What Becomes Possible When We Quit Protecting Ourselves w/ Jordan Grumet

The Kevin Miller Podcast

Kevin Miller

Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality, Social Sciences, Education, How To, Society & Culture, Science, Medicine, Life Sciences, Spirituality, Nutrition, Self-improvement, Mental Health, Relationships

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2026

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I believe much of what motivates our life perspective and choices is around protecting ourselves. It’s human nature. I’m not talking about self-absorption, but even amongst the most giving and serving and confident of people, I still experience a lot of motive and behavior around self-protection. I’m including myself in this as well. My guest today has a very unique perspective on this concept. My guest is Jordan Grumet. Jordan was an internal medicine physician who left clinical practice to devote himself to hospice care and deep conversations about life. Jordan walks with people who are given an end of life diagnosis and watches a phenomenon happen right before his eyes. Jordan says, “We are all living versions of stories, but when a person is diagnosed with a terminal illness and death becomes a near future certainty, something remarkable happens: the self-protective stories about identity, work and money crumble, leaving them with clarity about who they are, what they love, and what really matters.” He then cites they become free, as there is no reason to hold up pretense and no need to protect themselves. Their focus shifts from fear of loss toward the possibility of what can still be gained, and people focus on true desires, generally for the first time. The tragedy is they didn’t achieve this perspective, long ago in their lives. Which is why Jordan took his experience and wrote a book, Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor's Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life. He’s striving to help us leave our lives of self-protection and move to considering what is truly possible, now. Not waiting till death is imminent and we have a short time to do what really matters. You can connect with Jordan at his podcast, Earn & Invest Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome. I'm Kevin Miller. I have conversations with people that help us make better meaning of our lives.
0:07.2	In this episode, what becomes possible when we quit protecting ourselves?
0:13.7	I have grown to feel that much of what motivates our life, I say our, me included,
0:20.0	what motivates our life perspective and choices is
0:23.6	very much influenced by protecting ourselves. I think it's human nature. And I'm not talking
0:29.5	about self-absorption, but even amongst the most giving and serving and confident people,
0:35.7	I still experience a lot of motive and behavior around self-protection,
0:41.8	self-support. And I'm, again, including myself in there. Well, my guest today has a very
0:47.2	unique perspective on the concept. This is Jordan Grummet. So Jordan was an internal medicine physician who left clinical practice to devote himself to hospice care and deep conversations about life.
1:02.6	Jordan walks with people who are given an end-of-life diagnosis and watches a phenomenon.
1:09.5	He says happens right before his eyes.
1:11.3	He says, we're all living versions of stories,
1:15.3	but when we get a terminal illness diagnosis and death becomes a near future certainty,
1:22.2	something remarkable happens.
1:24.4	The self-protective stories about identity and work and money crumble,
1:29.1	leaving us with clarity about who we are, what we love, and what really matters.
1:34.9	Well, he then cites that people become free, as there's no reason to hold up some pretense
1:40.3	and no need to protect themselves. Their focus shifts generally from fear of loss
1:46.5	toward the possibility of what can still be gained. And people focus on true desires,
1:52.4	generally for the first time, often for the first time. So obviously he sees us as a tragedy
1:57.1	that we don't get that perspective earlier in our lives, which is why he took his
2:03.0	experience and he wrote a book called Taking Stock, a Hospice Doctor's advice on financial
	...

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