- I don't think that
you develop your legend by never failing.
- Well. - I actually think you kinda,
like, you build a legend by running toward the impossible and then proving to everyone
it was always possible. (upbeat music) - Erwin McManus, hey,
it's great to have you on the podcast, man. - Man, it's so good to be with you. - Yeah. This is long overdue. You're one of the greatest
leaders that I know, and I'm honored to know you up close. And the closer that we get, the more I love you and respect you, and so thank you for taking
time to invest in our community. - Oh man, it's my privilege, and I tell people all the time because people ask me, you
know, who do I respect? Who are the leaders I trust, Craig Rochelle's always
number one on my list. - You're, you're very kind.
Well, congratulations. Your book is out, "Mind Shift, It Doesn't Take
A Genius To Think Like One." And I am, I'm actually thankful that you let me read this ahead of time. So I got to sneak peek on
some of your brilliant work before it even came out, and I wanna congratulate you
on this very important work and talk more about it. But I wanna start a little bit about your leadership journey. First of all, for anyone in our community that might not know you,
Erwin is a creative genius. He is a rare mix of business brilliance with artistic creativity and with very strong spiritual values, which makes you unusually
effective in a lot of environments where other traditional
leaders are not effective. So, with that lead in, as
we talk about leadership, I'd love to know, Erwin, when is the first time in your life when you recognize, oh my gosh, I might have the ability to lead. - Yeah, I was thinking about that, Craig. You know, when you start
reflecting on your childhood, and I think that my first awareness was, I don't know if I'm really well
crafted to follow. (laughs) And that's kind of ironic 'cause I always call
myself a very good follower in terms of when I
worked on someone's team I would really work to
be a great team mate. When I had a boss. I tried to
be an extraordinary employee and I don't actually
think you can lead well if you don't learn how to follow well. - Yeah, exactly. Yes. - But there's also like that
contrast when I was young, I realized I saw the world differently. And so it wasn't that I
wasn't cooperative on a team, it's that where most people were going, I wasn't interested in going. And so some of it was
early on I realized that if I saw a different kind of world or I saw a different kinda life and no one was moving that direction, it would require me to
pioneer or to move quickly. And so I can look back all
the way to elementary school. I started my first little
business when I was a kid. I had a bank account. I bought my own equipment,
you know, you know, I had a, I had staff. I mean, it's, and I'm 11, 12 years old. And so I realized very early on that I had sort of
entrepreneurial leadership guess. And I think when I was in eighth grade, I was the track coach for the sixth grade elementary track team. And so somehow even at that
age, I had been identified. And that helps sometimes when someone sees that you have a capacity to do something and invites you to take it on. - Hmm.
- And I love coaching. I just found incredible satisfaction in helping other people achieve their own personal greatness. And I realized that I have a vicarious joy in creating environments
where other people are great. I don't personally need to be great for me to experience a ridiculous
amount of happiness or joy in my life. So it was very, very early on in my life. And also, you know how you
grew up playing pickup sports? You know, we grew up
playing pick up football, pick up track, and I was
always the last person picked. My brother was always
the captain of one team. And this kid next door, Hugh was always the
captain of the other team. And my brother wouldn't pick me, so the other guy wouldn't pick me 'cause he didn't have
to waste a pick on me. And so I spent my childhood
being the last person picked. And I remember one day thinking to myself, I am done being the last person picked. So I, we got went outside,
we all met in the street where we all played ball. And I remember saying, I'm the
other captain and Hugh goes, "thank God I'm so tired
of losing your brother." And my, and he was the first
person my brother picked, and I picked backwards. I picked the worst players first, and my brother was a superior athlete. He was incredibly strategic as a thinker. And he wanted everything he did. And so I took the worst players, the people who're always picked last. And even in our street world,
I began developing talent and I knew if I took the worst players and I won, it was a devastating, devastating loss for my brother, and so I really realized early on that I had some leadership instincts, but they were a little
bit counterintuitive. I didn't lead to win. I really led to elevate other people. And I think that was some, somehow something in me very early. - So there's a couple things you said that stand out to me that
one of the things I think a lot of leaders miss is you talked about being good at following before
you were good at leading, and so I think a lot
of people will say is, I wanna be a leader of people. I wanna be upfront, I wanna be in charge. And someone said one
time I'd give him credit, but if you want to be great at being over, you need to be great
at being under people. Yeah and that's, that's a
really good place to start because when you're under
people, you learn oftentimes what is what they do effectively. You also learn what you don't wanna do when you're over people. And so-
- Yeah. - You started there and then a couple of other
things that stood out to me, Erwin, is that you intuitively saw something in yourself, but it was not normal. And I think there's
gonna be a lot of leaders that will be encouraged by that because sometimes the
most effective leaders are the most extreme. And there's a lot of people, if you're kind of normal, you blend in, but if you're, if you're a little bit odd, if you see the world a little
in a little different way, you tend to stand out, and so you had the courage
at a very early age to say, I do see the world differently. And that's not bad. It
could be a strength. And the third thing that you
said that I thought is really, really important is you
really do see yourself as adding value to other people. And Maxwell says it all the time, the best leaders say it all the time. You know, it's never
about your importance. It's always about adding value. And that, that really does
make a big difference. And that's one of the
reasons why you're great. I'd love to know a little
bit about how you do that, because right now you coach anybody, you'll interact with, my team was telling me
when they interact with you that you were building into them. So someone comes in that's
just with somebody else and you're in, you're building
them, and then you'll coach and counsel world class athletes, CEOs. Tell me about your mindset of coaching. What do you, what are you, what are you thinking about
when you're meeting with people? how can we be better at coaching based on what you've learned? - Yeah, I think the key
to high level coaching is high level thinking, elite listening. Before you get the high level thinking, you have to get the high level listening. - Good.
- And I always walk in with a chaotic blank slate, in a sense. So I'm nervous because I
really wanna bring value to that person's life. And so I'm not, I'm not gonna pretend that I walk into a meeting with someone who's
really a top tier leader and don't feel a sense of nervousness because I realize I'm
interacting with someone who thinks that are at a
really high level already. It's so easy to coach people
from below average to average, and really easy to coach people from average to above average. And it's not that
difficult to coach people from above average to good. And what, what I've learned
in my own life is that, the people who are achieving
at the highest level have almost zero margin for error. And that's the space I love. I love the space where leaders have almost no margin for error. And so their thinking has
to be incredibly, you know, granular and even detailed. And there ha there ha there has to be a menstrual acuity there where they're really
aware of what's important in the details. And so one of the things I
do right away is I just go in without any preconceived
notions of what they need. I just go in to listen. And I, and I do use some
psychological assessments, but they're really there just as ink blots so that that person can find the space where they identify readily and begin to unwrap who they are. And so I pay, I find ways
just to get a person talking to begin to tell me their story. I start looking for recurring patterns and I look for recurring patterns that identify self-limiting structures, and I look for recurring
patterns that identify structures that really are leveraged for success, and 'cause they're both there, and a lot of times what
happens is that the people who have achieved an
extraordinary level of success have some incredibly powerful internal structures for success. They just can't identify what it is that keeps causing them to fall apart or what keeps bringing internal distress or what keeps them from
having a level of clarity that you would think they would have, and I just think it's like for all of us, when, you know, when you're the fish, you don't see the water even when you're a top tier leader, it's just really helpful
when someone listens to you, you know, pays attention to
the roadmap of your inner world and then begins to say, hey,
this is what I hear you saying, this is what I, this is what I
see that you're dealing with. And then I ask 'em, does
this resonate with you? I don't assume I'm right. And then I'll have, sometimes I'll have someone
say, oh, how did you know this? In fact, that's when I know I'm really on. One of the people I coach, I love coaching and he's
at the highest level in coaching in the world, and he kept saying to me,
how could you know this? How could you know this?
How could you know this? And you know, there, I'm
a deeply spiritual person, so I think I get to integrate
some of the spiritual gifts that God has given me with some of the psychological
tools that I've learned, and, you know, some of the
leadership constructs that, you know, I've learned over time. And a lot of times I just sense
that I can see into a person and when they tell me how,
how did you know this? I know I'm on track because what they're, what they're really saying
is I hide this from myself. And the moment you set
it, I looked in the mirror and I saw myself, and there
are other people, Craig where I'm like, how do I find my way into
this person's inner world? They're just so blocked
off and so locked out. And sometimes what I find is I
can help 'em solve a problem. They're not gonna let me
into their inner world. They're not gonna let me
into their soul space. And, but they have critical
challenges in front of them, huge obstacles, and they're
feeling the weight of it. So with them, I just go ahead and try to help them make a lot of money. I help them solve a huge business problem. I help them make a decision
that catalyzes massive momentum. And when I do that, they always come back and go, okay, how did you do that? And then I go, and they
said, can you do that more? I said, yes but does that
gimme the credibility now to have a conversation
about what's really going on inside of you and, 'cause I know in the end
what that leader needs is internal structures that can
carry the weight of success, not just how to become more successful. - There's about a hundred
follow-up questions I wanna ask you right now because that, that there's so much brilliance there. I wanna comment on a couple things, Erwin, and first of all, I want our,
our community to hear the fact that you said you're
nervous when you go in and-
- Oh, absolutely. - Yeah and so I think
that's really important because a lot of times we think if we're gonna be really
effective at something, we're not gonna be nervous, and the reality is when you really care and when you're really
good, you're often nervous. And so if we had more
time, I'd kind of dive into how do you deal with your nerves? But I think I've got more
important things I wanna ask you. But that, that's one thing. The second thing I want to
highlight is that you're working with top level leaders that
are seeking out coaching. And I want to just drive this in because there are some
leaders right now that think, well, you know, I don't
really need coaching, I'm pretty good, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah. And someone told me years ago, Erwin, that like if you look
at a flag football team full of seven year olds,
there's typically one coach, maybe an assistant coach, when you get into high school, college or pros, you've
got multiple coaches, and you've got individual
coaches for offense, for defense, for special teams. You got a kicking coach,
you got a quarterback coach, you got a pitching coach,
you got a batting coach on and on and on. So the better you are, the
more specific coaching you get. And I just wanna highlight that as well, because there are some people out there that may think I don't need coaching. And that's maybe because you
don't know what you don't know, that the better you are, the
more you're gonna seek it out. But I do wanna dive in and you actually talk about this concept in your book "Mind Shift." You talk about the structures
that we have in our mind, and I love this that
you said you're looking for the patterns or the structures that
are limiting their success or that are really structured
to catapult someone forward. Can you give me some
more insight into that? And how'd you discover this and what do you mean by what do, what are you looking for in seeing? - Yeah, I think one thing, Craig, is that sometimes highly successful people apply the same strategy in
every arena of their life and it doesn't work. You can, you know, let, I have this process called the seven frequencies of communication where I help identify
the natural frequencies from which people communicate. It's, let's say your
natural frequency is command and you're running a company. And so when you're using
a commander frequency, it can work fantastically
well if you are, you know, the captain of a yacht team or you know, your Olympic
rowing team or I, and, but when you go home, if
you're using that frequency with your wife, it's gonna
destroy your marriage. - Right?
- And if you're using it with your kids, it's gonna
really shatter the psyche and emotional development of your kids, and what happens a lot of times is that a lot of business leaders
who are highly driven type A, they have a recurring pattern that's being affirmed by success. And they think, oh, this is
the same pattern I can bring into my relationships, or this is the same pattern I can bring into my emotional health. I can just power myself
to not be depressed. But you can't, you know, I
can just power myself to deal with my lack of identity
in this incredible feeling of lack of self-worth. I can buy enough cars or planes or yachts to finally help me overcome that deep sense of inadequacy
and it doesn't work. And so some of it is helping
a person realize that a strategy that works in one area doesn't work holistically in every area of your life. And that's one of the
most difficult things I think to deal with because
I work with a lot of guys whose companies are all like
a hundred million and up and a lot of them are under 40 years old. They, they gain a massive amount of wealth and success early. And it's incredible how many of them have already been divorced
even multiple times. How many of them have just chosen to move into relationships as a commodity? And they, and they try to play it up as if they're just, you know,
you know, playing the field. But what's actually
going on is they've lost any sense of confidence that they can have a
sustainable relationship and deal with the real issues
within their own character or their own psychological structure. And you know, so that's some of the stuff I really try to work with. But really the book deals
with 13 mental structures, even though there's 12
chapters and then chapter zero, because I always have a chapter zero because the first chapter
is a shift in reality. And you know, Craig, you and
I both have similar paths in that we're both followers
of Jesus and we both pastored and we both work in a context where people have a deep faith. And you know, as well as I do that one of the challenging
things is when you're deal, when you're dealing with
people who really do love God and really have a deep
and honest faith in Jesus, but they're not changing
and they're not growing. And sometimes it, it's the default mode is
almost like to create a, a mythology or a superstition. You just need to pray more or believe more or have more faith. But it's always an indictment as if that person doesn't
have enough of that, rather than being honest and saying, you've developed some really
unhealthy mental structures and those internal structures are what are actually
limiting you from experiencing the life that God wants for you. And so the reason I wrote "Mind
Shift" was both for people who have faith and those who do not, because I found that the
same mental structures are the limiting
structures both for people who believe in those who do not believe. - Interesting. - I'd like to hear more about that. And so "Mind Shift" really, it, it was born outta years of research. - Yeah.
- Both in your own life and then working with people. So I'm guessing that of the dozen or so you talk about that there's probably one or two that you see most often. We have ingrained a message
we say to ourselves over and over again, or a way of thinking that's counterproductive to future success or even a way that's
counterproductive to thinking to of living in a way that is sustainable. Would you say there's one
or maybe two that stand out as being the most common things you see in high performing leaders? - Yeah, my mind immediately
leaps to the chapter called, You Are Your Own Ceiling. I'm an immigrant from
El Salvador, you know, Spanish was my first language, English was my second language. I never knew my real father. I have one brief memory of him, but I'm not sure if
it's a memory or a story I heard so much that
it feels like a memory. My mom remarried a guy involved in what we called creative
underground economies. And he took us to a police station and convinced the police
that we were robbed and that we had no identification. So I walked out McManus. So I go from being Spanish Cardona to walking out Irish McManus. I live with this alias all of my life. My mom and stepdad hope that I
don't remember my real father and my life before them. So they make up a scenario
that they were always there and that my past memories were false. Going through all of that, Craig, I ended up in a psychiatric chair by the time I was 10 years old. - Wow.
- In and out of a hospital for months, and for what they told me
were psychosomatic illnesses, I was a shattered and broken a human being
as I think possible. I wasn't on the brink of neurosis, I was on the brink of psychosis. I still, to this day struggle
with a level of night terrors where I'm wide awake and the
nightmares are still with me because of trauma and
experiences in my childhood. It would be so easy to point
to any one of those experiences as my explanation for why I underachieved for why I never became a, the full expression of my potential, for why my talent was buried under the rubble of my brokenness, but once I took responsibility for my life and I accepted that I was my own ceiling, I began realizing that
external circumstances as tragic and traumatic as they are, will never be the actual root cause for my ceiling in my life. My ceiling is my response
to the circumstances. My ceiling is my refusal to
allow those circumstances to define me and to be defined by my overcoming those circumstances. And I find that high capacity leaders take complete responsibility for their lives even in areas where they should not. And I think the adage that even if it's not your
fault, it's your responsibility is one of the most
important mental shifts. It is the mind shift that I
think may be most significant. I spent a lot of my childhood blaming and you know, the truth was
other people were to blame. When you're eight, you're not
to blame for all the trauma and all the tragedy and all
the pain you go through, but it doesn't matter if
it's your fault or not. What matters is that who you
become is your responsibility. And one of the things
people don't realize is that whenever you blame someone else, you are actually transferring
your power to them. If you are what's holding me back, then you're the only one
that can set me free. If you're the cause of my ceiling, then you're the only one
that can remove that ceiling. When you take responsibility
for your life, you are actually reclaiming your power. And now that ceiling is a
ceiling of your own making so you can decide to remove it. - That's so powerful. And you know, I've heard even more details about your childhood and what you overcame and it's special and I can imagine some people with similar stories of brokenness that builds their faith to know that whatever, wherever you started, you don't have to stay there. I'm, I'd like to kind of
process this with you. I don't think I've ever
talked out loud about this with anybody else, but I
find in my own leadership, I do have ceilings and I generally feel like that I am the biggest limiting factor and I'll just make it spiritual to what God wants to
do through our church. - Yeah. - That it's me, my
mindset, my limitations, my fear, my hesitation, my
insecurity on and on and on. And so if you put it in
business sense, I think for, I might say to some business leaders, you are the greatest limiting factor to what you could do
through your business. Then you find a breakthrough. For me, Erwin is like, I'll
talk to someone like you. I'll look for in some area,
I need to grow in a leader that's not one or two steps ahead of me, but are 10 steps ahead of me because I want to get what they call, I wanna get from them what they give, I call it the gift of disorientation. It's not tweaks like, I'm
gonna improve this a little bit or make this 5% better,
but I'm going mind blowing. I never thought of that. And so there are categories
of your leadership where you blow my mind. I, and what'll happen is
when I get a breakthrough, I feel like I get above a ceiling. And what used to be a
ceiling becomes a floor. - [Erwin] Yeah. - And I'll even say that
I'm standing on a new floor, then there's a new ceiling. What I'd like for you to do
right now is talk to someone who is, has a new ceiling and tell them how do they identify it? What do they need to do to break through? Do you read a book? Do you find mentoring? Do you get counseling?
What do you do to break through those ceilings when
you become the ceiling again? - Well, if someone's gonna ask me what's the first thing I need to do to break through my ceiling, I'm gonna say, you need
to pick up "Mind Shift." - All right.
- And read that. - But I would agree with
you, very good book. I was, I was strangely at a bachelor party about six months ago. That was kind of weird because I've never been
to a bachelor party. I'm 65 years old and that's not when I should start going to bachelor parties. - The fact that that was
your first bachelor party makes me have about
five follow up questions of which I'll ask you after
this interview, keep going. - And so at this, you
know, my wife's asking me, what are you doing going to a bachelor? And I said, it's my friend.
I gotta go support Joel. And so I ends up being
a makeshift mastermind where he texts me since, you know, because you're coming, would
you do a three hour session, you know, for all my men? So I'm like, oh, okay. This mastermind looked,
this bachelor party looks a lot like a mastermind. And then after the three hours,
oh well Erwin's still here so we can have a couple
of hours of q and a. And then since he's here, he can do some one-on-one coaching. But one of the guys asked
this question, he said, I have an opportunity
in my company to elevate and have a greater role, but I just keep hitting this wall and I just keep hitting this wall and I just keep hitting this wall and I cannot figure out how
to break through this wall. And so I just took 'em
through a small process. This is what I would say to
someone, alright, take a moment and imagine your life on
the other side of that wall, on the other side of that ceiling. Imagine how it affects
your role in business, your marriage, your family, your quality of life, everything. And took a moment and
I said, can you see it? And he goes, I can see it. And then I said, do you want that life? And he paused and he said, no. And I said, well, you are the wall. And he, and he just goes, I'm the wall. And he go, yeah. Most of the time when we
keep hitting a ceiling and hitting a ceiling
and hitting a ceiling that we can't break through, it's because we really don't
want to go to the other side. - Interesting.
- It's either it requires too much
risk, too much sacrifice, too much uncertainty, too much change, whatever it may be too much, you know, too much emotional energy. And Craig, sometimes I have
to stop and ask myself. And in fact, this is a
question I love asking people. I don't want you to think of
all the scenarios for failure. I want you to think about what will your life look like if you have a hundred percent success? Because you may not be
preparing for success. You may only be preparing
either for failure or mitigated success. And what you really don't want is the outcomes of that success. And so you're gonna, you're
gonna keep holding yourself up. And you know, I have a
friend, he came to my house, he listens to, you know,
our "Mind Shift" podcast and reads all my stuff. And he said, okay, I feel
like I'm underachieving and you know, I need you
to speak into my life and tell me, you know, what do you think is really my ceiling? What's limiting me? And I love this guy. And I said, well, you
have a great marriage. You're like one of the
best husbands I know and you have an incredible family. I love your kids. You actually have a,
like a beautiful life. So you're just a really safe person. You just, you're not dangerous
in any way whatsoever. And he just looked at me
like a deer in the headlights 'cause he's not dangerous. And he had to really process that. And I sent him a text
later. I felt so bad. I said, Hey, it's okay for
you not to be dangerous if that's the life you want. Like you just because you're my friend and you see the way I live my life, it doesn't mean this is like
the right rhythm of life for you. You have to decide whether you want more. You and your wife should sit down and have a conversation
about is our life exactly the way we want it to be? Don't feel like you
need to take more risks or be more ambitious
or make more sacrifices just because you feel the
gravitational pull of my life. And this has been a hard
thing for me, Craig, 'cause I think everyone
should aspire to be more, to do more, to risk more. But I also with time have
realized that the life that I'm compelled to live isn't the life everyone's
compelled to live. - Right.
- And sometimes I think we pretend that
we're hitting ceilings, we can't break through, but we haven't yet decided we want the life on the other side. - That it's interesting because yeah, I think to
break through most ceilings, it's gonna, we have to
break through an insecurity or you have to, you may
have to remove someone that's not performing well
and you don't wanna do it, or you have to undo a
promise that you made. Like, we're never gonna do
this. Now you have to do it. And it can be pain, you can be painful. And so I always say to
myself that the difference between where you are and where you could be might be the pain you're
unwilling to endure. And see-
- That, that's so true. - Right. You have to step
into the pain sometimes. - And for me it's, you know, chapters one and chapter three are like an ink blot 'cause chapter one in my shift
is it's all about people. And then chapter three is, you
can't take everyone with you. And I put a chapter in between so people could have a
breather between those two, that dichotomy. There's some leaders who are so type A, they need chapter one. It's all about people. And they need to be reminded that people are not a commodity. They are the economy, they are the value. But there are some people
who need chapter three. There's so much about people and relationships that they surrender their dreams and their goals. And actually they surrender their purpose and intention for life because they're trying to
take everyone with them. And they don't realize not everyone can go or even wants to go where they're going. And I just recently in our, in our space called
the Arena asked people, are you a chapter one or a chapter three? And and a lot of pastors who are really such good human beings, I know pastors get a bad rap, but most of the pastors I
know are really kind, loving- - Agree, agree, agree. - Caring beautiful human beings and they're trapped in chapter three. They think they're supposed
to take everyone with them. And they need to know that
one of the painful transitions of leadership is letting people go. It's not really leaving them behind, it's letting them go. - Jesus left the crowd sometime right? He'd walk away to go be alone. Yeah that that's very true. And there, there was a
phrase you said earlier that really jumped down at me. I wanted to ask you
about, and lemme give you a little bit of a lead in first. You live in LA you interact with a lot of very well known people. There's, there's more of them there. It doesn't make you better, you're just kind of in
the middle of it right? And I would guess that the, when you are around
hyper successful people, there are very few of them that are happy, very few that are content, very few that have good relationships. A lot of them are depressed,
deal with anxiety, massive problems. You said in there a little phrase, something about preparing for success. What I wanna do is I wanna
talk to our community right now because we have a lot of people, I just like to envision their, they have a higher than average IQ, they've got better than
average work ethics, they've got faster upward trajectory, I really believe that our community does, and there are people that
are living in success or moving towards success. And success is never easy. Can you comment on why success
is way more of a burden than an unsuccessful person would realize? And then if we're preparing for it, can you gimme a little
bit of language around it? What do I need to do if God's blessing me, if my business is growing, if I'm finally achieving my dreams, and recognizing my dreams might be a little bit of
a nightmare, what do I do? How do, how do I be good
at being successful? - Yeah I think one of
the surprising things that happens is the
loneliness of transitions that I was just asked a week ago if, you know, is it lonely at the top? I guess they assumed I was at the top. I see much higher summits than my life. But accepting that I've at least achieved some
level of being at the top. My response was, no, I
have more friends now than I've ever had in my entire life. But what was lonely
was in the transitions. Because when you're at one level of living and you decide I'm gonna
discipline myself more, I'm gonna take on more sacrifices, I'm gonna demand more of
myself or I'm worthy of more, I think God's designed me to have a greater impact. The moment you begin to
elevate all those friends who loved you as you were,
will not love you anymore, and they will not applaud you, and part of the reason I think that we are not prepared
for success is that we think everyone who
loves us in our failure will love us in our success. And but you know, there's this
old phrase that, you know, we don't probably use anymore, but you know, you have drinking buddies and your drinking buddies
are only your buddies when you're drinking and when
you decide to stop drinking, they decide to stop being your buddy, and a lot of us understand
that psychologically, that if you're an alcoholic, you gotta, you have to pick new friends because if your drinking
buddies are still your friends, you're gonna be drinking, but a lot of us have
underachieving buddies and they're our friends
while we're underachieving. But the moment we decide to step up and become the person God
designed for us to be, they're not happy with us anymore because they only wanna
have underachieving buddies. A lot of us have, you know,
satisfied with life buddies. And then the moment you say, no, I actually think I
have a calling on my life and I had to step into that,
you start losing those, and if you don't lose them, you'll go back to your previous condition. And so I think one of the things that people are not prepared
for in success is that, is that twilight zone in
between the friends you had and the friends you don't have yet, because what happens when
you're in that transition, you're elevating, but
the people above you, they're not sure if you're legit. So they're not inviting
you into the friendships. And so you in a sense, you've outgrown the friends you have, but you haven't grown up into the friends you're going to have. And that's why chapter two is actually between the two relationship chapters. Chapter two is you
don't need the applause. And I think that every leader who elevates and keeps destroying ceilings and then moves to the next level and destroys another ceiling and moves to the next level, actually moves without applause. If you stay where you get the
applause, you will stagnate. You have to keep growing through a stage where you get no applause because people aren't
sure if they agree with where you're going and
are not sure if the, if the price you're paying is worth the goal you're trying to achieve. - That's powerful. And that ties into this quote that I put down in my notes. You said you have to
choose between acceptance and uniqueness. If you're addicted to affirmation, you'll become what others want you to be rather than who you were created to be. Talk to me about that, the difference between
acceptance and uniqueness. - Yeah that quote is very personal to me. Years ago, someone came up
to me and they said this and they thought I would
agree with it, they said, I'm amazed how you do not need
to be loved by other people and liked by other people, and the exact opposite was true. I so desperately wanted to
be loved and to be liked. And he was actually talking about all the leaders in the Christian faith. You know, he thought, I just didn't care, and the truth was, Craig, I cared so much. - Sure, yep.
- I, you know, when I became a person of faith, I was in college, you know, I never wanted to be
like, seen as a heretic, or seen as an outlier, or, you know, seen as a
rebel or antagonistic, you know, to the movement of Jesus. And I had to make a
really difficult choice. And I cannot tell you
how many conversations I would have with my
wife in the living room. And I would say, I think
that this isn't real or true. I think I think our thinking is bad here and I think I need to speak into this. And Kim would say to me,
please don't say that. Please, please don't talk about
that outside of the house. And she was just, she
would try to mitigate me and she'd tell me, honey,
could you just do it this way? Or could you dress this
way? Or could you say this? And my wife so much
wanted me to be loved and, but I think it's, I
look back and I realize it's because she could
see the pain I was in and knew that I wanted acceptance. And one of the difficult choices I had to make throughout my life, Craig, is if I choose acceptance, it means I'm also choosing conformity. And maybe it's about design. You know, maybe some people,
their natural space is in that space that I would call conformity. I'm just not designed like that, and so what I discovered early on is that everyone has a personal uniqueness that no one else will understand. Everyone has an expression of
their own God-given uniqueness that I think should be protected, but no one will protect it but you. - Right.
- And, and so if you're willing to
give up what makes you unique, everyone will be happy
for you to surrender it. - Yeah, I, so I could
talk for hours about this. The, I like the word unique. The word I would use even is extreme because there are, there are some like, like you've got some extremes and I, those are the things
I like most about you because if you're not extreme somewhere, you're not gonna be great anywhere right? - I agree.
- And conformity, everything in culture tries
to pull us to be conformed, and from a spiritual standpoint, even we're told in scripture,
you know, do not be conformed - That's right. - To the patterns of this
world, but be transformed. How? By the "Mind Shift," there's a little, little book plug for you right there by the renewing of your mind. And so I love the fact that
you are, you're different. You approach leadership from
a different vantage point. You reach people and impact
people that others couldn't because of your uniqueness. So when I look on Erwin, I see
a guy from a distance that, man, this guy has it all together, but we all know when we're
up close and vulnerable, it's not always easy. I'd love to know if you're
comfortable sharing, is there a limiting
factor for you right now? A current fear, a bad mindset
where you need a "Mind Shift?" Is there, is there something
that's holding you back, weighing you down, something you're trying
to change about you that you're willing to share with us? - It's funny when you asked that, Craig, I wish I could say, yeah,
nothing comes to mind. (both laughing) - You want the whole list or
just the top three, right? Yeah.
- Well, I'll give you the one that this morning- - Yep.
- I'm sitting with my wife having coffee,
sharing with her my struggle. So it's, it's not a back burner. There is a certain personality type that feels incredibly comfortable,
like selling themselves, selling their ideas, selling the, their contribution to the world. And they're, and a lot
of them are my friends. And I, and I, and I told my wife, I said, it's so natural for them
to believe that any, everything they create is the most important thing in the world, and so they're just
really good at selling, and, but I, when I first
started writing books, Craig, I would say, "Hey, you
don't need this book. You know, all you need is the Bible, but you know, if you have
a chance, pick it up." Like I would, I would apologize
for everything I created. - And and what's the root
of that, do you think? - I don't know if I
ever properly dealt with the deep sense of insignificance
that I felt in my childhood that I didn't feel like
I deserved success. And, and so I do think I have that shadow inside of me. That, and and frankly,
faith in this didn't help, it actually hurt, because I wanted everyone
in the Christian world to affirm what I was doing, and every time you do something different, you get a lot of haters. And I'm like, oh man, I don't
ever want to dishonor Jesus. I don't ever wanna do anything
that'd reflect Jesus badly. So I have this over like
overdeveloped conscience where I go, I don't ever
want to communicate anything in a way that's improper. So it actually limits me from expressing how excited I am about something or how much I believe in something. And so I've actually tried
to deal with some of that, this friend of mine, and
actually you know Jamie, and Jamie Lima, she came up to me one day 'cause we were doing, I was taking 'em through the psychological
assessment and they saw mine and, and she came up to really upset and she said, why would
God give you such gifts without a drive to take
it to the whole world? And I kind of like fell back and I said, but I do have a drive to
take it to the whole world. And she was like, nah, you would know it. Like, you know, she just confronted me. And so what's really helpful
to me is how people in my life who actually believe in me. And this may sound weird,
Craig, you know, I mean, I've written like a dozen books and you know, I've made
some impact in the world and I've been in a lot
of different industries, but I always have this
deep sense of inadequacy. And so I suppose it's
what everyone calls it, the imposter syndrome. You know, I'm always shocked. I mean, when, when people
start paying me six figures to coach them one-on-one, I thought, like, is this stealing, like,
you know, is this right? You know, am I worth this? And so I always, I
always have to fight this and remind myself I've worked,
you know, for, you know, 45 years to develop
the unique contribution I can make in the world. I have to remind myself
that it's okay for me to believe that I have
something worthwhile to give to the world.
- Yeah. I can imagine Erwin
right now just, you know, a lot of people listening that are kind of right in the middle
of what you're saying, sometimes the most
outwardly successful people are the most inwardly insecure, right? It's almost like we're
trying to prove to somebody, a dad who's no longer
here, a parent, ourselves, the haters from school, the
people that picked you last, you know, for-
- Yeah. - Whatever kickball you're
trying to prove something and so there's almost an ongoing sense. I almost have a theory to really be God honoring and successful you have to have a very rare mix of deep and abiding confidence and at
the same time a very genuine and sincere humility. And so they're both, it's not, it's not an insecurity and an arrogance. It's a humility and a confidence. - Yeah, and I think it's a, it's a interesting chemical compound. If you can see behind me, I have daredevil everywhere and
I have all these art pieces, and a part of it is that daredevil is, I grew up with graphic novels and Daredevil was probably
my favorite superhero. And it's because he was blinded by a tragic accident when he was a kid. And so what all people, what people could see was
this person who was disabled, but they couldn't see the superpowers that are hidden within him. And then his, and then his moniker was that he was the man without fear. And even as a kid, I just told myself, it doesn't matter if other
people can see the talent in you, it doesn't matter if they
can't see the superhero that's hidden inside of you. You just have to know. And I actually made superpower to be a person that would be experienced as a man without fear, which is ironic 'cause I was afraid of everything. Interesting, and, but I
used fear to my advantage, and one of the things I
try to teach people is how to use fear to your advantage. I mean, I spent what, 10 years
working with drug cartels, with assassins, with, you know, gangs. And I mean, I've been in buildings where cocaine was stacked to the ceilings and Uzi machine guns guarded the doors, and you know, I've walked
the streets of Damascus and flown into Pakistan,
had the time of my life, and, you know, and crossed
through Lebanon to Syria. And, you know, I just, I picked the most dangerous
places in the world and I've gone there, and a huge part of it was that I knew I was a fearful person, and I knew that whatever I feared establishes the limits of my freedom. And so I decided that I would
use fear to my advantage. I would leverage it whenever I was afraid I would move fast in that direction. And so there is this, like, this sense inside of me where I know I'm full of insecurities and I know I'm full of inadequacies. And so whenever I see a ceiling, I go at it hard and I don't care. See, I've, I've failed
so many times that it's, it's irrelevant to me whether I fail. - Yep.
- But I don't think that you develop your
legend by never failing. - [Craig] Wow. - I actually think you kinda,
like, you build a legend by running toward the impossible and then proving to everyone
it was always possible. - I'm gonna ask you more about that, but first one more time, I
wanna just talk about the book. It's called "Mind Shift"
just recently out, it doesn't take a genius to think like one and most people who know Erwin well would, would call him a genius. He is a creative artistic
leadership genius. And so to hear from one who kind of is but wouldn't see himself as that, to tell me I could be brilliant without having to think like, without actually being
brilliant is helpful to me. I'm gonna ask you a closing
question before that. If someone wants to get
to know more about you, where do we find you, Erwin? - Yeah the easiest place to
go is to erwinmcmanus.com, and then you can have
access to everything I do. I have an online mastermind
community called the Arena that people can join through membership. And everything we create is
available there for free. And I think it's, it's the best place if you want have an
ongoing engagement with me and what we create here. - Well, I appreciate your
heart to serve other leaders and do it from a faith perspective. I wanna close out with this question, and it seems to me like
we've known each other for quite a while, that you have, you've
broken through ceiling, after ceiling after ceiling. There was a time when you
kind of almost decided not to, it seemed like, that you just kind of
pulled back a little bit and then you came back
with really more passion than ever before. One of the things I love
about you among many is that you have a faith-based mindset and a broader impact to
help people that don't. You are accepted broadly
and you love people and help them in a way
that is God honoring, but is also not, doesn't repel 'em away. Which in fact, it if
we, if it, if we do it, God honoring it should never, but oftentimes Christian
leaders don't get it right. You talked about fear, and
I'd love for you to talk to somebody right now that is afraid of being bold in their faith. They're afraid of taking a risk. They're afraid of starting the ministry. They're afraid of succeeding. They're afraid of not succeeding. I've said before that
what you fear the most often reveals where you
trust God the least. It seems to me that you have faced fears over and over and over again. You're nervous walking in, you don't fear like you're worthy enough, but you continue to get things done. Talk to me, build my faith
to overcome my fears, to get a little mind shift and to truly become the
person I was created to be. - That's a big question, Craig. And I would say, first of all,
fear is a wonderful reminder that we're designed for faith 'cause all fear is, is a negative projection of the future, and so fear is the shadow side of faith. So when a person says, you
know, I'm not a person of faith, I can guarantee you they
are a person of fear, and because something fills that space where you engage the future. And for me, once I realized that I lived in a relationship with
the creator of the universe, and that he designed me to be a part of the creative process, and that the future wasn't
something to be feared. It was something to be created, it was something that to be
engaged with hope and optimism, with compassion and
generosity and courage. It just made me so excited about life. Every day you should wake up knowing that you're a created being
that's created to create. In the same way that bees create honey and silkworms create silk and beavers create dams,
humans create futures. You are designed by God to be
a part of the creative process of creating a beautiful future. Whenever you're filled with fear, it means that you have allowed the vacuum of your creative essence to be shaped by such negative thoughts and a negative view of
yourself, of God, of the world, and of the future that you're going to actually
create the future you fear. And so it's so important, and I don't know, honestly, I don't know how someone does this life without Jesus. And you know, for me,
Jesus is not supplemental. Jesus is the essential. It's Jesus that informs
every aspect of my being. I'm not faith based I
am, I'm faith drowned. I'm like faith immersed. Every fiber of my being is an
expression of this conviction that you are not an accident, that you are not insignificant. That your life is not arbitrary,
that you are not fated, that you actually are created to create, you're imagined to imagine that you are a work of
art and an artist of work, and so the question is not
will you create a future, it's what kind of future will you create? And that to me is the
most important question to ask yourself. Why did God put you on this Earth? Not to survive, and not even
just to thrive, but to create. And when you create, you become the purest expression of God. - That's why you're Erwin McManus. This is incredibly powerful, and I take that to heart and would just say to our
community, I love you, I love our family. Some of you may say we haven't met, and it's like, I don't really care. I mean, I just, I genuinely
care so much about you and I pray that you take
Erwin's words to heart. That you were, you were
created by a good God. You've been given unique gifts
and you are created to create and you can create a better future. You can create a business
that is not just profitable, but provides jobs for people
and makes a difference in life. You can change legacies,
you can create ministries, that would serve people around the world, and Erwin, you have done that. You've created great businesses, you've created life altering ministries, you touched lives all over the world, and mine is one of them. I'm honored to call you a friend. The book is "Mind Shift, It Doesn't Take A Genius
To Think Like One." I hope those of you in
our community will dig in, find out more about Erwin and learn from him for
years and years to come. You will be blessed. For our YouTube community, I wanna give some books away. We've got five books to give away. Just type in the comment section. "I wanna 'Mind Shift,'
I wanna 'Mind Shift.'" If you're listening on somewhere else and you wanna go to YouTube, drop one, and you better do it quick
because we'll give those away at the end of the week after this drops, and Erwin, thank you for being on. You're a great friend and
you mean so much to me. Thank you for your time.
- Craig. Thank you so much, man. I always love having
conversations with you. - Same to you, to our community, if you want to get more
information about Erwin, we've got detailed notes for you. Go to life.church/leadershippodcast and we will get you the study
guide that comes out each with each episode to cover with your team. Hey, guess what? We got better today. Which is good news because we know that everyone wins when the leader gets better. (upbeat music)
