Scary Close and the Condition of Your Heart, with Donald Miller – Episode 113 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Bestselling author, speaker, and StoryBrand CEO Donald Miller speaks on discovering shame and discovering self, allowing yourself to truly be seen, how being impressive is like eating junk food, enablement vs grace, the one type of person you can’t be friends with, losing the battle to win the war, and the CRAZY story of meeting his wife.

About Donald:

Donald Miller is a student of story. He’s the author of New York Times Best Sellers: Blue Like Jazz, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and Scary Close. He is the CEO of StoryBrand and Business Made Simple. He is the author of ten books including Building a StoryBrand, Marketing Made Simple and How to Grow Your Small Business. Collectively, his books have spent more than a year on the NYT Bestsellers list.

Learn more at StoryBrand.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

LISTEN:

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR RSS FEED: https://feeds.captivate.fm/the-action-catalyst/

SUBSCRIBE ELSEWHERE: https://the-action-catalyst.captivate.fm/listen

__________________________________________________________________________

(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
The author that you’re about to hear from is Donald, Don Miller. And some of you have probably many of you have probably heard of, of some of his other books. He’s written several books. His most famous book is Blue Like Jazz, and it’s sold well over a million and a half copies, he sold millions of books. Let’s put it that way. And so Don, thank you for being here, brother.

Donald Miller
I’m so excited about this. Thanks for having me.

Host
So I want to dive right in. Why do you think it is so hard to just open up and allow ourselves to be known by other people or fully known as you say?

Donald Miller
Well I think, you know, we live in a day and age where it’s easy to project an image, especially with social media, we can project an image on Instagram, and Twitter and all this kind of stuff. And then when we actually are in person, we’ve got this image that we’ve projected in the back of our brain, and we try to keep it going, right. It’s hard to do that in person, because we’re not always in the coolest place. And we’re in the coolest pose and hanging out with the coolest people. And so to let people know that you’re normal, can be scary. But that’s the only way we connect. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s the difference between people being impressed with us and people knowing us. You know, I got married pretty late, I remember a year into our marriage. And Betsy and I had a really great first year, we had about 120, overnight guests in our house traveled and we, we just had a great time the company was growing around us and really fun, and almost no arguments, you know, we’re just not the type. I’ve had plenty of relations were argue all the time. Whatever reason, Benson I just don’t don’t do it. And laid in bed one night, and I’m Betsy is asleep. And I’m praying and I’m thinking, Okay, what’s the theme of the second year? Right? What? What do I want the theme to be my second year of marriage? And I really just felt like God was saying, Why did you let her get to know you? Wow, the second year of marriage, right? Why don’t you let her get to know you? And it wasn’t like, you know, he was being a jerk or anything. And I just realized, wow, I, I still, I’m still putting on a, a, an act a little bit for my wife to some degree, right? I mean, there are things that I was sort of that I hadn’t told her about my life of moments of failure that she didn’t know about that. I you know, I assumed she wouldn’t like me anymore. Now, I’m not I didn’t assume that. I just wanted her to be impressed. Right, I assumed she wouldn’t be impressed. And so I think it’s true in minor ways, even in just close friendships and family. And there’s something really, you know, we risk rejection when we let people get to know us. And it’s not just this decision to be known, I think a lot of us, including me, don’t even really know how to do it, right. We don’t know how we don’t know how to be known. And what happens is we end up in a room full of people that know us, and yet still feel isolated. And there’s damage there. There’s, there’s when whenever we’re isolated, bad things grow, and by bad things, I mean, insecurities and even temptations and all that kind of stuff. It’s a It’s not helpful.

Host
Wow. I mean, just this, there’s so many big ideas in there, talk about the self shame and the act to kind of talk about that.

Donald Miller
Well I have a friend named Bill Loki, and he’s a clinical psychologist at a at a place called on site. And it sounds really rehabbing. But it’s actually not, it’s a really great place where a bunch of executive types go to get their stuff figured out. So they can be better leaders. But he kind of sat me down, he said, you know, done. Every person is born a self right. And so he drew a little circle on a napkin, and he wrote the word self inside the circle. He said, This is you. And then he said, at some point, every human being as they grow up, they learn kind of lie that they’re not enough that there’s something wrong with them. And, you know, who knows what that could be either, you know, missed kicking a ball on the kickball field or something like that. But he said, that causes them to cover their or to feel a sense of shame. And so he drew another circle around the self circle. So he’s making kind of a target. And in that second circle, he wrote shame. And he said, so we’re feeling this kind of shame. And then he said, another thing happens after we discover shame. And we tend to something happens in our life where we succeed a little bit, or we get some attention that we want. So, you know, you hit up a homerun in a, in a softball game when you’re a kid, and you realize that that you’re good, you’re good at athletics, and that you matter because you’re a good athlete and you and so he said, we draw this third circle around shame. So we’ve got a three circle target here. And then he wrote the word, you know, good at athletics, or smart or whatever. And that tends to be the you know, the costume that we were in order to cover shape and any So the problem with all that is people get to know this costume, right? And they don’t ever get to know the self. And so one of the things that in the book that I just made this conscious decision to do was to just tell the casual reader, here’s who I really am. And I don’t, I’m not a big fan of airing all your dirty laundry, I think there’s some wisdom to being careful who you share your your vulnerabilities with, because not everybody is trustworthy. And so it wasn’t like I was, you know, telling everything. But I just went back into my elementary school days and talked about where I discovered shame. And the I remember when I wrote that the story is of me, having a small bladder and wetting my pants and elementary school. So in the book, I remember where I wrote that story. And how, you know, it was a really hard thing for me to write not because I didn’t trust the reader. But it was just a painful moment for me to go back in time and realize, wow, there’s this, this kind of shame wound back there that I never fully processed that from an early age, when kids are learning the things about life, I learned I wasn’t good enough. And I needed to hide. And what was really cool about it, from Bill’s perspective of my psychologist, friend, is he said, Well, you know, now that you’re an adult, you can actually kind of, you know, it’s called a story map, and you kind of map out you reframe the narrative in your brain. And you sort of realize, you know, if the adult you can walk up to the kid you in that moment, how, first of all kind of silly, the moment is how it’s not that big of a deal, right? And you would say to the kid, hey, you realize everything’s gonna be all right, right? Like, this isn’t? This isn’t a defining thing. There’s no reason to feel shame about this. In fact, this is the sort of thing you could grow up and be a comedian and talk about it and make a lot of money, right. And it’s amazing how healing that experience is. Because I think so many of us just the way our brains work, you know, we get programmed to walk around with this shame, and you sit and think about you realize this was dumb. Why am I feeling shame about that, that’s, if my child did that. I would have such a sympathetic, compassionate perspective on them that I that I’m unwilling to give to myself. And so that was a real healing thing for me. But I think a lot of people, you know, we walk around, and we meet folks who specially really successful folks. They can, they can, they’ve lived off that third circle of putting up an image for so long that they, they don’t even realize they know, they don’t even realize who they are anymore. And I remember for a buddy of mine, another counselor here in town, he counsels a lot of musicians, singer songwriters, a lot of people who are famous, and he had, at one guy sit down during a rebranding phase in his career, where he was moving from country music to some other kind of music. And Al said, Well, which one is more like you like, which one is you? And he said, Man, I don’t I forgot who I was long time ago. I don’t know if I’m the country or the rock. I don’t know. Yeah, a lot of us are like that in life, too.

Host
We live in this world where we can’t survive without being that act.

Donald Miller
Right? Yeah, well, you can’t survive, you can’t, you know, succeed, we can’t get some of that stuff that we want. And those of us and I don’t know if you’re like this, but I am, you know, I bought into the lie early on that if I’m not successful, people won’t, won’t won’t care about me. And so winning is really important. I’m not especially a competitive person. But I’m competitive with myself, right? I know what my potential is. And it bothers me when I don’t reach it, and give it day. But there’s this lie behind that where it says, you know, you know, they’re gonna leave you if you if you’re not successful. Right. And, and, ultimately, that there’s just no truth to that. And so I think part of the reason that we get exhausted doing this is because we think they’re going to leave us if we don’t, when really what the people who connect best are people who are free to be themselves and okay with who they are. Because if you’re okay with who you are, you make me really comfortable. And I get the sense that I’m going to be okay with who I am. But if you walk in the room, and you’re the kind of person who Hey, only matter if I succeed, but I think as well, you’re only gonna like me if I succeed and so I can only spend limited amount of time and because I can’t keep up the act. And you know, we’ve all met people like that where it’s really hard just to get real with them. And, and ultimately, you just kind of you need a you need a break and so I it was so comforting, you know, for me to make a conscious decision to cut that stuff out. And and it’s not 100% cut out but it’s just easier, it’s easier to just be myself and write things I want to write and do the things I want to do and say the things I want to say and a lot of that I think comes with just getting older too.

Host
You know, I want to just have you fill in the blank there was a line that you said it said the most powerful and attractive person we can become is the person…

Donald Miller
We already are. You know that I checked into this therapeutic retreat center called on site that we just talked about. And it’s a really great place, I highly recommend it for everybody listening if you if you’re trying to figure something out, or if you just feel exhausted. And what it is, is it’s 40 people go through a program called Living centered, the 40, people are broken up into groups of 10, and do some group therapy for one week, but during that week, you can’t tell anybody your last name, and you can’t tell anybody what you do. It was unbelievable. It was like, I wanted to tell everybody, I’m a writer. And if you’d asked me the day before dawn, do you think your identity is caught up in the fact that your provider said no way? I mean, I don’t care about that. It’s just what I do. I hardly ever talked about it. And sure enough, you know, somebody seemed really in control. And, and somebody I wanted to get to know and wanted to like me, and on the tip of my tongue would be well, I’m a writer, I’d be trying to drop it into conversations, I realize, oh, wait, you can’t you can’t say that. You can’t let anybody know that. And I thought, holy crap, I am so caught up and what I do, as is who I am, and even then over the course of the week, I mean, I sit there feeling like I’ve got this ace card, and all these people would really like to want to talk to me, and I can’t use it. And the reality is, they don’t want to talk to me, I’m sitting here eating lunch alone, and I’ve got an ace card I can’t use. So why in the world do I actually matter? Like, is this the real me the loser eating lunch alone? Is this who I really am without my costume. And then slowly, as the week went on, I had real conversations with people about you know, my childhood and about my relationships, and then somebody you know, over lunch, or I’d be talking about something and they kind of went, wow, you know, that was a hard moment. And that comment made me feel really cared about. And I thought, so this is the difference between people caring about you, and people being impressed by and being cared about was like, eating really nutritious food. And B people being impressed was like, eating junk food. And I’d been out on a diet of junk food for so long. And Manny, you know, it was life changing for me. And I really came out of there going, I this is what I want, you know, I want I want to eat nutritious food from here on out. And, you know, you go back and forth course, you’re standing from a lot of people and they’ve been paid to hear you talk you, you have a professional obligation to be impressive. Like you need to make them laugh. And yeah, and inspire them, that’s your obligation. But you know, you step off the stage and, and that it doesn’t feed you anymore. And you’ve got to actually have real connection with real people. And I think it comes from this conscious decision of I’m going to try not to be impressive here. You know, and the other thing is, and this was a year, I’ve got a buddy Bob Gough, who is a author and inspirational guy, and Bob, he actually has a New York Times bestselling book, and he put his phone number in the back of the book. And people call him and he he says all time, you know, you’ve got to be accessible, you got to be accessible to people. And I just completely disagree with him. I was like, if I’m accessible, I’m never gonna get anything done. This year, I just said, You know what, I think I’m going to allow myself to be interrupted and have my day hijacked a little more often. And just see what happens. What I discovered was, you know, and I’ve got a great staff and, and there’s a lot of ways that I can get things done while being interrupted. I discovered I’m getting more done, and am more connected. And that’s not for everybody. But I think this year is a year where I’m, I’m just being willing to kind of do that a little bit more. And I don’t know, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an interesting transition in life to have built a life being impressive and realize you’re feeling alone. And now to want to up to deeply want to connect with people consider that a priority. I can tell you emotionally and even physically, I’m probably healthier than I’ve been in a long time. So there’s some benefits to it.

Host
So I want to talk about the corrective pattern of some of this stuff. You know, you talked about how you know people caring about you is like eating healthy food, people being impressed by you is like eating junk food. And I mean, there’s this whole this whole risk of intimacy and being known and allowing people in the, you know, the big theme, how do you tell the difference between enablement with somebody? And Grace?

Donald Miller
I think there are different kinds of relationships, right? So with family, it’s grace to the end. And you know, that doesn’t mean you you allow our kids or or even our significant others to be awful to us or whatever, but you just keep turning the other cheek, over and over and over. I think you know, how to win in professional relationships. We’ve talked we talked about this often, as I run a company of, you know, when do you just when do you not show grace and when are you winning? Are we need to show grace but let somebody go or whatever. And I, the clarity in my mind comes from an interview I did years ago with Pete Carroll, Pete and I got out a couple hours alone in his office there in Seattle. And we talked a little bit about leadership. And one of the things I asked him because he is he’s amazing at taking somebody who other people don’t see the potential in any developed person. Yeah, yeah. Russell Wilson is an example of that the guy that was a great quarterback, but nobody saw that in him. And he turned him into a Super Bowl winning quarterback almost twice. And but he’s also had to let some guys go. And and so I said, Listen, what do you what, you know? Are you willing to throw a guy a rope, you know, we were sitting on the edge of the, of Lake Washington there in his office, he’s got a corner office that overlooks a practice field and lakes, and like Washington, there were some boats out there. And I said, Do you ever throw a guy row? And he said, out? Yeah, he said, If somebody on my team is hurting, or struggling, or even bringing other guys down or costing us, I definitely throw on the row. And I said, What do you do if they don’t take the rope? He says, throw them another rope done. And so what do you do if they don’t take that rope? He says, I throw him another rope. You know, and I was like, Wow, this guy’s run a football team. And he said, you know, Ashley again? And it’s okay, what are you doing that third row, because I let them drown. And I thought that’s really fascinating, you know, gives you a few tries, and then he decided, he realizes this person is trying to drown. That’s their, that’s what they’re trying to do that has nothing to do with me. That’s their decision. And so he’s got this great relationship between showing grace and developing guys, and not being codependent not and realizing this is their life, this is the decision that they want to make, and they need to make it. And they need to feel the consequences in order to develop as a human being. And he’s not going to get in the way of them suffering the consequences of their actions. So I, so different relationships have different, you know, ways of enabling, I’ll tell you that, you know, in the book, I’ve got this chapter called five kinds of manipulators. And one of the things I learned in relationships early on is there are some people who just are deciding not to make themselves compatible to have a good healthy relationship. And, you know, my friend, Henry Cloud is a is a psychologist, a great writer. He says, the only person that you can’t have a relationship with is with somebody who’s deceptive. And I thought, Man, that’s really true. You can have a relationship with a drug addict, you never relationship with somebody even abuses you. But if they’re lying, there is no relationship. Because there’s no trust there. And you’re not in a relationship with the real them anyway, you’re in a relationship with whatever image they’re projecting. I remember, I used to go hunting with a guy who would tell me Is it good Christian guy, church guy, and he’d tell me, you know, Dad, I don’t read your books. You know, I, I, I only read the Bible, you know? And I was like, Okay, that’s interesting. I don’t know anybody who does that. Right. But talk about you know, I like Robin around my tracker, listen to praise, music and blah, blah. And, and I love talking with the guy. It was really fun guy and good guy, and really successful. I learned a lot from, but I never connected with him. And I just, it was like, you know, I could spend I spend weeks with this guy, and I have no idea who he is. And all I know is he’s impressive from a religious standpoint. And then, you know, then he gets caught with a prostitute, right? And everything unravels. And he’s got to go through all these programs and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, the first thing I thought when I heard that he’d gotten caught with a prostitute. No idea. I literally thought, good. We can be friends now. Right? Like, we can be friends like, yeah, now I know who you are. Wow. I am, like, let’s talk. And let’s not try to impress each other. So I and I think the reality is, he really wasn’t good guy. He probably really did only read the Bible, when he probably really did liking like to ride around with his tractor and listen to praise music. And he liked some other stuff that he wasn’t talking about. And it stayed in isolation. And so it grew. Yeah. And so I think it’s really important, especially for those of us who a lot of people depend on us and look to us for examples. I think it’s important that you know, we lose the battle to win the war. And here’s what I mean by that. I was I actually am a Republican. If I ever run for office, I’ll run as a Republican. But I liked a lot of the stuff in the first Obama campaign. I liked a lot of his stuff when fatherlessness really got me and so actually defending him a couple times. And I was in a debate with the John McCain team, public debate. I was on Obama’s team. They had three representatives from the McCain team about 1000 people in the audience. Wow. And the guy that I was debating with on my side of the team was a civil rights lawyer, who was who went on to be on Obama’s staff is a very important member of Obama. his staff. And he said to me before the debate, he said, Listen, it’s not important that we win this thing. And I said, What are you talking? And I was like, ramped up, you know, there were some big names. There were some big guys on the other side of the deal. Sure. And I wanted to win. And he said that he’s a no, he’s you know, that if you try to win this thing, you might say something, and that would really cost the campaign a lot. And he said, here’s what I’m saying, be willing to lose this battle so that we can win the war. And in other words, don’t say anything on that stage and have that microphone, that’s gonna make CNN tonight. And an Obama surrogate said this and cost us the entire war. If we lose this battle, it will not be on CNN. Right. So I think there’s some, you know, when we’re sitting around a campfire at night, sometimes just as leaders, we need to lose the battle, we need to say, hey, you know, I’m, I’m not doing well in this area of my life. And and what do you guys think about that? Well, that may cost you a little respect around that fire. But what you’re not going to do is get caught with a prostitute and have it on the news that night, because you’re your best selling author and owner of a company you get because you lost the battle you’ve talked about, you will really cost yourself a little bit of respect, and have people not be so impressed with you, so that you can move on and keep moving slowly into true integrity and, and, and who we need to be as leaders. So I think those are lessons that I’m figuring out as I get older.

Host
Well, I love that line. That deception in any form kills trust, and here’s what we’re gonna do. We are out of time, where do you want people to go to learn more about you?

Donald Miller
You can learn about my company. And all we do at story brand.com, we really didn’t talk much about that. Story. brand.com is, is what I do. And you can learn about that.

Host
Here is my last question. And this is one you’re probably not prepared for. One of the things I loved most about you was the way that you talked about Betsy. At what point did you know that Betsy was the one you were going to marry?

Donald Miller
Betsy, and I met, or years before we started dating. And I had not done a lot of the work I needed to do to be healthy. And so I immediately really liked her and also immediately felt this chasm between how just, you know, I don’t mean to use economic languages, but how valuable she was as a woman, and how I wasn’t worthy of her right. And I knew that I knew that in my bones. That’s not just me being humble. That was actually true. And did a bunch of work. And then we we reconnected and I remember we were in Washington, DC, she worked in Washington, DC, and I was passing through town, we got dinner one night, and she actually had a boyfriend she was in and out of relationship for three years, when we were having dinner, we were having dinner with a group. And I just remember thinking this is this is the girl that I liked it for a long time I’ve done this work, and the eye and keep doing work. And I don’t think I’m going to be a bad guy for her. This is the girl that that I want. I want to marry this girl it was it was right when we really connected. And so the other couple left the dinner and we kind of sat and kept talking and I asked her I said you know, I mean, I knew her well enough to have a conversation like this. And I said, you know, are you seeing anybody? And she said, Yeah, you know, I’m in a relationship. It’s not great. He’s doing a lot of work in Africa. And he tends to be out of the country a lot. And I don’t know what he wants. And he clearly wasn’t making her feel good. So I said, Listen, I’ll give you 30 days to break up with him. I’m gonna call you in 30 days. And I really want to start dating. She just sort of sat there like, Who in the world do you think you are? And but it did go cause her to go home and to her roommates and say You wouldn’t believe what this doll and all her roommates kind of looked at and said, he’s right. And so 30 days later, I call her and I’m like, How are you doing? She goes, Well, I did break up with them. And slowly, you know, she started letting me data. But I’ll tell you the key to our relationship is, you know, there’s really not a day that goes by that I don’t realize I massively got the better end of the deal. I mean, massively. And I think that, I think to people who think they got the better deal is the key to a healthy relationship. And it’s an important thing for you to realize that you’re also blessing this other person, right? Yeah, it’s true. And that’s another part of a healthy relationship is realizing not only am I getting a great deal here, she’s getting a good deal, too. I’m just getting the better deal. Well, a better person than I. I mean, I knew it right away. It took her a little while to figure it out.

Host
I love it. Well, thanks for the work that you’re doing. And we appreciate you sharing your heart with us. And yeah, just thank you for laying it out there.

Donald Miller
Thanks for having me.