Sometimes, we all stop and think about where our life is going and feel like we’re meant to accomplish more. Life might be good, but there’s something inside that is urging us to grow and do something bigger, and we are willing to work for it. It’s a feeling many of us have had, and it often leads to big changes. When you feel like this, how do you turn that feeling into real steps forward?
In this episode, I sit down with Christian Ray Flores, a performance coach and entrepreneur. He discusses the common experience that we seek more in life despite achieving some level of success. He explains the concept of hedonic adaptation and the natural cycles of life, including the need for personal growth and fulfillment at different stages. Redefine success — tune in today!
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Embracing Growth and Change with Christian Ray Flores
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We’ve had some episodes that have covered some broad topics and we’ve also had some episodes that have covered some specifics, specific aspects about starting a business, specific pursuits, specific components of our lives. Today, I want to take us a little bit back to the more broad topic because we’ve all found ourselves in that situation and I think the broad category of experiences around the situation can be I’m looking at my life and maybe it’s okay, maybe it’s not, but I know I’m capable of something more and I have the desire for something more, I have the willingness to work for it, which is the situation that a lot of people find themselves in and I found myself in quite a bit throughout my life. To touch on this topic, I would like to introduce to you my guest today, Christian Ray Flores, who is an entrepreneur, evangelist, media producer, and a performance coach.
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Christian, welcome to the program.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you so much for joining. So, as a performance coach, you work with a lot of people in the situation that I just kind of described there where someone’s saying, “Okay, I’m taking a look at my life and I’m deciding that I’m ready for something more, I want something more, I’m capable of something more.”
Yes, a lot. Me, actually, most of the people I work with are in that space.
Yeah, I can imagine that. What’s a good way to kind of wrap your head around it, starts with a feeling, I’m assuming, for most people but –
It totally does, yeah.
Right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is an excellent question, by the way. Thank you for setting me up for success here. You know what I think? I think what happens is that the world changes around us and we change and those are the main reasons why we find ourselves in these places where we go, “You know what worked for me two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, it’s just not working for me anymore. It’s just not satisfying me and something that I would be grateful for five years ago, it’s just not enough, and what do I do with that now? What kind of moves do I need to make? What kind of skills do I need to acquire? What risks do I need to take?” And that is sort of in the back of our mind. It’s a little voice telling you, “Is this all there is?” and, yes, and I think the – I’ll tell you a story of – I’ve had so many of those, so many. I can count at the very least five big ones where I’ve made, as a result of that thought, thinking about it, talking to some people, making a switch that is dramatically into another lane professionally, for example, so I’ve had five different careers, and I think I can name maybe five more that are more minor but also significant. But I’ll tell you a story of one of the earliest ones. One of the earliest ones earliest ones was I think it describes the situation when you have acquired your first level of success, you professionally have mastery, maybe you’re a senior executive, VP, a successful writer or an artist or an engineer, whatever, and then something shifts where you go, “There’s a need – I need more,” but then I have this thing that I already have status, I have a good amount of money, respect in that old thing that keeps me from making a jump or a lateral movement, adjacent move, that kind of thing. So I’m in a train car and my very first career that was successful was actually, luckily enough, my very first career. I have a degree in economics, I speak several languages, but I went into music in my mid 20s because I was I was like, “Ah, what the heck, I’m in my 20s, I’m young, I can fail, no problem,” and it turned out to be a great move for me. So, at the time, I’m already selling millions of albums, I’m playing sports arenas, I have a staff of 21 people, and most of them are in the train with me, going from city to city, doing this big tour, and I’m sitting there in the train and looking out the window and I literally have this very soft little voice say in my mind, “Is this all there is for me?” And that’s the conflict.
The conflict is you already have achieved. You have respect. In my case, I had pretty significant achievements, and yet I found myself that there’s parts of me that were dormant even in this success. I was in Eastern Europe, 15 different countries, that was sort of the territory, the cultural territory that I was in. And I’m an international guy. I grew up all over the world, six different countries. I want to see the world, I want to be in other places. I speak four languages, I have an economics degree. I want to do philanthropy. I want to build a family and the family life in the long run really clashes with the lifestyle that I have. There’s all these other dimensions that were dormant and they together came up out and bubbled up in this big question. Is this all there is for me? And most people will ignore this thing that bubbles up for way too long. And why? Because it’s scary, because of the uncertainty that comes with it, because of the risk that comes with it, with the possibility of failure that comes from it. And at the very core of that fear, it’s actually not fear of failure, at the very core of that fear is a fear of rejection. What are my friends going to tell me? What are the colleagues that respect me going to think if I say I don’t want to do this anymore, which is exactly what I did, basically, and they’ll think you’re crazy. That’s what they’ll do. And that’s the fear.
So do you believe that there’s a natural cycle to this? So, for example, someone will achieve something and then they’ll enjoy it for a little while and then, naturally, any human being will eventually get, I don’t want to say bored but suddenly feel that need for something else, or do you think this is way more driven by either a change, as you said, in your circumstance, a change in the world, or something a little bit more personality driven, where some people can’t stay still for like three or four years and then they’re like, “I need something else and what’s next,” but other people may have this personality type where they can do the same thing for pretty much their whole lives and be fine with it?
I think both are active. So the first one, I think what you mentioned is probably a good term to describe it is hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation is you get used to the good stuff and either it makes you very happy right away and then after a while, you go, “Oh, this is just normal for me. This is a new baseline,” like if you were a kid right out of high school, getting a thousand bucks in your bank account would blow your mind.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
And then, a few years later, it’s depressing to you, because your expectations change, your tastes change, your lifestyle changes. But it’s also true on a micro level, like you’re thirsty on a hot summer day and you want ice cream and you get like three big things of gelato. Probably after the first one, the second and the third actually don’t make you as happy. That’s hedonic adaptation as well. So a part of it is that, I think, and you start seeing the downside of the things that you chose, etc. Everything has a downside. But there’s another layer to it that is more almost like longitudinal in my mind and it’s the seasons of life. In your 20s, I think you’re meant to puzzle a lot to figure out who you are, how you fit in the world, what do you want to do when you grow up, that sort of thing. And then, really, usually, on average, in your 30 to 35, you achieve some sort of mastery, like you’re good at this thing, whatever it is, finance, engineering, literature, whatever, and you get your first taste of status. Now you’re not a low level person, you’re going up the ladder of whatever, respect, if it’s in the corporate world, up the ladder of the corporate world, etc. And usually by around 35-ish, you hit that first season of, yeah, but what am I going to do long term now that I have some confidence in my skills. And this is sort of the first group of people that I usually see asking for help. It’s around that time, about 35. So, after that, what people do is they go, “Okay, this is it. This is my track, this is my lane,” and they go into this, this, this, and this profession, whatever. And around 45-ish, the cycle repeats itself a little bit. Forty-five, fifty. And I think that has to do with us maturing, understanding that half of our life is sort of behind us with the midlife crisis thing, there’s almost like a natural internal recalibration that happens. I had a midlife crisis literally on the spot at 40. It was like clockwork. And I remember when I was in that place, I was like deconstructing my game, almost, and going, “What do I want to do, actually? What will fulfill me?” So status is less important a little bit. It just goes a little bit to the second, third level of importance, but fulfillment becomes top priority because you’ve now achieved more. You are usually, whatever, a senior executive. VP, C-suite kind of person in the corporate world, or whatever the analogy that is in other places, and I think that’s another cycle of recalibration that happens and you go, “You know what? I need more fulfillment. I need a longer term vision.” There’s this sort of shift midlife crisis stuff and it’s really important. And then there’s another one, I think, around sort of 55, 60, 65, where really you start thinking about legacy more. You start thinking about what are you leaving behind, what you’re building. Is it going to stand the test of time without you at the helm of it, for example, if you’re a CEO? What about the children? Your grandchildren? Who are they in relation to the legacy you’re leaving behind? And then that’s a shift towards more of a season of being a sage where you don’t want to really hustle, like very naturally, you shift from that hustle mode where you are doing battle right on the front line, and you start really shifting towards a desire to pass on wisdom to other people, and the legacy, the wisdom, all of that sort of happens around, I think, 55, 60, 65. And the cool thing about it is that our longevity, our life expectancy, is now, in America, it could easily go to 85, 90 or more. So, when you’re 60, 65, you have a solid 20 years ahead of you of productive life, especially if you take care of yourself, etc. So I think it’s a very important season as well to recalibrate and create a legacy and you have the time, you have the runway. That’s sort of what I see.
And then so you talked about personal shifts, with the predominant pattern, even though people have different patterns and stuff, but you also talk a little bit about societal shifts, like when the world around you changes. Now, is this primarily like when something changes that’s no longer working, anything like that, where even the shift of the internet happened, where usually you used to reach people via buying commercials for the TV shows that reached your target demographics and now you can find a different way to reach people if you’re a marketer, right? So are those types of shifts oftentimes a trigger moment for people to kind of look within in this type of way?
I hope so. I think yes and no and I think there’s two things. There could be a push that happens just naturally. I mean, AI is going to displace a whole lot of people. Whole segments are going to be changed. So things like that happen every once in a while. Usually they’re slow. We sort of really overestimate just how quickly that’s going to happen. I don’t think it’s going to happen as quickly as we expect it to happen, quite frankly. But those are usually things that push us, we react to it, and it may or may not be real or urgent for you specifically. What I like the most, actually, is when people go, “You know what? I’m ready for change and the world has changed enough so that I can actually function on a completely different level.” So one of the things that I love the most and this is one of the things that I actually do professionally is personal brand development. So, developing a personal brand now is the most incredible thing you can do, and you couldn’t even do it not to that extent seven years ago. This is less than a decade as a phenomenon.
Yeah, for the masses, for –
Yeah, for the masses. You can publish a book and the whole world can buy it. You can record an album and the whole world can buy it. You can offer a service or even develop a product without owning a factory and distribute it globally. You can be a thought leader. You can offer services that are digital services that are packaged or even in-person services that are sort of remote. I mean, it’s unbelievable. So, to me, that is sort of a major thing where I would love for more people to notice that. This is like the gold rush of professional development that we’re experiencing right now and not responding to it just because of fear, just because maybe you’re not fluent in one or two technologies, maybe a little insecure, maybe you go, “Oh, the market’s too saturated. Everybody’s doing it.”
I want more people to do that and believe in themselves and embrace that kind of change of possibility. Share on XSo what do you think stops a lot of people from that? You talked a little bit about fear or, in your situation, which sounds like a lot of other situations, having something to lose because if you’ve already reached that level, let’s say you’ve gotten two promotions at your job and you’re feeling that but everyone’s looking at you like, well, you’re now the manager of people, you went from junior person to senior and now you’re the manager, why would you leave that behind, that type of thing.
I think it’s still fair fundamentally, because I’ll tell you a story. When I made that shift to –I’ve made so many, probably too many shifts but I moved to the US, I was 35 years old. I moved to the US because I married an American. We lived in Eastern Europe and we were going to just live there, and I had sort of a brand recognition over there. We moved to the States because my wife, Deb, her health didn’t really gel with the climate. The climate is awful, so like, “You know what? This is not sustainable. We’re gonna move,” okay, so we moved. So I jumped from one thing, I did philanthropy for a few years, I was excited to do it, then I started another company, a company that went really well until it didn’t and it failed. I was starting over and that’s when I started the company that I still own, it’s called Third Drive Media, which we do brand strategy, video, graphic design, web development, sort of the formation of the messaging, the most strategic part of it, and then execution. But at the beginning, I had nothing. I just had a name. I’m like, “Okay, Third Drive, I like Third Drive,” but I knew that this was the strategic move for me long term and I guess I’m hinting at what stops us. I can go, “Okay, you know what? I’m gonna go get a nine-to-five job that’s secure,” this and that, but I know that for me, personally, I’m more of an entrepreneur. I want to build something. I really like taking the risk and being able to harvest the upside, and, to me, okay, media, digital media in the business world, that’s strategically what I want to do, so that in the long term, I knew that it’s going to be hard but I’m willing to sacrifice and that will humble you because some of the first jobs I took were like nothing. I remember one job that it just felt bad. I was hired as a videographer for, I think it was a local politician, I didn’t know who that is now, I didn’t recognize the person at the time, and they needed some B roll for a politician visiting a factory and shake hands and kiss babies even though they don’t have babies there but it was one of those. So I’m like I’ll take the job, I need the money, I’m starting over, that kind of thing. So like start from the bottom. So I’m on this thing doing this gig and the politician comes in, rolls in with an entourage, three SUVs, that’s black SUVs, and then they’re doing their thing, and their handler who hired me, they’re bossing me around, seriously treating me like the help, not very nice, and I’m standing there with my camera and I’m going, “Well, how the heck did I fall so low?” That was sort of my thought process. I’m like, I have literally entertained millions of people.
And now you’re doing that.
And now I’m doing this. I’m this classic cliche immigrant with maybe like a guy with a PhD who drives a taxi now in New York City, that kind of thing. I’m like, I’m that guy who used to be huge somewhere else and he’s like standing with a camera being bossed around, treated like the help. And I remember really feeling the shame, this regret, everything, this guilt, and I remember just switching my mindset to, “You’re building a new future, you’re providing for your family, everything is honorable. There’s nothing that’s dishonorable about what you’re doing,” and that’s what changed my mindset. And since then, we’ve raised millions of dollars for startups. We’ve worked with amazing brands. I’m finishing a logo for the NASA science project, the third logo I’ve done for them now. So I’ve done really good stuff in this new venture in America. I’ve done just fine. But that shift, that’s the thing that we fear, I think. It’s that you lose status.
I think your sense of self-worth needs to be attached to who you are, where you want to go, and how hard you’re willing to work for it, and that’s it. And if you figure that out, if you make that shift in your mind like I did in that moment, it doesn’t mean that you’re not tempted to be super depressed. I was like really struggling there, standing with that camera, going, “What the heck am I doing here?” But, to me, I made the switch and I kept making the switch until I saw traction and now I show my website to anybody, I’m proud of it. People go, “Oh, that’s really good work.” We’re an award-winning team and we do good work, but it took so much to make that shift, so much of a mindset work, and so much grit.
So is a big part of it, the difference between having your sense of self-worth be kind of internally directed versus externally directed, because one of the things I keep thinking about is that if your sense of self-worth is externally directed, if you have a lot of your identity, your sense of value tied up in, say, what your status is, how other people treat you, some sort of something that comes from without, external to yourself, that, of course, there’s always going to be a way that that can fall apart. The most raw example of this is probably middle school where your sense of self-worth becomes, “I’m the most popular kid in school,” and then someone comes in and threatens that status because there’s this new kid in town and that kid is really popular and everyone loves him, all of a sudden, you’re extremely threatened and could even act really rash and we like to think that we grow up and we mature from that but there are some aspects of human nature all the way through life, even old age sometimes, that can kind of continue to follow that pattern if we don’t make that shift.
I think we are tribal people. You can’t really get away from that. And I think sort of maturity – your personal development, that’s where the treasure is. I mean, that’s one of the reasons why I do what I do and somebody helped me when I needed it the most, at the peak of my career. I was sort of falling apart on a couple of levels and I had somebody coach me and strengthen me and that made all the difference. That just made all the difference. You can be incredibly gifted and skillful in in your craft, in your space, but you have your blind spots and you have your weaknesses and if you don’t recognize those and if you don’t address them, you’re going to pay for it. And, unfortunately, even the talents that you have and the value that you bring in the marketplace will be diminished if you don’t address your weak spots.
Yeah. So when people think about what your weak spots are, now does this tend to be more along the lines of, because I think the traditional thought process of, say, someone’s a software engineer and they might say, “Oh, I’m good at object-oriented languages but I’m not good at user interface languages,” or something, whereas there’s another level to think about it as in, like, “Oh, I’m really good at, I don’t know, communicating with these types of people but certain situations cause me to lose my temperament,” something –
Yeah.
I’m guessing you’re thinking more along the latter lines of like what your weaknesses are. It’s not a specific skill set, it’s more like personality wise in one situation and what areas are there that you just don’t show up as your best self.
Yeah, I think so. I think personality is at the core. And then if you think of it in concentric circles, I guess, I think personality is at the core. You were shaped, nature/nurture, to be a certain way. So you’re good at this but you’re bad at that, that kind of thing. And I can give you a couple examples. For example, for me, there was two things. One was I was really weak in romantic relationships because I come from three generations of broken homes so I had very little instruction, training, coaching in how to how to date a woman, how to marry a woman, how to keep a woman. What are the criteria, even? That was just a really bad blind spot.
It’s not even a weakness, it’s a blind spot. A blind spot is a weakness that you don’t even know you have. You’re literally blind to it. Share on XYou had no example and so you didn’t – no one showed you or nothing to look at and it’s like this is how it works right.
Yeah. So, yeah, like I don’t have a very good baseline. The blind spots, I think, are most important but there could be other thing, because some of them you’re less exposed or more exposed to and a bit to wisdom in that space. Some of it comes from trauma. I see a lot of father figure trauma in the people that I coach, a lot, like it’s every second person has something that they need to work through that sort of has this grip on them that basically prevents them from being their full selves. And that’s why self-awareness, I think it’s like sort of a meta skill, like if you think about that concentric circle that I just talked about, maybe I would say this, at the very core of it is the skill to become meta cognitive about who you are, where you are, how you feel any given moment every day. That’s a meta skill. That’s a superpower. Then on the next ring would be personality traits, weaknesses, strengths, things like that. So if you have that meta skill, you can address them, you can improve them, you can get coaching guidance, you can get better. In the personality skills, the relational skills are the most important, in my opinion, because any human success hinges on people. So if you don’t get along with people, if you’re not friendly, if you’re not patient, if you’re not loving, if you don’t understand how to read them, if you can’t motivate them, if you can’t keep them excited about being around you and doing something with you, for you, etc., you’re not going to succeed on a high level. You’re just not. So if you don’t have the relational muscle, you can be a brilliant financial analyst, just off the charts genius, and if you do not have people skills, you’re dead in the water. You’re very, very limited.
Yeah, you’re going to be stuck at that lower level in the organization pretty much.
Absolutely, absolutely. So, on the next ring after that, it’s skills, specific skills. I mean, that’s the difference between being an employee and being an entrepreneur. An employee can just use this set of skills that they’re good at, that’s what they’re hired for, nobody expects them to have other skills, and you get job security but you don’t get an upside.
So, if you’re a tech startup guy and you’re usually a coder, you’re an engineer, you need to understand marketing, you need to understand public speaking to pitch your stuff. You need to understand people skills. You need to understand the investment speech, values, what makes them tick. Those people, you need to understand. You need people skills because you need to hire the best people. You need to know budgeting. You need to do no money because you’re going to run out of money all the time. How do you lower your overhead to the most extreme? All of those things. I mean, that’s why it’s so hard. If it was easy, everybody would do it. It’s just very, very hard. And I think, again, devoting time to getting skills that you don’t naturally have is a massive advantage. It’s better to be in the 10 percent across three different disciplines than being in the one top percent, in the 1 percent in one discipline.
Yeah.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Because you can be okay, you can be a one top percent violinist. You get two or three top 1 percent violinists that displace you out of the orchestra, easy. Then you’re done. It’s such a narrow niche. But if you’re in the top 10 percent in entrepreneurship, finances, and marketing, for example, or management, three things that you’re good at in the top 10 percent, you go anywhere and do almost anything.
Yeah. And I also think about how quickly the world is changing and so you could be in the top 1 percent of one specific skill but if some technology were to innovate and take that demand away from that particular skill, all of a sudden, you’re back at square one and you have to –
It’s obsolete, yeah.
Yeah. So if someone out here listening, say, they want to discover what their blind spots are, as you refer to it, and I love how you refer to it as blind spots because they are things that you’re not aware of. I aware of. I think people have weaknesses that they’re aware of but I’ve seen a lot of people in life suffer in some kind of way because of a weakness, a blind spot, that they’re not aware of. If someone wants to discover that, what’s the best thing someone can do to try to figure out what is this blind spot that may eliminate me?
I can even the exact blueprint for that. Super easy.
Lay it on me.
Okay, so I did that – it was actually ironically around my middle of crisis, probably around 40, and I just encountered this thing where people respond to me, there’s something about me that turns them off, and something a bit me that turns them off and I saw this pattern and what I did is I got so frustrated with myself that I basically emailed, I want to say between seven and nine people, almost like that, that had worked with me in the last six or seven years in whatever capacity, and I emailed them all individually, and I said, “Hey, I’m so grateful for the time we spent together. I’ve been really doing some soul searching here and I think there’s this pride about me, I think a very specific way that I displayed or talked to people, interacted, that prevents me from doing my best work. And I want to ask you very humbly and give you permission to speak into my life. And can you tell me if you got any of that vibe when you were with me? How did it display itself? How did it make you feel? I just want to know because I want to really remove that blind spot and make it a strength of mine,” and I really emailed like, I think I emailed nine people, something like that, and I got an answer from probably four and all of them were incredibly careful, loving, and very constructive but also direct because I invited them and I gave them permission. And that really, really helped me because – and, of course, the humility on my part was required to go, “Okay, I need to take it seriously. How does that manifest itself? I need to change speech patterns. I need to listen more and talk less. How do I remove that and make it my strength? How do I even notice it when I do it again so I don’t do it? I have to now respond to the input, the feedback that I got.” And I think the reason why this method really works is because most people, I mean all of us to one degree or another, unless you’re on the fringe of conflict, most of us don’t want conflict.
Oh yeah, for sure.
We just don’t want to get into fights, unless we have massive anger issues. Most people don’t have massive anger issues. So you will have blind spots literally follow you around as a trail, as a reputation, as a vibe, like there’s an energy about you that turns people off and no one will tell you, which is terrible. What they will do is they’ll quietly stop working with you or fire you or sort of distance themselves or set some boundaries and just not want to be around you. And that is a major problem, right? You’re not even aware of what it is, and people don’t tell you. So invite – so I think, in retrospect, you can do what I told you, but going forward is get people around you who will speak the truth and love to you, who have maturity, who are ahead of you, hopefully, who see around corners, that type of people. You have to tell them, “Please, you are with me. I treasure your input. When I mess up, even in a small way, can you please tell me, and I will thank you, I promise you,” and you start doing that, you nurture those relationships, and you’ll be in good shape, basically.
Yeah, so it sounds like the same thing that you put into, say, how you phrased those emails you sent would be something that you would say kind of in your life and what I love about this is it’s something that can correspond to both your personal life as well as your strategic and your business life. People that want to stop working with you could be being turned off for the same reason that people, say, distance themselves from a friendship or a romantic relationship or anything else in between –
Oh, absolutely.
– whereas there are people who are willing to speak the truth but you still have to show them that you’re open, because I’m willing to speak the truth to people too but not to anyone and there are people out there who I know who are, I think, still too attached to your identity and still too full of themselves where even if I were to tell them, “Honestly, this is why I set this boundary with you,” they might react in a way that I might not like and that same conflict could really do that. But when it came to your program or the manner in which you approached this, you also kind of seems like started from a point of at least making a guess as to what was going on when you talked about speaking with too much pride and stuff like that. Is that an important thing? If someone’s really just trying to discover any blind spot, is it important that they come up with a theory, almost like you’re testing a scientific hypothesis?
Yeah, yeah, and I think so.
Or, you know what I mean? Otherwise, it comes from nowhere, then people are like, “Okay, well, where do I start? Where do I begin? What do you actually –”
Yeah, I don’t even know what to do with it, so you have to give them something to work with. You have to say, “Hey, I have this vague sense because –” and, usually, if you’re married, your spouse will tell you. They’re the recipient of that flaw over and over and over and over again so, eventually, they go, “Dude, seriously, that’s not cool,” or they will lovingly say, “You know how you act with people like this and this and this, I think you don’t realize how it affects them, how you speak to them, or what you don’t say, even.” So I think giving a hint, and that’s why the meta cognition piece, to me, is central. This is one of the central things that I coach people in is how to develop a lifestyle of metacognition. It’s a superpower. How do you develop a daily practice where you are in touch with your thoughts, your feelings, the nuance of your life? We are mostly operating on autopilot. We’re mostly reacting to the needs, we’re sort of falling behind and we’re catching up, we’re really in survival mode a lot of the time. So people that win are the people who get out of the survival mode into creative mode. They have practices that allow them to get a signal, a clear signal, and that only gets developed through literally a very persistent practice and set of practices, as a matter of fact. You almost have this antenna on what’s off about you, rather than wait for somebody to screw you over at work or not work with you or not invest in you, that sort of thing. But that happens all the time.
And on the highest level, that happens. On the highest level, like people that you would never think would have a massive disadvantage in life, they have that disadvantage. I can tell you a story if you’d like.
Yeah, I mean you because you never know. I always think of – like one of the things that really rattled me, by the way, was Anthony Bourdain because he seemed like the person who had it all, but he was struggling and suffering. So, yeah, I know what you’re talking about exactly.
And you might not be even aware of the opportunities you’re missing out on by not developing those practices, that awareness and having those people around you. So I’ll tell you a quick illustration.
Yeah, go for it.
So I had a friend, just for privacy, stuff like that, I’m going to not say who they are, but a friend who’s, I’ll call him an investor, he manages a lot of money, and he just met someone who’s a fund manager, I’ll call him the fund manager, who basically takes somebody’s money and he invests them, and this guy’s extremely well known, very successful, has invested in tons of tons of startups. And so he introduces me, I come to the fund manager’s office. we hang out, we talk and I was just saying, “Hey, you invest in founders, founders are a lot of times incredibly burnt out, it’s just, it’s a very high stress job, and I was wondering if we can maybe partner up so I can help them with some of my coaching, because it’s great sort of synergy there that’s possibly there, just see what you think,” and the guy was like, sort of, you know, whatever, and not really interested in that. He’s really more of the sort of – he doesn’t think of the nuance of the founder, he really is more of a numbers person, like wholesale investments so he plays the numbers, that’s fine, but he was talking to me about the investor who introduced us. He’s like, “Hey, I want this guy to come and invest more in my fund and bring his friends,” something like that and I’m like, “Okay, good to know.” So I say it back to my friend who introduced us. He was like, “Hey, so how did the meeting go?” I was like, “It was okay. We just got to know each other. It’s fine,” and I said, “You know, he mentioned that he wants you to come back and invest more, maybe on a higher level,” and he goes, “Oh, no, no, that’s not gonna happen,” and I’m like, “Really? What happened? What’s going on?” He goes, “Oh, because he has a reputation.” Among people on my level and it’s usually a very rarefied strata, if you get a reputation for somebody who doesn’t care about other people, people will take note, and there’s a ceiling there of how much they will entrust you with, because it’s very relational, very much based on character. And, to me, that was an incredible insight that I was really grateful for. So you can be an extremely successful fund manager, let’s say, in this case, very talented, lot of hustle, well known, you hit a ceiling in your ability to change the world only because of the flaw that you’re not aware of and you’re not working on. Think about that.
You’re at that ceiling, that’s why you’re at that plateau, people are like I got to this level, which is great, within like –
Precisely, yeah. And the person that told me that about the fund manager will never say that to the person in person, because they don’t have that kind of skin in the game with the person. They don’t have that kind of relationship. They just make their conclusions quietly. You won’t get the single – and you will hit a ceiling that is completely invisible to you, although you have perfectly the capacity, the talent, your skills, a reputation to go way higher. But you’ll hit that ceiling and you’ll be stuck in the ceiling.
So is this the person that never gets the promotion, never gets –
Exactly, exactly.
– the person who has gotten rejected for business and they’re looking for people to invest in, and keep seeing, like you see the ceiling on one level because you see it like, “Okay, I keep getting to this point. I keep getting to the third interview. I keep getting investors to call me back for a coffee meetup but then after that, they’re not interested.” You keep seeing that but you don’t see the reason behind it, you don’t see the why, I have no idea because no one’s telling you, probably telling their spouse at home and maybe a couple family members, “Oh, my God. This person started a business and they’re so full of themselves, acted like they knew every single thing about everything, and I just couldn’t take it.”
That’s it. Now, you’re isolated and unaware. And it happens on every level. I had a conversation literally three days ago in a coaching session with a client of mine and he’s a single guy, very successful salesman and he was, like, we talked about work primarily and then said, “Can I bring something up?” I go, “What?” He goes, “I’ve been going on a lot of dates that go nowhere,” and I’m like, “Really? Tell you more about that,” and it’s sort of that thing, what’s the common denominator of those dates? It’s you.
After four or five, you’re the common denominator.
Yeah, exactly. And I was like – I said, “Okay, so tell me about that,” and he’s a sales guy so I wanted to use his language and his principles. I said, “So what do you talk about on an average date?” And he goes, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know.” I go, “What do you mean you don’t know?” He goes, “I don’t know, anything, just random things.” And I said, “Okay, so let me stop you there. Tell me something, if you were doing sales and I asked you that question about what do you talk about with your prospects on sales calls and you would say, ‘I don’t know, just anything,’ do you think you would be making a lot of sales?” He goes, “I’m not gonna be making any sales.” I said, “Dating is sales. You need to know what the person needs, what their needs are, what their pain points are, then she needs to know what your needs are,” and I don’t mean this in a sleazy way, I mean that it’s in a practical way. A date is a sales call, is a sales meeting, like is this interesting to pursue, fundamentally.
In a way like a two-way street kind of way, but, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, it’s a two-way street, but sales is too, actually, if you think about it.
Yeah, right, you’re selling to each other, right?
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m not going to go into a lot of details. These are the two needs that young ladies have. These are the two fundamental needs and I said, “Do you speak to any of those needs in your conversation?” He goes, “Not really.” I said, “Okay, let me tell you how to speak about those things, because I know you now, I’ve been coaching you for months and months and months. How does organically, authentically, sincerely, truly,” and I’m like, “Chase, you say this about this thing and you said this set of things about this thing,” and he goes, “Wow, that’s amazing.” I go, “I can promise you that pattern will stop if you do this. Just do it, and get back to me.” I don’t know yet because it was like three days ago, but I don’t think he has any dates since then, but I can guarantee you it will work absolutely 100 percent, because he just didn’t translate something very real, he already knows this, he just doesn’t translate this to that realm but it totally applies. It totally applies.
So it’s safe to say that, like with your clients, the main thing you do is identify a lot of these patterns that are preventing any one of us from getting to that place where we want to go, like, “I’m stuck here, I wanna be there,” and where here is, where there is could be different for another person because everyone places different desires, but like what’s stopping me, what’s keeping me here when I want to be there?
That’s exactly it, yeah. And then how to get there, not through magic, not through like something flashy and supernatural, but through very incremental, very disciplined change, changing who you are.
Bottom line is, your personality defines your personal reality, which basically means if you don’t change, nothing will change. Share on XThat’s fundamentally what it is. And we don’t like changing ourselves.
Yeah, because it’s like your patterns, right? It seems like your thoughts create your behaviors, and then your behavior create the reality around it and so the –
Rinse and repeat, yeah. Rinse and repeat.
People will need you multiple times in life, right?
Yeah. And that’s true of all of us. That’s true of me, that’s true of you, and some of it is actually good because you have qualities that actually propel you forward because they’re good qualities, your personality is the thing that’s moving you forward. And then there’s areas that are weaknesses and blind spots that are keeping you behind where you could be if you had addressed those things. Everybody has them. I have them as well. I have one area that I’m totally leaning into these days with my wife and I’m totally militant about it, because I don’t want an artificial ceiling in my life.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And so before we wrap up, given you talked about everything that you do, about helping people find the blind spot, helping people get over these plateaus, these ceilings and everything like that, if anyone out there listening is listening to this and wants to get a hold of you, first of all, are you taking new clients or are you full?
I have two or three ways of working with me. One way that is always like wait listed, but you can always join a wait list and, once a month, I have one or two spots that become available so if somebody wants to work with me, what we do is we schedule a free strategy call, we talk about life, the needs, the direction you want to go, a sort of dumb but exactly what I mean – free advice, take it or leave it. And if somebody goes, “You know what? I think I really need this,” we’ll just put you on the wait list and when the time comes, we’ll say, “Hey, there’s a spot open. You wanna jump in?”
All right, and if someone out there is listening, is there a website where you find the point to contact you?
Yeah, yeah. So you can go to, if you’re really interested in coaching specifically, go to xponential.life, and exponential is spelled with an X, without the E, that’s the only – and so you go there and you can see –
Exponential?
Xponential.life.
Exponential but without the E in the front. Okay.
Yeah, yeah. And then, if you’re sort of – you like some of the stuff that I’ve talked about today and maybe you’re not in a place where you need coaching or ready for it, go to christianrayflores.com and you can sign up for a free newsletter that comes out every Sunday. So I share a lot of this stuff every single Sunday in articles, podcasts. Books I read, people that I interview. I interview some of the top experts on the planet on this stuff. It’s really good content so you can just sign up for a free newsletter.
Excellent. So Christianrayflores.com, xponential.com, that will be in the show notes if you come onto the website nut I know a lot of people just kind of listen and hear it so if you’re hearing it, you can write it down and come visit. Christian, I’d like to thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, for talking about, especially this blind spot discussion because I think a lot of people are aware that they have blind spots or aware that they’re seeing something happen in their life but not aware of the specifics, the reasons behind it, how they’re coming across to people, and how much that can limit where we’re trying to get, whether it be in a traditional career or it be in a business or anywhere else in our personal, social community. So, thank you so much for joining and providing some insight and some of the things that people listening can do today or pretty soon to start looking into these things.
Yeah, that’s awesome. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.
And I would also like to thank everybody out there listening, as I always do, because I know you’ve a choice in what you listen to. I hope you got some really good inspiration. I hope you’re ready to go out in the world, address your blind spots, find what you need to do and get to the place where you really want to go in life.
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About Christian Ray Flores
Christian Ray Flores is an entrepreneur, international recording artist, philanthropist and performance coach. His extraordinary journey from a child refugee in Chile to entertaining millions as a pop star in Eastern Europe, leading philanthropic projects internationally, to founding entrepreneurial projects in the US – makes Christian a uniquely dynamic speaker and compelling leader.
With a master’s degree in economics and fluency in four languages, he is a versatile communicator. Based in Austin, Texas, he co-founded Third Drive Media, creating award-winning media projects and raising millions for startups and the non-profit Ascend Mission Fund, serving children in Mozambique and Ukraine. Through Xponential, Christian empowers business and non-profit leaders to reach and stay at the top of their game. He is the host of the “Headspace by Christian Ray Flores” podcast and author of “Little Book of Big Reasons to Love America.”