Your Compass & Creative Fuel

Todd Henry [00:00:02]:

We live in a world that constantly pulls us away from ourselves. Expectations, pressures and the endless noise of modern life can easily push us into roles that don't fit or to behaviors that don't really serve us, or decisions that just leave us drained. But what if the path to real impact and creative invincibility comes not from adding more layers of strategy or self protection, but from but from peeling back to the core of who we already are? That's the question that we're going to explore in this episode. The two conversations that you're about to hear could not be more different on the surface. One comes from a best selling business author who helps leaders uncover their core values, and the other from an actor and a teacher who helps performers and entrepreneurs embrace presence. Yet both circle around the same central truth. When you know what anchors you and you stop fighting that inner experience, you stop labeling what you're feeling as either good or bad, you unlock extraordinary clarity and creative power. Robert Glazier is going to remind us that the core values that we hold are not just lofty words that we put on the wall.

Todd Henry [00:01:12]:

They're non negotiable principles that guide us through difficult decisions. They shape the communities we build and they determine whether we burn out or thrive. And Josh Peiss challenges us to stop labeling emotions as good or bad, but instead to experience them as a kind of energy, a kind of fuel that can make us more alive, more present and more connected in our work. Taken together, these insights are going to provide a roadmap for us for living and leading authentically under pressure in a time when distraction and disconnection are everywhere. And I believe authenticity is more than a nice to have. It's really about your ability to thrive. And it's the secret to doing your best creative work. This is Daily Creative.

Todd Henry [00:01:57]:

Since 2005, we've served up weekly tips to help you be brave, focused and brilliant every day. My name is Todd Henry. Welcome to the show.

Robert Glazier [00:02:07]:

I've been working on this core values work for a while. I figured out for myself, I developed the kind of framework to figure out your core values. It was a key catalyst in changing my life and I think hitting my potential.

Todd Henry [00:02:20]:

That's Robert Glazier, entrepreneur and author of the Compass Within. He says that core values are not simply beliefs that we have. They're something altogether different.

Robert Glazier [00:02:30]:

Yeah, look. So a belief is something that might not be true. I believe it might be fun to climb Mount Everest. It might be my least favorite thing I've ever done. I think they can be disproven so core values are non negotiable principles that guide your behavior and decisions. I think in history, a lot of people have been even willing to die for those values. I think they're intrinsic, not aspirational. They reflect who you are and who you've been.

Robert Glazier [00:02:54]:

You just don't have the clarity on that. It's. No one gave you your instruction manual. I think they're consistent. So they show up the same across all areas of work life and relationships and decisions. And they're clarifying like the, like an actionable core value, which the word family and integrity won't do. Those are the two most common ones I hear helps you make better choices. Right.

Robert Glazier [00:03:14]:

In all aspects of your life. So to me, the ultimate of an actionable core value is that it serves as the ultimate kind of decision making rubric in your life.

Todd Henry [00:03:23]:

So what would be an example then of. So you say family, right? Or something more generic like that. How would you turn that into something more actionable?

Robert Glazier [00:03:31]:

Yeah, so let's. We can dive into both of them if you want. So family is a common one. I would say family is not a value. It can be a priority and people get upset about that and they say, oh, it's a value. Like, look, tell me how family helps you make a decision in the workplace, right. Where no one's your family and really is what it, what is it about family to them? Like, I'm digging a level deeper and if it's, look, you should always be there or you should always have the back of the people closest to you or trust of a small group of people is the most important thing or whatever. That actually is very consistent with how you show up with your family, probably how you show up with your team and how you show up with your friends and can help guide behaviors and decisions.

Robert Glazier [00:04:12]:

So that one word, family. I don't know if I'm doing a good job, but if it's like always be present, right? Because for me it's like always show up at the soccer game, then that's how I want to be for my team and that's how I want to be for my friends. And by the way, if I'm running around like crazy and I'm about to launch a book and I find out my friend's dad just died of a heart attack. This is not a true story. Died of a heart attack. And I'm like, should I go to this funeral, whatever. I probably should. Because if I have a core value of always be present, I'm going to be Pretty upset at myself if I chose not to be president.

Robert Glazier [00:04:41]:

So that's what that aware. I talked to someone recently and when I got down to it, it was like he was like family for me is about your actions match your words and your actions match. And then he also talked about when he felt like he totally failed at that with his relationship, when he was a workaholic and he was out of congruence with his values and it really felt terrible. Same thing with integrity. I've kept at least the definition of ten things of integrity. Some people means it believe you be honest, you tell the truth, you do what you say, you live your life according to certain principles. And then they can be like, oh, like I can see how I can use this in multiple and I know what that means. Like for I know it means to tell the truth or to have my words match my actions.

Robert Glazier [00:05:23]:

Those are two different things that, that while they're similar, they're fundamentally different and they might lead you to different decisions.

Todd Henry [00:05:30]:

This was such a fun thing to consider as I was thinking about this conversation because I deal with this on a practical level with companies a lot.

Robert Glazier [00:05:37]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:05:37]:

Where they'll come to me and say, oh, we're doing this thing. And I'll say no, that's not what you just told me the name of a project. But you're not doing a project, you're solving a problem. And when we. They abstract up one level. And so because of that people get stuck because they can't. There's nothing actionable about the name of a project or something like that. But when you define it by problem, suddenly, oh, okay, now I know what I need to do.

Todd Henry [00:06:00]:

I know what the next step is. And it almost feels like the same thing when you say and company values. Right. Are often things.

Robert Glazier [00:06:06]:

I mean, it's like I spend a lot of time helping companies separately from this work do projects to fix their core values. And 98% of company work values are BS. And I'll be the first ones that say it. They're just not. They're not operationalized. They're wall art. There are these one word integrity, respect. They're real.

Robert Glazier [00:06:24]:

When there's behavioral based hiring interview questions, there's core value awards, there's core value shout outs in the company communication. People are fired over discussion on their core values is in the performance review. And you just hear the words every day. And then that is in a very small percentage of organizations.

Todd Henry [00:06:40]:

So you mentioned a few minutes ago people living incongruent with their actual core values. So they might be living with their perceived core values, but they're not living according to their actual core values. What are some of the signs that people are living in? That kind of lack of congruence?

Robert Glazier [00:06:55]:

Yeah. So if you're out of congruence in your work, in your relationship or in your community, which is one that people forget about and we should talk about that because I think that's one, one that's overlooked a little bit. You're either gonna feel like you're going against electric fence a little bit on a day to day basis or you are gonna swallow. And so it's gonna be like painful, like little jolts or you're gonna swallow and subjugate your values and try to suppress them to, to exist in ever that environment. And there's gonna be some sort of explosion down the line of. So it's either a thousand little paper cuts or there's gonna be like an internal organ that sort of explodes. That. That's what I found.

Robert Glazier [00:07:34]:

Like you could be out of congruence for periods of time, but it's painful for us and so exhausting. When people talk about burnout, I don't think that's about quality of quantity of work. I think it's. I'm spending a lot of time doing things that drain my energy and feel like a buzz saw. You and I have these things where like time like just stands still and we do it for nine hours and I help my brother in law install like landscape lighting for five hours. Like we. I'm like why are you doing this? I'm like, because I figured out how to do it and I like, I really enjoy it because one of my core values is find a better way and share it. So I got ripped off by a landscape lighting.

Robert Glazier [00:08:10]:

I figured out how to do it, added 60 lights to my house and I was like this is fun. Who else can I help do this with now those five hours that I did that like those were fun. We're out in the sun digging every light we clipped and the thing lit up like it was fun. So it's not the time, it's what we're doing.

Todd Henry [00:08:25]:

One of the things that we've tried to instill in our children, we have three adult children now, is that there are a couple of decisions or a couple of opportunities that will come along in your life that can really be vector changing opportunities. Don't f up them and you're going to have a lot of opportunity, but.

Todd Henry [00:08:39]:

They'Re going to be a handful that.

Todd Henry [00:08:40]:

Are like these are really big opportunities you need to take advantage of. But also that there are going to be a couple of decisions that you make in your life and those decisions are going to set the arc for a lot of other things in your life. And you talk about the big three, the three really most important decisions that you will make. Can you share what those are and talk about why you call them the big three?

Robert Glazier [00:08:58]:

So the first is your chosen either vocation or the actual company. Right. For some people it's the type of work we do and does it meet our needs and others it's like where we choose to do it makes the difference. Like you can be a lawyer at firm A and it's miserable and you can be a lawyer at firm B and you love it. So the second is your partner. And look, I didn't really understand this in my 20s. Like, you do not need to be this. I think we confuse, like you can be different personality, different activities.

Robert Glazier [00:09:26]:

Like my wife and I do a lot of different stuff, but around the big stuff, we are always on the same page. And if we weren't, it'd be hard around where do we want to live and who are our friends and what are the values for our kids and what are our red lines? Like if we were in contrast on all of those things, I'd be really hard. So I didn't think when I was 20, I thought, oh, if you play the same activities, like that's compatibility, right? I think that's surface level. And you can be out of whack on one or two of these. Let's say that most of these things tie to these formative experiences, childhood experiences. I found you're trying to either double down on something or run away with it. So let's say I grew up like in a really tough house with not a lot of happiness. And so I am like very much about, we're going to live for the moment and enjoy today.

Robert Glazier [00:10:12]:

And she grew up in poverty and it was always about saving for the long run. It was on that this is going to be a point of conflict. Like she wants to plan for the long term and maybe it was something different, but it really made her have a long term orientation. And so I just want to spend our money today and go do stuff and live. And she wants to like plan and do for big things. If we're like, if that's our one thing, that there's a mismatch, we'll work around that. But let's imagine we have four like that, that's, that's hard. And I was doing this work with someone in a leadership capacity who's going through a divorce.

Robert Glazier [00:10:46]:

After we solved two of her core values, she's paused and had this look. I was like, what? And she's my ex is the opposite of two of these. And I was like, that's both not surprising and very hard. Right. So she was a generosity. Think of other people person and usually very selfish and take care of yourself first. And like, it was just a problem. And there were a couple more of these points of conflict.

Robert Glazier [00:11:09]:

That's. That's your partner. And then we forget about our community. And communities drive our behavior. They consume our willpower. We tend to morph to environments and workplaces and stuff. So if I'm someone, maybe I've had a health. One of my core values is health and vitality.

Robert Glazier [00:11:26]:

Right. And we frame things with our kids around health, like whether that's not eating enough or eating too much. Right. As a. As opposed to an arbitrary rule. And let's say I had a real bad health scare. And this is a priority for me. Like, I don't want to live in a town where the culture is.

Robert Glazier [00:11:41]:

We go to a bar five nights a week. Right. Because my example before, I'm either gonna go and not drink and try to pretend along, or I'm gonna drink and feel terrible about myself. And not maybe I drink, but I'm like, that's just not what I want to be doing five days a week. I want to be with a group that does the 8am bike ride and hey, let's go for a walk to catch up the community. What's going on in the community. And the dominant behavior drives our. What we do.

Robert Glazier [00:12:07]:

Like, it pulls us into it. And it can consume willpower. Imagine someone has a core value of include all perspectives. And they really like to talk to people about different. And this mirrors a little bit the book about different topics. And they're not politically aligned. And they live in a town where everyone's got a sign and you're either on team A or team B, that's just not gonna feel super awesome.

Todd Henry [00:12:30]:

And to your point, that almost sets the thermostat for everything else in your life. Right. If one of those big things is out of congruence.

Robert Glazier [00:12:37]:

Yeah. This person needs to go live in a. Not that it's like a purpley area where they're like, look like hearing all different kinds of things and talking to people. I'm not a. I'm not into monocultures. I think we forget about this. Yeah. Look, these things are forged and we all have our own lived experiences.

Robert Glazier [00:12:52]:

And the difference between me and a therapist is like, I'm. I think people gotta understand this stuff and understand how it's impacting them. Today we're not going back and litigating it and discussing it or whatever, like your journey is your journey and things that impact you in different ways. But having done this work now with thousands of people and listened to thousands of stories, in almost every case, a core value, a real strong core value came from something they were doubling down on that was really important to them. As a kid or something, they were running 180 degrees the opposite direction. That was painful to them or that they were missing. And that's just, that's what I noticed. That's how these things get forged, right? It's like iron hitting iron.

Todd Henry [00:13:34]:

Robert Glazier's new book, the Compass within, is available now wherever books are sold. And as we just heard, clarity about your core values gives you a compass. It keeps you steady when everything around you feels uncertain. But even when you know your values, there's another challenge that we all face. The swirl of emotions and sensations that show up the moment we have to put ourselves on the line. Whether it's stepping onto a stage, making a tough call, or having a difficult conversation, our bodies and our minds don't always cooperate. That's where Josh Peiss enters the conversation. Josh is a veteran actor who has performed in over 150 films and TV shows.

Todd Henry [00:14:13]:

But he's also the creator of Committed Impulse, a training program that helps people use presence and embodied awareness to perform at their peak. In his new book, Lose youe the Path to Creative Invincibility, he offers a radical reframing. Nervousness, fear and even anxiety aren't enemies to be conquered. They're simply energy. They're vibrations that move through us when we experience something. And they can become fuel for creativity and connection if we stop resisting them. So in just a minute, when we come back from the break, we're going to hear from Josh Pais, who is going to give us the engine that we need to perform at our best. If values ground us in who we are, what Josh is going to discuss will teach us how to channel what we feel.

Todd Henry [00:15:00]:

We'll be right back.

Josh Pais [00:15:08]:

I think it was soon after my sixth birthday. I didn't really know what my father did for work. He had a floor to ceiling blackboard and he would always do these things that he called calculations. And one day I tried to pin him down because all the other Kids that I knew, their dads were bus drivers or school teachers or drug dealers or typical New York City jobs that dads had. And he. So I was sitting on this little chair and there was a little table next to me. And I said, what do you do? What do you do? And he said, josh, do you see the table that you're sitting next to? I said, yes. What do you do? And I said, and do you see the small.

Josh Pais [00:15:50]:

Do you see your knee? And I was like, yes. And he said, the smallest part of that table and the smallest part of your knee are the same thing, atoms. And that's what I explore, the building blocks of the universe. And then he picked up his briefcase and walked out the door. And I was looking around the room and everything was. It was pretty trippy for a six year old.

Todd Henry [00:16:17]:

That's Josh Peiss, actor and author of the new book Lose youe Mind.

Josh Pais [00:16:22]:

He was a theoretical physicist who worked with Einstein for 11 years. He worked with Niels Bohr Oppenheimer, and he wrote several books. So that experience, aside from blowing my mind as a little kid, how I was able to integrate that very usefully in my life, was when I started auditioning as an actor. I had so much nervousness, I had so much fear, I had so much anxiety that it was crippling. And it was one of those 3am moments. It was like, what am I going to do? I don't know if I can do this career because I was so panicked, stricken every time I got in front of people. And then when I remembered the story that I just told you, that my body is made out of atoms, I started to ponder then emotions must be somehow connected to atoms. And then ultimately started looking at the emotions, the sensations, the fear, the anxiety, tuning into the actual sensation, the vibrational pattern of it.

Josh Pais [00:17:32]:

And then all of a sudden, I no longer held things as bad. I just started to experience different vibrational patterns in the body and take out this notion that this is a good one and this is a bad one. And that was instrumental in my creative life. It instantly opened up my acting career. I instantly started working on Broadway, working in film, working in television. It's not that the nervousness went away, but I experienced the purity of it, which made it a nonjudgmental experience. And everything became creative fuel.

Todd Henry [00:18:14]:

That's an interesting point of view. I do think that many people experience that nervousness, whether it's I'm going to go in and have a conversation with my manager about a difficult subject or I'm going To share a concept with a client or I'm going to step on stage in front of. Of a thousand people and try to perform in some way. And you're exactly right. I'd never considered that until I read the book. I'd never considered the fact that I do relegate some emotions to being good or being bad. And I always thought nervousness is a bad thing. That means that there's something wrong with me.

Todd Henry [00:18:44]:

I shouldn't be nervous. But to your point, I think once we listen to those emotions and we realize maybe what they signify and we recognize there is no good and bad. It just. It is what it is. We're wired to feel emotion. It does completely change the way we approach our work.

Josh Pais [00:18:58]:

Yeah. And it's built into our DNA to experience every emotion on the range. I firmly believe that the greatest myth of our time is that there are good and bad emotions. Who are we to say that they're. That's like walking through the forest and saying, that's a good tree and that's a bad tree. And I sometimes tell my students, in a hundred years from now, you're not gonna. You might even miss feeling nervous. And that this is our chance to.

Josh Pais [00:19:30]:

To relish in all those experiences. And another piece of this is that if we hold sensations as bad, we're naturally going to suppress them, manage them, heighten them, try to change them. And what I've found working with actors and entrepreneurs and people from all professions, is that as soon as they attempt to manage, which is basically a form of suppression, what they're feeling because they hold it as bad, they're booting down their connection to their body. And that opens up their mind to start taking off in a. And it's always ends up in a direction of, I'm not good enough, I suck. They're better Wine are this I should. The past was better. Some kind of mental drama, which is what our.

Josh Pais [00:20:24]:

A part of our mind wants to keep us sucked into. And so we have to catch that the narratives that our mind throws down are pointless. It's really just to recognize that our mind is trying to, in a sense, protect us from the unknown of the current moment by pulling us into a familiar mental drama.

Todd Henry [00:20:47]:

So many of us today, unlike at any point in human history, traditionally your job would be you're a blacksmith, right? So you're cranking out metalwork, or you're a carpenter. So you're going and you're sawing wood and you're making desks or something. So it was a Very. Yes, there's creativity involved there, but it was a very, like, physical, tactical thing. And either you did it or you didn't. You're a farmer. Like, either you had crops or you didn't. That's still the case in many countries that are still developing.

Todd Henry [00:21:17]:

But in large parts of the world today, most people make a living with their mind, or they engage in creative acts or they solve problems, or they're developing strategies or they're doing something like that. And it is interesting because we are wrestling, I think, with this sort of more psychological side of work in a way that historically we really haven't had to deal with because we're inventing value. Whether, again, that's an actor going on stage and doing a performance and trying to create sort of an aura around the character, or it's somebody writing copy and trying to connect with a reader or writing a book or developing a strategy, building a product, whatever it is. So it is interesting because we are. I think these psychological, emotional aspects of work are fairly recent.

Josh Pais [00:22:03]:

Mm. I think another. As you were saying that it. It just made me think that also, I think most jobs today, you can. We can talk about it. Involve what I call putting your ass on the line.

Robert Glazier [00:22:21]:

Yeah.

Josh Pais [00:22:22]:

Meaning that you have.

Todd Henry [00:22:24]:

You.

Josh Pais [00:22:24]:

You are facing some form of an audience. And it could be an audience of one or two. In this day and age, it could be an audience of millions at a given moment. And it's so key to learn how to increase your tolerance for all those vibrations so that you don't. Nothing will stop you. That's part of being creatively invincible. Everything is creative fuel. Everything is there to help you.

Todd Henry [00:22:54]:

And I think that's part of the provocativeness. Provocativeness. I don't think that's a word.

Josh Pais [00:22:58]:

I'll take it.

Todd Henry [00:22:59]:

The provocation of the title, lose your mind. The idea is getting beyond that.

Josh Pais [00:23:04]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:23:04]:

Getting beyond those limitations that your mind wants to put on you and to connect deeply with those emotions without judging them as whether they're good or bad. I always. I like to tell people, like, somebody will say to me that I'm so nervous, right? Because I public speak a lot. And I'll be backstage and somebody will say, I don't speak very much and I'm really nervous. And they'll say, that's good. That means you care. If you weren't nervous, I would be worried about you, because that means you probably either you don't care or you're, like, closing off because it's not natural to get in front of you 2000 people and share an idea like it's just not a normal thing. So it's not a bad thing.

Todd Henry [00:23:35]:

But we've convinced ourselves it is. I want to talk about the pathways that you talk about ways that we can connect with ourselves and get beyond that. What are the tactical ways that you describe in the book. That help us get beyond some of those limiting mental traps that we set for ourselves?

Josh Pais [00:23:52]:

It's the four access points to presence. And they're all built into our body, built into our system, and it's just a matter of using them. So let's start with one of them is a connection to the immediate environment. And typically, when we go into a new room, a new environment, we're checking for familiarity, we're checking for safety. And then we no longer really visually connect with that environment. And so a way to visually connect is to see what's in front of you in terms of color, shape, texture, lightness and darkness. Almost how a dog or a baby would see. And by literally looking at anything in your immediate environment and seeing exactly as it is.

Josh Pais [00:24:54]:

Without your interpretation, without how smart you know what this is and you know what that is. Instantly, the system, the nervous system calms. The mind becomes quieter because you're shifting your attention on what you're listening to. And when I say listening to, it's taking in. I include listening, in a sense, with taking in the visual information that's there. Another one is to connect to the nuance of sensation in the body. And again going back to feeling the emotion. Again, it's tuning into something other than the constant chatter of the mind.

Josh Pais [00:25:39]:

Another one is just to keep your breath going. Because if you try to stop a sensation, typically what people do pretty unconsciously is decrease their breath. As soon as you decrease your breath, you're leaving your body and your mind gets active. So just keeping breath going and breathing to feel, not to get rid of what you're feeling, which is a distinction. The practice of increasing your tolerance for you. Because you have a message to put out into the world. And as you put your message out, there's going to be more body sensation. And this is just natural.

Josh Pais [00:26:22]:

It doesn't mean anything. And it's just key to welcome increase your tolerance so that it doesn't block you from getting the message out into the world that the world needs right now.

Todd Henry [00:26:38]:

Josh Peis new book, Lose youe Mind, is available now wherever books are sold. And if you'd like to hear our full conversation with Josh Peis or Robert Glaser, you can do so@dailycreativeplus.com it's absolutely free. We'll send you a private feed where you can listen to the full interview for every episode. What ties these two conversations together is the reminder that authenticity isn't abstract. It's both deeply practical and also profoundly freeing. Robert Glazier showed us that when our values are clear, decisions become simpler and our energy is more focused. And Josh Pies reminds us that when we stop fighting our own emotions, our own inner experience, we gain access to presence and power that can't be faked in our creative process. So whether you're leading a team, making art, or simply trying to show up for fully in your life, for those around you, the path forward is the same anchor to your core.

Todd Henry [00:27:35]:

Embrace what arises and let authenticity do the work. Hey, thanks so much for listening. My name is Todd Henry. You can find my work, my books, my speaking, everything else@toddhenry.com until next time. May you be brave, focused and brilliant.

Todd Henry [00:27:55]:

We'll see you then.