From 'Non-Player Character' to the Hero of Your Story, with Mark Delaney - Joe Rogan | Alien Abduction

Mark Delaney [00:00:03]: Welcome to Building Your Leader Brand. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Mark Delaney. For so many men, their problem is not they drink too much, it's that they're living too little. And their heart is crying out to live for something far greater and far more, but the inability to live out in your life what your heart is beating for, you almost have to become an alcoholic to try to numb the frustration of that disconnection. Bob Gentle [00:00:40]: Hi there, and welcome back to Building Your Leader Brand. My name is Bob Gentile, and every week I speak to incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing, and monetizing their expertise and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new here, while you still have whatever device that is in your hand, take a moment to subscribe. That way you won't miss a single thing and you will make me smile when the downloads get bigger every week, which sometimes they do, not often enough. Again, if you like this show, you will love the Personal Brand Business Roadmap, 50 pages of everything you need to scale your expert business. Just visit amplifyme.agency. Roadmap. So there is nothing in life that matters more than life. Bob Gentle [00:01:25]: And this week we're going to be speaking about that. Life and work, they go hand in hand. People talk about life-work balance. Anybody who knows what they're talking about will tell you there is no such thing. It's an illusion. It's more of a breathing process than a balance. This week, to help me riff on this, play with the idea of A good life is Mark Delaney, author of In the Game: A Playbook for Overcoming Setbacks, Rebuilding Confidence, and Most Importantly, Living with Purpose. Mark, welcome to the show. Mark Delaney [00:01:58]: Thank you, Bob. I look forward to the exact conversation you just set up. Bob Gentle [00:02:02]: Oh, good. Well, that was me winging it, but winging it and getting it right for a change. You very boldly describe yourself as a life coach. A lot of people hear the phrase life coach and it makes them cringe. And I can understand that because I think there are lots of people approach life coaching not really knowing what they're doing, not really knowing why they're doing it, not really knowing who they're doing it for. I've spent a lot of time looking through your stuff and it matters. I think that's really what I want people to understand. Life is the most important thing. Bob Gentle [00:02:40]: For the listener who's meeting you for the first time, can you tell me a little bit about what it is that you actually do, where you are, what you do, and who you do it for? Mark Delaney [00:02:49]: Well, I think the only spot where I appear to boldly declare I'm a life coach is something that my tech guy put on the website because I hate the term life coach. I don't even call myself a life coach. I use that term a little bit just because it gives people some kind of context. But I don't want to be anyone's coach. I really consider myself to be a butler to people. I see myself as Alfred, like on the character Batman, who has this butler that helps him in the personal side of life and be equipped for battle. And so life coaching is not something— I don't even want to be a life coach. Matter of fact, I don't trust people who want to be life coaches. Bob Gentle [00:03:33]: So I'm glad. Does this all make sense to me? Because we all know the connotations that come with life coach, and this is bigger than that because the one underlying theme in all your work is purpose. So maybe if I tell you a story. When I was about probably 12 years old, I realised at some point I'm going to have to move out into the world. I'm not going to be able to just live in this nice little cocoon of my family anymore. And the image that came to mind was, oh my God, I have to go and get a job to earn money to pay for my board and lodgings in order that I could live to go to work and on and on and on. It was horrific. I just couldn't imagine what that was for. Bob Gentle [00:04:30]: What was the point of that? It made no sense. Oh, pardon me. And I struggled with that for a very long time until I discovered what I was for. And I think what I realised is not everybody has that experience. A lot of people are quite comfortable not really knowing what their purpose is. But there is a portion of people for whom it is the most important thing, sometimes consciously. A lot of the time completely unconsciously. And I think that lack of purpose is one of the biggest problems that we have in the world for that group of people. Bob Gentle [00:05:11]: You can probably be much more articulate to this than I can. So I'll invite you to basically tell me who is it that you work with? Because it's not going to be everybody. It's going to be a particular kind of person. Mark Delaney [00:05:21]: Well, you just said it so well. I look around, if you, anybody listening to this podcast, if you look around the room right now, everything that you look at with your eyes, you understand the purpose of it. And it brings just this easy clarity. Like nothing is confusing that I'm looking at. The problem is we look in the mirror and we don't even know how to simply with clarity know what our purpose is. And it causes such an underlying confusion about our life without even knowing it. It causes us to live not just a life void of purpose, but a life void of identity. Because a hammer is— if you say hammer, it's both what it is and what it does. Mark Delaney [00:06:12]: And when we can look at ourselves with that kind of simplicity, we can, no pun intended, hammer away at life. But I think you're right that I think for so many people, I would say for a small percentage of people, they have this bold, like, I need to know my purpose. I think for the majority of people, that thing is inside of us, but we don't recognise it. I was teaching at a high school about mental health a month or so ago, a bunch of high school students. And I asked them, I said, take a little piece of paper, don't put your name on it, but finish this sentence: my life feels— and just finish that sentence. And I accumulated several hundred of their answers, and it was mind-blowing. 15, 16, 17-year-old young people, many of them said, my life feels empty. One person said, I feel like a 3 letters NPC. Mark Delaney [00:07:18]: I feel like an NPC. And I was like, what is that? I had to look it up. People who game understand what it is. It's a non-player character. It's just this character on the screen that doesn't have any bearing or impact on the game. It's just there. And so many students gave answers similar to that. And it's just mind-blowing to me that this thing as simple as purpose becomes this invisible burden on the inside of us that it's hard to even know it's there. Mark Delaney [00:07:54]: But for instance, here's what happens to a lot of men. This is why I wrote the book In the Game. A lot of men, the emptiness of life turns them to something like alcohol. So then a man becomes— see, a man who struggles with alcohol. And then what does he think his problem is? Alcohol. Bob Gentle [00:08:15]: Yeah. Mark Delaney [00:08:16]: What do people say his problem is? Alcohol. No. For so many men, their problem is not they drink too much. It's that they're living too little. And their heart is crying out to live for something far greater and far more. But the inability to live out in your life what your heart is beating for, you almost have to become an alcoholic to try to numb the frustration of that disconnection. Bob Gentle [00:08:49]: As you were speaking, I was reflecting on a conversation I had, must be about 6 months ago. And this conversation came up again this morning because somebody was having challenges with people in their environment. And the advice was, whenever you're experiencing difficulties with somebody, number one, assume they're doing their best. But number two, how can you make it better? Well, the answer was, how can you make them the hero of their own story? Because everybody feels like they need to be the hero in their own story. It's an unconscious I don't actually know what it is, but it offers a real counterpoint to what you were describing as feeling like a non-playing character. Because that's what nobody wants to feel like this. And I'm thinking about, there are people that I meet quite often, and the listener will probably recognise this, or perhaps recognise it in themselves, where calluses have grown over this. And there's all kinds of reasons they won't look at this anymore because it hurts so much. Mark Delaney [00:10:01]: Yeah. Bob Gentle [00:10:02]: This is going to get very relevant to leadership and leadership branding shortly. So bear with me, but be interested in your perspective where people, you can tell that this is an underlying problem, but there's an unwillingness to look there. If you see what I mean. Mark Delaney [00:10:19]: Oh, yeah. I was talking to a man about 35 years old. And I invited him to be a part of these conversations we have with a small group of men. And I was holding one of my guidebooks that says The Purpose Mastermind. And I just said, hey, we're doing this. Men are meeting to talk about these. They're really fun conversations. He looked down at this guidebook. Mark Delaney [00:10:46]: And then he looked at me with a blank look and said, "I can't talk about that." I totally get it. This thing with purpose, it so quickly becomes something we feel, well, I've already missed it. That's the thing I could have been. I never will be. So why in the world would I talk about that? I would become a greater villain in my own story. If we talk about purpose, was then I'll see how much I failed. I would say it wasn't until I was 48 years old that I really came to this sense of, oh my goodness, this is who I am. This is who I am. Mark Delaney [00:11:30]: This is my purpose. And the feeling of freedom and liberation that I no longer have anything to prove to anybody. But instead, I have a life that I can give instead. It takes the chip off their shoulder. You mentioned leadership. Like, when a person doesn't know who they are, they're always trying to prove who they are. And it puts off this essence that makes people go, "Ugh." We act like that 5th grader in school that tries too hard to get friends, and then nobody wants to be your friend. Bob Gentle [00:12:06]: I think this is where things are getting interesting from a leadership brand perspective, because you touched on identity there. And if we don't really know who we are, then how can we present that to others? And if you don't have that sense of purpose, you need to then fill that gap with something else. You don't have this self-expression. You have almost, I don't even know what to call it. This is, I mean, terribly inarticulate today. You start thinking about how do I need to present myself? How do people expect me to show up as? Or who can I emulate? Or how can I convince or persuade? Or how can I create a persona that people will take seriously? Whereas once you actually settle in or relax into that true identity, suddenly everything gets easier. The risks feel lower, the threat feels lower, and it's like you enter into this almost, I hate to use the word grace because it has so many different meanings to so many different people, almost flow state. Showing up feels easy at that point. Mark Delaney [00:13:25]: Yeah, very well said. I think we're all looking for something to prove ourselves to the world. I remember growing up as a child in kindergarten, first grade, we had something called show and tell. And that is when students would bring something to the class that they wanted to show the rest of the class, some toy they have or something. As a little kid, I remember you have your little sack and inside of that sack is whatever toy you decided to bring to show your friends. And there's— you really want to be able to show something that causes people to go, wow, look what you have. And then as you grow, I taught for many years in schools and every student is looking for something. Well, I'm a ballplayer or I'm smart or I'm good looking or I'm funny, looking for something to be like, look, I made it. Mark Delaney [00:14:19]: I made it. The longer I taught 14-year-olds, Bob, I realised we're all a bunch of 14-year-olds. A human's a human. And I think we grow up as adults, and if we're not careful, our job is nothing but our show-and-tell item that we're sticking our chest out and trying to prove to people how amazing we are. And it makes people go, ugh. Instead, our job is like anything else in our life. It's a chance to give who we are to people, which is a far different way of showing up in the world. Bob Gentle [00:14:58]: I think this is where the question of specificity of purpose starts to become important. I think a lot of people, they start thinking about this whole thing of life's purpose. What am I for? Why am I here? What's my mission? They instinctively assume this has to be world-changing stuff. When I relaxed into what is my purpose, I realised it was actually very small. It mattered a lot to me and it matters to anybody who's on the other end of it. And that's enough. It doesn't have to be purpose with a big P and sunbeams coming out of it. Yeah, but it is that for me. Bob Gentle [00:15:44]: What does that commonly look like when you're working with people, when they get to the point of, oh, this is what people are talking about with purpose? What actually ends up being in the box for people? Mark Delaney [00:15:56]: Yeah, you know, a lot of people, a lot of people who have the guts to have these conversations, as we go through the conversations, they realize, you know what, I've been doing this most of my life. I never realised it. I think that many people look for the specific when it comes to purpose. And that's a mistake, because once you try to make it specific, you can study it for a lifetime. It's like the hammer. The hammer doesn't sit on the shelf thinking, okay, am I supposed to help build a doghouse or a human house? Or a sandbox, or the hammer just shows up wherever there's a nail. There's a nail. Oh, I could do that. Mark Delaney [00:16:42]: Oh, there's a nail. I can do that. And the people tend to think that purpose has to be this, like, specific, like, exact thing, and then it's going to be powerful. Actually, the more specific someone tries to make it, the more we stifle our lives. Because instead of just hammering away at whatever's in front of us, we end up just like growing in stagnancy, even forgetting how to hammer because we've been too busy thinking about what to hammer. Bob Gentle [00:17:15]: So I'm thinking about leaders and leadership. And I think when we're talking about purpose in terms of our own purpose, it's going to have an impact on the people around us and how we lead organizations. I'd like to understand, first of all, the context of purpose within the leader, but then there's also organisational purposes, a slightly different conversation. You do these 3-day challenge things within the business or corporate space. That can be rolled out through a whole workforce, but I'm interested in your reflections on when you see a leader suddenly understand how to show up in a way that they suddenly feel like they've got it, it's clicked. What happens next? Mark Delaney [00:18:07]: There's such a calm confidence that a human being can have. When you finally realize, oh, I'm a hammer. I drive nails in to connect things together. Like it's so it's such a simplicity without a calm sense of purpose, really purpose and identity, which you can't disconnect purpose and identity. Without that calm sense of that, there's always this void on the inside of us. There's always this confusion. There's always this question of how do I show up? The leader might end up becoming a person. Who everywhere they go, they have about 8 different hats and they decide which one to put on. Mark Delaney [00:18:53]: I feel like when someone knows their purpose, it helps their identity be built along with it. And you become what I call a one-hat kind of person. So when you walk in the room, like, people just know who you are because you're kind of just who you are. You're not acting for people. You're not trying to figure out how to coerce situations and people. You're just being who you are. Bold in that, and it removes the chip off of the person's shoulder. When we do the Purpose Challenge in the marketplace, number one, it's exciting to go to people and say, hey, what percentage of people do you think know their purpose? And everyone says like, oh, 5%. Mark Delaney [00:19:42]: And I'm like, Well, how about everyone in this room become part of the now 6%? Like, we can all do this. There's an excitement about it. There's an excitement about the challenge of like, I can know my purpose. Yes, you can. And when people do it, like they self-discover this through our conversations, it almost like it makes you stand up taller. Like, yeah. And there's such a— and probably I don't talk about this a lot, but probably the real thing I'm wanting people to do is live their life in the context of their purpose instead of the context of their problems. Because many people without ever knowing this, it's totally unrealized. Mark Delaney [00:20:34]: We live our entire lives in the context of our past or the context of our problems, never in the context of our purpose. And it's so hard to wake up every day saying, oh, I'm the guy who failed at business, or I'm the person who got divorced, or I'm the person who has this bad habit. You can't face a day with any kind of courage when you're dwelling on the wreckage of your life instead of the purpose of your life. And what I found is that when people become purpose-focused, every bit of wreckage can become an asset to what you're building. Like, wreckage is actually useful to people who are purpose-driven. But if you're not purpose-driven, every bit of wreckage in your life is like, oh, Here's one more reason I'll never succeed at life. And so that's really one of the tricks behind really helping people know their purpose is I want people to realise you can wake up and think about it and build it and grow in it every single day. Bob Gentle [00:21:48]: So I think one of the things I could forgive the listener for thinking is these guys are being very vague. They're not being very specific. Because, and I think this is the challenge with this kind of conversation, is there are things you probably shouldn't talk about because they only happen in the inside and there's no language for a lot of this. Mark Delaney [00:22:09]: So true. And it's my biggest battle in marketing, what you're saying. Bob Gentle [00:22:15]: But, and this is why we can only really talk about that, what happens on the outside, which doesn't really explain what's happening on the inside. But if somebody is sitting at home thinking, I identify as being kind of vague on my purpose, I get up in the morning not really knowing why, I'm quite transactional in how I approach life, what are some strategies that they could use to begin to unlock where purpose might lie? Mark Delaney [00:22:47]: I love what you just said because you're even helping solidify things in my mind. Because sometimes I feel like communicating, I feel like I'm going crazy. I'm like, why? Why is what I'm saying not connecting with people? And I feel like we're all— maybe the way I would say it is I feel like we're all trying to do different. And I feel like what we actually need is to be different. And being different causes us to then do different. I left a teaching career when I was 47 years old. I want to make sure I answer your question by giving this example. Inside of me my whole life was a desire to live a life that makes a difference. Mark Delaney [00:23:29]: And I totally agree with what you said, that purpose does not need to be, I'm a superstar, I'm famous. No, purpose can be powerful in the most simple, simple ways. And so I left teaching because I felt like I was descending as a man. My job was my identity. I didn't like me. I didn't like my life. I didn't like the person I was. But I have this job and I'm going to keep telling you I have this job in hopes that you'll be impressed. Mark Delaney [00:24:03]: Because that's all I got, Bob. I work at this school. But as a man, there was something inside of me that wanted to really live. I was tired of only living for comfort and security. And there was something of calling on the inside of me. And I quit my job. I don't think everyone needs to do that, but I just quit my job. I was like, I'm out of here. Mark Delaney [00:24:28]: I was reading a book and the first line of the book said, stop living as if the goal of life is to arrive at death safely. And I'm like, I'm tired of living that way. And so I left my job and I spent a couple of years a real, a real going through a lot of searching, a lot of soul searching. Because I left, actually, I was a teacher and I was a leader of baseball umpires. I quit both of those things and my phone stopped ringing and I felt like I was living on an island. Like, did anyone ever know I existed? Anything I do ever matter? Like, and I did handyman jobs to pay the bills. And I remember one time I was painting someone's house and I was on a ladder and I had this epiphany of thought. Because for probably a year and a half of doing these handyman jobs, I was embarrassed. Mark Delaney [00:25:26]: I wouldn't tell people, oh, today I was mending a fence because my job used to be my identity. And I used to say, I teach at this school. What am I going to do now? Tell someone, oh, I was fixing a fence today. I was painting a barn today. In my mind, that's not good enough of an answer in my mind. So I'm on this ladder, I'm painting this house, and the epiphany hit me. The way I look at life, all I want to do is help people. And I looked at the paint and the house, I thought to myself, that's what I'm doing right now. Mark Delaney [00:26:01]: I am helping someone right now on this ladder. And it really matters. I am using my life in such a beautiful way right this moment on this ladder, painting someone's house. And the realisation that as a human being, when I feel like I am serving the world with my purpose, it doesn't matter if it's in the tiniest of ways on a ladder or if it's on a stage speaking. It's all me getting to live my purpose. I'm in the backyard this last week building a playset for my grandkids. Hey, no one's here to watch. There's no news crew. Mark Delaney [00:26:44]: There's no celebrations. But every second I'm like, I'm getting to be me in this world. I'm doing this to help people. And so purpose, once you see it generally, can be lived out powerfully in every facet of our lives. It's a way of looking so that when you walk into every room, you know, the old me, when I looked into every room, I would walk into the room thinking, well, is anyone going to like me? Now I walk into every room being like, I wonder who I can help in here. There's somebody I can give an encouraging word. Purpose can just show up in everything we do in our lives once we learn the pair of glasses to wear. Bob Gentle [00:27:34]: Yeah, I think the most important thing— I probably say everything's the most important thing, and there's always a way to look at something as the most important thing. It doesn't matter what it is, but being able to bring value into a situation can take a million different forms and You can have two people in the same job. One person is performing transactionally very well. Another person is looking for ways to perform that transactional job, but it's about more than that. It's about how can they bring value into everything that they do. And I'm making a mess of articulating this again. There's a magical component to this. And there's just no escaping it, that once you understand what you're for, all the chains come off psychologically, and other people experience the difference. Bob Gentle [00:28:31]: And I think for leaders and leadership, this is particularly important because that's going to spread through the entire culture in an organization. On the one hand, everybody who supports you in this organisation is going to feel like they're supporting somebody who has a mission. They will just feel the difference, whether you articulate it or not. More importantly, those people who are further up the value ladder, the food chain, stakeholders, whatever you want to call it, they're also going to, whether you tell them or not, they're going to experience the X factor that is, this is somebody who knows what they're about., and it's going to manifest through charisma. It's going to manifest through confidence. It's going to manifest through greater trust. Somebody people want to spend time around, people that they want to support. It's difficult to pin this down to finite values and features and benefits, but trust me, anybody listening, if they've ever met anybody in their life that they really wanted to get behind and support, going to be somebody who knew why they were there, at a visceral identity level. Bob Gentle [00:29:44]: Anybody that you've felt was trying to hustle you, what felt was trying to force you into a shape that you don't feel belonged to you, I almost guarantee they didn't know why they were there and what they were about. And that's why this is important. Mark Delaney [00:29:59]: I'm a grandpa now of 4 going on 5 grandkids. And I'm so thankful that if they ever asked me what I'm about, I have an answer to that. And I can help them know what they're about. And I would encourage any leader, if you're leading an organisation of people, like, let's face it, everyone's walking around planet Earth wondering why we're even doing anything we're doing. And as a leader, If one of your people walk up to you and say, why are we doing this? Man, the leader has an answer to that question. You have an immediate way of lifting the hearts of your people. What else does leaders say? Like, we're doing this to make money. Well, that's not inspiring because then everyone who works for you is working so that you can make money. Mark Delaney [00:30:59]: That's not inspiring. Bob Gentle [00:31:01]: You really have to clarify something for me because a lot of my work is around helping people express themselves online clearly. And they struggle with it a lot of the time. And they struggle with it, I think, because they're thinking, what do I need to communicate in order to persuade somebody? When actually what they need to be communicating is who I am and what I'm about. And they're coming to content from a place of service rather than from a place of marketing. It's coming from a place of mission. And I'm going to have to spend some time thinking about this. Mark Delaney [00:31:36]: The quote that you said, when you know who you are, the chains come off, it gives me goosebumps. We don't even realize, we don't even, I think a couple of things occur. We don't know who we are. Number one, we may not even recognise the chains that are around us, the chains wrapped around our thinking. Or maybe this is even worse. We do recognise all these chains, and every day we think about our chains instead of having freedom to live out our purpose. Bob Gentle [00:32:14]: I work with a lot of people who are transitioning out of corporate life into what you would call a portfolio career. And in those corporate environments, identity is almost provided, and they can thrive in that. If you do well in a corporate space, that very safe identity can— there's no resistance, there's no friction. But when they step out into the world, on their own. That is gone. And a lot of people struggle at that point with reestablishing that identity. And I think this is where the purpose work can become really important. Because if they just step from one transactional identity into another, it doesn't come with the built-in jets that a corporate title does. Bob Gentle [00:33:07]: And you need a new fuel source. You need a new energy source. And that really is the identity. Yeah. That's really interesting. Mark Delaney [00:33:16]: When I think about purpose, here's what I would say. The difference between the work I do and the work that you do. Imagine everyone is trying to build a house. Their life is a house. What I do is the concrete foundation. It's not fancy. It's just powerful. You have to have that concrete foundation, right? But that's not the thing that anyone sees. Mark Delaney [00:33:42]: No one walks into a house and says, wow, look at this foundation. So I'm just the concrete guy. In the work that you do, you help people like build a structure, the design, stuff like that. I would say that most of the kind of help that people get in life is for above the foundation. But this concrete foundation is oftentimes ignored. But this concrete foundation of purpose, it establishes such a purity of purpose and identity from which to build something safely. But when that concrete foundation isn't there, I don't care how much money you spend on design, you can't put studs in the dirt and build anything. Bob Gentle [00:34:35]: I know what I wanted to talk about. So it's building directly on that. When this identity shift or solidification or illumination, whatever you want to call it, through getting a sense of what your purpose is, I'm going to call it rather than having clarity, you have a sense because sometimes it's just a vibe and sometimes that's enough. But there are people listening thinking, my purpose needs to be a big P. This is going to be a huge career change. It's going to be revolution. That's dangerous. That's a car crash. Bob Gentle [00:35:09]: I think sometimes it can lead to a decision to make a change. But I think what's more likely is people will realize, okay, now I'm just going to behave slightly differently. I now have a an internal GPS rather than trying to scramble around for maps all the time. Yes. And it might be that this leads to an adjustment in how I behave day to day, the decisions I make day to day, which is going to lead to a whole new trajectory rather than a revolution. And I think that's something I want people to appreciate, that this doesn't mean big changes short term. It might just mean a greater sense of peace, but long-term, it could mean a very different future. Mark Delaney [00:35:56]: Yeah, I think that people do fear, like if I talk to a business owner about the purpose challenge with their employees, I think people are like, well, if my employees find their purpose, they're going to quit their job. No, no, most people just work their job better because they live their life better. Most people do not need a different life to live, they need to look at the life they're living differently. It's almost like you can't see well and someone gives you a pair of glasses and you go, "Oh, I can read all the letters. I can see the color. It's all there." Purpose does that. Bob Gentle [00:36:33]: I think the reason I really like the idea of Your Purpose Challenge is I remember when I was 17, and I have a terrible long-term memory, atrocious. 17, I was working for a franchise that had the Apple franchise back then. So back in the 1980s, '90s, there were no Apple stores. Apple computers were sold through local franchisees, and they sent me off on Apple's customer care course. It changed my life, completely changed my life, because it made me reflect on what was happening on the inside a lot, which I'd never really done. There have been conversations that I've had through my life which completely changed things. Those people at the time probably had no idea. If I'm a manager today and I'm looking at how can I offer modest training to my team, don't underestimate the impact, particularly of the kind of training you're talking about, to feel like it's a small contribution today. Bob Gentle [00:37:35]: That small contribution in 15, 20 years' time could have changed the course of somebody's life. I've had people come up to me that I met 15 or 20 years ago at a networking event and say, "That thing you said to me, it completely changed my life." And I look back and I think, "Really? That?" That was a small thing. This isn't going to change anybody's company. Overnight in a big way. It's probably going to make small changes that really make an impact over time. But to the individuals on those courses, it could have a huge impact on their life and make a big contribution because this is almost the most important thing in life. Yeah. Sorry, that was another long ramble and rant. Mark Delaney [00:38:20]: You said it perfectly. It's a change in trajectory. Let's face it, no one makes huge jumps overnight in anything. But if we change our trajectory forever, the impact over the long haul is incredible. Bob Gentle [00:38:36]: Yeah. So before we started recording, I asked, because honestly, for the listener, I ask a few questions. What does it make sure we talk about? Do you have anything that you want to give to us? I pretend I don't do these things. I pretend it's all spontaneous. It's not. And Mark has a really exciting looking mini course that I would like you to tell the listener about. Mark Delaney [00:39:00]: Yeah, it's something called What Am I Supposed to Do? We make decisions in life and that question can haunt us. What am I supposed to do? And it's just a 3-day mini course and it's not going to tell you what to do. It's going to let the chains fall off of that question and enable you to ask better questions instead. Because nobody can answer the question, what am I supposed to do? You can ask it for 50 years. So there's different questions you can ask instead that you can actually answer. So that's free and you can put the link in the show notes. Bob Gentle [00:39:38]: I think that's the thing with this kind of question. You need to create the conditions where that question can answer itself. And those conditions don't exist day to day. And that's why I think this course, if you're listening, I don't care who you are, it's almost definitely worthwhile. Mark, I'm running longer than I'd intended to, and I told you I had a call at 4 PM my time. I realised I actually don't, so I'm not in a hurry anymore. Are you all right for a couple more minutes? Mark Delaney [00:40:03]: Yes, I am. Bob Gentle [00:40:03]: Yeah. Awesome. So we're going to move into part 2 of the podcast. This is quite short, but really looking at the 3 things, Mark's 3 amplifiers, 3 things listeners can go and do, read, think about exercises. I don't care. 3 things that you feel would be valuable for people to go and take action on in some way. So amplifier number 1. Mark Delaney [00:40:26]: Yeah, I would simply say this. If you focus on your past, it will give you more power over you. When it comes to therapy, many people think, well, I have to fix my past. Well, nobody in human history has ever fixed their past. But sometimes we call what we do purpose therapy. And here's a mental image of it. Imagine the room that you're in is your whole life. And one wall represents your job. Mark Delaney [00:40:52]: One wall represents your family. One wall represents your hobbies. But in that room, there's some random object on the floor that you keep tripping on because the room is dark. And every day you trip on it. It might be a habit, some kind of addiction, some kind of just whatever problem, and you trip on it. And the more you trip on it, the room just gets darker and darker and darker. And you finally are like, I got to get help. Here's what common therapy does. Mark Delaney [00:41:24]: It says, Bob, what time of day do you trip on that, that object? And we talk about that for 2 or 3 sessions. And then Bob, does that object feel square or round? Is it pointy? We talk about that for a couple of weeks. Then we can talk about, well, Bob, when you fall, do you fall or do you just stumble? We can talk about all the injuries. We can talk about that dark object for months and even years. What really needs to happen is whoever is closest to the light switch needs to turn it on. And just be like, oh, family, hobbies, job. And you look down, you're like, oh, it's just a coffee mug. I can move that. Mark Delaney [00:42:08]: I can pick it up. I can walk around it. Like, it's just, that's the kind of therapy most people need. It's just the awakening to what their whole life is. So yeah, that's the first thing. Focusing on your past will only give it more power over your life. The second thing I would say is You can't fix your problems, but you can be set free from them. You can't fix them, but you can be free from them. Bob Gentle [00:42:32]: I had to process that for a moment. I really liked that. So was that thing number 2? Mark Delaney [00:42:37]: That's thing number 2. Bob Gentle [00:42:39]: Okay. Just properly demarcating that. That was a very simple thing you said, but it bears taking a moment to think about. So feel free to pause, go back and listen again. I often, as soon as somebody says something, I'll have an opinion on it. I'm not going to have an opinion on that because I need to go back and think about it too. Mark Delaney [00:42:59]: I have a book called One Step to Freedom that has a picture on the back. It's a person in a prison cell with a big box that you can't fit through the bars. And that big box represents the problem. And we tell ourselves that we have to get rid of the box to get out of the prison. And the truth is the prison bars were created by how we think about our problem. And instead, we can leave the box in the prison and we can walk out of it ourselves with the doors not locked. So we don't need to be fixed. We need to be free. Bob Gentle [00:43:36]: Again, that needs a lot of thinking. So amplifier number 3. Mark Delaney [00:43:41]: I would say this. Mental health is a huge crisis in the world today. And I think what I have found helps people a lot is to realise that depression is really the result. For most people, depression is the result of a malnourished heart, that your heart has been tapping away to have more fun. It's been tapping away to have more friends. It's been tapping away to fall in love. And the longer we ignore the inward tapping of the heart, it's like we're not feeding our heart and it becomes malnourished. And oftentimes people tend to say, well, depression, I just need a medicine. Mark Delaney [00:44:25]: Well, what if what you needed years ago was just to involve your life with people in joyful and fun ways? And so it just— people feel very powerless when it comes to mental health issues. And I actually think that mental health frustrations are probably a lot more like hunger and thirst than we'd want to believe even. Hunger and thirst, we all understand it. You get that feeling, you go get something to drink. Well, anxiety and depression, I think, are these feelings that we have that our body is telling us to go live differently. But oftentimes we think, oh, I have this feeling something's wrong with me. Well, you don't think that way about hunger. You excitedly decide what you're going to eat. Bob Gentle [00:45:17]: The idea of inner nutrition is really interesting. I hadn't thought about it this way before, but you're absolutely right. The outer world, we know that there's physical requirements and we neglect them. We know we neglect them. Yeah. It's exactly the same on the inside. And again, there's a lot to unpack in that if people will do the work. There's that, honestly, listener, go back and really think about that because in a very short time you've presented something that is huge as I think about it. Bob Gentle [00:45:54]: I could go down a huge rabbit hole. With their— Mark, you have provided outrageous value today. It's been a lot of fun. I really enjoy thinking about these things. I hope the listener does too. If people want to get closer to you, if they want to find out more about you, what's the best place to do that? Mark Delaney [00:46:11]: Yeah, you can simply go to markdelaney.com. There's also a YouTube channel, Mark Delaney. I should say also, I also have a podcast called the Purpose Mastermind Podcast. Bob Gentle [00:46:24]: I will go and subscribe this minute. Mark, thank you so much for your time. It's been a lot of fun. Mark Delaney [00:46:32]: I've enjoyed this greatly. Great conversation. Bob Gentle [00:46:35]: So that does bring us to the end of another episode. Thanks at home for listening. If you have enjoyed the show, then I would invite you to leave a 5-star review. Count them, 5, with the fingers on your hand. Don't undercount. It causes problems. Mark Delaney [00:46:49]: Problems. Bob Gentle [00:46:49]: Again, if you've enjoyed this, you will love the Personal Brand Business Roadmap, 50 pages of everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business. 100% free as a gift from me. Visit amplifyme.agency/roadmap or hit the link in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone for listening. You are the best. Mark, you're also the best. Thank you so much. Mark Delaney [00:47:11]: Thank you, brother.