April 14, 2025 • 33 mins
🎯 In This Episode with George Bryant, You’ll Discover:
- What happens when success masks soul misalignment
- How silence can be the loudest call back to purpose
- Why you can’t build a life you love by becoming someone you’re not
📝 Episode Summary
In this powerful and soul-stirring episode, Jim sits down with George Bryant, a New York Times bestselling author and former digital marketing phenom who gave it all up to find his soul again. George walks us through the hidden pain behind his public success, his radical sabbatical in Costa Rica, and how God used silence, stillness, and suffering to rebuild him from the inside out.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re crushing it on paper but crumbling inside—this is your episode. George brings raw truth about identity, faith, and why your business must serve your soul, not steal it.
👋 About Our Guest
George Bryant is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and marketing strategist who helps entrepreneurs build aligned businesses rooted in integrity and impact. He is the host of The Mind of George podcast and a fierce advocate for living in truth, building in alignment, and protecting your peace at all costs.
💡 Key Insights from George Bryant
- Alignment Is a Fight – You won’t stumble into soul alignment. You have to actively pursue it and protect it daily.
- Success Without Peace Is Failure – If you win externally but lose yourself internally, it’s not worth it.
- Contemplative Space Is Critical – God speaks in whispers. You can’t hear them if your life is too loud.
🔗 Connect with George Bryant
Website: https://www.mindofgeorge.com
Instagram: @itsgeorgebryant
Podcast: The Mind of George
✝️ Faith Connection
George’s journey was marked by a deep encounter with God in the middle of the jungle. His entire redefinition of success was shaped by the simple question: Would Jesus be proud of how I lived today? This episode is a powerful testimony of faith in the quiet, not just the hustle.
🎨 Multipassionate Application
Whether you're building a business, raising a family, or exploring multiple creative paths, George’s message is clear: identity drives everything. You can’t build sustainably across your passions if your foundation isn’t aligned. Start with who you are, not what you do.
🛠️ Resources Mentioned
- The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham
- George’s Website: https://www.mindofgeorge.com
- George’s Podcast: The Mind of George
🔄 Related Episodes
[EP 28]: From Trauma to Truth – Maurice F. Martin
[EP 29]: When Faith Meets Burnout – Jeremy Howell
💪 Resilience Corner
George’s story is a masterclass in...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Grace and theGrind, the podcast where we dive
deep into the journeys ofheart centered and purpose driven
leaders and entrepreneurs.
We're here to equip andencourage you on your journey.
So let's get started and findthe grace within the grind.
This is Grace in the Grind.
And now your host, Jim Burgoon.
(00:23):
Welcome to Grace in the Grind,where we're here to tell the inspiring
story behind the story of someof the most successful entrepreneurs.
And today I have one of myreally dear friends, George Bryant
with us.
Welcome to the show, George.
Stoked to be here, brother, as always.
I'm glad.
We should have recorded thefirst hour of our conversation, but
we'll just hit go now.
Yeah, we should have becauseit was very rich.
(00:43):
But you know what, there areconversations for the audience and
there's conversations for usand so we'll chalk that up as a conversation
for us.
But with that being said, Iknow a lot of people know you, but
for the audience who doesn'tknow you, can you take the next 60
to 90 seconds to tell theaudience who you are and what you
do?
Oh, Jim, I love this question,my friend.
Yeah, I today I'd say I'm an Aminus father, I'm an A son, and I'm
(01:06):
an A son with God because myidentity is no longer wrapped up
in the things that I'veachieved or the things that I've
done, no matter what labelsthe world puts on me.
And my mission in the world istruthfully at the core, to give entrepreneurs
a permission slip to buildbusinesses their way in alignment
and scale with impact andintegrity in the process, like throwing
(01:26):
out outdated business modelsand copy and paste strategies and
tactics and having apermission slip to be unapologetically
themselves so that they loveevery ounce of their business and
get to reap in the rewards andthe revenue and the things that come
with it.
Because I have a pretty bighill with a flag planted that says
business is supposed to be anintegrity as well and nobody has
(01:48):
to sacrifice themselves in the process.
I either sacrificing yourcustomers and transacting with them
or sacrificing yourself andbecoming the world's version of you
instead of sharing your gifts authentically.
So that's today on, you know,Tuesday, how I would describe what
I do.
And now we're going to diveinto some really cool conversation
here because number one, wehad started already a cool conversation,
(02:09):
but something you said in yourintro and it's about the identity
and the identity shift and Ifeel like this is the Direction I
want to go in because so manypeople deal with identity, we turn
the TV on, you have so muchidentity crisis happening.
So tell me about when was theportion that you recognized that
you had an identity thatdidn't align to who you really are?
(02:30):
And then what were the stepsto start to shift that?
Oh, I wish that this was likea pretty little unicorn riding a
rainbow journey where it waslike this one aha moment.
But truthfully, there wereabout three or four very painful
catalystic moments.
The first one I remember likeit was yesterday where I had built
(02:51):
a massively successful multiseven figure business as a food blog.
I had roughly a millionfollowers online, there were 3 million
people a month coming to mywebsite and I ended up in the jungles
of Costa Rica and had my firstencounter with God and it was put
on my heart and convicted.
That entire business was outof alignment because I didn't know
who I was.
Like my identity was wrappedup in what Instagram thought and
(03:13):
how many likes I had and howmany cars I owned and houses I owned.
And truthfully, I had a hollow soul.
And so against the wishes ofeverybody in my life, my coaches,
my friends, my ex wife, in 24hours I gave that entire company
away.
I deleted my social media, Ichanged my phone number and disappeared
off the Internet for three years.
(03:33):
And in that process startedthe discovery of realizing that my
entire identity had beendictated by everybody else but me.
Not once that I ever askedmyself what do I value?
What, what do I care about?
Who do I want to be as a man,who do I want to be as a father?
And I was basically everybodyelse's version of what I thought
(03:53):
was the right way.
Here's how I should be a dad,here's how I should be an entrepreneur,
here's what society tells me.
These are the people I followand look up to.
And it was just thisadvocation of responsibility throughout
my entire life, everywhere.
And it rooted all the way downto my childhood because the way that
I survived as a 11 to 12 yearold kid who was basically homeless
(04:15):
and dealing with socialservices and abuse and neglect was
becoming a chameleon so that Icould get food and I could have somewhere
to live.
And then I ended up in themarine Corps for 13 years, which
gave me this entire identityof hey, those feelings you have,
that's not pain, that'sweakness leaving your body.
So go, robot, achieve.
And it carried all the waythrough into every relationship,
(04:36):
every bucket, every business bucket.
And so that was the first big one.
And then throughout the yearsthat led to me becoming a consultant
and taking all the accoladesand the credit of being a New York
Times bestseller.
And look at all these things I did.
And then I started consultingall these companies and I helped
make rich people richer.
And I convinced myself that wevalued the same things in the world.
(05:00):
And yet I got to be behind thescenes and under the hood of everybody
else's lack of alignment, towhere there were months at a time
where I felt like I couldn'thave enough showers to clean my soul
because of the things that Iwas involved in and the lack of integrity,
to where it happened again.
And I was like, I can't do this.
I can't get paid these copiousamounts of money to help these people
(05:22):
who on the surface say we careabout people and yet they sacrifice
their employees and they don'treally care about the customers.
And so I went through itagain, and there Was this like 5,
6 year span where every singletime I tried to go somewhere or do
something, it's like Iintentionally or unintentionally
put blinders on and I createdmy own cognitive dissonance.
(05:44):
I convinced myself that itlooked different than it actually
did, which just created thesemassive pockets of misalignment for
me.
So, you know, what it lookedlike in real life is that I would
achieve the things on paper,but I got.
And then I would wake upexhausted and I wouldn't want to
work and I would try to avoidmy calendar and I wouldn't want to
(06:05):
get on connection calls.
And yet on paper, everyone'slike, you're crushing it, look.
But like my soul was dead.
And it was like every singlething I did felt like it wasn't me.
And the more and more I didit, the more repulsed I got.
And so there were numeroustimes that I basically had to step
away and almost sabbaticalmyself and with no means to do so
(06:28):
at some of the hardest pointsof my life.
Like, there was a point wherewe were like three weeks away from
bankruptcy and my ex wife waspregnant with my son, and that's
when I gave away that company.
There was no backup plan.
I had driven it so far to thebottom by ignoring the signs that
I had to just throw it out inthe trash and rebuild it again.
And truthfully, the mostimportant step and the thing that
(06:49):
I never asked myself was,what's my vision for my life?
Right?
What's my vision for the world?
You and I were talking beforethe show about priorities and how
no matter what, when it comesto time, we all have so much of it
that we're going to sacrificesomewhere in some bucket.
But I was sacrificing thewrong things.
(07:09):
I was choosing work andidolatry over my son.
I was choosing status andconnections and false relationships
over the people that wereclosest to me.
I was choosing self suffragethrough hustling and working 20 hours
a day instead of taking careof myself.
And I had these.
This life of gain £100, lose£100, replace one addiction with
(07:33):
another addiction, go fromopiates to caffeine and not sleep
and convince myself it's okay,or I'm gonna sprint really hard and
destroy myself at the gym andthen not take care of my body in
the process.
Or I'm gonna just sprint sohard for two years and not sleep,
and I'll sleep when I'm dead.
And the truth was, is everyfoundation was built on sand.
And so all that effort and allthat energy I put into everything,
(07:55):
when I came time to rest orpull back, there was nothing left
because it never reallymatched who I was.
And it wasn't.
I wasn't able to maintain it.
And so it was more of atruthfully five, six year process
through me not getting the message.
And so the first thing I didwas I had to have really, and I say
this with full integrity, havea come to Jesus moment of who am
(08:16):
I?
Right?
If I erase the business, if Ierase the results, if I erase the
labels, like, who am I?
And I didn't like thatquestion because it forced me to
look in the mirror and takesome truth pills of the way that
I claim to show up is not thefeedback that people are giving me,
the way that I want to makepeople feel, not the things that
they're saying.
(08:37):
And so it became this, like,discovery process of who I am and
what I want to do.
And then over time, as Istarted to answer that question,
I started to bring in peoplethat felt in alignment with me in
that bucket and serve them inthat bucket to where now I was even
sharing with you.
I get bummed when I don't havestanding client calls.
I'm like, wait, when's thenext one?
(08:57):
Like, when are we schedulingthis again?
I love this.
It feels like family and friends.
But it wasn't this.
I think people hear this wordalignment, and they're like, oh,
I'm just gonna bringeverything into alignment.
That's not how it works.
Alignment is active pursuit ofthe things that we value, and it
requires that we know what we value.
If you value family, you can'tsacrifice that in the process.
(09:17):
Realize they turn 18 and youdon't get that time back.
Like it has to be a prioritynow, right?
And it has to be this pursuit,but also this protection of it when
you're in the process.
Because the world isn't goingto value the same things.
The industries that you're in,the buckets that you're in, they're
not going to protect your values.
They're going to try todistract you and get you to become
that version of yourself.
(09:38):
So you have to have this likedeep knowing in your core that's
really aligned like that.
Your heart, your mind and yourbelly is.
Huh?
This is like who I want to be,but it requires some humility as
well, because it required meletting go of things that I thought
I wanted, that I had bighouses, all these cars, private jets
and blah blah, blah.
(09:58):
Like those are the things thatwere on my vision board.
Like I didn't have on myvision board.
Like, oh, memories with my sonplaying in the park, doing backflips
on the trampoline.
And at the deepest level, Ihad to have this really integrous
talk with myself.
What is it that I want?
And not from what the worldtold me or what my childhood was
like, because I was basicallyreacting to my whole life, right?
(10:20):
I wasn't loving the resultsthat I got.
So this brings up a great question.
Matter of fact, I think itbrings up several.
But this is the one we'regoing to go with.
So you had said like that atsome point you would become a chameleon,
right?
And during this time, you keptgetting rid of different businesses
because they weren't you.
(10:41):
If you're at a place of achameleon who's struggling with identity,
how did you know if they werepart of were for you or weren't aligned
with you?
Like, how did you have that sense?
That's a great question.
I'm going to answer this in afortune cookie.
I'm going to answer this in afortune cookie because it resonates
at the deepest level.
I was able to know because Iwas willing to spend enough quiet
(11:01):
time to hear God's whispers.
I only knew because I createdthe space to actually slow down and
feel.
And the markers of being outof alignment is that there's never
a finish line.
There's always more work to do.
There's always more calls tomake, there's always more content
to make.
There's always more tasks to do.
Right?
You, your task list feels likeno matter how many things Go on it.
(11:24):
And how many things that youcross off that it's never enough
because it's this permanent distraction.
And I had a very wise mentorback in that period where I gave
away that company.
The reason I ended up givingit away is he wouldn't let me do
the healing breath workbecause he said I had no purpose
for my life.
And I was like, yeah, that'swhy I'm here.
A hole, right?
(11:45):
Like, why do you think I paid you?
And I came all the way toCosta Rica.
That's the point.
He's no, nobody can give youpurpose for your life.
Only you can.
So he told me that I couldcome back and participate when I
could answer this question.
And he said, what is thepurpose for your life?
And I was angry.
I yelled at him.
I was like, do you know howmany ways I could kill you?
Like, I have this entire skill set.
(12:06):
And.
And he's just smiling at me.
And I'm like.
And he's.
Your biggest problem is you'venever been quiet enough to hear God's
whispers.
And he's come back when youhave an answer.
And it took me, like, three days.
But for me, I actually had tointentionally create the space to
feel, to reflect, to look atmy life, to look at my day.
(12:27):
And now, as a man of faith,here's what I say to myself quite
frequently.
If Jesus walked through thedoor right now, would I be proud
of my morning today?
Would I be proud of my weekthis week?
Not from fault, not fromblame, not from guilt, not from shame,
but from a place of integrity.
And we need space to be ableto do that.
(12:47):
And so many of us wait untilit's the reaction where it's.
And I know everybody listeningto this has done this because I still
do this.
You have a day.
You pull into the driveway,and yet you sit in the car for 30
minutes before you go inside.
Like, you're just like, I justneed a minute, or, I just need to
go for a drive, or, God, no matter.
I'm just going for a walkoutside or I need to go to the gym.
It's like our bodies arecraving for us to create that space,
(13:11):
but it's not something weproactively do.
It's something we react into.
And so what it really requiredwas me having intentional time to
be with myself.
And not from a place ofjudgment or beating myself up, but
really from a place of thinking.
And I love Keith Cunningham asan author.
He has this book called theRoad Less Stupid.
Hilarious.
Listen.
Because he narrates it himself.
(13:31):
But he's a massivelysuccessful entrepreneur, and the
book is broken up into aseries of, like, independent stories.
But the one thing that he hasat the end of every one of them is
intentional thinking time.
He's no, I want you to go sitin a room with just a pen and a paper
and ponder and just allowyourself to write.
But we forget that thesharpest tool that we have is ourself,
but yet we never invest inthat relationship.
(13:53):
And so we have tointentionally create that space to
be in relationship with ourselves.
And I think for me and you,that's relationship time with God.
To be able to consecrate thatrelationship, to hear that.
But it doesn't come in thenoise of the world.
It comes when we quiet thenoise of the world to create that
space.
And so that's the biggest part.
Even with my private clients,the number one exercise that I give
(14:17):
them, and they fight me hard,they yell at me, they tell me I'm
crazy, is they'll be here.
And I'm like, all right, cool.
I need your phone.
I need your computer.
Yeah.
I'm like, I'm leaving for an hour.
I just want you to sit here in silence.
And they're like, you wouldswear I committed murder.
What am I supposed to do?
I'm like, no, you can't writeanything down.
You can't listen to music.
I just want you to practice being.
(14:37):
And they're, like, repulsed,and boom.
And then six months later,they're like, hey, I'm going to ignore
you for three hours tomorrowbecause I'm doing this and this in
the morning.
I love this space.
Right?
We tend to wait for thisoutside catalyst, but really, we're
not designed to be go do, do.
Like, it's be, do, have, notdo behave.
And so we have tointentionally create that space.
And to your point earlier, welive in a noisy world where what's
(14:59):
the number one tradedcommodity is attention.
And so in the world that welive in, it's not going to be like,
hey, I want you to go be byyourself and find yourself.
I want you to be anindependent thinker.
It's no, I want to capitalizeon all of your attention so that
you do what I do or you followwhat we want, or we can manipulate
you with marketing or whateverto get you to do these things.
(15:20):
And so it requires this, like,deep level of commitment to self,
and then it also forces thisrelationship with self.
And the way that I anchor thisin for people is we spend our entire
life Avoiding the onerelationship we're guaranteed to
spend the rest of it with,which is ourselves.
Yeah, absolutely.
Can't divorce yourself or atleast get rid of yourself.
(15:40):
So here then becomes the challenge.
So as somebody who is a hard charger.
Go.
To put on the brakes is adeath sentence.
Yeah, it feels that way.
It feels that way.
It's not one, but it feelsthat way.
So how did you navigate havingto shift those?
Because that's not an easy offand on switch.
That's not like, go, stop.
Great, go.
(16:01):
Because then stopping is alsonow part of your going.
So how did you shift into thismore contemplative version of yourself
to put the brakes on without really.
I don't know.
I don't know if I would saydriving yourself crazy, but without
having to constantly fightthrough all the challenges to give
up on the contemplative space.
(16:21):
It's a great question, and Ithink to even answer it in the way
you frame the question, you'regoing to have to be honest with yourself.
It is a fight.
It's fighting for what trulymatters, right?
I had a wise mentor who said,do you want to know why Olympians
win gold medals?
It's because they understandwhat temperance means.
Nobody trains at 100% everysingle day.
They train at 70% all day,every day for four years, to where,
(16:43):
when 100 is required, theypush the gas pedal.
This is a fight because theworld that we live in is not designed
before the Internet, for sure.
I'm blessed that I started asan entrepreneur before social media
really existed.
The only thing was Facebookwith college email addresses in MySpace.
Right?
There wasn't this constantfighting for attention, so we would
(17:04):
actually have time alone.
We would drive in the carwithout satellite radio and our phones
in our hands, and it's eitherlook outside or drive in silence
or have conversations, right?
There's this metric underneathit that we have to fight for.
And it was a fight, and it isa fight, but it's really this intentional
relationship to understand.
And this is so cheesy.
But as much as, like, I fly,we hear it all the time.
(17:26):
You have to put your oxygenmask on first, right?
You can't pour for an empty bucket.
And.
And the hard reality of thisis that if you don't proactively
choose it, it gets reactivelyforced upon you, except it causes
permanent damage.
Adrenal fatigue, burnout,resentment to the business, losing
clients, and all thesedifferent buckets that we say we
(17:48):
want to avoid, and yet wecreate them in the process by constantly
ignoring ourselves.
And so it's not even that.
It's like this fight that youchoose to do or not do.
It's this almost fight thatyou're required to do every single
day to actually have thethings that you want to have.
And it's not a finish line.
Just like going to the gym is.
(18:10):
All too often, I've achievedthese goals, and I'm like, oh, there's.
I have a six pack at 40 and blank.
And then what's the firstthing that goes out the window?
Oh, I'm there.
I'm gonna lighten up on my food.
I'm not gonna do as manysteps, so I can skip the gym a couple
of days this week.
And that's like planting agarden, seeing your first strawberry
sprout and be like, oh, I got it.
I never have to water it again.
I'm just gonna pickstrawberries from this thing forever.
(18:32):
And there's that part wherethe tending to the garden is what
keeps it producing fruit.
Right?
It's no different with our souls.
It's no different with our alignment.
Our values should change as wegrow as people.
The things that we valuechange, our priorities change, but
we have to consistently tendto that garden.
And so everybody wants thereto be an easy button, and they want
(18:52):
there to be a truth button.
The truth is that theresistance that lives in the world
is the workout program Goddesigned to make you the person strong
enough to maintain it.
And I did this post a coupleof months ago where I said, all too
often, I've prayed for thingsthat I don't have the scars and the
character to maintain.
Right?
Absolutely.
(19:13):
It's this constant fight.
And I think if you look at thesystems of the world that we live
in, we don't make them wrong.
I don't make marketing wrong.
I don't make social media wrong.
But those are not the rules ofmy life.
Those are a field that Ichoose to play on, and if I choose
to play on it, I get todictate the rules, but I can't let
them dictate my identity.
Just like our iPhones, right?
(19:34):
It's either a tool that youuse or it's a tool that uses you.
And if you look at it, justopen screen time, you'll have a pretty
sobering moment really quicklywhere you see the results of your
life dissipating away onTikTok and on games and on YouTube,
and you're like, man, I don'thave time to do this.
And I was like, you spent fourand a half hours scrolling through
TikTok today.
How much inspiration are youlooking for?
(19:55):
There's this, like, constant eradication.
And I use gardening all thetime because even when you plant
a garden, no matter how goodyou are, weeds are going to grow.
But the weeds are only painfulto you if you never pull them out
of the garden and they startto choke your plants, right?
But you can plant these seeds.
You can plant, pick yourfruit, strawberries, whatever you
want, go dragon fruit and getreally crazy, right?
(20:16):
Let's go exotic over here.
And you can tend to them andyou can water them, but every single
day, the world is plantingweeds in that garden.
And if you ignore those weeds,eventually it chokes out your plant.
But if you're intentionalevery day about, hey, I watered it,
I pruned it, I gave itsunlight, oh, I pulled that weed
out.
I pulled that weed out.
When you operate like that,you have the ability to plant more
(20:37):
seeds or to go sit at yourkitchen table and eat your dragon
fruit or strawberries.
But it's this consistent dailyrequirement to be able to earn those
things in your life, just likeyour wellness, just like your mindset,
just like your body, just likeyour business.
The garden only grows when wetend to it.
And we have these core bucketsin our life, and we tend to think
that if we just pour into thebusiness, then my life is going to
(21:00):
work.
No, that's like saying TomBrady because he played college football
and he won a Super Bowl acouple of times, that he can stop
training and stop practicing,and he'll still be able to win the
next Super Bowl.
It's this constant moving linethat we have to fall in love with
the process.
Right?
So then there's a greatquestion that this arises for me.
All right, so here's Georgeputs the brakes on contemplative.
(21:24):
Working through thechallenges, working through the issues.
Continually.
We're continually workingthrough them.
At what point did you findthat the contemplative state, and
I'm calling it a contemplative state.
I love it.
Place of silence is that youstarted feeling alive again, bro.
That is such a good question.
And I'm going to be reallyblunt with people.
It took a year and a half forme to go from resisting the process
(21:48):
to.
To enjoying the process andpursuing the process.
And there's a movie that Iwatched on Apple tv, and it's only
on Apple tv.
It's called Chasing the Present.
And it was this New Yorkrestaurateur, vegan restaurateur,
had everything, the houses,the apartments, In Manhattan, all
these successful restaurants,and he felt empty on the inside.
(22:08):
So he spent two yearstraveling the world to talk to every
spiritual leader and wasreally talking about presence.
And there was this one pointin this movie where they're, like,
sitting on the rocks by thislake with this, like, castle or something
behind them.
And he asked this guy aquestion, and the guy's answer was
so easy that it broke me.
So I hit pause on the movie,and I ended up laying on my couch
(22:30):
staring at the ceiling for 12hours before I realized I was still
laying there.
There was just this, like,state of peace in my body.
And the closest thing I canrelate it to is, like, when you finish
a hard run or a hard workoutand you're like, oh, I did it.
And then you just want to,like, lay in the grass, or, like,
you get out of the sauna andyou're, oh, I just did it.
Like, you just want to sitthere and soak in that presence,
right?
(22:51):
It gave me that feeling.
But even now, in my day today, I start every one of my days
in silence.
And multiple times throughoutthe day, I'll just go get in the
car, Windows down in silence.
It's something that once Iachieved it, doesn't stick around.
I have to earn it every day.
And it's also the law ofdiminishing returns, where the more
and more I do it, the more ofit's required to get the same payoff.
(23:13):
Just like if you haven't runin 10 years and you're like, I'm
gonna go run a mile today, youmight run the mile in 15 minutes.
So if you run consistently for30 days, you're gonna drop five minutes
off that mile time.
But when you get down into theseven minutes, the six minutes, the
five minutes, you're gonnahave to train at an increased capacity
for a couple of years to drop10 seconds off of it.
(23:34):
And so it's this, like, active pursuit.
And truthfully, you can't beattached to the results of the process.
You have to love the process.
Just like entrepreneurship, right?
The moment you get attached toyour marketing working or not working,
you're actually putting thewriting on the wall that it doesn't
work anymore, because themoment you're attached to the result,
you miss the inputs of whatmade it effective or didn't, because
(23:57):
we just want it to be done.
And so it's this activepursuit of it in every bucket that
makes it so powerful.
So before we start shuttingdown, like landing some of the planes
in the episode, I do Want tomake note to the audience just to
remember everything's going tobe in the show notes so that any
resource or anything that weput there, I want to make sure you
real that we're going to makeit super easy how to connect with
George, how to get the booksthat we mentioned, all those things.
(24:20):
I have a question before weget into some of the closing portions
of this.
So what were some of the things?
Because obviously healing is amultifaceted multi thing.
So getting quiet is just oneportion of that.
Not even, you know, a bigportion, but not even just the only
portion.
What were some of the otherthings that you did that were able
(24:42):
to help you on this journey of healing?
I love this.
So yeah, and I'll keep theseshorter so we can land the plane
because I know God gave me thegift of gab and I'm learning how
much I let out at a time whenmy thought process.
So the space is the starting line.
It's not the integration.
As somebody who's navigated alot of trauma, myself personally,
from war trauma to abuse toall these things, wellness is an
(25:04):
active pursuit.
Okay.
So in order for it to begin,you have to create the space for
it to start, right?
So the joke that I make withpeople and for everybody listening,
if you open Google maps onyour phone right now and you pick
a destination a thousand milesaway from you and you hit start,
the first thing it's going toask you for is your current location.
You can't get to where youwant to go until you know where you
(25:24):
are.
That's why space is so powerful.
It's this place of being yourown triage nurse of God.
You know what?
These relationships aren't good.
I'm not taking care of myhealth here.
I'm having self deprecating thoughts.
It's from a place of awareness.
Once that space is created,that clarity is your current state
to where that destination isstill ahead of you.
(25:45):
But then it requires activeobedience and intentional decisions
to be able to start getting there.
And the hardest part aboutthis is it's so simple, we neglect
it.
It's taking care of our bodies first.
It's choosing to take anaction that our future self is going
to thank us for by using thehistory of our past to protect our
(26:08):
future decisions.
And so it's your sleep, it'syour nutrition, it's your water intake,
it's your environment, it'sthe people that you talk to, it's
the conversations that youhave, right?
Look at what you consume.
If all you're doing iswatching shows of people cheating
and people being hurtful ormanipulating people.
Or you're listening to musicthat is constantly bombarding you
(26:29):
with all these messages.
It starts to filter and tiltyour brain.
And there's this part of itwhere you have to love the process.
And so in the Marine Corps,the one thing that we were always
taught is when the world getsloud or crazy things happen, a bomb
goes off, somebody gets shot,is you shrink your world as small
as possible to what you can control.
Because it's those microchoices and microhabits that allow
you to make progress.
(26:50):
And so that could be as simpleas I'm going to go for a five minute
walk outside every morning.
Regardless of how I feel, I'mgoing to take an alarm and put it
in my phone three times a dayto go off that says go for a five
minute walk and take five breaths.
It could be I'm going tointentionally drink water.
The hardest part about thisfor all of us is that we know this
already.
We know where we'resacrificing ourself.
(27:10):
We know where we're notpouring into our own bucket.
And for me, the biggest thingwas having a son and realizing that
he doesn't listen to what I say.
He watches what I do so I canbe talking all day, but he's modeling
my behavior.
And that kind of created thisaccountability for me.
And so number one is currentstating yourself.
Number two is finding theareas in your life where you're not
(27:32):
where you currently want to be.
And here's the short answer.
You're never going to be whereyou want to be.
But you should always lovebeing in pursuit of it.
I've found that it's my heart,like my journey of faith, my mindset,
my physical body and my business.
Those are the four bucketsthat I focus on.
And every day I make a depositin those buckets and I set myself
up to win.
(27:53):
I have a goal that I go to thegym an hour every day.
Does that goal happen frequently?
No, but that's my ceiling.
My floor is.
I'm going to go for at least a15 minute walk outside and do some
push ups and squats every day.
Because I can do that and I'mprotecting my progress.
Like I'm.
I'm valuing consistency overintegrity over intensity.
And so what it really boilsdown to is being able to look at
(28:16):
ourselves and then surroundingyourself with people who hold you
accountable to your potential.
But don't believe your storythat if you tell me that you want
to get loud and proud in your business.
I'm like, hey, when are you posting?
Hey, when are you posting?
Hey, why hasn't it gone up yet?
And utilizing our environmentand our community and the people
that we love, like sharing ourgoals with our significant others,
(28:37):
with our kids, with ourbusiness friends and be like, hey,
I want to do this.
Here's what I'm committing toand allowing ourselves to be in that
process.
Because you have to crawlbefore you walk.
You have to walk before yourun, and you have to run before you
sprint.
So we just have to fall inlove with that process and be in
active pursuit of it.
And it really boils down to, Ihave this belief that my clients,
(28:57):
the people I work with, thatthe answer is way better than I can.
I don't live inside your pill bottle.
You do, but with the right questions.
We tend to think about thesethings all the time, but we guilt
ourselves and shame ourselvesinto not doing them instead of when
we thinking about them beinglike, I haven't really taken care
of my body today.
I have 20 minutes.
I'm gonna go chug 8 ounces ofwater and I'm gonna go for a 10 minute
(29:17):
walk outside.
And then celebrating that winand then stacking those wins on top
of each other is what startsto create that momentum and the confidence
in the process.
That's powerful.
Thank you for that.
So with that being said, thisis the part of the show where we
talk about the hashtag wisdom bomb.
If you've been following me onFacebook for any amount of time,
this is a portable truth thatwe share that people can say oh and
(29:37):
apply to our lives.
I asked every guest this.
So, George, what is yourportable truth or your wisdom bomb
that you'd love to give to theguest or to.
The Oh, I love it.
I love it.
Here's how I'll frame this one.
If you're listening to this,it's not an accident, it's a permission
slip to let this be the moment.
Let this be the moment thatsomething shifts.
But know that any delay fromthe clarity that you've had for what's
(30:00):
hit your heart today to whattickled, is just preventing the inevitable.
Life is a journey, it's adestination, and it requires our
active pursuit of it.
But there is no tomorrow.
There is no I'll start Monday.
There's no I'll start next week.
There's a reason you hear it today.
You're worth starting todaybecause you have the ability to lay
a brick today that your futureself is Going to look back and thank
(30:24):
you for, but only if youprotect it and you think it's important.
And so know that you're worth it.
Know there is no other you.
No, there is no other versionof you.
There is no voice of yours.
It's yours.
You're unique, you're special,and the world deserves it.
But you deserve to give it toyourself first.
And so I would let today bethe permission slip to start and
(30:45):
celebrate every victory, learnfrom every shortcoming, learn from
every mistake and just keepmaking adjustments because as long
as we're in pursuit, you'regoing to win the game.
This is a game of consistencyand not intensity.
And so just keep makingdeposits and celebrate the victories
as you get there.
And before you know it, you'lllook back and you'll be standing
(31:06):
in the vision board of thismoment, reflecting on how you got
here.
But it requires that you start.
So stop moving the startingline and just start the race.
So how can people find you theeasiest way?
If you want to see the pinkestwebsite in the world, it's mind of
george.com and Jim knows Ihave my podcast up there.
And then if I can support youin any way, like shoot in my DMs
(31:28):
on Instagram.
Like, I love connecting, Ilove helping people.
I love having these conversations.
They what, bring me life andthey hold me accountable to the things
that I share.
And so if I can expand onanything or help you, my Instagram
is, it's George Bryant, butthe it's is included, so it's actually
its G E O R G E B R Y A N T.
And I know Jim will have allthat linked in the show notes.
Absolutely.
(31:48):
We'll have the Instagram,we'll have the website so that they
can see the pinkest websiteever, biggest website ever.
As well as a link to yourpodcast because it is an incredible
podcast.
So audience, I want you tomake sure that you do check out George
connect with this man of God.
He's an incredible dude with ahuge heart and he literally means
what he says.
I've known him for years.
(32:08):
So connect with him, reach outto them and see how you guys can
work together.
With that being said, George,thanks for being on the episode today.
Oh, bro, we're gonna have todo it again.
We might need like a speciallonger episode because I talk too
much.
So I'm right with you.
I have to calm myself downbecause I'm like, wait.
Because we both have the giftof gab.
Yeah, we can definitelyschedule something like that.
But here's the thing.
(32:28):
I to you, the audience.
We'd love to hear your thoughts.
So let us know in the comments.
Like if we had anotherepisode, what would you have us talk
about?
Let's ask some questions.
Let us hit up some of yourbiggest challenges, your biggest
fears.
Let us have thoseconversations that you benefit.
And with that being said, youhave been listening to Grace in the
Grind, where we're here totell the inspiring stories behind
(32:50):
the stories of some of themost successful entrepreneurs.
Make sure that you hit thesubscribe or whatever social you're
watching this on or listening to.
Do the thing, Hit the reviewand we'd love you for it and we'll
see you on a future episode.
Oops.
I almost this has been Graysonthe Grind.
We hope you've enjoyed the show.
If you did, make sure to likerate and review and we'll be back
(33:13):
soon.
But in the meantime, find uson social media LeadWithJam.
Take care of yourself andwe'll see you next time on Grace
in the Grind.
Welcome to Grace and theGrind, the podcast where we dive
deep into the journeys ofheart centered and purpose driven
leaders and entrepreneurs.
We're here to equip andencourage you on your journey.
So let's get started and findthe grace within the grind.
This is Grace in the Grind.
And now your host, Jim Burgoon.
(00:23):
Welcome to Grace in the Grind,where we're here to tell the inspiring
story behind the story of someof the most successful entrepreneurs.
And today I have one of myreally dear friends, George Bryant
with us.
Welcome to the show, George.
Stoked to be here, brother, as always.
I'm glad.
We should have recorded thefirst hour of our conversation, but
we'll just hit go now.
Yeah, we should have becauseit was very rich.
(00:43):
But you know what, there areconversations for the audience and
there's conversations for usand so we'll chalk that up as a conversation
for us.
But with that being said, Iknow a lot of people know you, but
for the audience who doesn'tknow you, can you take the next 60
to 90 seconds to tell theaudience who you are and what you
do?
Oh, Jim, I love this question,my friend.
Yeah, I today I'd say I'm an Aminus father, I'm an A son, and I'm
(01:06):
an A son with God because myidentity is no longer wrapped up
in the things that I'veachieved or the things that I've
done, no matter what labelsthe world puts on me.
And my mission in the world istruthfully at the core, to give entrepreneurs
a permission slip to buildbusinesses their way in alignment
and scale with impact andintegrity in the process, like throwing
(01:26):
out outdated business modelsand copy and paste strategies and
tactics and having apermission slip to be unapologetically
themselves so that they loveevery ounce of their business and
get to reap in the rewards andthe revenue and the things that come
with it.
Because I have a pretty bighill with a flag planted that says
business is supposed to be anintegrity as well and nobody has
(01:48):
to sacrifice themselves in the process.
I either sacrificing yourcustomers and transacting with them
or sacrificing yourself andbecoming the world's version of you
instead of sharing your gifts authentically.
So that's today on, you know,Tuesday, how I would describe what
I do.
And now we're going to diveinto some really cool conversation
here because number one, wehad started already a cool conversation,
(02:09):
but something you said in yourintro and it's about the identity
and the identity shift and Ifeel like this is the Direction I
want to go in because so manypeople deal with identity, we turn
the TV on, you have so muchidentity crisis happening.
So tell me about when was theportion that you recognized that
you had an identity thatdidn't align to who you really are?
(02:30):
And then what were the stepsto start to shift that?
Oh, I wish that this was likea pretty little unicorn riding a
rainbow journey where it waslike this one aha moment.
But truthfully, there wereabout three or four very painful
catalystic moments.
The first one I remember likeit was yesterday where I had built
(02:51):
a massively successful multiseven figure business as a food blog.
I had roughly a millionfollowers online, there were 3 million
people a month coming to mywebsite and I ended up in the jungles
of Costa Rica and had my firstencounter with God and it was put
on my heart and convicted.
That entire business was outof alignment because I didn't know
who I was.
Like my identity was wrappedup in what Instagram thought and
(03:13):
how many likes I had and howmany cars I owned and houses I owned.
And truthfully, I had a hollow soul.
And so against the wishes ofeverybody in my life, my coaches,
my friends, my ex wife, in 24hours I gave that entire company
away.
I deleted my social media, Ichanged my phone number and disappeared
off the Internet for three years.
(03:33):
And in that process startedthe discovery of realizing that my
entire identity had beendictated by everybody else but me.
Not once that I ever askedmyself what do I value?
What, what do I care about?
Who do I want to be as a man,who do I want to be as a father?
And I was basically everybodyelse's version of what I thought
(03:53):
was the right way.
Here's how I should be a dad,here's how I should be an entrepreneur,
here's what society tells me.
These are the people I followand look up to.
And it was just thisadvocation of responsibility throughout
my entire life, everywhere.
And it rooted all the way downto my childhood because the way that
I survived as a 11 to 12 yearold kid who was basically homeless
(04:15):
and dealing with socialservices and abuse and neglect was
becoming a chameleon so that Icould get food and I could have somewhere
to live.
And then I ended up in themarine Corps for 13 years, which
gave me this entire identityof hey, those feelings you have,
that's not pain, that'sweakness leaving your body.
So go, robot, achieve.
And it carried all the waythrough into every relationship,
(04:36):
every bucket, every business bucket.
And so that was the first big one.
And then throughout the yearsthat led to me becoming a consultant
and taking all the accoladesand the credit of being a New York
Times bestseller.
And look at all these things I did.
And then I started consultingall these companies and I helped
make rich people richer.
And I convinced myself that wevalued the same things in the world.
(05:00):
And yet I got to be behind thescenes and under the hood of everybody
else's lack of alignment, towhere there were months at a time
where I felt like I couldn'thave enough showers to clean my soul
because of the things that Iwas involved in and the lack of integrity,
to where it happened again.
And I was like, I can't do this.
I can't get paid these copiousamounts of money to help these people
(05:22):
who on the surface say we careabout people and yet they sacrifice
their employees and they don'treally care about the customers.
And so I went through itagain, and there Was this like 5,
6 year span where every singletime I tried to go somewhere or do
something, it's like Iintentionally or unintentionally
put blinders on and I createdmy own cognitive dissonance.
(05:44):
I convinced myself that itlooked different than it actually
did, which just created thesemassive pockets of misalignment for
me.
So, you know, what it lookedlike in real life is that I would
achieve the things on paper,but I got.
And then I would wake upexhausted and I wouldn't want to
work and I would try to avoidmy calendar and I wouldn't want to
(06:05):
get on connection calls.
And yet on paper, everyone'slike, you're crushing it, look.
But like my soul was dead.
And it was like every singlething I did felt like it wasn't me.
And the more and more I didit, the more repulsed I got.
And so there were numeroustimes that I basically had to step
away and almost sabbaticalmyself and with no means to do so
(06:28):
at some of the hardest pointsof my life.
Like, there was a point wherewe were like three weeks away from
bankruptcy and my ex wife waspregnant with my son, and that's
when I gave away that company.
There was no backup plan.
I had driven it so far to thebottom by ignoring the signs that
I had to just throw it out inthe trash and rebuild it again.
And truthfully, the mostimportant step and the thing that
(06:49):
I never asked myself was,what's my vision for my life?
Right?
What's my vision for the world?
You and I were talking beforethe show about priorities and how
no matter what, when it comesto time, we all have so much of it
that we're going to sacrificesomewhere in some bucket.
But I was sacrificing thewrong things.
(07:09):
I was choosing work andidolatry over my son.
I was choosing status andconnections and false relationships
over the people that wereclosest to me.
I was choosing self suffragethrough hustling and working 20 hours
a day instead of taking careof myself.
And I had these.
This life of gain £100, lose£100, replace one addiction with
(07:33):
another addiction, go fromopiates to caffeine and not sleep
and convince myself it's okay,or I'm gonna sprint really hard and
destroy myself at the gym andthen not take care of my body in
the process.
Or I'm gonna just sprint sohard for two years and not sleep,
and I'll sleep when I'm dead.
And the truth was, is everyfoundation was built on sand.
And so all that effort and allthat energy I put into everything,
(07:55):
when I came time to rest orpull back, there was nothing left
because it never reallymatched who I was.
And it wasn't.
I wasn't able to maintain it.
And so it was more of atruthfully five, six year process
through me not getting the message.
And so the first thing I didwas I had to have really, and I say
this with full integrity, havea come to Jesus moment of who am
(08:16):
I?
Right?
If I erase the business, if Ierase the results, if I erase the
labels, like, who am I?
And I didn't like thatquestion because it forced me to
look in the mirror and takesome truth pills of the way that
I claim to show up is not thefeedback that people are giving me,
the way that I want to makepeople feel, not the things that
they're saying.
(08:37):
And so it became this, like,discovery process of who I am and
what I want to do.
And then over time, as Istarted to answer that question,
I started to bring in peoplethat felt in alignment with me in
that bucket and serve them inthat bucket to where now I was even
sharing with you.
I get bummed when I don't havestanding client calls.
I'm like, wait, when's thenext one?
(08:57):
Like, when are we schedulingthis again?
I love this.
It feels like family and friends.
But it wasn't this.
I think people hear this wordalignment, and they're like, oh,
I'm just gonna bringeverything into alignment.
That's not how it works.
Alignment is active pursuit ofthe things that we value, and it
requires that we know what we value.
If you value family, you can'tsacrifice that in the process.
(09:17):
Realize they turn 18 and youdon't get that time back.
Like it has to be a prioritynow, right?
And it has to be this pursuit,but also this protection of it when
you're in the process.
Because the world isn't goingto value the same things.
The industries that you're in,the buckets that you're in, they're
not going to protect your values.
They're going to try todistract you and get you to become
that version of yourself.
(09:38):
So you have to have this likedeep knowing in your core that's
really aligned like that.
Your heart, your mind and yourbelly is.
Huh?
This is like who I want to be,but it requires some humility as
well, because it required meletting go of things that I thought
I wanted, that I had bighouses, all these cars, private jets
and blah blah, blah.
(09:58):
Like those are the things thatwere on my vision board.
Like I didn't have on myvision board.
Like, oh, memories with my sonplaying in the park, doing backflips
on the trampoline.
And at the deepest level, Ihad to have this really integrous
talk with myself.
What is it that I want?
And not from what the worldtold me or what my childhood was
like, because I was basicallyreacting to my whole life, right?
(10:20):
I wasn't loving the resultsthat I got.
So this brings up a great question.
Matter of fact, I think itbrings up several.
But this is the one we'regoing to go with.
So you had said like that atsome point you would become a chameleon,
right?
And during this time, you keptgetting rid of different businesses
because they weren't you.
(10:41):
If you're at a place of achameleon who's struggling with identity,
how did you know if they werepart of were for you or weren't aligned
with you?
Like, how did you have that sense?
That's a great question.
I'm going to answer this in afortune cookie.
I'm going to answer this in afortune cookie because it resonates
at the deepest level.
I was able to know because Iwas willing to spend enough quiet
(11:01):
time to hear God's whispers.
I only knew because I createdthe space to actually slow down and
feel.
And the markers of being outof alignment is that there's never
a finish line.
There's always more work to do.
There's always more calls tomake, there's always more content
to make.
There's always more tasks to do.
Right?
You, your task list feels likeno matter how many things Go on it.
(11:24):
And how many things that youcross off that it's never enough
because it's this permanent distraction.
And I had a very wise mentorback in that period where I gave
away that company.
The reason I ended up givingit away is he wouldn't let me do
the healing breath workbecause he said I had no purpose
for my life.
And I was like, yeah, that'swhy I'm here.
A hole, right?
(11:45):
Like, why do you think I paid you?
And I came all the way toCosta Rica.
That's the point.
He's no, nobody can give youpurpose for your life.
Only you can.
So he told me that I couldcome back and participate when I
could answer this question.
And he said, what is thepurpose for your life?
And I was angry.
I yelled at him.
I was like, do you know howmany ways I could kill you?
Like, I have this entire skill set.
(12:06):
And.
And he's just smiling at me.
And I'm like.
And he's.
Your biggest problem is you'venever been quiet enough to hear God's
whispers.
And he's come back when youhave an answer.
And it took me, like, three days.
But for me, I actually had tointentionally create the space to
feel, to reflect, to look atmy life, to look at my day.
(12:27):
And now, as a man of faith,here's what I say to myself quite
frequently.
If Jesus walked through thedoor right now, would I be proud
of my morning today?
Would I be proud of my weekthis week?
Not from fault, not fromblame, not from guilt, not from shame,
but from a place of integrity.
And we need space to be ableto do that.
(12:47):
And so many of us wait untilit's the reaction where it's.
And I know everybody listeningto this has done this because I still
do this.
You have a day.
You pull into the driveway,and yet you sit in the car for 30
minutes before you go inside.
Like, you're just like, I justneed a minute, or, I just need to
go for a drive, or, God, no matter.
I'm just going for a walkoutside or I need to go to the gym.
It's like our bodies arecraving for us to create that space,
(13:11):
but it's not something weproactively do.
It's something we react into.
And so what it really requiredwas me having intentional time to
be with myself.
And not from a place ofjudgment or beating myself up, but
really from a place of thinking.
And I love Keith Cunningham asan author.
He has this book called theRoad Less Stupid.
Hilarious.
Listen.
Because he narrates it himself.
(13:31):
But he's a massivelysuccessful entrepreneur, and the
book is broken up into aseries of, like, independent stories.
But the one thing that he hasat the end of every one of them is
intentional thinking time.
He's no, I want you to go sitin a room with just a pen and a paper
and ponder and just allowyourself to write.
But we forget that thesharpest tool that we have is ourself,
but yet we never invest inthat relationship.
(13:53):
And so we have tointentionally create that space to
be in relationship with ourselves.
And I think for me and you,that's relationship time with God.
To be able to consecrate thatrelationship, to hear that.
But it doesn't come in thenoise of the world.
It comes when we quiet thenoise of the world to create that
space.
And so that's the biggest part.
Even with my private clients,the number one exercise that I give
(14:17):
them, and they fight me hard,they yell at me, they tell me I'm
crazy, is they'll be here.
And I'm like, all right, cool.
I need your phone.
I need your computer.
Yeah.
I'm like, I'm leaving for an hour.
I just want you to sit here in silence.
And they're like, you wouldswear I committed murder.
What am I supposed to do?
I'm like, no, you can't writeanything down.
You can't listen to music.
I just want you to practice being.
(14:37):
And they're, like, repulsed,and boom.
And then six months later,they're like, hey, I'm going to ignore
you for three hours tomorrowbecause I'm doing this and this in
the morning.
I love this space.
Right?
We tend to wait for thisoutside catalyst, but really, we're
not designed to be go do, do.
Like, it's be, do, have, notdo behave.
And so we have tointentionally create that space.
And to your point earlier, welive in a noisy world where what's
(14:59):
the number one tradedcommodity is attention.
And so in the world that welive in, it's not going to be like,
hey, I want you to go be byyourself and find yourself.
I want you to be anindependent thinker.
It's no, I want to capitalizeon all of your attention so that
you do what I do or you followwhat we want, or we can manipulate
you with marketing or whateverto get you to do these things.
(15:20):
And so it requires this, like,deep level of commitment to self,
and then it also forces thisrelationship with self.
And the way that I anchor thisin for people is we spend our entire
life Avoiding the onerelationship we're guaranteed to
spend the rest of it with,which is ourselves.
Yeah, absolutely.
Can't divorce yourself or atleast get rid of yourself.
(15:40):
So here then becomes the challenge.
So as somebody who is a hard charger.
Go.
To put on the brakes is adeath sentence.
Yeah, it feels that way.
It feels that way.
It's not one, but it feelsthat way.
So how did you navigate havingto shift those?
Because that's not an easy offand on switch.
That's not like, go, stop.
Great, go.
(16:01):
Because then stopping is alsonow part of your going.
So how did you shift into thismore contemplative version of yourself
to put the brakes on without really.
I don't know.
I don't know if I would saydriving yourself crazy, but without
having to constantly fightthrough all the challenges to give
up on the contemplative space.
(16:21):
It's a great question, and Ithink to even answer it in the way
you frame the question, you'regoing to have to be honest with yourself.
It is a fight.
It's fighting for what trulymatters, right?
I had a wise mentor who said,do you want to know why Olympians
win gold medals?
It's because they understandwhat temperance means.
Nobody trains at 100% everysingle day.
They train at 70% all day,every day for four years, to where,
(16:43):
when 100 is required, theypush the gas pedal.
This is a fight because theworld that we live in is not designed
before the Internet, for sure.
I'm blessed that I started asan entrepreneur before social media
really existed.
The only thing was Facebookwith college email addresses in MySpace.
Right?
There wasn't this constantfighting for attention, so we would
(17:04):
actually have time alone.
We would drive in the carwithout satellite radio and our phones
in our hands, and it's eitherlook outside or drive in silence
or have conversations, right?
There's this metric underneathit that we have to fight for.
And it was a fight, and it isa fight, but it's really this intentional
relationship to understand.
And this is so cheesy.
But as much as, like, I fly,we hear it all the time.
(17:26):
You have to put your oxygenmask on first, right?
You can't pour for an empty bucket.
And.
And the hard reality of thisis that if you don't proactively
choose it, it gets reactivelyforced upon you, except it causes
permanent damage.
Adrenal fatigue, burnout,resentment to the business, losing
clients, and all thesedifferent buckets that we say we
(17:48):
want to avoid, and yet wecreate them in the process by constantly
ignoring ourselves.
And so it's not even that.
It's like this fight that youchoose to do or not do.
It's this almost fight thatyou're required to do every single
day to actually have thethings that you want to have.
And it's not a finish line.
Just like going to the gym is.
(18:10):
All too often, I've achievedthese goals, and I'm like, oh, there's.
I have a six pack at 40 and blank.
And then what's the firstthing that goes out the window?
Oh, I'm there.
I'm gonna lighten up on my food.
I'm not gonna do as manysteps, so I can skip the gym a couple
of days this week.
And that's like planting agarden, seeing your first strawberry
sprout and be like, oh, I got it.
I never have to water it again.
I'm just gonna pickstrawberries from this thing forever.
(18:32):
And there's that part wherethe tending to the garden is what
keeps it producing fruit.
Right?
It's no different with our souls.
It's no different with our alignment.
Our values should change as wegrow as people.
The things that we valuechange, our priorities change, but
we have to consistently tendto that garden.
And so everybody wants thereto be an easy button, and they want
(18:52):
there to be a truth button.
The truth is that theresistance that lives in the world
is the workout program Goddesigned to make you the person strong
enough to maintain it.
And I did this post a coupleof months ago where I said, all too
often, I've prayed for thingsthat I don't have the scars and the
character to maintain.
Right?
Absolutely.
(19:13):
It's this constant fight.
And I think if you look at thesystems of the world that we live
in, we don't make them wrong.
I don't make marketing wrong.
I don't make social media wrong.
But those are not the rules ofmy life.
Those are a field that Ichoose to play on, and if I choose
to play on it, I get todictate the rules, but I can't let
them dictate my identity.
Just like our iPhones, right?
(19:34):
It's either a tool that youuse or it's a tool that uses you.
And if you look at it, justopen screen time, you'll have a pretty
sobering moment really quicklywhere you see the results of your
life dissipating away onTikTok and on games and on YouTube,
and you're like, man, I don'thave time to do this.
And I was like, you spent fourand a half hours scrolling through
TikTok today.
How much inspiration are youlooking for?
(19:55):
There's this, like, constant eradication.
And I use gardening all thetime because even when you plant
a garden, no matter how goodyou are, weeds are going to grow.
But the weeds are only painfulto you if you never pull them out
of the garden and they startto choke your plants, right?
But you can plant these seeds.
You can plant, pick yourfruit, strawberries, whatever you
want, go dragon fruit and getreally crazy, right?
(20:16):
Let's go exotic over here.
And you can tend to them andyou can water them, but every single
day, the world is plantingweeds in that garden.
And if you ignore those weeds,eventually it chokes out your plant.
But if you're intentionalevery day about, hey, I watered it,
I pruned it, I gave itsunlight, oh, I pulled that weed
out.
I pulled that weed out.
When you operate like that,you have the ability to plant more
(20:37):
seeds or to go sit at yourkitchen table and eat your dragon
fruit or strawberries.
But it's this consistent dailyrequirement to be able to earn those
things in your life, just likeyour wellness, just like your mindset,
just like your body, just likeyour business.
The garden only grows when wetend to it.
And we have these core bucketsin our life, and we tend to think
that if we just pour into thebusiness, then my life is going to
(21:00):
work.
No, that's like saying TomBrady because he played college football
and he won a Super Bowl acouple of times, that he can stop
training and stop practicing,and he'll still be able to win the
next Super Bowl.
It's this constant moving linethat we have to fall in love with
the process.
Right?
So then there's a greatquestion that this arises for me.
All right, so here's Georgeputs the brakes on contemplative.
(21:24):
Working through thechallenges, working through the issues.
Continually.
We're continually workingthrough them.
At what point did you findthat the contemplative state, and
I'm calling it a contemplative state.
I love it.
Place of silence is that youstarted feeling alive again, bro.
That is such a good question.
And I'm going to be reallyblunt with people.
It took a year and a half forme to go from resisting the process
(21:48):
to.
To enjoying the process andpursuing the process.
And there's a movie that Iwatched on Apple tv, and it's only
on Apple tv.
It's called Chasing the Present.
And it was this New Yorkrestaurateur, vegan restaurateur,
had everything, the houses,the apartments, In Manhattan, all
these successful restaurants,and he felt empty on the inside.
(22:08):
So he spent two yearstraveling the world to talk to every
spiritual leader and wasreally talking about presence.
And there was this one pointin this movie where they're, like,
sitting on the rocks by thislake with this, like, castle or something
behind them.
And he asked this guy aquestion, and the guy's answer was
so easy that it broke me.
So I hit pause on the movie,and I ended up laying on my couch
(22:30):
staring at the ceiling for 12hours before I realized I was still
laying there.
There was just this, like,state of peace in my body.
And the closest thing I canrelate it to is, like, when you finish
a hard run or a hard workoutand you're like, oh, I did it.
And then you just want to,like, lay in the grass, or, like,
you get out of the sauna andyou're, oh, I just did it.
Like, you just want to sitthere and soak in that presence,
right?
(22:51):
It gave me that feeling.
But even now, in my day today, I start every one of my days
in silence.
And multiple times throughoutthe day, I'll just go get in the
car, Windows down in silence.
It's something that once Iachieved it, doesn't stick around.
I have to earn it every day.
And it's also the law ofdiminishing returns, where the more
and more I do it, the more ofit's required to get the same payoff.
(23:13):
Just like if you haven't runin 10 years and you're like, I'm
gonna go run a mile today, youmight run the mile in 15 minutes.
So if you run consistently for30 days, you're gonna drop five minutes
off that mile time.
But when you get down into theseven minutes, the six minutes, the
five minutes, you're gonnahave to train at an increased capacity
for a couple of years to drop10 seconds off of it.
(23:34):
And so it's this, like, active pursuit.
And truthfully, you can't beattached to the results of the process.
You have to love the process.
Just like entrepreneurship, right?
The moment you get attached toyour marketing working or not working,
you're actually putting thewriting on the wall that it doesn't
work anymore, because themoment you're attached to the result,
you miss the inputs of whatmade it effective or didn't, because
(23:57):
we just want it to be done.
And so it's this activepursuit of it in every bucket that
makes it so powerful.
So before we start shuttingdown, like landing some of the planes
in the episode, I do Want tomake note to the audience just to
remember everything's going tobe in the show notes so that any
resource or anything that weput there, I want to make sure you
real that we're going to makeit super easy how to connect with
George, how to get the booksthat we mentioned, all those things.
(24:20):
I have a question before weget into some of the closing portions
of this.
So what were some of the things?
Because obviously healing is amultifaceted multi thing.
So getting quiet is just oneportion of that.
Not even, you know, a bigportion, but not even just the only
portion.
What were some of the otherthings that you did that were able
(24:42):
to help you on this journey of healing?
I love this.
So yeah, and I'll keep theseshorter so we can land the plane
because I know God gave me thegift of gab and I'm learning how
much I let out at a time whenmy thought process.
So the space is the starting line.
It's not the integration.
As somebody who's navigated alot of trauma, myself personally,
from war trauma to abuse toall these things, wellness is an
(25:04):
active pursuit.
Okay.
So in order for it to begin,you have to create the space for
it to start, right?
So the joke that I make withpeople and for everybody listening,
if you open Google maps onyour phone right now and you pick
a destination a thousand milesaway from you and you hit start,
the first thing it's going toask you for is your current location.
You can't get to where youwant to go until you know where you
(25:24):
are.
That's why space is so powerful.
It's this place of being yourown triage nurse of God.
You know what?
These relationships aren't good.
I'm not taking care of myhealth here.
I'm having self deprecating thoughts.
It's from a place of awareness.
Once that space is created,that clarity is your current state
to where that destination isstill ahead of you.
(25:45):
But then it requires activeobedience and intentional decisions
to be able to start getting there.
And the hardest part aboutthis is it's so simple, we neglect
it.
It's taking care of our bodies first.
It's choosing to take anaction that our future self is going
to thank us for by using thehistory of our past to protect our
(26:08):
future decisions.
And so it's your sleep, it'syour nutrition, it's your water intake,
it's your environment, it'sthe people that you talk to, it's
the conversations that youhave, right?
Look at what you consume.
If all you're doing iswatching shows of people cheating
and people being hurtful ormanipulating people.
Or you're listening to musicthat is constantly bombarding you
(26:29):
with all these messages.
It starts to filter and tiltyour brain.
And there's this part of itwhere you have to love the process.
And so in the Marine Corps,the one thing that we were always
taught is when the world getsloud or crazy things happen, a bomb
goes off, somebody gets shot,is you shrink your world as small
as possible to what you can control.
Because it's those microchoices and microhabits that allow
you to make progress.
(26:50):
And so that could be as simpleas I'm going to go for a five minute
walk outside every morning.
Regardless of how I feel, I'mgoing to take an alarm and put it
in my phone three times a dayto go off that says go for a five
minute walk and take five breaths.
It could be I'm going tointentionally drink water.
The hardest part about thisfor all of us is that we know this
already.
We know where we'resacrificing ourself.
(27:10):
We know where we're notpouring into our own bucket.
And for me, the biggest thingwas having a son and realizing that
he doesn't listen to what I say.
He watches what I do so I canbe talking all day, but he's modeling
my behavior.
And that kind of created thisaccountability for me.
And so number one is currentstating yourself.
Number two is finding theareas in your life where you're not
(27:32):
where you currently want to be.
And here's the short answer.
You're never going to be whereyou want to be.
But you should always lovebeing in pursuit of it.
I've found that it's my heart,like my journey of faith, my mindset,
my physical body and my business.
Those are the four bucketsthat I focus on.
And every day I make a depositin those buckets and I set myself
up to win.
(27:53):
I have a goal that I go to thegym an hour every day.
Does that goal happen frequently?
No, but that's my ceiling.
My floor is.
I'm going to go for at least a15 minute walk outside and do some
push ups and squats every day.
Because I can do that and I'mprotecting my progress.
Like I'm.
I'm valuing consistency overintegrity over intensity.
And so what it really boilsdown to is being able to look at
(28:16):
ourselves and then surroundingyourself with people who hold you
accountable to your potential.
But don't believe your storythat if you tell me that you want
to get loud and proud in your business.
I'm like, hey, when are you posting?
Hey, when are you posting?
Hey, why hasn't it gone up yet?
And utilizing our environmentand our community and the people
that we love, like sharing ourgoals with our significant others,
(28:37):
with our kids, with ourbusiness friends and be like, hey,
I want to do this.
Here's what I'm committing toand allowing ourselves to be in that
process.
Because you have to crawlbefore you walk.
You have to walk before yourun, and you have to run before you
sprint.
So we just have to fall inlove with that process and be in
active pursuit of it.
And it really boils down to, Ihave this belief that my clients,
(28:57):
the people I work with, thatthe answer is way better than I can.
I don't live inside your pill bottle.
You do, but with the right questions.
We tend to think about thesethings all the time, but we guilt
ourselves and shame ourselvesinto not doing them instead of when
we thinking about them beinglike, I haven't really taken care
of my body today.
I have 20 minutes.
I'm gonna go chug 8 ounces ofwater and I'm gonna go for a 10 minute
(29:17):
walk outside.
And then celebrating that winand then stacking those wins on top
of each other is what startsto create that momentum and the confidence
in the process.
That's powerful.
Thank you for that.
So with that being said, thisis the part of the show where we
talk about the hashtag wisdom bomb.
If you've been following me onFacebook for any amount of time,
this is a portable truth thatwe share that people can say oh and
(29:37):
apply to our lives.
I asked every guest this.
So, George, what is yourportable truth or your wisdom bomb
that you'd love to give to theguest or to.
The Oh, I love it.
I love it.
Here's how I'll frame this one.
If you're listening to this,it's not an accident, it's a permission
slip to let this be the moment.
Let this be the moment thatsomething shifts.
But know that any delay fromthe clarity that you've had for what's
(30:00):
hit your heart today to whattickled, is just preventing the inevitable.
Life is a journey, it's adestination, and it requires our
active pursuit of it.
But there is no tomorrow.
There is no I'll start Monday.
There's no I'll start next week.
There's a reason you hear it today.
You're worth starting todaybecause you have the ability to lay
a brick today that your futureself is Going to look back and thank
(30:24):
you for, but only if youprotect it and you think it's important.
And so know that you're worth it.
Know there is no other you.
No, there is no other versionof you.
There is no voice of yours.
It's yours.
You're unique, you're special,and the world deserves it.
But you deserve to give it toyourself first.
And so I would let today bethe permission slip to start and
(30:45):
celebrate every victory, learnfrom every shortcoming, learn from
every mistake and just keepmaking adjustments because as long
as we're in pursuit, you'regoing to win the game.
This is a game of consistencyand not intensity.
And so just keep makingdeposits and celebrate the victories
as you get there.
And before you know it, you'lllook back and you'll be standing
(31:06):
in the vision board of thismoment, reflecting on how you got
here.
But it requires that you start.
So stop moving the startingline and just start the race.
So how can people find you theeasiest way?
If you want to see the pinkestwebsite in the world, it's mind of
george.com and Jim knows Ihave my podcast up there.
And then if I can support youin any way, like shoot in my DMs
(31:28):
on Instagram.
Like, I love connecting, Ilove helping people.
I love having these conversations.
They what, bring me life andthey hold me accountable to the things
that I share.
And so if I can expand onanything or help you, my Instagram
is, it's George Bryant, butthe it's is included, so it's actually
its G E O R G E B R Y A N T.
And I know Jim will have allthat linked in the show notes.
Absolutely.
(31:48):
We'll have the Instagram,we'll have the website so that they
can see the pinkest websiteever, biggest website ever.
As well as a link to yourpodcast because it is an incredible
podcast.
So audience, I want you tomake sure that you do check out George
connect with this man of God.
He's an incredible dude with ahuge heart and he literally means
what he says.
I've known him for years.
(32:08):
So connect with him, reach outto them and see how you guys can
work together.
With that being said, George,thanks for being on the episode today.
Oh, bro, we're gonna have todo it again.
We might need like a speciallonger episode because I talk too
much.
So I'm right with you.
I have to calm myself downbecause I'm like, wait.
Because we both have the giftof gab.
Yeah, we can definitelyschedule something like that.
But here's the thing.
(32:28):
I to you, the audience.
We'd love to hear your thoughts.
So let us know in the comments.
Like if we had anotherepisode, what would you have us talk
about?
Let's ask some questions.
Let us hit up some of yourbiggest challenges, your biggest
fears.
Let us have thoseconversations that you benefit.
And with that being said, youhave been listening to Grace in the
Grind, where we're here totell the inspiring stories behind
(32:50):
the stories of some of themost successful entrepreneurs.
Make sure that you hit thesubscribe or whatever social you're
watching this on or listening to.
Do the thing, Hit the reviewand we'd love you for it and we'll
see you on a future episode.
Oops.
I almost this has been Graysonthe Grind.
We hope you've enjoyed the show.
If you did, make sure to likerate and review and we'll be back
(33:13):
soon.
But in the meantime, find uson social media LeadWithJam.
Take care of yourself andwe'll see you next time on Grace
in the Grind.
Host
Jim Burgoon
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