How to Stop Feeling Like You’re Never Doing Enough | Caleb Campbell - EP 813

John R. Miles sits down with Caleb Campbell, former NFL player and author of "Unstriving," to explore why so many of us tie our sense of worth to achievement.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01John R. Miles?

  Hey friends, what if your biggest problem isn't that you're not doing enough, but that you've spent too long proving that you are enough? You can be successful, needed, and surrounded by people and still feel completely unseen. That's the problem I explore in my new book, The Mattering Effect. I show you how we become hyper-visible for what we produce, while quietly becoming invisible to ourselves, and introduce the matter framework to help you reclaim meaning, autonomy, trust, time, energy, and reciprocity. Stop auditioning for your worth, start living from it. The Mattering Effect is available for preorder now at matteringeffect.com. What if the version of yourself that helped you succeed is now the very thing keeping you stuck? Caleb Campbell spent years building an identity around achievement.

• 0:47John R. Miles?

  He was the captain of his West Point football team, an army officer, an NFL player, and someone who had learned early in life that performance was how he earned acceptance and belonging. But when that identity was finally put to the test, he discovered something he hadn't expected. He had become so afraid of failing that he was protecting himself from giving everything he had. And what Caleb told me about what was really happening underneath that fear stopped me in my tracks. Take a listen to this.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  The version of who I am today needs to die because it is not capable of creating the life that I want to live tomorrow. And that's ultimately the deeper work that I was avoiding by making excuses in my life and avoiding giving it all that I had because I didn't have the capacity, the tools, the awareness, or the guidance to navigate the liminal space that I would inevitably have to cross over to go from who I used to be to who I needed to become.

• 1:46John R. Miles?

  It's your friend John, and welcome to Passion Struck. I'm so glad you're here. Whether you're a longtime listener or someone who just discovered the show, thank you for pressing play today. Maybe you've built the life you were supposed to want, but you've quietly wondered why it still doesn't feel like enough. If that's you, you're in the right place. Every week, I sit down with the world's top scientists, researchers, and thinkers to uncover what it actually takes to build an intentional life that matters. Thanks for joining me. Let's get into it.

• 2:26John R. Miles?

  Welcome back to episode 813 of Passion Struck. We're continuing our series, The Adaptive Brain: How Your Mind Learns, Changes, and Heals. And today, I'm doing something a little different. Instead of my usual Momentum Friday solo episode, I'm bringing you a conversation with Caleb Campbell. Over the past few weeks, we've been exploring the forces that shape who we become, our biology, our environment, our relationships, our choices, and even the stories we tell ourselves. But there's another piece of that puzzle. What happens when the identity that helped you succeed is no longer the identity you need? Because sometimes the very things that make us successful can become the things that keep us stuck. That's what makes today's conversation with Caleb so powerful.

• 3:11John R. Miles?

  Caleb is not only a West Point graduate, he's one of the very few players ever drafted into the NFL. He's also a former army officer, coach, and author of the new book Unstriving. He spent years building his life around achievement, performance, and becoming the person other people expected him to be. Eventually, he reached a point where he had to confront a difficult truth. What if I can achieve everything I'm supposed to achieve and still not become the person I actually want to be? In our conversation, Caleb opens up about his experience in the NFL, the pressure of tying his identity to performance, and what happened when that identity that had helped him earn acceptance and belonging

• 3:55John R. Miles?

  could no longer carry him forward? We talk about what Caleb calls the liminal space, that uncomfortable territory between who you've been and who you're becoming. It's the place where the old version of you no longer fits, but the new version hasn't fully emerged yet. And that's where his idea of unstriving comes in. This isn't about giving up on ambition or becoming less driven. It's about learning how to pursue growth without constantly using achievement to prove that you're worthy. So if you've ever achieved something you thought would finally make you feel enough, and then discovered you were still searching for something more, I think this conversation is going to hit home. Here's my interview with Caleb Campbell. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters.

• 4:41John R. Miles?

  Now, let that journey begin.

• 4:48John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Caleb Campbell to Passion Struck. Caleb, how are you today?

• 4:54Speaker 01

  I am wonderful, John, and thank you for inviting me onto the show. It's an honor to be here.

• 5:00John R. Miles?

  Well, I first discovered you through Substack, so I have been spending much more time on that platform and have found it more difficult than I had ever expected it to be. But slowly but surely, we've been cultivating a loyal audience. How about you? What's your experience been like?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  You know what? I'm gonna have to second that. It is actually a very difficult experience. It's funny, I got on Substack when it first started and I got off of it just because life got intense and I just found myself not spending enough time on the app. And I wasn't really gravitating towards it much at the time because it was new and I'm beating myself up because I think I was one of the first people to be on the app. And then I walked away for a while and now I'm back. And it is, like you said, it's a difficult challenge. It's a difficult platform to break through the noise. And so I'm here for the long run, though.

• 5:53John R. Miles?

  I think what's been difficult for me is there's absolutely no guidance, no holding, none of that. And it's been interesting to me how much the notes drive the engagement over the post. And I originally went on it to move from writing long-form content on Medium to this. And I think I've finally cracked the nut as we've been starting to gain, but I hear you.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Wait, I'm gonna selfishly ask here. I've heard the same thing with the notes being the main way in, but there's no rhyme or reason to it. I find that some notes, like for people, just take off and then some don't. Is it just at some point you say the right thing that the algorithm rewards you and you have really no control over it? Because that's what it feels like.

• 6:38John R. Miles?

  That's what it feels like to me, too, is that sometimes the algorithm will pick you up and the more frequent you post, the more likely that's gonna happen. And we had it happen in April where, out of nowhere, one of the simple one-liners went viral and reached over a thousand people. But I tried to post three, four times a day and the vast majority don't seem to go anywhere. But those who are loyal, I find on Substack are extremely loyal. So my whole purpose for doing it is serving the community that's on there following me and subscribing, even if I'm hitting one or two people, it still feels like it's worthwhile.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. I feel like what people don't talk about enough with all social media platforms in a lot of ways, if you are like kind of an authentic creator, you really are when you are signing up to play the social media game. I think in a lot of ways, for me, I'm signing up to do deeper shadow work in my life.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  It's on Substack, I'm talking about that specifically, putting out some things that I feel like are just really from the depths of who I am and it just falls flat, there's no response, there's nothing. And you stare at the nothingness long enough and it's easy for that to start mirroring back to you, a lot of insecurities, a lot of self-doubt, you start questioning your voice and you start asking yourself, wait, am I the problem here? And then you can easily get confused and you start to realize, oh, no, it's mirroring back some internal misalignment that still needs to be worked through potentially. It's an interesting experience, I feel like, when you are on social media and you're doing it consciously.

• 8:18John R. Miles?

  Yes, I can assure you that I know the feeling when you put stuff out there and all you hear is crooked.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Hello, anybody see me?

• 8:29John R. Miles?

  That for me has always been a sign that I need to double down. So I just tried hitting the same thing from 10 different angles. And typically, I find that it is the wording I'm using or the way I'm coming into it. And when I try different approaches, I find it actually helpful because when it finally hits, then I use that phrasing and carry it forward across all the different channels.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  That's a much more intentional way of going about it than I do.

• 9:02John R. Miles?

  Some things work, some things don't.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hear it. Well, for what it's worth, I appreciate your voice on the platform, the content that you put out. I know from my experience, it genuinely speaks to my soul. So, thank you.

• 9:14John R. Miles?

  Well, I thank you, Caleb. I appreciate that. So I'm going to start today off here. You and I both know what it's like to live inside an academy culture. And when I say academy, I'm talking West Point Naval Academy, Air Force Academy. And what I found, I'm not sure what your experience was, excellence isn't optional. For us, it was expected. When you look back now, what do you think West Point gave you that still serves you today?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  It's a beautiful question. I think it was Douglas MacArthur, who says that we had to learn our plebeia in our little handbook. He says, "On the fields of friendly strife, are sown the seeds upon other fields. On other battles, in other battles will bear the fruits of victory." And he was essentially talking about on the fields of friendly strife, talking about the football field. That was what we saw as we were walking into Mikey Stadium to play football games. And as a graduate of West Point, you start to realize that West Point and the military academies, for me, it did a beautiful job at cultivating the internal conditions, the resiliency, the grit, the determination, the ability to pick yourself up and try again, time and time again. And those things have carried

• 10:31Speaker 01

  over through every different season of my life, long after I have graduated.

• 10:37John R. Miles?

  For me, and when I talk to my classmates, I think the thing that comes back more than anything is just camaraderie, that you have a group of people. And I see this when I go back to class reunions, and I should say, I didn't go back until my 20th for the first time. But it was, it's like your close high school friends. It's like you can just pick up right where you left and time stands still.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely. We still get together, me and my boys from West Point. We'll see each other. We keep saying every year that we'll see each other more, but it usually comes down to once a year, we get together, whether it's us solo, as a bunch of guys getting together, or our families getting together. And honestly, I know today, even though we don't talk as much as we would like to, the moments that we get back together, it's like nothing was missed. And I know that if I ever found myself in a really hard place, a few of my friends from West Point, they're a phone call away, and they would be here as fast as possible, and they would come through without a question. And I think that's really rare in today's world. It's a gift, for sure.

• 11:43John R. Miles?

  Caleb, I didn't play football at the academy. I was originally recruited as a cross country and track athlete, and then cross transferred into playing rugby. Of all the dramatic changes you could possibly do. But one of my NAPS roommates was a multi year starter, and he ended up being in my company all four years. And he would often talk about the brotherhood, and he still does, because there's the academy, and then there's the football culture. Did you guys consider it the brotherhood as well?

• 12:18Speaker 01

  We did, absolutely. And there was the academy, and then there was the football culture, which actually, at my time at West Point, there was a really big divide between the academy and the football players. We were seen to be given preferential treatment. We had some, you can call them what they want, but we had some advantages in terms of a little bit more time around meals. We got a little bit more time away from the corps. We weren't parading, like a lot of other people had to parade in the afternoons. But at the end of the day, we were still Division One college football athletes, trying to win games on Saturday for the school. And I know that with Coach Jeff Monken, who has come in and completely reinvented the program, and really created a winning culture,

• 13:01Speaker 01

  he did a really good job. From what I hear, he's done a really good job at bridging the divide between the football program and the corps of cadets.

• 13:09John R. Miles?

  I just found when I was there, we had the ability, if we were a recruited athlete, to go to team tables. And I think that was the thing that my classmates, especially my company mates, probably had the most animosity about because they had to get ruled. And so I learned, as they became vocal to me, that I needed to come pretty frequently to take one for the team. And that's exactly what it was like, because when you did show up, and you had the option of going to the team tables, the upper class seemed to just put all their focus on you. So I knew every time that I was going to do that, that it

• 13:51John R. Miles?

  was going to suck. And they were going to make it painful. But I know my classmates really appreciated it. And I'm sure it was the same scenario for you.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So many great memories when we think back to that season of life. And also, so many memories I never want to revisit again.

• 14:08John R. Miles?

  Yeah, man. I'll tell you, one of the worst for me is I was on the honor staff when we had the worst cheating scandal in academy history. So believe me, that was a very painful senior year for me.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yes, I can imagine.

• 14:22John R. Miles?

  Caleb, you were a Division One football player. You came out of the Panhandle of Texas. You ended up becoming the team captain, Army officer, NFL draft pick. I'm curious, before all those titles and expectations, who was Caleb as a kid growing up in that Panhandle?

• 14:45Speaker 01

  It's an interesting question. I feel like, as I'm currently working through this with my therapist now, so much of my childhood just feels like a black hole.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of just, a lot of gaps in my childhood, a lot of things that I feel like that have just been blacked out. But when I really get back to the earliest memories of who I was as a boy, really before the world got a hold of me, and before the pain started to really shape my personality into something else. For me personally, I was a young kid who was born into this world with a deep hunger to leave the world in a better place, to do something meaningful and significant with my life, to rise above the status quo, and to ultimately make a difference in the lives of people. I remember my middle school and my high school experience were wildly challenging. I was the star athlete, but I was also probably one of the most bullied kids in school, just simply because I didn't

• 15:40Speaker 01

  drink, I didn't sleep around, I was very devout. I was raised in a very Christian home, so I was very devout to my spiritual practices. And it was a really hard experience for me, because even though I was scoring touchdowns and taking us to a state championship, there wasn't a day that went by where I didn't feel like I was all alone, or left out, or like I just simply didn't belong. But despite all of the hard challenges, I still remember having such a heart for people, that sometimes when people were going through really challenging things, they would come and find me behind closed doors, and they would just ask questions about their lives. And I knew that despite some of these people that I was having conversations with were the reasons why I was having such a hard life experience in middle school and

• 16:23Speaker 01

  high school, I was there to serve them. I was there to help them. I was there to help them grow through whatever it is that they were experiencing in life. And so I think from the earliest time, from the earliest childhood memories, there was always just, who am I? There was just always a desire to love and to serve and to help people grow and to help people heal and to ultimately leave the world in a better place. That's always been my desire.

• 16:44John R. Miles?

  Well, I love that. And for people who aren't familiar with Texas, I've done a few stints there. I've lived in Houston, I've lived in Austin. In fact, my kids were in the school district, Westlake High School, which I'm sure you're familiar with. That's where Nick Bowles, and it is quarterback U. But there's a huge difference between where you grew up and kind of those areas of Texas, which get highly recruited. For those who aren't familiar, how different is it?

• 17:13Speaker 01

  It's wildly different. Mostly, when colleges go to Texas to find and scout athletes, like you said, they just need to fly into the Dallas metropolitan area, they need to fly into Houston. And essentially, you're going to find all of the talent that you need in those surrounding areas. To give you a deeper example of this, when we played in the state semifinals, we played Everman, which was a school outside of Dallas. And we're from the Texas Panhandle. I am the only person from my high school that was going D1. And I think I'm the only person out of the history of my high school that's ever been drafted into the NFL. I was the only person on my team going D1. And we were playing a team that had 24 players going Division One. So that means two of the players going

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Division One weren't even starters. But they were still going Division One. And so when a school or a scout, they come in and they start scouting for talent, they just have to go down south to really find all of the talent that they need. And so I guess what I'm trying to say is people growing up in the Texas Panhandle, athletes growing up in the Texas Panhandle, were just wildly overlooked. And it was hard to get visibility as a potential college prospect.

• 18:24John R. Miles?

  We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Caleb Campbell. As you're listening, I'd like you to consider one question. Who are you when you don't have to prove anything? Caleb's story reminds us that sometimes the hardest part of change isn't knowing what we want next. It's being willing to let go of the identity that got us here in the first place. If you want to go deeper into these ideas, you'll find the companion workbook for this entire series inside The Ignited Life on my Substack. You'll find links in today's show notes. Now, a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

• 19:05John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Caleb Campbell. I don't talk about this a lot, but I grew up in South Central Pennsylvania, a town called York. And I ran cross-country track and we won the state championship. And this little podunk Catholic school that I went to, all five of the top runners, we all actually ended up going to Division One schools. And our top runner ended up being the first American to finish in the national championships a few years later and missed the Olympics by a couple of tenths of a second in the marathon.

• 19:43John R. Miles?

  So to me, it's always interesting to see that this group of misfits all ended up going to where we did.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  I love it. People will find talent, I think. People will find talent.

• 19:56John R. Miles?

  Caleb, one of the things that we're talking about today is your book, which is coming out in September, called Unstriving. Why that name?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Why that name? I can tell you two different reasons, but it's interesting. I was having a really hard time on what to name this book. And I was having a conversation with not a stranger, but somebody that I had only met once. And he was passing through town and we were having dinner one that night. And we were just talking about the trajectory of the book. I was explaining to him some of my story, who I was before I started my healing journey, after the NFL came to an end, and I was thrust into an identity crisis and I was working through that. And I was explaining to him really life on the other side and just really the arc in that liminal space between what once was and what now currently is.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  And he looked at me and he, the beautiful part about getting perspectives from people that you don't necessarily know, or that don't know you very well, is that they see things that you might not otherwise be able to see. And he looked at me and he says, I know the title of your book. And I said, oh yeah, you do. Like, bro, I have been thinking about this day after day and no title feels right. And he goes, I got it. And he said, the title of your book is Unstriving. And I began to immediately cry. I got tears in my eyes and I felt a full body yes. I was like, oh my God, that is the title of my book. And for me, what it feels like and why I gravitated towards it

• 21:31Speaker 01

  is because I had spent my entire life building a life on the back of endlessly striving, of doing more, being more, working harder, working longer, going faster, and doing everything that I could take to essentially close the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be. And I followed that playbook. And I think for a lot of us, it's the playbook that we're handed, just endlessly strive to get to where you want to be. And I got to where I want to be. I'm the second draft pick out of the history of West Point, the first one that was ever given the permission to play and serve simultaneously. And there was a long story and a long journey to get there with a lot of unforeseen disruptions that came. But at the end of the day, I followed the playbook that I was handed.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  This ruthless ambition, striving above all things and everything and do it at whatever cost. And I got to the dream and I realized that I missed it. While I was externally successful, I was also deeply internally bankrupt. And I didn't know how to handle that season of my life. And so when I walked away from the NFL, I started this long healing journey of really rediscovering who I am apart from the game and how to move my life forward in a new way. And in so many ways, I fully reinvented myself. I fully reinvented my life. And I went from really being in an identity crisis that honestly, John, you could probably relate to it. It just felt like I was being ripped apart from limb to limb. I had no idea who I was from apart from the game. It wasn't just a game to me.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  It was my source of acceptance and validation and this way I found belonging in my life. And so essentially it was the way that I survived my life. And so when I walked away from it, in so many ways, there was a death that had happened. And I was battling an addiction. I was on the border of filing for bankruptcy. And essentially I spent my entire life chasing a dream that when I walked away from it, I had absolutely nothing to show for it. So I was drowning in a sea of shame. And I started to do this inner work of just healing and expanding and evolving at an identity level. And again, I fully reinvented myself. And when I look back at that journey, what essentially what I did is I untethered myself from this need to endlessly strive

• 23:41Speaker 01

  to make my life happen. I went from surviving my life to participating in my life. And when I really got down to the basics, I realized, oh, striving got me here, but unstriving took me to where I wanted to be. It was working through this outdated identity and approach to making our lives happen. And that's just the name that we gave it is Unstriving.

• 24:03John R. Miles?

  Thank you for sharing that. I remember before Passion Struck even became something in my mind, I was having a conversation with a mentor of mine and I was talking through this concept of, I kept seeing these people who had this ability to be able to find this problem that needed to be solved, that humanity needed, that they wanted to serve humanity. And they were willing to go after it with all that they were, whether that was risking their reputation, their financial security, whatever it might be to go after it. And a lot of them prior to that were stuck in some way in their life before they unleashed it.

• 24:47John R. Miles?

  And he said to me, it sounds like what you're describing is someone who went from becoming stuck to becoming passion struck. And I had the same moment. That's the word.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  That's the word.

• 24:58John R. Miles?

  I have, I've been thinking about this so hard and you just named it right there. And I'm not sure what happened for you, but the first thing I did is I got off the Zoom call we were on and I went right to GoDaddy to see.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  I did the same thing.

• 25:13John R. Miles?

  Even existed. And I could not believe it that it was right there. I was like, this is God like intervening.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. I did the same thing at Unstriving.com is officially my domain and it was 99 cents to buy it.

• 25:28John R. Miles?

  Crazy, isn't it? Cause you would think that would be a domain that would have been taken up. And in my case, Victoria's Secrets had owned the domain because they had a fragrance and they had released it because they had decided that they were going to sunset that fragrance. But it just fell right in my lap. And interestingly enough, I have this buddy of mine, John Doolittle. He's an Air Force Academy grad, about my year group. And he ended up retiring as a 06 Navy captain, Navy SEAL. And his name is very difficult because there's a famous congressman who had his name, who had that domain. And I guess the congressman let it lapse.

• 26:11John R. Miles?

  And I happened to be on GoDaddy and I looked up his name and I'm like, dude, the domain is available. You gotta grab it. And he did. And I guess the congressman was not too happy.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Listen, for a premium price, I would be open to giving it back to you.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  No, I'm actually, I'm in that battle right now. Some C-list actor in Hollywood that's, I don't even think he's acting anymore. I think he owns CalebCampbell.com. And we've been in conversations and he put a price tag on the domain for several thousand dollars. And I was like, come on, man. Be better. But I get it.

• 26:48John R. Miles?

  I hear it. Well, that's why I use my middle initial because for me, I have a distant cousin in England who is now deceased, but he was a two-hit wonder. And for the longest time, anytime you searched my name, he was the one who came up. And so it was taking forever to do it. So I put the middle initial in there just to try to capture my space on the internet.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 27:14John R. Miles?

  So I have been fortunate enough to know many professional athletes over the years. And one of the things that I immediately connected with your book is how military academies and high-level athletics can simultaneously forge identity and consume identity. When did you realize first, because you talked about this a little, but I wanted to nail, when did you first realize performance had become more than competition for you?

• 27:48Speaker 01

  I think there was a couple of different moments. I don't think I consciously understood it when I was younger, but there was a moment that I oftentimes think about. I also speak about it from stage, but I was seven years old when I scored the game winning touchdown in the community All-Star championship game. Now, again, as you can really, I grew up in Texas, so.

• 28:05John R. Miles?

  Peewee football, here we go.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  This was still a very big deal. I always laugh because according to my grandma, the only thing that would have been a bigger deal than this is if I would have been cast to play Jesus in the annual school Christmas play. But scoring the touchdown, that was a big runner up. And I just remember after scoring that touchdown, I'm scanning the sideline, looking for my biggest fan. It was my mom. And I ran as fast as my legs could possibly run. And I reached my mom, I'm looking up at her, I got this smile on my face, and she's looking down at me. She's got this really beautiful, bright smile on her face. And my mom, in this moment, she said something to me that honestly, John, it went on to heavily influence the next two and a half decades of my life. And she said, son, in the most innocent way, son, I love you so much. You scored the game winning touchdown. And I remember those words like verbatim. And I tell you that because I remember in that

• 28:50Speaker 01

  moment, even though I wasn't consciously aware of it, what I heard is that I was loved because I performed well. And from an early age, my performance became more than just scoring touchdowns, right? My stats are more than just numbers on a piece of paper. My stats were now a definition of my worth. Success was no longer something that I did or didn't do. It was now who I was and who I was not. And that was reinforced time and time again. And so my entire life was in so many ways, a performance, a pursuit of greater success, and also a performance of self. How can I present myself externally so that I can find the acceptance and the belonging and the validation that I so desperately needed in my life? And I followed that trajectory all the way up to the NFL. And I remember

• 29:33Speaker 01

  there's this one specific moment in the NFL, with the Kansas City Chiefs. And my time in the NFL up until this point, it felt a lot like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. It just wasn't working. I wasn't firing on all cylinders. I was dealing with a lot of pain, a lot of fear that I didn't have the tools or the awareness, or quite frankly, the authenticity and vulnerability to work through it. And so I was not playing good football. And I remember when I got to the Kansas City Chiefs, the GM brought me into his office, and he told me what he saw in me. And it was the first time I felt like I had a coach or a mentor or somebody come alongside me and say, hey, I see your potential, and I know you have what it takes to make it here. And I felt like I was on top of the world. Finally, it felt like everything was coming together. And in addition to that,

• 30:17Speaker 01

  I remember this one specific practice with the Chiefs shortly after I arrived, that had one of the best practices in my NFL career. And in the NFL, practices, everything is in so many ways, it's your currency. And I remember after that practice, coach, he sent us to the team meeting room so that we could watch the film together. And I always hated these moments, historically speaking, just because usually they were like a watch Caleb mess up practice film. But the time around, I knew that, hey, I just played some damn good football, and I have every reason to sit tall and to feel proud. And long story short, we're going through the film. And he's eventually, I saw myself up on the big screen.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  And he said, where's Campbell at? And I said, right here. And he congratulated me. He was like, this is why we signed you. This is why you're here. Keep up the good work. And I felt proud. I really did. And I remember at the conclusion of that practice, that film session, everybody got up, they went home for the day. And I remember sitting there, John, for a good 10, 15 minutes, because I wanted to take it all in. I took a lot for me to get to where I was in that moment. And I remember as I was sitting there, smiling to myself and feeling proud, I could not help but to also feel like despite getting to the very version of reality that I had been chasing since I was just a young boy,

• 31:39Speaker 01

  I had this moment of realizing that it's still not enough. And I know how cliche that sounds, but it was so disheartening in the moment that I followed all of the rules. I was as resilient as they come. I faced more adversity than most people had to in order to make their dreams come alive. And I was standing in the middle of it all. And here I am realizing, holy shit, it's still not enough. I'm not enough. And that was the moment that my relationship with performance was really exposed. And it was really clear to me that something needed to change in that moment.

• 32:18John R. Miles?

  I'm not sure, I think you guys probably played at about the same time, if you ever played against Vincent Jackson.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  I did not, but I know the name. Yeah.

• 32:27John R. Miles?

  He was a Pro Bowl wide receiver, first with the Chargers, and then he played for the Buccaneers. And he and I became really good friends. And I remember, he had a long, for football standards, a pretty lengthy career. He played somewhere between 13 and 16 seasons. But he was telling me, probably four to five years before he ended up getting out, and his parents were both Army veterans, that he started to think about life after football, because there was such a void, and he had been warned time and time again, you need to start thinking about this. When I met him, he was really humble, because he was trying to learn the business world, and he was trying to surround himself with people

• 33:08John R. Miles?

  who he thought were business leaders, who could kind of give him the acumen to get better in that space. But as he and I got to know each other more and more as time went on, he also said he had this huge void that existed where he too, didn't feel like he was enough. What is me after football? And unfortunately, he ended up developing CTE and ended up ending his life. But it was really a, an interesting perspective for me to see. And I have another really close friend who played on the 88 Notre Dame team, who won the national championship. And I've gotten to know a lot of those players, because

• 33:53John R. Miles?

  every year, they do a big team gathering now at his house, where 20, 30, 40 of them now show up. And it's interesting, as I've talked to them, and so many of them played in the NFL, how many of them say the same thing you say, that there's this deep void. Why do you think there, there's so much of a constant, from person to person, that, that keeps coming up? And I don't think it's just around NFL players, because I experienced it too. But why do you think so many of us are feeling this way?

• 34:25Speaker 01

  It's a beautiful question, and it's one that we should really probably sit some time with, individually and collectively speaking, because I think for a lot of high achieving, high performing, successful people, whether you're a professional athlete, or a C-suite exec, or mid-level manager, whatever it might be, I think there oftentimes comes a moment, a threshold that we all face, where we realize that more external success is not actually synonymous with a more fulfilling life. I think for a lot of us, we find ourselves, and this was my experience, sitting there in the NFL, in that film room with the Kansas City Chiefs, I was externally successful, but I felt internally bankrupt. And there was something that was off within myself. And I think this idea that we experience a lot of success and is still not enough, it's not a reflection of that we have not

• 35:10Speaker 01

  yet achieved enough success, right? It's not enough, is always for me, from my personal experience, was more of a reflection that some part of me believed that I was not enough. And I'm not enough is, from my experience, always a reflection of some deep shame that I'm still carrying in my life, probably from my childhood. And for me, the way that I learned how to compensate for the shame, that feeling of being reduced, and devalued, and seen as not enough, or feeling like I'm not enough, the way that I compensated for that shame was by performing more, and by doing more, and by being more, and by achieving more. And so for a lot of me, my experience personally, I can only speak to my experience, I think that we get to this point of externally successful, but still feeling that void,

• 35:54Speaker 01

  not because the success is not sufficient, but because there's some deep pain that has been hiding behind our ambition, a deep pain that's been hiding and buried beneath our striving or our pursuit of success. And so when we get the success, we get the thing that we have been wanting, we have to slow down for a minute. And as we try to experience or to enjoy it, we suddenly realize, well, shit, all of this pain, all of this insecurity, all of this shame is still coming along with me. And I think that's what creates the void. The void isn't, that's necessarily a reflection of our inadequacy, it's really just a signal that there's a misalignment within ourselves.

• 36:33John R. Miles?

  I was recently interviewing Blake Mycoskie, and I'm not sure if you know who that is. But for the listener, he founded Toms. And after selling Toms, he went through a period where he felt suicidal. And it was for much of the same reasons as we're describing. So here you have a person who spent much of his success as an adult, fulfilling his purpose in life, giving away shoes to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of needy people throughout the world. And he still felt he wasn't enough. And he's recently started a new nonprofit called We Are Enough, that I think, and I hope, will do good for so

• 37:14John R. Miles?

  many people, given his platform and everything else. But you're right, it affects so much of us. And what I found, and what I want to go back to, is as I was writing and researching my upcoming book, The Mattering Effect, I found that for the vast majority of us, like it did for you, this goes back to our childhood. And I found that most of us live in two different scenarios that we grow up in. The first scenario is what you described, coming out of that Peewee football moment, where we think it's our performance that makes us feel that we're seen. And then the other most common scenario is you grow up in a family culture where

• 37:56John R. Miles?

  your invisibility is what is rewarded. But no matter which one it is, they all end up in the same result, feeling that you're not enough. So in the book, you describe growing up in a culture where football, patriotism, masculinity, and faith were all deeply intertwined.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:16John R. Miles?

  How did all of that coming together shape your understanding of what it meant to matter?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  I oftentimes joke that when you are born in the Texas Panhandle, especially if you're a boy, they hand you a Bible, an American flag, and a football, all in that order, because that's the holy trifecta.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  And I was born into evangelical Christianity and early on I was taught to believe that God has a really big purpose for my life. And I also was told that I have an incredible skillset. I can throw a football and I can run really fast and I can make big plays on the field. And so very quickly, my passion for football was in so many ways co-opted by evangelical Christianity. And it wasn't about a game for me. It was all about now, this is my duty in life. This is my purpose in life. This is the way that I give back to God in so many ways, and the way that I can actually find deeper meaning and significance for my life. And so

• 39:18Speaker 01

  I think early on, that is what fueled me as a young boy growing up in the Texas Panhandle, that God gave me a gift and my job and my purpose in life is to give that gift back to others and to essentially help people along the way. And I found such a sense of belonging in that at a very young age, but so many others, essentially that sense of belonging really became a cage. And it would be slowly become the very thing that would lead me into some deeper challenges in my life.

• 39:52John R. Miles?

  When I think about what you just said, I think of Will in Good Will Hunting, because that's exactly the cage that he put himself in. The things that he thought and were some of his biggest strengths ended up becoming the biggest cage for him and being able to develop a relationship with others.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think it's important, I think, is it Henry Dear Swift, Henry Swift, Dear, a Native American teacher, and he said, we all have a survival path and we all have a soul path. But while everyone experiences their survival path, not everyone experiences their soul path. And that soul path is where we can step into a more satisfying, nourishing, and fulfilling life. And for me, growing up with that experience, that being my kind of baseline in life, that was really the way that I survived. I moved through my young adult life, really asking, okay, how can I be a man or a child of God? How can I demonstrate great faith? And how can I perform really well on the football field? That's the way that I found survival. And I think it looks good from the outside, like somebody hearing

• 40:49Speaker 01

  that might be saying like, well, why is that a problem? And for me, great faith was just taught to believe that God always has a plan and you got to believe that God has a plan and there's no room for fear. There's no room for a lot of the uncomfortable emotions that are just a byproduct of being human. And so I never was given a safe space to talk about the deeper fears or the deeper emotional, complex challenges that I was holding in my life. And so every day I would show up trying to be this person that I thought everyone expected me to be so that I could belong and also perform really well on the football field. And that just wasn't my truth. I didn't feel safe enough to talk about the deeper challenges of my life or allow myself to be fully seen, because I thought it would

• 41:33Speaker 01

  compromise the sense of belonging that I found by being everything that I was told I was supposed to be in order to be successful. And that's how it quickly becomes our survival path. And essentially, our survival path, while it allows us to fully survive our lives, it will never allow us to fully live our life.

• 41:49John R. Miles?

  There's a well-known psychologist at Cornell University named Tom Gilovich, who has been studying this topic for decades. And one of his most prominent pieces of research was analyzing thousands of people who were in their trimester of their lives. And what he found was that 76% of them all have the same regret. And that is the regret of never pursuing their ideal self, which is really that version that they felt enough being. And in my first book, Passion Struck, I talked about this through my own experience, is wearing a mask of pretense. You use the word survival self, the version of ourselves that we have

• 42:34John R. Miles?

  to become, or we think we have to become in order to stay loved, accepted, safe, et cetera. And I think especially for men who are listening, and I believe also for many of the women listeners, that is a version of us that over time, we recognize less and less. And for me, what ended up happening is the more I became that person, it seemed like the more the rest of my world started to become more dull. It's like hard to explain unless you've experienced it, but it was like, I was still there, but the colors of my life were starting

• 43:17John R. Miles?

  to fade. It was like this slow fade. Did you feel the same way?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  I think, I think you're speaking to a lot of what people would maybe even call a midlife crisis or a midlife reinvention opportunity, however you want to phrase it. But I think you named it well, our survival self, this version of who we were taught to be in order to stay safe and survive our lives. Like, it is such a gift. It gets us through so many challenging and hard and difficult childhood experiences. We learn how to get loud when we need to get loud. And we learn how to stay silent and disappear when we need to stay silent and disappear. We could tort ourselves in all of these beautiful ways so that we can survive our lives. And we shape personalities from this survival self. And for so many of us, our survival self is really successful. It allows us to do well. We perform

• 44:04Speaker 01

  really well. We're able to push through the burnout. We're able to overcome challenges. We're able to do all of these beautiful things. But eventually, what ends up happening is life is love. We have to understand that. Life is love. And life wants us to succeed more than we want to succeed. And when I say succeed, I'm not just talking about external accolades and achievements. I'm talking about life loves us so much that it wants us to live these deeply satisfying and fulfilling and nourishing lives so that we can feel fully alive in this one beautiful life that we have. Life wants that for us. The hard thing is that our survival self, while it allows us to survive our lives, it can never offer us that gift. It will never allow us to fully live our lives. And so I think what ends up happening and what I experienced is that my survival self, it took me all the

• 44:48Speaker 01

  way from the red dirt roads of the Texas Panhandle to West Point to the NFL. And then slowly, as you communicated so well, I found myself in the middle of my childhood dream, this version of reality that I have been chasing since I was just a young boy, feeling passionless, feeling like I was wearing a sweater from five years ago that fit really well, but now it's like all tight in the wrong places. Life didn't feel good to live. My success looked good, but it didn't feel good to live. I felt a loss of clarity, a loss of direction. I was living in more confusion than I had ever felt before my life. Everything felt so disoriented. And I thought that was all just a reflection of my inadequacy, or

• 45:30Speaker 01

  I thought it was a signal that I needed to work harder and to push forward even more. But what I come to realize now is like, no, life created this beautiful ecosystem with enough tension and discomfort to surface this reality that my survival self has come to the end. It is not, it's gotten me to where I am today, but it is not going to take me to where I want to be. And now the journey to cross over the threshold from what was to what will be isn't about more striving, or more ambition, or more external effort. It's now about learning how to allow that survival self to die, so that we can go into the cocoon of our lives and reappear as somebody new. We become a more aligned, more true,

• 46:14Speaker 01

  more whole version of us that's fully capable of actually stepping into the fullness of life, not because we tried harder, right? But because we became somebody new in the process.

• 46:25John R. Miles?

  I absolutely love that and share that that vision. It's everything that we try to do here on the podcast is explain to people how to do that through all aspects of their lives. Because to me, that would make the world such a better place, wouldn't it?

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, honestly, I told my wife the other day, I said, honey, this is going to sound like a really arrogant thing to say. And I said, if everybody just followed my path, the world would be a better place. And I was joking when I said it, but I also, I was like, no, I'm serious. All right, we can even look back at Robert Blythe, has been a major influence in my life. Wrote the book Sibling Generation. I love this concept. I bring it up in my book, but essentially, we are living in a sibling generation. It doesn't take long, John, for us to look around at the current landscape of leadership and see that there are a lot of adult people still tethered to an adolescent psyche, right? There are a bunch of grown ass men and women acting like a little bunch of boys and girls

• 47:21Speaker 01

  that are deeply wounded in their lives. There's no avoiding that. There's no ignoring that. It's out in plain sight. And really what's happening, John, is because rites of passages are so voided in our culture today, there's no elders, there's no communities coming alongside of the younger people and saying, hey, you are evolving and it's time for you to let go of your, your survival self. Go out and be initiated through a rites of passage so that you can come back with a deeper understanding of not only who you are, but the gifts that you carry to your community to make the community a better place. And that's essentially the death of an old way of being, a death of an old identity, and the process of becoming somebody new and reinventing yourself that so that you can contribute in a more meaningful

• 48:05Speaker 01

  and whole way. And that is so void in our culture. And it's evident, the problems that it's creating when it comes to so many different challenges that we're experiencing in our country. And it's all because we are afraid to evolve at an identity level. We are afraid to die. We are afraid to let go of this version of who we were created to be in order to survive our lives. And if we were just willing to do that, more people would be living from a place of alignment. And from that place of alignment, we wouldn't be perpetuating fear and pain, but we'd be offering greater love. And I think that truly could change the world.

• 48:43John R. Miles?

  One of my, I don't listen to a lot of Joe Rogan podcasts, part and merely because they're fricking five hours long.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Never looked at one.

• 48:52John R. Miles?

  I actually listened to a couple that have been life transformative for me. I had a lot of traumatic brain injuries throughout my life and so did he. And I actually discovered a doctor on it who was helping a whole bunch of veterans process this because in combat situations, you get a ton of TBIs through micro explosions that you're exposed to. And I actually got treatment from him and it changed my life. So if it wasn't for Joe Rogan, I would have never discovered that.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 49:20John R. Miles?

  But one of the things I heard Joe talking about was exactly what you're describing, but he was talking about it more of why do we stay in these identities? And he was talking about what ends up happening is you get so comfortable in it. Comfortable, meaning your lifestyle is surrounded by it. So it's now become the neighborhood you live in, the way that people see you, the cars you drive, the expectations of your family and everything else. And I always describe it when I talk to people about it, it's like you have just climbed Mount Everest and now you realize that where you really should be is not at the top of Mount Everest. You really want to be on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

• 50:03John R. Miles?

  But Kilimanjaro, but it's 2,000 miles away. And you see this huge void in between and you realize what it's cost you and how hard it was to climb Mount Everest. And now you think to yourself,

• 50:18John R. Miles?

  one, do I have it in me to climb Mount Kilimanjaro? But how do I even go from where I am to even start the climb to get there? Because I don't even know how to cross the terrain to even get to the base of the mountain. And I think that's where 99% of people get stuck even before they begin. Do you think that, does that resonate with you?

• 50:40Speaker 01

  I think if I'm hearing you correctly, what you're describing is the idea of liminal space, right? It's that space between what was and what will be. And I think the poet David Whye, he is referencing Dante's commandeer. And there's a line from that and he says, "I awoke in the dark wood of my life and the way was wholly lost." And David Whye, in response, he says, "How do you know you're on the right path?" He says, "Well, the path disappears."

• 51:06Speaker 01

  And I think there's something about, okay, I built this beautiful life. I climbed Mount Everest. I'm very successful, but it's not enough, or it's not my fullest expression of myself. And I can sense that something is missing. Life is no longer alive like it once was. And I know there's something more, but I also know that this more isn't just a byproduct of more external effort, hard work and success, because I've climbed the mountain of success and it's still not enough. So I have enough awareness to understand that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something deeper happening within myself. And now what life is asking us to do is that we've come to a threshold. We've come to this moment in time, in order for us to cross over the threshold, this liminal space between what

• 51:47Speaker 01

  was and what will be, is going to require us to fully accept uncertainty in the unknown. We're going to have to be willing to essentially walk feeling confused, feeling disoriented, feeling a little unclear on who we are and why we are here. And all of that uncertainty, it creates immense vulnerability. And if you don't have the internal capacity to hold the tension that is inevitably going to be found in the space between what was and what will be, we will always revert back to the familiar. We will always cling to what we know, even though we have outgrown what we know and what we know is not allowing us to live a satisfying and fulfilling life. And so for me, creating the

• 52:28Speaker 01

  internal conditions and creating the capacity to hold the unknown that inevitably comes in order for us to cross over that threshold and walk through liminal space to step into a new life, that's some of the most important work we can learn how to do.

• 52:43John R. Miles?

  I want to talk about this liminal space here just for a second with one of your examples from the book. I call these spaces transition points, because when I served, I often found that where more veterans became vulnerable, were in the transition points on a mission. This is where I got the concept. When you get to the point where you're going to accomplish the mission, I feel like you're functioning at optimal anxiety. You know why you're there. You know the mission that needs to be done. But a lot of times in the transition points, you let your guard down. It's where you kind of get lackadaisical. You're not really thinking about everything that you need to. And oftentimes, I think that's how most of us live our lives, is in these liminal spaces. You tell

• 53:28John R. Miles?

  the story in the book about veteran linebacker Julian Peterson inviting you to watch film with the team, but instead you did something completely different. Why is that story important about understanding how we use liminal spaces and the decisions that we make? Because I think some decisions take us closer to our dreams and some decisions take us farther away.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  It's a great question, John. Just to give the listener more context, I was drafted, I was celebrated immensely at the draft when Detroit drafted me. Like, I was a seventh round draft pick, but Roger Goodell came to the podium and he announced me to the 10,000 screaming fans that were at the draft. And I think there were 36 million people tuning in on national television, watching the draft. And when I got drafted, they called me America's athlete. I was a West Point graduate, I was an army officer, and now I'm an NFL athlete. And I know that they all meant well when they called me America's athlete, John, but I didn't hear anything good in that statement. What I heard is Caleb, failure is not an option. Caleb, you better have it all together all the

• 54:32Speaker 01

  time. Caleb, don't you dare be weak and mess this up. And so that's the pressure that I was living in, using all of my energy trying to perfect this facade so that on the outside looking in, you saw a army officer, NFL athlete that had it all together all the time. I was, in fact, America's athlete, even though internally speaking, that was the furthest thing away from my truth. And when I got to Detroit and I was in training camp, I wasn't playing good football, the, all of the pressure and all of the fear that I was carrying, it was definitely affecting my ability to show up and perform my best. It was affecting my ability to connect with my teammates. And I, again, from a young age, my performance was how I found acceptance and belonging in my life. And I

• 55:13Speaker 01

  always lived in a way where I presented myself so that I surpassed your expectations, so that you validated who I was, so that I could feel good. That's the way that I survived my life. And now in the NFL, I was reaching this threshold, I was reaching this point where I didn't have what it takes to perform really well. And I felt like I was on the verge of, I felt that I was on the verge of being exposed as a fraud. I went from the growth mindset that it required of me to make it to the NFL. I completely disregarded that. And now all of my energy was now all about managing the image of being a success. I was just spending all of my energy managing in an image. And when Julian asked me if I wanted to go watch film, I disregarded it. And I said, I had other things to do and I

• 55:58Speaker 01

  had nothing else to do. I wanted to go numb the pain that I was feeling. And so I was on my way to a bar, essentially to drink alone on our first night off, when all of my teammates were heading to the film room to get better. And the reason why I wanted to say, or the reason why I said no, is because there was a part of me, even though I probably couldn't have consciously articulated this at the time, there is a part of me that didn't want to give it all that I had, because my identity was fully wrapped up in my performance. And if I gave it all that I had, and I went and I watched film and I put in the extra reps and I went above and beyond, and I still came up short, and I didn't make it. What would that say about me then? That would threaten my identity. It would

• 56:43Speaker 01

  threaten the way that I found acceptance and belonging in this world. And so for me, what I did is I gave myself a way out. And if I did get cut, I could always have an excuse on why I didn't make it. It would always prevent me from looking within myself and realize that the version of who I am today needs to die, because it is not capable of creating the life that I want to live tomorrow. And that's ultimately the deeper work that I was avoiding by making excuses in my life and avoiding giving it all that I had, because I didn't have the capacity, the tools, the awareness, or the guidance to navigate the liminal space that I would inevitably have to cross over to go

• 57:28Speaker 01

  from who I used to be to who I needed to become, so that I could actually step into my fullest potential.

• 57:35John R. Miles?

  Caleb, a few years ago, I was working with a gentleman who was a lineman at Kansas State. And his senior year, he was all big 12, first team, All-American, drafted in the second or third round. And he said, after he got his contract, went to training camp, he said, it was the most incredible panic he's ever felt in his life because he realized he was the worst player on the team. He was the slowest, he wasn't the biggest, all the advantages that he had had up until that point were completely erased and he never made it past training camp. And he said, it haunts him to today because of the way it all transpired.

• 58:20John R. Miles?

  But he said, when you reach that elite level and you think you're elite going into it, and then you realize you're just ordinary at best. He said, it is just such a hard thing to confront.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  I think, John, this is the difference between really having confidence in your skill setting, your talent versus having confidence in knowing who you are. And for so many of us, our identity is secure to our performance. And so it rises and it falls based on our performance. And when we are thrust into an ecosystem where we are no longer the biggest, the fastest, and the strongest, we are in fact, the worst one on the team. Right now, our identity goes from being very expansive to now very small, and we have less spaciousness to work with. And so this is just like the reason why learning how to evolve at an identity level, learning who you are apart from all of the ways that you found security, validation, acceptance, and belonging, and ultimately apart from your performance is so necessary because you just realize that there's the

• 59:14Speaker 01

  small self that so many different religions and eastern practices and philosophies and religions will speak to, and then you have the big self, right? And for so many of us, we live in the small self of our life. The small self is everything. This is how we survive our life, and we never tap into that big self. But when you go through enough identity evolutions, when you go through enough, learning how to let go of who you once were, crossing over the liminal space between what was and what will be, allow life to mirror back to you the deeper inner growth that needs to take place so that you can evolve and then step into who you are becoming. Like, when you go through that thread and that journey enough, you start to learn how to connect to your big self and really, essentially, really understand who you are apart from this small experience

• 59:56Speaker 01

  or this hard experience that you're having in your life. And that's some of the greatest work that you can ever learn how to do. And in my book, I call it The Dance of Detachment, and it's absolutely important.

• 1:00:07John R. Miles?

  Caleb, I wanted to give the listener a clear picture of what life looks like now. So we've talked a lot about what achievement life looked like for you. But now that you have found yourself again in the process, what does healthy striving look like now for you?

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  It's one of the biggest misconceptions that I really tried to address in my book. And when I say unstriving, people are like, oh, so we just give up trying in life? And like, no. And John, there's a really big difference between me waking up every day and sitting at my computer and doing work in an attempt to prove my worth in life versus me waking up every day, sitting at my computer, doing work from a place of deeply knowing my worth. And it's not that I do less. It's not that I don't put myself out there. I've never been more ambitious in my life. I'm going to be 42 in September. I have never been more ambitious in my life. But what changes, John, is the energy behind

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  my ambition. It's not coming from a desperate place. It's not coming from a fear or a scarcity place. It's not coming from a insignificant place, right? I don't need my success to be something for me that it was never supposed to be. Because if we're being honest, for so many of us, we have a really codependent relationship for success. Just like you can have a codependent relationship with a spouse or a partner, like, we need our spouse or partner to do or to be certain ways so that we can feel okay about ourselves. That is not the recipe to a nourishing life. For so many of us, we need our success to be something for us so that we could be okay with ourselves. And that's essentially a codependent relationship with success. And so now, I've never been more ambitious, but where it's coming from, that's what changes. I'm not here to prove, I'm here to serve. I'm not here trying to

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  avoid my fear. I am here to step into my fullest potential because that was the biggest shift for me. I realized, John, that I was never chasing success for success. I was chasing success in the avoidance of stillness. Because in the stillness, I would have to be more present with all of the internal discomfort, the fear that would surface in my life. And so for me, I'm still more ambitious than I've ever been, but there's no hustle in it. I'm not trying to be somebody that I'm not. I'm not trying to prove my worth. I am living from more of a inner compass of what inspires me, what feels good, what feels like play, where is inspiration, and am I willing to follow it even when it doesn't

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  make logical sense? There is a recalibration that has happened where the way that I explain it, John, life is a river, and the river is flowing. And for so many of us, we spend so much energy trying to push the river, trying to swim faster and harder. But the truth is, the life, the river is already flowing. Our job is to learn how to rest in the river and allow the current of the river to take us downstream to exactly where we're supposed to be. But the difference is, we get there and our souls aren't tired from the journey. And you just are able to live a much more satisfying and fulfilling life as a result.

• 1:03:09John R. Miles?

  That's interesting. You bring up that analogy because you might not be aware of this, maybe you are, but President Abraham Lincoln, for so many years of his life, described himself as a piece of driftwood, just floating down the river. And it wasn't until the twilight of what most people remember him for, that he figured out how to start taking the rudder and directing that piece of driftwood.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a Clarissa S. is the author of Women Runs With Wool. She calls it the river beneath the river. All of our lives have a river beneath the river. And for so many of us, we live on the river, on top of the river. And we live striving and hustling and proving and attaining and accomplishing and trying to do all of the things that we need to do in order to survive our lives. But there's this deeper river that we have access to that is never in a rush. It does not panic. It does not fret. It moves at the exact pace that it is supposed to move, and it always gets exactly where it's supposed to go. And there is great wisdom in learning how to tap into the wisdom or to the river beneath the river. And what I try to do with my book on striving is to take you on the arc. So that's exactly what you can do. The last chapter in the book, before the conclusion,

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  it's the river's already flowing. And when you learn how to rest in the river, you still accomplish everything you want to accomplish. You still set out, you're still ambitious, you're still hungry, but just you have changed in the process. And so you show up differently. I had a mentor that once said, John, what you start with is what you finish with. And so for so many of us, when we start our pursuit of success from a place of insignificance, or fear, or scarcity, doesn't matter what you do or how much you accomplish along the way, in the end, you will be left with the scarcity, with the fear, and the insignificance. But if we can start from a place of wholeness, if we can start from a place of purpose, and we can start from a place of alignment, then in the end, that's what we are left with. And as a result, our success isn't just more authentic, it's more meaningful and satisfying as a result.

• 1:04:59John R. Miles?

  I love it. So the book Unstriving by Caleb Campbell. What I took most from the book is that the emotional promise of it is not to achieve less, it's to stop sacrificing yourself to achieve.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  That's absolutely right. I like how you said it. I'm going to use that, John. Thank you.

• 1:05:19John R. Miles?

  Caleb, where's the best place for listeners to learn more about you?

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  So you can go to my website, calebcampbell.me. My day job, I'm a full-time keynote speaker. I spend almost every week, if not, or multiple times every month, on stages across all different organizations, associations, and conferences. And essentially, I help leaders and teams rise under pressure. I think right now with the world and the way that it's operating, like, it's moving faster than ever before. AI is faster than it's ever before. There's a lot of uncertainty and unpredictability. And so what really is going to be the determining difference between the leaders and the teams who can rise under this pressure versus those who burn out trying? And my work as a keynote speaker is to show you exactly how to do that, how to rise under pressure. And calebcampbell.me is a great place to start, and I will direct you to every other resource that I offer.

• 1:06:08John R. Miles?

  Caleb, it was an honor to have you today. Thank you for joining us on Passion Struck.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, John.

• 1:06:13John R. Miles?

  I hope today's conversation with Caleb Campbell gave you a different way to think about ambition, identity, and what it really means to change. For me, one of the biggest takeaways was that sometimes we don't need to try harder. We need to be willing to let go of who we've been so we become who we're capable of being. If something from today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway. Share it with me on Substack, LinkedIn, or Instagram. And if you know someone who's wrestling with the transition in their own life, send them today's episode. And if you haven't already, be sure to follow Passion Struck on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube so you never miss an episode. And with that, we've come to the end of our August series, The Adaptive

• 1:06:54John R. Miles?

  Brain. We spent the month exploring how our brains change, how our biology environments influence us, how identity and behavior shape our lives, and what it takes to keep becoming. Next Tuesday, we're going to widen the lens. I'm kicking off a brand new series called The Adaptive Human: How We Thrive in a Changing World. And I'm joined by someone who has been a huge influence on how we understand human potential, Angela Duckworth. Angela is the author of grit. And her new book, Situated, takes her work in a fascinating new direction. She argues that grit and individual effort matter, but they're only part of the story. The situations we're in can amplify our strengths or diminish them.

• 1:07:38John R. Miles?

  We talk about the people, places, mentors, cultures, and environments that bring out our best. And one question that I found especially powerful, do our situations change who we are, or do they reveal what's already there?

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  Whether you are optimistic or discouraged, whether you think your work is interesting and that you matter, or you think the opposite, is not just a function of what's inside you. It's also a function of where you are.

• 1:08:05John R. Miles?

  That conversation launches a September series about agency, adaptability, belonging, courage, meaning, and ultimately, what it takes to thrive when the world around us keeps changing. I think you're going to love where we're headed. Until then, remember, you're not finished becoming. I'm John Miles, and as always, stay curious, stay intentional, and stay Passion Struck.