Bill: So Marty, we just finished that conversation with Ryan and the listeners about to listen to that conversation. What did you like about that? What did you like about the conversation?

Marty: This is very interesting. Man, he bridges all kinds of dichotomies and, and integrates and harmonizes them. And I think there's something for everybody to see about the other side of their own point of view and listening to Ryan.

Bill: Ryan Sawyer was our guest today. And the name of this episode is Heart First Leadership. That is what he's doing in his coaching practice right now. And he has some amazing things to say. A couple of real quick things that I wrote down that he said, I loved so much of what he said was don't tell them, show them.

Bill: This is all about modeling. He talked a lot about, self control and self command, which can be kind of controversial in the conversations around the different styles of coaching. Let me grab one more quote and then we'll just let the listener listen to the actual conversation. He said, the first one that grabbed me was, he said, the ceiling on grit is pretty low.

Bill: We'll hear that in the first few minutes. All right. Enjoy the episode.

Bill: Welcome to another episode of Not Your Typical Leadership Coaching. I'm Bill Tierney, and my co host is Martin Kettlehut, and our special guest today is Ryan Sawyer. It's my pleasure to introduce Ryan. Ryan is a former national champion collegiate football coach, traces his athletic roots to his playing days at Central Washington University.

Bill: We're actually recording from Liberty Lake, Washington, where I'm at Ryan's in Spokane Valley, Washington not far from Central Washington University, what, an hour and a half away or something? It's probably a couple hours. A couple hours away on the way to Seattle. And then, Marty, you're in, you're, where are you today? I'm in La Paz, Mexico. La Paz, Mexico. And then so it's there today in a couple of months it'll be Boulder, Colorado. Is that, am I right about that? Close to Boulder. Longmont is where I'm at. Okay. So Ryan, his coaching journey took a pivotal turn when he led his team to a national championship at Eastern Washington University, not far from Spokane here out in Cheney.

Bill: After embracing the joys of marriage and fatherhood, Ryan made a courageous decision to step away from College coaching, embarking on a new entrepreneurial venture while prioritizing precious time with his growing family, understanding the challenges faced by young athletes in today's dynamic world.

Bill: Ryan has dedicated the past decade to unraveling the intricacies of mental toughness and resilience, a relentless pursuer of greatness. He has curated several acclaimed coaching programs, notably the integrated mindset and competitive edge for athletes. Beyond his coaching endeavors, Ryan wears multiple hats as the host of the Heart First podcast, where he delves into the intricacies of mental strength and athletic success.

Bill: And Ryan, are you doing that with your wife, Heidi, or is that something you're doing separately from her?

Ryan: Yeah, she joins me most of the time. It's a combination of solo cast, and then she's with me if I, if it makes sense. And then we have guests on as well, once in a while too.

Bill: As an accomplished author, Ryan shares his insights on navigating unique challenges athletes encounter.

Bill: Ryan's expertise also extends to the stage where he is a sought after speaker, captivating audiences with his wisdom on achieving peak performance. Ryan, I also know you well enough to remember that you were looking at being an auctioneer there for a while. Are you still doing that?

Ryan: I'm an auctioneer.

Ryan: I went to school to be an auctioneer. It was a family thing where I had made a promise to my grandparents, and then when they passed away, I thought now I got to uphold that promise. So it went back to Mason city, Iowa to go to auctioneering school. And I do it a few times a year for nonprofits and just more to kind of keep the family tradition alive.

Ryan: It's not something I am pursuing per se, but it's a fun little hobby.

Bill: Wow. Yeah. You have two kids, tell us about your two children.

Ryan: Yeah. So I got a boy and a girl Colton is 11 and Haley is 10 years old. They're 17 months apart. And my pretty much my life revolves around that life of first everything that I do is my own growth and spirituality and God and putting that in the priority and then my wife and my kids and.

Ryan: And then life seems to kind of fit in the pieces around that. So Colton is a creative soul and loves to explore anything that I'm exploring in nature and doing hard things, which is part of the story. And then my daughter is loves to sing and dance and is really just, yeah, it is a super loving child.

Ryan: So it's a joy. It's an absolute joy.

Bill: Marty, I'm going to hand it over to you here in just a little bit. But before we hit record, what we found in common is that both Ryan and Marty have, published books, on leadership and, today's topic heart first leadership is what we want to talk about.

Bill: But Ryan's got another book that he's written, that maybe he'll talk about a little bit and his son has also written a book. We can talk about that a little bit later as well. Marty, with that, I'll hand it over to you and let you begin to interview and have a conversation with Ryan and I'll jump in from time to time.

Marty: Well, let me just start with something that might be like, right on the surface, and an obvious question that our listeners might have it seems like, especially in athletics, what leadership is about is sort of grunting and making people do stuff. Right. Yeah. Right. And you're coming at this from the heart and safety and it sounds like two paradigms just crashing against each other.

Marty: So tell us about how that happens.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's a wonderful entry point into a little bit of my story, right? That grunting and forcing, if you were to take back about a little over 10 years ago, that is exactly what you would have seen in my life, is somebody who grunted and forced and, and achieved and pushed and grind and all the things and put my sense of okay ness and worthiness in everything I either accomplished or did.

Ryan: I was doing the roles I was playing. I was a collegiate football coach and I realized in that transition that these things that are external, whether it be winning or the roles we play or whatever, these things are all conditional and that they don't last. We won the national championship.

Ryan: This was a lifelong pursuit and goal that I felt like, Oh, I have finally made it. My arms are up in the air on the field. And I remember my mind saying, you got to go do it again. And I thought to myself, wait a minute here. I just spent 20 years of my life pursuing this thing. We are in the moment, still arms in the air.

Ryan: And I already have to start planning how I'm going to try to do it again. Like, what's the point of all this? Right. And so when I made the transition from coaching to a family life and an entrepreneurial life, it was mainly because I was suffering. I was suffering and I was somebody who is battling with severe anxiety and depression and these swings back and forth.

Ryan: And it was because my orientation to the world was completely backwards compared to lead to what created a mental and emotional well, being individual and even the correlation with that in performance. Right? I had to force performance rather than allow for performance to happen spontaneously and automatically.

Ryan: And so in this cycle, I promised myself I wouldn't go back into the athletics, but 10 years later, here I am with all this information and knowledge and practice and awareness and saying, well, if I were to go to an environment that. My approach would basically completely challenge everything that is being taught or practiced like this would be it.

Ryan: So this would be the absolute opposite approach than what people are hearing. People don't talk about the importance of psychological safety for an athlete to perform at the highest level and yet what we now know and what. We can talk about different studies and different aspects of the brain and inputs and what creates his outputs.

Ryan: But the brain's number 1 job is survival is safety and so if we can give the brain as much information as we possibly can, that makes it feel safe number 1, mental emotional well, being is going to be better, which we know the numbers. are increasing there in a negative way, as well as the outcome is going to be better for performance as well for not just the individual, but for the team and the collective as well.

Ryan: So

Marty: that makes good sense to me. What if there are people listening who say, well, what's the evidence for some emotionally well balanced football player doing better on the field?

Ryan: What I would ask is, and I'm working with a collegiate football player right now. When I first started working with them, he was an individual who completely resisted the approach completely was like, yeah, but it takes this and it takes that.

Ryan: And I'm not saying it doesn't take incredible amount of effort. It doesn't take an incredible amount of grit. All I'm saying is that the ceiling of grit is fairly low. And if you look at it in terms of even power versus force, if you're familiar with David Hawkins work, right? And knowing that how much stronger an individual is when they're operating from above the line or from love or being enough or psychological safety.

Ryan: All the way down to Martin, when. You actually their studies have shown, and this is a little bit individualized in the sense of it doesn't work the same for everybody, but taking your tongue to the roof of your mouth, for example, something super, super small, super surface. Everybody can do this.

Ryan: Take the tongue to the roof of your mouth. It's rest. It's natural resting spot. Okay, that's signaling to your brain safety that everything is all as well can increase strength output up to 30%. So that's just 1 tiny little input that I'm giving my brain while I'm doing something hard. Let's say I'm in a workout and rather than me dumping my mouth open and whatever's happening with my system, I'm telling my body.

Ryan: Hey, I'm connected to my breath. I'm breathing through my nostrils. I have a tongue goes to the roof of my mouth and my eyes gaze. My gaze goes up into others. All these things are signaling safety right now. I'm going to be a better teammate. I'm performing a higher level because the information that I'm feeding to my brain is 1 of safety.

Marty: That's very interesting. Just a little anecdote. When I first learned to meditate, which was at the school of practical philosophy in New York City, one of the instructions that the meditation instructor gave us early on, as he was leading us into meditation is let your tongue come off the roof of your mouth.

Marty: And I was 1st of all, I was amazed that he knew that my tongue was on the roof of my mouth that our tongues were on the roof of our mouths. But it makes sense now that I understand. And I had no idea that was because we were trying to feel safer that we were doing that. And I've always. I always use that instruction with my clients too, because I found it effective.

Marty: There's some tension there. There's something going on there. And if you can relax it and be vulnerable and totally open, then you can meditate more easily. So that's, I've never heard this other side of the story. That's really good.

Ryan: Yeah, the pilot has a lot of. There's a lot of sensory input there.

Ryan: Right? And so if you're forcing it, that's 1 thing, but holding it and relaxing it in the roof of your mouth as well as you can. Even if you just did it within recovery, let's say, in between plays or whatever, right? Like, how fast can I get my system to recover? We're not talking about a sports psychology or sports performance thing here because it's all areas of life.

Bill: Before we go off in a different direction, Marty, if you don't mind, Ryan, you began by saying that you're working with a collegiate athlete right now who is resistant to these ideas. What's the rest of that story?

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. We kind of went off of that anyway. So he, in practice, I said, well, here's the thing.

Ryan: I want you just to trust me for a period of time here. And it's been now four or five months. We've been working together and now it's. Completely shifted his entire experience, right? Understanding that everything that he does within the level of preparation or how he handles a stressful moment or adversity is all understanding how to create his own sense of safety or psychological safety, right?

Ryan: And if he can do he can govern himself in a way that he performs at a higher level. But At first there's this incredible barrier of resistance and saying, yeah, but how I've always done thing has worked. Yes. I'm not saying we didn't, we want a lot of, when I was a coach before and using grit and force and even coaching from fear, meaning that like either do this or don't be here or you're, I'm not going to play you or whatever, getting them to operate from fear, there, it was a motivator fears, a motivator, we know it is, you know, but, I'm just saying that there's a better way. There's a more holistic way and there's a way that's better for everybody in the locker room.

Ryan: There's a way that's better for everybody and not only just in that environment, but what is then carried into adulthood? That's what I'm really concerned about. It's not so much whether or not they win when they're 16 or 18 or 22 years old. I want to know that they're not continuously putting their sense of worth and identity in everything outside of themselves as they continue through into adulthood, that they can learn how to Come to the world from the inside out and have that's what we call heart first leadership is from the inside out.

Ryan: Yeah.

Bill: That's what I had Marty. I can jump in again, but I have the idea that you have another question there.

Marty: It's also a theme in my book that the performance will be better, ultimately, if our well being is high, emotional, mental, social. I'm interested in that question because I think that's where we can shift the paradigm if we can show it's like the environmentalists are trying to show that.

Marty: Look, if we switched off of these fossil fuels, we're ultimately going to have a race longer and human race into the future. And so similarly to shift this paradigm, I think what there is to do is to show how is it that we will do better performance wise as we become adults and go into other fields besides that.

Ryan: That's what I'd like to hear more about. I'd like to, I'd like to approach this from, from 2 different angles. We'll start with the understanding of we have basic human needs,

Bill: right?

Ryan: And when we are placing those ability for us to meet those needs and things outside of us, those things become conditional.

Ryan: For example. A culture that we live in is being primed by a high information world to be very externally focused and for a young kid who doesn't have a brain that's fully online yet. A prefrontal cortex. It's not fully formed. It's really easier for them to even have more of their attention or awareness or sense of worth in things outside of that.

Ryan: So there's already a level that's natural to that. But then now it's increased, which gives them a low sense of control. Which control the ability to feel like you have some control in your life is a basic human need. So that's already stripped away from them. And then when the control feels like there's less of that, then it creates a lower sense of self, which.

Ryan: A sense of self is also a basic human need, right? So this external focus culture is compromising the ability to for someone to learn how to meet their own needs internally as much as they possibly can within their own environment of their own body within their own system strips their sense of control destroys their sense of self because their sense of worth identity is everything outside of them and nothing internally and they're not able to source that internally it allows and what happens is The other piece with this is it's a battery.

Ryan: It's a battery conversation where your attention goes, energy flows. We all know that, right? So I am draining my batteries. Now I don't have enough resources to inhibit the negative thoughts that are now even more prominent because there's already a level of negativity that we all have to deal with because we're being, because we're human.

Ryan: And then if you have a decreased sense of self and low control, the negativity is ramped up even further. But yet my resources are completely drained. Therefore I can't even inhibit the thoughts that are even present naturally and they're increased. So it's about that piece fundamentally to begin with.

Ryan: And then, so what do we do with that? That we can't necessarily just change how our society is. So what I say is that we have to then, we have to equip people with a greater ability to handle what it looks like to be a teenager or an adult. In 2024 and beyond. And so that turns into a conversation of what we call spectrum training and spectrum training is understanding that a nervous system that feels safe to engage or disengage in any moment in time and different strategies in which that nervous system engages or disengages is going to feel safer.

Ryan: If it's a very narrow way that your system feels like it can handle or have the perceived ability to cope with whatever stressor is present, then that system's not going to feel safe. That's the signals is the brain is getting mental and emotional. Well, being goes down performance drops, but if we can train the nervous system. And we can equip ourselves with a repertoire of strategies to be able to handle stressor, stressor moments or adversity moments, meaning that. Hey, what are we going to do pre prep for preparation or preparing for the adversity? What are we doing during the moments of adversity? And then how are we recovering our post stress reflection and so with even within the during conversation, there's multiple different ways that we can increase our perceived ability to cope.

Ryan: So how well are we able to sit with emotions or use what we call compassion? And work through what our internal domain of the sensations and the inner dialogue, like, be able to be just with that and not judge it and objectify it. That's 1 strategy. Another strategy is to be able to, hey, I don't have time for this to be able to flip the script on it.

Ryan: Right? To be able to interdict whatever's happening internally and replace it with something else. And maybe a 3rd strategy would be. Hey, I got to learn to take my eyes and my awareness off of the stressor for a moment. Place it on something pleasurable or on others or on God or something else outside of this current scenario, and then I'll come back to it when I'm able to, right?

Ryan: And being able to recognize that strategy one, I usually works for me. I usually can sit with most things. But right now it's not. So I'm going to shift a strategy to strategy two. Is it working? I'm going to shift a strategy three. And that's a simplification of all the different repertoires that we could have, because there could be hundreds that go underneath those three.

Ryan: Right. But our ability to give our system different ways to engage. In the moment, meaning to lean in and to approach or to, Hey, I got to pull back and pause here because this situation isn't safe for me. So I got to be able to disengage from that. Right?

Marty: Yeah.

Ryan: And so that creates a system that feels safer.

Ryan: So that takes skill that takes tools.

Marty: I have 1 more question about those skills and tools. And then I'll let bill jump in. Since the teenager doesn't have a fully formed frontal cortex, how does what is your study about the brain? Tell us about how much of this they can actually do. Now, part of the reason why I asked that is because I'm in a 12 step program, adult children of alcoholics, and we're learning some of these, there are different words for it, but it sounds very familiar to the sort of things that you just described those 3 steps with ourselves. Now, we're all adults. We didn't get this from our parents back then when we needed.

Marty: So we're learning to do these things for ourselves. Now, as adults,

Bill: And

Marty: so I just, it's an, I'm wondering, is, are there studies about how much of this could a teenager learn, or do they not have the brain yet to be able to do that? Are you writing a curriculum for high school kids?

Ryan: Yeah, so I love this question because this what brings us back to our 1 of our themes that we use when we're teaching and we're coaching people is don't tell them show them because it comes out of modeling, right? And we actually just recorded a podcast about this very thing that, you know, how does how do humans learn an image is worth 1000 words. Right? And so, unless we are both doing the work, meaning. The coach, the parents, the whole entire environment doing the work and the kid, it's not going to be supported for the kids.

Ryan: How I do all those strategies that I just spoke to you about as a coach or as a parent is how their model of their prefrontal cortex is going to be formed. So this is why it becomes so important. This is a great conversation. My mission is to really support the youth because they're, you know, they're tomorrow's leaders.

Ryan: Right? Exactly. Right. But at the same time, not going to happen if we don't do the work. And then there's other aspects within that of how we reward effort over talent to make sure that we're helping them link their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation because most kids don't have access to intrinsic motivation and then a further conversation of how we can highlight, growth mindset or

Ryan: incremental growth through intentional bias. See what that means is basically is that we can prime our attentional mechanisms to actually see growth happening, no matter how microscopic it may be. And that will help them to approach growth with a different level of awareness and mindset because they're being rewarded for their effort.

Ryan: And they're seeing how they're growing the lessons. They're learning regardless of the outcome. They become more process oriented. We actually can help Them to develop an internal dialogue.

Ryan: That is gonna be supportive for them to be able to create that, that, intrinsic attachment figure that they don't necessarily have access to unless that's being modeled for them.

Ryan: So there's this conversation could go on for hours of how we do that for them. 'cause they, you're right, they don't have full access to that. But it can be trained. That prefrontal cortex is a muscle like anything else, right? That part of our brain can be strengthened. It can be trained.

Marty: That's why I love the connection that you make to God and I made it to meditation because that's.

Marty: That is the first time that ever I noticed that I had an internal dialogue going on when I learned to meditate. Then I was like, Oh, wow, I could have a relationship with my own mind. Like I could coach myself. I could pay for myself. I could be my own best friend. I didn't even realize.

Ryan: Meditation is the number one thing that I teach.

Ryan: All right. So the foundation of everything is that some sort of the ability to become familiar with. And doing that internal process of saying, hey, there's something going on in there. We need to start by saying that you're not okay in there and there's something happening in there until we become aware that.

Ryan: There's these different parts and voices and things happening.

Bill: Mm-Hmm. that

Ryan: then we're just gonna continuously project out and be putting our sense of worth in, in the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. And it's endless and conditional and not satisfying.

Ryan: No, not fulfilling. Not one bit. It's a conversation that comes back full circle to say legitimately the winning in itself is meaningless. The outcome in itself is meaningless. What makes the outcome meaningful is the process that you went through to achieve it.

Ryan: And then what you learned, the meaning that you intentionally placed upon it. And that's another aspect of psychological safety is that, hey, we can choose how we respond and the meaning we place on things. Now, I know that's what I'm in control of, and I relentlessly focus on that. It gives me all the control back.

Ryan: See, to me, it seems so obvious that

Marty: would make a player at any game, business, football, marriage. Better at the game because their attention is off of the external reward or goal or whatever, it's now it's back on being really good at the game.

Ryan: It's all about actually just playing the game.

Ryan: And what we tell people is that if you do this work and you fully adopt it, you then are you giving yourself the right to play free. Life, I may say, let the game of life,

Bill: you can,

Ryan: you can then, and when we say compete untethered, you're not tethered towards a certain experience or outcome, right? Or a certain type of marriage, like you said, even relationship, my wife and I are in this work together.

Ryan: It is such a beautiful experience to be able to say, always coming back to the process. How we are sharing moments and the types of things that we're into. We just went on a walk right before we hit record here and we were talking about our kids and what kind of little incremental shifts that we can make to help to give them the ability to do this for themselves and to appreciate the process and to highlight their own growth and whatever.

Ryan: And we're in this conversation knowing that. There's no finish line, man, like, stop pretending like, once I get there, then I'll be okay. No, you won't know. You won't. You have to, we got to come back to the process. You're actually

Marty: okay right now.

Ryan: Right? And that's it. The only place you're okay.

Ryan: And the only place that greatness is, is even possible is in the moment. Right. Stop chasing something that's available to you right now. Does you got to be willing to accept it? Because I'm falling madly

Marty: in love with this guy here.

Bill: No, feel free. I don't have a burning question. I'm really just taking it in like a sponge here.

Bill: It's interesting. I'll just say this Ryan and I meet probably every couple months or so we'll go have a coffee and. In a coffee shop somewhere, and it doesn't take long before either, either he's put a quarter in me and I'm on just, I'm just delivering an answer that seems to be endless or the other way around.

Bill: And I just can't get enough. So it's really nice to be able to hear from 2 men who I admire and respect and love so much have this conversation about leadership. And I, because, you It all is so meaningful to me and I'm getting some things just by listening here that I wouldn't get if I was on the edge of my seat thinking, should I ask this next question?

Bill: I'm just listening.

Ryan: It's kind of, it's kind of nice. I'd like to

Bill: be the observer, just sitting and

Ryan: absorbing one. So

Bill: I'm just indulging. I do have a couple of questions, but if you Marty, if you, if you want to keep going with what you have, feel free.

Marty: No, I'm good.

Bill: Thanks. So I want to tie now to leadership. Of course, this is what we've been talking about, but let's explicitly to explicitly talk about it.

Bill: Heart first leadership, tie everything together. If we can Ryan to to to that.

Ryan: Well, I don't know what kind of direction you want to go here, but it's a constant. Recalibration in your own personal life. I don't teach people how to be in relationship with other people, right? I'm not going to help you with communication styles and different things that you're going to do to try to figure out conflict.

Ryan: The conflict is within you, right? Conflict resolution is if I can get better at being me, then I'm, and being better relationship with myself and with my higher power, then I'm going to have a better connection with you. And that's the way I look at it. And so heart first leadership is a progression.

Ryan: What I look like, and if you can look at it from any stage of development, whether you're talking about the stages of consciousness and different levels of consciousness through meditation practices, or you're talking about, the different stages of development within the plateaus or whatever that may be, I look at it as.

Ryan: Originally we are. Working on ourselves to try to be okay, and then we recognize, oh, I can help others and serving others helps me be even more. Okay. And then eventually, maybe I haven't progressed to a place where I am wishing to serve some sort of a higher purpose. To try to gain the, the good graces of whatever we know is out there because there's something bigger out there.

Ryan: It's God, it's the universe, it's whatever. So I'm trying to, you know, trying to be, yeah, exactly. I'm trying to be, I'm trying to be a good person. I'm trying to be a good person. Right. And then the final stage to me is one where I'm truly living. A surrendered state where I am and, you know, letting go and surrender is a dear topic to me, Bill.

Ryan: We talk about it frequently, and that's kind of one of the first things that you and I really, built our friendship around is those types of conversations is I'm truly surrendered to doing what I believe I'm here to do. And listening very closely, listening to the information that's coming into my awareness when I meditate, when I am working, when I'm engaging with people.

Ryan: To really explore that's another part of psychological safety, the ability to explore, what that looks like and how I can be more in alignment with is some might call it the will of God, whatever your relationship to some form of spirituality or higher power is. But it's in the neuroscience perspective.

Ryan: We call it your specialty role or specialty function. And that's the cherry on top of psychological safety is when you know exactly where you fit. What you can bring to the world that it's unique. And within that specialty role, it's one that we can completely recognize that in this conversation, Marty, you and I are for the first time meeting and I can feel that we can just go back and forth on this forever and based upon your, your own input that you're giving to this conversation, like it's bringing something out in me that only you can bring out in me.

Bill: And

Ryan: the same is true for what I could bring out in you or Bill or anybody else I'm in front of. And that's what a specialty role is all about is that we all have a place. It's about our, how are we playing our role in that place in the world and that I can bring out something in somebody that only I can bring out.

Ryan: And that is what wakes me up in the morning.

Marty: What in ontological coaching, which is Bill and I both have background in ontological coaching that's referred to as your essence.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. So that to me is the thing that this lights me up to say, I wonder what it is that I'm meant to bring out in this person because this person's in front of me right now.

Bill: And if

Ryan: I'm operating from a surrendered state where I'm not trying to get something from this, I'm not serving with some expectation in something in return, because of the going through those different stages, the, like I said, I first date is I want to just try to be okay. Then I serve others to be okay, because it feels good to serve others.

Ryan: And then I'm hoping to be in the good graces. So I'm just trying to be a good person. And eventually I'm just saying, it elevates me. It lifts me up. It pulls me back and up to just know that I might be able to bring something out in somebody else that only I can bring out just by being yourself, just by being your authentic self and living that essence that you speak of and without any sort of filters or as little filters as I possibly can.

Ryan: And so to live heart first is to, it's to go through quite a bit of What I would consider to be death and rebirth, where you're having to let go of certain references and outcomes and surrendering all of that, knowing that the goal is to actually kind of feel like every time we go around the sun to feel like there's actually less.

Ryan: There's less of me. I am able to give more,

Bill: I want to frame this up in the way that you intended it to be framed. And that is are you describing the personal development journey, the maturity journey, the psychological maturing journey of a human being?

Bill: When you say that at first, we come to a place where we want to be okay, because we've got the idea that we're not. We're try trying to free ourselves. Mm-Hmm. , oh, I wanna be okay. I wanna be free. Mm-Hmm. . And it moves to, I have discovered some things about how to be okay and how to be free, and that I act actually am free and Okay.

Bill: And now it fills me up to be able to help others see that as well. Is that the second level that you. Yeah.

Ryan: Uh, yeah. The second stage is probably a little bit underneath that in the sense that I think a lot of people serve because they, it meets their needs to contribute but it's still a good thing. It's still a good developmental stage,

Bill: right? It's still, yeah, sure. Development. These are developmental stages. And then the third one, it's, I wanna be a good person. How do I be a good person?

Ryan: Yeah.

Bill: Be in good graces.

Bill: Now that I know that I'm okay, now that I know that I have freedom, how can I be a good person? And then the fourth one would be, how can I help others to bring out their own discover and then bring out their own specialty roles, just as I have discovered mine.

Ryan: That's no way. Yeah, absolutely. It's truly being willing to walk the path, whatever that path is asking of you.

Bill: Right? Yeah. The Michael singer is in my book.

Ryan: Yep.

Marty: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, yeah, he's been on my mind for a couple of paragraphs here to the 1 of the things that I find. With my clients working on these things. It reminds me of this game. My grandparents used to have where you there's this ball and you got and it's sitting between 2 sticks.

Marty: And then when you open the sticks, it makes the ball fall forward. But if you keep them open, it falls. You want to keep moving the stick closer and closer until you get the ball to go all the way to the end of the board and drop in that last hole and get the most points. And what my the analogy is that, you know, once you get your internal needs met, it becomes easier to go on to, to serve.

Marty: And once you're getting that positive feedback and joy of serving, it gets easier to see your purpose in life. And so they, like these things. I think that I watched clients go through these stages, it's easier to say no, or, you know, something like that, or to reschedule their life to better be, to be better balanced.

Marty: And then it becomes easier to have tough conversations, and then it becomes easier to, you know, and it just get. So I think it's an aligning process, like you said, getting more and more trued up.

Ryan: Yep.

Marty: But you're here of what you're really here for.

Ryan: Yeah. And it's not one that's good or bad.

Ryan: There's no judgment around it, but it's just the record. Now, the realization that there's always going to be more there's always going to be the next thing that we could uncover, unveil, unhide. And that's what it is to me. I've studied Michael Singer is one of my back from the temple universe.

Ryan: Actually, it was just down there to meet him in person. Fundamentally, what we're talking about to me is this process of unhiding. Like I've studied a lot of consciousness, Tony Nader, the leader of TM, has a lot of conversations about this and Michael Singer being one of my main mentors and actually just got back from the temple of the universe just two weeks ago, went down there and met Michael Singer in person.

Ryan: Wow. It was a beautiful experience. There is no good nor bad along the way. There is just an unveiling process, right. It's just to recognize that the more that we have learned to come from our heart to really just, if we were to simplify this, to get out of our head.

Ryan: And into the, into our body, because that is a visceral experience of leading with your heart. It's the generally is a visceral inside out approach where you're being pulled forward, you know, into something, into life

Bill: at

Ryan: the same time, you feel like it's coming through you. Right. In a sense. It's just a beautiful process of uncovering and unhiding.

Bill: Parting thoughts that you'd like the listener to take away with them. If you could summarize it, or if there's 1 more thing you'd like to say, Ryan, for the listener, what would that be?

Ryan: Look in the mirror. Do the own work. I mean, the modeling that we're we always have an opportunity to create a model for somebody in our environment.

Ryan: Right? And we can't wait for that model to be presented to us. And in the same right that we should be on the search for finding those models in our world that will help us to learn how to source that ourselves. It's a process of reaching up to. And reaching down at the same time while we're on our journeys that there's somebody out there who is living this heart first leadership and one way, shape or form that speaks to you.

Ryan: And you should reach up to that person at the same time. No matter where you are in your own development, you can be reaching down and supporting somebody else and modeling for them and your personal environment at the same time.

Bill: And if someone wanted to reach up to you. How would they do, how would they go about that?

Ryan: Yeah. So we are IHP coaching. So IHP coaching is a Instagram, you know, Facebook, those types of things is a good way. We're fairly active on there. At least my wife is anyway. Yeah. I poke in from time to time, but

Bill: yeah. Yep. Heidi's wonderful as well. I, I do want to, I did want to mention this book written by you and your son, Colton.

Bill: Colton's the main author and you supported him in this, and he had an amazing experience. The book is called we can do hard things by Colton Sawyer and Ryan Sawyer. I bought copies of this for my grandkids. I just love the book and it's an amazing experience that Colton had with his dad. And then you've written another book called choice point.

Bill: Ryan, are you working? I understand you're also working on another book. Is that accurate?

Ryan: Yeah, it's yeah, it's going to be a project. It's hard. This is a heart first approach and I'm collecting information. I'm just. I'm kind of observing and writing every day. I write some probably a page a day and just see what comes of it.

Ryan: There's no deadline to it. This 1 is it's going to be. Yeah. When it forms it forms. I appreciate you joining us, Ryan. Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. It was a pleasure. Pleasure meeting you, Marty. Likewise.

Bill: Thank you.