What would life be like if we gave ourselves PERMISSION? Permission to truly chill, to feel deeply, to open up and express ourselves in ways that serve us - and others? Kristoffer “KC” Carter has A LOT of ideas about this. He’s the exact opposite of aspirational hustle culture and warmed over self help -- and he’s Laura’s coach! In this episode, Kristoffer shows us what happens when a disaffected sales dude goes deep into the world of meditation and spirituality and emerges as a Fortune 100 executive coach and unwavering advocate for every. single. one. of us. Have a pen and paper handy for this one, because the wisdom is flowing. The Four Permissions: https://www.thisepiclife.com/manifesto/ KC’s Book Permission To Glow: https://www.thisepiclife.com/book/ Meet KC: https://www.thisepiclife.com/about/ Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community. Support TMST, hear uncut interviews, and keep it ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/ Join our free online community (it’s not a Facebook group!): https://www.tmstpod.com/
Tell Me Something True with Laura McKowen
Kristoffer Carter on Your Epic Life
[00:00:00] Laura McKowen: Hey, it's Laura. If you're listening to this, you're not hearing the complete unedited version of this conversation. If you want in on that, you can get it by becoming a TMSC plus member. Just head over to our website@tmscpod.com and click support. All right. Enjoy this.
[00:00:29] Laura McKowen: I'm talking with Kristoffer Carter or KC as most people call him, including me. KC is a master-level executive coach, a serious meditator and meditation teacher, host of this epic life podcast, and author of the forthcoming book, Permission to Glow: A Spiritual Guide to Epic Leadership, which will be released this October and is available for pre-order now.
[00:01:02] KC is also my personal coach and one of the most enigmatic, energetic, intuitive, and fun people. I know as a fellow Enneagram seven seeker type, he's got a unique ability to call me on my bullshit, but more importantly, he's truly helped me and so many others work through the big blocks, which burns us out and keeps us from, as he says, achieving our big honkin dream.
[00:01:34] Some of KC's clients include musician, Ani DiFranco, artist, Lisa Cognizin, fortune 100 CEOs, and American author and meditation teacher, Susan Piver. In this conversation, we cover a lot of ground. KC shares the personal backstory of hitting the walls of his ambition and desire to run from pain, getting sober, serendipity, finding a guru, what meditation means to him, becoming a coach, and The Four Permissions covered in his book, which are the culmination of all his personal and professional experience to date. I just can't say enough good things about KC. I think you'll find this conversation fun, helpful, and inspiring.
[00:02:34] Laura McKowen: Hi, KC.
KC: Hi, Laura.
Laura McKowen: Welcome to the other side of the question-answer booth. It's trippy and amazing all at once. I say that because you are on my team. You're my coach. I always say you're my business coach, but it doesn't really qualify. I'm like, is he like my spiritual mentor? My business? Is he my therapist? No, you're definitely not my therapist. That's a whole other job, but I'm so excited to have you on because we get to talk about you and the things you’re creating and your new book.
KC: Oh gosh. I'm so excited about it. And I think like you calling me your coach is like me calling Laura McKowen, my client. You're such a force of nature. And to kind of witness the evolution of the podcast from the other side of the curtain, as you were getting ready to put it out there to be, to be on it. Now, it truly is kind of surreal. But what I love about these conversations with clients is we get to share some of our process together.
[00:03:37] And so people could gain a greater understanding of what is coaching and how does it work and why I do so much in coaching with my coach and my team of coaches.
Laura McKowen: Yeah, totally. And we're going to get into that because I was definitely one of those coaching skeptics, like, please. Sure. Everybody's a coach. What is a coach who needs a coach? Yeah. So we'll get into that, but first I want to start by talking about how you came to be this person and maybe take us through the beginning parts of your career, your work?
KC: Yeah. Well, what I hear in that question is, what is the career path of becoming a spiritual teacher at the intersection of consciousness and business? It's weird. It definitely wasn't my major in college. There wasn't like a prep program for it, but I'm from the Midwest. I live in Akron, Ohio, Northeast, Ohio and it's one of these parts of the country that's really like an underdog story. Like people write us off as the rust belt or this like post-industrial wasteland.
[00:04:47] And I think that there is such a kind of a spiritual beauty to being from here because people don't expect so much. I live in the birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is interesting. The founder, Dr. Bob, is buried about a mile from my home. And I think my formative kind of path was about growing up as a latchkey kid in, you know, middle of nowhere, suburban Ohio. And because I didn't have a lot of parental oversight, I got into a lot of trouble as a kid and was always kind of a seeker, you know, it's set me on a path of being a seeker. And if I had to summarize all of it, you know, I got so hardcore into personal development to make stuff happen in my life and where the personal development path ended, the spiritual path kind of began and so that's kind of led me to-
[00:05:41] Laura McKowen: Stop. Well done, because I want to know what that means. So where the personal development path ends, like what does that actually mean? What was going on?
KC: Yeah, so I think back to my early career in entertainment. So after I graduated college, we lived in Hollywood and I worked at a movie studio and this was at the advent and the dawn of Napster. Do you remember what Napster is?
[00:06:05] Laura McKowen: Oh my God, of course.
KC: I worked for a startup because that was like 2000 or no, that was ‘99, 2000, 2001. They had to give us a period. You know, how your parents used to say, you can play Nintendo for three hours from six to nine? It was like, they had to tell the employees, you can do Napster off hours from like six to 9:00 PM f you're in the building, otherwise, you can't do it. Cause it clogged up all the internet because we would download so much music. And this was before BitTorrents like Napster was old school and there were so many viruses, but one of the things I got obsessed with was downloading personal development audiotapes. I grew up like most of us in the eighties seeing infomercials for Tony Robbins or whoever, and I would download all of his programs, load them onto my phone and just absorb or try to absorb this raw accomplishment, personal development stuff.
[00:07:02] And it was cool, you know, but it was also the formation of some addictive tendencies and I have two speeds and this might be an Enneagram seven thing. I coach other sevens like both are and sevens don't really have the moderation gene. We're like either all off or all in. I have two speeds, often completely epic. So rather than dabbling in the personal development thing, I like immersed myself, you know, and I couldn't get enough. So that was like the start of my personal development journey.
Laura McKowen: So why did personal development end? Like what do you mean where that ended spiritual?
[00:07:47] KC: Well, I think I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the experience of just accomplishing more. It was great, but that masculine approach of like doing, setting it up, knocking it down like that was starting to happen, but I wasn't finding the meaning and the fulfillment. I started noticing the threads and a lot of this personal development work was leading back to meditation, to consider some sort of stilling practice. And I just started paying attention over many, many years to finally realize like, oh, I should probably meditate.
[00:08:25] Laura McKowen: Yes. So you're in your twenties at this point and you're working in Hollywood.
KC: Yeah, I was working in Hollywood. We had our first kid out there. This was about 2004. I was kind of a mess at that stage. Like, nobody gives you a manual on how to be married when you're in your early twenties, you know? So like, I was sleeping on the floor of recording studios and my wife would be drinking with our neighbors cause I was never home. And then, you know, we have a kid and, and we started growing up a lot to support this child. And you know, it just became apparent that we wanted to be closer to a family level of support.
[00:09:03] By that point, I was starting to get a lot more honest with myself and with her about who I was hoping to become like nowhere near close, but like who I wanted to eventually evolve into, which was somebody a little bit more dependable, a little bit more present, a little bit more on.
Laura McKowen: Okay. So when you say I was starting to get more honest with her, when you say her, are you talking about your wife? What had you communicated before? Or were you just kind of trucking along like people in their early twenties do, and you've realized this is not working out the way I think it is or I'm headed for something else?
KC: Well, I had a health reckoning when I was 26, before we left LA. I had kind of a stress-induced, what they thought was an aneurysm. It looked really serious. And when I went in for the spinal tap and the mandatory CT scan, it was the anesthetic for those procedures that almost killed me. And my wife was present for that. Like all of my vitals just dropped, dangerous, really low. And she was literally waiting for me to breathe in between these breaths.
So coming out of that, I realized I kind of had the reckoning of like, you know, by the way, sweetheart, I've been miserable for a long time. I hate my career. I hate myself most days. I'm addicted to marijuana. I'm stoned in gridlock traffic all day long. I'm stoned at my desk. I mean, I was kind of a disaster. As I said, I didn't have any real manual on how to do this.
Laura McKowen: I mean, I don't know a lot of these things because our conversations tend to be..
KC: Well, I don't put this on my coaching enrollment page, Laura. No, you know, maybe I should.
Laura McKowen: Okay. That's a big deal. I just want to dig into the emotional part of this. So was this news to her?
KC: Yeah, I mean, she looked at me as if she didn't know who she was living with, you know, and she's a highly intuitive woman. She's also now a coach in my practice and she knows what's going on before I open my mouth on some levels. But I think it was really reassuring to her that I was willing to cop to a lot of it and receive her support. You know, I think that's what's kept us married 22 years now. I give Gail so much incredible credit for her inexhaustible patience with me and love, to see me through the other side of that. Cause, of course, I have so much shame, like even saying those words now, like it brings up the shame the same way when I was 26, but what I've come to recognize about it now, the timing was really auspicious because we lived in Los Angeles. And now when I go back to Los Angeles, it feels more like, almost like a spiritual pilgrimage to me. Whereas when I was there, I was blind to all of it. I was so disconnected and kind of miserable and just, you know, a victim of the traffic and the Hollywood flakiness and all this other crap that I hated.
[00:12:04] And now when I go back, it feels like the epicenter of my spiritual life. And so I think I needed that health reckoning there to kind of come back full circle to a major presence there. Paramahansa Yogananda wrote Autobiography of a Yogi in Southern California. The worldwide organization is headquartered in Los Angeles. Like literally, you know, a mile from where my apartment was. He also left his body there in 1952 next to the practice space where my band practiced. So now when I reconcile my past and I'm standing on a block in Los Angeles, I'm like Yogananda who left his body on that block.
[00:12:45] And my band used to practice when I was high all the time on that block, you know, on that corner. And so it was kind of the guru sprinkling these seeds throughout my life. And if I do trace them back, it goes all the way back to when I was three years old, looking at the cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, because his face and three others of the lineage of gurus is on the cover of that album.
[00:13:08] And I've been looking at those faces since I was three. It was one of, many of those bread crumbs that the guru was kind of nudging me towards the path. And even in my most disconnected self-loathing place in Los Angeles, I was within blocks if not a corner away from the path. So I was on the path. I was just going through the miserable desert.
Laura McKowen: Right. Yeah. Well, that is part of the path for sure. Sadly, sadly, unfortunately frustratingly. Yes. So what happens after that? What happens after you say like, all right, hey babe, this is not the man I want to be?
KC: We had our first kid and then it became really obvious that we should, you know, head back to the Midwest and I really surrendered into clocking into the corporate phase of my career, you know, providing for the family, figuring out how to make money back before pandemics opened the door to all of us working from home. I got a job with a startup company out of Chicago and we were moving back to Ohio and I was able to work where I wanted to live in Ohio, but make this great salary and also start learning about company culture, team dynamics, start coaching executives. And that became a career for about nine years.
Laura McKowen: So what did you think? Did you have some idea of where you were headed or what was your thought on your career at that point?
KC: Another version of the miserable tension of knowing that I'm here for a bigger purpose and that I'm passing through here for some other reason, unbeknownst to me. So I was resistant as hell, you know. I would get my sales job done in the first few hours of the day and then I would spend the vast majority of my time working on the people in the company because that's where my passion has always been, as in people unlocking potential motivation. Even before I was certified and trained to do this work, I had that mindset to do it, but that part of me that had to use sales to pay the bills was always kind of miserable and unfulfilled. You know, and that was kind of the height of my drinking career, I would say.
Laura McKowen: We haven't even talked, touched on that.
KC: Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean, when you're a salesperson, you have pretty much an unlimited spending line for entertaining clients and we had no limits on that stuff. And then, being a dad, also being a musician, being a salesperson, you literally have good reasons to drink just about every night of the week, if you want.
Laura McKowen: And how, and when did that come to an end?
KC: So this was, you know, early on, let's see, I finally quit in 2012. I started having the conversation with myself and probably 2008, 2009. This company was a very young, work-hard, party-hard company. I mean, it wasn't unusual to walk into the lobby of the office and find somebody doing a keg stand or somebody like blackout drunk up on the roof singing karaoke.
Laura McKowen: Hey, I worked there.
KC: Yeah. I think we all did if we were lucky, it was a great environment and it was fun and I'm not knocking it, but it was not sustainable for people's wellbeing. And I get it that we all needed to medicate on some level just to ride the emotional highs and lows of sales and clients and that pressure cooker of media. Like I can see it all very clearly now, but I knew that it had to have an end date for me.
[00:16:58] Laura McKowen: Yup. Hear that. So did you leave there or did you?
KC: Well, I stayed there. I stayed. Yeah. It was kind of a radical notion to be like a young media salesperson dude, and to be sober. So like I started making the declaration early to prepare people for it because I was approaching the point of being really serious. I knew just based on my genetics and my family, that if I didn't quit consciously in my thirties, I would absolutely need rehab in my forties. You know, but by this point, I was meditating more and more and more. And that meditation practice really took root and as meditation practice takes root, it strengthens your discernment.
[00:17:43] And what I think discernment is, is like in the serenity prayer that's used in recovery, the wisdom to know the difference. Does this serve me? Does it not? You know, alcohol was at the top of the list of what does not serve me. So I started having to figure out like, can I party just as hard and have just as much, if not more fun while being sober and ever since then, you know, now going on 10 years of sobriety, it's been like trying to prove that out. That it's possible.
[00:18:09] Laura McKowen: So I'm amazed that you started meditating while you were still drinking. That to me blows my mind. Can you just talk about meditating at the same time that you're drinking?
KC: Yes. I was drinking a fair amount and my first real attempts at meditating, I would lay in savansana, like corpse pose at the end of yoga, because I thought, oh, that's meditation, right? Like lay on your back and then fall asleep on your basement floor. You know, there was no real meditative benefit to it other than maybe a nice nap. So I was really unconsciously incompetent when it came to that. And what I started noticing was while I was living there, I was also listening to Tony Robbins and starting to run and developing my running practice.
[00:18:57] So at first running became my meditation and then I would start getting on the trains on the red line in Chicago and start practicing the basic tools of meditation of just dropping my thoughts and now I'm grateful for having developed my practice on a crowded loud bus, where people are bumping into you and ripping your ear phones out of your ears. Because like, I think I could honestly now meditate through anything because of that formative experience. Like that was clearly God's plan for me to figure it out in the most resistant environments. Yeah. But again at that time, you know, even moving to Ohio, noticing my drinking, that I would have to consciously stop.
[00:19:38] I remember training for a marathon while I was probably high. Like I'd smoke weed and go out for a nine-mile run. I didn't have any boundaries between these things that were trying to serve me. I was not giving any of them their due reverence or respect. The reason I point this out is that people kind of know me now as my brand of 10 years of sobriety and a lot of meditation and teaching meditation, but it literally was the seed that I had to be willing to water over many, many, many years. Yeah. That's, it's really good to point out.
[00:20:16] Laura McKowen: Okay. So take me to where you transitioned into being a coach.
KC: Yeah. So 2012, I still had, you know, a few more years left of my corporate career working for other people. I was still a very uncomfortable dissatisfied salesperson. And one of our offsite retreats for the good life project, there's a lot of incredible coaches in this program. I can think of two offhand, Karen Wright, who's probably my biggest mentor as a coach. She's one of the biggest, most established executive coaches in Canada. She was in the same program as me as a participant. And Cynthia Morris, who's been my writing coach forever. And so these were two, like no bullshit, highly trained, powerful women. And for better, for worse, I'm way more likely to listen to women than I am to dudes in that space. And cause they're like my wife, Gail, they're like, they'll tell you how it is and they don't mince words. And so I really respected them and they were adamant that I have professional training. I was so ready to quit my career. And I was like, I was that fool, you mentioned earlier like I'm a life coach. I'm going to be a life coach. Now I'm going to tell people how to live, bro. It's such a preposterous notion, you know, who am I to show anybody how to live? They both gave me the smackdown. They're like, you have no clients, you have no track record. You have no training. You have no network. Shall I continue? You have three children. They laid it out in front of all of my peers in the program. And I remember just being pissed off about this. Seething with rage. I was like six months or maybe four months sober, but I was like, how fucking dare you cop in front of my colleagues. They call me on that bullshit.
Laura McKowen: Oh, so this was in your training, in the Good Life Project? Can you share what training you did?
KC: Yeah, it was the Good Life Project. It was the immersion battleground.
[00:22:21] Laura McKowen: Okay. That's awesome. And so then what did you do?
KC: Yeah, I pouted, I was pissed off. I basically had to do what I coach so many of my executive leaders now on. I had to build the bridge from where I was. I couldn't build this bridge from someplace that didn't exist. I had to lean further into my meditation practice. I had to get more honest with what I wanted to build, including honest with my employers. Like, listen, I've been seeking out this personal development thing for years now. It's who I am. I'm in charge of four salespeople right now. I was responsible for a $7 million sales goal. What could I drive if I took over the training and development or motivation of like 110 person sales force?
[00:23:07] And I started making that business case, it was incredible. I would say the months between that reckoning of me being pissed off in the front of the room and three or four months later in November when I took on my new role as a leader in training and development, it was truly a transformation that had taken place. And now I was making a great living to do what I'm here to do. And then I had maybe three more years at the company to build out that bridge into being a professional coach. At the end of 2015, my position was eliminated, but for those last three years I was there between 2013-2015, I designed and delivered tons of training programs, tons of coaching to fellow executives and other leaders, and started the foundation of my training. But I didn't get formally trained until I was out of my head.
[00:24:18] Mikel Ellcessor: Hi, I'm Mikel. I'm the executive producer of the podcast at TMST. We're passionate about having conversations that bring us together and help us stoke our love of learning. That's why we created a dedicated site for the show it's free. It's not a Facebook group and we aren't mining your data to target you with ads. So check it out. And while you're there, please join TMST Plus, our paid membership group. TMST Plus members will play the critical role in keeping this going and ad free. There are no corporations backing us. There's no advertisers. I mean, it's really up to us to pull together and make it happen. You can make a one-time contribution or you can join our monthly program where you can help shape the show, hear the complete unedited interviews and join regular online experiences with Laura. But know this, you can make a huge difference right now for as little as $10 a month. You can find the link in the show description, and then please head over to tmstpod.com right now. And join us.
[00:25:56] Laura McKowen: How did the Four Permissions come to be and I want to talk about what they are.
KC: Sure. Yeah. Distinguishing the Four Permissions as they showed up through this process. The end of 2015, this company was so great, they gave us paid sabbatical every five years of employment. So I was on my second sabbatical with my family. We always go out to Encinitas, California, which is where Autobiography of a Yogi was written. So my family can live extremely well while I'm meditating for many hours of the day, going to all the temple services. And I was doing this New Year's Eve meditation in 2015, and it was a four-hour meditation that crossed the border from one year to the next. And it was really profound. And I remember at some point during this meditation, I started getting kind of this fervor of just pleading with God and pleading with guru.
[00:26:56] I needed reconciliation on this career. I was tormented by the idea of having to go back and work this effing job one more minute when I had so much to share with the world. I didn't know what it was going to look like, but I was praying deeply for reconciliation. Yogananda teaches when you pray with tears and pleading with the divine mother, she has no choice, but to listen to her naughty little child until she gives you an answer.
[00:27:26] So, I'm walking out of the temple and there's always a mountain of fruit in front of the guru’s picture that people bring in with us to give blessing while the meditation's going on. So, you break your fast after this four-hour meditation. I'm grabbing a banana and some apples for my walk home and I get this very clear voice in my head. Prepare yourself. Reconciliation is coming. It was unmistakable. Holy shit. Yes. Right. Holy shit. And I walked home and got launched. And it was the perfect launch because I got severance pay instead of leaving on my own, I got this three-month kind of runway.
[00:28:11] And we had sold our house at the time. So I used the proceeds from the house to also kind of cushion in this transition. And, you know, it unfolded beautifully. I mean, ever since then, it has been. I believe God and guru dropping the perfect client at the perfect time, the perfect event MC, the perfect speaking gig, or whatever. And so to answer your questions about the permissions, the Four Permissions were starting to distinguish themselves early on in my career. The permission to chill. That's permission one. The need to meditate to get past the excuses and to practice being with what is, to hit the pause button and to see things as they are. I mean, you could call that sobriety. You could call that the process of meditation. You could call that discernment, but just making the time.
[00:28:53] Laura McKowen: What I'm most curious about and then I'll ask specific questions about some of them is how they came to be in your process and then when you actually started to name them?
[00:29:14] KC: Yeah, I started naming the permissions. I do everything in a linear order, but the first permission I distinguished was permission to glow in the dark. And that was how I interpreted it early on. This was probably like early 2015. I was like, what is this thing? This audacity thing. And people would always compliment me on it. Like, wow, you're like, sorry, not sorry, permission to be you in any environment. You know, you're the same guy at home as you are at work, as you are teaching meditation. And so I thought that that's what permission to glow in the dark was. So I started using that language and I called it like full self-expression with witnesses, but not until later when I was writing the book that I realized that it was only half the equation... that I had to go deep into what the darkness meant.
[00:30:00] Self-expression despite or because of the ever-present fear that we all have, you know? So that was probably the first time I started using that. And by that point, I had already been teaching a lot of meditations. I had started leading some of Jonathan's Good Life Project retreats in Costa Rica as a meditation teacher, leading meditation at camp Good Life Project for hundreds and hundreds of people. And so my practice was kind of making a teacher out of me before I was even ready to call myself that. And so I started calling that jokingly permission to chill because I think we all kind of need it, you know, and not many of us are willing to give it to ourselves.
[00:30:44] Laura McKowen: So, that chill. What do you mean by chill?
KC: What do I mean by chill? You know, it's the defiant act in a very fast-paced, distracting world that is always hooking our attention. The defiant act of hitting the pause button and just stopping and looking at things as they are. So that's, you know, permission to be still. Permission to meditate, permission to just stop the crazy train of thoughts for a few minutes each day, just to notice it, to build the muscle of your meta attention. That's what I mean by chill, and the more you commit yourself to that practice, the more that benefit shows up for you. You become more chill, you bring more peace into your relationships. You bring more peace into the pursuit of your goal. So permission to chill. My career path was that I needed permission to chill, to even be able to see the opportunity when the door was opened up to me and permission to feel all the feels is the second permission. And I called this the willingness to be with what wells up in our heart to guide us. And it's tricky for us achiever types, because we've learned how to put on our game face or this mask that protects us from being emotionally vulnerable, or even acknowledging our humanity. We want to beat on our humanity, like some crappy little horse jockey versus celebrate it for the beauty that it is.
[00:32:16] That is at the core of permission to feel the feels. And when I dove deeper into that in the book, it turned out that these feelings point to root emotions, and I believe these root emotions that show up in our body, usually they're embedded there from past trauma. Or sometimes if we're blessed, they're embedded there from past high achievements or peak states. But when we listen to what those emotions are pointing to, that is the true wisdom of our body. And I think that that's also a gift from God that we can tune into that and tap into that. This is something I had to really learn and still learn all the time. As a society, we operate primarily in our heads.
[00:33:02] When you realize that your emotions are a language in and of themselves, that they are language that informs you and that your heart is a language that informs you, it can be much more useful in my experience. They work together. The mind is beautiful and useful, but you can't get to the same places in the same way with grace and those types of things, as you can, when you drop into the body and you use the body.
[00:33:31] Laura McKowen: I mean, I think writing is a great example of that and experience of that, where you can do all kinds of great writing with your head. I don't think you create with your head. I don't think that's where, for example, you would think you conceptualize something like the Four Permissions, right?
[00:33:49] KC: It's such an important part of the conversation. I use this in conscious leadership all the time with executives is that they're buying data. And if they're able to clear the space through the first permission to chill, and then they're able to listen, to act on permission to feel the feels. Then the third permission is activated and that's when our glow shows up. That's when a full expression, when some sort of higher vocation in our work gets activated.
Laura McKowen: You’ve coached some very high achieving C-level executive folks. Give an example about how permission to glow, which is something I can imagine isn't always easy for a C-level person to do. You know, they're not going to sit there and go, “I'm sorry. I'm glowing right now” in their board meeting, but how do you get them to adopt it? And how does it show up? Like, if you can give an example?
[00:34:29] KC: Well, okay. So we're at the precipice of like my biggest vulnerability hangover in my career because there I'm with this book, I'm letting them behind the curtain with all the levers I have been pulling for years. We sometimes we use this language and a lot of times we don't because they're not in that conversation. You know, corporate people, generally aren't in a spiritual conversation if any of them are willing to be in one, but HR teams that hire me, you know, don't want that language necessarily. So we call it meditation, mindfulness, or whatever. But to answer your question, where I think glowing shows up is when they become a fully embodied leader. When, you know, and I think this is an important conversation as it relates to organizational leaders and also for all of us, because we are all leaders in our own lives.
[00:35:34] Like the buck does stop with us when we're creating anything. So whether or not you call yourself a leader, you kind of are one. Your question was about organizational leaders and these types, when they get into these transcendent moments of leadership, this is when they're able to make the hard decisions. And sometimes these are, you know, tragic. I mean like last year during the pandemic, these show up as mass layoffs or letting go of a workforce because they don't have any other option if they're going to hold onto their business. But in those moments, when they authentically communicate with their people, when they love them on their way out as they did on the way in, when they are fully embodied even in that darkest moment, something transcendent happens and that's where the glow shows up. So I don't want to limit it to only when they do these feats of miracles and, you know, acquire the company or get the $50 million fundraising round or whatever, all that stuff happens too. But the stuff that really impresses me is how they navigate it when they're in the thing.
[00:36:39] I do believe everyone's a leader. You're a leader in your home. You're a leader in your community, whatever it is, we all have that capacity to show up that way. So then the last one, this was the hardest. To put together the puzzle and numerous, numerous drafts. I can't even count. During the book my editor would come back and say, well, you have two of the four permissions. Oh, you have three of the four permissions. So, the writing process for the book was literally a lot of meditation and a lot of rewrites to really perceive and distinguish the permissions and particularly this fourth one. The fourth permission is permission to glow in the light. And this seed was planted by my friend who was once my biggest hero on earth Ani DiFranco, a songwriting activist.
[00:37:34] You know, she’ll probably go down in history as one of the preeminent of her generation for sure. And then there's the volume of songs and incredible poetry and artistry of her as a musician. I mean, she's a phenomenal soul, but when I was interviewing her for my podcast, she planted the seed of, what does it mean to be a beacon and to just glow in the light? When you're so past the darkness, what does that look like? That means transcending competition for cooperation. That means figuring out ways to love one another bravely enough to uplift the entirety of our human family. Would we even have the bravery and audacity to transcend all of our personal needs of those first three permissions? The fourth permission is the permission for those people who have done the work of the earlier three, who are willing to lay down all comparison, leave behind all scarcity and to move forward for the upliftment of humanity.
[00:38:40] And I know that can sound very utopian. However, if you look at scripture, if you look at God, or what our creator might be asking of us, I think it has something to do with that. Maybe get along with others. COVID was the best lesson for this. You might want to think of others before you think of yourself, just once in awhile. I mean, it's a radical concept, but we can save lives if we do it. And so, permission to glow in the light is about the collective.
Laura McKowen: I love it. How awesome that that came from her. I mean, did you have the sense that, that it wasn't?
[00:39:22] KC: Yeah, always. And all these things are constantly moving towards some level of completion that may or may not happen in my lifetime. I mean, just last week, I committed to my publisher to write four more books- one for each permission. I know, I know, right. Yeah. Well, that's amazing. So yeah, I mean, it does sound utopian, but it's not, you know. That is where the yoga concept of Dharma points. If we are here to play a role, if we are all here to play a role, which I believe that we are, that is the yoga concept of Dharma, which I is how I teach it. Then it's not just for you, right? You have to go through the transformation process yourself.
Laura McKowen: The thing that you just said, I want to underline, like triple underline. It is that all of us have some dream or something we feel like we're here to accomplish, but when you connect that to the universal good or ask yourself, “what is this in service of beyond me”, that gives that thing an accelerating power because that is what the creator intended. Whether it shows up as Dharma in yoga and in Buddhism, it shows up in service to all. I mean, all true religions have this act, these aspects of service, certainly Catholicism, Christianity. I mean, we have to consider others.
[00:40:53] KC: I mean, that's kinda what I was tuning into. And I thought, you know, personal development is about the person. Spiritual development is about the collective. It's preparing you to be in service. And it's almost just a natural extension. It's not like there's this point where you go, okay, I'm complete. Now I'm going to hand it over to the world.
Laura McKowen: The reason I love this part of it is because a lot of times with what I teach, I will hear people say, “Isn't this such a privileged thing to worry about? Myself and what I'm supposed to do and what I'm supposed to become?”. And like, it feels like this selfish act. I hear a lot, especially women, say this feels just selfish sort of Naval gazing stuff. And my response to that is like, no, you are responsible for doing this. This is your primary responsibility in the world is to become who you are, because this is the role you play. Giving it away is your responsibility. And damn it, yes, it's a privilege. If you can do this, you fucking better, right? If you have the privilege to be having this conversation, you fucking better do it.
KC: Oh gosh. Well, first of all, this is a perfect example. You get these people permission to glow in the dark by being willing to be in your own process, you pay that forward in service of them and their families who then pay it forward in service to the greater good should they choose to call it that. One of Yogananda's quotes comes to mind that I use this at the end of my TED talk when I shared my gut churning last day of drinking. And I knew I needed to share it because it was so awkward and painful, but I followed it with this quote, which is just so simple, but it's so important. And it kind of summarizes what you said. He said “one who is reformed themselves will reform thousands”. And if we choose to transform ourselves, we will give people the permission to get on their own path of doing so. We will light the way. We will show them it's possible. More than anything else in my work of being a coach or being a dad is that I'm trying to show my kids that you are worthy of working on yourself. You are worth trying to show your highest and best, or your essence, versus just giving everybody your survival mechanisms.
Laura McKowen: So when does the book come out?
KC: The book comes out for pre-order September 7th. It's published on October 5th, but for me as a first time author self publishing, the way I'm doing it, pre-orders are kind of everything. So that's what we've been kind of gearing towards. I'm doing a book tour during the pre-order date. Even if you don't consider yourself a leader at work, it really is for everything. I almost wish it wasn't a business leadership book, but Ani had to read it last week to give me a blurb. She's a childhood hero. I'm like, what if she thinks it sucks? Like she's not a corporate leader. I was mortified. I was inadvertently being a dick to everybody in my life because I was waiting for her verdict on my work. You know what I mean? You're a total hero on earth, reading your shit. I was like, no way. So, she comes back and she's like, this is a deeply feminist manifesto. This book is far more than it seems is what she said about it. And what we're putting on the cover is her quote. It says: This book will teach some of us how to lead. All of us, how to live. And I was like, what do I even do with that? I'm like, I just work here at this point. I'm like, yeah, cool. I'll pass it along to the editor. It's crazy. But I mean, you could imagine how triggering all that stuff is. Like even, you know, being with you, working with you, working with my heroes, standing shoulder to shoulder with people you really respect, it's supposed to be triggering, you know, and, and there's such a joy. Looking around and thinking like, wow, this is my job now. It's beautiful.
Laura McKowen: I know. I have that feeling often. I really do. Like, are we at work right now? Laura? Are you? I don't know what's happening right now. Yeah, I am technically at work right now. So are you. Welcome to your life.
[00:45:33] KC: Thank you so much. Oh gosh. Thanks for your time and generosity. Thanks for like getting all the journey in there. It was super fun.
[00:45:48] Laura McKowen: Thank you for hanging out with us today. We want every episode of Tell Me Something True to give you something you can use in your life. We also don't want there to be any barriers between us. That's why we built our own online community. It's free. It's not Facebook. And you can head on over to tmstpod.com to connect with folks around this episode.
[00:46:15] Also, have you noticed there aren't any ads on TMST? That's by design. We want to keep the show and our digital spaces ad free, but that's a goal we can only accomplish if we work together and that's where you can make a huge difference. TMST is being built as an ad free subscriber driven project. The subscribing members will play the critical role in keeping this going and keeping it ad free. There are no corporations backing us, no sponsors. So it's really up to us. And the good news is folks are signing up. Thank you so much to all of you who have come on board for this very unusual way to do it. You can join them when you make a one-time contribution or join our monthly program. We have cool opportunities for you to help shape the show.
[00:47:09] Hear the complete unedited interviews. Ask our guests questions before they're on and connect with other TMST folks. I cannot stress this enough. You can make a huge difference for as little as $10 a month. So head on over to tmstpod.com right now. Tell Me Something True is engineered and mixed by Paul Chuffo. Mikel Ellcessor and I dreamed up this show and we're looking forward to joining you online and next time at Tell Me Something True.