Your life can change in the space of two seconds. That’s the promise behind the “Epic Reset,” and it’s why I invited licensed professional counselor Zander Sprague to share the simple framework he uses to help people stop reacting on autopilot and start choosing a better path: Emotion, Pause, Interrupt, Choose. We talk about why that pause is the most powerful step, especially when fear, doubt, and worry feel like they run the show.
Xander also tells the story of his “bad week,” when his car got totaled, his engagement ended, and he was fired all within seven days. Instead of staying stuck, he recognized the pattern, made a decisive move back to San Francisco, and watched his life open up in ways he couldn’t have planned. We connect that to the fear of the unknown, why change feels threatening from a survival standpoint, and how cognitive behavioral therapy style tools like asking “What proof do I have?” can shrink anxious thoughts back down to size.
We go deeper into parenting, identity shifts, and the pressure cooker of social media and anonymous feedback. We also talk honestly about grief and the real meaning of “time heals,” not as a platitude, but as a process of gaining tools that help you carry what happened without being crushed by it. If you’re craving personal growth, mindset change, and practical habit change strategies that actually work in real life, this conversation gives you steps you can practice today.
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What’s one trigger you want to pause before you respond to it?
To connect or purchase any of Zander’s books go to his website at: epicbegins.com or on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zandersprague
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry, and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Hey Lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release Out Reveal Purpose. And today is Xander Sprague. He’s here to talk about the epic reset. Now, that means something completely personal to Xander. But one thing I read that I could totally relate to is when you’ve had the worst week. And he describes it as losing a fiance, you know, having to move from one city to another, all these changes. I know I’ve talked tons on this podcast about change. We know change can be very tough at times. And when we don’t view it with the lens of this is an opportunity for me to shift the direction of my life and to kind of view why I landed in this space, like why I landed and I lost everything, and then shift gears. I think some of us stay stuck longer than we want to. And so that’s why it was important for me to bring Xander on the show so that he can share his story of transformation and how this epic reset has really played an enormous role in shaping his divine purpose now. So without further ado, Xander’s thank you so much for joining us on Released Out Reveal Purpose.
Well, thank you so much for having me on, Sylvia. I’m really excited to be able to talk with you and share some of my epic journey with your audience.
I’m really excited too. And let us know where you’re at and why this epic reset is something that means so much to you and why you’re talking about it on podcasts and written books on it.
Yeah, you know, I’m interesting. The Epic Reset is actually a book I’m currently writing. It should be out, I hope, uh, sometime later this year. And it’s an evolution of uh a book I wrote called Epic Begins with One Step Forward. And as I was thinking about all of that, Epic Begins with One Step Forward is a book, a self-help book to have for people to step into their epic, do those things that instead of saying, someday I’d like to write a book, run a marathon, travel somewhere, that today is the day that you start doing that. But as I thought about that and I thought about my own life, I looked at the patterns that happen. And I guess as a licensed professional and clinical counselor, I the psychologist in me looks at stuff and says, why is this happening? I don’t, you know, like this is interesting. Let me figure out why this is happening. And so that epic reset is that opportunity for each of us to recognize a pattern that isn’t serving us. And then I’m in the book, I’m talking about how we can change that pattern. And just in short, the you know, the EPIC is what is the emotion or the that is the trigger for the this? The P is the pause. It’s that crucial two seconds where we we we are creatures of habit. You know, we we hear in psychology of you know, the the response to stimulus, you know, you get a particular uh stimulus, you have a particular response. And the easiest one to think about is um if you have a sibling, there are things that your sibling can say or do that will instantly get you to respond the same way every single time, no matter how old you are. And that response may be your six-year-old self responding. So, and then the I is that interrupt, interrupt the pattern. A funny thing happens when we interrupt patterns in our life. We go, oh, hold on, I’m doing this, I need to stop. And the C is just choose, choose some new path. You’re gonna have to repeat it because it takes time. But that’s in short, that’s that’s the concept behind the epic reset.
All of us sometimes have much bigger resets in our life. You talked at the beginning, I call up my bad week. And by any anyone’s definition, in a seven-day period, my car got totaled, my fiance broke up with me, and I got fired from the job I had. That’d be a bad week in anyone’s day. Any one, that any one of those single things, never mind all of this happening within seven days. But here’s the thing I grew up in Boston, I was living in Boston at the time, but right after college, I spent two years living in San Francisco. All of my friends from college and my oldest and best friend lived in San Francisco. When I went back to visit, I could truly say my heart was in San Francisco. I knew I wanted to be there. I had a mirage of roadblocks of why I couldn’t, why I couldn’t make the move back to San Francisco. And I call it a mirage because it was. They weren’t actual roadblocks. But all of a sudden, life came in and just took them all out in seven days. And I was bummed about breaking up with my fiance. But if I look back, I’m like, yeah, that probably was not going to be a successful relationship. So that’s not a bad thing. Uh the job I was in was okay, but wasn’t really filling me with joy. And while my car, part of the reason I didn’t want to move back to San Francisco was having driven back and forth across the country, uh, two full round trips. I just didn’t want to drive across the country again. Uh, I know some people love it. Uh, I gotta say it was interesting, but I don’t need to keep doing it. This bad week happened, I made the decision to move back to San Francisco. Now, let me do note that I was a psychology and history major. So as a history major, I have a freakish memory for dates and times. And I moved back to San Francisco six years and three hours to the day that I left San Francisco. Stepped off the plane, said, All right, here I am. Eight days later, I set myself up on a blind date. I ended up marrying that woman. I had two children with her. Not married to her anymore, but that’s not the point. The point is I knew what I wanted to do. I made an epic first step, which is to say, I am moving. And I did, and it’s made all the difference. I mean, my life is so much richer for having moved back to San Francisco.
I can see you were talking about what each letter represented. And the one that my heart stopped on was the pause one because I don’t think people realize how powerful that pause is. Oh, it’s I mean, it’s probably the most powerful letter in that whole epic series.
Absolutely, absolutely.
In that, when you have an emotional trigger that triggers that pattern to start all over again, that whole cycle over again, that pause is the opportunity that you have to kind of just observe that feeling that showed up for you and and think and choose to say, no, I think I’m going to choose something different and just insert some new way of thinking, new way of operating, anything in that. This is actually something I was discussing with my daughter this morning on the way to her horseback riding camp because her thoughts were on the OCD part of the spectrum that we know that the thoughts can like when they ruminate, it can just like take over. And we know that that builds some grooves, like neural pathways in the brain that it’s just back and forth, back and forth. We just kind of walk on it over and over and over again. And and I told her, I said, you know, it would be awesome if when you feel that trigger to notice where it’s showing up in your body, absolutely, and that pause of like, huh, I feel it in my heart space, or my hands get clammy, or my heart starts to pound. You know, something’s happening physically in your body, right? And now we have to either reframe it or kind of do something different. And so I said, sometimes we can choose to say, you know what? Right now I’m having too much fun, and I’m just gonna pop that thought on a cloud, just gonna give it to God, because this is how I kind of coach my kids, right? Like, just give it to God. It’s not a thought that identifies you, anyways. You know, it’s just a thought that randomly rammed into your brain, right? It’s your mind’s way of protecting you somehow, right?
Absolutely. And what I was gonna say is, you know, they say that we that most of us use only 10% of our brain, and geniuses might be 12. Look, I’m really, I think most of the time, that 10%. So that’s fine. Well, I’ll go with that. So that means that there’s 90% of this incredible thing that is aware of so many more things, taking in so much more information than our conscious mind is aware of. So that pause is taking something that’s sort of in the unconscious part. Oh, this happens, I do this, right? I talked about uh our siblings and stuff like that, you know, that that I’ve got a younger sister, and there’s things that she can say and do that I have noticed instantly I re I react the same way. And it’s taken a lot of work to go, yep, I’m actually not going to, but I have to be, I have to bring it from kind of that 90% into the 10%. That’s where that pause is going to happen, is where you you recognize, hey, I I’ve got a automatic response to this. I I want to change this. And look, changes, it it takes practice, like anything. I like to break things down, make it really basic. So, Sylvia, do you remember in kindergarten, first grade, you started to learn how to write? And it took a lot of concentration to make the A’s, the B’s, the C’s, all of that.
Yes, I remember that.
Do you put that much brain power into writing now? No. No. Why? Because you talked about the neural pathways. We built those neural pathways where we know what to do so that it sort of goes more into the unconscious part of our mind where we’re not having to think so much. Uh, for other people, you know, let’s take driving. I remember when I first got my license, I was so excited and I was exhausted. Why? Because I was noticing every single street sign, every, you know, everything. Now, having been a driver for well, more years than I’m gonna admit on camera, I still see all of that stuff, but it’s just not as front of mind. Why? Because I have that neural pathway. And you’re right, we do get patterns and noticing our somatic response. Where am I feeling that? In my chest, and you know, in my throat, in my hands. That’s key because that our our brain knows way before our consciousness does that something isn’t right, that there’s something going on, right? And it’s funny because it’s smart and as evolved as all of uh we are, our brain like picks up so many more things, millions more things than we’re actually ever aware of.
It does. I think it’s it’s shocking how much it actually cuts up. I discussed it a lot in my own book, In Faith I Thrive, Finding Joy Through God’s Master Plan. It’s like chapter one, and I go through like seven patterns that I identified in my own journey, right? And I kind of named them. And my biggest one was security seeker. Like when doubt showed up, man, that sucker kicked in so fast. This happened when I was seven. And so anytime doubt showed up, there was a way I was operating on automatic, and it was so frustrating because you do want change, you just don’t realize how powerful that mind is, and it has no filter. So, for those listening, I mean, everything matters.
What you read, who you listen to, the news that you know you’re watching on television, the stuff you’re all of it is getting brought in. And when you’re little, it matters because you don’t have that developmental part of your mind that says, I’m not gonna pay attention to that because that doesn’t really apply to me or whatever. It just kind of like accepts it. Now, can you speak a little bit to that? Because we all have little kids out there that we absolutely look.
I mean, I think I guess the historian in me looks and goes, All right, you know, we need to understand history, we need to understand, and each of us, there are the things that that you and I grew up with that the perils that our parents were scared for us, right? I’m a Gen Xer, so I honestly, there are days where I I’m surprised that I’m actually here because well, I’m not only in my Gen X, but I’m a boy, and and boys are stupid. We’re all really stupid, and young boys up through adolescence are especially stupid, and I say that not in a negative way, but like we just the thought pattern goes like this hanging out with your friends, dude. Let’s ride our bikes off the roof. Yeah, let’s go. It’s only when someone is lying on the ground with their ankle pointing in a direction that it shouldn’t naturally point that someone goes, Oh, we could get hurt, right? Now I think at adolescent women look and take it one step further and go, oh, we could get hurt. Maybe we shouldn’t do it. Maybe you do, but at least you had that thought. Boys, we we don’t have that thought. So I I look at that, and I’ve got daughters who who are 22 and 20, and I, you know, and I worry about the social media and and all that validation and stuff like that. But I also realize that it it’s this, it’s different generation, same worry that parents have. It’s just transformed. I I think it is a lot larger because there’s so much more information available. And frankly, it there’s so much more anonymous feedback that that we take in as being negative. Look, I’m on social media, I’m you know, a person who’s putting myself out there. I realize there are people who are going to try and troll me, they’re gonna put negative comments on posts that I put up. And I’m like, okay, it’s part, it’s for me, it’s part of it’s just part of this game. I can’t control what some random person who I don’t even know. And that is one of the things that I, you know, I have to say bothers me. I’m gonna sound like an old man here, but you know, I noticed uh I did my internship for my licensing in a middle school and high school. So over 3,000 hours of of internship, working with lots of middle schoolers and high schoolers. And one of the things I noticed is there is a real lack of interpersonal communication skills. They don’t know how to do it because everything they do is texting or whatever. And I try and explain to them that our human communication, there’s a huge part of it that’s non-verbal, right? And that doesn’t come across on text. And you can’t control once you send a text, I can’t control how you, Sylvia, see my response. I can put emojis, I can spend three lines explaining that I’m being sarcastic. But that sort of removes the whole point of sarcasm if you have to like explain the whole thing. Whereas, you know, in there in their things that we say to each other. So for example, if you’re telling me some incredible story and I’m like, be quiet. I’m not telling you to be quiet. It’s it’s like, but you get that I’m not telling you to to not speak because of the nonverbal, the tone of my voice, the smile on my face, the way I’m reacting. That doesn’t come across on text. And so what I’ve noticed is that there’s this whole generation of people who, when it they actually have to interact face to face, don’t have the skills. You and I grew up, and if frankly, we wanted to say something, and I’m not saying we had to say mean things, but like if you if you’re like, I I want to show my displeasure with this person, you’d either talk to them, maybe you’d pick up a phone and go, hey, you know, Bob, I’m really annoyed that you said that about me. Or maybe you wrote a note. But the fact of the matter is, people know who you people know that you were the one who who wrote that note. You’re the one who’s on the phone. Now with texting and posts and stuff, you can be anonymous. And and and so I talk to my my girls all the time about make sure that you have the people you listen to are the cheerleaders in your life, the people who support what you’re doing. They can absolutely say, Hey, I don’t know that that’s your best choice. They do it because they’re coming from a place of care. As a parent, we certainly have to say, I’m not sure that’s your best choice. But we have to honor that hard as it is as parents, our children are going to make mistakes, and we have to let them make mistakes. You know, when your kids were toddlers and they first started to learn how to how to well, they don’t walk, they run. Children, we talk about oh, they learned to walk. No, they didn’t, they learn how to run, and they have no sense of danger, they’re going towards stairs, cliffs, you know, whatever, right? You’re like, oh my god.
Yes, I remember those ears.
And and but but you see, you see them, and then like you see them running on grass, and you’re like, they’re gonna trip and fall. You see it, you can’t prevent it. And in most times, we we we have to let it happen because there’s learning there. When my daughters learn how to ride their bicycles, I knew they were they were going to fall off their bike. I didn’t want them to. I did all I could to prevent it, but I also realize there’s actually a lot of good in them just falling off and scraping their knee in the sense that now they’ve fallen off the bike, they know what that experience is, and they don’t have to go around, oh my god, I’m gonna, I could fall, I could fall, right? Because you talked about sort of that obsessive thought pattern, right? You know something could happen, but it hasn’t happened. For some people, it gets worse and worse because they just perseverate on it happening. But if you were just riding and you fell off your bike and go, oh, uh I’m okay. Yes, I scraped my knee, yes, that hurt. Okay, yeah. I’m okay. I can get back on the bike, I can ride my bike. And it’s hard. I remember both my daughters the first time, you know, they sort of got wobbly and and and they fell off the bike. Wasn’t happy, but it I knew it had to happen because now they’re like, okay, it’s not a huge deal.
Yeah, it’s not this crazy fear that builds up in their mind, and then when it actually happens, it’s like, oh, that’s what that is. Okay, you know, they kind of move on, which kind of leads me to a question I was really wanting to ask you.
Sure. Because the epic reset is about change, about making that micro step towards that change that you want. When I was interviewing adults for my own book, I was asking them what their greatest fear was as it pertained to change. And I wasn’t surprised uh that both men and women answered fear of the unknown. Can you speak to them? The epic Risa can maybe help to alleviate some of this fear of the unknown.
Sure. Well, I mean, look, yeah, absolutely. What I’ll say is change change is scary. Why? Because as human beings evolutionarily, we like to know what’s going on, right? We’re comfortable with structure. Structure makes us feel relaxed. When we don’t have that, we feel unsure. Now that’s that’s honestly a survival mechanism. Hey, I don’t know what’s going on. All of my senses are now on a much higher level of alertness because I I don’t know where I am. I don’t know if there’s, you know, a saber tooth tiger in the bush or whatever. But when I’m in my cave, I’m safe, right? And of course, change makes us uncomfortable. However, change is where the exciting stuff happens, Celia. That’s where we as people grow because there is change. And I believe the way in which we we can notice and say, yes, I’m feeling uncomfortable, but I also believe in myself unfailingly. And I will figure this out. You know, I not enough people utilize that phrase. I will figure this out. Because we will. That’s how we as a species have gotten here. Because we figured out a whole lot of stuff. Millions of people before us fill figured out a whole lot of stuff that allow us to be here today, right? And I think that fear of change is again, one, it’s normal. I want to normalize it. Change does make us feel uncomfortable. But if we view it and say, yes, change is coming, but I’m I’m going to embrace this. That reset is again, sometimes it’s that pattern of change is bad, and I re or change is coming, here’s my reaction. What if you pause that and go, okay, what do I think is bad about this change? Now, I’m not saying that all change is good. I certainly experienced some major changes in my life.
One of the big things was uh my older sister was murdered 29 years ago. That was a huge change, one that I never expected I’d have to go through. Yet here I am, still here. I didn’t only survive, but I’m thriving and I’m doing work on my sister’s behalf because it feels like it’s part of what I’m supposed to do. I didn’t feel that way at first, of course, but I figured out. And when people say when you experience a loss, oh, time will heal, and I thought, oh, that’s trite, oh that’s but I I gotta say, I actually do agree with that, but here’s the twist, the reset that I’ll put on that. Time does heal because we we acquire more tools that allow us to understand the feelings that that that we’re having. So if if a wave of grief is coming, something reminds you, something reminds me of my sister Lucy, I have the tools to go, I recognize what’s going on. And sometimes I can stop it or I can lessen the effect of it. So time does heal because I now have more tools. Uh, we were talking about driving, right? You have a whole arsenal of tools that allow you to be a much better driver because you’ve experienced stuff. You understand that if it’s raining heavily and a car goes through a puddle and all of a sudden you can’t see for a second, you need to just hold on a moment. The windshield wipers will clear it, you’ll be okay. Um, yes, it’s it scares you. There’s a big change of I can’t see anything and what’s gonna happen. But your experience lets you know that this will pass quickly. I don’t need to panic, slam on the brakes, turn the, you know, turn the wheel, whatever. Yes, hopefully that doesn’t happen right as you’re you got a car in front of you and and stuff. But my point is you’re a better driver because you have tools that allow you to deal with those unexpected things, those things that change in your drive, right? Have you ever gotten been driving and gotten a flat tire? Yes. And now, if it happened again, you’d understand how how can I get my car, you know, I need to try and get my car to the side of the road. You understand how to do that. When that first happened, you’re like, oh my God, what do I do? Right. So I I think that reset for all of us is to stop. Literally say, stop, let me let me look at this, let me understand, and all those negative thoughts you have about change and stuff. Ask yourself a simple cognitive behavioral technique, really helpful, which is to say, what solid proof do I have that the thought this isn’t going to be good, this is gonna be terrible, whatever you think about change is true. Most times we don’t actually have solid proof. We have a belief, I have a feeling. Well, that’s actually not a really solid reason. If you have some solid reasons, you know, there’s not a tire on the rim of my car. Yes, this, yes, this is bad. My proof is I don’t have a tire. Yes, I’m not doubting that that’s bad. But I think a lot of us we have those thoughts and we believe in, we believe those thoughts, but if we take a moment and challenge it, we pause and go, what proof do I have, solid proof that this thought is actually true? Um, with teenagers, oh, so and so doesn’t like me. What proof do you have that that’s true? Did they actually say those words to you to your face? Not over text, because frankly, someone’s friend could take their phone and say, I don’t like you. Yeah, but but that person actually didn’t say it. So unless they actually said it to you.
And I think you’re right. I was trained under a cognitive behavioral therapist to do some life coaching at the church. So I understand that reframe of the thought of like, show me the evidence that this is actually true. Yeah, because the thought shows up as truth in the mind, and the rumination of that thought is like what makes it bigger than it actually is. And it’s just taking the pieces apart and just kind of looking at them. Okay, I can’t come up with evidence. So what then that’s where your the conscious ability of your mind, the thinking mind, can come in and say, Well, then that truth is actually a lie that I’ve believed for a long time. And when you name it like that, when you call it out like that, what happens over time? I’m not saying one and all and and done, right? It’s kind of bringing it to the light. And once you bring a pattern of thought to the light or a thought itself, and you name it for what it actually is, it it kind of starts losing its power over you.
Is that is that a correct absolutely you you take the teeth out of it if you want to call it a bully thought, right? Oh, I have this thought. It’s it’s like a bully. And you’re like, oh, but if but if I actually look at it and go, yeah, no, not so much a bully, just a thought that isn’t serving me, right? With the reset, there’s like I call it the crucial two seconds, right?
It’s that two seconds between whatever that emotional, whatever that emotion is, whatever the trigger for the response is. If you if you are able to catch it and go, oh wait, no, no, no, not going to react this way, right? As parents, we have to practice the two-second rule all the time because as our kids get older, it is hard for us to sometimes allow them to be their own person. Yeah, I know better, I know what’s good for you. I always try and remind myself with my daughters, remember, was it okay for me at their age? Right? So take a big road trip or something. I worry about them. I’m you know, I’m a girl dad. I’m aware of I can have all kinds of horrible thoughts about what might happen, right? But I remind myself that at 20 or 22, I was doing road trips with my friends. I was, hey, let’s go. You know, I was in school in Southern California. Hey, let’s go over to Lake Mead and rent a houseboat. So if that’s okay for me, it’s got to be okay for my daughters. I can tell them, hey, I want you to be careful, I want you to think about this, but I have to allow them to do that because it’s I can’t it’s I’m inauthentic. If it was okay for me, but it’s not okay for you.
Well, and I and I agree with you because as hard as it is as parents, it’s so hard, it’s so hard to not jump in there. And as mothers, we Mexican mothers, because I’m full-blooded Mexican to try to dear God. I’m like, pull back, no, no, because I remember having a a good buddy of mine the other day, Denise Melianta, she’s over in New York City, and she said, So I’m gonna give you a piece of advice. Uh, she’s a woman of faith just like me. And she said, before you jump in there and try to tell your kids, you know, how to feel about God, for example, let them experience God the way you have experienced God in your own journey. Because if you have someone coming in and telling you what you should or should not feel or think or not think, you’re taking that experience away from them and you’re taking the power away from God too, because he’s there to transform their life in a way that only he can. And I’m gonna tell you like, we don’t know best sometimes. We’re jumping in there without really understanding what the true plan of their life is. And sometimes when we come in, we muck things up. That’s like true though, if you think about it, because it’s like, well, how else are they gonna learn how to discern his voice if you’re constantly the voice they hear in their head?
Absolutely, because have their own experiences and and they have to look, we learn so much from our failures. Look, we’re all going to fail at things. Uh, when I talk to people about beginning their epic journey, whatever it is, writing a book, running a marathon, traveling somewhere, changing a job, being brave about getting into relate, you know, being open to relationships and understanding that in doing that, you you can get hurt. And you are gonna get hurt at some point in your lifetime. Someone you’re gonna be in a relationship, someone’s gonna say something mean that hurts your feelings, they may do something, but you gotta just be open. And there’s so many people on their epic journey go, I need to have all before I do this, I need to have all the answers. Well, okay, uh, here’s the simple question. Again, I like to break it down and go, let me make it relatable. So, Sylvia, when you got up this morning, did you have all the answers to all the questions that you’re gonna get asked today? Heck no. Did it stop you from getting up? No. So I I go, okay, so in your daily life, the fact that you don’t have all the answers didn’t stop you. So why on whatever your journey is, are you letting that stop you? I don’t want to fail, right? Or what what if I start this and I make mistakes? I’m like, I I make mistakes all the time. I try and learn from those mistakes and try and go, oh, well, that’s not the way to do this, right? But failure is part of the journey. And if it isn’t, frankly, there’s no learning going on. Daniel Coyle, who wrote uh the talent code, so you’re talking earlier about sort of those neural pathways, and he’s talking about how we learn how to do something, right? Be it play the guitar, play tennis, drive a car, write. And we build these neural pathways that allow us to not have to think so much, right? The you’re like, oh, I need to write uh words out, I need to write my name. I don’t have to consciously think about how to make a Z and an A and and all the rest of it. I have that that neural pathway, right? But he says, the best learning, the deepest learning happens when we struggle at something. If you try, you’re trying to master something and you just do it right away. There’s actually not a lot of learning going on. But uh he uses an example of someone trying to play uh Blue Danube on a cello, a young lady, and she’s struggling to get, she gets up to a certain point, and she’s just struggling with the chords and how to move the bow and stuff. And he’s like, There’s deep learning going on there. She will know this better than someone who just sat down, read the music, and goes, Oh, okay, and knocks it out. She’ll know that forever. The other person without the music won’t know it. And I really do believe in that in our own life. And those mistakes, when we struggle, no matter where your struggle is, right? You can say, Yeah, there’s learning here. I’m I’m learning. You, you, you being a woman of faith, right? Um, there may be times where it’s hard to understand what what God’s path for you. You’re like, are you really? This is the path? I don’t understand, right? You talked about, you know, hearing God, God in your own life. Well, look, sometimes there’s a lot of other noise, and I don’t know what to listen to. I think all of that’s so important. But you’re right, yeah, we have to let our kids figure it out. And if if uh the same way that if my mom tells me I’m doing something wrong, I yeah, my reaction is the little the little kid who goes, Don’t tell me what to do. Adolescence is challenging for parents. Why? Because our kids are growing up, they want more freedom, they feel that they deserve more freedom. And as parents, we’re like, oh my god, I have to protect them even more. It’s like a license, you know.
Well, and then we incapacitate them by overdoing and overfixing and the helicopter, you know, mom. Absolutely.
Yeah, I look, my my my ex-wife worked in HR. She actually had a couple of people who showed up for interviews and their parent was with them. And she’s like, This is a thin adult. No, you cannot come in and no, like, no, you shouldn’t be here, right? And she’s like, that’s a hard, hard thing to say. I never had a parent show up to an interview with me. I would be horrified.
I think the fears like of what we know now versus what how we grew up, because I was also Gen X, like you, is just so much more, right?
Because the amount of information in our head is like so I I don’t remember having as much information as my 11-year-olds.
Absolutely. But but here’s the here’s the thing. I mean, I love seeing on social media, you know, the Gen Xers, and they’re like, look, first of all, it was like a daily game of survivor. There were games that we played that could never be played today, but were regular parts of uh our childhood, you know, uh Red Rover, we were on playgrounds that I had cement. There was no, you know, chopped up bicycle tires and uh car tires and foam and uh we end up with a bunch of concussions, honestly. Like, like seriously, we we we fell down, we scraped our knees. We got up, we did it again. Yeah, we rubbed some dirt in it and we went on. I mean, I saw this recently, and I’m like, no, that’s so true. At like 10 o’clock at night, the TV station would come on and go, it’s 10 o’clock, do you know where your kids are? That was that was not today. Parents would be like, Oh my god, where are my kids? Right? I’m being a bad parent. For our parents, it was like, oh, hey, by the way, you have kids, do you know where they are? They didn’t. We didn’t have cell phones, we didn’t have GPS tracking. I don’t know about you, but like I was out and about. I grew up in in a country area. I had woods I was exploring with my friend.
Same thing. I was in South Texas, and we just kind of rode our bikes everywhere and played softball till the sun went down and we were out and about like the whole afternoon.
If if you came back, you know, by the time it got dark, it was fine. Look at look at this thing, Sylvia. When we were growing up in the summer, the worst punishment was you had to stay in the house. Now the punishment is you have to leave the house. What happened?
I mean, seriously. I even asked my daughter on the way to her camp this morning. It’s like, let’s think of ways that we can be together as a family that does not include electronics. And she’s like, I don’t know. I’m like, well, think about it during the camp.
Did you go? Am I right that like the punishment was that you couldn’t go outside? Yeah, yeah. Parents are in you. I I know I kind of I’m like, look, you need to go outside. What are we gonna do out there? I don’t know. Jay’s a lizard. I don’t care. Use your imagination. Like two old people on the well, in our day, we were but it’s historically, yes, general and my generation, but I look at it and go, Yeah, we are Gen X is really tough.
Yeah, we are tough cookies. We I just but I do know this about Gen Xersers is that because we’re tough cookies, we also fell into some of these traps, identity traps, because we did have to survive it, right?
So, can you speak a little bit about the identity? How does it play with this epic reset?
I think it does. I think look, we all have multiple identities. And there are times where our identity, a part of our identity, is a bigger part of who we are. Okay, so we we talked a lot about being a parent. Being a parent’s big part of your identity, but when your kids are old enough and they do, they move out, and all of a sudden there are no more kids. It’s not that you stop being a mom, but that’s just not or a dad. That’s not the primary, the biggest part of your identity. And there are people who say, Oh my god, what am I gonna do? The last 25 years, I’ve just I’ve gotten them up, I’ve made sure that they’re getting to where they need to go to. I’m I’m doing and all of a sudden they don’t need me. No, yes, that part of your identity is now shifting, and that reset is to go, I’m more than just one, you are more than just a mom. You’re an author, you’re a podcast host, you’re a daughter, possibly a sister, you’re a wife, you’re a friend, your any number of things. So that reset is going, okay, what part of my identity is going, am I gonna raise? What part where where do I want? Hey, now I have time for me. Look at that. I can choose to do something. I’m going to take care of myself. I’m gonna put down my electronics and I’m gonna start to walk and explore my area on foot.
I was just curious about it because I know that a lot of this pausing and resetting is also playing into the identity piece of who am I becoming, right? Because it’s a different identity than the one new ones were. The like the old versus the new, the new that reframes these thoughts that looks at the emotional trigger and says, Okay, I’m gonna choose differently because I don’t want to be this person anymore. I don’t want to fall into these patterns anymore.
This isn’t serving me anymore. Yeah, I don’t want to be that person, right? Yeah. And look, maybe you find that you’re reacting in a way to someone in your life that you’re like, I just really, gosh, I just that’s not serving me, and it’s not serving this relationship. I want to try and reframe it. And look, sometimes you you’re doing your part, the other person doesn’t want to accept that that you’re changing. Okay, well, maybe that’s a person that doesn’t deserve as much of your time and thought because it’s not serving you. Um, we all we have to be happy. If something you’re doing isn’t making you happy, your job, a relationship, try and change it. If change just isn’t possible, now you have to make another choice. And those choices are are scary and they’re hard, but ultimately slugging through that hard part, you are so much better on the other side. And rarely do you look and go, I shouldn’t have done that.
Yeah, yeah. And there is in the darkness, I have really found my light. Like the light has really shone really brightly in some of these tougher chapters. You were mentioning earlier, like the woman that was struggled in playing the cello. I struggled in playing, you know, hitting a backhand in tennis during the years I was getting bullied. It was the one thing I could hold on to that if I was just good at something for me, then I could survive some of those years. They they were less stressful for me. But I do know that we learn lessons along our journeys that have been profound. What has been the greatest one for you and all this change you’ve incurred?
I guess you asked me the question, it’s a pre-interview question. What is my big why? And my answer is, why not? Why can’t I do something that seems hard? Why can’t I take something on that seems very daunting? And I’ve done it multiple times in my life. I’ve run marathons in my life. That’s really hard. I didn’t know how to do it, but I I figured that I I need to ask for help. I got help. I got a training schedule, it it got created. Some structure for myself. It wasn’t as hard. When I actually ran my marathons, yeah, they were really hard. But I I but I was like, I I can do this. I am going to complete these. And I’m happy to say I ran 12 halves, four fulls, and a 50k ultra. I don’t run anymore very much, but uh when I did those, I completed every single one of those races. I’m not fast, but I finished every single one of my races. I also accepted I there are races I may start and not be able to finish for for a number of reasons. And although that’s highly disappointing, that is part of the challenge of doing anything. I I might not I might fail.
So I love it. Why not? Why not me? Why not do it now? Why not and try it? And you’d be surprised how much you learn as you take one micro step at a time because it is micro steps. A lot of people think it’s these giant leaps that you’re taking in transformation, and that’s not how you and I have experienced it. So I’m just grateful that you were on the show to kind of share some of this relatable examples of how we can take the reset in any stage in life, in any role in life, right? Because we we discussed a gamut of roles on the podcast today, but most chiefly, chiefly as parents, because we that’s a big one for those listening on the other side of this. Any last words of encouragement?
And Xander, where can we purchase your books, your services? We want to book you as a speaker.
Absolutely. If you go to epicbegins.com, you will find all the all the my books, my podcasts, my YouTube channel where you can watch my TV show, uh contact information if you’d like like to work with me to start your epic journey. And I just want to finish up with this that remember that epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
Nice, clear, and simple. And I couldn’t agree more. So thank you so much for joining us today, Xander, on release outreve purpose. And for those listening, you know I always sign this off to remember Matthew 5.14 to be the light. Be the light in your own life. You have choices. You have the ability to pause before you make the same choices that have brought you to the same place over and over and over again. So remember the epic reset. Pause is probably the most important step that we discussed here today because it is the chance that you have to make a change in the epic life you want to lead. So for the rest of you, have a wonderful and blessed rest of your week. Bye now.
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