1KHO 925: Your Energy Is Contagious | Jon Gordon, The Energy Bus

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast

Host Jenny Urich sits down with bestselling author Jon Gordon to discuss how personal energy is contagious and can be intentionally cultivat

Key takeaways

• Jon Gordon has authored 32 books, including 19 bestsellers such as The Energy Bus.
• Implementing weekly family meetings can create a foundation of mission and vision for children.

Main topics

• Contagious Energy
• Positive Habit Formation

Notable quotes

You're not the thoughts you think. You're the thoughts you believe to be true.

Conclusion

Listeners gain actionable mental frameworks to transform negativity in

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:34) Hey friends, welcome back to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. I'm Jenny Urich, and I'm really glad you're here. Whether you've listened to five episodes or 500, I do not take it for granted that you choose to spend some of your time with me. There are so many things competing for our attention, and the fact that you keep showing up for these conversations is the best. If this podcast has encouraged you, taught you something, introduced you to a book that you loved, or just kept you company somewhere along the way, would you leave a review? It takes a minute or two and is a huge help to the show. I read each one and they are super encouraging. And while you're there, make sure you're following the show because tomorrow, Dr. Mitch Prinstein is joining us. And we're talking about something that affects us from childhood all the way through adulthood, popularity. There are actually two very different kinds of popularity. And the one we tend to chase isn't necessarily the one that gives us the life or relationships we actually want. It is a fascinating conversation. Today, we have the inspiring John Gordon. We've actually been trying to get John on this podcast for a couple of years, and then in the strangest turn of events, I randomly met him in person just days before this interview finally came together. John has written more than 30 books, including The Energy Bus, which has sold millions of copies. His newest book is called The Power of Positive Habits. This conversation is about the energy we bring into our homes, our work, our relationships, and our own lives, and remembering that our energy is contagious. Here is John Gordon. Speaker 2 (1:55) Hours Outside podcast. My name Speaker 3 (1:57) is Ginny Ertz. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and today... Speaker 3 (2:02) the incredibly accomplished, the incredibly encouraging and inspiring, the incredibly wise John Gordon. Welcome. Speaker 1 (2:11) Jenny, so great to be with you. You are amazing. Speaker 3 (2:14) Okay, so here is the story. We've actually been going after you for a couple of years, which I'm sure that you don't know because, you know, it's like always through admin and things like that. And about a week ago, it was finally like, oh, well, hey, something might happen with John Gordon. And on, I think the same day, We met in person. I was in Tennessee for John Acuff. He had an event called Stage and Page. It was fantastic. He knocked it out of the park and there was a dinner at a hotel and you were there with your wife. You were in town for a wedding. Speaker 1 (2:47) How cool is that? So we walk by and we see this little cafe. We want to go in there and then we realize, oh, there's a private party. And then we see that John Acuff is the host of the party. And I'm like, oh, John's a friend. Like, should we say hi? And I'm like, nah, I don't want to bother him. My wife's like, no, we got to go in and say hi. So I go in and I say hi and we hugged. And so I'm glad he was happy to see me. and then you were there too which was awesome and then we met so it really was you know synchronistic how it happened i think it was a god thing that we were meant to meet in that moment i thought it was so fun and so cool i just loved your energy right away and and seeing john of course was great and yeah i love what he has done with that event he's just such a great guy such a great friend he Speaker 3 (3:28) is he is fantastic it was interesting because where, you know, at that point, I knew that we were going to probably have a conversation somewhat soon. And you have written in the 30s, 32 books, is that correct? Speaker 1 (3:40) 32 books. Speaker 3 (3:41) 32 books, including 19 bestsellers and five children's books. And so I was asking your wife, if I had to pick one of the 32, which one should I talk to John about? Now, the newest one is Power of Positive Habits. This is a great one to read as a family. I know you talk a lot to families and you talk to CEOs and corporations, but also to families. And what a great format that you could read a page every day for the beginning of the school year. Power of Positive Habits, proven strategies to exponentially grow you. But your wife said, talk about the energy. G-Bus, especially because we're talking to a lot of parents. So I took notes on both, but I would love if you could back up, back up a couple decades. Who was John Gordon before writing 32 books and speaking to the NFL and being on CNN? Speaker 1 (4:28) Well, Jenny, before you go there, I do want to say for parents, I have a heart for parents because I'm Speaker 3 (4:34) a Speaker 1 (4:34) parent. And I know the challenge they face. And I faced a lot of challenges. My kids are now 28 and 26. I made a lot of mistakes. When you say read this book as a family, I love that because I'm getting a lot of emails from people who are now reading the books with their kids. And they're actually talking about these habits because these are 93 habits that will exponentially grow you. And so as you're going through the habits. This is going to set a foundation for your kids for life as they read these habits because their mental habits, their physical habits, their... ways of living your life and overcoming fear, ways of overcoming negative thinking and overthinking, which is what so many kids struggle with. So you're going to give them a foundation from a mental perspective, also a physical perspective, and also a relational perspective, because it's all about building relationships. So when people are telling me they're reading it as a family, and you just said that, that's confirmation that I just want to emphasize, like, you can actually read a habit in about two minutes, three minutes, go over with your kids, and then do the next one the next day. And that's what's happening. And I wrote it for people to read these habits and say, okay, these are all these different habits. Which ones do we want to implement? And each person can implement what they want to as an individual member of the family. But then collectively, you can say, all right, what are going to be our family habits going forward? Like the family meeting, having a family meeting once a week is like ideal. That changed my family, having a family meeting where we talked about our goals. We talked about our mission and vision as a family. We talked about the one words, which is one of the habits in the book, the one words that each one of us picked for the year. So each family member picks a word. And then we went over how we were doing with our word for that year. And that was like a game changer, that family meeting. We also talked about problems that each person was facing. And we came up with solutions as a family. And my family now is really... tight all these years later because of that. I firmly believe that we are a strong family because of that family meeting. The only bad thing I say about this is when you do this, is that years later, now when they're adults, they want to go on vacation with us and travel with us. And I'm like, you know, like, hey, kids, we just want to go alone, mom and I. Like, we don't want you with us, but they actually want to come. And so it made it, some might see that as a really great thing. But sometimes I'm like, you know, I just want to travel alone. But if that's the worst thing in the world, that's fine. But I just wanted to say that about habits. And then going to your question of who I was back then, I was just someone who was struggling. I was someone who was really negative. I had two little kids, a wife, a mortgage. I was trying to figure out how to pay my bills. I lost my job. Go to the dot-com crash. Didn't know how I was going to pay the bills. Didn't know how I was going to support my family. And I'm crumbling from the inside out. I'm 30, 31 at the time. We had just moved to Jacksonville from Atlanta. I'm originally from New York. I met my wife in Atlanta. We then moved to Jacksonville and then everything just came crashing down. But that was when I really found what I was born to do. That was when I was found, okay, why am I here? What is my mission? And I asked those questions and writing and speaking came to me. In the darkest time of my life where I'm crumbling, And my wife is threatening to leave me because I'm so negative and so miserable. I said, what am I born to do? And writing and speaking came to me. And I wanted to be more positive. And that led to me eventually, you know, writing all the books that I write. Speaker 3 (8:01) So this story about George in the energy bus is very much your story. Yes. And it's very much a lot of people's stories. I loved how you were able to weave in there the common human things of being overwhelmed, of having marital problems. One of the things that he said was basically that he was like, I'm trying to find the wording in my notes, but he was so popular at home, right, with his kids, but he was kind of annoyed about it. And all of these things are so relatable. Upset on Monday, struggling with his coworkers. Maybe he's going to lose his job. He gets a flat tire. And what is incredible about it is he turns his story around in a week or two. And that was one of the biggest messages I got out of the book is if you are in a spot and. Joy, who is the bus driver, says everyone goes through things. No one goes through life untested. Every one of us has challenges that you can start to turn things around fairly quickly. You had listed in this book, so you have the energy bus. I think it was actually brilliant of your wife to bring this one up to talk about. And now I do want to talk about a couple of the habits that stuck out to me to empower positive habits. But there's a children's book. And so you could, if you have younger kids, you could be reading the energy bus, you and your spouse, just you, and then reading energy bus. And there's a version for schools. So there's a lot here that people can use. You talk about the characteristics of positivity. And I was wondering in an age of AI, if you would consider these to be some of the top qualities a person would need to navigate. So optimism. trust, enthusiasm, love, purpose, joy, passion, spirit to live and work and perform at a higher level. Like to me, I saw these qualities and I thought, I don't think grades matter quite so much anymore. Speaker 1 (9:54) They don't. They really don't matter because as we know, kids and AI, all the information that you need will be given to you. So tests are relevant. We want kids to think critically, which is important and teach them how to think. and how to think positively is really key. Like optimism is everything. Belief is everything. They did research from Duke University and they found that optimists work harder, get paid more, and are more likely to succeed in business and sports. And what they found was that these optimists, because they believed in a brighter and better future, they took the actions necessary to create it. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy. So what you believe so often like determines what you create. So teaching kids that their belief matters, their optimism is important, that tomorrow's going to be better, gives them hope. It gives them resilience. It gives them focus. It also gives them grit. So when I talk about leadership, optimism really is the number one characteristic of a leader because you have to believe in a brighter, better future in order to rally people towards it. So as a family, what do we believe? What do we believe about the future? And do we believe we can create it? And do we believe we have the resilience and the strength to overcome all the challenges along the way that we're going to face? You have to face it in order to go through it and then overcome it. But then you become stronger on the other side of it. So teaching grit is important, but how positivity fuels our grit, how positivity fuels our hope, how it fuels our faith. how it feeds us and feeds others. So a lot of times people think of positivity like as a rah-rah thing or a Pollyanna thing. I always say it's not about seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. It's knowing you have the power to overcome the thorns. And it's not about ignoring reality. It's about maintaining optimism, belief, and faith in order to create a better reality. And talking to your kids about this early on, it's never too early. The Energy Bus for Kids teaches kids about optimism, about their attitude, about staying positive through challenges. George, the main character in the book, is getting bullied and he has to learn how to deal with the bullying. He has to learn how to deal with energy vampires who are trying to drain his energy and suck the life out of him. The naysayers who are speaking negative things to him. He has to learn how to overcome that. So it's a very real book. It's actually, I think, my second most popular book out of all my books is The Energy Bus for Kids. And the energy bus is my most popular book because again, everyone's going to have to deal with negativity and everyone will have to overcome it to define themselves, their success and their family's future. And that's why I think it's so important. Speaker 3 (12:35) Absolutely. Wow. Oh, I can see how it would be so important for kids to read the book. And I love that so many of the things just translate. Like you talked about the kid would love to read about the energy vampires. So one of the things that you talk about with George, and this is sort of related to what you brought up at the beginning, you know, he's got young kids, he's struggling with his wife, he thinks he might lose his job. And he says things like, I'm tired, I'm stressed, I'm anxious, my life is spinning out of control. I found the wording, he was a reluctant celebrity in his own home. Such great wording. They wanted a piece of him, but he just wanted to hide in silence. He doesn't like to wait. He feels like a lot of things are inconvenient. And so the premise of this is he gets a flat tire. He gets on this bus with this energetic, beautifully energetic woman named Joy. And she basically says, it's my, you know, part of my job is to try and get this energy, this positive energy into your life with these 10 rules. And he scoffs at it. But one of the things that comes out at the very beginning is he thinks that she has no problems. You know, he's like, oh, how hard could her life be? All she has to do is drive this bus and get people to where they need to go and talk with strangers. Can you talk about the fact that everyone is carrying something? And so to sort of have this self-pity view that it's only me is not going to help you in the long run. Speaker 1 (13:58) It's ironic because he thought she had no problems. She probably initially looks at him. and thinks he has no problems, and we often do that. We think we're the only one who is dealing with problems, and we often feel alone, and we feel isolated when we're like that. It's really helpful to remember that every one of us is dealing with something, and that person that you're talking to or sitting across from is likely dealing with something going on in their life, some challenge, some adversity, some pain, some past, they're dealing with. We are all dealing with something. And so then you're not alone if you're going through it. Remember that. You're not alone. Everyone is experiencing the same kind of challenges. Maybe not the same exact one in this moment, but throughout your life, everyone's going to experience family issues, loss of a loved one. struggles with their job, struggles with their growth, struggles with their identity of who they are and who they want to be and how they want to grow. When people retire from their jobs, they often struggle with their identity of who am I now that I don't have my job anymore. So everyone at every level is going to struggle. So it's knowing that, which is very helpful. And it's also knowing that there are major themes in life and adversity is our partner in growth. That's good. So the more you see adversity as your partner in growth and you teach your kids this, that we're actually growing stronger from it. Let's not run from adversity. We face it. It's our partner in growth. And as we face the adversity, we're going to grow and then we're going to become stronger because of what we face. That's the ultimate teaching. And Joy, as great as she is, the energy she has, obviously she has her own struggles, but George was just in such a dark place. He was just so negative that he's looking at her life and everyone else's life as, It's better than his. I think that's what we also do. We compare other