[00:00] These conversations create magic. These aren’t the everyday conversations you have. These are intentional conversations with the right people. When you have conversations, you learn about opportunities and new clients and new ideas and new insights and new things that you didn’t otherwise know. Welcome to another episode of success through failure.

[00:24] This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. and today I’m bringing you a solo episode. We’re talking about the magic of the invisible untapped force that is controlling your life right now. Whether you know it or not. And how you can harness it if you like the solo episode more than you like the interview episodes.

[00:43] I know for me personally, there’s some podcasts that I listen to where I really enjoy hearing the host and the interview episodes. Aren’t quite as interesting to me. So if you like just the solo episodes, you can see all of those. You go to JimHarshawJr.com/SOLO. And they’re just listed right there on the page.

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[01:55] And you’ll magically hear my voice booming through your smart speaker. All right. So let’s get into today’s episode on this. Magical untapped, invisible force. That’s controlling your life. What is it? Right. You wanna know? This came from a conversation that I had with a client recently, a Pathfinder. We call my clients and the reveal, your path program, his name’s Jeff.

[02:15] And we are having this conversation and that’s really what sparked what we’re talking about here today and what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna give you four examples of this sort of magical force, this untapped thing that has happened in my life and totally changed my life in these four different examples.

[02:31] And I want you to see if you can understand or sort of catch what the common theme is, what was the thing that happened that really had the big impact and was the catalyst. You know, after I share these four quick examples with you, we’re gonna get into sort of how to use this for yourself. Okay. So the first one is this, you know, for me, like growing up, I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, about a half an hour outside of Pittsburgh, rural country, boy grew up on 10 acres, riding four wheelers and hunting and fishing and doing country boy stuff.

[02:58] Doing a lot of splitting wood was a real fun, pastime fun in air quotes for much of my childhood. But, you know, dad was a construction worker. Mom was a secretary blue-collar family. And personally for myself, you know, wrestling was my sport of choice. Whereas as it was for a lot of kids in our area and you know, I, I never achieved any of my goals.

[03:19] And my goal was to be a Pennsylvania state champion. And not only did I not win the state championship, I didn’t even get on the podium. I didn’t finish in the top six in the. So I had pretty low confidence in myself. As far as wrestling went, you know, I didn’t have any success. I lacked self-belief, but luckily there was one man who watched me train and watched me compete in the summer on the national team when I competed for the Pennsylvania national team at the national championships.

[03:49] And while I, again, didn’t have the success there that I would’ve liked to have had he saw something. His name’s Jim Akerly. He was the assistant coach at Virginia, where ended up going to school. He became the head coach at American university. He’s now the head wrestling coach at quest school of wrestling outside of Pittsburgh.

[04:05] Great guy has had a huge impact on my life. But Jim reached out to me and began recruiting me based on what he saw and him reaching out to me. And those conversations changed my life. You know, it got me into the university of Virginia, opened up my eyes to a school. I really never even would’ve considered or thought about as the number one ranked public university in the country academically.

[04:28] And, you know, it was just kind of outta my league in so many ways, but he recruited. Came to the university of Virginia life completely changed, completely transformed. And I, I, I most likely wouldn’t be standing here talking to you and you wouldn’t be listening to my voice right now. If it hadn’t been for Jim Aley, reaching out to me and having a conversation and recruiting me to the University of Virginia, like what if he never called.

[04:52] How would my life be different? You can’t even count the ways it’d be immeasurably different. So that’s the first example. The second example is this. After I graduated from the University of Virginia in 1999. Instead of going right into the workforce. I decided that I wanted to do something different. I do like to go about things differently.

[05:10] It’s kind of a little bit about how I’m wired. I didn’t wanna go into the workforce. And I had a friend who played soccer, actually won four national championships with the University of Virginia soccer team. When he was in school, graduated a couple years ahead of me. He was living in Guatemala at a meditation center and he had been on these grand adventures sailing almost around the world.

[05:30] Done a lot of traveling and he’s like, Jim, before you get into the workforce, you gotta do something different. Right? You gotta, this is your chance to go do something different. For me, it was, it was my life up to that point was mostly wrestling. So I decided to, you know, instead of going into the workforce, I, I ended up painting houses and staying at my mom and dad’s house just for about two or three months, painting houses, saving up all, all my money as much money as I could.

[05:49] And I bought a one-way ticket flight to Houston took a bus. I got to Brownsville, Texas crossed the border into Matmos Mexico. And that was the beginning of an epic, epic journey for me. I had three months, I was gonna try and stretch my money as long as I could. And I figured it would be around three months.

[06:08] It was kind of my estimate. And I had nowhere to go nowhere to be no agenda. Other. Find the adventure of the day. So I packed all down through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Baileys, and backup, and just jumping on buses from city to city town, to town village, to village, literally chicken buses. I mean, literally on a bus with a chicken next to you on the bus.

[06:29] I mean, that’s a real thing. And I had this grand adventure. I ended up in Guatemala, which really the crux of this story is I ended up in Guatemala and I’m at. Ancient may ruins Tikal, and it’s a beautiful mine ruins. And, you know, I just have a hammock. There was no hotel nearby or campsite or anything like that, but you can string up a hammock for like three bucks a night or two bucks a night or something like that.

[06:53] You can string up your hammock in this pavilion and kind of camp out there. So that was what I did. I strung up my hammock. And I settled in for the evening because the next morning I was gonna go into these may ruins and spend the day and kind of journey around and explore these, uh, ancient Mayan ruins.

[07:09] And I was sitting there in my hammock and I’m reading my guidebook and catching up on some journaling. And that was my plan for the night. I wasn’t planning on engaging with anybody. There’s a little restaurant kind of on the site there. And it wasn’t really planning on engaging with anybody, but it’s like, you know what, like, you never know who you’re gonna meet.

[07:23] You never know the conversations you’re gonna have. So I decided to, right. And I went into the restaurant and there were these. Couple people, this one group, and there was these two girls there by the sales. I ended up chatting with them and we’re talking. And actually we know a little side note here. We actually created a plan.

[07:37] We were all tight on our money and I’m not super proud of this, but I’m gonna tell you this story. Anyway, we decided that we were gonna wake up and go into the Mayan ruins early, before they opened. Because we were trying to cut corners and not spend the $3 or something like that tour, the may ruins.

[07:52] So we actually did. We followed through on this plan, we woke up early, went into the may ruins, snuck past the guard gate thinking we were being sneaky and low and behold a guard flashes. His flashlight on us. and we like freak out. We run and I ran into the ruins and started running down this trail, get totally lost.

[08:12] It’s pitch black. I’ve lost in the jungle on this trail that I can barely see. There’s holler monkeys, screaming down from the trees above me. And it was the most bizarre experience you, you can imagine. I ended up, you know, making my way through, down this trail, through the jungle, not knowing. Any direction to go or where I was going, but eventually it led me into, thankfully the Mayan ruins got away from the guard, snuck up to the top of the highest temple.

[08:37] That was well above the top of the jungle. And I could look down on the trees, watch the sunrise as I, I drank a bottle of water and how a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on top of an inch at Mayan ruin anyway, so. Amazing experience. But in that conversation, the prior night as we were kind of hatching this plan, the one girl told me that she had this great job back in America with a company called Trek America.

[09:00] And I was like, wow, that sounds like an amazing job. She was telling me all these adventure camping tours that she’s leading all across the country. She drove a 15 passenger van with people from all over the world, mostly young people in their twenties and thirties who like to have a good time and like to adventure.

[09:15] I’m like, man, what a job that sounds like so much fun. So I wrote down the 800 number, the phone number in my journal and closed my journal, thought nothing of. And we go on this adventure the next morning that kind of went awry. But a few months later, I’m back in the states after I complete this epic journey, which has all kinds of other adventures.

[09:33] Maybe I should do an entire episode on this epic adventure at some point, cuz there were experiences like scuba diving in a collapse, volcanic cauldron, scuba diving at night, hiking into cloud forests and national parts and Honduras experience with the shaman medicine, man, I mean, on and on just epic, epic experiences.

[09:53] But after the trip’s over, I’m back in the states and I’m working at my high school as a teacher Seneca valley high school back in Pennsylvania, Western Pennsylvania go Raiders. And I’m realizing to myself like I’m not done. I’m not done traveling and adventuring yet. So I dig up my journal. I find it. I open up to the page where I have this phone number written down of Trek America.

[10:14] I called Trek America. Turns out. They’re looking for tour leaders for the summer and I sign up, do the interview, get hired, fly out to Los Angeles, get put into a training group. And there’s three weeks of training before you can lead actual tours of these people of, you know, travelers from all around the world who come in for this.

[10:33] And there’s this really cute girl in my training group and names Allison and fast forward. She’s my. Quick interruption. If you like what you’re hearing here and you want to learn how you can implement this into your life. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/APPLY to see how you can get a free one-on-one coaching session with me.

[10:56] That’s JimHarshawJr.com/APPLY. Now, back to the show. So this conversation that I had in Guatemala, this chance conversation, when I decided to engage, rather than not engage, decided to have a conversation with strangers, as opposed to not, not only led me on this crazy adventure that happened the next morning, getting lost in the jungle, but it also led me to.

[11:18] Meeting my wife. I mean, think about that one conversation and the power of that and the impact that that has had on my life. Like what if, what if I never spoke to this girl? What if I never met her? And she never told me about this really cool job she had back in the states. What if I never wrote down that number?

[11:32] What if I never had that conversation? I most certainly wouldn’t be here talking to you today. My life would be so different in so many ways. So that’s the second one, right? The first one is, you know, Jim Akerly recruiting me to the University of Virginia. The second one is this conversation I have in Guatemala.

[11:47] The third one is this. When I decided to get out of the college wrestling coaching business, I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn’t really know how to go about it. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know what kind of company to start. And so I spoke with the local businessman who was a friend of a friend and he had an idea.

[12:05] He said, Jim, look around town. He goes, What does every building in town have in common, they have windows, every building, every home has windows. There’s only one window cleaning business. I’m going to start a window cleaning business. And he’s a multimillionaire. This guy, he goes, I’m gonna start it unless you want to.

[12:20] Then you can go ahead and do it. So I went ahead and did it. I started the window cleaning business, you know, before, you know, we have hundreds of clients and three crews and three work trucks on the road, and it’s a successful thriving business. And. I ended up selling that business and starting my next business.

[12:35] And this really started my entrepreneurial bug, you know, really ignited a fire inside of me to be an entrepreneur and sparked that interest, but it all started with a conversation. And if that conversation didn’t happen, if I didn’t reach out and have that conversation intentionally, I would not be here talking to you.

[12:52] Today. So that’s the third example. Again, the first one recruited to the University of Virginia. The second one, this experience in Guatemala, this third one is, uh, you know, this conversation with the entrepreneur, which led me to starting my first business. Really my second business, if you count my college summer painting business, my first business, really, but this fourth and final example that I wanna share with you is this we’ve been married for almost 20 years.

[13:15] Now. We just had our 19th wedding anniversary, just this. And when you go through a marriage, when you go through spending your life with somebody for that long, you have your ups and downs, that’s just how it works. And over the years we’ve worked with a marriage therapist and those conversations have brought understanding.

[13:35] They’ve brought healing and they’ve brought growth in our relationship. And I’m so thankful for those sessions. Because it’s quite possible to say that that they’ve saved our marriage or certainly they’ve improved our marriage. Don’t know, you know, if we didn’t have those conversations, what would happen?

[13:51] I don’t know. But these conversations were so powerful. What if we never engaged in those conversations with our marriage therapists? Who knows how my life would be different right now. And so I just shared with you four stories, four examples in each of these, a simple thing happened. Which led to major, major impact on my life.

[14:15] And if you don’t know already, if you haven’t been a hotel, those things, the catalyst in each one of those examples, one of those stories was a conversation. It was a conversation with a different person who I may not normally speak with. The magic in these stories is a conversation. The magic in your life are the conversations that you have, or maybe the magic you’re missing out on in your life is the conversations.

[14:38] You’re not. You know, the title of this episode is about the magic of the invisible untapped force. That’s controlling your life and how to harness it. It’s these conversations meeting with people, meeting with people who have information and experiences and access to something that you don’t the conversation with Jim Akerly who recruited me to the University of Virginia. Thank goodness. He reached out. He engaged in that conversation with me. The conversation with the girl in Guatemala. Thank goodness. I didn’t just decide to burn my head in my guidebook or my journal for the night. I went out and decided to have some conversations.

[15:10] Same thing. When I reached out to the entrepreneur, the businessman, same thing. When we reached out to the marriage therapist. Like these conversations create magic. These aren’t the everyday conversations you have. These are intentional conversations with the right people. When you have conversations, you learn about opportunities and new clients and new ideas and new insights and new things that you didn’t otherwise know.

[15:35] These conversations are the magical untapped, invisible force. That’s dictating your life. Like we don’t even realize these half the time. Right? There’s a great quote that says until you make the unconscious conscious, it will control your life and you will call it fate, like at some unconscious level, you know, that having the right conversations with the right people is important.

[15:59] Right now with this conversation that I’m having with you, I know it’s one way, but this conversation I’m bringing this and helping this unconscious stuff, you know, knowledge that you have around. Yeah. I need to have conversations with the right people and networking and relationship building, et cetera.

[16:13] But when you do this, it brings you unconscious to the conscious, and now you can control this. Now your life is not up to fade. It’s up to you. I just highlighted four obvious, big conversations that had huge results in my life, but there are hundreds or, or thousands more that have led me to hear where I’m at and led you to where you’re at in your life.

[16:34] But what magic are you missing out on, like through the pandemic for me. and I know a lot of people, you know, I ended up holding up in my home office and not getting in the habit of not leaving and not connecting with people, but I systematically forced myself to get out block time on my counter to get out and reengage with people in network.

[16:55] And guess what? The magic is happening just a week ago. I had coffee with a guy who. We worked together at a prior job and he left and I left and we went our separate ways. I just wanted to reconnect with him just to see how he’s doing. and, you know, I’ve always respected him. We were never close, but I thought, Hey, let’s just connect.

[17:12] You know, they don’t know what’s gonna happen. Well, guess what? Now we’re talking about a huge business opportunity, you know, and I actually was part magic for him because his wife is in a new role and I have a couple of people would be really helpful for her to be connected with. And I, I made those connections for.

[17:27] Like, how was the magic for them? He was the magic for me. We were the magic for each other. You might be saying, oh Jim, but I, I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t know people, I don’t have opportunities to share or information or experience or wisdom. Yes, you do. It’s not just about going to find other people who can help you.

[17:41] It’s about helping them. It’s about building relationships. The grant study, which is the longest longitudinal study on human happiness ever. It’s based outta Harvard. It’s been going on for 85 or 90 years. What they’ve discovered. Is that the single biggest factor in happiness is relationships having meaningful connections, meaningful relationships.

[18:00] That’s really what this comes down to connecting with people, having relationships. And when you do that magic happens. Right. And what I’m talking about is having these, these very specific conversations with very specific people. Sometimes you know, that magic’s gonna happen sometimes, you know, most of the time you just don’t.

[18:20] Right. Who do you have to reach out to like who is doing what you wish you were doing, who is doing the thing that you’re doing now, but doing it in a way that you wish you were doing it, who has started that business, or, you know, run that marathon or heal their relationship. Or done the thing that you admire or want to do, reach out to them who who’s interesting to you, who have you not connected with, since you know this, since they took their new job, or you took your new job since you’ve parted ways, or maybe it’s a doctor or a therapist or a coach or a pastor or an old friend, or maybe it’s a conversation you need to have with your spouse, or maybe a meaningful conversation you have to have with your child.

[19:04] I know recently for myself, I, I had the porn conversation with my 16 year old son, something that I had been thinking about for a long time, how do I have this conversation? How do I make him aware of the negative effects of this stuff? And just, you know, how it’s, it’s not real life and you know how this can affect relationships down the road, all that stuff.

[19:24] Like that was a hard conversation. It was a tough conversation, but I had it and I don’t know, maybe. Maybe at some point in his life, he’ll look back on that conversation, say, wow, that was, you know, thank God dad had that conversation with me. You know, you’re bringing magic to others. They’re bringing magic to you.

[19:40] Connect with people, connect with the right people. It might be a spouse, it might be a child. It might be a coach. It might be somebody who’s doing the thing that you wanna be dealing. Right. As you see from these examples that I gave you, these weren’t people who I normally interacted with some cases, the, you know, it’s the same people you interact with, but you’re having D.

[19:59] Interactions, you know, like the example with my son, having the right conversations with the right people. That’s the magic. That’s the magic. That’s the invisible force that is changing your life. That is controlling your life. That is dictating your life right now. Who’s the one person, just one right now think about one person who you might benefit from having a conversation with who is that person out there right now?

[20:22] Is it an old colleague, somebody who’s in your community and you’re kind of afraid to reach out to them because you never met them before. Maybe it’s an old friend, maybe a coach, maybe, maybe me, you know, you could apply for a free coaching call with me, JimHarshawJr.com/APPLY.. Maybe it’s a mentor.

[20:39] Maybe it’s a pastor. Maybe it’s somebody else in your life. Who’s that one person. Maybe it’s two. Maybe you, maybe you can think of three. I don’t wanna overwhelm you with action items, but think of one person right now, but you can reach out to, you can create a magical conversation. Maybe it’s for them.

[20:54] Maybe it’s for you. Maybe it’s for the both of you. Take action. Good luck. Thanks for listening. If you want to apply these principles into your life, let’s talk. You can see the limited spaces that are open on my calendar JimHarshawJr.com/APPLY where you can sign up for a free one-time coaching call directly with me.

[21:15] And don’t forget to grab your action plan. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/ACTION. And lastly iTunes tends to suggest podcasts with more ratings and reviews more. You would totally make my day. If you give me a rating and review those go a long way in helping me grow the podcast audience, just open up your podcast app.

[21:36] If you have an iPhone, do a search for success through failure, select it, and then scroll the whole way to the bottom where you can leave the podcast, a rating and a review. Now I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today. Good luck and thanks for listening.

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