Episode 1601: Interview with Ryan Gottfredson Author of Becoming Better

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Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining us on episode 1,601 of the Inspired Stewardship podcast.

Ryan Gottfredson: I'm Ryan Gottfredson. I challenge you to invest in yourself. Invest in others. Develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to awaken to your being side rather than your doing side is key.

And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friends Scott Maderer.

Right. So I don't care what level you're currently at. I believe that we can all become better, and when we become better, we can have a greater positive influence on the world around us. And so it's for everybody. Now what I've learned is that most people, they want to become better. But what I've also found is most people [00:01:00] actually don't know how to become better.

Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself.

Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

In this podcast episode I interview Ryan Godson. I asked Ryan about his book Becoming Better. I also ask Ryan about why mindset is the key for real growth, and Ryan also shares with you how we can overcome blocks to our mindset. To become better. I have a great book that's been out for a while now called Inspired Living Assemble the Puzzle of Your Calling by Mastering Your [00:02:00] Time, your Talent, and your Treasures.

You can find out more about that book over@inspiredlivingbook.com. It'll take you to a page where there's information and you can sign up to get some mailings about it, as well as purchase a copy there. I'd love to see you. Get a copy and share with me how it impacted your world. Welcome to the show, Ryan.

Hey, thanks for having me on. Absolutely. I, I'm looking forward to our conversation today. It sounds like, uh, we've got a lot of things in common, a lot of common mindsets from our, our earlier conversations and getting to know you a little bit and learn a little bit more about you and about your book.

I shared a little bit in the intro, but I always say that I, I think of intros as sort of like Instagram photos. They never really show the whole story. They just show Yep. Bits and pieces, yeah. So take us back in time a little bit and share a little bit about your journey and why is this the message and this what you feel called to do in life.[00:03:00]

Ryan Gottfredson: Well, I appreciate you asking and let me take you back to my PhD program. So I did my PhD at Indiana University in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources and my this, it sounds like

Scott Maderer: a fun major.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, it's totally fun. And, and I'm my minor's in social psychology, so it's all about how people tick, and particularly within the workplace.

And I'm being

Scott Maderer: kidding. I actually would love studying that. Yeah, no, I,

Ryan Gottfredson: I mean, uh, clearly I'm biased, but, uh, so yeah, love it. And so I did my dissertation on leadership and that allowed me to review the last 70 years of leadership research, and. One of my primary observations from this review was that there's really been one primary question that's been asked and answered over the last 70 years, and it's not a bad question, um, and it's led to some good answers, but the question is, what do leaders need to do to be effective?

And now what we've got is a whole list of. Essentially a [00:04:00] whole list of things that leaders need to do to be effective, right? So that's helpful. But in my mind, that's really never sat very well because when I think about leadership, leadership to me isn't about doing certain things. It's about being a certain type of person.

And so when I took my job where I'm at, at Cal State Fullerton I kind of put it on my shoulders to study. How do we tap into the being side of leadership? How do we help leaders to truly become people that others want to follow? And that's been the focus of my study and now consulting and my books over the last 11 years.

Scott Maderer: So when you talk about the being side of leadership talk what do you mean by that?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. At first I really didn't understand it right and that, but that's what I wanted to unpack. So when I first started to, I kind of said, okay, I want to dive into the being of leadership. What does that mean? Well, where I first started was to focus on motives, [00:05:00] recognizing that two different leaders can engage in the same behaviors, but.

Depending upon their motives, their impact is going to be different. So we found some initial evidence of that. Uh, but as I started to dive more and more into motives, I started to come across research related to mindsets. Um, and that mindsets are something that shaped the motives of individuals. And so, uh I did a deep dive on, on mindsets, um, and that's where my first book Success Mindsets came out of.

And what I've learned now that I've. Been studying mindsets, been helping leaders in the business world to develop their mindsets. I've come to learn that doing this mindset work is actually a different form of development than what we're used to. So what we're used to is we're used to gaining new knowledge and new skills.

But when we do mindset work, we're not gaining new knowledge and skills. What we're actually doing is we're [00:06:00] upgrading and refining our body's nervous system, what I call our internal operating system. And when we do this work, what we're doing is what we, what I call our being side work. We've got two different sides of ourselves, a doing side, which is our talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities.

That's what we typically focus on, but we do have another side of ourselves, which is this being side. And that's what I've kind of come to learn is the being side of leadership is upgrading the, our internal operating system so that we navigate our situations in more sophisticated and mature ways than what we've done previously.

Scott Maderer: So one of the things I like to highlight on the show is sort of our, our faith journey and how that intersects with our life journey and feeds back into this. And so as you're doing all of this work and studying leaders and studying leadership and mindset and [00:07:00] behavior and all of this, what has been your experience between the overlap between what you, what you've gone through in terms of your faith or spiritual journey and your life journey?

Ryan Gottfredson: And it's been a journey. I love that word, a journey because my relationship with my faith has changed over time, and I would say. That this understanding, the being side of leadership has helped me as my relationship with my faith has changed. So one of the ways in which this has come about is as I've been studying the being side of leadership, one of the fields of study that I've dove into is the field of developmental psychology.

And what developmental psychologists is have found that, is that as adults there are three different adult development stages. What's interesting about this, so that, that says is that adults can develop, but what's interesting is that they found that most adults don't. So if we've got three adult [00:08:00] development stages, what they find is that 64% of all adults stay at the base level where their bodies are wired for safety, comfort, and belonging.

At the second level, 35% of adults get here and 85% of leaders are here. And this is when our bodies are wired to stand out, advance and get ahead. Okay? And in this third level, the highest level, this is where 1% of adults and 8% of leaders operate. And this is where our bodies become wired. To contribute, add value, and lift others.

So it's not about us standing in, it's not about us standing out. It's now about us creating value for others. And so how this relates to my faith journey is I, I don't know if any of our listeners are familiar with. Fowler stages of faith. Uh, but Fowler has a model of different stages of faith that correspond to these different adult development levels.

And what [00:09:00] he's found is that as people mature in their faith, not all people do, but as people mature in their faith, the relationship with their faith changes. And, and there's some predictable stages. And I won't, I'm no expert in Fowler stages of faith, but I just share this to say. That this is, I believed what, what I've learned is as we elevate on our being side, our thinking becomes more sophisticated and more and more mature.

And I would say the same thing about my faith, right? I feel like I grew up in a religious environment and I felt like growing up in a way things were white and black. And in certain ways I like that because there's a certain level of safety and security in that perspective. Mm-hmm. Um, but as I have elevated along my being side, how that's changed my faith journey is I've gone from seeing things in black and white to something that's closer to seeing things in color.

I think I've [00:10:00] still got some room to grow and develop. Um and I believe it's created a much. It's allowed me to be much more healthy in my faith in that I feel, while it's more complex, it's also more nuanced, and I believe I'm able to better serve and contribute in the world from this position than what I had for my previous position, if that makes sense.

Scott Maderer: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It does. And, and I think it's, it's, uh it's interesting to think about it in terms of. And I use the word journey stages or different areas that you go through as, as you mature. And I would say that probably it would be interesting to see if there's any data out there on percentages of people in the different stages for faith.

It's like there is for, for people, because I have, I'm, I bet you there's some similarities.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, for sure. And, um. I'll say this, like when I was [00:11:00] going from, I'm gonna call it the more black and white stage of faith to a, a stage that brought in more color. That was I'll be honest, it was deeply unsettling for me at that time.

And what I've come to learn kind of in hindsight is while it was unsettling at the time it was crucial for my. Development. And so I, I think if there's a listener that's out there that's feeling unsettled in their faith, what I would say don't, maybe don't be too worried about that.

I, I mean, it's uncomfortable, but recognize it's a doorway to something better.

Scott Maderer: Well, and I, I think, you know, going back to your main study about, you know, becoming. Better mindset leadership and that, and what you're talking about, like the stages of, of human development. I think it's unsettling if you, [00:12:00] when you're changing quote, stages of development too.

For sure. Sure. 'cause you feel, you feel less certain, you feel less comfortable. You don't it, it isn't you're, you're creating a new normal. And so it would attack our, our identity in a way. We've gotten comfortable with who we are and now we have to be something different.

Ryan Gottfredson: Well, let me bring that to life, even with the leaders that I work with in, in my consulting practice.

So what I find, as I mentioned, is that 85% of leaders are at the second level, right? And when I, we find leaders here, they are, are, they're very driven individuals. They are go, go, go. It is about hitting oftentimes the short term metrics, results, or outcomes. Sure. And the way that I commonly will describe it to these leaders is it's like they're, if imagine we got a vehicle that's got five gears, manual transmission, five gears, and these are leaders that are operating in fourth gear.

Now, fourth gear is awesome because it's, you can go way faster than first, second, or [00:13:00] third gear. Fourth gear you could get, you, you could get the speedometer going pretty good. Mm-hmm. And when you get it going pretty good. Also at that same time, RPMs are up and in a way you can feel the speed and many leaders get addicted to that feeling of speed.

Um, and so when I work with leaders, I kind of help them to see like this, while this isn't bad. It's maybe not the highest level that we can perform at. And if we wanna perform at a higher level, it's gonna require that we have to shift gears. Now, a lot of leaders are very apprehensive about shifting gears when they're in this fourth gear mode, and there's several reasons why.

But one of the reasons why is because unless you're a power shifter, if the first thing that you need to do if you're shifting gears is to pull your foot off of the gas, right? Then you stick in the clutch, you punch it into fifth gear. And then once you get into [00:14:00] fifth gear, what you realize is you can actually go faster and at lower RPMs mm-hmm.

You actually don't feel the speed. And so leaders are unsettled, commonly unsettled about the idea of pulling their foot off of the gas and they feel unsettled about not feeling as if they're going a hundred miles an hour.

Scott Maderer: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Gottfredson: But that's where the best leadership lies is when we're running at low RPMs but still going at speed.

Well, um and so there's some, yeah. To your point, is that shifting of gears whenever we do it and whatever gear we're going to, it's going to feel unsettling

Scott Maderer: And extending the analogy if your team and your, your organization is the engine and the motor of the car and the wheels and all of that.

Driving cross country at high speeds at fourth gear puts a lot of wear and tear on that engine. Oh, for sure. Fair enough. For sure. You could do it you, you put a lot of, a lot of [00:15:00] wear and tear on the engine where if you can shift up into fifth. You're gonna get cross country and probably still have a working car at the other end kind of thing.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. And so that's, I mean, you bring up a great point. The, the fallout of a leader operating in fourth gear is their people get burned out and I see it. Unfortunately, I see it all the time

Scott Maderer: and often the leader gets burned out too because you can't operate, you can't operate yourself at that speed all the time without or it shows up in other things.

Their relationships. Yes. Their, their as one of my friends said when he was a lawyer and he was about to make partner in a firm and he looked around and he went. Everyone who's made partner was divorced within three years, maybe I don't wanna make partner, you know? Yeah. And he stepped back and changed careers and went into a totally different field and is very successful now.

But, you know, he, he basically just said, eh, maybe if that's what it takes [00:16:00] to make it as a partner, maybe I don't want that. Yeah. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but it's just not what he wanted in that organization. So, yeah. So talk a little bit about the book where. Where did you get the idea?

Who's the book? For somebody out, there's listening, you know, why should they pick up a copy? Tell us a little bit about the book.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, thank you. So the new book is called Becoming Better, the Groundbreaking Science of Personal Transformation, and it's really for anybody. Who wants to become better, right?

So I don't care what level you're currently at, uh, I believe that we can all become better and when we become better, we can have a greater positive influence on the world around us. And so it's for everybody. Now what I've learned is that most people, they want to be, become better. But what I've also found is most people actually don't know how to become better.

Uh, I think they know how to improve incrementally, but they really don't know how to improve tally. And so that's what the book is all [00:17:00] about, is about helping people understand that there's a different developmental path out there than what we're used to. And it's a path that if we can get on will help us to transformationally become better.

So one of the kicks that

Scott Maderer: I have well, kicks one of the ideas that I have that, that I share with people is and I think it resonates with the message of the book, but I wanna hear you kind of expand on it, is all too often we, I think especially in the Western culture today we elevate busy as a badge of honor.

You know, it's all about being busy. Yeah. And all busy is, is doing a lot of stuff. Doesn't necessarily mean you're doing anything that matters or that makes an impact or that's important. So how do you see this kind of fitting into that kind of hustle busy culture that I think so many of us are surrounded by today?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, for sure. So I, I think it's helpful to understand that we really have these two [00:18:00] different sides of ourselves. So we've been talking about, we have a doing side. Think about that as like an x axis on a graph, and we've got a being side, and that's the y axis on a graph. And so we could find ourselves in these different quadrants.

We could be low, low, we could be low being high, doing high, being low, doing or high doing high being. And what I've found is that, and the research backs this up, is that most adults are in the low, low quadrant. And then what's interesting is that where most leaders are is they're in the high doing, low being quadrant.

And that's interesting, right? Be and, and we could ask, well, why is that? Well, who gets promoted into leadership positions? It's people who can do stuff really well, and so they get promoted into leadership roles and in a way thus we are socially and oftentimes formally incentivized to focus on our doing side.

But you probably know [00:19:00] just as well as I do, is just because somebody is promoted into a leadership role doesn't mean they have the being side. Capabilities to lead effectively. And so the, the doing side can help get us into leadership roles, but it's the being side that's gonna dictate our success in those roles.

And, and so, and it's just unfortunately that most people just aren't aware of their being side, what it is, how to evaluate it, and how to elevate along the being side. And that's ultimately what I want to help people to do.

Scott Maderer: Well, and when I think you know, I know from being in corporate and, and working with a lot of folks in different things that in a way too, it's almost like leadership.

Like you said, a lot of the way leadership is taught is about what you do as a leader. E even the way we talk about leadership is [00:20:00] almost self. Enforcing that idea of well just do something and it'll fix it. It'll be better. Yeah. It'll, it'll change it. But you talk a lot more about mindset and that sort of thing than quote skills or, or what you do as a leader.

What, where does that come from? What, what has your study shown you why mindset's so important and what. What do you maybe unpack a little bit? 'cause people hear mindset. I'm, I'm kind assuming everyone knows what you mean but yeah, talk a little bit about what you mean when you talk about the mindset side.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. I mean, so you're spot on, right? It, as a leader, our behaviors and our decisions dictate our effectiveness. So there's nothing wrong with focusing on our behaviors and our decisions, but I think of the question we need to ask is what drives. And dictates our behaviors and decisions, and that's our mindsets.

In fact, uh, what research on psychologists as well as neuroscientists both agree that the most foundational [00:21:00] aspect of everything that we do. Our mindsets, they're the mental lenses that we wear that shape how we view the world. So our mindsets aren't just our attitude towards the world or towards something.

They're literally neuro connections in our brain that have three specific jobs. So job number one of our mindsets is to filter, select information into our brain. So there's way more information in our world that we experience than what we can process. Uh, what our brain could process. So the first job of our mindsets is to filter and select information into our brain.

The second job of our mindsets is then to assign meaning to the information that comes in. So, for example I could be faced with, let's say a learning zone challenge. Okay? This is gonna get filtered into the brain 'cause it's salient to me. Uh, it's relevant to who I am. And then my brain is gonna say, oh, is this a good thing or a bad [00:22:00] thing?

And it's our mindsets that dictate one or the other. So what I found is that most leaders, 60% of leaders have what's called a fixed mindset. And so what that means is when they are presented with the learning zone challenge the way that their brain tends to process this is uhoh beak be leery here.

'cause learning zone challenges are a place where you might fail and look bad. And so leaders of the fixed mindset, they steer away from learning zone challenges. But if we have more of a growth mindset, the automatic interpretation of this learning zone challenge is, oh, this is exciting because we now have an opportunity to learn and grow.

And so that, and this interpretation is occurring below the level of our consciousness and automatically. And so that's, that's why we say our mindsets. Are the most foundational aspect of everything that we do because [00:23:00] they shape all of this information that comes in and interprets it as maybe either being dangerous or being safe.

And that interpretation shapes how we think, how we learn, and how we behave. And so, like I said. 60% of leaders I've found have more of a fixed mindset, stirring them away from learning zone challenges. And what, what that means for them is these leaders have a tendency to hold on to what's worked in the past, and they're reluctant to what to embrace, what might work better in the future.

And when that happens, their organizations just become increasingly stagnant over time.

Scott Maderer: Mm-hmm. And. They become increasingly NT over time. Yes. On on. Yeah. Uh even, even more importantly, because that limits or changes the way we see that. So talking about how mindset filters information, 'cause I think that's so important and I think, you know, and in a simplistic way, we've all [00:24:00] experienced that where we've, we've had a conversation with someone, whether you're a leadership or you're just.

Walking down the street talking to your, your friend and you've said something and they're like, and then they respond to it in a way that it's like, wait, that's not what I said, but that's what they heard kind of experiences. We've all experienced those sorts of moments. If we're honest with ourselves, we've done the exact same thing where somebody says something to us.

Yeah, that's true. And we've heard in a way that it wasn't there. You read into the email. So as leaders knowing that that's going on, not just for you, but for everyone around you, what does that mean? You know, for leadership in, in a leadership position what is your responsibility as a leader when it comes to not only your own mindset, but the organization as a whole?

Ryan Gottfredson: Such, such a great question and there's, there's some, a lot of depth into this. So I think it's helpful to recognize when we think about our being side [00:25:00] it, it's a continuum that represents on the bottom side being wired for self-protection and on the top side being wired for value creation. And so what we know is that when people are lower on their being side and they're more wired for self-protection, they are more reactive.

They are more sensitive to cues in their environment that might signal that they're unsafe and therefore they react. We also will call this a more, a more narrow window of tolerance. And so one of the things that we've gotta recognize is that when somebody steps into, let's just say that an employee in an organization, they're already stepping into that position, somewhere along that continuum from self-protection to value creation, right?

So one of the things we've learned. Is that the more trauma somebody is has in their past, the more wired their body is generally for self-protection. So, mm-hmm. So they're already bringing their past to the equation. And there's certain things we can do [00:26:00] about that. But then the other thing, to your point that we need to consider is how is this environment now impacting where they show up along this continuum?

And what we find is that when we have. Less psychological safety in the environment, more controlling behaviors, um, more micromanagement. That is an environment that essentially incentivizes people to move down on their being side and become more self-protective. And so what that means for leaders is that if we want to get the most out of our people, if we want them to grow and to thrive, we have got to be intensely focused on creating an environment that helps them to feel safe and secure so that they're less worried about themselves and more focused on the broader purpose of the organization.

I, I'll commonly call this gardener minded leadership because gardeners know they can't force a seed to [00:27:00] sprout, a plant to grow, or a tree to bear fruit, but they could create the right conditions for that to occur, right? And the better the conditions, the greater the growth and the greater the yield. So I find that the best leaders are gardener minded leaders.

Scott Maderer: They're focused on creating the right environment, not

Ryan Gottfredson: Yep.

Scott Maderer: Making quote unquote people do the right thing, so to speak. And you know, you just mentioned trauma and, uh, the other thing that kind of brought to mind is, uh, you know, obviously we have. Both as leaders and then again the workplace. Neurodivergence, yes.

We have clinical depression. You know, I suffer from clinical depression, so I'm familiar with that brain chemistry and how that can mm-hmm. Affect the way you see the world. So as leaders, you know, where does the fit in, where does it fit in our own awareness of our own? Trauma history or A DHD or any of the, you know, neurodivergent clusters.

[00:28:00] 'cause again, I have seen some very successful folks that are very good at doing that get promoted into leadership that have some of those challenges. You know, and again, it doesn't necessarily make them a good leader or a bad leader. There's other stuff to it. So how does that difference in the way we see the world through, through our own past and history and, and neurochemistry affect us?

Ryan Gottfredson: Well, it's critical. So when we start to learn more about our body's nervous system and how it operates, and oftentimes in the traumas. Space, we'll call it being trauma informed, uh, in the neurodivergency space, we'll call it neurodivergent informed. Um, and then, you know, these related things like depression, anxiety, and other, other potential chemical imbalances that are going on for individuals is, is actually the more that we learn about these things and how they apply to ourselves, we actually it doing, learning about these helps us to become more metacognitive.

We [00:29:00] increase our capacity to introspect about ourselves as well as step into the world of others. And that is crucial because ultimately that's the base of empathy. So when we learn more and more about these things and how they impact our body's nervous system, and when we know our nervous system is really what's driving how we think, process and operate, then it allows us to step in to, to lead.

As a more empathetic leader and, and thus more of this gardener minded leader. The other question that came to mind is, you know, you talked about how so many of these. These signals happen unconsciously or without our, our con, we don't make a decision. We're going to feel that way. We just feel that way.

Scott Maderer: So how does that make, I, I mean, obviously that makes it more challenging, but what do we do about the fact that so much of this is [00:30:00] happening at an unconscious level? To help us respond more appropriately as leaders when that's going on for us?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, I think there's a couple of different ways to think about it.

One is, if we can bring any of this to the level of, of consciousness, it allows us to have more control over it. So oftentimes in the mindset work that I do with leaders, that's my purpose, is to help them to become more conscious of their mindsets so that they could more intentionally choose the mindsets that they want to use as they go about their day-to-day lives.

But the other factor is this is the reality is, is we're not gonna be able to be intentional about our mindsets all the time. And so what we've learned and what the mindset research has found. Is that if we wanna shift to more value creating mindsets, what we need to do is we need to actively hit the gym for our mind.

Because our neuro connections are a lot like our muscles. The more we use 'em, the stronger they become. And we, we can't go to [00:31:00] the gym once and expect to go become strong. We gotta go to the gym again and again and again. And so what the mindset research has found is that if we can engage in mindset exercises on a regular basis, like five minutes every day or every other day in the course of 30 days, we actually see changes in the wiring of one's brain.

Uh, and so what are some of these exercises? Well, some of these exercises. Could be reading books focused on specific mindsets. Doing the same with articles. Uh, research has found that watching videos that activate certain mindsets is helpful. Journaling dis having discussions with others about mindsets and then also doing some work to improve our self-talk.

So those to me are kind of the six primary I'm gonna say exercise equipments in our mental gym. And if, if we can, if we could utilize those on a regular basis, we will see a shift in our mindsets. [00:32:00]

Scott Maderer: You were just talking about self-talk and it, it brought to mind. I, I once had the, uh, honor of speaking to a group of leaders.

Um, there were about four or 500 of them in the room. These folks all own multiple businesses. They were all very successful. You know, all the external trappings of success, you know. Anything that you would think of. And I asked the question, I said, how many of you have some sort of internal voice or internal dialogue or something where you, you know, you talk to yourself, raise your hand, and every hand went up.

I said, great. How many of you is that? If keep your hand up, if the voice is nice to you? And every hand went down, you know? Oh my goodness. Yeah. And I'm like, think about that for a minute. You know, we here, here you are successful. In, in a place where we're. People look at us and say wow, look how much you've accomplished.

And yet you'll say things to yourself that you would never say to your neighbor or your employee, or your spouse or your child. Talk a little bit about that internal dialogue piece. [00:33:00] 'cause I think that's so important to how we. How we show up in the world.

Ryan Gottfredson: Well, it's making me think of the, I don't know if you ever saw the Saturday Night Live skit where he is like, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, Gary Smally, people like me.

Right. And that is self-talk. But wow. I mean, that's incredible because what that shows in turn of the, them raising their hands and then them lowering. Most of us right. Have some work to do with our, on our being side. Mm-hmm. And here's what I've learned is that as to do this work on our being side, the deeper we go into ourselves, the higher we could go on our being side.

And what's going on as we elevate along our being side is we are changing, improving, and healing our relationship with ourselves. That is the core of doing any of this being side work. It's about ultimately healing our minds, our [00:34:00] bodies, and our hearts. And so I think it's a recursive relationship.

We could work on our self-talk and that will improve our being. I will also say as we improve our being, our self-talk will naturally improve because we'll be developing that, that better relationship with ourselves.

Scott Maderer: It's sort of the where do you start? Well, it's a cycle, so you just start. Yep. It's a feedback loop.

So pick somewhere. Just do it. So I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, Ryan, but before I ask you those, is there anything else about the book becoming better or the work that you do that you'd really like to share with the listener?

Ryan Gottfredson: No, I think you've been great. Right. And I feel like we've touched on really the primary topics that I cover in my books and that I generally talk about.

Of course. Well, I could talk about this all day. Um, and, and so in many ways we've just kind of scratch the surface. So if you're listening to this and you're, you're kind of feeling I want to become better and these ideas [00:35:00] are things that I would like to dive into further, y yeah. Please go to my books or even reach out to me personally.

Uh, would love to connect with anybody to help them along their becoming better journey.

Scott Maderer: Awesome. So my brand is inspired stewardship, and I kind of lead things through that lens of stewardship and that's how I look at the world, and yet I've discovered over the years that that word can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

So I like to ask people, when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

Ryan Gottfredson: Oh well, I would say most immediately, the word that comes to mind, maybe it's a syn synonym of some sort, is the word responsibility. Uh, and I think that there's something there, but if it's okay, let me change your question.

Okay. Because I also think it's helpful to think not about what is stewardship, but I think it's helpful to think what is a steward. Okay. And that's helped me anyways. And, and the way that I think [00:36:00] about what a steward is, is I believe a steward is somebody who has done deep work on themselves to elevate their being so that they have a greater capacity.

To be a light in the lives of those within their spheres of influence. Um, and ultimately, I believe a steward is somebody who has gotten, as we talk about these three levels, they've gotten to the highest level along their being side. And they truly are wired to be a steward, to be somebody who wants to contribute, add value, and lift others.

And so hopefully what we've talked about aligns with this idea of us becoming better stewards or a greater light in the lives of others. Awesome.

Scott Maderer: So imagine for a moment that I could invent this magic machine, and with this machine, I was able to take you from where you are today and transport you into the future, maybe 150, maybe 250 years.

And with the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire [00:37:00] life and see all of the ripples, all of the connections, all of the impacts you've left. What impact do you hope you've left in the world?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, to even make a small impact would be meaningful. I just know for myself as I've been on this becoming better journey, for me, it has been transformational and I am living life at a higher level than what I was previously.

And I just, I think our world would be a much better place if each of us individually. Operated at a higher level, and I hope that the ideas, I don't think that my ideas are new. I'm not gonna own any of these ideas that I created them. I'm really standing on the shoulders of giants. But what I do believe is I do believe I've been able to articulate some of these ideas in a way that will help people.

To be able to transform their lives. And as it becomes more known, more well known, I think as a whole, we can [00:38:00] elevate our world. And I, I hope, uh, maybe I'm creating a, a butterfly effect or some sort of ripple effect that will ultimately lead to me and others like you, where our collective impact is elevating the world and the people within it.

So what's on the roadmap? What's coming next as you continue on your journey? Oh man, I, I feel like, uh, so one of the things that I was I've learned as an author of three books is you kind of have to wear two different hats at different times. One hat is writing the writing hat, and the other hat is the marketing hat.

And for me, I am I'm wearing that marketing hat and it's I was told by my publisher or my first publisher. Our job as a publisher is to fill the distribution channels. Your job as an author is to get people to pull it out of those channels. Um, and so I feel like that's what's next for me is just to continue the work of of directing people towards my book and other resources so that they can become better.[00:39:00]

Scott Maderer: So you can find out more about Ryan Godson over@ryangodson.com. Of course, I'll have a link to that in the show notes so you can find it there as well. Ryan, anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

Ryan Gottfredson: I hope that this has been a helpful conversation and I just think, let me reiterate what I just think is the most beautiful message of everything that we've talked about and, and that message is.

If we want to become better, we need to heal our minds, our bodies, and our hearts. And so I just hope, uh, this might inspire you to do some deeper healing.

Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspired [00:40:00] stewardship.com/itunes.

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