Michael Hyatt
speaker
169 appearances
6 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2022
last heard Feb 2025
Michael Hyatt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And I think AI, I'm very optimistic about it. Obviously it could go wrong. We've all seen the Terminator, right? But I think that it could go wrong, but I think there's more ways that it could go right.
And I think it can enable us, and this is what I've been playing with this last year, to get that double win and to see the realization of human flourishing, not only in our lives, but in the lives of our customers and clients. So I had a friend tell me that one point, this was probably four years ago, he said, at this season in your life, your job is to grow fruit on other people's trees.
That's what I think a true legacy is. Because the truth is, unless you're some international pop star or somebody who does something enormously heroic, all of us are going to be forgotten within a generation. You know, I can't even tell you my great grandparents' names without really thinking about it. You know, they're just forgotten in my own lineage.
And so the idea that you're going to be remembered for time and eternity is mostly vanity. But that doesn't mean your life doesn't matter. Because what you do in this life, I believe, will ripple through in the lives of other people and into eternity. And so that's what I'm committed to doing is being a good steward of this one life I've been given.
And first of all, having an impact on my children. having an impact on my grandchildren. I've got 11 of those now.
Yeah. If I can just do my part there, you know, really be intent about the few and building quality relationships and they do the same thing, then you start seeing the exponential growth and the exponential change.
It won't be credited back to me and that's well and good because I stand on the shoulders of other people and people stand on my shoulders, but we can make a meaningful difference in the world for sure.
No doubt. I grew up in a family where my father was an alcoholic. He started drinking at probably the worst possible time for me as a kid when I was in middle school. And he just wasn't there. He was pretty much checked out. He wasn't a violent drunk. But I would frequently come home from school in the afternoon, and my dad would be passed out with six crumpled up beer cans on the floor.
And I can remember one time in high school coming home with my sister late at night. Some friends dropped us off, and there was my dad, to our great embarrassment, passed out on the sidewalk. And we had to pick him up as our friends laughed at us and haul him into the house. And I remember standing in a corner. My sister ran into a room crying. She's two years younger than I.
And I remember looking at him with such disgust and really fury. And I said, I will never be like that. Well, so what happened was then I became driven to a fault. I overcorrected and I became a workaholic. And it took me years of therapy and just trying to work this out to get some sense of balance.
And I came to the conclusion a few years ago that I didn't get the father I wanted, but in retrospect, I got the father I needed. Because it's kind of like the sort of the adage that you learn more from a bad boss than a good boss. And my father, in fairness, he did a lot of things remarkably well. And he's still living, he lives not very far from us, so I see him every week.
And he's really changed a lot. But that was traumatic in those days. And I think for a lot of people, their trauma is something they resent. There've been many people who've gone through far, far worse than I have. So I'm not trying to glorify my experience, but I do think sometimes it's in our wounds that we're able to heal and to be really helpful to other people.
And so I think that built some character qualities in me that I couldn't have gotten any other way.
That's a great question. I think I would have gotten therapy earlier. Therapy is a really, really helpful thing. And I can tell you up until now, probably six years ago, I didn't think I had any anxiety. And I think this is a very common characteristic of leaders and of entrepreneurs.
And I had a diagnosis about two years ago from a doctor that said I needed a stent based on a test that he had given me in my annual physical. And he said, you need to stop exercise. Don't lift anything over 10 pounds. And he said, you need to get a stent. And I'm sending you this cardiologist as a referral. So I went to the cardiologist. And of course, it takes you weeks to get in.
And of course, my stress is through the roof. But now I was starting to get language around it. I realized that something was different. And so I finally got into the cardiologist. The cardiologist said, well, he misinterpreted the test. He should have never given you that test to begin with. And he said he misinterpreted the results. And no, you do not need a stent. So I was like, hallelujah.
So I went back to the original doctor. I said, look, I met with the cardiologist that you referred me out to. And he said, I don't need a stent. And I thought, you know, that's the end of the story. He says to me, he was wrong. He said, you need to go back to him and beg him to give you a stent. He said, I've been in this business a long time. I have a sixth sense. You need a stent.
So now I'm right back. I mean, this is like this rollercoaster ride. So I go back to that same cardiologist and I said, Dr. Houston told me to beg you for a stent that you're wrong. And he just laughed and he said, I can't put on your insurance papers that this other doctor has an intuition. We try to be science-based here and there's no science to support that you need a stent.
And I said, what would you do if you were me? Because I'm in the horns of a dilemma here. He said, I'd get another opinion. I said, great. So I got not one, but three. I went to three different cardiologists. They all said exactly the same thing. And I went back to the original physician and I said, I have three doctors now, three cardiologists that have said I don't need a stent.
He wrote me back a one word email. He said, noted. And that's when I fired him. But I suffered like crazy from anxiety. I got back into therapy. I even got a medication. But out of that, this beautiful thing has happened where I've been talking openly about anxiety and everybody thinks, every leader, every entrepreneur thinks it's just them.
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