Below is a summary of the interview hosted by Landon with Type 8. Type 8 is a community dedicated to improving the lives of its members and those around them daily, and has designed a platform for getting amateurs and artists recognition for the work that they put into that journey. Type 8 reached out to me for an interview on how to live an inspired life. To hear the audio, click on the MP3 below, or enjoy the summary that follows.

Landon: What kind of work do you do?

Scott: I am a theracoach, which is a term people are going to start hearing more regularly. So essentially, I am a therapist, but the bulk of what I do, Landon, really is performance coaching, life coaching, that sort of thing. So, I work a lot with people who come in for generally one reason. For instance, they may call me and say they are anxious, depressed, or feeling stuck in a particular area of their lives. 9/10 times however, what I find is that these people are actually just stuck. They are miserable, and it doesn’t make sense to diagnose these people for these mental health diseases such as, depression or an anxiety disorder, when it isn’t what the problem is. It would be a disservice if i diagnosed my clients in that fashion.

As an example, I had a guy that called me several weeks ago, and he said, “Well, I think I need a diagnosis for bipolar disorder. I am in my mid-thirties.” So, I asked him to tell me why he thought that he was bipolar. “Well, because I am unhappy, I don’t like my job, and my family is telling me maybe I am bipolar.”

So, I explained to him that this isn’t really criteria for having bipolar disorder but let me guess for a minute. “You have already said you’re miserable, you’re probably having some marital issues, you can’t stand your job, you feel like you’re stuck in life, maybe you’re not where you want to be, you are in other words stuck.”

He said yeah that’s it.

“So, you wake up every day miserable.”

“Yeah.”

“You aren’t bipolar, you’re unhappy.”

(He doesn’t feel like he’s living up to his potential)

The majority of the people I see aren’t for therapeutic reasons. That’s where coaching comes in handy.

In dealing with people, I ask typical questions- what do you think is going on, what do you think is contributing to the way you feel? How does your family see these things? Family History etc. and inevitably what I get is that they feel stuck in some regard. Life is not what they thought it would be by now, and/or it’s not headed in the direction they would like it to go.

So, my approach with people works around the idea that there are 3 things that make up the recipe for an inspired and happy life. Any book in the self-help section, you will find a formula for success, happiness, etc. These formulas indicate that there’s a specific way of doing things to achieve a positive result every single time. I consider my “formula” to be more of a recipe. The beauty of it is that these three things taken together, or incorporated together, would prompt your life to become much more inspired. Much more enjoyable or fulfilling. But any one ingredient put into action, utilized alone, creates a life that is significantly better, or greater than it has been. (So even if it seems overwhelming to gather all this information and then put it together, you can still benefit from just including one piece of the recipe at a time.)

So, the first place I look is the person’s values. Define values. What are yours? I normally get social idealisms. Integrity, honesty, family, etc. But what I’m looking for is, “What do you love, what do you enjoy?” You can find out a person’s values by asking several questions.

Dr. John DeMartini is really the expert in the field of values and value determination, and how those affect you. He is the author of the Values Factor, and several other books. He is a great speaker and great author, I recommend all his stuff to my clients, friends, and family. He asks these 13 questions to determine your values. Some of them being, “When you’re in your office, home or private setting, what do you see when you look around? What do you see that inspires you, that you love? What do you love to do? What do you think about? What occupies your mind? What do you do instead of the things that you tell yourself you ought to do?” Oughts and Shoulds are an indication of values that we are living, that belong to someone else. I should go to work today. I should go help my neighbor. I’ve got to go do this. I’ve ought to go do this.

What I may be communicating there is something that I’ve been taught that I need to do, to be a good neighbor. Or, go to this job that I really don’t care for in the first place. If we are living in our values, that sounds like “I want to do this. I love to go do this.” Which as you can notice, uses completely different language than “I’ve ought to, or I should.” And a lot of times we will put off those “shoulds” for something else. So, what is that something else? That’s probably what you value.

If you’re living your values, the honesty, the integrity, the social idealisms will come into play on their own. Those become a natural part of who you are and what you do. (You can find links to the Values Determination Quiz in the resources section of this website, or you can click here to be redirected to the quiz!)

The values part ties in well with the second part of the recipe, one’s psychological needs. There are 6 different ones, Significance, Growth, Love, Contribution, Certainty, and Uncertainty. Everything we do, we do to meet those six needs. Tony Robbins, who has probably made more of a significant impact in my lifetime than anyone in the field of change, or coaching, and anything where psychology is concerned, created this test with Cloe Madanes. A lot of people in my field will probably disagree with my opinion on Tony, but they are probably in the academia side of psychology, areas that are looking for something that fits a diagnosis.

For instance, the fastest way to feel connected and significant is a problem. You probably know someone who constantly has a problem, they are always down, anxious or upset about something. Those people have essentially learned that they can connect to others through their problems. Its not necessarily a healthy way to connect, but essentially it allows them to connect with loved ones or friends and be the center of attention. So, they meet their needs for connection and significance through that problem.

Everyone that I see is striving to meet these needs. We all are. The interesting part is it’s hard to separate them from values, so what you need is to be able to help people meet their psychological needs through their own personal values.

We all have the same 6 needs but they’re in different hierarchies. So, If I can meet those needs through my values, without even pulling the third part of thought part into this, I’m already focusing on doing the things that I love to do. By doing so I am meeting my needs at a high level every single day, which creates a life that is significantly more inspired or impactful, than probably 99% of the world.

When we bring the third piece into it, thoughts are a significant piece of what I do as well. What I generally try to communicate to people is that everything comes back to thought, every experience begins with a thought. Here’s what I mean by that: if we go somewhere and we walk outside and its raining. (I personally can have some negative thoughts about the rain.) I walk outside, see that its raining and think, well this day is ruined. Now I’m going to be stuck inside all day, etc. We may walk out the same door together, and you may think, “Oh this is great, now I can hangout inside, watch Netflix. Its great weather to take a nap.” So, what’s the difference? I’m having a miserable day, because of what? Because its raining? You’re having a great day because its raining? No, it all boils down to thought. It’s the same rain and we’re two people walking out of the same door. It’s the same experience, but our thoughts are creating the emotions we have about the rain.

Now we walk out and see the rain and turn around and go back in. I’ve decided this is going to be a bad day, but you’re pumped! And you say, “Let’s go see this movie they’ve been talking about on tv.” So now I’m pumped too, but it’s still raining. The rain didn’t change. My thoughts about it did.

This can sometimes be something that is hard to grasp, but the best way I can explain it is, an experience is not good or bad, how we think about the experience makes it that way. Often times I get resistance around this because people want to be able to blame an experience, or a parent, or something someone did. And I’m not making light of trauma, but for trauma excluded experiences, often times its what we think about that experience that creates how we feel.

A good example would be the many studies about happiness. Overall, western countries are fairly unhappy. We are one of the wealthiest countries, the United States especially. We have essentially everything that we can ever want, lets be honest, even the poorest in the US, assuming that they are not living on the street, have more than most people in other third world countries. Even people who are living on the streets, they may have more than people in third world countries. Studies show that the majority of happy people aren’t in the United States, they are in these third world countries.

What’s the difference? From all indication, they should be absolutely miserable. They’re living in a grass hut, or maybe nothing, with one meal a day. Meals that don’t even compare to our meals. The difference here is thought. That’s it. A lot of people struggle with this, but what else could it be? Its important to realize that if you take these three ingredients separately from one another, if all you did was focus on your values, and live by those values, life would be completely different. If all you did was determine your top psychological needs, and live your life meeting those needs, then life would be completely different.  If all you did was recognize that all your experiences, they way you feel about those experiences comes down to thought. So, if you could just pause and realize that you are having a bad experience or having a bad mood and realize that this could change in an instant. This is what I try to communicate to people every day. If you take all three and bring them together and recognize that if you’re meeting your psych needs through your values, that I can have experiences that may be negative but I don’t have to let that experience ruin my day, or ruin anything. I can just realize that the experience isn’t good or bad, but my thoughts make it so. That has an impact on relationships and everything in our lives, so if we can pull the three together and recognize that when we do that, when we live that life, that it is truly life changing.

As I was thinking about this, I started thinking about Type 8, I went to the anagram institute. I wrote this down, so here it is:

The Anagram Institute said, “At their best, type 8 personality: self-mastering. They use their strengths to help improve other people’s lives. Becoming heroic, magnanimous, and inspiring.”

So, I looked that up, because that’s an interesting word.

Magnanimous means generous or forgiving, especially toward a rival or less powerful person.

And I thought, this fits so well with what we are talking about today. To have for your company, Type 8, to represent that level of or that pursuit of life mastery and really what we are talking about is emotional or thought mastery. These things, thoughts, values, psychological needs, all fit very well with the message Type 8 is trying to communicate. And I think if more people can receive Type 8’s message, recognize that life truly can be inspiring and heroic, that we can all live our lives passionately, whether our personality fits a particular category or not. We can all live our lives in a way that is beneficial to not only ourselves but to others as well. Thus creating a more inspiring, fulfilling life, but also a better world. A better world in your own universe, for your family, for your friends, for your connections. And that’s the kind of message that I try to bring to people every day through my work, and I know you guys do the same there at Type 8.

Landon: So, Type 8 started out as a platform for artists and amateurs, people that are really trying to pursue what they love. We are trying to create a community of support for those who just go for it, those who are going for the gold. What would be step 1 of trying to make that happen in your life? What is one practical step?

Scott: I think the first practical step is to really recognize that what you’re doing as an artist is meeting your values at a high level, and its contributing to other people. Unfortunately, for a lot of artists, art is not always a big money maker, and that’s too bad given the fact that is does contribute so much to everyone. Even to my enjoyment and many others that I know. But if you can recognize that art in all its forms and whatever you do as an artist is meeting your values at a high level, meeting your psych needs then great! Consider this, maybe your top needs are contribution. So, you are contributing at a high level, if you’re doing that consistently, on a daily basis. It makes your life different. When you aren’t doing that, you recognize it, you notice something is missing. That’s when the thought piece really comes into play. So, I think the first step, to answer your questions, is really to nail down why you do what you do. What are the values that you hold around art, or whatever you create? And recognizing the level of contribution that you’re bringing to other people.

Landon: So that’s really good information, that’s probably going to help a lot of people get over a slump that they’re in where they feel like they really want art to be the focal point of their life, but fear that its not necessarily sustainable.

Scott: Remember to that if you’re pursuing those values, and one of the things DeMartini says is to figure out your values and find a way to get paid very well for those values. It can be difficult for artists to make money doing the things they love to do, but keep pursuing that because you’re filling a void, and not in a bad way. The easiest way to make money is to fill a void in someone else’s life. Do not give up on pursuing your values through art in an effort to get paid by doing it.

Landon: So that’s helpful information for people who may be feeling discouraged about what they are doing right now. So where can they go to kind of get these steps, find their values, find what is really inspirational in their lives? What they should be pursuing?

Scott: I would start with the Values Factor by John DeMartini. You can go online to his website and find the Values Determination Process, which is a very helpful tool(link is in the text above as well). Then I would take a look at the psychological needs test, which can be found online in a couple of different places. Its by Tony Robbins and Cloe Madanes. That is probably where I would start. The thought piece can be a little more in depth, but one resource would be the book “How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything, Yes, Anything” by Albert Ellis. It would probably just be easier to just google Albert Ellis. Those are good places to start.

There’s a couple of books, if you google the three principals, that really goes into thoughts. There are some differences between these three principals and Albert Ellis’ approach of Rationally Motive behavior therapy, and the three principals but that is a lesson therein of itself.

Landon: The way I understand it is that you have some material coming that you’re working on now that will go on your website, that will be available to the public. Is this true?

Scott: Correct. My website is scottgroveslpc.com, or anyone can book an appointment directly through the URL oklpc.com.

Thanks for checking out our interview, and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to myself or Landon, with Type 8.