Dr. Ian Brooks on Choosing What Your Pivotal Moments Represent to You – episode 48

The Changed Podcast with Aden Nepom

Episode 48 of the Changed Podcast features Dr. Ian Brooks, on the power of mindset, living a life of intention (which includes Netflix and chips!), and his own self-determination even as he narrowly escaped the wreckage of a collision in his own fork-in-the-road story.

Dr. Ian Brooks started off working in a clinical psychology ward eventually transitioning to work with "higher functioning individuals."

Over the span of his 25+ year career helping people move forward. He's worked with clients that include Netflix, Shondaland, Bank of America, Guitar Center, Nike Inc. Sony, and Warner Brothers.

Most recently, Dr. Brooks is the author of Intention: Building Capabilities to Transform Your Story which integrates research and personal journey that drives readers toward introspection and action.

His contagious smile and upbeat demeanor might fool you into thinking achieving Transformation is easy! And it is! But also, it's challenging, it's hard work, and it absolutely takes intention. Our conversation weaves through the ins and outs of intentional transformation, what the nuances are between transformation and change, and the difference that intention makes throughout all of it.

What's in this episode?

• The differences in getting patient compliance in a closed setting, like a lockdown facility vs the open setting of the general population
• The difference between achieving personal transformation, and making personal changes
• The relationship between fear of change and the power of belief when it comes to transformation
• Why Ian doesn't cry anymore
• How Dr. Brook's book, is really a second draft, which serves as an excellent reminder that failure isn't always failure and that we have a choice about how we move forward from setbacks
• How easy it is to let challenges stop us from doing the good and important things in life
• Ian's personal fork-in-the-road story from a moment when he was in a motorcycle accident
• How living with purpose and intention does not mean that you don't get to also enjoy spacing out, eating chips, and lazing on the couch watching Netflix

A few memorable things Ian Brooks said in this interview:

"We only have 24 hours in this day. We were only promised the next second. That's it. And I can't tell you what I'm going to do with that next second. But I can tell you that it's going to be done with purpose. I don't want to waste time."

"If you want to kick your feet up and eat a whole bag of potato chips and watch Netflix all day, you're doing with that purpose, whether you realize it or not. Now, if your purpose is really to go out there and exercise, well, then that's a different conversation. But you're still doing what you're doing with purpose because you are doing it intentionally, and that's okay. It isn't always necessarily outcome-based. Sometimes that purpose is: I just need to get lost in my thoughts."

"I can do more than what I'm defined by in this motorcycle injury or otherwise."

"The power of the mind is very interesting. As we think about fear, and the reasons why we don't do certain things, or even potentially the reasons we do, it's very interesting in the context of specifically, this idea of change. Because we do things quite a bit out of fear, not necessarily providing the context around, how do we actually move forward?"

"Change is: I can get someone to do something one day, in a particular moment in time, and just taking very targeted steps to do something different. That's a lot different than transformation, which I think a lot of people are really reaching for. And that is building it into your fabric of who you...
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