00:00:08:12 – 00:00:32:26

Nick McGowan

Hello and welcome to The Mindset and Self-mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. And on this show, my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us and the lives that we lead on our path to self-mastery. Today on the show, we have Eric Todd Johnson. Eric is a seasoned attorney who’s confronted the challenges that arise in billion dollar business deals and in billion dollar litigation.

00:00:32:26 – 00:00:59:02

Nick McGowan

And he’s prevailed. He struggled until he learned how attorneys confront adversity. He had poor grades in high school and college and was rejected by every law school that he applied to until finally being accepted into one, but just barely. And he started as the worst, but rose to become the top of his class. He even wrote a book about it called Worst to First, and I’ll let him tell you the rest of the story.

00:00:59:04 – 00:01:12:05

Nick McGowan

So let’s not wait any longer. Let the games begin. Hello, Eric. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

00:01:12:24 – 00:01:13:06

Eric Todd Johnson

Great.

00:01:13:25 – 00:01:24:20

Nick McGowan

And I appreciate you being on. I was reading through a little bit of your background and I’m excited to get into the back story. So why don’t you start us off? What do you do for a living? And one thing that most people don’t know about you.

00:01:25:25 – 00:01:53:22

Eric Todd Johnson

I’m an attorney by trade and I specialize in public private partnerships and something that people a lot of people don’t know about me is in the last six months, I helped a $2 billion railroad get approved by the Surface Transportation Board, which regulates freight rail. And I’m also working on standing up a nuclear research center.

00:01:55:04 – 00:01:56:11

Nick McGowan

Outside of your day job.

00:01:57:19 – 00:01:59:05

Eric Todd Johnson

Well, that that is my day job.

00:01:59:12 – 00:01:59:19

Nick McGowan

Yeah.

00:02:00:12 – 00:02:05:09

Eric Todd Johnson

And but but a lot of people, you know, we keep that kind of quiet. A lot of people don’t know about those things.

00:02:05:13 – 00:02:08:21

Nick McGowan

Sure. Sure. So how did you get into law? How did you become a lawyer?

00:02:09:06 – 00:02:27:07

Eric Todd Johnson

Well, I always wanted to go to law school when I was 15 years old, my parents sat me down. They said, hey, write out some goals. And I wrote out the goal of being a an attorney. That was largely because a neighbor of ours was an attorney. And I thought, well of him. He was one of my scout leaders.

00:02:27:26 – 00:02:36:14

Eric Todd Johnson

And I thought, hey, it’d be great to be kind of like he is, but the reality is I didn’t take a very direct path to get there.

00:02:37:09 – 00:02:39:08

Nick McGowan

Tell us a bit about that path. How did you get there?

00:02:40:06 – 00:03:07:25

Eric Todd Johnson

Well, my grades in high school were very average at 2.6, nine grade point average. College was more of the same. I graduated from college with a 2.73 grade point average. And I thought, I don’t think that’s good enough to go to law school. So I didn’t bother applying five years out of college. One of my friends announced I got into law school and I thought, Huh, that was always my goal.

00:03:08:26 – 00:03:35:11

Eric Todd Johnson

But despite that being my goal and and working hard at it, I, I really hadn’t moved toward it very much. So I thought, well, I’m going to actually apply and see what happens. I just assumed I couldn’t get in. Let me let me see. So I, I took the law school admissions test and did well enough that I thought, oh, maybe.

00:03:36:00 – 00:04:00:17

Eric Todd Johnson

And I applied to law schools and every law school I applied to rejected me. So I was absolutely right. My grades were too low. And I went and I spoke with the dean of admissions for each of the different law schools and said, hey, you know, what could I do to improve my. My application? I think I want to try to apply again.

00:04:01:11 – 00:04:22:04

Eric Todd Johnson

And they said, well, you know, your grades are really low. Yeah, I got that. I was like, Well, yeah, yeah, but I can’t change those. So what else? What else can I do? And they, they gave me some pointers and I spent a year preparing and I applied again and I eventually was able to slip into law school.

00:04:23:13 – 00:04:51:19

Eric Todd Johnson

But the problem with that was I was literally the very last person that they admitted, and I was the very bottom of my class and so knowing that I dove into law school and I just I worked hard. I thought, you know, I’m a lot of my classmates were like, I’m going to be top ten. And I didn’t say anything like that, like.

00:04:51:19 – 00:04:52:15

Nick McGowan

I want to stay here.

00:04:53:14 – 00:05:21:19

Eric Todd Johnson

Yeah, exactly. It’s just like I. I just want to do the best I can. I didn’t have a lot of high aspirations and anyway, I was in a job interview a few months later after grades came out. And much to my surprise, the interviewer said, So how’s it feel to be number one in your class? And I said, I didn’t know I was number one in my class.

00:05:22:17 – 00:05:35:02

Eric Todd Johnson

And he offered me a job. I said, Thank you very much. And I didn’t bother telling him where I started. I literally I literally jumped from worst to first in law school.

00:05:35:15 – 00:05:45:03

Nick McGowan

I have never been to law schools, but I could only imagine that it’s probably not a cakewalk. So how did you manage going from the bottom to leading the pack?

00:05:46:06 – 00:06:16:09

Eric Todd Johnson

That’s a great question. So the first week or so of law school, they they had us in a seminar and they told us about a study they had done. And in this study, they said, you know, we can tell you right now, right about where you’re going to finish in law school with a high degree of confidence. They said our admissions criteria are so effective at forecasting performance that we know where you’re going to fall.

00:06:16:21 – 00:06:46:23

Eric Todd Johnson

They said there’s two exceptions. They said for those of you who will work fewer than 7 hours a day, you will not live up to expectations. You will not perform as well as your admissions criteria would suggest. And now, mind you, I knew my admissions criteria were the worst in the whole law school. Right. And they said there are those who actually perform better than forecasted.

00:06:47:23 – 00:07:17:25

Eric Todd Johnson

And those are the people who work more than 11 hours a day. And I thought, wow, okay, there’s hope. I don’t have to finish last. Maybe I can be a little above the bottom if I work really hard. And so I set out a schedule for I worked 13 hours a day, just day in and day out, and just did my best.

00:07:18:15 – 00:07:48:26

Eric Todd Johnson

Law school is unique in the sense that there’s no quizzes, there’s no exams, there’s no intermediate grades that you get during the term. There’s one three hour comprehensive final. That’s it. The lone exception to that was our writing class, which had a midterm paper and a final paper. And on the midterm, I got a D-minus. It was the lowest D the law school allowed without actually being an F, and that was just a pity grade.

00:07:48:26 – 00:08:16:13

Eric Todd Johnson

The professor just didn’t have the heart to fill someone right out of the chute. Yeah. You know, they. They were like, well, they may they, you know, they may wash out, but but I’ll give them a little hope. You’re right. But I learned something from that. I remember being at my study, Carol, after getting my grade on the midterm back and just wondering what I should do.

00:08:16:13 – 00:08:54:00

Eric Todd Johnson

It’s like, Hey, I started last, I’m still last. It appears I don’t belong here. And I at that point, I had no hope, no expectation of anything great. But I said to myself, you know what? I came to law school because I wanted to develop certain qualities of fairness and justice. And I hope by doing so, maybe I could help some folks.

00:08:54:00 – 00:09:17:21

Eric Todd Johnson

And I thought, you know what, forget it. I’m not going to be top of my class. I never imagined I would be. I’m just here to be the best self I can be. And so I literally and this is a quote I said to myself softly, she stuff it. And I just it was late one night. There wasn’t very many people around.

00:09:17:21 – 00:09:45:14

Eric Todd Johnson

And I just decided, you know what, I don’t I don’t care what the grades are. I’m here for me. Not for the grades, not for the professors. Right. And that was significant to have an objective of who I wanted to be and to do something because it was what I wanted, not because I had expectations of anything great.

00:09:46:01 – 00:10:08:05

Eric Todd Johnson

It was just I wanted to be the best me I could be. And I decided this was the way I was going to go about it. And that really flipped a switch. That that was an emotional change that that then things fell in line after that.

00:10:09:09 – 00:10:27:27

Nick McGowan

Yeah, I could imagine that you had a self-confidence at that point that whatever’s going to happen is going to happen. But I’m going to do the best damn thing that I can do. TO Where do you think that came from? Was that just you had enough and you’re like, you snapped in a good direction? Or do you think that was part of maybe your upbringing and kind of how your parents raised you?

00:10:28:18 – 00:10:59:03

Eric Todd Johnson

Well, certainly my I grew up with my father listening to Zig Ziglar, Napoleon Hill, you know, Earl Nightingale, Brian Tracy, all the great ones. And so I was exposed to that in my home. And, you know, the one thing that he drilled into me is you can be the person you want to be. And so I just yeah, I just decided, hey, that’s what I’m going to do.

00:10:59:16 – 00:11:33:13

Eric Todd Johnson

I’ll be I’ll be free. Despite despite having all of that drilled into me at a young age, I really had not enjoyed the success that I was hoping for up until that point. I five years out of college, I was working in a hospital as a housekeeper, you know, cleaning toilets, polishing floors, things like that. And, uh, but it really was I just decided, you know what, I’m going to do this for me because it is what I want.

00:11:34:07 – 00:11:56:02

Eric Todd Johnson

Everything’s screamed. I shouldn’t do this. Everything screamed. Just, you know, I was married, I had a daughter, everything scream. Oh, you should just take care of your family. You’re wasting your time. I was like, No, I still want to do this. This is what I want to do. Not because I think I’m going to be great at it, but because it is what I want.

00:11:56:17 – 00:12:19:25

Nick McGowan

There’s there are a lot of people in the world that may think about what they want, but that’s about as far as they go. And there are others that will think about it, start to take some action on it. And the first thing that pops up, they just feel like that’s maybe it’s not supposed to be, but you kept pursuing and pursuing even five years later you had somebody else that got in and you’re like, Maybe I can still go do this.

00:12:20:09 – 00:12:27:00

Nick McGowan

So if you were to give advice to either yourself back then or somebody that’s actively going through that now, what sort of advice would you give them?

00:12:27:23 – 00:13:06:24

Eric Todd Johnson

Most of the time when we set objectives for ourselves, it’s because we want a certain result. Okay. A lot of objectives that people set are to have things. Okay. Oh, I’d like a nice house. I a nice car. You know, they want prestige in the community. Those are certainly reasons. I felt like I wanted to be an attorney and more important than goals, to have things or goals to be a certain person.

00:13:06:24 – 00:13:33:20

Eric Todd Johnson

And it was when I determined I’m going to pursue and be the person that I’ve determined I want to be, then the doors opened up. And that’s hard because just because you are a particular person that doesn’t there aren’t necessarily rewards with it. I mean, Mother Teresa was never rich, but she was the person she wanted to be.

00:13:34:22 – 00:13:55:11

Nick McGowan

Of the Theresa’s especially one of those people that just served and served and served. But yeah, you’re totally right. You completely broke but rich in so many other ways. And that’s a perspective thing. You know, I like the, you know, people who live in first world. They go, I wouldn’t want to do any of that stuff because I love to have all the luxuries and things that I have.

00:13:55:11 – 00:14:25:15

Nick McGowan

And for the most part, that might be a fear based thing where they’re like, Well, I just don’t want to be without. And you were kind of without what you thought you were going to be doing for a number of years now. I assume that’s a bit of time ago. Can you give us some sort of any observations or things that have really stood out to you over the course of yourself being an attorney that you would have only learned through being an attorney that you wouldn’t have learned had you actually pivoted and gone a different direction.

00:14:26:13 – 00:15:06:06

Eric Todd Johnson

Attorneys are are taught how to confront opposition and overcome it. There’s big in our society. There’s very few places where you can learn that in the military we train the military how to confront and prevail. The same with law enforcement. They’re trained that way. But in outside of those two, really, lawyers are the only other ones. An engineer is not taught how to confront opposition and prevail, but every engineer confronts opposition.

00:15:07:11 – 00:15:34:06

Eric Todd Johnson

And it was really that it was really learning that dynamic of, okay, how do you overcome? How do you deal with these problems and get the results that you want? Because that’s what that’s why an attorney is paid to do. An attorney is paid to shoulder the burdens that someone else has and get them the results that they want.

00:15:34:06 – 00:16:07:13

Eric Todd Johnson

And and so as an attorney, I learned that it really refined the qualities of justice, fairness, truth and equity that I had come to treasure. And so those those are things that that I came to value greatly and things that I learned. Look, let me give you an example. Everybody knows how to deal with adversity to a degree because we all confronted.

00:16:07:13 – 00:16:37:24

Eric Todd Johnson

Okay. But it’s a little bit like a marriage counselor. Okay. Everyone has relationship problems, but some people are specially trained to help work through those issues. Right. Okay. As a lawyer, I was trained how to help other people work through the adversities that they face in life and become, you know, much better at dealing with that than I otherwise would have.

00:16:37:24 – 00:17:00:12

Nick McGowan

It makes a lot of sense. I don’t often think about the occupations that kind of put you in a fight or flight mode, but it’s easy to think about the ones that will automatically put you in a fight or flight, like being a fireman or something. Can’t just casually stroll into a fire like dude to go to save these people and hopefully the police don’t burn down.

00:17:00:12 – 00:17:12:07

Nick McGowan

That’s a little different. But throughout your day to day, how do you keep your your tenacity going and how do you manage your mindset going from case to case or working long hours to do this stuff?

00:17:13:03 – 00:17:15:06

Eric Todd Johnson

Are you asking me about a daily routine?

00:17:15:28 – 00:17:35:12

Nick McGowan

Maybe not as specific or typically about a yeah, more broader. Would you think of the course of time? Because everybody, no matter what you do, you have days where you just don’t want to do it. You have other clients maybe that you’re like, I really don’t want to help this person. So how do you manage your mindset to be able to still give the same amount of effort and stick to you?

00:17:35:20 – 00:18:00:02

Eric Todd Johnson

So one of the keys to that, again, is having objectives about who I want to be, because when you have objectives about what you want to have, it’s like Thanksgiving dinner. And once you’ve stuffed yourself, you just can’t put any more in writing. You’re just like, Yeah, I don’t care. Good. Hey, do you want a chocolate? Thank, you know, another piece of pie.

00:18:00:03 – 00:18:34:24

Eric Todd Johnson

Oh, delicious. Sorry. Right. That’s the way it is with things. You you can actually get satiated with. With who we are. It’s it’s it’s a little different along those lines. Let me let me address something that that helps me that I found also can be very useful to others when we are setting goals. Okay. Let’s say we have a goal for a nice house.

00:18:35:22 – 00:19:00:29

Eric Todd Johnson

Okay? You can sit in your mind. You can envision that how some people will have a vision board, a dream board. They’ll cut a picture out of a out of a magazine and put it on the board. Well, you can envision that. You can close your eyes. You can you can envision that house very clearly. However, what is in your mind is not the house itself.

00:19:01:23 – 00:19:40:15

Eric Todd Johnson

Okay? There’s a gap between what’s in here and the actual house. Now, let me talk about a different type of thing. Fairness. Okay. When you close your eyes and you envision fairness, fairness only exist one place that’s in here. And when you envision fairness, fairness itself is created. And let me let me turn to love the same way.

00:19:40:20 – 00:20:18:18

Eric Todd Johnson

Okay. When you envision love, you actually create love. You generate it. Okay? And there’s no time lag. It’s food. It’s there right now. You have absolute control over that. So some of the things about ourselves that may be affiliated with the House is, let’s say, the feelings of security and repose. You can live in a castle and still feel threatened, but what it really represents is security and repose.

00:20:18:18 – 00:21:05:13

Eric Todd Johnson

And so a more direct way to move toward the house. You want more direct than envisioning the house itself is actually imagining security and repose is associated with that house. And that is a more direct path because you’re actually generating within yourself those things that the House represents. The house is just an outward manifestation of that inward security and so what you want to do is you want to identify goals like that about yourself, and then you want to envision those.

00:21:06:04 – 00:21:16:02

Eric Todd Johnson

And those are a more direct path to the things outside that you want to then actually just imagining those outside the.

00:21:17:12 – 00:21:27:22

Nick McGowan

Oh and just saying, well, be nice to have that, you could have that mental picture, but if you don’t actually tie to it and yeah, that mental pictures is the nice picture in your head. That’s about it.

00:21:28:15 – 00:22:06:00

Eric Todd Johnson

Yeah. Let me let me explain that a little further. So Napoleon Hill is noted for saying what the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve. And that is absolutely true. But let me explain the difference between conceiving and believing, because that is the missing link for most people. Okay, let’s say you were to stretch a 20 foot long, two by four on the lawn and say, hey, you know, can you walk across that two by four?

00:22:06:15 – 00:22:24:13

Eric Todd Johnson

Most people would say, well, it’s a little narrow, but yeah, I can do that. Right. And they they’d stride across it and back and forth pretty easily, maybe even, you know, to show off, do a little jump or something like that. Right. And then you’re like, well, okay, what if it’s three feet off the ground? Probably pretty much the same.

00:22:25:24 – 00:22:49:02

Eric Todd Johnson

But if you suspend that over a hundred foot chasm, the same board, now you tell yourself, Well, I know I can do it. I did it on the lawn, but there’s a part of you that Whoa, wait a sec. Okay, you step on to it, and all of a sudden you find yourself leading to the right or to the left, right?

00:22:49:02 – 00:23:15:17

Eric Todd Johnson

And you’re like, Wow, what am I doing? And you take little teeny steps and you just scooch forward, right? You literally risk falling off because there’s a difference between what you conceive and what you believe. Okay? And as much as you’re telling yourself, I know I can do it. I know I can do it. I know I can do it until it gets in your heart that you’re like, Well, yeah, of course I can do it.

00:23:16:06 – 00:23:34:07

Eric Todd Johnson

Okay, there’s there’s a gap between the conceiving and the believing and that is what we have to work on in order to translate our goals into reality. Is that gap?

00:23:34:07 – 00:23:39:14

Nick McGowan

Are there ways that you found that work for you to find that gap and and work on that?

00:23:40:11 – 00:24:06:28

Eric Todd Johnson

Again, I would say, yeah, you turn you turn to what’s internal. So let me talk a little bit about our thoughts and our feelings. Okay. So our physical bodies, we’re all familiar with the way the physical world works. We are finite. I can only be in one location at one time. For me to move from one place to another takes time.

00:24:07:27 – 00:24:40:21

Eric Todd Johnson

Okay. I am only present in the now as much as as sci fi and movies. Talk about moving forward or backward in time, right? It just doesn’t happen. Okay. That’s what I mean by finite. Okay. I’m limited as to location and to time. My thoughts, on the other hand, are infinite. Okay. I can remember last Christmas. I can move backward in thought.

00:24:41:18 – 00:25:02:24

Eric Todd Johnson

I can project forward to this next weekend and what I’m going to do and I can plan for it. So in my thought, I am not limited as to time. I can move forward and backward in time and thought the same with location. Here I am sitting in my office, but I can imagine being at the Eiffel Tower in Paris right now.

00:25:02:24 – 00:25:32:03

Eric Todd Johnson

Even though my body is here, I can imagine myself way over there. Or maybe I want to. Maybe in my thought I want to travel to Hawaii. Okay. So my thought is literally infinite. It is not bounded by location or by time the way my body is. Okay. Our emotions are much the same. My my father in law was a Navy SEAL and, you know, he would write letters, love letters to my mother in law.

00:25:33:01 – 00:26:07:17

Eric Todd Johnson

He would be in Hong Kong aboard ship and even though he was half a world away, the love did not dissipate because of the distance, nor did it diminish because of a time lapse. Right. He loved her just as much, maybe even more because of the separation. And so our thoughts are infinite. Our feelings are infinite. And we also have a spiritual capacity that we’ll just assert is infinite without going into the details.

00:26:07:17 – 00:26:45:04

Eric Todd Johnson

And but we do have a finite body. Okay. And so the key is to apply our infinite thought feelings and spirit and align those things with what we want. And then those things tend to come about in the physical world. And that is that is it’s getting those four things aligned and I didn’t come up with this on my own.

00:26:46:00 – 00:27:09:20

Eric Todd Johnson

This actually, you know, comes from the teachings of Jesus Christ, where he says, love the Lord, that God with all the heart, mind, soul and strength. Both the Book of Mark and the Book of Luke refer to that. Okay. The heart, our our feelings, the mind, our thoughts, our soul is our spirit and our strength is our physical body.

00:27:10:15 – 00:27:32:15

Eric Todd Johnson

Right? He identify it all for and it’s really getting getting those four things aligned is is how we best move forward when the internal all gets aligned and then we add our physical action to it, then it impacts external results.

00:27:33:11 – 00:27:34:20

Nick McGowan

It’s like a cascading effect.

00:27:35:03 – 00:27:40:07

Eric Todd Johnson

Yes, it beautiful. I love that term. I hadn’t heard that cascading effect. That’s wonderful.

00:27:40:16 – 00:28:00:12

Nick McGowan

Yeah, it’s a no. I think that there are a lot of people that get stopped at one of those where maybe they’re working on their mind, but they’re not working on their body or their health is starting to go down. That takes their mind down with it. But to be able to line those things up, if everybody was at a status of everything’s all right, then we could all grow accordingly.

00:28:00:12 – 00:28:13:15

Nick McGowan

But at the sub levels of that, where they’re not at Stacy’s, they’re not there yet, they haven’t aligned those things. Are there things that you found maybe in your daily routines or just throughout life that you’re like, this is how I align myself back up with these?

00:28:13:15 – 00:28:50:07

Eric Todd Johnson

For sure? Absolutely. So I take time every day to spend time with in holy writ. I’m a Christian, so I spend time in the Bible and in the Christian Scripture. I also try to spend time, though, in Scripture from other faiths, the Hindu, the Bhagavad Gita, yoga. Such is a Patanjali, the Vedas, the Zen, divest from the Zoroastrians, the Koran from the Muslims, the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

00:28:50:18 – 00:28:53:16

Eric Todd Johnson

Now, I don’t have time to read all of those every day.

00:28:53:16 – 00:28:56:11

Nick McGowan

I was going to say, is that a daily thing like that? At least one page of each.

00:28:57:20 – 00:29:45:02

Eric Todd Johnson

But every day, you know, I’ll I will I will spend time in my own faith and then some time in another faith. Okay. Because I find they all touch on the great truths and are mutually reinforcing and I find that very helpful. I then, of course, spend time, you know, in prayer or meditation every day and I find that time of meditation that if I will write down the thoughts that come to my mind, that actually more flows to me and I get even better thoughts.

00:29:46:06 – 00:30:19:04

Eric Todd Johnson

And that’s very gratifying. But I will, you know, I’ll take about an hour a day or more doing that. I also, you know, try to spend a little bit of time just on the physical. I live near mountains and so in the summertime, oh, oh, hike or mountain bike in the wintertime I’ll snowshoe and that’s that’s stuff I do for the the aerobic exercise.

00:30:19:04 – 00:30:30:05

Eric Todd Johnson

I also, you know, work on the upper body a little bit. I have some rings that are hanging in the garage that I, I go out and play on. You know, just to, just to work on those type of things.

00:30:31:05 – 00:30:35:12

Nick McGowan

It literally your mind and your body, which all helps your spirit.

00:30:36:10 – 00:30:40:05

Eric Todd Johnson

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

00:30:40:26 – 00:30:55:01

Nick McGowan

Wow. Are there are there any key moments throughout life that you can look back at and maybe you’ve talked to other people about it or maybe you’ve talked to yourself about it? A moment you can look at and go that moment right there. That was one of those times that completely changed me.

00:30:55:14 – 00:31:24:19

Eric Todd Johnson

You know, certainly I already told you one of those of just so a friend of mine in law school, Greg, after that day when I said stuff, it he it’s again, it’s a time when there’s not as many people around it kind of comes up and I’ll softly says, you know what? He says, I was the next the last person admitted to our class.

00:31:25:15 – 00:31:57:05

Eric Todd Johnson

I said, Really? Said, Yeah. He said, Yeah. And he told me when he was admitted and indeed it was just shortly before I was and that ate at him. Right. And so unfortunately at the end of our first term, he dropped out because he didn’t feel like he belonged. I never I never said boo to him about when I was admitted or anything like that.

00:31:57:05 – 00:32:26:27

Eric Todd Johnson

Right. I just I really oh, you know, I just commiserated with him and and whatnot and went on my way. And so a lot of a lot of success. This is not just the mental process, but it it is managing the emotional dynamic that we have to deal with. My friend Greg was great but emotionally he he built.

00:32:27:29 – 00:32:53:02

Nick McGowan

Manage your mindset, manage your emotions, people and enough said when it comes to that, I think it all ties together too, because if somebody is a strong minded person, but they’re a little baby when it comes to emotions and there are only really as strong minded as they believe that they are. And for the most part, the people that have the the balance in life are the ones that are successful.

00:32:53:08 – 00:33:09:06

Nick McGowan

So I really appreciate you being on the show, appreciate you getting into the background of what you’ve done and kind of what you’ve gone through and you’ve dropped some incredible wisdom on us. So thank you for that. What’s one piece of advice you would give for somebody that’s on their path towards self-mastery? Hmm.

00:33:10:05 – 00:33:31:18

Eric Todd Johnson

You know, about four years ago, my my oldest son said, you know, I’m going to write a book. And I said, oh, that sounds great. You should do that. But I thought, oh, what what are the odds that he was 19 at the time? I thought, what are the odds he’s going to get that completed? And I thought, maybe not real great.

00:33:31:18 – 00:34:04:22

Eric Todd Johnson

I said, You know what? I’m going to write a book too. And so I set out to to write a book about the things that I had learned about overcoming adversity, how to prevail over problems, and how to achieve your goals. Despite having failed at them numerous times before. And, you know, after a year or so, I say to my son, how’s your book coming?

00:34:04:25 – 00:34:26:28

Eric Todd Johnson

Right. Well, you know, I haven’t made a whole lot of progress lately. And I said, well, I’m still working on I’m still working on it. And it took me about two years to get it written. And, you know, I shared it with him, had him, you know, kind of read it over, read it through, see what he thought about it and kind of give me his pointers.

00:34:27:28 – 00:35:03:08

Eric Todd Johnson

And then it took another two years to find someone who would publish it and get it out. Okay. And so my advice is half the battle is showing up. If you don’t show up and keep at it day after day, you can be sure it ain’t going to happen. And to my great surprise, the book that I wrote entitled Worst to First was picked up by night and guilt content.

00:35:03:09 – 00:35:32:23

Eric Todd Johnson

And I can go content has specialized in audio programs for about 60 years. Names like Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale. Obviously, that’s where Nightingale of Nightingale content comes from. You know, Zig Ziglar had programs there. Doctor Wayne Dyer, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Jack Canfield, you know, a lot of great legends in the self-improvement area have published with that and Nightingale.

00:35:32:23 – 00:36:00:19

Eric Todd Johnson

CONAN So I was so excited when they picked up my book, and it’s now available on Audible was the first, and it really is just a testament to, you know, keep moving forward to to keep persisting with something. Because I spent I spent a year trying to find someone who would publish it after it was written and finally was able to to into.

00:36:00:19 – 00:36:03:00

Nick McGowan

It more adversity to go to write.

00:36:03:00 – 00:36:04:05

Eric Todd Johnson

Yeah, absolutely.

00:36:04:22 – 00:36:11:00

Nick McGowan

Well, you kind of let it nicely into the last bit of this. Where can people find you and connect you and find the book.

00:36:11:08 – 00:36:34:19

Eric Todd Johnson

Yeah, wish to first it’s on audible and just type in words. The first it should pop up my name. Eric Todd Johnson. I’m the author. And you know, Nick, I would encourage you to get a copy and listen to it. I think some of the stuff we’ve touched upon is is explained in greater detail, and I think it’ll be useful to you and to all of your listeners.

00:36:35:08 – 00:36:44:15

Nick McGowan

I agree. Absolutely. And all that. The links will be in the show notes. Everybody go check out the book worth first. Eric again, thank you very much for being on the show. I appreciate your time.

00:36:45:04 – 00:36:55:01

Eric Todd Johnson

Thank you very much, Nick.

00:36:55:01 – 00:37:19:01

Nick McGowan

Another great conversation on today’s episode of The Mindset and Self-mastery show. Adversity isn’t something any of us is a stranger to, but it does look different for everyone. So imagine if Eric did what his buddy Greg did and just friggin bailed. Does that sound like something you’ve done before? Yeah, I know it is for me. I fell on many things in life.

00:37:19:18 – 00:37:39:10

Nick McGowan

Yeah, there are times I’ve regretted those, but I understand that’s part of my story. And we’ve all bailed on something, but we can all work to not bail on ourselves ever again. This was a great conversation and I’m really looking forward to checking out Eric’s book, Worst The First, and I’d suggest you do as well. So what did you think about today’s conversation?

00:37:39:10 – 00:38:00:00

Nick McGowan

I’d love to hear your thoughts on everything we got into, and if you enjoyed the episode, please jump over to iTunes, subscribe rate and leave a five star review. It helps us be found and it definitely helps others be feel. If you really enjoyed the show today, go ahead and share it with a friend or family member, somebody you really like because you know this is an awesome podcast and they’ll really like it.

00:38:00:01 – 00:38:25:04

Nick McGowan

Don’t you think you could check out the show notes for more information, contact info for Eric and check out other episodes on the Mindset and Self-mastery show dot com as well as our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and type in the Mindset and Self-mastery show and we’ll come right up and thanks again air for being real, being honest and vulnerable with us and sharing your adversity story.

00:38:25:11 – 00:38:52:08

Nick McGowan

And I’d like to thank our sponsors, the Manly Club and the powerhouse men, brotherhood men. Do you consider yourself to be a powerhouse man? The criteria for becoming one is simple live with virtue and do good work. You see, a powerhouse man builds his life. He doesn’t settle for it. He attacks mediocrity at the root. And that’s exactly what we do in the powerhouse men brotherhood visit the manly club dot com today for details and thank to you.

00:38:52:11 – 00:39:01:07

Nick McGowan

Yes you thank you for hanging out with us today I really really appreciate it. And with that, remember, your mindset matters and so do you.