Meet Dan Griffin: Want Your Life To Change, Do The Work

All right. Good afternoon, all my friends at Cadre, the Cadre sphere, I believe it's called. So this is my second week, my second presentation. It's called Meet Dan Griffin. And if you want your life to change, do the work. And really, what I view it as is, it's really my philosophy on personal change and what I'm going to be incorporating to all of the streams that I do. I've been doing personal work in a both professional and personal sense for almost 30 years, and I've watched myself kind of get hooked into different ways of thinking that change happens or doesn't happen or something to that effect.

And so there's a program, it's called Al Anon. It's for friends and families of alcoholics. It's a twelve step program. But in that program, they have a saying that they share over and over and over again. And what it talks about, it's kind of like a three step piece piece, right? It's called awareness, acceptance, and action. And frankly, if I'm going to be a little bit, maybe cynical, maybe provocative, but excuse me, I hate that this is live. I sneeze and I can't edit that out. Come on. So awareness, acceptance, action.

Our society seems to me to be addicted to awareness. Oh, my gosh. Podcast, podcast, podcast, podcast. Oh, I heard this podcast and this podcast and this podcast, and I watched this on YouTube, and I heard this guy and this guy, and I know so many people who are just like, they're so into that. And the awareness is great, and the new ideas and the new ways of challenging our thinking. Like, that's essential, right? I mean, there's a guy named Anthony DeMello who was one of my spiritual kind of guides.

He wrote a book along, or they wrote a book about him based on one of his retreats, and Anthony DeMelo. And the book is called awareness. And he basically says, the mystics all came to the same conclusion, and others as well, come to the same conclusion, that awareness is the essence of all spiritual and personal growth and transformation. So awareness is huge. But that three step component, awareness, acceptance, action. Like, that's the critical piece, right? So awareness without action is a lot like a Ferrari without an engine.

It looks really good, but it'll get you nowhere. And, I mean, I think that's kind of the essence of what I hope to bring to Cadre. And not that my peers and colleagues on Cadre, Andre, aren't also doing it, but I'm just going to really kind of hold myself to a standard that says each time I share something, I'm going to invite people to practice something, to do something, incremental changes in their lives that are action, applying that awareness. I mean, that's. That's what I have learned over the years.

I used to be the guy. I read a lot of books. I read a lot of self help books, personal growth books. I didn't grow, I didn't change because I wasn't doing the work necessary to be able to do that. And sometimes I didn't even have the ability to change. My body was so dysregulated, my brain so often offline, the prefrontal cortex offline, because of being triggered by things that I had no idea about. And so for me personally. Hey, junk food junkie, how's it going? Thank you for joining. So, again, I don't think what I'm saying is original, but I'm just putting this out there, holding myself accountable to the philosophy that I want to integrate and incorporate into everything that I do here on Cadre.

I believe very much in what Cadre is doing, but I also think we have to support people in giving them the tools to change their lives. And ideas don't change people's lives. Applying those ideas to our lives, you know, that's what changes our lives. As a recovering alcoholic, you know, I could have tons of insight about my alcoholism and what was happening, but as long as I was still drinking, it wasn't really getting me very far. Doesn't mean I wasn't making some progress. And I think we can make progress, and I think that's what it's all about is the progress that we can make.

The baby steps, you know, small steps, walk a mile. But if you want your life to change, you have to do the work. Awareness, acceptance, action. And so, like I said, for each of my live streams and any other content I share, at the end, I will be doing something that I call the practical and the tactical into action. And it will just always be an invitation to practice something that we talked about. It'll be an invitation to do something tactical, to start things kind of differently. And, you know, we can all improve and we can all benefit from that.

And sometimes the interaction may be doing nothing, learning how to do nothing, learning how not to respond to a situation, learning how to just simply breathe and take a. Take a deep, thoughtful breath, you know, like those types of things. But that's my, that's my intention, and that's my goal with the rest of the live streams. And my hope is that people will share what they've gotten from practicing those things and then even offer their own tips and ideas about things that they want to encourage people to practice as well, or that they have practiced and have found to be very effective as relates to the particular topic that I may be talking about.

So, awareness, acceptance, action, do the work. And the work is hard sometimes. I mean, it can it can it. Over the years, the work has brought me to my knees. And part of that has then offered me greater humility, greater vulnerability, and the constant realization, right, because I realize it once and then I got to realize it again and again and again. The constant realization that I cannot do it alone. I will never be able to do it alone, and I don't want to do it alone. I think that's the key as well.

So again, awareness, acceptance, action. If you want your life to change, do the work, find the people that you can do the work with. And always, you know, one of the great lines I found in the twelve step community that I often hear is the best person for me to compare myself is not to anybody else, but the man I was when I first started to do this work. That's the best comparison. And usually within that space, there's always an opportunity to see progress and there's always an opportunity to see how things have improved and changed as a result.

So, kindness to everyone. Absolutely. Junk food junkie kindness to everyone, including ourselves, right? I mean, like, that is very, you know, ideally when we give it, we get it back from others, but also, like, really finding the way to be kind to ourselves. I know so many people who, you know, the trap is thinking that the external behavior can automatically change how we feel about ourselves, and yet it's an inside job. And the more peace and kindness we can bring within, the more we can actually transmit it and share it to others.

So thank you for chiming in and thank you for listening. And again, I really happy to be here. I look forward to my time here on the quadra sphere and for my own growth and learning as well, because I know I've come a long, long way from the 21 year old I was when I got into recovery and started this personal growth. But I also know I've got many, many more opportunities for growth and increased consciousness. So thanks so much.