I roll the dice on big multi million dollar

real estate deals every day.

I fly airplanes at high speeds and high altitudes.

I'm a pilot.

I'm a scuba diver.

I race cars.

I do all kinds of crazy things.

And maybe one of the things that drives me, I had to ask myself, is

maybe, maybe you're trying to prove that you're not afraid when you are.

Um, uh,

What does it truly mean to go all in on life?

Especially after facing a potential life threatening health scare.

Welcome to Seek Go Create where today's guest, Alan Morris shares his

transformative journey from the brink of a medical crisis to a profound

personal and professional rebirth.

Alan, CEO and chairman of the Alan Morris company has not only led his

company to new heights, but also embarked on a journey of self discovery after

experiencing severe, unbearable pain.

Unexplained headaches that made him reevaluate his

purpose and approach to life.

After ruling out a brain tumor, Alan used this turning point to reshape his

life and leadership style, leading to the creation of his book, all in how to risk

everything for everything that matters.

Join us as Alan discusses how he transformed adversity and

opportunity, not only continuing to excel in the business world, but

also enriching his relationships.

And finding deeper joy in life, Alan, welcome to seek, go create.

It's great to be here with you today.

Thank you.

Glad you're here too, Alan.

Hey, Alan, just tough question.

Just to get started.

If someone asks you with, with the bio you've got, which is massive, by the

way, I didn't read it all because people have to go, we only have 60 minutes.

We don't have that long.

You got quite the bio, but if someone asks you what you do.

What's your, what's your response typically

it's really probably is simply aligned with our company, mission.

And that is, uh, what I do is inspire, impress and improve

the lives of other people.

Whether it's with real estate or whether it's in my writing or my

speaking or, in my relationships.

That's my, that's my goal and my passion.

has it always been that way?

At what point did that kind of get crystallized?

I found myself getting bogged down in the business of my business

and all of my overwhelming commitments.

And what can happen when we get overcommitted is we can lose our joy.

And I had lost my joy.

so one thing that kind of, I'm going to go back to your bio that

I sort of alluded to just a second ago, it, I read your book yesterday and we're

going to talk a good bit about that.

We're going to cover a lot of things here and background and stuff like that.

And, and I read.

At the end of the book, it lists out, it kind of has your bio and Alan,

there's a lot of stuff in there.

You mentioned just getting, how we could kind of get filled up and bogged down,

but, but yet we do want to achieve and accomplish, while we're on this earth.

What is it that led you to, first of all, let's just talk about, let's talk a little

bit about the filling up of that bio.

Is that something that was intentional?

Did it just happen?

Or, or were you just going at it trying to fill up, say, I think it

was like on my Kindle, like six pages towards the end of the book, if it,

if I sound cynical, it's impressive.

Okay.

I want to, I want to, I want to say that at the same time,

tell me more about That how that

I think you got the long version, which would, which when

I read that, it starts to give me a headache because I, I, I, I suppose

of the addictions that I, that I've got, one of them is an achievement

addiction and, over commitment.

you'll see a trail of, a lot of commitments and a lot of, involvement

in a lot of different things.

some accomplishments.

but also, a little bit of the craziness that my life, has become and, and why

I hit the wall in my personal life.

But, on the, on the business side, we just broke ground on

our 90th development project.

Um, and, we're developing projects in nine different cities, across the country.

and I love what we do, but it's, it can, it can get out of hand, when it's combined

with other commitments that are more than, more than any person can happily enjoy.

what is the, what's the downside just in, brief terms

to having those type of commitments.

I know you mentioned hitting the wall and we're, we've got time here.

There's, there's some things we're going to go into.

Don't, don't, don't, think this is a light

conversation.

We, we don't, we don't surface level stuff here at seek, go create.

We kind of go deep, but just, just briefly, cause a lot of people

would be extremely impressed.

And I was, by the way, mostly I'm impressed that we're

both Georgia Tech graduates.

And, and we could chit chat about that a little bit, because that,

that immediately lets me know that I'm, I'm in, some good company, but,

and it actually may feed into some of this conversation because people

us just saying that tells something about us, but, but talk about the downside.

To, to being overcommitted.

what happened in my life was that I I had lost my joy in the

midst of trying to please everyone else by Uh, helping and trying to serve

or participate with everyone else's, things that they wanted me to do.

Together with, all of the things that I set out to try to achieve and accomplish.

And in the process of achieving and accomplishing, we can lose touch

with what we, what we really want.

what, what we want is probably the easiest question to, to ask.

an increasingly difficult question to answer, because when I, when

I ask myself what do I want, uh, there are layers to that.

And when I get down below the layer of what it is I think I want, to what

is it I really want, um, I discover that, I may be staying very, very busy.

And not enjoying what I'm doing.

And, that led to my burnout, where I was trying to accomplish and do

everything and just got burned out.

And it's a plague, and I think, in our country, certainly amongst leaders that

I know, um, and CEOs that I know and, and, have friendships with and work with.

Um, where they may be very, very accomplished, but their

accomplishment has come at a great cost to them personally, and the

relationships they have with others.

certainly was true in, in my case.

So you mentioned you use the word addiction.

It is something I'd written down in, in my notes here.

This is actually been a theme that's come up a few times here on here on the show

with people that successful and I'm air quotes for anyone listening to audio.

If you're watching this on video, you saw my air quotes successful.

But yet they mention addictions we would almost classify them as addictions

that are okay by social standards, but yet they have some repercussions.

Addictions like, I'm going to rattle off a few and then I'll let you just chime

in and all because you've been around people and you brought it up, addiction,

addiction to, achievement addiction to my addiction was to more, I was working on

businesses and every time I had a thought, I thought I needed to start a new business

or company and had someone who was on that said they were addicted to tomorrow

and it was, it was always the future.

They were always addicted to the future.

And all of these were males, by the way, I've never.

Had this issue with females that have been on here.

They, they may have things other, addiction to expectations

or something like that.

But I know from reading the book that you had someone advise you at some

point go hang out with AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, and do a deep dive

Yes.

And I didn't get the feeling that you had an alcohol.

or substance abuse issue at that time, or at least I didn't read

that in or may have missed it.

What was that all about?

And let's, let's layer this addiction mindset or this addiction, that we have.

Maybe

men have it.

just talk more about it just with what I said there.

addiction is a, is a hard word, and it can be, confusing and a real

turn off to a lot of, a lot of people.

and so let me define it, first, that an addiction is any behavior that we continue

and persist in, even after we know that it's hurting us and or those that we love.

So we could have any number of areas in our life where we're persisting in,

self damaging behaviors and behaviors that are hurting those that we love,

and we continue with them, and, we don't know why we, uh, can't stop.

Um, and so that can be, a work addiction, um, a codependency addiction, a,

an addiction to achievement or an addiction to, substance abuse, where,

social drinking turns into more, um, and where food turns into more.

And we continue to eat or we continue to drink or we continue to work.

in excess, beyond what is healthy and when it starts to hurt us and starts to

hurt those around us in our relationships.

And we'll often see that, uh, the tip off to that is often the conflicts

that we are experiencing in our relationships or in our physical

health or in our emotional health.

So, that's what I think of when I think of addictions.

So why is it, especially with men, that We have this situation

where some of our addictions, not all of them, cause obviously some

of them, we don't have to go into substance and sexual pornography,

all these, all these ugly ones, but yet the addiction to achievement, the

addiction to more, the addiction to work, addiction to our role in our title.

It seems to be acceptable in our culture and society.

How does that cause us issues?

Because many of us would say, but it's good that I'm addicted to work.

Isn't it?

that's a really, really good point.

And that's one of the things that makes the particular, those particular

addictions, sticky, hard to, recognize.

hard to accept and hard to recover from because they're surrounded

by lots of positive reinforcement.

Um, when you, when you over commit yourself to people in your business and

you work long hours, you get rewarded with a lot of attaboys and praise and

maybe accomplishments in the business.

Or, where you're helping people in the business and they tell you how great you

are so you get lots of reinforcement.

Or even if you're volunteering in your, in your church, and volunteering

way beyond what you should be doing in terms of your personal well being.

Health and in the time that you have, uh, you people may tell you how

wonderful you are and how indispensable you are and all of your volunteering.

And so you get all this positive reinforcement that reinforces your

dysfunctional behavior, reinforces that, that addiction where you've

gone above and beyond a healthy giving and a healthy contribution to where

it can actually start resulting in.

resentment, and in my own case, I would give and give and give until I

began to resent all the commitments that I had, resent the people that I

was serving, and actually resenting God because I'm supposed to be a good

person and give to other people, right?

I'm, I'm not enjoying my life and, I should be mad at God because, all I'm

doing is trying to be a good person.

Well, we can find ourselves in these traps in our lives when the stories

that we've told ourselves and, this is, this is how a lot of us, feel

when we get stuck and we feel stuck and we don't know how we got there.

in the book?

And I recommend people get the book all in YouTube.

Talk about, I'm going to go back to the AA because you just brought up the

spiritual component of, of God and church.

So I'm going to, we, we don't shy away from that conversation here, by the

way, we like to bring the kingdom of God and business and all of that together.

One of the things that came to me, I was, as I was reading the book yesterday,

Alan, I was thinking to myself, many of These addictions are also idols.

And, and we know we're warned about having idols above our spiritual walk.

It, we, scripturally we're warned of that, but I guess I wanted to ask

you, cause I think you referenced this some in the book, but I

wanted to ask you about it here.

You brought up the spiritual component of AA or Alcoholics Anonymous,

or even Al Anon for the families of those that are associated.

Mm hmm.

Let's go ahead and layer it in here because I, I,

this is my belief that it's very difficult to talk about addictions.

It's very difficult to talk about what really matters without

having a spiritual conversation.

Some people might go there.

I could tell you're not that way.

So let's go and bring the spiritual into it.

What did you notice with AA related to God?

Conversation.

What have you noticed in your journey?

You mentioned being mad at God and you thought you were doing everything, right?

I'm sure.

But yet you had no joy.

And you know what it says counted all joy in the Bible.

Why do I not have joy?

so where

did, where did that spiritual start creeping back in?

Or what did you learn about yourself from a spiritual standpoint as you

were going through this journey?

It was very embarrassing.

I have to tell you.

It was very embarrassing.

I'm meeting with my counselor, my coach, one day, and he says, Alan, would you be

willing to do anything I ask you to do?

And I said, I don't know.

You asked me to do some pretty weird stuff.

He said, I said, let me think about it overnight, and So I

thought about it overnight.

I thought, if he asked me to do something really, really crazy,

I could, I could just fire him.

That's the way, that's the way a lot of us CEOs think.

And I came back and I said, okay, Bo, I'm willing to do

anything that you want me to do.

I'll consider it.

And he said, I want you to go to AA meetings.

I want you to go to 60 meetings in 60 days.

And I'm, I say, AA meetings, alcoholics, anonymous.

Why would I go to an AA meeting?

I'm not an alcoholic.

He said, because God is there.

I said, Oh, great.

I'm an elder in my church.

I'm the chairman of the board of a Christian ministry, which is one

of the things I did on the side.

And you want me to go to AA meetings because God is there?

Just slap me in the face.

And I thought about it.

What I really realized is.

What do I do if somebody recognizes me at an AA meeting?

I was really concerned about my image and my, my, my personality, my

persona, my, my role in the community.

I'm kind of a big fish in a little pond here.

And, and, and so a couple of my buddies that were also CEOs said when we were

out of town, let's go to an AA meeting.

We'll go with you together to one of these meetings.

And I sat in that meeting with my buddies, um, in, in a town in Colorado where

I figured no one would recognize me.

And.

I was dumbfounded by the honest, vulnerable, powerful stories that

people told about the truth of mistakes they had made in their lives.

I had never heard anybody share stories like that at a Chamber of Commerce

meeting or or even at my church.

certainly not safe in my Sunday school class or, or any other group that I was

in, and I was just so impressed with that.

Later, I discovered Al Anon, which is Family and Friends of Alcoholics, and I

realized they had exactly the addiction that I had, which is codependency,

because the Family and Friends of the addict are the ones who enable the

addict by tolerating that behavior over and over and over again, and not

having healthy boundaries in their lives around the, the, addictive behavior.

And that was the spiritual component that I discovered.

It was, the honesty, the vulnerability, the truthfulness that I wasn't

used to hearing any place else.

and was a place where people were connecting with their higher power.

Um, and it was beautiful.

So contrast that.

All right.

So you're, call it a church going guy.

You obviously served in church settings, but this is what I just heard.

I'm going to make a statement and you either correct me or

argue with me or nod and say yes.

Sure.

So you spend all this time in church circles doing the right things,

but yet you really, and this is your counselor coach that said this, God is at

these AA meetings almost like he said, you may not find him in that church setting,

but you're going to find him here.

And is, is that the case?

Is that, is that where you saw God or more of God or got a different perspective

of God or tell me more about that?

think that's what, yeah, I think that's a great question,

and, and I, I think that's where I got a different perspective.

That there's a certain kind of freedom that I felt when I would go to an

AA meeting, sitting in a circle of grace, where nobody's judging me.

Where no one's posturing to look better or sound better, but just being real.

There's so few places that I know in life where you can be in a

confidential setting and be real.

And explore the truth around what you're feeling and where you feel like you may

not be succeeding in an area of your life.

Or in a, an important primary relationship in your life.

or in your life purpose or your calling.

And when you're in a safe circle, like that, it can be

transformative in a person's life.

I found that to be true when I, when I had my medical crisis too.

One of the things you mentioned was that you found your joy.

through this process, but the, the question that came to my mind was,

you ever have it in the first place as a child growing up going through

college, Georgia Tech and Harvard and, and because one of the things I want

to say this that I observed, and this is sort of related to the question.

And it seems as if shortly, either at a young age or at most of the considered

young age twenties, you were sort of being groomed to step into a very

adult role of running the companies and being on boards and things like that.

So I guess back up, tell me, did you have joy growing up or did you find

it for the first time with this long process that we're going to talk about a

I think I had a lot of joy in my life as a child.

And I think most of us do.

It's when, the rules of our families of origin, the rules of our community,

um, the, the disciplines that are put upon us, Uh, the restrictions and the

expectations of others start to pile on top of us that we can gradually,

layer by layer, start to lose our joy.

And I believe that the process of reclaiming that joy and refinding that

joy is to go through those layers.

And we, we become.

We, we, reclaim our joy layer by layer as we go through, the discoveries

in our blind spots, that some would call as the, as the, the psychologist

Carl Jung called our shadow.

That as we peel another layer off of our shadow and see one more layer of truth.

About ourselves that we restore our joy piece by piece and, and I think that's

also, not just what psychologists and psychiatrists write about and talk

about, but it's also, what Jesus talked about, that, that in, in him in this,

This spiritual journey that we take, that we will find an abundant life,

that God intended for us to have.

So a lot of it is restoring our childhood joy as adults that we lose over time

because of the, the, all the experiences of life that we have, the betrayals,

the disappointments, the failures, the conflicts in important relationships.

All those things that all of us experience can rob our joy layer by layer by layer.

And the opportunity that we have when we go all in to look into the truth

about our inner secret life, we can start peeling that onion of discovery

and layer by layer, restore our joy and restore our, our clarity of purpose.

and calling in our lives.

And with that comes, an empowerment that I think, that God intended

us to have in our lives.

whether we're, whether we're, in business or in a profession or whether in,

we're, whether we're raising a family.

Or, whatever it is that we're doing.

of those can weigh us down.

from excess.

And that's where we can restore our joy.

As you were saying that the images of my granddaughters who are

four and two came to mind and you you are correct that that childlike joy that

childlike faith we could also call it that you know Jesus spoke about that

it is interesting how life can start things to us so that then we get to a

place where we need to then go all in again when I think My granddaughters

are all in, they are all in on joy and enjoying life and the moment.

And you know what?

I support that.

in all in, I want to say this, I enjoyed the read.

It was great.

There was a stretch in it where you made some, what we would call

maybe pop culture references.

You referenced within a very short period of time, the movie city slickers.

And then you referenced

Ha, ha,

musical group, the Eagles with the song Desperado, which dates

us by the way, there are some people now that don't recall the early

seventies and you and I probably still remember the early seventies somewhat.

And then you went to what I believe is one of the greatest movies of all

time, which is the empire strikes back.

And you talked about the force within that.

And I'm teasing people to want to go get the book cause I'm not going to

give them what you talked about, but I'm leading to a, to something here.

I think the empire strikes back is one of.

The best of all of that arc.

And really, if we want to put movies, I want to say, I watched it on an

airplane recently, Alan, I actually had one of my granddaughters in my lap.

So I couldn't really listen to it, but I put on the subtitles and you

know what, that movie still holds.

It is still a great movie, but one of the things that came out of the empire

strikes back is probably one of the.

Biggest daddy issues, father issues scene of all time, when all of a sudden

Luke finds out his father is Darth Vader and how's that for a segue to go

into discussing father issues, right?

Men, men in general, if you talk to any of them, I had dinner, my son, he he's near

us here in Arizona where we're spending a little bit of time and we had dinner last

night and I'd already, I'd read your book and you'd mentioned a few things about

your father and some things like that.

Men in general, fathers are issues for them.

Either use your story or talk generally, talk a little bit about why

or, or what's going on with fathers and why is that such a challenge?

I think that, the issues that men deal with, um, are generational

in that, I realize that, the, the challenges that I had relating to my

father and wanting to earn and win his approval is something that, that he grew

up with and that his father grew up with, and that his father's father grew up with.

It's, it's a generational wound, as we would say.

and in, um, John Eldridge, in his book, Wild at Heart, says every

man um, takes a wound in his heart.

And it's invariably given to him, either intentionally or

unintentionally, by his own father.

And so we have generations of Men that have an unhealed wound in their heart,

because I believe he's correct in this, having worked with hundreds and

hundreds of men and hosting hundreds and hundreds of retreats for men and

hearing so many stories of so many men.

In a closed confidential setting that, this is, this plays

itself out again and again.

And one of the ways that I think we experience that is when we discover

that beneath all the different, uh, things that drive me is a feeling

that I'm not quite good enough.

That I'm not quite good enough and I need to prove that I'm good enough.

I need to prove that, that that, that I can do everything

that everyone expects me to do.

and it doesn't matter whether you're the, the, the CEO and chairman of the board

of a big company, or if you are, in, living in obscurity, we all carry that

same core wound, that number one, right?

That we're we're afraid we're not good enough.

And number two, we're afraid we're going to be found out

that we're not good enough.

And so that drives a lot of our self protective behaviors to create these

personas, these images, to not let people into the truth about ourselves.

And so that creates a type of isolation.

where we can only have a certain level of intimacy.

Maybe we would like to have this kind of intimacy, but we are only

experiencing this level of intimacy.

and part of that is because we're protecting ourselves because of the

things that we're afraid people are going to find out that we're not good enough.

And that drives a lot of people to a lot of outwardly success.

In show business, in business, in the professions, in all areas of life.

My, my uncle was the editor of Variety Magazine in Hollywood, and his

close friends were all of the famous actors whose names I could mention

that you would know very, very well.

They had a saying in Hollywood that celebrity is a mask

that eats away your face.

You wear this mask long enough, this persona, this image that

you want to portray to the world, long enough that you forget what

your real face even looks like.

You really don't know.

And so the idea of the sacred inner journey is to

rediscover who we really are.

Because whether we're, whether we're, a movie actor, or whether we are

just acting on the stage in our own neighborhood or in our own families,

we're carrying these personas that are keeping us from connecting with,

the truth about who we are and seeing the blind spots in our own lives,

which is where the healing comes from.

Look,

of questions kind of related to this, this concept of our

interaction with Father, with our fathers is we read in the scriptures that we

are to look at God as Abba Father.

Some, some people even use this word Father God.

We hear that quite a bit.

does it do for us if we have challenged relationships I'll, I'll even connect

some dots with you because you brought up, the God, your God relationship earlier,

and you mentioned it with your father.

What does that do for our view and relationship with God when the father

relationship on the earth is impacted?

I didn't realize how that affected me.

In terms of my spiritual life, but as my coach gave me the 12 step program

to work through in this workbook that I was working on one day, in

a little, pub down in the Florida keys where I could find solitude

and nobody would see me and know me.

I'm working diligently in a corner booth on this notebook.

And, and there's the picture, it says, uh, fill in a picture of, of, this is

just a circle, draw a picture of how you see your father looking at you.

And I drew a picture of how I saw my father looking at me, and I described it

as he was loving and caring and interested in me, but just a little disappointed

that I wasn't doing all that I could do.

And then it, I turned the page and it said, now draw a

picture of how you see God.

And I thought, Oh my God, that's what I just did.

That became my view of my heavenly father.

That became my view of God.

I did not realize that I had created God in my own image, in

the image that I had of my father.

So when those of us have problem relationships with our fathers, which

is very many of us men, we have to realize that we may be taking that

image of a very imperfect, wounded, father that we had growing up.

And we are recreating our image of God in His image, which is going to limit,

Our, our spiritual growth is going to limit our sense of freedom and an

understanding of grace in our lives and that, um, that we have the freedom to

fully feel and Fully engage in life, fully be creative, uh, because we're

not recreating, ourselves and recreating our image of God in the image of all

the failures of our own earthly fathers.

Yeah, it's tough.

And I, and I know that, Men, women have a little bit of a different situation.

My wife has dealt with some issues with her father, but it's almost like

there's this never quite good enough then transfers into our spiritual walk.

And so we're never quite good enough.

And like we said, we could go back to your resume and your accomplishments

and they are, you know, Superior.

Great.

Yet if they're never quite good enough.

So, all right, here's, here's the tough question.

You ready for the tough question?

Sure, bring it

on.

layering them in here, man.

We're going deep here, Alan.

We're not, we're not, I, I am the father to a 30 year old, awesome young man.

I know you, I think there's a son that you have this working in your organization.

So you mentioned earlier that this was generational.

You mentioned the father issues.

We've talked about how it impacts people's relationship with the heavenly father.

What do you and I have to do so that that generational stuff

doesn't keep passing on to our sons?

Yes, our sons and our

Yeah, our children, because

yeah,

said it's generational and we look at our parents and we

said, Oh, they did the best they could.

And we're doing so, because I, I'm concerned that I'm doing some

of that and I'm aware of this.

I've got three daughters, two stepdaughters, and, a son, and my son

is, 33 years old now, and he is now the president of our company, very talented,

and each one of my girls is very talented in different ways and has enormous gifts.

And I want the very best for each of them.

but I also have to, show up with the truth that, that, I still

carry the remnants of the, the expectations and the disappointments

that I felt I got from my parents.

And I think the thing that is the healthiest thing that I can do is

with my, uh, son and daughters is for me to show up authentically, to

recognize that, that I am imperfect in a million different ways, that I have

shortcomings in a million different ways.

that I want to love them wholeheartedly and without reservation, and that I also

want to speak the truth in love to them.

And it, since they are now all adults, uh, I am not, Um, I am not making life

decisions for them, but I am available as a, an advisor when they want my advice.

And, so I have to, uh, prove that I respect them as adults.

And not be trying to impose my decision making on them, but to give them, advice

and express concerns or ask questions.

Um, but also, let go of trying to control them.

and one of the ways I first learned this was I learned that I should ask them ahead

of time if they would like to, like my advice on that particular subject or my

observations on that particular subject.

And if they said, actually, Dad, no.

Then I would prove to them that I was an honest person and really cared about

them by not giving them my advice.

Because my natural tendency would be to say, but, what I think you

should do is, after they just said they don't want my advice.

So what they're doing when they say they don't want my advice is they're

testing me to see if I am a trustworthy, safe person or not a safe person.

Because I can be in a, I can be in a very controlling mode, and when I'm in a

controlling mode, I'm not a safe person.

And um, they may say no and then later come around and say, when

they see that, that I honored their request, they may come around later

when they're in a receptive mood and say, Dad, what do you, what do you,

what do you think about this thing?

And I can say, here's what I would have said to you the other day.

I feel the same way now.

Um, and, maybe that's helpful to you.

what do you think?

And then solicit their insights.

But this is a, a, this is a way that I think we start healing

those generational wounds.

Getting back to your question of how you don't How you stop

recreating, the generational wounds.

I don't think we, I don't think we entirely do

that.

I was going to

but I think we could,

I was going to ask you, how hard is that?

How hard is that to be that authentic versus you use the word control.

It, I, I, I find it difficult.

I'm aware of it.

I think I'm doing okay.

I would probably give myself a B minus.

Would you give yourself?

Some days, some days I get myself higher grades than other days.

Yeah.

So anyway, Alan, one of the things that we do here is we, we have this subtitle

that's called redefining success.

And then we throw

all these buckets in there of leadership, business and ministry,

which basically is a lot of

Mm hmm.

those of us.

Type people do,

Yeah.

but to kind of dig a little bit more into what all you

covered in all in, and also to kind of move us to a place where I think

we could really leave some good, some good tips and maybe some teaching

things for the person listening in.

I was going to ask you at, I think I'm getting the ages right here if

we need to adjust this, but I was going to ask you if you could what

success was for you at the age of 45.

if I read it correctly, I think it was around 47 that some big

shifts started occurring for you.

Is that right?

Right.

if you can, let's back up and tell me in however way you want

to, how you would have defined success.

If you were being interviewed back then, they didn't have podcasts

then probably, but if you were being interviewed and someone says, Alan,

how do you define success at 45?

What would you have said?

What do you think you would have said?

I think, I think there's a whole, uh, Cluster of things, that,

that, I, that I would, I would define as elements of success for me, and those

are related to my particular personality and my, uh, my childhood wounds that

I bring to the table that I cover up very nicely as a 45 year old CEO.

I would say number one, earning the respect and admiration of other people,

other professional people, other CEOs, and other community leaders.

I would say having a, a business that is successful and, growing and, creating, in

my case, developments or, or transactions.

That are considered worthy and, profitable in the community.

I would say, being a, a generous person.

Who's supporting good causes in the community and giving of my time to

community causes, whether it's on the Board of Directors of the United Way

or the Chamber of Commerce or all these other non profit organizations, and And,

and also being, in a, some leadership role in, in my church at the time and

also, having, a, a well ordered home.

And a, um, a loving relationship with my wife and my children.

And, I saw my children starting to have trouble, particularly one of my, one of

my daughters was getting into a lot of trouble, uh, around that time, um, that

was one more stress point in my life.

And so when I was 47, I started having the severe headaches.

After putting my daughter in, she got suspelled from one school, moved her into

a boarding school where she got expelled from that school, and then took her

up, put her in another boarding school that was more severe and more severe.

kind of a, a locked down school in a sense.

And I, I, I tell the story in my book of, driving back to the airport

alone because my, my wife had her own problems and she was not able

to travel with me because she was, emotionally breaking down and I couldn't

understand what was going on with her.

And, I'm driving back from, to the Burlington Airport after

dropping my daughter off at this godforsaken place in Maryland.

Northern Vermont, and I'm weeping alone in the car, in my rental car, driving

two hours back to the airport, feeling like, how could I have failed so terribly

as a father that I would have to leave my precious, beautiful teenage daughter

in this godforsaken place up here?

I didn't know what else to do.

And it was, it was two, within two weeks of that, that between that conflict in

my life, the conflict I had going on with my wife, the conflict I had going

on with two executives in my company that were at war with each other, that

I started having these severe headaches that the head of neurosurgery in my

hospital, preliminarily diagnosed as a brain tumor, and said, let's get the MRI,

let's find out where your tumor is, and then we'll know what our options are.

And it turned out, in the end, that, I was creating these severe headaches myself.

with what was going on in my life that I was disconnected from.

And, and that's when I healed what was going on inside.

It stopped all the headaches.

And it also started healing the relationships in my life.

So one thing that I'm always fascinated by, and and I was

going to mention them later that I know y'all have retreats and meetings

and all with the groups y'all do with all in, but I have this theory, Alan,

and I'll just go ahead and mention it here and I'll let you respond to it.

Great.

I am fully aware that we can make significant change in

our lives developing a plan, making a decision, and going about doing

things, blah, blah, blah, change.

However, the most significant change in my life Has typically been around

catalytic events like the one you just mentioned for me It was in 08 all of

our companies Were seven figures and all in real estate and i'm sure you can

tell some stories about that time too

Yeah.

Ha,

so my theory Is that most people are aware that they

can go through some methodical change and make things happen.

usually it's a two by four across the head, literal and figurative

with you that, that causes change.

Speak to that, especially now that you're seeing other leaders in

these groups that y'all are doing.

Give some input because what we'd love to do is I'd love to get people by the

collar and say, is a wake up call, but yet sometimes we just need those situations.

So thoughts.

Yes.

frankly, I had two different CEOs independently call me yesterday.

that both had just finished reading my book.

And, they said, can we talk?

Because they could relate to the stories in the book.

Because they're very real and very gutsy.

And, they don't leave out.

many details, in terms of the reality of life that, that is

true about what we're all facing.

And I don't, I get tired of books and, and, and people's

talks based on platitudes.

I, I like stuff that's real life.

And, and, If we could just make a list of the 10 things we needed to

do to fix our lives or to fix our businesses, why don't we just do them?

The answer to that is that the biggest problem is not the actions

we need to take, but ourselves.

The biggest problem is what's going on in ourselves that's causing us to make.

The decisions that we're making and carry the attitudes that we're carrying that

are creating the ongoing blocks to our success and what what I found that I

never anticipated, never a part of this.

I just wanted to get healing in my life.

I wanted to get rid of the headaches.

And I found I could get rid of the headaches by, connecting

with what I was feeling.

And I was, let me tell you, I was in the remedial class on healing.

My, I went to a retreat and, and the facilitator of the retreat said,

Alan, what are you feeling right now?

I said, I feel fine.

They said, no, no, what are you feeling right now?

I said, I feel good, I feel good.

That's not a feeling.

What are you feeling right now?

He says, I don't know.

I, what do you want me to say?

I, I, I just couldn't go there.

Apparently I had been trained in how not to feel.

Finally, he said, look, I'm going to give you a card here, uh, to put in your

pocket with these six feelings on it.

Mad, glad, sad.

Tender, excited, or scared.

Now you just, you just carry this in your pocket and pull it out 500 times a day and

ask yourself, what am I feeling right now?

And just pick one of those.

Okay, I really did it about 10 times.

but, I was surprised to discover how many times I was feeling anxious,

or concerned, or worried, or, which are all nice words for scared.

Because I, I'm anticipating problems in the future, problems down the

road, problems here and there in running my business or in, in

my family or in, my activities.

to discover that, that, I was, was afraid about a lot of things, a lot of the times.

And I would never admit to it.

Maybe I've spent a large part of my life proving that I'm not afraid.

Because I am.

I roll the dice on big multi million dollar real estate deals every day.

I fly airplanes at high speeds and high altitudes.

I'm a pilot.

I'm a scuba diver.

I race cars.

I do all kinds of crazy things.

And maybe one of the things that drives me, I had to ask myself, is

maybe, maybe you're trying to prove that you're not afraid when you are.

So this is part of the discovery, start peeling the onion, as I

describe it, to discover what is it I'm really feeling inside.

And how is that driving me?

And how is that affecting my business?

And when I got more and more freedom from those fears, I could

redefine myself in a different way.

And one of the results is our business has grown 20 times over from the

successful business I had before.

And we're building beautiful, award winning projects.

Every project we build now is, wins awards.

And because of that, it's an expression of my personal passion and joy.

And creativity and we say no to profitable projects that do not inspire us.

Because that's not our mission anymore.

Our mission now is to inspire, impress, and improve the lives of other people,

inspire people with the beauty of our projects, impress them with the

excellence of their experience and improve the lives of everyone we touch.

And that's not just my personal mission statement.

But it's the mission statement of our company that we have on our mugs, that

we have on the wall of our conference room, that we have in our reception room.

So, everybody knows what it is.

And we can always challenge that.

And they can challenge it and say, Hey, are we truly

inspiring people with this thing?

Are we truly inspiring people with that thing that we're doing?

and, and this is what's made my children and my family and my extended family

all of a sudden in the last 20 years, become all very interested and engaged

in what we're doing as a company.

And they all want to invest together with us and be a part of what

we're doing, voluntarily because it's exciting and it's inspiring.

And.

Wow, we're getting wonderful feedback from people.

So this is, this is how it is affected my real life and how it's

affected our very real, uh, company.

And I do want to, I do want to say that I've got on my browser

right here on my computer, projects tab on the Alan Morris website.

And you are absolutely correct.

These are, these images these projects are absolutely stunning.

We'll include a link down in the notes cause people need to go take a look at

the, take a look at those and check them

out.

But, we started that with just the ability to.

deal, to deal with things and to kind of move through it.

That, and it sounded like what you were describing is what's in the book.

We don't have time to go into it much here, but that shadow work, is that

the shadow work that you talk about?

Yes.

Yes.

It's what we do.

it's just a part of the, part of the safe, experience.

That we provide people in our weekend retreats.

that's become so popular among CEOs and other leaders.

So Alan, the book all in, and the subtitle is important.

How to risk everything for everything that matters.

The.

I could guess the purpose of the book, but as an author myself, someone

who's written something recently, I had this realization sometime during

the process that God may have had me writing this book as much for me.

As for someone else who was reading it now, I'm, I'm not putting words

in your mouth, but what was the process of putting it together?

did that have any impact?

Cause you, there was some, there was some deep, deep stories

here that you went through.

So my, my question is not necessarily what's, what do you

want the reader to get, but what did Alan get from this process?

it was a cathartic process for me.

It was, when I, when I realized, I don't know who's going to read this book.

And I can't really worry about whether I'm going to make them happy.

I've got to just tell the truth.

I've got to kind of get it out, my truth, the truth of the men that have

allowed me and given me permission to share their stories, and, and it, it,

it helped me clarify my message and how I wanted to share this with others.

And whether anybody ever bought the book or not.

But now we've already gone into a second printing, and the Young Presidents

Organization just distributed 1, 300 copies of the book last month at

their Global Leadership Conference for CEOs from around the world.

They came for their annual leadership conference, I'm

being asked to speak on this.

All over, Australia, Ghana, Ecuador, New York.

It's, it's California where we're being, uh, pulled in a lot of different

directions because, it seems to have just.

In telling the truth has touched a chord with a lot of men and women

and now more and more women who have said, why, what, why don't

you make this available for women?

we do now.

And we're, we're having ongoing women's retreats and women's forums.

And we have a women's program director for our charitable, organization

called all in leaders Inc.

Uh, so we have all the same programs for women that we have for men.

And, it's, it's very rewarding.

I, I, I'm having less and less time to run my real estate business

now, and so I'm glad my son is taking over more and more of that.

it's just, it's, it is, I, I, how could I say, it's so rewarding to

have gone through that process.

of writing, just to help me get the clarity.

And one of the gifts that I hope the book is to people, so they don't have to take

a three year sabbatical that I took to get this all straight in my head, I want

to give others the chance to read the book and get started on this journey.

and not have to take some long sabbatical to do it.

So hopefully it'll be, it'll be an open door to reconnecting with,

with your joy in the midst of the trials and challenges of life.

Yeah, I, I, I enjoyed it.

I was able to read it in about a 48 hour span, was actually, I liked, sometimes

spread books out this, we, we had this deadline, so I wanted to read it

as quickly as possible.

But who do you think it's for?

If you were to define who it's for, I know as authors, we say sometimes,

Oh, it's for anybody who reads it and it needs to, but did you have someone

in mind other than what you were going through yourself that you thought this

is someone that needs to read this?

absolutely.

I would say it's somebody that is not satisfied with their life,

with something about their life.

Where they are.

Where they feel stuck in some area of their life.

They feel stuck in a relationship.

They feel stuck in their profession.

Um, and they want to know how to get unstuck and get the freedom

that they want back in their life.

And with it, the joy.

that's what, that's the person that's going to really grab on to the book, that

I found that people that call me, like the two men that called me yesterday,

both of them were feeling stuck because of some things in their life, their, their

marriage, in one case a marriage, the relationship with a father, a relationship

in, in, businesses, and And this is where they started to find some, some real

freedom, and want to go further with it now, and they want to come to retreats.

interesting to me is that we all believe that our situation is

so unique and different, yet you read the book, you just told the stories

of the two CEOs and we start seeing repetitive things that are, that are

there and not that there aren't still unique situations and the names and

all are different, but anyway, Alan, Where can people connect with you?

Find the book websites.

What, what, what all would you like to give here?

We'll include all that in the notes, but go ahead and share for the person

that's listening that may not be able to check the notes while they're

driving or something where they can find all of this great info from you.

Great.

The easiest place to start is the website, allinbook.

com.

Just very simply, allinbook.

com.

And you can get, that'll launch you into all the access to the book,

information about the book, and all the other resources that are

available through our charitable organization called allinleaders.

org.

Uh, that, allinleaders is, will get you into that.

And, we have webinars, we have one on one coaching.

We have retreats and conferences all available that have all

grown out of the, the book.

Excellent.

Well, I'll definitely say that anyone that has been listening in here at Seek Go

Create for the 250 plus plus episodes, the message of all in and what you're talking

about is a great fit to what we're doing, because that's very similar missions

and that is to help people get to that place of like you brought up early joy or

getting to what it is that they believe they're created for and on this earth.

So anyway, Alan, we are seek.

Go create those three words.

I'm going to allow you to choose one and why just it resonates more.

Seek, go or create.

Which one do you

I'll tell you, it's go all in to seek, to

seek the truth about yourself.

That's where the, that's where the, that's where the answers are.

To look into the truth about yourself, to seek.

Amen.

Thank you, Alan.

This has been so enjoyable.

I highly recommend you get the book all in.

I've got it on my Kindle here.

All in.

How to risk everything for everything that matters.

Like I said, I did read it over the last few days, extremely enjoyable, extremely

valuable, started poking at me and getting me thinking about a lot of things.

And I truly appreciate that.

So I appreciate you writing it, Alan.

We're SeekGoCreate.

I appreciate everyone for joining us here.

If you want to support us in any way, you can always go to seek, go create.

com forward slash support.

If you like what we're doing, you could support us financially, make

comments and just help us out there.

I appreciate Allen for joining us today.

I appreciate you for listening in until next time, continue being

all that you were created to be.