The Morning Upgrade Podcast Featuring Karl Staib
Welcome to episode #21 of the Morning Upgrade Podcast. Today I got to speak with Karl Staib, who is a personal development coach and author. He loves writing about gratitude and spending time with his family.
Top Talking Points
- Using an evening routine to cheat your long-term memory.
- Rebranding in order to simplify your business can help with success.
- Turning your challenges into opportunities.
Resources & Links
Share Link for this episode
Connect With Karl at digtofly.com
Find The Books Mentioned on Kindle or Audible:
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnigie
The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz
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Episode Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the morning upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote. Where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.
Ryan Cote:
Hey everyone. This is Ryan Cote with the morning upgrade podcast. Today I’m super excited to be speaking with Karl Staib. Hey, Karl
Karl Staib:
Hey, how’s it going? I’m excited.
Ryan Cote:
Excellent. Yeah, me too. So why don’t we start off by you telling us what you do and then what your interests are?
Karl Staib:
Yeah. Man, so many interests. I love writing, hiking. I got two boys, family living in Texas. But my main passion is what we talked about right before we hit the record button is coaching people and helping them kind of get to the heart of what really their struggles are and then how to find opportunities in them.
Ryan Cote:
You always enjoyed helping people, have you always been interested in personal development?
Karl Staib:
I have, and man, I started with how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie influential book, (Inaudible 01:10), watched Oprah as a kid growing up. Man, so many little things. Ted talks are a huge part of my life and always leaning on like different phases when I’m doing research. But yeah, it’s usually been kind of… I’m 44 now so probably since I’ve been like 20 I started yoga and really diving into self-help books.
Ryan Cote:
Yeah, I try to think about my path too. I’ve always been interested in self-improvement and personal development. And I’m trying to remember exactly when it started. I remember not too long ago as we’re selling our house and I was going through old books in our attic. I don’t know how far back, but way back. And even in that collection, there was like a, what was it thinking big, I think was one of the books and I was like, man, I was reading this stuff even way back then. But I guess it’s like the journey that never ends personal development, which is what I kind of like, you know, there’s always improvement that you can make and try to help others.
Karl Staib:
Yeah. Our brains are flexible and just like 10 years ago they thought brains were static and like you couldn’t really learn more and then all of a sudden it was just wait, no anything can happen. You know, anything’s possible, your brain can learn literally anything. It takes longer as an adult, but it’s possible to create those new neural connections.
Ryan Cote:
Let’s talk about habits now, you mentioned your brain expanding and growing. Do you do anything in your regular routine that is training or exercise for your brain?
Karl Staib:
Yeah. I’ve been really kind of digging into my evening routine. I do have a morning routine and I can talk about that as well. But what I really like about an evening routine is as sleep your brain processes the day. So the three most important things and the most impactful thing is what will go into your long-term memory, approximately. So the things you’re thinking about at the end of the day, like that comment a coworker made or, you know the weird half-smile that someone gave you in the coffee shop. And you’re like, whoa, that was weird, comment your wife made, or your kid made. And that’s the stuff that sticks with you as you’re going to bed. And as you’re going to sleep, that’s what goes into your long-term memory. So if you can, and this is kind of a brain hack that a lot of people don’t talk about is using that time before bed to have a little process. I have a process that I use, I call it the source system and it’s simplify, observe, appreciate and reflect at the end of every night. And when you do that, you’re basically setting yourself up for a more positive sleep. You wake up with more energy and the things that you’re thinking about, you’re more likely to be able to do them even better the next day.
Ryan Cote:
How long does that take you to do, the nighttime routine?
Karl Staib:
My nighttime routine usually is around 15 minutes, but give or take depends on how tired I am. I will always go through the system at the end of the day. So if I’m really tired most of the time. So it’s basically a give it real quick, but you can do each one in a minute so it’s like a total of four minutes. But simplify is, I usually try to simplify what’s going on in my mind. And I will write down things that I’m thinking about, things that are bouncing around and I’m like, okay, I need to stop thinking about these things and I just need to get them down and I can focus on them tomorrow. And then sometimes I’ll organize my area. So if I have like, my nightstand has a couple too many books on there, I’ll clean that off. If I have some sticky notes on there, clean that off and it just helps me kind of relax. And I start to set the tone for getting ready for bed. And we talked about Ted talks. I usually try to observe somebody I admire at the end of the night and it could be Bill Gates, it could be Oprah Winfrey, it could be (Inaudible 05:36). I mean so many amazing and talented people out there. Watch Ted talks or just type in a keyword and see what other people are doing and writing about it and comedians as well. I find kind of listen to a comedian’s storytell kind of relaxes me as well. And then appreciate you know, I’m big on gratitude. Thinking about this, those good things that happened to you in the day. It’s so important. And really take time and feel that feeling of like, oh yeah, that time I had lunch with my son. You know, right now we’re in the middle of COVID so a lot of kids are at home. We’re busy, but you know, taking that time and just putting my phone down and not having it distract me, closing the laptop and just being there with them is really important for me and making that time to appreciate that, that I had that time with them.
And then reflection, I just think about the good things I’ve done that day, because if you’re anything like me and you have an inner bully and he loves to beat me up. I call my inner bully Arnold because he’s got a German accent. But the idea for me is that I say, yeah, okay, inner bully, you know, that’s fine, but guess what? Look at all the good things I’ve done today. I finished a blog post. I recorded a podcast. I helped out a friend. I sent out a really quality email. I took my time, did a great job on that, finished the report, whatever it is. And then I end it with, what can I do just a little bit better tomorrow? And it just plants the seed of, oh yeah. Like I need to pause more before I hop on a meeting and this is a thing for me. I go, go, go and all of a sudden it’s like, you know, four o’clock and I’m frazzled. And so I’ve been taking more time just to take a few deep breaths before I go on a call or before I start writing and center myself. And I appreciate that thing so much more. And it’s because of planting that seed, like your brain then thinks about these things, processes them. And you’re more likely to do that thing the next day. And man, it’s done wonders for me.
Ryan Cote:
Yeah. I appreciate you sharing such a tactical step-by-step way to end your day on a good note. I have a morning routine, it’s not that sophisticated, but I will write down three or four wins for the day at the end of the day. And I like to do pen to paper, something about that pen to paper three or four wins for the day. It does kind of like, I don’t know. It helps a lot to reflect on what went well that day. I’ll even take it a step further. Like part of my morning routine, you know, I’ve got my affirmations, I’ve got like what I want to happen in the future, like my goals. But then to reflect on what you said, I also have a section where I have things I’m proud of, accomplishments over my whole life. And that list hopefully grows over time. And cause I think you do need to take a step back and yeah, it’s important to have goals, but you also need to be conscious of what you’ve achieved, because if you don’t, it’s easy to just forget about it and just always focus on the future. When there have been things that you’ve accomplished that you should be proud of and you should remind yourself of those things.
Karl Staib:
Exactly. Because too often we beat ourselves up and we don’t see all the good we’ve done through the day. And if we don’t focus on that, we can fall into depression. We can procrastinate more than we like to because we don’t see what’s the point, you know, we’re like, well, what’s the point of doing it? Well, the point is to reach those goals that we want to help people, that we want to help ourselves, we want to help our family members. So yeah, no, it’s a great routine.
Ryan Cote:
So I got two more questions for you and then we’ll wrap up with you telling everyone how they can learn more about you. So my first question is in regards to your coaching business, what’s the hardest thing about your business, and what are you doing about it?
Karl Staib:
So I’m rebranding. So a lot of rebranding from bring gratitude to dig the fly. What I’ve realized is simplifying things for people is so important. We’re busy, our brains have worked the way they’ve worked for years and years. And you’re not going to be able to change things overnight, it takes practice, it takes effort, it takes creating processes. And so for me, it’s been simplifying it. So I help my clients get better results. I think that’s really the key part. Because in the end, if people get great results, those are the people that are going to tell their friends about you
Ryan Cote:
I love the lesson of making things simple. And actually, you kind of gave me like a segue into my last question for you. Normally I ask something along the lines of like your number one personal development tip, and this sort of will be kind of related, but you talked about rebranding from Dig the fly where you talk about turning challenges into opportunities. So what is your number one tip or maybe one tip for turning challenges into opportunities?
Karl Staib:
Yeah, so I have a sequence of questions and how it really works is you have to be able to calm yourself down. Every struggle is a struggle because your emotions are on overdrive. So I would just give you the questions real quick, ask yourself how difficult is this struggle on a scale of zero to 10? Like zero is easy, 10 unbearable. If you have any wiggle room, then you can move on to the next one. Even if it’s like a 9.6, you know, like, okay, there’s some wiggle room there. There’s a point for wiggle room. Why do you feel this way? Really dig in, feel with it, feel what’s going on. Why is this a struggle for you? And then what were your expectations of the situation? When you really sit down most of the time it’s because we expected the situation to be different than it is. And this is one of the hardest things about being human. And we do, we need to be able to think in the future and think how things will be, but then we have to be more accepting of it. And that’s key is understanding your expectations.
And then what are a few small things you can appreciate about the situation. This helps calm you down, release some dopamine, some serotonin, gives you that like, okay, everything’s okay here. I’m okay. And then once you can do that, then you look at what opportunities are in there in that situation. And there are always opportunities. It’s just taking time to think about it and allow yourself to let go of the strong emotions. And then once you do, then you can really say, okay, oh yeah, no, I can go and talk to somebody about this. I can go connect with so and so. And yeah, they’re going to give me that next step that I think that can really help me.
Ryan Cote:
Awesome. You gave us lots to think about Karl. I appreciate all the advice you gave here and the questions to ask and your nighttime routine, a lot of actionable advice. What’s the best website for someone to visit if they want to learn more about you or connect with you?
Karl Staib:
Right now, it’s bringgratitude.com. But hopefully within a few days, depending on when this goes live, it’ll be digtofly.com. And the idea is dig deep to fly high. Because, you know, 99% of life, happiness is all from our mindset. And the 1% is just showing us the way, you know the trigger for our emotions. So we can navigate these waters and go into smoother waters. Because once you realize it’s just all up in your head and it’s just all there for you to be able to do what you can with it and be able to grow within your own mind. That’s when you have the ability to do anything you want.
Ryan Cote:
Great. Thanks for sharing Karl. It was great talking with you.
Karl Staib:
Yeah. Thank you. I had a great time.
Ryan Cote:
Me too. Take care, everyone. Thanks for listening. Talk soon.
Announcer:
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