How to Become Emotionally Fit with Miles Adcox, CEO of Onsite Episode #31

Aaron: Welcome to the work life play podcast. I'm Aaron McHugh, your host.

Aaron: Friends. Welcome to my podcast, episode number 31 today is deeply special to me to be able to introduce to you my guest Miles Adcox, the CEO of onsite. And I'll tell you a little bit about onsite what they do, my experience with them, some other people that you'll recognize that have spent time there and onsite, but I'll just start with the caveat introduction is that this is deeply personal. So yesterday I spent some time cutting these intros and I realized overnight something just wasn't working. I tried him five different ways and none of them sounded right. And I realized overnight that the reason they didn't sound right is that I wasn't practicing what I learned there. And I downloaded last night Donald Miller's new book called scary clothes. And it's about his experience largely that he spent there at onsite about dropping the act that we play and what we externally projected the world and getting real and getting vulnerable.

Aaron: So in this intro, what I realized what was missing, and this is a regular occurrence for me, unfortunately, is missing the vulnerability of just being authentically true and honest and giving you the whole story. So in a minute, when you hear the conversation that Miles and I had and we talked about becoming emotionally healthy, emotionally fit, becoming your best self, all that's gonna make more sense to you. If I start by providing you a context of why I even got involved with onsite. So Onsite is located outside of Nashville, about an hour in this great rural kind of a state, 18 hundred, like property. It's a big mansion on the Hill and then a series of cabins and other facilities there. And you know, they have equine big horse fields and pastures and trails and creeks and it's just gorgeous. It's an easy place to become able to get to the center of yourself.

Aaron: So the reason I went to Onsite back in April of this year, 2000 was I was sideways, is really what it comes down to. And my life was starting to go sideways. My relationships were starting to go sideways and I was really reaching a point of near-crisis where I'm just not able to do life. And I don't know what's wrong. I talked to my son yesterday and we had a conversation about this. He is in a recovery program himself in, out in California and has also spent time at onsite. And what was funny to me, which was so true, I did not think I needed to go to some intense workshop and spend a week of my time in lockdown there to get to the bottom of what was really going on and what was wrong in my life. But the truth is I had tried everything else and it didn't work.

Aaron: So my son and I were laughing about how when you're in the room, you look around and say, Oh, that's nice. Good for you that you need this, but I don't need this. Or I remember when I first got to Onsite after this long bus ride from the Nashville airport out to their facility. You know, I'm looking around thinking Donald Miller described this in his book. It's like, man, what these guys do to deserve this, you know what they do to get here, these inmates. So all that said, it is a phenomenal program that helps through their workshop I attended called living centered to get to the bottom of what's the drivers and for me deep in the engine that was misfiring cause something was wrong and I couldn't figure out why. I'd been through all kinds of counseling. I've done all kinds of everything and I still wasn't to the root cause of what was driving my life to not be the life I wanted to be living and whether it was the expression in my work, whether it's the expression in my relationships where it was the expression in my priorities, it was just not working.

Aaron: What I learned in going to Onsite is it helped me answer kind of a couple of key questions: what does the definition of becoming my best self even look like? Because I think that got lost over the years and stacked underneath so much debris. What I found is I started just adapting. I just started adapting to whatever event or traumatic thing happened or grief or loss or mistake. Through those adaptations, I became more of what I would call my false self and what the world was rewarding in me. Less so about being authentic. So I began to find more and more ways to try and control life, to try and control and influence and manipulate situations, relationships, circumstances for an outcome that I desired. And what I found is that wasn't working anymore and I wasn't proud any longer of predominantly who I really found myself to be.

Aaron: And so with that Onsite workshops and their living center program that I went through basically has salvaged and resurrected my life. So when I tell you about this story with miles today and we talk about Brene Brown's work on vulnerability and Donald Miller's work with scary clothes. When we talk about this stuff together today in the podcast, I just want you to know how deeply personal this is for me and how deeply personal it is for miles because both of us are in the process of recovering and becoming our best selves. And we talk about this concept of making a two-degree shift, the idea that we do an about-face in our life and all of a sudden we're 180 degrees in a different direction as he discusses this in the podcast today. Sometimes that's what it requires to get out of harm's way to flee a relationship or a circumstance or problem that actually requires you to be safe, and remove yourself.

Aaron: But oftentimes, really that's not what is required. But these subtle shifts in every single little conversation in every single your normal mode of operation. What I learned at onsite was what it looks like to become my best self. And that oftentimes that is simply a subtle two-degree tilt of a slightly different way. I engage in a priority for the day in a slightly different way. I engage a conversation, in this case, a slightly different way. I cut this audio intro for the podcast and just hang it out there and get real with you and offer to you vulnerability in nakedness. Here's the real story, so I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. It really is an invitation to find out how to live forward in the best story possible for your life with your set of giftings, with your storyline, with the challenges that you've been faced with in life, with the mistakes that you've made and moving forward into living out your best self, which allows for us to have congruent CC deep within us, the people who are committed to becoming emotionally fit, emotionally ready for the day, for their life, for their relationships, for their work, for their play.

Aaron: Those are the people that actually end up experiencing joy in relational connectedness, which yields intimacy and all of it in a sustainable manner that you can actually keep up for the rest of your life. Hope you enjoy it. So Miles Adcox, welcome to the work-life play podcast. I'm super stoked you're here and excited to introduce you to our audience so they can hear about what you do and why it matters and how it changed my life and how it changes the world. So welcome and tell us more about yourself.

Miles: Thank you, Aaron. I'm honored to be here and to be part of this. I love the content you're putting out there. It's, it'll be fun to be here today. Thanks for having me. Who am I? I'm a guy who feels deeply, who is incredibly passionate about digging in and understanding who I am so I can show up better for myself and for the service of others. I love seeing the lights come on for people. I am a product having overcome the struggle. So it really lit up a part of my world that I found a passion and a calling, which is not necessarily you know, pushing people from a step to the place of clarity. It's heavy to comfort and join his pain. So it is, you know, the world, a messy place. Somehow I've been put in the path, the dance with people's struggle and I think the present is fairly comfortable with having done it on my own, I don't know what's the right word cause it all feels like a bit of a struggle to look inward, but I just loved the prospects. I love that process. I love walking people through there. That's kinda who I am.

Aaron: All right, I love it. Well, I'm going to add a little bit to that for the listener. So you and I have whatever we've got eight months, 10 months under our belt now, in understanding what some of that means and why it matters. So for the listener, Miles runs Onsite workshops in Nashville, Tennessee and they specialize in healing and trauma. And specific workshops for helping. They have one of them that I attended called living centered. And so what miles is describing as we look at this trifecta of work and life and play is showing up and living into being your best self. Identifying what is your best self, who is that person, and then what standing in the way of living forward and what debris exists or areas that require healing and, and attention. And so I am, I wouldn't call it a fan. I'm an evangelist. I now consider myself a disciple and I'm an advocate for becoming, figuring out what's standing in our way so that we can then live forward in our work and in our life, in our play. And most people can't do that just from a series of books sitting on their shelf. So organizations, companies like miles help people like us be able to become our best selves and live that forward. So Miles, is that a fair assessment?

Miles: Yeah. That sounds good.  I appreciate you clarifying what I do and you know like how you didn't really do a ton of separation between what I do and who I am because if you would ask me that question five years ago, you know, who are you a little led out, but everything that I do for a long time, I tried hard to separate these two identities because I got really wrapped up in what I do and the last two I busted and I realized once it really about building separation, more about bracing, creating harmony and having a narrative who I am and what I do and what I do and who I am. I'm way more comfortable now, not necessarily spinning it off, all the things I've accomplished because I don't feed into most conversations with a strong need for external validation because I've just done so much heavy lifting to try to pick a couple of functionally fit. It's not a place that I've learned thoroughly. Something that you're in process of. You always workout. So I'm not going to pretend like I still don't have those hooks, but they're not near as loud as they used to be. It's fun just to really explore who I am as being a duck. 

Aaron: Well I love what you just said is I've done enough heavy lifting to become emotionally fit. So I would say for those of you that are listening that are already ready to push the stop button and say, I don't, I don't need this crap. I'm, I'm fine. I'm, you know, everything's working well for me. Well, the truth of the matter is the bravest people I know are the people that are willing to engage in what miles is referring to. So becoming emotionally fit, if you think of it that way. To me that's more inviting than saying, Hey, I got a bunch of stuff broken in me. So Miles, if you met him, he's a fit guy. So that's actually a good descriptor of him physically. And I would say now emotionally, so Miles, I really love that terminology and I think that is inviting for those people that have never waited into these waters to say, Oh okay. It's not just about sitting in a counseling office. It's actually becoming fit for becoming and living out the best story I can.

Miles: Yeah, I agree. I think unfortunately the way our culture tends to work is if you have to have some type of really bad life experience in order to get a chance at looking deeper, raising your emotional IQ. It's kind of a shame, but not as much as it used to be because there have been some great writers come out the last 10 to 15 years talking about the importance of versus IQ and it came through the lens of science. You know, they researched it, found that it helps you learn to lead a parent. There are so many advantages to learning who you are, raising your emotional consciousness that no longer causes it's something that we do out of necessity based on some type of mythology that we've been hearing. Whether you're dealing with a mental health issue or if you're going through a difficult relationship or life's just not working.

Miles: That's when you usually get the gift of emotional awareness. And that typically is what people wait on. And it feels like a burden when you look at it through that lens is what we're waking up to. Now. Saudi, which is a lot of fun is you don't have to wait to experience that gift. I will say that the pain that I've experienced in my life and I've had my fair share of it, every single bit of it looking back is ultimately in the doorway to the biggest gift that I've ever been able to experience. And now looking back, I don't know that I would trade him. Yeah. I don't wait in order for me to need experience. And I guess what I mean by that is I think life happens and we get wounded, we get hurt to experience and we often don't create experiences to counteract that kind of what we do at onsite.

Miles: And you know, like you said, that traditional counseling, cause we know it is what you've got to see. You know, when the media and the movies, it's laying on a couch and shrinks off. It's where you're just talking to you. You're doing this cognitive day. It's, and that was very critically important. Don't get me wrong, there's a huge space for them and I've done a lot of that. I think you build in a ceremony, you build in engagement, you build experience. We get wounded in an experience and I think we feel an experience and it's our job to create healing experiences and to step into them. And it doesn't have to be some do a week you know, at a personal growth workshop and onsite work. Listen to your podcasts once a week about life love play, which I hope they do both. It can be as easy as what lights me up. Is it a film? The movies make me feel if they do, I need to make time for this music, touch my soul in a deeper way than words, dude. So I've got to make time every day to build that in.

Aaron: That's what it's all about. It's more preventative maintenance or medicine for the soul. Okay. I love it. So again, for the listener, my invitation, Miles' invitation to you is to get real right now while you're listening to this and assess where is the, where has life happened that in ways that you had never intended. And so as we're talking specifics of, all right, that's divorce, that's an illness. That's a loss, job loss, that's death, that's abuse that everybody walking around has a story. And my wife wears a tee-shirt that says my story's going to be a good one. So if life happens as miles saying for all of us, and what's standing in our way is some of that life and milestone is saying, Hey, we had Onsite are able to proactively counteract what's happened. So what I love about that Miles is you're saying, listen, basically, it's a fork in the road, is my view.

Aaron: You can keep going the way you're going. And if that's working for you, great. Super. That's, that's awesome. But if there's something that you sense, feel, experience because life has happened, then a place like onsite in the work that they do isn't another path that enables you to counteract through experiences that they have. Whether it's equine therapy or like you said, music. I won't give away some of the punchlines of what actually happens there. But I will say that it is definitely for me a fork. I chose to counteract the things in life that happened that I would have chosen otherwise and I wish they hadn't. But now I have this other choice which miles and I chatted about briefly before he got on the line about, they talk about tilting your life and your decisions and your relationships. Just a slight subtle to degree shift.

Aaron: And what would two degrees in your life look like over a week, a month, a year, 10 years. And where I always think of that miles is I've spent a lot of time in the backcountry and in the wilderness and when you're reading a map in a compass, there's this thing called declination, which is the difference between true North and magnetic North. Well, you have to adjust your compass wherever you are in the world to compensate for this degree of shift. And so I always view it as if I'm in the wilderness and if I walked two degrees, I didn't adjust my compass correctly and over two degrees, over a mile, over five, over 10 I'd be in a totally different place. So I view it as overtime, that two degrees and this emotional fitness to counteract these things that I didn't want to happen in life is actually a tremendous shift for my future. That, as you said, I'm willing to and I was willing to, my family's been willing to proactively chase and I'll say one last time it, I do believe there are some of the bravest people I've ever met and Miles at Onsite leads that environment and creates that ability for people like us to show up to find and be invited into what is a two-degree shift for the rest of your life look like. So there's my commercial.

Miles: Well thank you. Yeah, very kind. And I love the way that you, you framed it cause I can not only no, I say that a lot. Professionally. I talk about the two to three shifts. Just the reason I do, I love the metaphor you just tied in with it cause it's, I think it's so true in that particular shift has been a more attainable or realistic approach to grow. Emotionally, personally, no, whatever you want to call it. I think the reason for that is that in some of my early experiences where you deal with a painful situation in the way you'd like to manage your way through it or navigate you, what to do it is to do a 180-degree turn because it's difficult. You're in it, it's hard to look at. It's hard to swim, it's hard to do it.

Miles: Okay. The way to counteract this, turn my back to it. Go the other way. Okay. That's, I'd say 80% of the change process looks like they need a bad situation by going in the opposite direction or is there a necessity to do that? Absolutely. Because of some bad situations or crisis-oriented in order to save yourself or save your life, you need to move out of the way. However, most are not life-threatening most just feel that way. So as it relates to what we're talking about with shifting to degrees, there's something about standing in infusing struggle instead of turning your back to and you know for an amount of doctor per new client on, which I'm sure a lot of you know your, her work, she's an incredible researcher storyteller. If you just really given permission for vulnerability through a few books.

Miles: The one that kind of broke out and she's most known, the fourth book, daring greatly, but she's got a new one that's coming out in August that I'm really fascinated, thought up at digging into and it's called rising strong. And it basically is okay once we can prove that being vulnerable will help you the most to be seen, heard, valued, and it will help you live as a loving parent and lead in a better and more effective way. What happens when you go out into the arena and you fall and you have a really difficult day, a really difficult year, a really difficult situation. How do you go from falling to rising and she's kind of studying that process and presenting it is incredible. Incredibly moving away or very validating. Right. So she's coming to Nashville to do the best part of her book tour with O magazine, Oprah Magazine.

Miles: And I'm going to be able to speak alongside her and some other amazing storytellers. And August you can jump on her website or a bit page or random house books and get some tickets out of it. They went on sale yesterday and they're going fast. Just cause she's a really sought after person. I think it ties in super well to the narrative that you and I are discussing what you know, like your work, as Onsite does. But I guess anybody who's in the past seeking and searching needs to become familiar with.

Aaron: Yeah. Miles. I love it. I'm going to read. I just pulled up the Teddy Roosevelt quote cause it's one of my favorites in any excuse I can find to use it. So Bernay Brown in her book, daring greatly wrote about this concept the arena and the concept of the arena came from a famous Teddy Roosevelt speech that he had. So let me read it to you. So it's not the critic who counts,

Aaron: Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who's actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly. Who errs, who comes short again and again. But there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat come OD that has their good stuff. So what I love is these intersections of this are Miles and I are in the arena right now. We're striving and trying and not striving in an exhaustive way. We're offering our best and we're believing whether it is Onsite or through a podcast, we're doing it out of heart and soul in the belief that it makes a difference and we're going to air and come up short again. But at least we're in the arena. And it's true that the triumph does go to those who are willing to try versus those who just sit on the sidelines. So go ahead, miles.

Miles: Yeah, it does. It lights me up every time I hear it. I love that she needs to read because a lot of times people stop when they get to the dairy. At least, you know, dairy Gregory, that's a strong piece. But could you read the last sound bite right after that?

Aaron: Yeah. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Miles: Yes.

Aaron: Yes, that's right man.

Miles: A video.

Aaron: Can I get an amen?

Miles: The reason that lights me up, it's because I have seen Nicole, so I spent a lot of my life looking through the lens of needing to be perfect dating, anything I could do. What I realized was definitely B and C, but I went around and armored up and it's an exhausting process. It did keep me from ever really fully being known. So you asked the question, is it worth it to take the emotional risk to get into the arena, to get real and vulnerable, not about what you're incredible at. That's great. That's actually vulnerable to, you know, I just wrote a blog about that. But also while you struggle with what did you lead with the parts that you caught in doing? So it's taken me to an incredible new place in my life where I feel more deeply connected to myself. Did you bring friends to family in a way that it's kind of indescribable?

Aaron: Yeah. Well, I love in the recent blog that you wrote, you talked about putting yourself out there. What basically if I put myself out there, and this is where I related to you, is that I too can very easily hide behind my gifting and project a certain version of myself outward. And I've done that for a really long time while hiding

Aaron: But what I found as you referenced in your blog is that some of it, it just plain and simply came down to, if I put myself out there, what if people don't like what I have to say? The truth is I'm scared that this podcast won't matter. But what I'm choosing to do is to say, you know what? I think just even saying, I'm afraid it won't matter or no one will listen or it won't turn out very well or whatever or what we have to say. People won't like that in that risk. I think, as you said in your blog, it actually is an invitation for other people to do the same and then we actually kind of level the playing field and then we're, we're allies in all that resume crap that we both have kind of fades to the, and we just become pals because we're, we're both risking together.

Miles: Yeah. It's funny how we can even put our art in the right craft or words, whatever it is, into the world, even putting what we would consider this as a gift. I'm a good communicator. I interviewed him, referring to, you know, I'm a good communicator. I know I interview people well and I like to start conversations. I like to raise awareness and I'm going to do it. We can even play a small part putting out a message behind what we do. I can't, that's why I wrote about it. I was really good for a long time at promoting other people's brands. As long as I didn't have to put myself out front. Because here's what it means. You said it well, it's like you. I put something out there. If people don't like it, that's not where it stops.

Miles: That is where most people look. They're mostly like, well, they don't like it. What people don't realize is that if they don't like that, that typically means they don't like me. They don't like me. That typically means, you know, you go down the rabbit hole all the way back down to I'm going to be and what happened? So what is the message underneath? They don't like me. They don't like me. It means I'm not likable, I'm not a likable piece, I'm not lovable. I'm not lovable means what value do I have? You can chase it all the way down, whether you're conscious about whether you're doing it or not. We're all human beings. We are biologically wired to connect. So that's why people survive tribes for many years and now we've got this subculture. Okay. That is breeding isolation for technology and all these other States. And we are correct for a culture that's hard to connect to be disconnected. To me, that's the root cause of everything that we struggle with. To RuPaul, the divorce, the root cause of addiction, the root causes and [inaudible] it's not. Yes. Do we have free genetic gets positions to some of those factors? Absolutely. Mmm. I believe disconnection. This is the root of it.

Aaron: Yeah. Amen to that. And, and in agreement with you also that if you chase the thread of what if nobody likes what I do, then that does ultimately tie back. If I get real honest and keep cutting layers lower and I've learned to do this because of work like it onsite is realizing that it is a fundamental will then I'm not likable or I'm no good. So these conclusions, so work like Onsite work, like Brene Brown's research and studies work like the Donald Miller book that just came out. I would invite you, listeners are our friends here too. Dip your toe in the water, check it out. You don't have to take a plunge and go into the deep end. You can pick up a book and listen to it on audible, whatever. And you'll find that this is a human story we're talking about. So when we go back to the trifecta of attempting to live fully in your life and in your work and in your play and adventure in relationships, that is a means by which to become emotionally fit so that we can be our best self in all of those arenas. 

Aaron: So Miles, this has been a rock star, brilliant and offline. I'm going to brag about you some more than you did a while. We did this recording together. Just said, listeners know that you roll with some heavy-hitting people and, and what I love about that heavy-hitting part is they are like us. We're all together in a story together. So thank you for doing this and I love your work. Please keep doing it. It does matter.

Miles: Well thank you. And it was awesome to have this conversation. It's a brilliant way to start the day for me and I need to be, I need to be reminded, and that's if I could leave anything with you and your audience is he is a dance in the joy of knowing struggle, embrace it. So just a second ago when I said I go down the route, I'll say I am not enough. Usually, the way I used to get out of that was to say, I can't feel that. That's not true. Isn't that stupid? No, it's not. You're human. The fact that you know, let's celebrate that because the more you know at the left, it impacts you. So embrace, struggle, embrace no way you don't know and continue to strive towards and emotionally healthy off stuff. You pass that on to kids and you pass that onto people in your life. You'll break every dysfunctional family generation cycle that you were ever born with. And guess what? We were all born with them. But that's, that is, that is what transcribes grow.

Aaron: Yup. All right. So leave us with the last question. What do you do for play and for fun when you're not getting emotionally fit? What do you dispute for slaps and giggles?

Miles: Well, that part is fun for me, but it's pretty much anything outdoors and anything with animals. I love to hike. I love to be out on the land and a lot of horses. I love dogs. Anything before that. To me, it's as simple as just spending time with my animals. So you'll catch me most of the time, even during the day. Mmm. I am out on the land. We're fortunate to have a beautiful little ranch just West of Nashville. It's a great environment to be able to play in and he had work, so that's what I love to do.

Aaron: Very nice. Great. Well, thanks again. Miles has been brilliant friends. You know how at the end of a movie like the rolling credits and it gives credit to all the people who made this happen. While I want to let you know about a company that I use that make

Aaron: These blogs and podcasts happen, it's keynote content. My friend John Cook there has been instrumental in helping me fine-tune my writing voice, my podcast voice for the last year or so, and I want to make sure that you have a chance to use and leverage his expertise and his company as well. Before I push the publish button on any of my blogs or podcasts, I run everything past John, so he's provided me platform development coaching. He's new content creation, copy editing, grammar control, SEO optimization. He's helped me with some development of ebook content that I'm working on and even a second edition of a manifesto that I wrote a couple of years ago called don't quit your job, fire your boss. So whether you're in the business world, you simply just need some help like starting your own blog or you're positive, maybe even launching your own platform. Definitely check out keynote content.com and ask for John. He'll help you. He'll make sure that you turn what you have into a greater degree of professionalism, that the world will actually have a chance to digest and accept and receive from you better than if you were on your own.

Aaron: I hope you'll accept my invitation to do your best work, to live the life you want to live and play a whole lot more. This was fun and if you'd like some more visit Work Life Play podcasts.