It’s time to level up your life, and Kim Gravel recently sat down with Anthony Trucks to get his clear, detailed advice on just how to do that.
Anthony is a former NFL Athlete, American Ninja Warrior, international speaker, host of the Aww Shift podcast, author of the book, “Identify Shift,” and founder of Identify Shift coaching. He uses cutting-edge research in science and psychology to upgrade how you operate so you can elevate your life and business to reach your full potential. He learned how to shift at a very young age, and now his life mission is teaching others how to do the Dark Work to Make Shift Happen in their lives.
While he’s now a successful coach, speaker, teacher, husband, and father, Anthony, who is Black, was adopted out of the foster system at age 14 by an all-white family. He said he experienced “a lot of weird dynamics of who am I, where do I fit, and how do I exist?”
Seeking the answers to these questions made him want to be something … not another foster care statistic.
Thanks to that drive and what he called “a lot of great love” in his life, he began to try different things. One of those: football. He got a college scholarship, played Division One at University of Oregon. He had his first child at 20, met his biological father for the first time at 20, and went on to marry his high school sweetheart. An injury stopped his NFL career before it started, and he lost his sense of identity.
After two more kids and a divorce, he experienced three years during which he “did dark work to figure out who I was to elevate my identity to a man I could be proud of, that I would want my kids to be like.”
As time passed, he realized that to progress, he needed to navigate certain windows of time—he calls it dark work. He explained it as a follow-up to shadow work. In shadow work, you uncover why you keep repeating harmful patterns, and in dark work, he said, you take action to change it. Doing the dark work gives you the ability to shine the light later on.
Kim asked how a person takes action; in many instances, people feel stuck if they’re experiencing a dark time.
Push.
Pushing, Anthony explained, is where you develop the dark work mentality—the mindset that “I’ve done too much work in the dark to lose in the light.”
Consider where you’re headed. If you remain on the road you’re on, where will you end up? If you don’t want to reach that place, take action to get somewhere else.
How does someone do this?
Craft a dream that is just one inch out of control. That is, consider a different path that is possible. You don’t know for sure you can take it, but it’s so close. Close enough to touch, but you’re not quite sure you can grasp it.
When you commit to that, you get a little bit of excitement.
Once you put yourself in the direction to do it, you start to realize you can do it … and you can potentially do even a little bit more than that one inch.
Anthony offered a unique perspective on this type of goal-setting: do not identify with the outcomes. At the beginning, when you’re encouraging yourself to make that one inch, don’t compare yourself to the guy who runs a touchdown.
Instead, identify with the efforts, with showing up. Identify with taking each step, moving a little further in the direction you want to go.
In taking unconfident action, you create confidence.
Meanwhile, instead of falling in love with the achievement, fall in love with each step of reaching it.
“We love the achievement, the peak of the mountains” Anthony said. “And it would be so amazing … if you think about the people who are climbing mountains, how much time do they spend on the peak versus the climb? Vastly more on the climb. And so for me, I go, well, if I can just fall in love with the day, not just the destination, then I’ll actually have a lot more peace, a lot more joy in the journey.”
But when we’re striving toward a goal, how do we enjoy the journey?
Anthony said, “You find the monotony and you find the nuance within it that gives you joy.”As an example, he shared how, even though he has his own business, he’s the handyman for the properties his wife owns. He may not feel like fixing a fence, but he strives to find a way he can add joy to the project; maybe there’s an album he’s been wanting to listen to—he’ll put that on while he does the repair.
He actively seeks ways to add joy to tasks he may not enjoy on their own.
“If you set the brain to go find something positive, you’ll find it. It’s little nuances like that. They give me a way to fall in love with this day,” especially because that particular task leads to a destination of a great marriage, a sound household, and a better business for his wife.
Kim and Anthony also talked about making shift happen.
If you want to have a moment where you have an overwhelming welling up of joy—like it’s just got to come out—you must shift your identity.
Anthony clarified that it’s not changing who you are. It’s not turning into a whole new human and starting to dance. It’s making small shifts over time.
For example, if you go into work in a place where you don’t enjoy working, consider making a small shift to your optimism in the morning. Identify with a few positive words, for example joy, communication, and happiness. Throughout the day, remind yourself that these are the words you’re identifying with, and you’ll step into new experiences of life that help you reframe what you’re seeing and teach you something different.
That’s how to create an identity shift over time.
Everyone’s wired a certain way, thanks to biology and to experiences; you can change your wiring on demand or wait until the stuff hits the fan.
Most people wait until the stuff hits the fan.
Anthony recommends doing it on demand. Make new choices and step into small shifts—with intention.
Kim mentioned that she believes everything starts with intention. The why behind our actions is so important. But a generic intention such as “I want to lose weight” isn’t as powerful as a more specific intention.
Anthony used the example of going to visit a friend—in this case, Kim. If he was going to go see her, he wouldn’t just type the state where she lives, or even the city, into his GPS. He’d have to type her specific address in order to get to where she is.
This example relates to the way many people set their goals. They set state or city goals, when they’d have more success with a specific address goal. Being specific connects your brain to the goal. It empowers you to sacrifice for it, to work for it.
If you don’t clarify exactly what you want, your brain doesn’t get an opportunity to lock in and empower you to take action.
The best part of Anthony’s Identity Shift system is that anyone can do it. He said, “Absolutely any human being can create this for themselves.”
It simply takes action. “I’m not consistent and disciplined until I give myself something to be consistent and disciplined towards.”
It’s not about hustle. It’s about doing things that light you up. Decide what you want to put your energy towards … if you don’t love doing it, then it’s not going to help you move forward.
“Everybody can get there. It’s just a matter of what do you want to do? And it’s the falling in love with the days that get there.”
Anthony cautioned against going big—as so many folks are tempted to do.
Instead, go small. Go small in a really big way. If you can do that, you can change the world.
