Have you ever felt so down and wished that someone comes along to lift you up? Chip Baker joins us on this episode to uplift and teach you how you can go get it with his simple approach in life – live, learn, serve, and inspire. He shares his personal experiences and insights on how we develop as a people, and the commonalities that everyone shares. He also dives deep on embracing the possibility to be great and going after your success even when faced with trauma.

Listen to the podcast here:

Go Get It! With Chip Baker

Our guest is Chip Baker. He is a fourth-generation educator, an author, a podcaster, a life coach and a speaker. Chip’s two books, Growing Through Your Go Through and Effective Conversation to Ignite Relationships are both bestsellers. Chip’s podcast is called The Success Chronicles and it can be found on YouTube. As an educator and a football coach, Chip understands what it takes to sort through life’s disappointments to find the hidden lessons within. He also understands how to guide his students to maximize their potential. He’s sure to share some of his tips for success with us. Chip, welcome to the show. It’s an honor to have you here.

Thank you for having me. It’s my pleasure.

I’m so glad that you showed up. I know that I sought you out and I want our readers to know why. I did find your podcast page on YouTube. It was your little video that sucked me in. It wasn’t that long. It was seven or eight minutes and it was called Be Aware. I watched that video on your podcast page and I’m wondering if you can tell us a little bit in your own words what that video is about instead of me retelling it. It was so powerful for me to hear.

I’m an educator and the story is about me. I’m also a give-service kind of guy as well. Throughout my career, I worked in a school district which is about two hours away from my hometown. I would always go back and do football camps and do things to help in the community where I grew up because growing up, we didn’t have those opportunities. I did a program where I brought some speakers back to speak. We were walking in the cafeteria auditorium area and as a teacher, you see the radar. You see things that are different. I walk in and there’s this kid in the back sitting by himself. I immediately went right to him, â€œHow are you doing?†I reached out my hand to shake his hand. He looks at me and he’s like, “I don’t know if I will shake your hand.†I was like, “How about a fist bump?†He just gives me that. I’m like, “It’s good to see you. I’m glad you’re here.†We went and did this and fast forward, I get the job in my hometown as the head football coach athletic director. The next year, similar thing happens.

I walked into the same cafeteria auditorium area, it’s the same thing, a kid was sitting in the back. I went up to the kid and the same thing happens. As I’m walking out of there, it dawned on me, “That’s the exact same kid.†I made it a personal challenge to find out about that kid and make sure that he was all right, just to be aware and make sure he was okay. Let him know that as an educator, “I’m here for you if you need me. I don’t want to be in your personal space, I understand but if you need me, I’m here for you.†Eventually, fast forward about a week-and-a-half or so, he was giving me his fist bump. I found out what his name was and then a little bit more time to go back and get to know about some of his family. Fast forward even later, the kid ends up trusting me. I’m developing a good relationship with the kid because I made the extra effort to be aware and make sure he was okay. Anytime anything happens in the school, he would want to talk with me about it. He would be comfortable with me. Eventually, he found out what time I came to school and started meeting me out in the parking lot where I park and all of that stuff. It goes back to being aware and building those relationships to help others. We all need help. That’s what that story was about.

I’m a trauma specialist and that story stuck out to me because, I don’t know if you have any background in working with people who have experienced trauma, but oftentimes kids that sit alone and don’t interact with other people have something that’s blocking them because that’s not our true nature. You noticed it and you went in. Whether or not you have training, you have this knack for knowing how to hold space and meet people where they are because that’s what that story is about. You were able to see where that kid is. Many people in our society will just gloss over it and walk away. They’re like, “The kid doesn’t want to be around me.†They take it personally and they think the kid or it doesn’t have to be a kid, it can be any other person, they’re not engaging in conversation so we start to judge them. That’s because we take it personally and you didn’t do that.

That’s exactly what that kid needed. It takes time. I love how that story illustrates exactly how you work with somebody who’s been through something tough in their life. Who knows what it is? We all have stuff that we’re dealing with at home and in life. Sometimes our parents don’t even know what we’re dealing with inside our own minds. Our parents will come and tell our teachers, our principals and coaches that everything is fine at home and they have no idea what’s going on inside the kid’s mind.

I agree with all of what you said. I think you’re not a person that likes to make assumptions and judge a book by its cover. If you are making an assumption about a person, we can all assume that when we’re around with somebody that they’ve had some things happen to them, they’ve had some hurt or trauma. We’ve all been broken or let down. None of us are immune from going through any of that. If you’re going to assume something, assume that we’re all broken and we’re trying to put the pieces together to get better.

We have more commonalities than we have differences. For most of us on the planet, our differences are superficial because I don’t know anyone that I’ve talked to, even people who have committed crimes. More often than not, it wasn’t their intention for things to get out of control and to go the way they did. I don’t talk about the hardened criminals. I’m not talking to your planners. I’m not that type of therapist or researcher or anything like that. I’m talking about the everyday people and it’s usually a misunderstanding where our intention is good. We have this tendency as humans to see our own intention as what it is. A lot of times we don’t mean for things to go out of control and when we look at the other person, we assume the worst out of the other person. If we would flip it around and realize that we have more in common and that the other person, more likely than not, had a good intention and things just got out of control, that could mitigate a lot of situations. Let’s assume the best out of people.

There are a couple of things on that as you were saying that. First, that’s the great thing about sports and team things is that you all come together for a common goal and none of that other stuff matters. I don’t care what color you are, how you were raised, none of that. I do care, but it’s a non-issue because you’re my brother, you’re my sister, we’re on the same team together. I got you, regardless. No matter what happened, I got you. The other thing too is people that truly understand that are people that have been broken before. They’ve had somebody come to their rescue and helped them. I can genuinely say that in the community where I grew up, there were many amazing people that helped myself and my family through some tough times. I’m trying to return the favor in what I do.

When you walked into that cafeteria, how did you know? How could you tell that one student out of everybody in the room was the one who needed some connection?

The first radar was he was sitting by himself. Everybody’s sitting at the tables and he was in the back table completely by himself. As an educator, as a person who is trying to be a good person, I want him to feel involved. I brought these people here for the assembly, from out of town, some amazing speakers, some people that have achieved some amazing things that I’m even excited to listen to, to hear and to learn from. First, “I’m here to help. I’ve got some people here that you need to hear.†It’s basically my thing. What I saw at the beginning, it was the same thing.

For me, there’s no child left behind. It’s not acceptable for me to have one kid not be reached. I’m so passionate about what I do as a fourth-generation educator. It’s in the blood. That’s what we do. We care for people, we give service, we take care of people. I truly believe that I’m blessed to be a blessing. I think that when you do those things with a humble heart and realize that I’m very fortunate to be able to do the things that I’m able to do and I want to help others and give them some of that too. When you move about that way, you get it in return. It’s not that you’re looking to receive benefits from it, the Big Man looks out for you for sure.

That is so powerful. I hope some of the readers out there will pick up on that because I think we’ve been conditioned. I can’t speak for other countries, but in Midwest America where I live, I can say that we have been conditioned to fear the loner, the other or what’s different and it’s not serving us well at all. We’re in so much chaos right now.

I also think that our differences are what make us unique. Our differences are what make our world interesting. We need to embrace it and enjoy it and know that the ability to be around different only makes us better.

It absolutely builds your capacity and resilience for what you’re able to handle and live through in life without it taking you out. When I say taking you out, it could be something like taking you out with symptoms of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, craving for whatever that thing you’re addicted to and all of these things that we’re seeing in epidemic levels in our society. It’s like we’re seeing the fallout of the fear that we’ve been conditioned to take on.

There have been a lot of people in my life that have helped me that don’t look anything like I look. They may not even like the same music or do the same things that I do but because I was open, it allows me to have blessings upon me. I’ll give you one example. In college in the dorm, there was a guy that lived two rooms down from me. He was a cowboy and I’m not. He wore tight Wranglers and boots and I don’t, but every time we cross paths, we spoke to each other like, “What’s going on?†We’ve come to find out that we have some similarities in the way we were raised, our faith, some principles that we believed in and some other things. He ended up being a great friend of mine. He worked back in the day where they still had some full-service gas stations. I don’t know if you know about those.

I remember those. I used to pump gas for customers when I was a kid because we have a store.

We’ve all been broken and let down. None of us are immune from going through any of that.CLICK TO TWEET

He worked at one of those in the town. I had an older car in college and I was nine hours away from my hometown. Anytime, I was going out of town, he was like, “Come by and let me service your car and make sure you’re good.†He would take care of me. What if I had chosen not to be open to differences and those kinds of things? I would have missed out on that great friendship and things that benefited me. Everything in life is that way, when you’re open, everything opens up. When you limit yourself, you limit yourself.

I love how you worded that because you chose to be open. Being close-minded or being open-minded, it does become a choice at some point. Awareness has to be in there too. What I know about trauma is people who had severe trauma in childhood oftentimes are so immersed in the emotional chaos that they’ve experienced. They don’t realize what life is like in the absence of the emotional chaos, so that emotional chaos is their normal. That’s how I was raised. I came out of childhood and into early adulthood, not realizing that having peace inside my own mind was even possible. I didn’t even know it. It distorts your sense of normal. When you are around nice, peaceful, calm people, it’s highly upsetting. You start to get antsy and you’re like, “This is the calm before the storm, isn’t it? What’s about to happen?†That becomes a scary place to be. It took me a lot of years to get out and to condition myself out of that.

Sometimes people are so stuck that they don’t realize that they’re close-minded. I work with people to help get that little bit of a space in there so they can have awareness. When I say space, it’s the space between the uncomfortable feelings and the uncomfortable emotions that are hard to sit with and the reaction. If we can get a little bit of space in there, we can start to sneak awareness. Once awareness comes in, then people can start to interrupt their own patterns, then that’s how we learn to self-regulate.

I have a podcast and I interview people. There are two things that resonated with me as you said that. The first is a quote from David Chang. He talked about how we have to focus in on our self and take care of our self to make sure that we grow. He said, â€œWe don’t have to strive to conquer the world. We have to strive to conquer ourselves.†None of us are immune from going through tough things. We’re all broken. We all make some mistakes and it wasn’t perfect. When we focus that energy and effort towards being the best version of ourselves, it’s amazing how organically we eliminate distractions. Organically, we get in alignment with our self. Organically, great things happen. That’s the first thing that hit me. The second thing is, we always hurt people. To me, healed people, help people.

We talked about that in my classes because I’m in the middle of a course with Dr. Gabor Maté. We say that, “People heal people.†It’s a saying in the therapeutic world. It’s people’s interactions with other people in relationship that bring about the trauma in the first place. When I say trauma, I’m not talking about an event like an accident, an IED, a tragic death in the family or something. I’m talking about what happens inside of you was a result of what happened to you. It’s anything that limits or restricts your capacity and your ability to respond to a future event. If you end up with so much fear imprinted in your nervous system that it limits your future responses, that’s what I meant by trauma.

It hinders you from your growth. It blocks your growth.

I’ve described it like that. We have a lot of adults walking around with adult bodies and they are full grown people. Their nervous systems are stuck in childhood at different points in time when the trauma got imprinted. Which is why a lot of times when somebody gets into a reactive phase, it’s one of those habitual things that is conditioned into the cellular memory. When somebody gets reactive, a lot of times you can look at somebody and say, “Why are you acting like a five-year-old? You’re acting like a petulant teenager or a pouty eight-year-old.†That is the information on when the trauma happens and a part of them is showing up at the moment. If somebody is acting like an infant, pouting, not getting their way, this black or white thinking, this way or that way, A or B, they can’t see any other way, that’s childlike thinking. Kids don’t have the capacity to see other possibilities and options. It tells you how early in life they were traumatized. They get stuck in that loop.

That’s deep. That’s why I was excited about being on this show. I knew it was going to get deep.

I also loved when you said earlier that you’re a fourth-generation educator and it’s in the blood. That’s true. It does get in your cells. Cellular memory is our implicit memory. I had an implicit memory expert on and she called it your brain’s hidden control panel. It’s true. It’s this hidden control panel that we don’t realize it’s in charge because our conscious mind thinks it’s in charge. A lot of times it’s the reactive cellular memory that’s really in charge.

I think we’re all a mix of our environment, the situations that we’ve been through and things that we’ve experienced. It’s a cumulative effect on that. We have to strive to conquer ourselves.

We all have within us an experiencer and a narrator. The experiencer is the body and the narrator is the mind. If we can get them on the same page, we are good to go but it’s like trying to get bickering siblings.

That’s a good description right there. I knew about that a little bit more than I wanted to.

I saw one of these viral videos that somebody took. They were in the mountains somewhere and there was a mama bear that was crossing the road. Her three little cubs got into this little fight in the middle of the road and held up traffic for a long time. I’m like, â€œThat’s what happens inside my head on a daily basis.†These different parts in my mind are stopping in the middle of the road, holding up traffic, holding up everything in the world so they can fight and argue.

It’s important too that we find ways to quiet the noise. They came out a few years ago with noise cancellation headphones. The difference between those and the Pods are you put the Pod and you can still hear things. If we put those on the noise cancellation, you hear nothing but what you’re trying to hear. In our lives, if we can find ways to have noise cancellation, it will help us to focus our attention where it needs to be.

I love that analogy. That’s beautiful. Chip, how do you cancel the noise in your head?

I just talk to amazing people like you and get deep and learn. I’m a thought processor guy. I’m an introvert guy as well. I think a lot, read, listen to music and exercise. I try to focus on what’s important to me. Organically, it eliminates the distractions and quiets the noise. I’m a maximizer. I believe in having habits. Successful habits create lots of great things. When you can focus on the minor detail of your habit and your routines and your systems that you have in place, you can do that on a daily basis. I have a principle for that too that I use in my life and I share that with my athletes and students. I expect that from my athletes because I know the difference that it’s made in my life.

I talk a lot with my clients about discipline. That’s such a scary word for people because discipline has multiple meanings. The meaning that sticks out in most people’s mind is punishment. People hear discipline and they think punishment. That’s not the way I use the term when it comes to discipline, especially with yourself. If you want to grow and become a better person, you have to be disciplined with yourself. That is caring enough about yourself and having enough self-love to commit to some daily routine or daily practice of self-care so you can take care of your mind, body, emotions and spirit.

Do you mind if I share the principle with you that I have?Our differences are what make us unique. We need to embrace it and know that the ability to be around different only makes us better.CLICK TO TWEET

Yes, please do.

I call it the SHG principle. A lot of times, when we are movers and shakers or big achievers, we get focused on all of the stuff. When we can just focus in and take one step at a time, it allows us to get to our destination or journey efficiently. To maximize our potential, the S is Show up. If you say you’re going to do something, be committed to that and show up. That’s anything like the top five things in your life that is most important to you. Show up, be aware, be present in the moment, be committed, principles over feelings. Sometimes you’re not going to feel like doing it but the principle is, “I’ve signed up for this, so I need to make sure that I’m on point for this.†The H is Have a great attitude. We know that gratitude is the attitude that determines your altitude. We have to practice the attitude of gratitude and change our mindset from “I have to†to “I get to.†There’s a whole lot of people that’s like, “You may not be able to do it.†It could be better, but it could be way worse.

The G is Give your all. Sometimes your all may be 70% or 80%. Whatever it is, give your all. When we do those things and realize that in giving your all, you may have a little bit to give, that little bit you have to give can make a big difference in the life of someone. When you show up, have a great attitude and give your all every day, if you focus on doing that every day, it allows you to have great days. You stack those days and then you have great weeks. You stack those weeks, you have great months. You stack those months, you have great years. Before you know it, you have maximized your potential. You have lived a legacy. For sure, you’ll leave a legacy when you get to go see the Big Man, but you will have lived the legacy every day by your actions and being on point every moment of every day.

You said that you share those principles with your athletes?

Yeah, with the kids that I coach, the position guys that I’ve coached, that’s the expectation. All those rules, you’re going to learn all of that. We’re going to do that, but every day show up, have a great attitude and give your all. If you can do that every day, we’re good. We’re going to be all right.

I do have to say that you are not the stereotypical Texas football coach. The reason I say that is because I have walked in the living room when my son who just graduated college was watching this show called Friday Night Tykes. I was standing there like, “Are you serious? These are little kids.â€

A couple of things on that. I’ve coached for many years and this is my first year to be out of coaching, so I’m teaching. The second thing is football is real in Texas.

Here in Ohio too but I’m not sure. There are communities here in Ohio that donate little footballs and megaphones to hospitals. They have regular supplies. Every female baby comes out with a megaphone and every male baby comes out with a little football. I’m like, “Really? Seriously?†That’s a horrible expectation to put on a baby just a few hours old. Chip, I’d like to hear a little bit more about your podcast. Tell me about your podcast. I’ve watched a couple of episodes of it and I love it. You’re putting some good work out into the world.

It’s Chip Baker – The Success Chronicles. I interview people from all walks of life. We talk about their stories, their path to success, tips of what they feel it takes to achieve success. I share that on my YouTube channel on my podcast. I also have a radio show. I share that for positive inspiration and motivation.

It’s similar to what I’m doing here. I take a little bit different approach because I studied trauma, so I like to point out a lot of times the links between what happens to us in childhood and our dysfunctions in adulthood. This hidden control panel is so sneaky and so stealthy that most of us aren’t even aware of it. We don’t realize sometimes how it hijacks and sabotages us.

There are some traits or transferrable skills that can be effective across whatever it is like the SHG principle. You can take that and use that in business, sports, whatever it is. If you do that, you’ll be effective and successful. It’s the same thing about dealing with trauma because we all have traumas in our life. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if it may look like two parents and nice family. We all go through personal traumas and things that we have to have a first-hand experience and learn and grow through. That’s what my first book is Growing Through Your Go Through.

How did you come up with the title? That’s an interesting title.

It’s called Growing Through Your Go Through. It’s my first book. I co-wrote it with Dr. Oliver T. Reid, an amazing man, a philanthropist, a preacher, a motivational guy, awesome dude. I’ve met him through my interviewing through my podcast. We linked up and hit it out well like, “Let’s talk about the topic next week.†We talked about the topic and then, “Let’s do it again next week.†We had a great time. It was like, “This is some good stuff. We had to put this in a book.†That’s where it all started. It’s a four-book series. Growing Through Your Go Through was the first one and Effective Conversation to Ignite Relationships is the second one that we’re about to drop. I’m excited about that, but that’s where it came from. We feel that when you go through those tough things or trauma, you have to learn to find the blessings within the lessons.

What that allows you to do is when you come out on the other side of it, not only are you better, but you are better so that you’re better for others. That’s what it’s about because at the end of the day, it isn’t about you. We think we have the plan, but really the Big Man does. The sooner we get that and understand that, the better off we are. When we take those blessings and the lessons and learn, it’s amazing how great things happen in your life.

I say similar things to my clients. You’ve got to find the lesson in the less and find the message from the mess. It’s so true because if you spend some time in the mess, you’re going to figure out what the message is that you’re supposed to learn from it. It’s all about going within ourselves and doing our own work instead of pointing our finger and blaming everybody else for where we are.

That’s the worst thing you will do. It’s like the quote I told by David Chang, “Striving to conquer yourself.†We know those things but when he said that, it blew me away. That is so true. If we could just focus in and get over ourselves, don’t beat ourselves up, forgive ourselves, learn and break those bad habits. If we could do all of those things for ourselves, then we’ll be okay. Everything else will fall in line for us.

Do you also do life coaching?

Yes.We’re all a mix of our environment, situations that we’ve been through, and things we’ve experienced.CLICK TO TWEET

Tell me a little bit about your life coaching and who do you work with? Who’s your target market?

My target market is anyone who wants to get some positive inspiration and motivation. I want to put that out there. I love differences. Being the genuine and authentic me, I can only be me and I can only help someone with the experiences that I’ve gone through or speak on the experiences that I’ve gone through. Things that I’ve gone through like growing up with a single parent, my mother, fourth-generation educator, teaching, coaching, team building as it relates to corporate, anything like that. SHG principle, I preach that and building relationships. Growing Through Your Go Through, my book titles, things that I’ve written on. Those are some of the things that I hit within that. Anybody that falls along the lines of that is my target.

You already have this wisdom that I had to go to school to learn. I didn’t naturally come in with it. It’s so true that you can’t take anybody somewhere if you haven’t been in yourself.

Without a doubt, I can show you better than I can tell you.

The client knows, whoever you’re working with might not consciously know it, but that hidden control panel knows. Because that hidden control panels speaks, it doesn’t speak in the language of words. It speaks in the language of sensation and emotion and that’s our implicit memory. We’ve got the implicit memory that speaks in the language of sensation and emotion. We’ve got the subconscious mind that speaks in the language of images and visuals. We’ve got the conscious mind that speaks in the language of language and verbiage, our narrator. The Tower of Babel is within and we got to get that straight. We have to figured out how to get these things to communicate on the same page.

I’d like to call it like this, people read through BS. It’s just doing the best we can with what we have and trying to make a positive impact in our world.

Where we often go wrong as humans is we lead ourselves to believe that conscious mind, that narrator, that verbal mind is the one that’s in charge. That’s the one that knows the least. There’s no Spidey sense to it. The other two, there’s a little bit of a Spidey sense to the subconscious mind and the implicit memories. The implicit mind, there’s definitely a Spidey sense to those. In a lot of times, you can’t put your finger on it but you know that you don’t trust somebody. That’s the whole kids and dogs thing. Kids and dogs haven’t lost touch with it the way we have as adults. It’s not fully conditioned out. We need to get our internal states all on the same page because if we’re battling with ourselves inside our own head, then we’re suffering so much inside of ourselves that we can’t stand to be present for ourselves in our own life. We project that anger and hatred out to everybody else.

There’s a guy that I follow and I’ve interviewed and he’s doing an amazing thing, Coach Kendall Ficklin. He’s associated with Dr. Eric Thomas, a motivational guy. This guy is doing some great things. I had the opportunity to hang out with him and talk some life with him. He hit on some things that you said about the moral compass. When we look at the areas in our life, our foundation, our relationships, be it spouse or family and you get to a place in your life that you feel whole, that you’ve completed it and learn some things and now you can share with others and you’re living the right way, it’s a great place to be.

Part of our journey of adulthood is to uncondition all the stuff that was dumped on our shoulders when we were kids. We had parents, siblings, family members, neighbors, friends, teachers and everybody in the community trying to tell us how to live our lives. It disconnects us with who we are authentically. Our whole journey of adulthood is to reconnect with our own authenticity. The more somebody is suffering inside themselves, the more disconnected they are with who they truly are and the angrier they are. That’s what’s epidemic in our country. That’s the problem and that gets to the root of it is people are so disconnected with themselves. They end up wallowing in anxiety and depression and contemplating suicide. They are trying to get out of the suffering inside of their heads, so they self-medicate or do whatever they can to avoid and deny that it’s happening.

The denial is pointing the finger at you and being angry at you or somebody else in the world for everything that’s wrong with me or the self-medicating that comes with our addictions or the avoidance comes with, “I don’t want to deal with this right now. I’m going to go take a bath or I’m going to go watch Netflix.†There’s a lot of self–care. I’m to the point where I do sometimes Netflix and chill, but I go into it with my eyes wide open now. I’m not going into it like I’m just avoiding everything. I’m like, “I’m choosing to avoid everything for the night.†I call it conscious coping. I know what I’m doing it. I just need a night to avoid life, then I’ll be back out in the morning.

We all need a break and get away sometimes.

It’s when you don’t know that you’re doing something as a way to avoid or deny or not face something. That’s when those things have control over you. You have to face it, become aware of it and confront it. Whatever that demon is or demons that live inside of you, if you don’t face them, they control you. You want to put your own butt back in the driver’s seat. That’s the way to do it.

All gas no breaks, let’s go.

That’s one of your saying, “Go get it.â€

That’s my thing. It’s a mindset. This is going to come to you. You have to control it. You create your destiny by your actions. You have to go get it, no excuses.

You create your destiny. Fate happens when you’re not aware and things just happened to you.

With our world and the way it is now with the technology and access to knowledge, anything that you can think and create in your head with time and effort is as good as done. There’s knowledge and information out there for you to find out how to do whatever it is you want to do. I’m a true testament of that. I didn’t go into detail on that. When I started my YouTube channel, I’ve never taken any editing classes, photo, video, none of it. Everything that I’ve done so far, I’ve learned it all. It’s been amazing. That’s the exciting part too is that the possibilities are possible. If you can believe it, then this is just as good as achieving it.

Chip, I want to circle back around to your speaking. Do you speak locally? Do you travel? How has that taken?When you go through tough things or trauma, you have to learn to find the blessings within the lessons.CLICK TO TWEET

Whoever wants it, they can get it. I’ve done some school district professional developments focus in schools, teachers, coaches, athletes, some business stuff as well. Some motivational things or things to help maximize their life and help them with life balance. Being aware like you saw the video, Be Aware. It’s just some of those things that I’ve spoken on.

I love to hear you say that. You are the third man that I’ve had on my show. I specifically say man because you don’t often hear men talk about work-life balance, but that’s coming up more and more in conversation.

You have to have it. This is my personal belief because I’ve thought this. Back in the day, you had people that specialized in certain things like carpenters, and they did those things their whole life. With the knowledge base and the information, you have so many people that are doing multiple things, multiple streams of income, multiple this. You have to make a conscious effort to find ways to slow it down, break it down, prioritize what’s important, what’s not important. For me, it’s a daily thing that I’m conscious of and aware of. I strive to be the best version of myself as well.

Do you mind giving us an example? What does work-life balance look like for you?

What I use in my life is I call it the balanced pie. If you can envision a pie chart and we all know a pie chart, when you add it all up, it equals 100. There are things in my life that I prioritize that are important to me and I’ll list some of those things. My first is faith, being a great son, a great husband, a great father, a great teacher, a great coach, and the other things. It’s like ten things and my pie chart is like a thousand. For me, each day, along with the SHG, I’m striving to be the best percentage that I can be in each of those areas every day. Will I ever hit that? No. I know that but to me, effort counts.

If I hit 80% one day, I’ve got to put that on my checklist and hit the ground running the next day to make up for that. If I didn’t get enough time with my little guy now, that’s unacceptable. I have to make sure I’ll be on point with that the next day. If I didn’t teach that lesson as good as I felt that I could have taught it to reach those kids, that’s unacceptable. The next day, I have to hit the ground running and be better and explain to them, “I messed this up. I make mistakes. I blew this, but we’re going to fix it and get it right.†To me, the balanced pie is what I use in my life and that’s something that I also speak on and the foundation of my life coaching as well. Have people prioritize and look at what’s important to you. Assess where you are in that and then how do we find ways to get better at that? What can we take out and add to situate to make it better?

Thank you for sharing that with us. I love your approach. We’re getting close to running out of time. Can you tell our readers the best place to find you online and to reach out to you if they’re interested?

The best place to find me is through my YouTube channels, Chip Baker – The Success Chronicles. All of my social media sites, it’s @ChipBakerTSC. Check it out. I’m real responsive to social media for something you see that you like. Reach out to me through social media. These are the normal things that people say: like, subscribe, follow. I love for you to do that, but I realized a long time ago in my life that it isn’t about me. If there’s something that you see or hear that you like and there’s somebody in your life that could benefit from it, please share it with them. That will help make our world a better place.

You sounded like me. I don’t like to say all that stuff either. I get awkward. I love it when people reach out to me and I can interact with my audience. I don’t like the shameless self-promotion. I’d spend my wheels on that.

I’ve also heard too, “If you don’t promote yourself, who will?†It’s a balance. You have to have the balance within that and you’re putting in maximum effort to benefit people. I hope that you’d like the product, but share the product. Let’s do our part to make our world a better place.

I think this is a fantastic episode for anybody who wants to be a better human being.

That’s what it’s all about. We’re all striving to be the best version of ourselves.

For years, my attitude is I want to be 1% better tomorrow in some area than I am today. It might not be in every area in my life. I might backslide in some area, but I might take a leap forward in another. If it averages out to 1% better, then I’m on the right track.

Did you get better today? That’s the question I ask myself at the end of the day. You have to stare on the man in the mirror, “Chip, did you get better today?†If it’s no, that’s not a good answer.

I think I did. I had to spent three hours creating an online class. Whenever I hit the final button, it just spuns, nothing happened and all my work was lost. Everything is gone and not one single sentence flew out of my mouth. I’m definitely getting better. I pushed away from my desk and I took a deep breath and I’m like, “I’ll just do it again.â€

I’m glad that you made it through that and I’m glad that you feel that you got better. I definitely got better. I truly enjoyed our conversation and I knew that I was going to learn some things. I love learning.

I do too. Learning sustains me. That’s been a life saver in my life. I’m with you on that. Chip, it’s been an honor to have you. Thank you so much for showing up.

Thank you for having me. Go get it.

I am now signing off. Please listen, subscribe, share, comment and review. I do respond if I hear from my audience, and I love it when I hear from my audience. If this was valuable, please share it with somebody that can learn something from it. I’ll see you again soon.

Important Links:

• Growing Through Your Go Through
• Effective Conversation to Ignite Relationships
• Be Aware â€“ YouTube Video
• Chip Baker – The Success Chronicles
• Coach Kendall Ficklin
• @ChipBakerTSC on Instagram
• YouTube.com/c/ChipBakerTheSuccessChronicles
• http://LinkedIn.com/in/chip-baker-thesuccesschronicles-825887161
• https://Linktr.ee/chipbakertsc
• https://Squareup.com/store/chip-baker-the-success-chronicles

About Chip Baker

4th generation educator, best selling author, podcaster, life coach and speaker
email: [email protected]

adulthood journey embracing differences fighting suicide going after your success going through trauma long term trauma effects