What if everything you thought you knew about personal change was wrong? Michael Lopez, author of the Amazon bestselling book “Change: Six Science-Backed Strategies to Transform Your Brain, Body and Behavior,” shatters conventional wisdom with science-backed insights that revolutionize how we approach transformation.

Drawing from his diverse background as a consultant, intelligence officer, athlete, and youth coach, Lopez reveals why most change efforts fail despite our best intentions. The problem isn’t lack of motivation—it’s that we’re working against our brain’s natural mechanisms rather than with them.

The conversation explores fascinating neuroscience concepts in accessible terms. Lopez explains that after age 25, our brains stop creating new neurons but can repurpose existing neural pathways—like deer creating trails through a forest by walking the same paths repeatedly. This means successful change requires not just adding new behaviors but consciously identifying what we’ll give up to create space.

Most surprising is Lopez’s perspective on stress. While chronic stress harms us, intentionally exposing ourselves to short-term, managed discomfort actually strengthens our anterior cingulate cortex—the brain region responsible for doing hard things. This explains why athletes often demonstrate exceptional mental toughness and why challenging ourselves regularly builds our capacity for change.

Whether you’re a leader guiding organizational transformation, an athlete pushing performance boundaries, or simply someone wanting to break stubborn habits, Lopez offers practical strategies that work with your brain’s natural processes. His approach isn’t about willpower or motivation tricks—it’s about understanding the biological foundations of change and leveraging them for lasting transformation.

Ready to develop change as a lifelong skill? This episode illuminates the path forward with the profound question: “Who might you be on the other side of what you’re afraid of?”

Connect with Michael:

Personal Website

Book

LinkedIn

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Speaker 1: 0:00

In order to learn something new. What are you going to give up? And that has to be a conscious choice, and so much of that is not just a physical release of a behavior or an action, but it’s actually also the emotional release of giving something up that you might experience as a loss, Whether it’s time, whether it’s a pattern of belief that has been holding you back. You’ve got to make space for something new.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Hey, uncommon Leaders, welcome back. This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast. I’m your host, john Gallagher, and I’ve got a great guest for you today. Diverse guest for you author Michael Lopez, who’s written the Amazon bestselling book Change Six Science-Backed Strategies to Transform your Brain, body and Behavior. Looking forward to having a conversation with him about that today. A little bit about him, though His career spans something that I think is really cool, from a consulting background at KPMG and at Booz Allen Hamilton, but also as an intelligence officer in the US intelligence. So maybe we can learn some cool stuff beyond that as well. And then certainly even to today, as a high school and youth coach, we’ll learn a little bit about his athletic background and how he has influence on the young youth in our communities today as well. So, michael Lopez, welcome to the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Great to have you on the show. How are you doing?

Speaker 1: 1:28

Thanks for having me, john. I’m great. I’m excited to talk about it and share some time with you, and certainly your podcast has just been inspiring to me, so I’m happy to contribute to it.

Speaker 2: 1:38

Excellent. Well, I’m fascinated by some of the topics we’re going to talk about today, but I’ll still start you out with the first question I always ask my first-time guests, and that’s to tell me a story from your childhood that still impacts who you are today, as a person or as a leader.

Speaker 1: 1:52

Yeah, you know, I would say it was actually at my later high school time. You know, I played high school football. You mentioned this. I played college football and one of my high school head coach I played quarterback. I’m not very big, I’m like five, seven, 150 pounds in high school and uh, he told me I’d never played college football and uh, I just remember a couple of things.

Speaker 1: 2:15

A that was incredibly, um, you know, hard to hear from someone who’s supposed to be guiding you and encouraging you and lifting you up, but it also became incredibly motivating.

Speaker 1: 2:26

And I remember just thinking to myself I’m never going to let someone else tell me what I can and can’t do. And so for me, it just became a place to lean into. And you know, when I coach athletes, when I work with young people, when I work with other leaders, you know the story that you’ll never do something, you can’t do something. You know the story that you’ll never do something, you can’t do something. You know those are the words that hold us back. And so for me, you know, my whole life’s been about doing a lot of things that people said I couldn’t, and not to prove anyone else wrong, but to prove myself right. And you know, I think for me it’s just been an ethos that I live by and you know, my responsibility as a parent is to demonstrate that to my kids. As a leader, that to demonstrate that to my teams and, you know, as a consultant, to to demonstrate that to my clients and everywhere in between. So, yeah, that’s that’s kind of the big one for me.

Speaker 2: 3:15

Well, and it sounds like you’ve studied it pretty deep when we think about the book and I love you know, I love the word uh, as you get into it neuroscience, that component of it. So there are not a lot of folks that start to write about that. But let’s start there with the book. Even before, neuroscience is who did?

Speaker 1: 3:34

you write this book and why did you write it? Who did you write it for and why did you write it? Yeah, yeah, it really is. I started writing it because you mentioned my consulting career.

Speaker 1: 3:41

I’ve been in and around the world of change for a long time, helping clients with a number of issues, whether it’s culture or strategy or operations, or they bought something, they sold something that you know all of the reasons why you help organizations try to change in some way and I became aware of that kind of keenly that the strategies we were using to try to help companies change weren’t really working. And that’s the first insight. The second one was that you know, the only person you can change is yourself, and so we were doing things that I think felt good organizationally because it approximated momentum, but it wasn’t really changing people. And so I really the last several years, have kind of been on a crusade to change that conversation. You know, as a coach, as an athlete, we know so much about the body and how to drive adaptation, we show up to work and we forget all those things. Right, we forget how to change behavior because the same strategies apply.

Speaker 1: 4:39

So that’s why I started writing it. I actually started writing about organizations first and realized about a third of the way through I needed to go back to the basic principles of the individual right. What’s happening to us at the microscopic level when we try to change? What stops us from changing? And then, how do I leverage those systems to actually accomplish my goals? So you know, that’s what it’s all about, and it’s really for anyone the CEO all the way down to the, to the parent, to the child, anyone in between who is struggling to accomplish their goals, and that’s, that’s. That’s really what it’s all about.

Speaker 2: 5:14

I love the strategies, how they to your point, how they go across. If you will, it’s not just about change in your work. It’s about changing your home as well, in terms of some of your personal behaviors that go along with that. So many different things that go on your relationships that you have outside of your home, your faith, your finances all those things come into play and change is the primary constant, if you will, that exists inside of that space. Now you talk about some of the bad habits within your book that exists. So, as you’ve studied that, as you brought it about, what are some of the big barriers that you see that people run into that prevent them from changing?

Speaker 1: 5:55

Yeah, yeah, it’s. Uh, you know it, we’re, we’re, we’re. Just, we’re into March already, which is kind of crazy to think, but we all did the new year’s resolution thing and you know, to some degree. Um, you know, one of the things that drives us into change struggles, uh, a, we try to change too many things at once, right? So we, I want to be a better parent, I want to make more money, I want to get a different job, I want to be a better spouse, I want to be more patient, I want to read more. You know, pick your list of stuff, and what I tell people is uh, at the beginning of the year, pick four goals and do one a quarter, and, and you know, we just try to do too many things at once. And uh, and that’s primarily, if you read the book, we can talk about it.

Speaker 1: 6:37

The way we learn as adults is very different than the way we learn as kids. It requires focus, it requires repetition, it requires unlearning some things, which is an interesting concept. So that’s the first thing I’d say. B, change, by definition, requires effort, right, habits are things that we do without thinking about them, and that’s efficient, right? We like efficiency in all sorts of ways. People like it, companies like it, teams like it.

Speaker 1: 7:06

But in order to change something, I’ve got to deliver effort, and effort requires motivation and effort requires stress and struggle, and you know, most of us don’t really have a strong relationship with those two concepts. When things get difficult, we tend to tap out kind of early and I’d say that’s you know. See, there’s others. But just to keep it to three, we give up on our goals way too soon. We always overestimate how long it will take to get to where we want to go and for most of us, having a better understanding of the time horizon that’s actually going to happen and how to keep my motivation going through that right, because life is just a series of start-stop experiences. And so those are three big things that I think most people tend to get wrong when they start on their path to goal pursuit.

Speaker 2: 7:53

I love that, especially that first one. Again, we have a tendency certainly to overestimate what we can do in the short term. Again, four goals for a year, that seems pretty reasonable. But to your point about taking one of those goals per quarter, I love that as approach. Start small and work your way through it, and that way maybe it will help you. Your point number three keep going so that you don’t, in essence stop just before you’re about to have a breakthrough and see some things happen, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 8:19

Yeah, there’s actually a fourth one, as you said that, about starting small. That I think is worth noting. Actually a fourth one, as you said that, about starting small, and I think it’s worth noting.

Speaker 1: 8:30

Most people, when they set a goal, we tend to pick the things in our life that are sort of most negatively salient right. We tend to pick the things that have the greatest source of friction in our lives right, the thing that we stare at every day and whatever way that manifests, whether it’s a relationship challenge or job. I’m sick of my job. I need a new one, whatever it may be. The challenge with those things is those are the most negatively salient because they’re the hardest things to change. And so I encourage people to say it’s not that you don’t want to make that a goal, but maybe not make that the first goal right, because change is a skill. You can learn how to change, and that’s what the book is all about. And so I’d rather have someone get a couple of base hits in places where they feel like I’ve got an achievable goal that I just maybe need to stick with it a little bit longer before you start working on the big stuff. So don’t pick the hardest thing to do right out of the gate.

Speaker 2: 9:21

Love that. You know. You think about that, the, the components of change. You know we get to where we are and we feel pretty comfortable, and you gotta, you gotta expand yourself through that as well A lot of times, even whether it’s on our health. You know, one of the things that you say is that willpower alone often fails, and you know, if we try to use willpower as a solution, that we’re probably not going to succeed. Tell me more about that and again, the neuroscience behind that. Well, I just won’t eat chocolate cake anymore.

Speaker 2: 9:49

I mean, I’ll have willpower.

Speaker 1: 9:51

Right, right. Well, let’s just use that example, right? Hey, John, don’t eat the cake. What are you thinking about right now?

Speaker 2: 9:57

I’m thinking about cake. I can see it it’s a double layer.

Speaker 1: 9:59

Absolutely. Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. So, so, um, there’s two things about the willpower equation that I think are really important. The first one is the, the mindset that you have going into this conversation of willpower, and then the second one is kind of the science of motivation. So there’s a couple of studies I referenced in the book, the, the really groundbreaking work of Carol Dweck, uh who, who is really the pioneer of the term growth mindset. There are studies done that that we know that there’s two dimensions of of this idea. One is called growth mindset, which is the idea that I am a growth oriented person and I believe that I’m someone who can and will grow. That’s an important first, uh, mental, uh, you know orientation to adopt. The second one is what’s called a stress is enhancing mindset, which is this idea that this may not feel good but it’s good. For me, Stress is positive, and I talk a lot about our relationship with stress. It is essential you will not grow unless you have a more productive relationship with stress, and so there’s been really some incredible studies done about, particularly in teens, that with some pretty simple training around adopting these two mindsets, their performance actually increases quite a bit on, you know, tests and other cognitive things of that nature.

Speaker 1: 11:19

The second thing around motivation is that, you know, motivation has some unique attributes to it. Most people think dopamine is the, the, the, the hormone of reward. Right, it’s not. It’s the hormone of pursuit, it’s about striving right.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Striving is a big part of our sort of, you know, neuroscience foundation in terms of goal pursuit, and so one of the things I tell people is that if we can understand how to harness this experience of you know two dimensions of where we’re most motivated when we start something and when we finish right, the closer we get to a goal, the more motivated we get right. If you were, you’re going to run four laps on a track for a mile, right you. You get out of the gate pretty hot with the first lap. Laps two and three are really tough, but when you get to lap four, you feel this burst of energy in terms of moving forward right, and so there’s ways to rebuild your goals and your habits and your structures to leverage that experience right. So, instead of just biting down on the idea of avoiding something, if I use this idea of I’m approaching a sequence of wins, then I become much more motivated. So those are the two big pieces of kind of how to rebuild your orientation around motivation.

Speaker 2: 12:33

But I love that second piece, that rewarding of stress success and I use the word stress because it was part of the question too you talk about. One of the strategies is to embrace stress as a change factor, but around a lot and there’s levels to it, right?

Speaker 1: 13:00

And so it’s important to understand and acknowledge that. You know, long-term emotional, physical stress is absolutely 100% bad for us, and we know that. And that’s not really what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about is really short-term, acute, particularly self-induced stress, and what that means is can I put myself in hard situations and withstand the physiological response of what comes next right?

Speaker 1: 13:27

Stress is designed at its most basic level to get us to move right.

Speaker 1: 13:32

It’s sort of the fight or flight response to the fight or flight response, but a lot of us, when we approach that experience, tend to stop instead of move right, and movement is a big part of what keeps us motivated. And so what I talk a lot about in the book and I do this in my own life is finding ways to self-induce and harness stress for learning, and so you know whether it’s a cold shower, I do that every day. Right, it’s, it’s, it sucks. I’m not going amazing studies that have come out in the last maybe 15 years. It’s an area of the brain that when you do hard things actually gets bigger, meaning more real estate is dedicated to this, and people who live a long time have a big AMCC. Athletes tend to have the largest because they have a relationship with understanding how to do hard things, and so so you will not change unless you are able to put yourself in situations that are uncomfortable and difficult and work through those. That is, by definition, what change is all about.

Speaker 2: 14:49

Hey listeners, I want to take a quick moment to share something special with you. Many of the topics and discussions we have on this podcast are areas where I provide coaching and consulting services for individuals and organizations. If you’ve been inspired by our conversation and are seeking a catalyst for change in your own life or within your team, I invite you to visit coachjohngallaghercom forward slash free call to sign up for a free coaching call with me. It’s an opportunity for us to connect, discuss your unique challenges and explore how coaching or consulting can benefit you and your team. Okay, let’s get back to the show Putting yourself into those situations. So that was one of the questions that I had too, in terms of you mentioned turning change into a habit. You’ve got a lot of these dichotomies that exist inside of some of those, and I can understand the neurotransmission side. So we have to turn change into a habit. Tell me more about that.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Well, I think, at its most simple level, it’s about what can I do that’s new on a regular basis, right? I sort of have a belief. This has happened to me, probably more in the career side. But once I become comfortable with my job and I’m on autopilot, it’s time to do something else. Right, it’s time to pick a new thing, whatever that new thing might be, and then rinse and repeat this process of identify a new goal. Design that goal in a way that’s motivating. Try it, practice it, fail, struggle, have setbacks, start again. Right, that experience of learning and iterating and failing and I don’t use failure in the kind of cliched way that I mean. What I mean is failure.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Mistakes are the single largest contributor to your opportunity for neuroplasticity and I use that phrase intentionally, which means a mistake is a signal to the brain that something needs to change. What happens after that is up to you, right? If you go and make an adjustment, then you’re building the skill of testing, learning, restarting, failing, reorienting and that’s the skill of change, right? The skill of change is the investigation of new behaviors and then the practice of those new behaviors until they become habitual. Well, once I’ve learned to do something, what’s the next thing to go do and you know I tell people I hope you learn something new the day before they close the casket right. Like we, we have the ability to learn new things our whole life. We just don’t like the experience of learning new things right, because it’s uncomfortable.

Speaker 2: 17:25

I love that. It reminds me of a country song. When was the last time you did something for the first time? I know there’s a song, there’s a song that’s in that, but it is. It’s trying to find something new, choosing something that’s hard that keeps you on that path of continuous improvement knowing that you’re going to fail, especially at the start of that journey.

Speaker 2: 17:42

Yeah, I love you. Using the word like neuroplasticity, it goes over my head pretty quickly. No pun intended with regards to how that works, but when did you kind of find this interest, or and uh, and the neuroscience side of that?

Speaker 1: 18:06

Yeah, you know, it really, um, right around the COVID experience, I think, started for me this under this, this questioning of like there’s some things I had always been doing it, like I said, as an athlete, as a coach, as a consultant that I just sort of had intuitively adopted, but I didn’t really understand why they work. And there was an interesting angle around this in terms of you know the competitive world of big consulting, you have to have a hook. You know why am I different than company A, b or C? Because there’s a lot of similar solutions and frameworks and you know, everyone’s trying to build a better mousetrap. And what I found was you know what I was applying on the field as a coach, with teams and with athletes? I was, I was using those same strategies in the boardroom or, you know, in the team room, and and yet I didn’t really have a language for understanding why it was working.

Speaker 1: 18:55

I was just kind of doing the thing I knew how to do, and so you know, of course, then, right around the COVID experience and I talk about this in the book, you know it was such a transformative shift on so many levels and and so it started the refinement of me of some of these pieces that I knew were happening that I just again didn’t have a language for, so I dove into the research. Um, places like the Huberman lab podcast were groundbreaking in terms of giving you know. It was like going to med school and just listening to a three hour lecture from somebody who you know knows this stuff inside and out. And so that led to the next reading, the next study or reading the next book, and I just started building this framework around what I had been doing for years and then had a language for it, and so that’s kind of how I got here.

Speaker 2: 19:43

One of my favorites on that one is Jim Quick’s Limitless. I’ve gone through that a couple of years ago and it’s just really fascinating when you start to dive into some of that neuroscience there. So you’ve mentioned, and I had a coach. Rory Vaden from Brand Builders Group would say you’re most powerfully positioned to help the person that you used to be. So you were an athlete that was overcoming, specifically, you were overcoming what would be seen as a size deficiency, let’s call it in terms of 5’7 and being a quarterback in a sport where 5’7 is just not there. And now you’re teaching that at the high school football level and you’re teaching that with your consulting. Where do you find it more difficult to be successful with these strategies? Is it with the high school kids that you’re coaching? Is it with those in industry that you’re coaching? Or, frankly, is it continuously with yourself as you continue to grow?

Speaker 1: 20:37

Yeah, I mean, each one has its uh, you know, um, ups and downs, right. I mean I think you know I coaching athletes, uh, is just still the among the most rewarding experiences for me as a, as a father now, as a, as a, as a, you know, over 50 guy who remembers his moments and has an opportunity to give back. Um, you know, this is going to be my last year as a coach for a while. My son will be 17 and he’s graduating and I need a break. I’ve got a small baby too. So, uh, you know that it’s just that window of time in the young mind, in the young experience. You know, the opportunity to send some of these lessons in ways that I think are really, really powerful, you know, for me is kind of really what it’s all about.

Speaker 1: 21:26

The challenge, of course, with young athletes they don’t have the emotional wisdom or regulation that maybe a more seasoned adult has, right, their brain is still forming. So it’s a great window to plant some of these seeds. But you’re definitely planting seeds, right. These are things that will come about maybe 10, 15 years later. You know, with the executive folks you have kind of the opposite problem, right, you have really ingrained behaviors, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, right. But we’ve got habits and patterns and standards, and so the idea of breaking those things and and going through the repetition of learning it’s really tough for folks, but they have the wisdom and experience of understanding maybe how to get through it a little bit better.

Speaker 1: 22:10

Uh, so it’s kind of you know, where do you want your pain right? Do you want it on the inexperienced side? Do you want it on the emotional side? Do you want it on the frustration side? And there’s joy in both of those things. For myself, my poor family I say this to them way that I have these kind of patterns. I’m a human being. I get frustrated, I get disenfranchised, I get disappointed, but I’m able to really start again. And I think that’s the biggest thing of learning from what just happened to you and starting over. And that experience for me, you know, is kind of the one that I try to just lean into as much as I can.

Speaker 2: 22:58

Yeah, and I think about this and I’m honoring our time just watching the clock. I want to make sure we actually get to some of the strategies as well.

Speaker 2: 23:06

We haven’t gone deep into that. I love the backstory into some of those things and the different areas that you’re able to use, as you said, in the home, with youth sports that you’re working with or high school age sports, and in the workplace. In fact, I think on the consulting side, what I’ve learned is that it is much like parenting an older child that’s getting ready. They don’t have to listen to anything that you say and complacency can be the biggest thing that gets in the way of change. Everything’s okay now why do I need to get better? I mean, I’m doing okay and so overcoming that. Your six strategies, science-backed strategies to transform Is there one in there? Or tell me one of those that kind of is your favorite to talk about and maybe give an example of a success story you helping somebody implement that strategy?

Speaker 1: 23:54

Yeah, you know, I think one of the strategies is around creating focus, and what that means is when we learn as adults we talked about this, so I’ll get geeky for a second your brain. People use the word rewiring your brain. That’s not really how it works. So, you know, over the age of about 25, we don’t create any new neurons. What we actually do is we repurpose the pathways in our brain that we already have. It’s kind of like deer in the forest. You know how deer, they track patterns and that’s how trails happen, because they walk the same pattern. Our brains are much like that.

Speaker 1: 24:30

What we have to do is repurpose that pattern for something else, and so, for me, one of the things we talk about, you learn by repetition, something called long-term potentiation and or by not repeating something, long-term depression, not the emotional version of depression, but depressing behavior. In order to do that, I have to give something up, and the biggest thing that, for me, I spend time using, for example, the leader’s conversation is in order to learn something new. What are you going to give up? And that has to be a conscious choice, and so much of that is not just a physical release of a behavior or an action, but it’s actually also the emotional release of giving something up that you might experience as a loss, right? Whether it’s time, whether it’s, you know, a pattern of belief that has been holding you back, right, all of those things. And so, for me, the linchpin of of all of this we’ve talked about a lot, we stress and those sorts of things and repetition, but what are you going to give up? And, being conscious and intentional about that conversation, you’ve got to make space for something new. And we try to stack things and stacking doesn’t work.

Speaker 1: 25:45

And so, for me, when I and maybe I’ll tell a story about a woman I’m coaching with one of my clients she is a kind of middle manager and she had applied for a promotion a year and a half ago and she didn’t get it and she was told this was an internal role that she tried to to work on. She was told that she bombed the interview because she thought, oh, I don’t need to explain anything, you all know me. I can just say you guys know me, right. Well, I’ve been she. She applied for the job again.

Speaker 1: 26:15

It’s been a bunch of changes and we had maybe seven or eight sessions to prepare and the work that was required to allow her to let go of the person that was the one who bombed the interview and believe in herself growth mindset, stresses, enhancing mindset to be able to say I’m someone who is capable of doing this job, who can explain the job I need to do. You know it. It wasn’t about practicing questions. It was about breaking down the belief system that had become an anchor keeping her from changing, and so you know that kind of stuff. To me, it’s so rewarding to see she got the job, by the way, excellent and and and. So you know that’s the kind of thing. At the center of all this is who am I and why am I holding on to something, and who might I be on the other side of what I’m afraid of? And you know that’s what this is all about.

Speaker 2: 27:12

Love that and that really identifies. You know, as folks read your book, I often talk about that book test. Your book’s been out for a couple of months now as we make this recording. It’ll be out here soon and folks are going to have it on a bookshelf, just like those books behind me. You’ve got yours kind of facing out, but if they had a lot of books there, they’re going to set it up on a shelf and a year later they’re going to see that binding, if you will, with your title on the side and your name. That’s going to be in the binding. What do you after that year, when they see your book, what do you want them to feel? What do you want them to and what do you want them to do after reading your book?

Speaker 1: 27:51

I actually talk about this, somebody. I had a young man helping me with some pieces of the book and that I was turning into some learning after that, and we were working together and he asked me a question that was really profound. I actually talk about this in the book. Who do you want the reader to be when they’re done?

Speaker 1: 28:08

And my hope is I want you to be someone who believes that change isn’t just possible, it’s necessary, and that for this thing we call life, that we all have in different ways, that you have the ability to learn this skill, and when you learn it and when you apply it, the opportunities for your life really become limitless. And so that’s my hope. And for the folks that maybe read it a year ago, I hope they look at it and think, hey, this really helped me get to where I want to go. And for the folks that maybe have it on the shelf and haven’t picked it up, you know I hope that they start. You know there’s no time like the present, and so for me I would say, pick it up and, you know, take some of those strategies and just try them on. Just try them on in different ways and you’ll be really amazed at where you end up.

Speaker 2: 29:08

Love that, Michael. That is so cool, and I actually when I think about that in terms of that change. It’s not optional, it’s something we have to do, it’s necessary and we will change or I believe we will be changed. Not enough time to even really talk about what artificial intelligence is going to do with regards to some of that mindset and our ability to think differently and things like that, but just so powerful.

Speaker 2: 29:30

Michael, I think folks are going to really find value in your book and I am curious where do you want them to connect with you specifically? Where can they find you and where can they get more information about your book?

Speaker 1: 29:41

A good place to start is my website, michaeljlopezcoach, and it’s got all of my socials on there. I’m most active on LinkedIn. I’m a LinkedIn top voice and I do a weekly LinkedIn live series with other top voices and we talk about a range of issues and all of those get put on my YouTube channel, michaeljlopez9. If you see the picture behind me, that was my number, so it’s a little homage to that moment of my life that was so awesome. And then on Instagram and X and all those places. So the website’s a great place to start. There’s a link to purchase the book right there. You can find it on Amazon, barnes, noble Ingram all those places, so pretty easy to find. And yeah, I love talking about this. I literally could do this all day. So anytime people want to reach out and connect, have me talk to their teams, their organization, I’m happy to do so.

Speaker 2: 30:36

Michael J Lopez dot coach. Love that ending there, dot coach. I’ve heard another interview I did today. It was a dot life. I’m like there’s so many different things incom.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean once a coach, always a coach.

Speaker 2: 30:48

So yeah, I think you’re right, absolutely as you. As you think through that. I’ve coached my sons as well when they were small and I and I hope that you’ve cherished that time. Cause old, so you’ve got a young one as well, and that time, that time will go just as fast also. So, michael, you’ve been, I believe, a great guest. I think the folks who listen into this podcast are going to come find great value, and I’ll put you the link to your website in the show notes to make sure they can get to you. I want to give you the last word on the interview. I have so, so appreciated the time that you’ve invested today and I I on the interview. I have so, so appreciated the time that you’ve invested today and I’m going to give you a billboard, mike, when you can put a message on that billboard and you can place it anywhere you want to. What’s the message you’re going to put on that billboard and why do you put that message on there?

Speaker 1: 31:33

Yeah, it’s simple, it’s two words and it’s keep changing. You know, I think it’s. There’s a simple elegance of this idea that we choose to continue down this path of growth or we don’t. The only person you’ll ever change is yourself. You cannot change any other human being, it’s impossible. But you can change yourself, and orienting around this idea that I can and I will keep changing for my whole life is my hope for everyone. So that’s what I’d put there.

Speaker 2: 32:03

Excellent, michael. Thank you so much for being such a gracious guest on the Uncommon Leader Podcast. I wish you the best with your book and all of the work that’s going to come out of it as well. Thanks, john, I appreciate it, and that wraps up another episode of the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you found value in this episode, I encourage you to share it with your friends, colleagues or anyone else who could benefit from the insights and inspiration we’ve shared. Also, if you have a moment, I’d greatly appreciate if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback not only helps us to improve, but it also helps others discover the podcast and join our growing community of uncommon leaders. Until next time, go and grow champions.