E120 | Rich Habets | When We Get The Ego Out Of The Way

I play basketball at the young age I started at seven have pretty good. And I always dreamt of being an NBA basketball player. So that was actually my access to the US. I was thought like, you know, hopefully some Scout will pick me up and see me in the national team and then they give me a scholarship can go play for a good high school and college and that whole path.

Welcome to the MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST. I'm your host Achim Nowak. And I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform, so you won't miss a single one of my inspiring guests. And please consider posting an appreciative review. Let's get started. I am delighted to welcome Rich Habets to the MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST. Richard, a former management consultant turned world class coach who hails from mastery in the Netherlands. Well, Maastricht is home base, but rich is the penultimate citizen of the world. He has a big soft spot for things American. And I trust we'll have a chance to chat about that. Rich coaches, CEOs, C suite leaders, entire leadership teams and increasingly fresh entrepreneurs who longed to play a bigger game. Rich's opinionated and outspoken, and he has already lived multiple acts in his life. All of this makes him an absolutely perfect. My fourth act guest. Welcome, Rich.

Thank you so much, Achim. That's beautiful.

I love hearing that about me. I had the privilege of having sharing a meal with you in Amsterdam, last November when I was there, thanks to an introduction by a mutual friend married as well. So this is my true impression of you based on having actually met you in person. I'm really curious, this is a question I like to ask every guest. When you were growing up as a young boy, or teenager in the Netherlands, you had to think about who you wanted to be in life. You know how people grownups like to ask us those questions. What were you thinking about?

you know that history better than I do. I know what I was thinking about Atlanta, but Atlanta may have been another one. You I'm sure you're right.

When I saw that, it was like, Oh my God, I want to go to Los Angeles. I

thought was drew my intention. I am originally German. And I grew up with two narratives about the United States. One narrative was, Wow, this is the land of opportunity. This is the land where they're advanced in lots of things. But also in Germany, people had lots of mixed feelings about the country. It's a country of excess. Its gaudy. There was always a dark side. So I always heard a dual story about the United States. Was that true for you as well. And he just ignored the dark side.

I ignored the dark side. Basically, I was just looking at positive things like the you know, the innovations and the people that live there. And of course, in Dutch television, we will always have these American television shows. Right? And then they always paint kind of a different picture than how it really is. And then I was always play basketball, the young age. I started at seven, and it was pretty good. And I always dreamt of being a basketball player. So that was actually my access to the US. I was thought like, hopefully some Scout will pick me up and see me in the national team. And then they give me a scholarship can go play for a good high school and college and that whole path. Didn't know back then actually but basketball really was I was playing Dutch basketball. I was good in Dutch basketball. One day we played an American high school team with some good players in there and it was a guy Mike Bibby he played for the Sacramento Kings later on. He was on that team and that's when I found out that what we were playing wasn't Basketball. He was playing basketball. And to me my dream that day was like, was scattered, are shattered, actually not scattered shattered. I became interested in in just working in the corporate world with us. But it was basically the positive sides. Yeah.

I'm really struck by pilot, professional basketball. So Well, the way I'm processing this, he likes to think big from the moment he was young, and especially pilot. It's a literal profession, but it's also a metaphor for so many ways of navigating life. What I'm really curious about you mentioned, you're in information technology. But your first professional career was as a management consultant, and to meet an obvious leap, like how do you go to school, get a degree in Information Technology? And then next thing, you know, your management consultant, can you tell us that story?

I love the phrase you use the break that I created, which the beautiful ownership phrase. I also love what you said is got what I wanted. As I get older, I tend to be a manifester. Like if I'm clear on what I want, the universe tends to support me. But you and I have also know that some of the things we want are ego driven. The desires are clouded and always pure to how do you know that the thing that you want is in your best interest? Well,

as I get older becomes more clear, right back then it was clearly an ego thing, right? I didn't want to be just a programmer. I wanted to be a management consultant, because to my ego that was more valuable. So that was definitely something back then that was was it for the right intentions? Probably not. I think it's more ego. And as I got older, I get to see more and more depending on who's driving car is it my mind that wants to success, the money to fame, the admiration, the respect all of that stuff? Or is it really something that fires me up? And throughout the years I've become, this is such a funny journey. I was I'm really smart. Okay, it's not me bragging. I'm just really smart. I my brain is really good at seeing patterns, what works, what doesn't work. And that's what I relied on when I was younger. That built my career better back then. But it also has downsides to it. Right? Because your mind is also that same thing, your imagination, you can create beautiful dreams with it. But you can also use it to doubt yourself. Right? That's the negative use of imagination. When you doubt yourself, and you doubt people's intentions. I did that a lot, too. And when I started to see like, wait a minute, it's just all mind created reality. I started to look at what can I trust on? What can I rely on, and then the word and that's not a word used in business. But the word intuition kept coming to me. And I was like, What is intuition? Because it's really hard to distinguish intuition and mind if you've never seen the difference. But it's a different energy.

This is a almost timeless fourth act question for all of us, which is, at what point do we know that I'm done with this part of my life in your case, and then with management consulting, it could be that I'm bored out of my friggin mind. Or it could be that it's bringing out the worst in me and not the best and, and whatever it is. So one thing is how do we know that it's time to move on? And how do we find the courage to move on?

I think we've heard of him. That

I checked all we need to spread the reaction of your Dutch friends when you come back as the mini Tony Robbins. And channeling that energy that Tony has on stage right? Describe to us because you use the word deconditioning and use the word of doing deep work. Can you give us some one or two snapshots of how you actually do that, like some things that you had to face? To do this work for yourself? Who

know that as part of the work you do right now, we talked about your mentors and your work. You're a mentor to other people who some of them are other coaches, consultants growing their own businesses these days. And you talked about being careful. There are lots of coaches out there these days. So when you were inspired by Tony Robbins, and you said oh, I want to be a coach, that takes a certain amount of use in New York, Jim quick spa to do this. To say, I want to play there, I'm gonna play this game. Well, what have you learned about yourself just as a professional coach and growing your coaching business and jumping into a new swimming pool with lots of other coaches swimming in it? What have you learned along the way there?

I just handled as I see it, you are a lot less careful these days, which is nice. A lot less one, a lot less careful. We talked about you being careful when you were younger or cautious, right?

Well, here's how it works, the careful thing still comes up. Which Be careful, right? Because my body has been conditioned with that for decades. But now I distinguish it doesn't have me. So the pattern can still come up. It still wants to take the wheel of the car. But now and go, whoa, wait a minute. Me being careful here doesn't serve my client, because my client is not helped by me being careful. So I'll make a different choice. That's what this is all about.

And curious. Because as I follow you and your pride in what you post about, and a lot of it resonates with me, which is why I wanted to speak with you talk for a moment, how you see the difference between doing and being maybe there isn't a difference. But I've seen writing about what it means to actually be in your business rather than being a little hamster on the wheel. If you had to define the word being and I know I'm asking a big question right now. But how do you experience that? How do you see that?

That's an excellent question. And if you ask 10 people, they would all give you a different answer. But here's my approach, right? So I love being practical. I love keeping things simple. Being is how you see the world. We don't have a direct access to the world, we have access to the world through who we are in the moment, when I'm irritated, guess what I'm seeing in the world, I'm seeing reasons to be irritated. And I think it's the world. No, it's me. It's who I'm being in that moment. If I have you as amazing. Guess how I listen to you? I listen to your every word and everything you say I consider and I think about it, if I have you asked that say arrogant, there's a different way that I see you, you're still the same Akeem it's me, who's creating, I'm creating you through who I'm being. Now. I'm always creating, I'm always being. But for most people, they don't distinguish who they're being in the moment. I'm working with this guy, I shared his example. Also, last week at the event is a guy I worked with, he came to me said rich, can you fix my team? It's always an interesting question. And they say, Can you fix my team? So with a red flag? I said, Sure, can I just sit in one of your management meetings, we would have a management meeting, I would sit there. And the guy would talk, talk, talk, talk talk the whole time. And we'd never ever let anybody else talk for longer than 10 seconds without interrupting. And I could see who is being he's tried to control the whole thing. He's trying to dominate everybody. And then he complains to me that his team doesn't work. Now, I told him during the break, I said, Can you do me a favor, but two hours, don't talk no matter what you want to say, no matter if you want to interrupt, no matter what you think about what people are saying, just don't talk and notice what's going on in your mind. So I sit next to him for the next two hours. And he the team starts talking and they're billing on each other to have great ideas. And the guy wants to jump in. And every second, I could see him getting more nervous by the second checking his watch checking his phone. So who he was being was like, Oh, I know better. And he didn't notice. That's who he was being right. He really thought that team wasn't smart. He thought the team was the problem. But that only is a problem from who he's being. At a certain moment he jumps in. He says, Guys, we don't need to talk about this. This is not going to work. Bah, bah, bah. And the whole team just went quiet again. Two weeks later, he calls me up. He says, Rich. Thank you so much. He said, This has been my problem for all my life. I've always got Pat's on the back for being the smartest boy in the class. I've always had Pat's on the back, because I was an excellent problem fixer. But I now see that it's all about me. I have to make sure that conversation goes in the direction I want it to go. I have to make sure that I'm right. I have to make sure that they listen to me. And from that way of being, I don't give other people any chance to contribute to me. So he was doing doing doing without seeing who he was being underneath. Because doing comes from being and then he started to say you know who I want to be. I don't want to be that controlling leader anymore. I want to be an empowering leader. Somebody who empowers other people. That's a switch and being goes from needing to control first as I am being an empowering leader. Now that's not easy, because at first your psychology wants to interrupt. No, no, no, we have to say this and we have said no, no, no who I am is empowering. And when you practicing that long enough, that old way of being, it's almost like turning the volume down on the stereo goes from 10 to six to five to four will always be there in the background. But you keep choosing a new way of being who I am as an empowering leader no matter how dumb I think the other person is because that's what he said, no matter how dumb I think lamb is empowering an empowering leader, it doesn't interrupt or make anybody wrong. So who I am, as I'm listening, and present, and I just keep seeing the greatness in that other person. He got promoted six months later to a global role is the great power. He builds people instead of needing to show everybody how smart he is. Now, that for me is being and doing they go hand in hand. But most people focus on the doing, it's who you're being in the moment that really determines how you see everything around you, including that thing you call yourself. And

we play with another big word. I think it's totally related to being by sarcoidosis discussed, and there are different levels of experiencing it, which is the word freedom, how we have a sense of freedom in our lives, and how we experience freedom. How do you rich experience freedom for yourself? What does that look like? And how do you have others have a greater experience of freedom?

Freedom is a big word. For me freedom is freedom to fully self express who I am. That for me is freedom to full self expression. Not filtering myself not thinking about how do I come across not thinking about what do people think of me? It's really that self expression. For me, that's freedom. We can talk about freedom as a person, right? Freedom from if you're living in a country like I don't know, where's whenever Peter, not talking about that kind of freedom. But for me, freedom is really self expression, freedom from mine freedom from conditioning, freedom from these old patterns, ego patterns that run me instead of me running me. Why have this be careful? That winning format that I've been running, as long as I'm running that I'm not free? In my self expression, because I'm always filtering everything's through? Am I? Is it safe to say, is it not safe to say, and do I? What do I have to watch out? Do I get repercussions when I say this? So freedom, for me really is full self expression.

It totally makes sense. So in that spirit, you are at a certain stage in your career, you've done multiple shifts already in your life, you're married, you have a beautiful family, you have still relatively young children. When you look to your own future. Are there any other dreams or aspirations or things that are working in your back of your mind where you go? Sometime? It might be cool to do this? Maybe not now. If there are any of those, what are those? Well, they're

actually many slowing down, comes up. I like adventure. I like new things like also share in the beginning, I was also always looking for the new fresh things. That was an addiction that my mind actually had right through the fresh new things. In this day and age, there's every day, there's a new fresh thing. So if I allow my mind to indulge in that I will be having no peace at all. So for me, it's really slowing down. Spending more time with family and friends. Really looking at my experience with more depth, instead of rushing through it. I used to travel a lot now I seriously am fine. If I would never get on a plane again. I love being at home that used normally that wasn't the case, I would always needed to go somewhere else. So last week, I was in Arizona, and the only thing I thought about was when can I go home. I love Arizona, I love the people there. But I just love my wife, I love my kids, I love spending time with them. I love writing more and more. That's what I also what I like so much about who you have this, this calmness around you right and you really look at life as its lived. I would really like to do more of that. Recently, I stopped being so active on social media, because why would I? It's my life on social media. So it's really that the slowing down moving to maybe to a milder climate than we have here. And the times that we have great weather here, I would love to go to like Southern Spain, something that I'm thinking about with my wife, and just really enjoying. Nobody knows how much time we have. I'm 49 Turning 50 in a month. I just want to slow it down, see what shows up from there and then really looking at but the intuition intuitive side of me. What does that say trusting that more and more and teaching that to others also, that's what draws me. Yeah,

you said it so beautifully. But as we start to wrap up, especially when we create our own ventures and life. For me, there's always been a back and forth between being strategic and intentional. And then getting out of the way and looking at what wants to be revealed or what the universe is sending to me. How do you navigate that dynamic for yourself and how do you help your clients to navigate

it believe that I can only teach my clients when I got for myself, there was a time or I thought that I would if I read a book, then I can teach you about it, not so much, not so much, they would get it intellectually, that then like a week after that, they would have forgotten about the whole thing. What I do more and more, and this is something that just the last two, three years, I take more time for meditation, I take more time for workouts, and I have my morning ritual, where I just really focus on mantras that I do listen to these frequencies, the chakra frequencies I do that more, I enjoy walking the dog more. Once I've done that, I take out my planner, and I write down what am I up to, to give you an idea been approached by one of my previous employers, to create a new brand breed actually, of consultants, because they say to me, rich with ai n, knowledge is going to be at everybody's fingertips, you know, we can look up knowledge everywhere. People don't buy, like expensive reports from us anymore about market conditions and stuff. So we have to be different with our clients. We want to bring this thing called being weather consultants, how do we train our consultants in that because you're basically creating an enlightened consultant. So I'm now working with them. This is one of the big four companies. I've been with the Big Four consulting company. So I'm working with them and Dusseldorf about how can we do that? And this is a company that makes their money with their mind. And I've done so for decades. Now looking at how can we create an A consultant that doesn't only look at the content of the client, KPIs, the processes and all that stuff, but also at Who are we being while we're looking at the content? Who are we being while we create a process, because who I'm being determines what process I create, or which KPI I think is important, or how we put new policies together. I think that will be keep me busy for the next five to seven years. Actually, if they go in that direction, it's challenged because it requires a total new way of looking at the world where that Poblenou company culture, let's see what that brings. I'm not attached. I would love it will happen. But I'm in the meantime, I'm writing my book, petting my dog and joining my family.

Well, thinking of that company, you're speaking about a, you will be the perfect pilot for them to navigate them through what would be a true transformation, which is amazing. Last question. From your vantage point, as somebody who's about to have a milestone birthday, or by the time we release it, you probably already had it. If you had a chance to whisper into young Rich's ears when he was a young boy, and share some wisdom with him that he couldn't have known now. And the purpose is not to change the course of his life. The course of your life has been perfect as is both but what would you want rich to know from your current vantage point? A

couple of things. Number one as appreciate yourself more. It's not as bad as you think. Don't be so serious. Life is not meant to be serious. Actually, people perform much better when they're not seeing. Yeah. For years, I felt like an impostor. When I was with the management consultants, I felt like I needed to be older. So I bought expensive suits and stuff like that. And I was like, come on, rich, you know what you're doing. But I would really say don't be so serious. Just really see what your talents are. amplify that by 10. And leave out what you can't do. Don't try to be perfect. Nobody likes somebody tries to be perfect. And relax and enjoy the company of other people. Because that's for me at the end. That's what life is about. It's not about what I do. It's about the relationships around me. That's what I will remember, can only you can make money everywhere. Money's easy. If you know you can do things that make money, but relationships, that's the real currency and time for yourself. That really is so much more important than all that money that you make and status. What is status, you do something great people say you're fantastic tomorrow, they forget about everything. So just really relax. Oh, and make sure that whatever you do, you don't hate your work.

Or any of our listeners who want to learn more about you and what you do. Where would you like to direct them to?

They can go to my website, which is simple. It's just rich habits.com If you want to read more about me, there's a short bio and stuff like that on there. And I don't have any books yet. But they're also more podcasts also on that website.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for the gift of this conversation and happy big birthday rich. Alright.

Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to it.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the mindful of X podcast. If you liked what you have heard, please like us and leave a review on your preferred podcast platforms. If you would like to engage more deeply in fourth act conversations, check out the mastermind page at Achim nowak.com. It's what fourth actors like you engage in riveting conversation with other fourth actors. See you there. And bye for now.