{"id":9725,"date":"2021-08-11T04:13:21","date_gmt":"2021-08-11T10:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/?p=9725"},"modified":"2021-08-28T06:01:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-28T12:01:52","slug":"s07e04","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/s07e04\/","title":{"rendered":"S07 | 04 &#8211;  Living Life Outside of Expectations with Scott Blasken"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Are you living your life to fit the expectations of others, or are you living it for yourself, your joy, and your passions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Feeling obligated to live up to the expectations and demands of those around you is a mindset that so many people fall victim to. Scott Blasken joins me on the podcast today to share how he was able to break free from that and truly begin living a life he enjoys. For many this may sound like an unattainable dream, but Scott believes that this is a potential everyone can achieve if they have hope as an active component in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Listen in and take Scott\u2019s advice to stop apologizing for where you\u2019ve been, and begin living your life looking forward to where you want to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/anchor.fm\/hope-motivates-action\/embed\/episodes\/Living-Life-Outside-of-Expectations-with-Scott-Blasken-e15opgp\" height=\"102px\" width=\"400px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2>About Scott Blasken:&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken grew up a big dreamer, who wanted his head in the clouds by flying airliners, but was forced to live on <em>terra firma<\/em> by being partially colorblind. After having his wings clipped by his colorblindness, he spent his youth and adult years chasing the goals he thought would satisfy others and happily lived his life for other people. He followed the idyllic life of school, a successful corporate career, a wonderful marriage, a nice house, and amazing children. He spent a decade working with top-level business coaches, and with them, he \u201caccidentally\u201d figured out he hadn\u2019t been his true self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a quarter-century at the same company, he was given the golden handshake, with a boot in the backside for good measure. Scott took his experience from an exciting and challenging career all through his life, and with insight from a circle of professional supporters, he peeled back the layers to rediscover that childhood excitement, wonderment, and love of life. Inside his head and heart lies the opposition of needing everything black and white, but loving when his world was full of color.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a commercial photographer, Scott loves that his crazy, creative mind and heart are allowed to run free within the confines of project scheduling, budgeting, and execution. Scott loves insightful conversations with others about the journey of chasing a self-imposed set of goals to please others, because many others often say, \u201cYeah, me too!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He\u2019s humbled by the place, the time, and the circumstances he was born into. The wonderful life he\u2019s led to this point is exactly what was needed to continue to grow, expand his photography business, and the mindblowing trajectory he has planned, prepped, and manifested.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To learn more, you can connect with Scott on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/scottblasken\/?originalSubdomain=ca#\">LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Mentioned in This Episode:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/programs\/dream-catalyst\/\">Dream Catalyst Program<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2>Transcription<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 0:03&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hello, welcome to another episode of the Hope Motivates Action podcast. I&#8217;m your host, Lindsay Recknell. And it is my pleasure to have Scott Blasken here with us today. Hello, Scott.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 0:14&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well hello, Lindsey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 0:16&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Super excited to have you here. We, I have been anticipating this interview for quite some time. I&#8217;m very excited for, yeah, for people to hear your story and how you&#8217;re using hope to motivate action these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 0:28&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hope&#8217;s a very important thing. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a good tool along with some other ones that everybody needs to have in their life for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 0:33&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, and I know you&#8217;ve got some excellent ways that you&#8217;re using hope these days. Let me introduce you in a more formal way, and then I will pass it over to you to tell us your story. Scott grew up a big dreamer who wanted his head in the cloud by flying airliners, but was forced to live on terra firma, by being partially colorblind. After having his wings clipped by his color blindness, he spent his youth and adult years chasing the goals he thought would satisfy others and happily lived his life for other people. He followed the ideal, idyllic life of school, a successful corporate career, a wonderful marriage, nice house, and amazing children. He spent a decade working with top-level business coaches and with them, he accidentally figured out he hadn&#8217;t been his true self. After a quarter century at the same company, he was given the golden handshake with a boot in the backside just for good measure. Scott took his experience from an exciting and challenging career, all through his life, and with insight from a circle of professional supporters, and he peeled back the layers to rediscover that childhood excitement, wonderment, and love of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 1:37&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Inside his head and heart flies the opposition of needing everything black and white, but loving when his world is full of color. As a commercial photographer, Scott loves that his crazy creative mind and heart are allowed to run free within the confines of project scheduling, budgeting, and execution. Scott loves insightful conversations with others about the journey of chasing a self-imposed set of goals to please others, because many often say, &#8220;Yeah, me too.&#8221; He&#8217;s humbled by the place, the time, and the circumstances he was born into. The wonderful life he&#8217;s led to this point is exactly what was needed to continue to grow, expand his photography business, and the mind-blowing trajectory he has planned, prepped, and manifested. Ah-mazing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 2:18&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, I loved it, it is so exciting to read a bio like that. I mean, it has transformation in it from start to finish, which is so so cool. So Scott, tell us about this crazy, amazing life that you have, and how you&#8217;re using hope to motivate action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 2:34&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, you know, it&#8217;s really interesting. You know, so I&#8217;m a Gemini, so you know, all bets were off on me being able to be maintained and that&#8217;s sort of what I talk about, you know, sort of the crazy artistic side yet liking, liking control and, and structure. So you&#8217;re never quite sure which one of me is going to be showing up. And that, and that really has played out through my, my entire life, is just this dichotomy of wanting structure yet wanting just to be freeform. I think there&#8217;s one movie where the setting was spontaneity is great when it&#8217;s planned. And that&#8217;s so true. And, but as I&#8217;ve gone through my life, I have, I always thought that I was being an accidental, accidental opportunist when it came to my career plans. And I don&#8217;t know that I ever thought I was really taking an active route in what I was looking to do for my different career paths. I&#8217;m really fortunate, I had four, maybe five very different careers at the same company. But then when I look back on it, I realized that I was doing things in preparation for it. But it was the subtle things that I was doing. So that when I did get an opportunity and it was presented to me, everyone would say, &#8220;Oh, you&#8217;re so lucky.&#8221; And then I would go back and I would take a look at it, and I&#8217;d go &#8220;Well, actually I did a lot of things leading up to it.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 3:58&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I, hope was always a big part of that because I was always looking for the next thing. I was always hoping to get that new position. I was always hoping to get that new fork in the road as it related to my career. And by using hope, I was able to sort of manifest that to happen, and it gave me the focus and the direction that I was looking for. So that when it happened, it did happen. I used to always tell a story about my son when he was learning to ride a two-wheeler bike and he was running down the sidewalk and so well look down the sidewalk, and he says, &#8220;But the hedge is there.&#8221; &#8220;Don&#8217;t look at the hedge, look at the sidewalk.&#8221; And he couldn&#8217;t not look at the hedge and then you crash into the hedge and say, &#8220;See, I told ya.&#8221; Well yeah, &#8217;cause where you looked is what you&#8217;re what you&#8217;re going to go through.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 4:44&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it wasn&#8217;t until about, I&#8217;d say maybe 15 years into my, I think in my career that I stumbled onto a few incredible business coaches. And just by dumb luck and ended up being coaches that, you know, worked at the sea level around the world, and a British girl, that poor thing, and end up having her as my coach for a number of years. And it was more psychological-type conversations that we ended up having. But what we did is we laid the groundwork for about 10 years of me figuring out who I am so that when I did get my package from my company, I had a pretty good idea as to what I wanted to be. And I&#8217;m really fortunate to be where I am now, doing the photography that I&#8217;m doing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 5:31&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My father mentioned to me back in 2017, he says, &#8220;When you were a little kid, you had this joy and this excitement about being a, about airplanes. And then you hit this wall of being colorblind, and there&#8217;s nothing you could do about that. And then you went off, and you did what you needed to do. You went to school, you got a good job, you started a career, you got married, you bought a house, you had the kids, you had the stay-at-home family. You know, it was a Cleaver, Cleaver family. He says, &#8220;You lived your life for everybody else.&#8221; Now, what&#8217;s happening is now that I do my photography, he says, &#8220;I see you with that exact same passion and joy that you had back when you were a kid with airplanes.&#8221; So he says, &#8220;You&#8217;re living your life for you now,&#8221; which you know, now that I&#8217;m in my 50s is, it feels a little bit selfish. But it&#8217;s what I need to do, my kids are grown up, they&#8217;re in university. So I&#8217;m starting to live my life, the last third of my life, for me, and it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s oft exciting. And what I love about, you know, the manifesting and the future vision, is really for the first time ever, I have a vision as to what my senior years are going to look like. Beforehand, it always been just sort of a fog as to what was gonna happen. Now I have this great clarity, and I&#8217;m using hope to help direct me in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 6:52&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amazing I love, I&#8217;d love to hear about the intention of that. Like, so listeners of the show know that my idea of hope, my definition of hope, includes that future vision, that the future will be better than today. But we, you know, a big part of it is figuring out what that future looks like. And for sure, the further out it goes, the murkier it gets because clearly, we don&#8217;t know what that holds. You know, the crooked path will get us to the place that we&#8217;re meant to be by taking action over the things we can control. But it is nice to think about it because when you have clarity of where you want to go, then it can help to direct the actions. Like you mentioned, the perception is it was all luck to get you where you ended up. But looking back, it feels like you were intentional in doing, putting some, you know, dominoes in place to get you to that place where you ultimately wanted to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 7:53&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, for sure. Hope is my idea, hope is that it&#8217;s a very active component of my life. It isn&#8217;t something where you just kind of throw it up to the wind and hope something will happen. But it&#8217;s it&#8217;s an integral part of a larger picture. You need to have that vision. And that vision, you need to be able to know: &#8220;What am I going to do to get there?&#8221; And then you have to, you have to put your heart and your mind out there. I know you&#8217;ve talked about manifesting before. And it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s like with my son, you know, where I want to look is where I&#8217;m going to go. And hope is just that, I say it&#8217;s an elastic band that sort of helps keep me back on track as to where I&#8217;m going when it starts to wander off that path. And it&#8217;s because there&#8217;s a passion, there&#8217;s, and there&#8217;s emotions that are that are integrated with hope. That&#8217;s where I think the real staying power with that is. Because there&#8217;s the mechanical part of setting the goals and future visioning and all these things. But hope is really that it&#8217;s that connection, it&#8217;s that essence that really makes you excited, and keeps you on track. So hope is so, so important in today&#8217;s world, well it&#8217;s always been important, but especially with what&#8217;s happening in today&#8217;s world, more and more hope is needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 9:15&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You don&#8217;t got to sell me on that one. So, you mentioned that you are, you know, in the, in the next season of your life. You are living for you. You are doing things outside of other people&#8217;s expectations, which I think is just awesome. And I wish and I hope that more people will hear that and recognize that they, too, can live their lives for themselves in a totally non-selfish way. Self-care is not selfish. And I, the, the, traditionally, we think that self-care is selfish and it is the exact opposite of selfish, if you ask me. So what do you, you know, and you mentioned, what, what do you say when people say to you, &#8220;Well, why are you living for you? Like, don&#8217;t you have other people that you need to take care of first or consider first?&#8221; You know, like, what has that experience been like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 10:18&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, that&#8217;s mostly been games that have been playing in my mind, conversations in my mind, you know. So it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a lot of that, in my mind going, &#8220;Oh geez, you know what, is I&#8217;m a huge people pleaser,&#8221; that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m all about. So I will give of myself until I&#8217;m empty. And, you know, it&#8217;s, so you and I have had the conversations about this the last couple of weeks about how, you know, starting to hit burnout, because I am giving of myself and I haven&#8217;t had a chance to recharge my batteries.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 10:45&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Self-care is an important thing. And really, the conversations that I&#8217;ve had have been inside my mind, not so much with people outside of, outside in the real world. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s those crazy characters that live inside my head. As I, as a person who&#8217;s a people pleaser, I have always been trying to give of myself to others, and if people ask for help, I will be there. But what I&#8217;m finding now is I&#8217;m, I am the one asking myself for help in order to give myself that time to recharge, to reflect. And when I&#8217;m able to pause and reflect, I, I look at it not so much as I&#8217;ll say, so that cliche of &#8220;You can&#8217;t love anyone as much as you&#8230;unless you love yourself,&#8221; right? And I make it, being that I&#8217;m all about flying, I think back to when the air, the air masks drop down from the airplane and it says, &#8220;Make sure you put yours on first before you put on anybody else&#8217;s.&#8221; And, really you&#8217;ve got to take care of yourself. Otherwise, you can&#8217;t be there for other people.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 11:46&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I&#8217;m just now starting to get down that path. But it&#8217;s been interesting to see some of the people who are in my world that have been excited about having me do all these things for them, now that I&#8217;m starting to kind of pull back a little bit, they&#8217;re not actually liking it. So I, you know, so now it&#8217;s a bit of a juggling act, you know, it&#8217;s but there was people that I want to do things with. So really, it&#8217;s it&#8217;s still a big battle back, you know with those voices in my brain that are having that argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 12:17&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you for your transparency there. I think that the, that message will resonate so much with people that are listening, because I think mindset is something we all struggle with, right? Often, we think &#8220;Well, other people are judging me&#8221; or &#8220;Other people are questioning my decisions.&#8221; Probably other people aren&#8217;t even thinking about us. But in our head, they are absolutely wondering what the hell we&#8217;re doing every time we make a decision that might be out of, you know, against tradition, or out of the norm or something like that. When the reality is they probably don&#8217;t care, and in fact, will probably be looking at us going, &#8220;Oh, man, I wish I had the courage to do that for myself.&#8221; So, so thanks for speaking the truth about that, because I think more often than not, we don&#8217;t talk about those kinds of things out loud, because it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s vulnerable. It&#8217;s scary to talk about and, and burnout. I mean, you and I have been talking a lot about burnout the last little while, because we have experienced so much of it as a as a humanity, as individuals.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 13:17&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can tell you that last Monday night, my husband came home from work and I was curled up in a ball on our bed in the fetal position, bawling my face off because I had hit that, I tipped over into burnout. It had just, it had all got to be too much. And, you know, I know that burnout is preventable, I know that we can stop the slide. And as someone who talks about this stuff for a living, you would think&#8230;people, do what I say, not as I do. But you know, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a very easy place to get to, especially if we are trying to please everyone and trying to do all the things, and not giving ourselves the permission to take the time away, to recharge, that we know is good for us. And, we know we give the same advice to other people. So why don&#8217;t we take it ourselves? You know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 14:07&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I always find it amazing how we are able to lie to ourselves, you know, that our brain knows the truth and yet we lie to ourselves and we believe the lies. And so it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s amazing how that mind works. But being able to harness it for good and not evil is, that&#8217;s the key to where, you know, where I&#8217;m going on my life journey, is, is making making all the right decisions, well as many great decisions as I can, but making impact where I can along the way for myself and for those in my circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 14:39&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, amazing. You mentioned boundaries, you kind of talked about boundaries. In the sense of when you decided and have started to take action on taking care of yourself and doing things that are fulfilling and joyful for you, that other people who are used to taking advantage or having you do things for them as a priority are pushing back against that a little bit. And I think that is such a common experience, when we start to establish boundaries, as a self-care activity. Do you have any thoughts around that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 15:15&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s them being, being negative or them, them being with their discomfort of me pulling back. It&#8217;s, they enjoy having me in their life, and I enjoy being in their life. So it&#8217;s, you know, it&#8217;s that strike a balance of I love having off little bits of time across the board yet, it&#8217;s collective Scott time. And it&#8217;s tough for me, because I really enjoyed being with these people, I really enjoy helping them out. Again, you know, as a people pleaser, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s one of the things that gives me excitement. That&#8217;s what gives me joy. So it&#8217;s, it isn&#8217;t that they&#8217;re being malicious with it, it&#8217;s, they&#8217;re a little bit disappointed, because they&#8217;ve really enjoyed it. So anyway, it&#8217;s a transition phase right now. So where it will end up down the road is where it&#8217;s going to end up. I&#8217;m manifesting where I want to go, and I&#8217;m using hope to help guide me and keep me on on track with that. But you know, it&#8217;s it is it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a journey, and it&#8217;s a change in in direction from where I&#8217;ve been for the last 5-10 years. So you know, it&#8217;s not going to happen overnight. And it&#8217;s like, like, getting healthier, or whatever it is that you need to do it. You know, little bits, little steps. You know, the big bang doesn&#8217;t work if you want a long, sustained change in your life.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 16:49&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, transformation is for life.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 16:52&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Very much so.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 16:53&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, very very cool. How do you recognize hope in other people? You talked about, you know, sort of manifesting. Do you recognize, how do you recognize hope in other people so that you know, kind of, you know, the ones you want to surround yourself with?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 17:09&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When people are active in what they are looking for and what they want in their lives, that&#8217;s the people who really understand what hope is. Those who just kind of sort of sit back and just say, &#8220;Oh, I hope that happens,&#8221; you know, they&#8217;re dreamers. But those who really understand that hope is part of a greater, greater picture, you know, just one of the tools hanging off your, the tool belt of your life. Those are the ones that you can just tell, by the way, they carry themselves, the way that they talk and what&#8217;s happened in their life in the past, and is happening at this point, and what they&#8217;re talking about the future. It&#8217;s, it becomes really apparent that they are emotionally engaged with this, what I say hope is. right. Hope is an emotion. And that&#8217;s what really makes the staying power for things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 17:59&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What would you say to someone who might be in a position that you were in five or six years ago, you know, in a corporate career, you know, living the life they&#8217;re &#8220;meant&#8221; (air quotes that nobody else can see), meant to be living, but just aren&#8217;t, feeling like there&#8217;s something else out there? That they&#8217;re just not fulfilled, that, you know, it&#8217;s kind of status quo&#8230;What would you say to that person that&#8217;s listening right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 18:28&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, first and foremost, you know, you know, and that&#8217;s where I was about the last five-six years, in when I was at my company, is, you can&#8217;t just walk, pick, pack up, leave and go off and do something. In the real world, you know, you need to have a job, you need to provide for your family, you need to do all these things. And that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s really what it&#8217;s all about, right? The thing that you need to do, though, is start to build that vision. You know, start to figure out, &#8220;Where do I want to go?&#8221; It&#8217;s, you know, if you want to jump off the merry go round, you can&#8217;t just jump off wherever you want, because you&#8217;ll fall, you&#8217;ll hurt, your&#8217;ll skin your knee. But if you start kind of having that little point, you know, somewhere, you know, and look at looking at it, every once in a while, you know, as you&#8217;re going around just going around, and you plot where it is you want to jump off, and you&#8217;re ready for it. Then guess what, when you jump off that merry go round, that&#8217;s where you&#8217;re going to land up, maybe do a tuck and roll, but you&#8217;re going to come up a little bit dusty, but really in one piece and no longer going in circles.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 19:33&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it does take time, and it does take a vision, and it takes part of a lot of people around you. You know, I was really fortunate that I had some great business coaches and I had some really good mentors, and had some really good personal support people in my world that helped me as I was going around that merry go round get ready, so that when actually, as it turns out, I got kicked off the merry go round. I still landed. I did my roll, came up a little dusty. But now, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m exploring the entire park, not just that crazy merry go round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 20:06&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, yeah, that&#8217;s a really great analogy, I can totally see that. And it&#8217;s interesting, I&#8217;ve been doing a lot of work around this in the last few weeks. And I swear I didn&#8217;t, I didn&#8217;t prompt this, but it&#8217;s kind of cool how our, where our conversation is going, because I&#8217;ve actually been talking to a lot of executives and senior leaders who are in that place that who, where the&#8230;I mean, the pandemic has really brought out what&#8217;s important to us, right? And I don&#8217;t know if this is your experience, but I know that a lot of people that I&#8217;ve been talking to, you know, they don&#8217;t want to go back to the way things were because they know now, what matters, what they want to keep doing, what they want to go back doing. And it&#8217;s really, they don&#8217;t want to go back to the things that they always did, because there&#8217;s obligation there and all of that. And for many people, doing their job that they did before the pandemic is not the job they or the, or the lifestyle they want to be living now. But often for people, it&#8217;s that like, expectation, that obligation that I&#8217;m supposed to be doing this thing, and how can I possibly do something different? Everybody&#8217;s gonna judge me, everybody&#8217;s gonna question me, look at me like I&#8217;m bonker bananas. You know, how, like&#8230;Hearing you, hearing your story, hearing you share what your experience is, it feels hopeful, it feels possible. You know, with some planning, with some support, with some, you know, business coach guidance, it&#8217;s all possible. Feels very hopeful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 21:51&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. It is, you know, and isolationism is not a good foreign policy. No man can stand alone. And it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s through building that good, trusted network. When you get that trusted network, opening up and being vulnerable, is huge, huge. You know I, there was, we&#8217;ve been, what&#8230;four days after we had the funeral for my father, I had to get up and do a big presentation in front of a bunch of, in front of a bunch of professionals at the petroleum club. And you know, I was are sitting up there, and I just kind of said, you know what. and I went up here, and it was actually a conversation about vulnerability, you know, men and vulnerability. And I looked at what these group of guys, right, I could just feel this huge wave of bobbing that was just coming up through my body. And I stopped, I looked at these, these men, and went, &#8220;I am with those super good group of guys, and these guys all care about me. And it was amazing. It was just like, just disappeared, I had one tear come out of my eye. And I didn&#8217;t care about it. They didn&#8217;t care about it. But they found it really neat that, you know what, that I was up here, because I was committed to them, even though I was not, not in very good place as it related to one of the last things I wanted to be doing was standing up and talk in front of a bunch of people. But as it turns out, it was incredibly cathartic to be in a room of 35 men who were all, you know, sending their love to me.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 23:27&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it&#8217;s not a Kumbaya moment, right? It&#8217;s, you know, it&#8217;s, it really is just one of those things have build, again, building that support group of people that really care about you so you can be honest, you can be open with yourself, and you can be open with them and know that you&#8217;re not they&#8217;re not going to use it against you. On the contrary, they&#8217;re going to ask you questions that are going to end up being really difficult, and they&#8217;re going to ask those questions that you ask yourself, but you can, you know, you can avoid the answers in your head. And when when those friends or one of those one of those support people ask that question question directly at you, there&#8217;s no place to hide. And that&#8217;s what that&#8217;s what&#8217;s fabulous about having, having those sort of support groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 24:09&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fabulous, terrifying, whatever. I mean, really like, but what you say like, imagine what it could be like, if you were living a life where you got to be your whole self, right? Or you got to do something you love, be with people who appreciate you, lift up others because you are in a hopeful place. Hope is contagious. So you can spread the love when you get into a place and you can pay it forward, so to speak. But it is so powerful to to know that you can be that guy, that you can be that person and take the, take the risk out of it. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s the right language. But you know, you don&#8217;t just want to fling yourself off the merry go round. But with some planning, with some support, it is totally possible to get towards that hopeful future. And you are living proof of that, your story is living proof of that in the next season of your life, you get to do these things because you took care of yourself, you planned, and you continue to figure out what it is, and who is, Scott. It&#8217;s very cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 25:29&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But you know what the great thing is, Lindsay, is, everybody has this potential. Now, it will manifest itself differently in every different other person, different than, you know, what&#8217;s happening with me is what&#8217;s happening with me. But it&#8217;s when people stop me, and they reflect on who they are and they take that time to invest into themselves and look inward into themselves. It&#8217;s there for everybody. Um, and if everybody were to do this even 1% of the time, you know, what a change in society there would be. And it&#8217;s, it&#8217;d be a beautiful thing. You know, it&#8217;s, again, I know, that starts to sound like a little Kumbaya moment. But it&#8217;s it is, it&#8217;s a fabulous thing. If everybody were to just be that little bit kinder, that a little bit nicer, that little bit gentler with themselves, it would play out with the others around them, and yeah. It would be a wonderful place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 26:31&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m here for that. I&#8217;m here for that. Anyone want to have a discussion about that? I am here for that. Amazing. Alright, Scott, you know, we&#8217;re coming to the end of our time together. And I ask one question of all my guests: Scott, what gives you hope?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 26:48&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It boils down to one basic thing: the innate goodness in everybody. Everyone&#8217;s got it in them. Sometimes it&#8217;s buried a little bit deeper. But I will go through life look- expecting good in people, because I&#8217;d much rather find it, than you&#8217;re looking for the negative. Is it, and, you know what, I&#8217;ll get burned every once in a while. I tend to think of that quote of, &#8220;If you look for the good in people, you&#8217;ll find it. If you look for the bad, you will, you will become it.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 27:24&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So again, that&#8217;s that that&#8217;s that vision. Where are you putting your eyes? Where are you looking? Are you looking down the street or are you looking into the hedge? And, oh, it&#8217;s, it is, it&#8217;s the innate goodness in everybody that&#8217;s there, that society is going to be fabulous, we&#8217;re gonna get through all these tough times. You know, each of us as individuals have our own challenges. But, you know what, if we look to the future and we look to it with a smile in our, in our faces, in our hearts, and in our minds, that&#8217;s that looking forward, and it&#8217;s manifesting the proper decision as to where you want to go. And when you want to jump off the merry go round. If you want to jump off the merry go round, or just having fun looking at everybody else looking at you having fun. It&#8217;s, some people love the merry go round. I don&#8217;t understand them. But some people do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 28:15&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amazing. I always just think, you often tell me to stop apologizing. But instead to reframe it, to &#8220;Thank you for waiting for me,&#8221; as an example. You know, you definitely live your life looking to where you want to go, as opposed to looking back or apologizing for where you&#8217;ve been. And that&#8217;s a light that is a lesson that I have learned from you in our short time of knowing each other. And I can, I&#8217;m very excited to continue learning more of those life lessons from you. So thank you so, so much for sharing your wisdom with us. sharing your story, your vulnerability. I know you&#8217;ve inspired other people to figure out how it is they can get off that merry go round if they&#8217;d like to, if they would like to, or to you know, continue to watch you as you live your best life. But I really appreciate you coming on the show and, and sharing you with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 29:11&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well and Lindsay, you know what, thank you for doing this. It&#8217;s, I always talk about, it&#8217;s an amazing, the elixir that is who you are. And, you know and I use the cliche of you know if there if we could figure out how to use your blood as an antidepressant, the world would be a much better place. So I truly feel that I have gotten more out of our relationship than I could possibly ever give you. And I&#8217;m happy to just keep absorbing the person you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 29:42&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s amazing, thank you. Thank you so so much. We will definitely keep this conversation going.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Blasken&nbsp; 29:47&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You bet, we will.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 29:52&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hope you enjoyed this latest episode of the Hope Motivates Action podcast. These episodes are a labor of love. Inspiring conversations with hopeful people make my heart happy. If you also love this episode, it would be amazing if you could go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review, five stars if you&#8217;re into it. It&#8217;s these reviews that encourage Apple to promote this podcast to their network, and the more people that listen, the more hope we can spread into the world. Don&#8217;t forget to check out the show notes of this episode to find all the links to my guests, books and other resources referenced in this episode. You&#8217;ll also find the link back to my website where you will find additional support and resources for you, your team, and your community. I truly believe that the future will be better than today by taking action over the things we can control. And hearing from these guests on these episodes, I know that even more hopeful future is totally possible.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 30:40&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m always looking for inspirational guests so if you or anyone you know would like to be a guest on the show, please reach out. You can find me on the contact form of my website at expertinhope.com or by email at lindsay@expertinhope.com.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell&nbsp; 30:52&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I was a teenager, my sisters were leaving the house to go out for the night, I always made it a point to remind them to call me if they need me. It was my way to tell them that I cared and would always be there for them. I&#8217;d love you to know the same so all of you listening out there, call me if you need me. Again, thank you for your love and support of this podcast, my work in hope, and your intentional focus on making your future better than today. After all, hope without action is just a wish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Transcribed by https:\/\/otter.ai<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lindsay Recknell | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Expert in Hope<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/expertinhope\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Facebook<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/lindsay-recknell\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">LinkedIn<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lindsayrecknell\/\">Insta<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lindsayrecknell\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">g<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lindsayrecknell\/\">ram<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/shop\/\">Take Hope Home!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Listen to this and all episodes of the Hope Motivates Action podcast wherever you listen to your favourite content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you living your life to fit the expectations of others, or are you living it for yourself, your joy, and your passions? Feeling obligated to live up to the expectations and demands of those around you is a mindset that so many people fall victim to. Scott Blasken joins me on the podcast today to share how he was &#8230; <\/p>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/s07e04\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[108],"tags":[296,25,382,383,379],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>S07 | 04 - Living Life Outside of Expectations with Scott Blasken<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Listen in and take Scott\u2019s advice to stop apologizing for where you\u2019ve been, and begin living your life outside of expectations.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/s07e04\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"S07 | 04 - Living Life Outside of Expectations with Scott Blasken\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Listen in and take Scott\u2019s advice to stop apologizing for where you\u2019ve been, and begin living your life outside of expectations.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/s07e04\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lindsay Recknell\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/expertinhope\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-08-11T10:13:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-08-28T12:01:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/HMA-podcast-Season-7.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lindsay Recknell\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lindsay Recknell\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"28 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/s07e04\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/s07e04\/\",\"name\":\"S07 | 04 - Living Life Outside of Expectations with Scott Blasken\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2021-08-11T10:13:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-08-28T12:01:52+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/#\/schema\/person\/7269f4f6f0cc05f57840f5e93fc6cfa8\"},\"description\":\"Listen in and take Scott\u2019s advice to stop apologizing for where you\u2019ve been, and begin living your life outside of expectations.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/s07e04\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/s07e04\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/s07e04\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.expertinhope.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"S07 | 04 &#8211; 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