How to Reinvent Yourself & Live a Better Life with Craig Siegel

Are you living a life that you were meant to? In this episode of Best Year Ever, Rob Cressy is joined by Craig Siegel, Performance Coach and Global Keynote Speaker, as they jam about reinventing yourself, intentional living, and how to creating a better life.

Rob Cressy & Craig Siegel both had well paying corporate careers but left them because they were called to a different and better life. What does that moment look like when you make that decision? How do you create a frequency & energy that attracts more of what you want? Why is being intentional about all aspects of your life so important? How do you create a standard for yourself where you “Execute Beyond Emotion”. How do you create a list of non-negotiables that you live by?

Here’s the podcast version:

Connect with us:

• Rob Cressy – Instagram: @rob_cressy – LinkedIn: /cressy/ – Twitter: @RobCressy – Sports Content Studio: www.baconsports.com

• Craig Siegel – Instagram: @craigsiegel_cls – Website: CultivateLastingSymphony.com

Transcription of the podcast:

(note: what follows is an AI-generated transcript from this video. Please be mindful that the transcript may not be 100% accurate)

First question, tell me one thing you do to create your best year ever. Become available for all the abundance out there waiting, and, and make no mistake about it, there’s enough for everybody to win and win big. The key is to block out that interference and stay available for it. Stay available. Ooh. I love that, Craig Siegel, because we are actually gonna help people create a lot of availability in their life in this podcast episode.

And welcome to Best Year Ever, a podcast designed to inspire growth and impact so you can create your best year ever. And I’m your host, Rob Cressy. Joining me today is Craig Siegel. Global, global Performance coach, keynote speaker, and host of the C Ls Experience podcast. Craig Siegel, great to have you on the show.

Thank you so much for having me, brother. First of all, your energy is off the chart, so that’s what it feels like to be on the receiving end of an unbelievable intro. Thank you for having me. I’m excited. Let’s rock. And Craig, I’ve gotta shoot that right back to you because you’ve got amazing energy, my friend.

I see it radiating all the time on social media. And here’s what I wanna start with with you. You and I have a, a lot of similarities, but there’s one of them that I think is so important, and it is the life that each of us used to live. And you’d previously worked on Wall Street, but then the pandemic hits, and you had an awakening.

Awakening. And I wanna dive a little bit into that because a lot of people, right, Or questioning, what do I wanna do with my life? Who do I wanna become? What does the best version of me look like? Is it where I’m working right now, or is there something else out there in the world that is calling me? What did that look like for you when you’re in that moment between the comfortable, well paying job and the other life that you saw for yourself?

First of all, you mentioned comfortable, right? I was really uncomfortable in the standpoint that I, it didn’t feel. Right, and I’m very big on energy intuition, and it started to just feel like out of alignment for lack of better words. And ultimately, I had always felt called, and I’m writing a book right now.

We signed a huge deal with WIE, which I’m really excited about, and just exploring some of my upbringing and some of the stuff that led us to this moment has really been eyeopening. So I’m excited to talk about it with you today. I just felt like I was underachieving and I began to hear whispers and I, I felt as.

We’re here for a much bigger mission and reason and spoiler everybody is, anybody listen to this podcast right now? You all have gifts. Make no mistake about it. And, and it’s not a choice. It’s your obligation to fulfill your assignment, make an impact, right? Contribute, which will ultimately lead to a ton of money in return.

It’s just an energetic exchange. So I felt like I, I was underachieving. I. Like this energizer bunny in the wrong arena, so to speak. And that’s why I started running marathons and that was great. But I wasn’t looking to become a professional runner. I was just looking for something to test myself.

Pandemic lockdown as you had tested to, I took a moment and we opened the show with how did somebody create their best life? I became available for what? For those creative divine downloads to be on that higher frequency, high vibe, to be the best version of myself to attract. The right ideas and so forth, and it came to me.

I had a spiritual moment. I believe everybody had a, a bit of awakening at the beginning of the lockdown, and it’s interesting to see now, now that we’re a little bit over two years after, like who took advantage of the opportunity to maybe reassess and, and who did not. But it is what it is. It’s never too late.

Ultimately, I asked myself what my passions are and, and I’ve been obsessed with personal development for a very long time, and it occurred to me in that moment that maybe personal development is more than a passion. Maybe it’s also my purpose. And then I said, all right, what am I good at? What are my gifts?

Cuz everybody’s got ’em. And then it came to me. I have an effective ability to communicate quite well. I can move people, I can elevate them, I can get, I could turn caterpillars into butterflies, so to speak. I’ve always been exceptional at that humbly. And so I said, okay, now we’re onto something. What if we married those two concepts?

Right? And now we attack personal, develop. Extend our reach, make an impact, but not just speaking. Maybe we create a 10 lane highway, right? Coaching, speaking community, podcast book, all that stuff. Maybe it looks a little bit something like Tony Robbins and just, and just to be clear, I didn’t wanna be the next Tony Robbins, but be the first Craig Siegel, but you can’t hit a target that you can’t see.

It all started to come to me. I remember the next day in a run, I bought the domain from my website, cultivate lasting symphony or a cls, apply my initial. I started working on a logo and people think those are small things. I was jazzed. I had momentum. Now I’ve given life to this idea. It had a pulse, it had energy, and I was off to the races.

At some point, sooner than later, I saw my business on Wall Street and I stepped all the way in, or as we like to say, burn the ships and it’s been the right of a lifetime, the last two years, and we’re just getting warmed. Absolutely love that, Craig Siegel. It resonated so much with me because in my journey 12 years ago, I sat there and I said to myself, I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t give it a shot at making my dreams happen.

And for me, the bigger risk was not taking the risk at all, because I didn’t wanna look back on my life and say if I had only dot, dot, dot. But you said one thing that I wanna sort of dive a little bit deeper on. When we or others are questioning what we wanna do or we’ve got, um, this awakening that’s happening.

But what I wrote down is creating space. And I think a lot of people, one of the things that they are missing, uh, when it comes to the self-awareness, is creating the space in their mind to give them the availability. To even create these insights because, uh, with both you and I being masters of language, we hear a lot of, I don’t have enough time.

I’ll get to it later, I’ll get to it someday when things slow down, whatever it is. And there’s always, oftentimes a lack or not enoughness. But in this instance, it’s actually the removal of all of the things going on in our heads over and over and over again, aka the hamster wheel of life where people can never get off of it because they don’t create this space in themselves that say, You know what?

What if I just give myself a day, an hour, just something to sit and reflect and do this internal work and say, Hey, what is it that I would really love in my life? Yep. You nailed it, brother. You don’t find time. You create time. Simple, right? Period. End of story. If you want something bad enough, whether it’s a relationship, a person, an event, an.

You create that window for it. And if it’s not important for you, if you’re interested and just not committed, then you won’t. It is what it is. But make no mistake about it. That’s why I said you have to become available for the abundance, for the downloads, for the ideas, for the strategies to get stuff going, and how do you become available?

You intentionally create. As you just attested to, and I love that you did that because that kind of brings both of our concepts right together into a complete and utter alignment and synergy. You have to create intentionally some space to become available because it doesn’t matter if you have the best strategies in the world.

It’s funny cuz all my, like my newer one on one clients, when they start up with me like, I wanna do what you’re doing, Craig Siegel, like how do you explode a brand like that for nothing in less than two? And I’m like, we’ll get to all strategies and tactics, but are you available right now? And they sometimes they’re like, I don’t know what you mean.

Really. You have to be on that vi, you have to be a vibrational match. Right. And spoil all the good stuff out there. The abundance, all the energy field that already exists. We’re not creating the market. It’s already there. We just have to raise our hand. Right, and, and become available for it. And, and that’s an energy thing.

That’s a mindset thing. That’s a high vibe thing. Higher frequency. And you gotta create the space to become available. I love that you said that, and let’s just dive deeper into this, cuz this is one of the things that I wanna talk to you about and one of my superpowers is energy in my ability to create it myself and then give it to.

Because I think back on how I became this person, and it was by design because I know what it’s like to live, uh, three quarters of my life without self-awareness, without a growth mindset, without waking up every single day excited for what I’m going to do. And then I’ve lived the last 12 of my li 12 years of my life.

With those perspectives. So it creates an energy in myself where I wake up and literally every day for the last 12 years, the first thing that I’ve said is, today is gonna be a great day. And I estimate, I say it three to five times over the course of the first two hours. Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, boom.

I’m creating that energy in myself that way. Um, I can put that out into the world and it’s gonna come back to me. And Craig Siegel, you talked about frequency in energy, and it doesn’t mean you need to be a high, uh, energy person like you or I. There’s a large variety of ways that you can create energy, but it is a way of being inside of yourself.

It’s an internal thing in your heart and in your mind. So can you dive a little bit more into the frequency side of things? Once people get in tune to this, this is actually the secret sauce that changes your life. Agreed. Yeah. And it used to be such a mindset guy, like NLP and all that stuff. That was how I started with all this being mentally fit stuff and NLP is still great and mindset is the key to life.

but even deeper, right below the surface is the energy stuff. It’s the quantum, it’s the energy fields, whatever it is that you, that you listen to or gravitate towards God’s source, whatever the case may be. We’re all here to be abundant, to be part of the collective. Part of the infinite to create. Problem is, is society or families, whatever the case may be, they, they cause interference and we begin to second guess that or begin to think of scarcity.

It’s never enough. I’m not worthy. I can’t do this. I see those people doing that. That’ll never be. Now that we’ve become aware, right, that we weren’t born with those beliefs, now we can be intentional and strategic. On how to change and replace those belief born power ones. And the best way to do that is to understand that if you’re ever feeling weird or low vibe or not in a high frequency, or not yourself or negative, it’s just because you currently have disempowering thoughts, which you are allowing to take up real estate inside your mind.

And now that you know that and, and if you get nothing else from this podcast, please extract this. This is tangible. Go back in and say, you know what? Negative, dis powered thoughts. Get the hell out like an intruder. I’m gonna go ahead and replace those with empowering thoughts. I am worthy. I can, I am resourceful.

I can create, I’m here for reason. Now you begin to cultivate new beliefs, and now you’re a confident on fire, high vibe, higher frequency. Those new now create new behaviors, which ultimately create new results in. So ultimately you’ve heard the expression thoughts become things from the Bible, thinking grow rich.

All these books, it’s, it’s true. Your thought is an energy, it’s a signal. And whatever you’re sending out there, you’re gonna get more of. That’s why you don’t manifest what you want. You manifest what you are. And the reason why this is so powerful is cuz if you’re not getting the results that you desire at this beautiful thing that is life, it’s feedback that your thoughts, right?

Whack and you can do something about. And then you can begin to be higher vibe, better energy connected to source. You know that frequency where you’re on fire, you can’t be stopped. You have all the ideas, all that you’re at the right place at the right time. When you can stay in that state for longer, then you can be abundant.

You can create and you can manifest everything that you do want because you are that. That’s where the strategies come in, is paying attention to your thought. . Yeah. And here’s the key to all of this. All of this is invisible and costs no money. So if you can create this for yourself at any point in your life you feel that momentum, you feel in flow, you’re like, man, this is just so amazing.

Well wait a second. You can have that whenever you want. And that can become the evidence for you to create that whenever you. So once you understand these things, you say, all right, well, I can create momentum, I can create flow. I can create whatever it is that I want in my life by being that person and showing up a certain way, while all of a sudden you start to think about things a little bit differently, which Craig Siegel will bring us to the next topic, intention for life.

And I know you and I, one of the things that is so important for both of us is being so intentional about every single aspect of our. And one of the quotes that changed my life was live by design, not by default. because living by default is just doing the same thing over and over again without really thinking about it.

And the majority of the world lives this way, and it’s pushed on us that there’s the comparison, there’s the keeping up with the Joneses, all of that. But when you live by design, this becomes a one of one game where it says, what is, what do Rob Cressy and Craig Siegel want to create in their life, in their vision in this moment?

And when you do this and you start to live by design, and then you start to become intentional about every single aspect of your life. And I think about where I learned this when I left my corporate job and went all in and burned the boats, and I sat there and I was like, holy smokes. Every single aspect of my life is up to me.

And then it went from holy smokes to whoa. Every aspect is up to me. And it clicked almost instantly where I was like, oh, if I want to create the dream life for myself, That it’s up to me to fill in every single little micro bucket of my life in being intentional in not only all areas of my life, but every single moment of my life.

Because why would I not if I’m living by design infinitely? You nailed it, brother. Every single word, right? And you gotta be intentional with everything from the people you surround yourself with to the thoughts that you allow to take up real estate, to where you. To the work that you do, all of it, right?

And people that are in your life are either feeding you or bleeding you, and it’s time to make some tough decisions and have some tough conversations. If you’re around people, right, that are not elevating you, there’s a good chance they’re actually lowering your vibe, right, and they can actually destroy your momentum.

And, and don’t feel weak because you allow people to bring down your state. We’re all human beings. We all deal with mental health, all that stuff, which is why, because our time here is so precious and, and so short regarding this human experience. You wanna make sure you surround yourself with people that are obviously, Sleep better or further along cuz you can grow, but more importantly, positive, your cheerleaders clapping for you, got your back, good vibes, and anybody out there that’s toxic or that brings down your state, it’s time to do an audit and reevaluate and be intentional with everything that you do.

Your thoughts, what you do, the choices that you make, but specifically the people that you hold yourself to. High standard or the people that are in your inner. And if you start to be more strategic or, or the word that you use, intentional, a life by design and surround yourself with people that are on the right vibe of who you’re becoming, that’s when things really begin to open up.

And if you feel really bad and you’re listening to this, listen, you’re not exactly outgrowing people because they have a choice to grow with you. And if they don’t want to, no problem. Nothing personal. It is what it is. Most people are in your life for a season and a reason. And once you accept. Now it makes the choices a little bit easier to be more intentional with the people that you surround yourself with.

Yeah. And Craig Siegel, the yes and what you said. I think, uh, two things that changed my life along this perspective. Was number one when I hired my first coach ever, which was actually a branding coach. And number two, when I joined my first communities ever, when I realized, wait a second, I wanna be surrounded by the best in the world, the people who are doing things, even at a level greater than what I am doing.

Because that’s how we’re all going to grow. And the reason this is so important is because for the longest time we may. Self-limiting beliefs are a scarcity mindset around paying money to work with coaches or to be part of communities being like, oh, you’ll hear so many dissenters online talking about how things aren’t what they seem.

But Craig Siegel, you and I, both being community builders and coaches and leaders, we know on the receiving end, just of the things that you and I receive on, these are the game changers that I look right now in my life. Some of my best friends are the people from these communi. The, the levels of growth that I’ve achieved and I’m going to achieve is because of the coaches that I continually work with to help me level up to get to the next area.

So if you’re sitting there and you’ve never done it before, I encourage you to, uh, hear what both Craig and I are saying. Find a coach, find a community, find a tribe for you that speaks your language and your vibe because when you do, it’ll be a cocoon of warmth. And I think about all of the communities that I’m a part of and I legitimately love them.

Community and coaching to me equals love. Yeah. It’s so important. I love that you brought up, because it is your tribe and it becomes your family. And guess what these, the convers that you and I are having right. These are my dinner conversations about, this is all I wanna be talking about these days is, is growth, personal development, building cls, collaborations, helping people extending the reach.

I love this stuff, you know, and it’s like as you continue to grow and become enlightened or unplugged from the matrix, I like to say, You have to then challenge yourself to do that audit. Say, who am I around right now? Who can help me? Who’s my cup of tea these days? Who is more on the frequency of the person that I am and, and more importantly that I’m becoming, and, and then you surround yourself with them and it’s the cheat code to accelerate your growth.

It’s why I started the CLS membership, and it’s why I think community is, is everything this day and age. So, Craig, the last thing I wanna talk about with you. Uh, I’m having a lot of fun as a real time creator listening to language everywhere in my life, and most recently while watching football, I notice things that commentators say.

It’s usually just one phrase that all of a sudden I think about. How can this apply to my life and the growth that we’re going to create? So I wanted to have some fun with you and talk about a phrase that I heard that I believe can help some next level growth. And the phrase is execute beyond emotion.

So I’m watching Ohio State, Michigan, this. And Michigan takes the lead over Ohio State and the crowd is just quiet. The sideline of Ohio State, quiet Michigan is going nuts. And the announcer says A head coach Ryan Day before the game said, you know, what’s gonna be important for us? Execute beyond emotion.

Cuz he knows a game like this is gonna be up and down. And at that. Ohio State was in a down, and I heard that and I was like, execute beyond emotion. And I was like, you know what I love about this? Because so much of our growth journey is about executing beyond emotion. And I think the simplest example is when you think about a fitness journey, even when it’s a lifestyle for you of going to the gym or running or doing Peloton or whatever it.

There are still days in which we wake up and say, you know what? I just don’t feel like going to the gym today, Craig Siegel, or another thing, waking up early. Boom. You wake up at 5:00 AM for years at a time, guess what? It never gets easier. Execute beyond emotion. Sometimes our emotions are going to lie to us, but we’ve gotta execute upon them because those instances in which we do execute despite not wanting to, those are the true gold nuggets.

What are your thoughts minds me of standard over feeling something I, I always preach, I’m big on standard over. Means when your alarm goes off tomorrow morning at 4:30 AM there, there’s no negotiation because you already made that decision the night before when you held yourself to a higher standard.

There’s no emotion. There’s nothing to think about. It’s non-negotiable. So standard over feeling, right? Sometimes the amateurs, they succumb to their feelings and they don’t move forward. The goats, the greats, the legends, the people that I like to surround. They hold themselves to a high standard, meaning they do the things that are necessary even when they don’t want to because they hold themselves and everybody around them to a higher standard.

And based upon my experience, and I agree, that’s the big separator. Yeah, and it’s interesting because once again, we’re living a life by design. So these are habits and routines and mindsets and ways of being that serve us that we want to do, but it doesn’t mean that we’re always a hundred out of a hundred on feeling like doing it.

So I love the way that you said that. And Craig Siegel, I wanna make. Uh, to emphasize something you said, it’s a non-negotiable and for anyone listening or watching right now, if you have not done this before, I highly encourage you to write down your non-negotiables in life. Why so often on a growth journey, you’ll hear something and you’re like, oh, that sounds good.

But like riding a bike, you’ve gotta go from your training wheels to doing it on your own before you start popping wheelies. So creating a non-negotiables list says, listen, this is who I am no matter what, and the simplest version for me. I live a life of absolute positivity. Negativity has no place in my life because when I started my journey once again, going to the burning, the boats moment, I asked myself one question.

I said, what will help me accomplish my goals faster? Positivity or negativity, positivity. Of course, negativity’s gonna take us further away from where I want to. Therefore this became binary in my life, a non-negotiable. I live a life of absolute positivity in anything that’s negative. It’s a zero for me.

Craig Siegel, I’m curious, what are some of your non-negotiables? You know what? I agree, buddy, and, and this is tough because the more I evolve and the more I grow, the more I become comfortable with saying the word no. Right? And I say no to. That I don’t want to do, and I know that sounds a little cold, but based upon where I’m at right now in this season of life, if it ain’t a hell yes, it’s a hell no.

Straight up, right? And usually it’s because there’s some sort of negativity involved, or if it’s just not my frequency. Now, granted your family, right? You make exceptions. If there’s some place that you don’t wanna go, but it’s your family, whatever the case may be, put on a happy face and you do your thing.

But other things than that, you need to start to create an authentic filter. And, and for me that means blocking out any type of negativity. And, and the best way for me to do that is to transform from reactive to proactive so that I could dwell in a proactive bubble of serenity. Even though the world of honest might exist in Rob and ruin, I’m just not available for intent, negativity straight up.

Whether it’s the voice in my head or the news or people or chat or anything. I just make a choice each and every single night. Like people meditate every day. This is what. I’m available for what can go right. I am not available for unworthiness and imposter syndrome. What could go wrong? O C D, any of that stuff.

I used to be, I have contrast. I used to live a life like that and I made a decision as I continue to evolve and spread my wings and become this version of me, I’m just no longer available for that stuff, just like you just attested to. And on the flip side, I would consider myself a bit delusional, optimistic.

I’m always thinking. I’m always thinking, how can we do that? There’s no such thing as, I can’t afford that. It’s how can we afford that? I’m always thinking about what can go right, so I’m gonna have to agree with you on this one. Brother. Blocking out any type of negativity in, in all sorts is an absolute 100% non-negotiable for me.

And Craig Siegel, when you said that, you say No. I actually heard that from a place of love because you’re actually saying yes to the things that you do love in your life. So that can be such a gift to yourself and to others. And Craig, I love conversations with people like you because you make the world a better place and there needs to be more people like you.

Where can everybody connect? Uh, thank you for saying that, brother. I appreciate that. I really. Uh, you can find us anywhere on social media at Craig Siegel, cls, anywhere you listen to podcast, the CLS experience. You can check out our website, cultivate lasting symphony.com. Find out ways to join the membership, the community, the masterminds, all that stuff.

Focus for speaking. And if you love free daily inspirational messages, like the stuff that we’re talking about today, uh, feel free to join our texting community. Just text the word Rob so I know it came from here to 917-634-3796. Come say hello. I’d love to. And I wanna hear from you. Did anything that we say cause you to think or take action?

You can hit me up on all social media platforms at @Rob Cressy. I’ve got a ton of resources to help you on your personal growth and creator journey.