Empower
Host: Eric Chow · October 13, 2021 · Episode 54 · 18 minutes
Transcribed from the episode audio and edited for names and terms. Wording can differ slightly from what was said; the episode itself is the record.
Quoted from this episode: 8 quotes on the quotes page.
Hey everybody before we get started with what this episode is going to be all about. Here is a quick message on how you can start your own podcast if you want to. Oh right. What is going on everybody? Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Eric Chow Empowers Podcast. I'm alone today. I'm just going to do a little solo episode. I've literally I'm it's currently 10 43 a.m. I've got a call at 11 so. I'm going to keep this fairly short. I imagine maybe 10, maybe 15 minutes, but just want to take a little bit of time and share some thoughts.
I think when I started this show, I really started it as a space and a platform for me to really share my own thoughts, right? And it's expanded now into this beautiful, beautiful show where I get to have all these incredible conversations with so many different people and hear so many different stories and it's absolutely amazing. But after having all these stories and getting to share everything from my guests and lessons from my guests, I feel that there is also some tremendous value in having me take some time and share some thoughts as I synthesize different things that I'm learning.
after having talked to so many different people and you know, I mean 50 plus episodes of the show and so many other conversations going on outside of the podcast and business and getting featured on other podcasts and getting interviewed and so many other things that are happening in my life. I want to take some time to make sure that I am sharing some of these lessons that I'm learning and things that I'm synthesizing. with you guys and bring another added level of value, I hope. And again, I really started this show as a space for me to share. And now that it's expanded, I feel that I have more to share. And so today I want to talk about empowerment, right?
The podcast is literally called Eric Chow Empowers's podcast. And so I want to kind of go back to the heart of what this show is about. It is all about empowerment. And the way I see it, empowerment on this show happened in so many different ways. And I don't know that I'll talk about all of it in this episode right here, but I do want to share a few little thoughts that will hopefully end up helping you. When I started this show, I was empowering myself. Yes, there was a sense of I want to share all this because I feel that it's valuable and I want to empower my audience as well.
But the truth is initially the first reason why I even thought of making a podcast was because I was looking for a space and a platform where I could share. I was really looking to empower myself and give myself that opportunity. And that is.
That gave me the space that gave me the platform. That's what created the podcast. And I started sharing my own stories. And then of course, I started to have conversations, right? I started to bring guests on and give them an opportunity to share their story and. It just expanded beautifully and then there was this sense of okay, let's do some conversations Let's do some solo episodes. So they're sharing and I'm sharing and it was amazing right and it's this sense of Empowerment all the way around I was empowering myself and then I empowered some guests to share their story and then in doing so the hope was that we would be together empowering you the listener and what I really want to emphasize there is I started with myself and I think that's super important.
There is a sense of you can empower other people without having yourself be empowered. I do believe that. Well, maybe in a technical way, no, but of course you are always able to empower anybody.
I want you to know that. Just even in speaking the right words, words of encouragement to people is very, very empowering, right? That is an encouragement is a form of empowerment. It's not the most powerful, but it's certainly a very, very powerful form of empowerment because it gives somebody encouragement. It gives somebody hope. It gives somebody that sense of, you know what? There's somebody who believes in me and that's very empowering. So anybody, anybody can empower somebody else. But to do something more than that requires you to be empowered first. I realized I have to uplift myself before I can pull others up. And I have to make sure I'm on a higher rung of the ladder before I can help somebody else climb the ladder.
Otherwise, I'm just pushing them. If I'm below them, then what am I doing? Right? So when I started this show, I empowered myself first. And then I was able to empower other people. That's what happened. And another way that that showed itself was I wanted to be a good host for my guests. Right? That means that I needed to make sure I wanted to create a safe and comfortable space for them to come and share their story. In my view, the way I thought of it, and this was something I literally, I remember thinking of this so many times in the early stages of my show, I said, before I can expect my guests to do something, I have to do it first. And I think I've made it said that on some of those first maybe 20, 30 episodes of the show.
I probably did say that somewhere in there, or at least I know I told it to many of my guests, maybe off air, but I think on the podcast, it's probably still in some of those episodes. I do have to do this first. And the reason I felt that way was if I can't trust my own platform to feel like a safe space to share my story, then how can I expect this guest to come on my show and share their story? That wouldn't make any sense. So. I had to learn how to share myself first. And I remember there were episodes there where I just wanted to share my thoughts and share some experiences and share some stories.
And there were even some vulnerable things that I ended up sharing in certain episodes. But that gave me tremendous confidence and comfort because I was able to sit there and talk to a guest and give them that space because I had already done it.
Maybe it's just that sense of me wanting to be a good host. Maybe that's all it is. But I do believe that even though I may not have shared all of that with them, I may not have told them, hey, by the way, I've been vulnerable on my show. So you can be vulnerable. I don't think I said that. But because I had, it allowed me the mental capacity to say, you know what, I've done this. And I know other people who have done it. So this person, I hope, will feel comfortable to share their story too. And that became the heart of the show.
And because I had already done it, it allowed me to have these stories. It allowed me to let people be vulnerable and share the ups and downs of their life and the different experiences that they've been through and the different lessons that they've learned. And it really all started.
because I empowered myself and I gave myself that space first. You know, I'll tackle this from a little bit of a different standpoint, you know, separate from this podcast. I remember listening to, I don't know if it was a podcast, some audio, some talk, whatever, but person A was talking to person B and person A asked, Person B, why are you so wise? Like every time I talk to you always, you're just so wise, man. And person B turns to person A and goes, I like to read. Do you want to be wise? And person A goes, yes, I would like to be wise like you.
And person B goes, good. Read books. And person A, he's like, I, and he just kind of turns in, because he's narrating the story. So person A turns to the audience and he says, Well guys, I'm a simple guy. I don't question it. I like person B. I think person B is wise. If he says read, I'm going to read. So he starts reading books. And one day he reads a book and he reads a certain paragraph or a certain line and he says, wait a minute, this is where person B said that one thing. And I thought he sounded so smart and so wise. And the truth is he just got it from his book.
And he kept reading and that came true again and again and again. And he said, this is where he got it. This is where he got that one. This is where he got that one. And that was it. And I'm not going to say that all the wisdom of the world is in books. And honestly, it might be, I don't know. But what I will say is that story is not a one off for me. Anytime I've talked to people, I've gotten to know people. The people who have been most wise and most quotable, you know, those people who are just like really easily quotable.
It's often people who are reading books, talking to a lot of people, hearing a lot of stories, listening to podcasts. It's people who are...
kind of putting themselves through another life. And what I mean by that is, you know, all of us live our own individual life. We have these all our experiences and everybody is so interesting. I want to tangent off of this a little bit. Everybody is interesting. I hear people tell, say all the time, I'm not interesting. I don't have anything interesting to share. It's absolute nonsense. Trust me. I've had enough conversations with enough people to know everybody is interesting. It's just a matter of finding it. I even find that sometimes the more shy people have more to share when you find the right thing to talk about.
It's absolutely incredible and it's so exciting for me. But guys, what I want to say is we all have our own life and we have something interesting to share. You just have to find it. But what a lot of these...
quote unquote, wise people are doing is they're giving themselves another opportunity to live. You know, you read somebody's story, you listen to somebody's story, and you kind of put yourself through another life entirely. And it's absolutely incredible how that works. Like, I'll give you an example. I'm currently listening to Matthew McConaughey's audiobook. It's autobiography. And he's just sharing his life story. And it's amazing. I'm enjoying it. And it's almost like I get to live through or kind of experience and watch Matthew McConaughey's life, narrated by him. And I'm on my, that's my 24th or 25th book of the year right now. I finished 23 books.
That one's probably gonna be my 24th. I'm also reading another book, a physical book. And I love reading because it gives me that experience. Now, of course, I'm not always reading biographies and autobiographies, but regardless, you get to see, I can hear all these stories and It gives you a wealth of knowledge. It gives you so much to share. They say that you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. So you can listen more and talk less. You have two eyes and one mouth for a reason. You see more and talk less. That's why sometimes shy people are even the ones who have more to share because they've spent so much time listening and watching.
which I find kind of ironic because I'm on a solo monologue right now. So only I can talk and I just can't see here and listen. Like imagine if we just sat here in the hole up for like five minutes and the episode is just like that'd be kind of weird, right? So, but what I want to say is empower yourself and you'll be able to empower others even more. Do not forget that you already have empowered yourself. You have empowered yourself with just simply the power of words and the power of encouraging people. You have so much power. And I'm going to talk about that more and later and later episodes because I do have to get going in a few minutes here for this call. But this show started because I gave myself a space and I trusted myself and I decided.
I wanted to express myself and I wanted to be me and I wanted to share me and I wanted to add value in any way that I could and I'm very fortunate that I was able to do so and I'm very fortunate that because I was able to do that I was given the opportunity to give other people that space as well and it's been amazing right I mean you guys who have been listening to the podcast you guys know Right? I've had some incredible stories and incredible, incredible guests who I love and appreciate so much. And I, in many cases, admire and am inspired by them.
So that's the first major lesson I want to share here. And the second one is, I hope you take some time out of your life to experience some other people's lives as well. Not little snippets of them, but...
read some books, listen to some stories, and you'll find that you have so much more to share. I promise you. I've had 50 plus of these episodes and I feel like I'm just getting started here and I've had so many other conversations outside of this and read so many books, 23 books this year, and listen to so many podcasts and other audios and talks and speeches from people and You know, I remember talking to this gentleman. I really do need to get going after this But I really I remember talking to this guy Rob's 10k friends at Rob's 10k friends on Instagram His name is Rob lawless.
He's been for a couple of years just meeting people one on one for one hour and He doesn't really document it. He just I mean he does he posts these little screenshots on Instagram and writes a blurb about it But it's amazing. He just has these one on one, one hour conversations, getting to know people. And I was fortunate enough to be friend number 4,390 something, something around there, maybe 40 something. But I remember asking him, listen, I've done a bunch of conversations on my podcast. And I've found that it's amazing. You just get a wealth of knowledge and it's easier to relate to people and understand people after you have so much.
because you have so much data points, right? You've learned so much, you've heard so many stories. And he goes, yeah, that's absolutely true. Because I mean, the guy has 4,000 data points, damn it. And yes, we're all interacting with people all the time, but I hope you'll take some time to actually make it more intentional too. I hope you'll actually take some time to give it a point and actually give people your attention, you know? Just like Rob does with his one hour just like I do with my podcast. It's a very purposeful conversation and That holds a lot of power. So talked about a bunch of different things here.
Hopefully you guys found it valuable I Have an amazing episode coming up next week. We just did the interview on Sunday and Oh my god. It was blast. I cannot wait to share you guys their story. It's an amazing amazing couple if you were looking at my Instagram story a few days ago, you probably saw it. But anyways, guys, thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I'll see you next week. Bye bye.