Meet Greg Berard

Today we’d like to introduce you to Greg Berard.

Hi Greg, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
It’s one of those beautiful abnormal early Saturday mornings when the children are still asleep, and the sun is just starting to peek thru my shutters. I’m sipping a steaming cup of black bitter (but not too bitter) coffee and I’m immersed in deep work when a sudden realization slaps me in the face – I am feeling incredibly fulfilled. The feeling is strange and it’s new, so I sit with it for a moment. It doesn’t feel like jubilation or pleasure, it’s more subtle than that. I feel peaceful.

I know there is a ton of work that still has to be done, and I’m nowhere near where I want to be, but that’s ok, I feel settled in and ready for the journey. What’s more strange about all of this is the fact that it happened so quickly. For nearly my entire adult life, I have felt like I’ve been chasing something elusive; call it happiness, or call it that moment when I “finally arrive” at that place I’ve been seeking. When I was younger, it maybe felt like it was just part of my journey, but one day I woke up a few months short of 40 to realize that I have been seriously unfulfilled for years.

Not that my life is miserable, quite the opposite. I’ve checked off all the boxes I was supposed to check off. I have the grownup home, financial security, a supportive and beautiful wife, three healthy children, an annoying little dog, and I’m far more successful than I ever thought I would be. I have it all, which makes these feelings of unfulfillment that much more unusual and confusing. It took a global pandemic and full quarantine with a toddler and two newborn twins for me to slow down just long enough to think deeply about what was important and why I’ve felt this way for so long and how I might possibly make a meaningful change in my life. For the last many years, I’ve obsessed over performance as I chased success. I thought more success might lead to maybe an early retirement, but I never stopped to wonder if retirement was something I even wanted. I entered the success hamster wheel, and no matter how much money I made, there was always more to make – it was never enough. I felt the bonds weaken in my relationship with my wife. I traveled more, saw more clients, and gave clients and partners all of the attention that I should have been showing at home. I’m no dummy, I know how this story ends. I become a super successful man in his mid-fifties with a broken marriage, an enormous alimony payment, and a not-so-great relationship with my kids that I see every other weekend. I needed to make a change.

My relationship with my wife would last longer than my working years, and I wanted it not only to survive, but I knew it could thrive if I put the energy and attention into it that a relationship of that great importance deserves. I wanted my relationship with my children to be deep, everlasting, and meaningful and I knew that I needed to find equilibrium and balance at work. I wanted to bring creativity back into my life and do something meaningful and full of purpose. I wanted it all! And so I made a decision. I was going to make it my mission to live a great life and to inspire others to do the same. I was going to walk the walk and share my experience. I was going to put myself out there creatively and intimately as I fumbled and stumbled through my journey. At first, I didn’t know quite what this would become. I thought maybe a podcast about performance and parenting. But then I pondered more deeply about what it was that I really wanted to understand, learn and become and I realized that it was fullness, presence of being, happiness, love, passion, family, meaningful work – all of it. It was a Full Life I was looking for and I was determined to live it. And now that I’ve made the choice and started taking action, this remarkable feeling of peace has washed over me so quickly, and I honestly think that it’s because, for the first time in my life, I’m in the driver’s seat. For the first time in my adult life, I’m the one making the decisions about how I want to spend my time. I know this sounds completely absurd. How could I possibly have had all my choices in my life made for me or outside my control? Nobody tied me down and forced me to choose one path over another, but I feel strongly that the path I chose was not mine.

The decisions I have made throughout my life have been made by my own inability to think for myself as well as by my very limited experience with the world and lessons learned from my family and upbringing. When I went to college, of course, that was my decision to go. I didn’t bother to ask why I should go to college, or better yet, why I shouldn’t go to college. I wanted to be an actor, and I didn’t even bother to consider what college would be best for a career in the arts or if a college was even necessary for a career in the arts. Maybe I should have gone to an art school, or better yet I could have just worked. I could have joined theatre groups, improv comedy, performed in dozens of independent films, gotten an agent, and tried to break into “the biz.” But I didn’t think about any of that. I went to a California University because the degree mattered, at least that is what I was told. Society told me that a college degree was necessary for a “good life.” My family told me that a college degree would open opportunities wherever I went. The Jewish tradition told me that formal education was paramount to a successful life. So I went to college, spent a lot of my parent’s money studying theatre arts (you read that right, I have a degree in theatre freaking arts!), and instead of building a resume of work or studying at an art school that specialized in the career I was interested in, I received a general degree by studying every part of theatre OTHER than acting (the only part I really cared about). I studying theatre theory and theatre stagecraft. I even took a costume sewing class for heaven’s sake!

After I received my degree, I spent a comically short amount of time trying to “break into the business.” I went on two auditions (that’s it!), and they were both really solid, and I was encouragingly told that I was very talented but that I needed to “gain some experience.” Funny- I guess I thought my four-year degree was going to win me auditions. When I quit acting that was another hugely important decision in my life and it was made without barely any consideration. Living in LA, you see plenty of 50-year-old waiters that are still trying to break into the “biz,” and I said I didn’t want that for my life. I made that decision without consideration because I was told by society that artists starve. I made that decision because a successful entertainment producer in my family always told me that acting was such a challenging and miserable career fraught with failure. I made the decision because my grandparents taught me that making a decent living and spending time with family, retiring into your golden years is a happy life. Yeah, the decision was mine to make, but it was made by listening to others and from my very limited life experience. I was not thinking deeply about what I wanted, or even why I wanted this or some other path. I don’t regret the lessons I’ve learned in life or in business.

In fact, I have zero regrets about not being an actor nor about the life I am living, but now that I’m here and I’m woke, I will no longer allow anyone else to sit in the driver’s seat of my life. If you’re reading this blog then maybe you’re a lot like me. Maybe you checked off all of the boxes you were supposed to check off and for some reason, you feel unfulfilled. Hopefully, you’re not miserable, but mediocrity is a pretty sad state too. We get one life. One chance at the big game, and it’s a shame to be miserable, that’s for sure. But It’s also a shame (IMO) to be mediocre. I choose to be the best that I can be. And I want to inspire others to be the best they can be. Happiness has become my least favorite word in the English language. Happiness is such a multifaceted state of being that it just can’t be encompassed in one word. I now think of true happiness as a life well lived and that is why this project is called “On Living a Full Life.” A Life (hopefully a long one) is not but one moment. It is a life. It’s all of it. And a Full Life is one that encompasses all of the important things for living a great life. A full life, one that I would like to live, is one filled with love and purpose. It is a life filled with challenge, adventure, success, and failure.

But most importantly, for me, a Full Life is the one that I choose to live and actually make happen! Not what my spouse wants, or my parents want, or what society wants, even if their intentions are pure. It’s the life that I want. It’s taking my unique gifts and sharing them with the world. It’s about purpose. It’s about presence and mindfulness. It’s about self-love and cherishing the mind and body so that they can be in service for a lifetime. It’s about relationships and passions. It’s about showing up, getting into the driver seat, buckling in, and being the best! And once I made the decision to Live the Full Life that I want to live, just like that, peace washed over me. And, yes there is work to be done, and that’s ok, that’s good, that’s what I want. Because I’ve been sleepwalking through my life till now, and to live the life I want takes waking up and getting to work. But it’s the best work. It’s the work you wake up in the morning exciting to get started on. It’s the flow state I’ve been looking for. It’s the adventure I’ve been deeply wanting to take. It’s true Happiness. It’s the journey of Living a Full Life.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I have struggled and continue to struggle everyday, but the journey is beautiful and struggles (sometimes called failures) are how we learn. We don’t tend to learn from our successes, but we learn from our failures. The hardest part of all of this was taking home my twins a week before the stay-at-home orders. I had everything mapped out, and I was ready to hit the road again for work. I had a night nurse to watch the twins so my wife and I would get sleep. I had a nanny to help during the day time and when I left town. My daughter was in pre-school and we enrolled her in later classes to give us more special time with the boys. Then it all came crashing down – we furloughed the nanny. We let go of the night nurse and I became the night nurse.

My daughter stopped going to school, my wife was recovering from the birth of our boys, we couldn’t see family or drop my daughter off to play with her best friend/cousin, and we were utterly and completely exhausted. I took the job of night nurse and sleep trainer and my poor wife had the three kids all day while I tried to get a bit of sleep. But instead of spending all night binge-watching Netflix or reading for pleasure, I decided to take a journey inward. I decided to take this special time to consider my life, consider this pandemic, consider who I was, who I wanted to be, and it was the very struggle and challenge that gave me the opportunity to sit with myself in self-examination and decide who I was and more importantly, who I wanted to be and the life I truly wanted to build for myself.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
I own an advisory firm, helping digital businesses with payment acceptance, global payment strategy, regulatory, compliance, and dispute management and all things payments. But this is my day job and while it has been incredibly lucky and fruitful, I’m most passionate about my podcast, called Greg Berard – On Living A Full Life. I launched this podcast for four primary reasons. 1. As a creative outlet 2. As a reflection of the inner work, I was committed to 3. As an accountability tool 4. As a way to explore how others were living their fullest lives and what I might be able to borrow from them.

While the idea of starting my own podcast was still just beginning to percolate in my mind, I would sit silently, in the dark bedroom of my newborn twin boys, from around nine at night until around 6 in the morning when my poor wife would relieve me to manage three kids all day while I slept. Playing night nurse, while certainly challenging on its own, gave me plenty of quiet time to reflect, and so rather than read a bunch of books or binge Netflix shows, I focused on sitting still and taking advantage of this precious quiet time by going inward and really getting to know myself deeply. I learned about who I was and questioned who I wanted to be. I thought deeply about the life I wanted to create and I rediscovered my unique skills and without judgment, admitted to my own weaknesses. Then I began to take deliberate action to create the life I really wanted. The podcast was a perfect fit for me and my skills. It was simple, inexpensive, and has a very low barrier to entry. Besides being a perfect creative outlet for my unique skills, the podcast was also a beautiful reflection of the work that I was committing myself to.

Also in many ways, I knew the podcast would help me hold myself accountable to creating the vision for my life. By using the podcast to reflect my struggles, successes and lessons learned, I could spend time deeply considering areas of improvement, as well as celebrate the wins along the way. And by sharing these intimate stories in a public outlet where friends and family would potentially listen and, let’s face it – judge, it was a perfect medium for me to practice accountability as well as mindfulness around judgment and conformity. Lastly, by interviewing others that were consciously creating full lives of their own, I could engage, learn, and sharpen my own tools of listening, asking powerful questions, and hopefully borrow tools that could further help me in building the Full Life I dreamed of.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
I believe that we all can be living the lives that we dream about but there is a lot of homework to be done first. This was my formula for beginning to build a life that is full of passion, meaning and purpose. 1. Deep Self Examination and remember what Richard Feynman says “You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” 2. Deliberate Action. Deliberate means to be conscious and intentional about EVERYTHING. 3. Practice Maitri. This is my hacked version of Buddhist wisdom and most commonly translated as love or loving-kindness, Maitri also means loving-kindness to oneself and is the foundation of the four Buddhist virtues, which are: 1. Loving Kindness 2. Compassion 3. Sympathetic Joy 4. Equanimity These are my pillars to living the fullest life, and I try to put them into practice on a daily basis to live my fullest life. I am a work in progress and this is what I talk about on the podcast and with guests that I interview.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: gregberard.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onlivingafulllifepodcast/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OnLivingAFullLifePodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/greggy8580
• Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/greg-berard-on-living-a-full-life/id1524647414?uo=4