Speaker 1: If you are chasing more because you just want a
Speaker 1: bigger number on your scoreboard, you want more fancy things
Speaker 1: to try to impress other people for whatever reason, you
Speaker 1: are going to end up losing sight of the things
Speaker 1: that are more important.
Speaker 2: Along that journey, Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time,
Speaker 2: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 2: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 2: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 2: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wealth.
Speaker 3: What if everything you've been told about wealth is missing
Speaker 3: the point? For years, we've chased more money, success, achievement,
Speaker 3: only to find it doesn't always bring fulfillment. Today's guests
Speaker 3: saw Hill Bloom had everything society says should make you happy.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't until a quiet morning with his newborn
Speaker 3: son that he understood what true wealth feels like. So
Speaker 3: how do we balance striving for more with appreciating what's
Speaker 3: right in front of us? Can we redefine wealth beyond
Speaker 3: dollars in status? What happens when we start treating time
Speaker 3: as our most valuable currency. That's what we're going to
Speaker 3: explore today. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is the one
Speaker 3: you feed Hi Sawhill, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. Thrilled to be here.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited to talk with you about your new book,
Speaker 3: which is called The Five Types of Wealth, which is
Speaker 3: really a holistic way of looking at the different ways
Speaker 3: in our lives than which we can be wealthy. And
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting to look at as a way
Speaker 3: of seeing where we might want to be more wealthy,
Speaker 3: but also as a way of really recognizing there's a
Speaker 3: lot of places we already are wealthy. And I think
Speaker 3: recognizing that is really important because self improvement is part
Speaker 3: of the game, but so is self acceptance, you know,
Speaker 3: and appreciating what we have. And we're going to get
Speaker 3: into all that after the parable. But let's start there.
Speaker 3: And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with
Speaker 3: their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two
Speaker 3: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. What
Speaker 3: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 3: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops think about it for a second. They
Speaker 3: look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which
Speaker 3: one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life, in the
Speaker 3: work that you do.
Speaker 1: It really is an important representation to me of a
Speaker 1: simple fact, which is that you have the power to choose.
Speaker 1: Each day, we have a choice in which wolf will feed.
Speaker 1: We can feed the dark wolf and be filled with anger, fear, hate, jealousy, envy,
Speaker 1: or we can feed the light wolf and be filled
Speaker 1: with hope, kindness, joy, love, optimism, and at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, that choice is fundamentally yours.
Speaker 3: Wonderful. I'd like to start with a quote that you
Speaker 3: use at least once in the book, if not a
Speaker 3: couple of times, which is you say, never let the
Speaker 3: quest for more distract you from the beauty of enough.
Speaker 3: Let's start there.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you pulled this out because this is such
Speaker 1: a fundamental and important concept to the entire book, the
Speaker 1: entire idea, and really my life in general. The genesis
Speaker 1: of this was a very personal experience, which was that
Speaker 1: shortly after my son was born, you know, after a
Speaker 1: two plus year journey with infertility that my wife and
Speaker 1: I had faced, we were blessed with a little boy
Speaker 1: and I was walking him around outside early one morning
Speaker 1: and an old man came up to me on the
Speaker 1: street and said, I remember standing here with my newborn daughter.
Speaker 1: She's forty five years old. Now it goes by fast,
Speaker 1: cherish it. And I took my son home and I
Speaker 1: brought him into bed. My wife was still asleep, and
Speaker 1: the sun was kind of coming through the windows, and
Speaker 1: he had this little smile on his face, and I
Speaker 1: just had this sensation that for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, I had arrived. But there wasn't anything more
Speaker 1: that I wanted. That moment was truly enough, And that
Speaker 1: was when that line came to me of never let
Speaker 1: the quest for more distract you from the beauty of enough,
Speaker 1: because it is so easy in life to allow the
Speaker 1: things that you prayed for to become the things that
Speaker 1: you complain about. We see that over and over again
Speaker 1: in our own lives. The house that we prayed for
Speaker 1: becomes the house that we complain is too small. The
Speaker 1: car that we prayed for becomes the car that we
Speaker 1: can't wait to trade in. The relationship we prayed for
Speaker 1: becomes the relationship with the person that we criticize. Today's
Speaker 1: version of more becomes tomorrow's version of not enough if
Speaker 1: we allow it to, if we don't stop, pause, catch
Speaker 1: ourselves and pull ourselves back into that moment and recognize
Speaker 1: that sometimes you are literally living out your prayers. So
Speaker 1: that is what that quote, what that line is all about.
Speaker 1: To never allow that chase, that quest for the more,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, whatever more we're searching for, to distract us,
Speaker 1: to pull us away from the beauty of enough in
Speaker 1: the present moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so beautifully said and so very true. We
Speaker 3: adapt to nearly anything and start to take it for granted,
Speaker 3: and then you're even going a step further, which is
Speaker 3: we then see it as a burden, which is a
Speaker 3: really fascinating thing. And is a surefire way to never
Speaker 3: be happy in life. And so there's this balance, and
Speaker 3: I think I've been exploring it on this show for
Speaker 3: a decade and I mentioned it kind of in the beginning,
Speaker 3: and you're getting to it right in this question. How
Speaker 3: can I both strive for more, whether that be financially,
Speaker 3: in my relationships, et cetera. How can I do that?
Speaker 3: Because I do think that's a natural human thing, it
Speaker 3: seems built into us, and also be satisfied with exactly
Speaker 3: where I am. And doing both those things is at
Speaker 3: the same time, turns out to be the thing that's
Speaker 3: an art far more than it's a science.
Speaker 1: The fundamental tension there is an important one too to
Speaker 1: wrestle with, And the way that I wrestle with it
Speaker 1: is to say that the quest for more needs to
Speaker 1: be grounded in the right things. Yeah, it is dangerous
Speaker 1: if it is about something as surface level as money
Speaker 1: or fancy things. If you are chasing more because you
Speaker 1: just want a bigger number on your scoreboard, you want
Speaker 1: more fancy things to try to impress other people for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, you are going to end up losing sight
Speaker 1: of the things that are more important along that journey.
Speaker 1: If you are chasing more because it's your purpose to
Speaker 1: go and build something big, because you really feel fundamentally
Speaker 1: that you want to grow, that you want to develop yourself.
Speaker 1: You're trying to get better at the things that you're
Speaker 1: working on. That is a very well grounded and important pursuit,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing wrong with that. One where it goes
Speaker 1: awry for people and where they lead themselves on the
Speaker 1: road to the rich yet miserable existence that we know
Speaker 1: a lot of people are living is when that chase
Speaker 1: for more is just about these things like money or
Speaker 1: fancy things.
Speaker 3: I agree with you that that's a fundamental distinction, and
Speaker 3: I have found even in my own life, even if
Speaker 3: my striving for more is pointed in the right direction,
Speaker 3: you know, I want to be become a kinder person,
Speaker 3: or you know, it's about growing this show, which is
Speaker 3: kind of the way that I try and put love
Speaker 3: into the world, that even within there, I can get
Speaker 3: caught in this more and more and more, which pulls
Speaker 3: me out of the moment. So I think what you're
Speaker 3: saying is, first off, we've got to be really clear
Speaker 3: about what we're striving for, and if that's misguided, we're
Speaker 3: always going to be off track. And then the second
Speaker 3: part comes to even when I'm on the right track,
Speaker 3: how do I relate to being on that track? And
Speaker 3: how do I relate to being on a journey that
Speaker 3: you know there's not a destination on?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that this comes back to a really
Speaker 1: beautiful quote. I believe it's Victor Frankel who said that
Speaker 1: our power exists in the space that we can create
Speaker 1: between stimulus and response, and that concept of space is
Speaker 1: really essential to the whole book. It's one of the
Speaker 1: pillars of what I think of as mental wealth is
Speaker 1: the ability to create space. And the reason that space
Speaker 1: is so important is because that is where you actually
Speaker 1: get to choose your response. To go back to the
Speaker 1: wolves parable, the ability to choose every single day, you
Speaker 1: actually need to have the space to choose. You need
Speaker 1: to be able to stop and pause so that you
Speaker 1: can choose your response. Which wolf are you going to feed?
Speaker 1: The same applies to this never ending chase. If you're
Speaker 1: able to pause on a daily basis and appreciate the
Speaker 1: things that you have while still pursuing the things that
Speaker 1: you don't that are grounded hopefully in the right reasons,
Speaker 1: that is where you find your sort of Goldilocks like
Speaker 1: your sweet Spot. From a life standpoint, I think it
Speaker 1: was Kurt Vonnegut. In nineteen ninety seven, he gave a
Speaker 1: commencement speech at Rice University and he talks about his
Speaker 1: uncle Alex, who had this tendency when things were going
Speaker 1: nice and you know, the day was really pretty out,
Speaker 1: he would just stop. He would pause, and he would
Speaker 1: look up at the sky and he would say, if
Speaker 1: this isn't nice, what is? And that idea of forcing
Speaker 1: yourself to pause and appreciate those moments literally say out loud, say,
Speaker 1: if this isn't nice, what is? On a more regular basis,
Speaker 1: I guarantee you will find new joy in the journey
Speaker 1: in your life.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Vonagett also has that classic story about enough of
Speaker 3: where he's at a party with Joseph Heller, the author
Speaker 3: of Catch twenty two, and they're looking around and seeing
Speaker 3: all these people who have way more than they do,
Speaker 3: and Joseph Heller, basically I think I'm paraphrasing, says something like, yeah,
Speaker 3: but I have something they don't, which is I know
Speaker 3: what enough is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, the knowledge that I've got enough. It sort
Speaker 1: of all relates to one of my favorite stories of
Speaker 1: the fisherman and the investment banker. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've ever heard this, but like this investment banker goes
Speaker 1: down to an old Mexican fishing village and he comes
Speaker 1: across this old boat and the fisherman is in the
Speaker 1: boat and has caught a few fish. And the banker says,
Speaker 1: how long did it take you to catch those fish?
Speaker 1: And the fisherman says, only a little while. And the
Speaker 1: banker asks, why didn't you fish for longer? The fisherman says, well,
Speaker 1: I have everything I need. In the morning, I fish
Speaker 1: for a little while, and I go home. I have
Speaker 1: lunch with my wife, then I take a nap, and
Speaker 1: then in the evening I go into town and sing
Speaker 1: and dance with my friends. And the banker's like, you
Speaker 1: got this all wrong. What you need to do is
Speaker 1: you need to fish for longer so you can catch
Speaker 1: more fish. Then you can buy a second boat. Than
Speaker 1: that boat will make money. You buy a third boat,
Speaker 1: a fourth boat, a fifth boat. Eventually you build a
Speaker 1: fishing boat enterprise. You move to the big city, you
Speaker 1: take the company public, and you'll make millions. And the
Speaker 1: fisherman says, and then what and the banker says, and
Speaker 1: then what then you can retire and move to a
Speaker 1: small fishing village. You can fish for a little while
Speaker 1: in the morning, and then you can go home. You
Speaker 1: can have lunch with your wife, take a nap, and
Speaker 1: in the evening go into town and play music and
Speaker 1: dance with your friends. And the fisherman kind of just
Speaker 1: smiles and walks off, and that story. It's interesting. Is
Speaker 1: common interpretation is to say that the banker is wrong
Speaker 1: and the fisherman is right. I actually think it's more
Speaker 1: nuanced than that. I really think this is about the
Speaker 1: two of them having a fundamentally different definition of what
Speaker 1: enough looks like. The banker may be grounded in this
Speaker 1: purpose of building something big, creating jobs, creating this growth,
Speaker 1: pursuing his definition, and he's trying to apply that map
Speaker 1: of reality to the fisherman's terrain, which is fundamentally very different.
Speaker 1: The fisherman is already living his enough life, and so
Speaker 1: for the two to be seen as in conflict is
Speaker 1: very interesting because that's what happens when we spend all
Speaker 1: of our time on our phones comparing our lives to
Speaker 1: other people. We start getting obsessed with someone else's life. Yep,
Speaker 1: and starting to apply their map to our reality, which
Speaker 1: is a recipe for discontentment.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I had an experience of this not too long ago.
Speaker 3: We spend a lot of time in Atlanta. My partner Ginny,
Speaker 3: is from there, and I'll be driving around Buckhead and
Speaker 3: one of the most noticeable things about certain areas of
Speaker 3: town are the houses are enormous on these giant plots
Speaker 3: of land, Like it's a lot of money that you
Speaker 3: just see kind of right out there, and as if
Speaker 3: I spend enough time driving around there, my brain starts
Speaker 3: going like, gosh, shouldn't I maybe I should have a
Speaker 3: house like that? Why don't I have enough money to
Speaker 3: have a house like that? And then at the same
Speaker 3: moment as I was thinking that, I turned my attention
Speaker 3: back to what I was listening to on the radio,
Speaker 3: and it was a band called the Gaslight Anthem. They're
Speaker 3: kind of a punk type band a little bit, and
Speaker 3: then it reminded me of what my ethos actually is,
Speaker 3: and I was just able to see right in that
Speaker 3: moment how easily I was getting turned away from my
Speaker 3: ethos to buy what I was surrounded by and what
Speaker 3: was attractive, and I needed help to be reminded of
Speaker 3: where my true values are. And I think that's kind
Speaker 3: of what you're speaking to here. And the problem is
Speaker 3: sometimes we don't get those reminders often enough, and so
Speaker 3: we just get more and more sucked into this idea
Speaker 3: of someone else's success.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's so governed by the environment that you
Speaker 1: are in, the people that you're surrounded by. I will
Speaker 1: say anecdotally, my friends that live in New York City
Speaker 1: or Los Angeles struggle with this much more than my
Speaker 1: friends who live in a small town in the suburbs.
Speaker 1: It is very much like a cultural indoctrination. If you're
Speaker 1: surrounded by people who measure their worth in terms of
Speaker 1: how expensive their kids' school is, or how many weekends
Speaker 1: they get to spend in the Hamptons or what charter
Speaker 1: plane they're taking to X, Y or Z. It is very,
Speaker 1: very difficult to opt out of that game when you're
Speaker 1: surrounded by it. The environments that we operate and really
Speaker 1: do govern our reality. They really shape the way that
Speaker 1: we view the world. And so I have often said
Speaker 1: to people that your environment that you spend time in
Speaker 1: a two way feedback loop, because you shape your environments
Speaker 1: for sure, but your environments then in turn are shaping you.
Speaker 1: And you really want the environment that you operate in
Speaker 1: to be a reflection of your core values, because it
Speaker 1: will be very difficult for you if the to are intention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think a lot of people find themselves
Speaker 3: in this spot. I know a lot of our listeners
Speaker 3: certainly do, because I've just heard from enough of them,
Speaker 3: worked with enough of them over the years where they've
Speaker 3: achieved some degree of conventional success, at least in the
Speaker 3: way that like, they've got a home, they've got retirement savings,
Speaker 3: they've had children, and then somewhere in there, something wakes
Speaker 3: up in them and starts desiring more. And yet they're
Speaker 3: firmly embedded in this place that had these different values, rightfully,
Speaker 3: so they're very hesitant to be like, well, I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna blow my whole life up here, right because they
Speaker 3: may have, you know, a good family and a wonderful spouse,
Speaker 3: but they need something else. And I think that's why
Speaker 3: it can be so helpful to try and seek out,
Speaker 3: even in smaller doses, people who align with your values.
Speaker 3: It's so important in being able to stay the course
Speaker 3: with anything.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, I mean the people you surround yourself
Speaker 1: with fundamentally determine your outcomes. There is clear scientific evidence
Speaker 1: that the expectations of the people that you surround yourself
Speaker 1: with actually hermin whether you are kind of rising or
Speaker 1: falling to meet those expectations. The Pygmalion effect is the
Speaker 1: name of this psychological phenomenon whereby we rise to the
Speaker 1: level of the expectations that others have for us. So
Speaker 1: if you're surrounded by people who believe you are capable
Speaker 1: of more and sort of lift you up, you will
Speaker 1: actually rise to meet those expectations. But similarly, if you're
Speaker 1: surrounded by people who make you feel bad, who put
Speaker 1: you down, who tell you you don't have enough, or
Speaker 1: who show you that with their actions or their behaviors,
Speaker 1: you will fall to the level of those expectations in
Speaker 1: the way that you engage with the world. And it
Speaker 1: is fundamentally a call to action to be very very
Speaker 1: careful about the people that you allow into your energy,
Speaker 1: into your reality, because they really will have a profound
Speaker 1: impact on your happiness or misery in life.
Speaker 3: Let's talk through that in a little bit more depth.
Speaker 3: I'm curious how you would think about this, because you
Speaker 3: clearly value family and loyalty to family to some degree.
Speaker 3: And so let's take my scenario where somebody is middle
Speaker 3: aged at this point and they find themselves surrounded by
Speaker 3: maybe their family and people that maybe do have lower
Speaker 3: expectations or don't support their values, and yet one of
Speaker 3: their core values is to be of support and love
Speaker 3: to the people that are around them. You know, how
Speaker 3: would you go about thinking about honoring those two values,
Speaker 3: One which says, hey, I do recognize that the people
Speaker 3: that I'm around affect my trajectory, and one of my
Speaker 3: values is I don't only see the people in my
Speaker 3: life that I love as an instrument for making me
Speaker 3: more successful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that there's a big difference between people
Speaker 1: who are sort of a neutral force in your life
Speaker 1: versus a truly net negative in your life. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, the person that you need
Speaker 1: to be most loyal to is yourself. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: don't mean that in the sense that you just, you know,
Speaker 1: cast everyone else off and you're like, you know, fundamentally selfish.
Speaker 1: But you do need to protect yourself certain ways from
Speaker 1: people who consistently durrain you and pull you down. And
Speaker 1: the way that you do that does not have to
Speaker 1: be cutting people off. The most traditional way that people
Speaker 1: talk about this is like, oh, you know, if you
Speaker 1: have a family member that treats you poorly, you have
Speaker 1: to just cut them off. You never see them again.
Speaker 1: And that's easier said than done, and it's frankly unrealistic
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases. Like you know, I have
Speaker 1: family members who have not been a positive force in
Speaker 1: my life. Fortunately not direct blood relatives, but family members
Speaker 1: who I see it every holiday, or close family friends
Speaker 1: who are the same. And the way that I always
Speaker 1: advise people to manage that, which is the way that
Speaker 1: I have come to terms with it, is just because
Speaker 1: you are around someone physically does not mean you have
Speaker 1: to open up to them energetically or spiritually. If you
Speaker 1: believe in that, you can be closed off to someone.
Speaker 1: If you know that someone is a toxic force on
Speaker 1: your life, if you know that they happen to say
Speaker 1: things that are negative or they put you down in
Speaker 1: certain ways, you don't have to open up to allow
Speaker 1: them to put the knife in. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this is the reason that scientifically ambivalent relationships, relationships that
Speaker 1: are sometimes supportive and loving and sometimes demeaning, are actually
Speaker 1: more negative for your health, yes than purely toxic ones.
Speaker 1: This has been shown over and over again like that.
Speaker 1: You know, you put someone up on stage to give
Speaker 1: a talk if the audience is purely toxic versus if
Speaker 1: the audience is ambivalent, sometimes booing, sometimes cheering. The blood
Speaker 1: pressure spikes and stress levels of the speaker actually are
Speaker 1: worse when the audience is ambivalent because it opens you
Speaker 1: up when they're really nice, and so then the knife
Speaker 1: on the demeaning part really hurts the toxicity. And I
Speaker 1: think that with relationships and family members that really applies.
Speaker 1: We need to really monitor who and how they are
Speaker 1: impacting our energy in those ways so that we can
Speaker 1: create those level of boundaries that just allow us to
Speaker 1: continue in our own flow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's such a great point, and I agree ambivalent
Speaker 3: relationships like that are really difficult to sort out because
Speaker 3: sometimes they're good and you're like, okay, this is great,
Speaker 3: and then sometimes they're really bad and you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: got it. Maybe you know, if it was just always bad,
Speaker 3: it would be clear what to do. You'd be like,
Speaker 3: all right, you know, I really need to minimize my
Speaker 3: time with this person or you know, put them out
Speaker 3: of my life. And if it were only good, you
Speaker 3: wouldn't be having the struggle. I think that so many
Speaker 3: things in life we end up with ambivalence about, and
Speaker 3: that ambivalence is really challenging.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely completely agree. I sort of ascribe to the
Speaker 1: wisdom that you should give everyone a second chance, but
Speaker 1: never a third, and I think that that is kind
Speaker 1: of a healthy way to approach these things when it
Speaker 1: comes to relationships, and when it comes to relationships that
Speaker 1: are sort of on the edge for you in your life.
Speaker 1: Life is too short to allow people into your energy
Speaker 1: that are truly a consistent negative force over and over again.
Speaker 1: The first time someone's that way, I personally default to empathy.
Speaker 1: I assume person's having a bad day. Even when I,
Speaker 1: like encounter a stranger and they do something that is
Speaker 1: sort of negative, like you know, treat you in a
Speaker 1: certain way, It's like something is going on in this
Speaker 1: person's life that caused them to act this way. Give
Speaker 1: someone a little bit of grace, But when it becomes
Speaker 1: a consistent pattern, it's no longer something that's just a
Speaker 1: one off.
Speaker 3: So I want to get into the different types of
Speaker 3: wealth here in a second, but before I do, I'd
Speaker 3: love to talk about the life raiser. Tell me what
Speaker 3: the life raiser is.
Speaker 1: So the life raiser is this concept of having a simple,
Speaker 1: single statement that is an identity defining rule for your life.
Speaker 1: A raizer, just as a term, is a sort of
Speaker 1: rule of thumb that allows you to simplify decision making.
Speaker 1: So a life raiser is a rule of thumb that
Speaker 1: allows you to simplify decision making across your entire life.
Speaker 1: The way that I articulated in the book is best
Speaker 1: brought to life through a story, which is Mark Randolph,
Speaker 1: the first CEO, the founder co founder of Netflix, has
Speaker 1: this thing that he has talked about and written about
Speaker 1: in the past that throughout his entire technology career he
Speaker 1: had a hard rule that on Tuesdays at five pm,
Speaker 1: he was leaving the office to go out on a
Speaker 1: date with his wife. And he talks about the fact
Speaker 1: that what he is most proud of from his entire career,
Speaker 1: which founded all these incredible companies, built these incredible things,
Speaker 1: is not that he achieved those amazing successes, but that
Speaker 1: he was able to do that while still remaining married
Speaker 1: to the same woman and having kids who, as far
Speaker 1: as he can tell, love to spend time with him.
Speaker 1: And I thought that it was such an interesting thing
Speaker 1: after I spoke to him in reflecting on it, because
Speaker 1: what I understood was that it didn't really have anything
Speaker 1: to do with any one date or the date in
Speaker 1: and of itself. It had everything to do with the
Speaker 1: identity that it established in his life that he was
Speaker 1: the type of person that never missed a five pm
Speaker 1: Tuesday dinner with his wife. It means something about how
Speaker 1: he shows up in the world, and it sends a
Speaker 1: clear signal ripples to everyone around him about the things
Speaker 1: that he holds most dear and about the way that
Speaker 1: he is going to show up in these different situations
Speaker 1: in his life. To all have our own version of
Speaker 1: that Tuesday five five pm dinner rule, some single identity
Speaker 1: defining statement for your own life that allows you to
Speaker 1: cut through the noise in the various situations that you
Speaker 1: encounter is very powerful. So on my desk, I have
Speaker 1: a little sheet of paper that says I will coach
Speaker 1: my son's sports teams. That is my life raiser. That
Speaker 1: is the idea that I am going to be the
Speaker 1: type of husband, type of father, type of community member,
Speaker 1: type of individual who is always going to put those
Speaker 1: things first, who is going to make sure that whatever
Speaker 1: decisions I have to make in life, they are not
Speaker 1: going to come into conflict with that ideal version of myself.
Speaker 1: How that version shows up in the world.
Speaker 3: This idea of a life razor, and I have one
Speaker 3: of my own. I want to dig a little deeper here, though,
Speaker 3: I'd love to see how you think about this. Right,
Speaker 3: Like you'll coach your son's sports teams. It's a good
Speaker 3: overall framing, But even with that clarity, you're going to
Speaker 3: be faced with lots of decisions about where time goes. Right,
Speaker 3: do I put it towards one of my professional pursuits?
Speaker 3: Do I put it towards my son's development? And you're
Speaker 3: not always going to choose your son's development, because if
Speaker 3: you take that to a extent, you could spend your
Speaker 3: entire life doing nothing but focusing on your child, which
Speaker 3: it would be fine. How do you think about applying that?
Speaker 3: Like the Netflix guy's rule was pretty straightforward, like I
Speaker 3: just have to make sure for an hour and a
Speaker 3: half on Tuesday I show up. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: latitude around that. How do you think about taking that
Speaker 3: I will coach my son's sports team and practically applying
Speaker 3: it as you go through your day.
Speaker 1: To day life. To me, it is about the statement
Speaker 1: about the timeype of person you are. I mean, my
Speaker 1: son is two and a half, so he's not even
Speaker 1: on sports teams yet, so this is very much a wide.
Speaker 3: Latitude statement for it already.
Speaker 1: No, no, and I'm far from that type of parent
Speaker 1: because my parents weren't like that with me. But this
Speaker 1: is about the type of person that I believe I
Speaker 1: am when I show up as my best self. Let's
Speaker 1: take an example. Someone comes to me and offers me
Speaker 1: a new business opportunity, and I'm looking at it and
Speaker 1: it's exciting. They're going to pay me a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: but it's going to require me to be on planes
Speaker 1: for one hundred days out of the year, going around
Speaker 1: and doing a bunch of things. I can look at
Speaker 1: this card and say, well, this seems exciting, but what
Speaker 1: does the type of person who coaches his son's sports
Speaker 1: teams do in these situations? Well, I probably can't be
Speaker 1: away that much and still be the type of person
Speaker 1: who will be there for my family in this way.
Speaker 1: So that means I might need to go back and
Speaker 1: adjust the opportunity. It doesn't mean I'm just going to
Speaker 1: blanket say no to it, but maybe I need to
Speaker 1: make adjustments to the construct of how it exists. Similarly,
Speaker 1: if someone comes and offers me a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: but it might jeopardize my integrity or morals the way
Speaker 1: that we're going to be making it, it's a hard no.
Speaker 1: I can immediately look at this and just say there's
Speaker 1: no way, because I cannot jeopardize my relationship with my
Speaker 1: son or wife because for me to coach that team,
Speaker 1: that's not just my choice. That's his choice that he
Speaker 1: wants to have me around. That's my wife's choice that
Speaker 1: she's proud to have me out in the community with
Speaker 1: other people. So I cannot take actions that wouldjeopardize that
Speaker 1: if I'm the type of person who does these things.
Speaker 1: So it's really important to understand the ripples that that
Speaker 1: one statement creates into other areas. And in Mark's example
Speaker 1: of the five pm Tuesday dinner, yes it's just this dinner,
Speaker 1: it also creates a ripple to all of his employees.
Speaker 1: Because his employees see the CEO of the company creating
Speaker 1: these boundaries and prioritizing his family and having a life
Speaker 1: outside of work, well, they're empowered to now do something
Speaker 1: similar it's not to say that, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: a junior person, you can do the exact same thing,
Speaker 1: but they can create something because they know that there's
Speaker 1: a core of value now and that makes them more
Speaker 1: loyal to the company, that makes them want to stick
Speaker 1: around and work together, and it creates you for everybody involved.
Speaker 1: So it's really those ripples that extend off that single
Speaker 1: statement that become very interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love that idea. That is really good, And
Speaker 3: I also love the idea of having a statement because
Speaker 3: life happens fast and it gets confusing, and having something
Speaker 3: that's that always at hand can be so valuable. Mine
Speaker 3: is just that I try and leave every situation, whether
Speaker 3: that a person a place better than I found it, Like,
Speaker 3: that's just kind of my life. Raiser just sort of
Speaker 3: orients me in general. Doesn't solve every decision making quandary
Speaker 3: I come up with, but it does point me in
Speaker 3: a direction, and it's simple enough that it consistently can
Speaker 3: be useful.
Speaker 1: I love that one. That's a very very good one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's several examples in the book that I go through
Speaker 1: from people in sort of different walks of life, and
Speaker 1: that's a really important piece to this idea of the
Speaker 1: life raiser too, to recognize that your life raiser will
Speaker 1: change across the different seasons of your life. My son
Speaker 1: is young man, Wow, this is clearly a key focus.
Speaker 1: When he goes to college or when our children are
Speaker 1: no longer in the house, it obviously doesn't serve in
Speaker 1: quite the same way. So recognizing and assessing sort of
Speaker 1: pressure testing whether the life raiser that you have is
Speaker 1: still one that suits the stage that you're in in
Speaker 1: life is also just a healthy kind of natural process,
Speaker 1: over and over again.
Speaker 3: Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask
Speaker 3: you something. What's one thing that has been holding you
Speaker 3: back lately? You know that it's there, You've tried to
Speaker 3: push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way.
Speaker 3: You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major
Speaker 3: saboteurs of self control, things like autopilot behavior, self doubt,
Speaker 3: emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's
Speaker 3: the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put
Speaker 3: together a free guide to help you spot these hidden
Speaker 3: obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can
Speaker 3: use to regain control. Download the free guide now at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash ebook and take the first step
Speaker 3: towards getting back on track. My son is now twenty six,
Speaker 3: so you know, if he was your son's age, I
Speaker 3: might have a very different focus. The stage of life
Speaker 3: I'm in in the stage of life you're in, are
Speaker 3: very different.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: So we just alluded a little bit to stages of
Speaker 3: life and how you spend your time in different stages
Speaker 3: of the life might be different. So let's move on
Speaker 3: to the first type of wealth that you talk about,
Speaker 3: which is time wealth. And my favorite part from this
Speaker 3: is just this very simple question, would you trade lives
Speaker 3: with Warren Buffett? Talk to me about that question, because
Speaker 3: that is such a great and illuminating question.
Speaker 1: I love asking young people this question. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: such a simple articulation of a very important point, which
Speaker 1: is that time is your most precious asset. If I
Speaker 1: ask a young person, would you trade lives with Warren Buffett,
Speaker 1: it's a hard charging young person just starting their career,
Speaker 1: and I tell them he's worth one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: billion dollars. He flies around on a Boeing business jet.
Speaker 1: He has access to anyone in the world. He basically
Speaker 1: reads and learns for a living. Sounds pretty good, but
Speaker 1: you would never trade lives with him for one simple reason.
Speaker 1: He is ninety five years old. There's no way that
Speaker 1: you should agree to trade the amount of time that
Speaker 1: he has left for all the money in the world.
Speaker 1: And on the flip side, he would do anything to
Speaker 1: be twenty two again, he would give up every single
Speaker 1: dollar that he has to be twenty two and to
Speaker 1: have the amount of time that you have. So in
Speaker 1: that articulation, what you're recognizing is that your time has
Speaker 1: quite literally incalculable value, incalculable value, and yet on a
Speaker 1: daily basis, are you really wasting it? I mean, we're
Speaker 1: spending all this time scrolling on our phones, comparing ourselves
Speaker 1: to other people, stressing about the past, anxiety about the future,
Speaker 1: all of these things that are fundamentally disrespecting this one
Speaker 1: most precious asset that we have, the one asset that
Speaker 1: we can never get back once it's gone.
Speaker 3: I love that question too, because you first hear it
Speaker 3: and you think, well, of course I would, until you
Speaker 3: get to the ninety seven. You know, he's ninety seven
Speaker 3: years old piece, and I think then it kind of
Speaker 3: wakes you up to this idea. And as you were talking,
Speaker 3: I was thinking a little bit about you know, we
Speaker 3: talk about spending time. If we really applied that idea
Speaker 3: of spending time the way we did money, There's a
Speaker 3: lot of ways I spend my time that I would
Speaker 3: not spend money on. It's really interesting to think about, like,
Speaker 3: I do this thing, but would I pay to do
Speaker 3: that thing? Of course I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting way of thinking about it. I've
Speaker 1: actually never articulated it that way in my mind, but
Speaker 1: it is an important framing. It is just really interesting
Speaker 1: what changes you start to make when you recognize that
Speaker 1: time is really the thing that you have, and that
Speaker 1: all of these moments, these windows of time are actually
Speaker 1: in a little bit more of your control than you think.
Speaker 1: That is a really important and peace is to just
Speaker 1: recognize that you can actually create time for the things
Speaker 1: or with the people that you really care about in
Speaker 1: your life. You can make decisions, you can take actions
Speaker 1: that actually create more of these moments with the people
Speaker 1: that you want to spend time with, or for the
Speaker 1: things that you really enjoy, for the experiences that you
Speaker 1: really want to have. You can take actions that fundamentally
Speaker 1: create time in that sense, and once you realize that,
Speaker 1: you start living differently in a lot of ways. But
Speaker 1: it all comes from that awareness of the fact that
Speaker 1: time is the really precious asset, not the money, right.
Speaker 3: And I think there's a second level to this. The
Speaker 3: first level is being intentional about where I put my time.
Speaker 3: I think the second level is being intentional about what
Speaker 3: I bring to the things I'm doing. And this gets
Speaker 3: back to where we started. You said, you know, certain
Speaker 3: things that we used to pray for we now see
Speaker 3: as a burden.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It can be easy when you're trapped in the just
Speaker 3: the word I use there describes the mind state that
Speaker 3: we're in, even though I don't believe it. That word
Speaker 3: in this way with your two year old for four hours,
Speaker 3: and it can begin to feel overwhelming. So your time
Speaker 3: is in the right place, But what you're bringing to
Speaker 3: that time is also an important part of what makes
Speaker 3: that time valuable or non valuable.
Speaker 1: I think what you're hitting on is a really important concept,
Speaker 1: which is that your ability to direct your attention and
Speaker 1: energy into the moments or windows of time that really
Speaker 1: matter is where you achieve the greatest successes and outcomes
Speaker 1: in life. There are these particular windows of time during
Speaker 1: which certain people are, certain opportunities present themselves, and they
Speaker 1: are weightier, they are more textured than others. The ancient
Speaker 1: Greeks actually had two different words for time. They had chronos,
Speaker 1: which was the idea of chronological kind of linear, quantitative time,
Speaker 1: and then they had chiros, which was the idea that
Speaker 1: not all time is created equal, that there are certain
Speaker 1: moments or windows that have more texture, that have more
Speaker 1: meaning or more importance, and your ability to direct attention
Speaker 1: or energy into those is actually amplified in terms of
Speaker 1: the outcomes that you can create. So those moments with
Speaker 1: certain people that are really important, those business opportunities that
Speaker 1: are time sensitive, that if you just lean into and
Speaker 1: really sprint at, you can generate these incredible outcomes for
Speaker 1: your life. It's sort of like the Lionel Messi version
Speaker 1: of playing soccer, where he walks around the field the
Speaker 1: entire game, and then he sprints in the exact right
Speaker 1: moment to achieve the incredible outcome that he's going for.
Speaker 1: It's taking the approach that to life, rather than the
Speaker 1: consistent jog, finding those moments of time and deploying your
Speaker 1: attention and energy into them.
Speaker 3: I want to do a thought experiment here with you,
Speaker 3: which is the business stuff I totally get right, Like,
Speaker 3: this is the time you go hard. If we're talking
Speaker 3: about time with family, Let's say you know, you recognize
Speaker 3: that the first ten years of your son's life you
Speaker 3: call him I think the magic years. I've always said
Speaker 3: the glory years of parenting are like five to eleven.
Speaker 3: But you're right, the first ten years are so critical.
Speaker 3: You can't just pick a couple of moments to sprint there, right,
Speaker 3: because that would be the equivalent of what you know
Speaker 3: people call the Disneyland dad. Right, you drop in and
Speaker 3: you take your kid to Disneyland, and you create these
Speaker 3: great moments. But day to day, your wife is doing
Speaker 3: kind of.
Speaker 1: All of the work.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that I found is that
Speaker 3: sometimes training my attention in non important moments to be
Speaker 3: prepared for the important moments is valuable. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think in many ways this is what meditation is. Meditation
Speaker 3: I think is training your attention in a moment that
Speaker 3: theoretically isn't that important, right because you're just sitting there
Speaker 3: with the goal. At least my goal is the ability
Speaker 3: to actually really inhabit the important moments.
Speaker 1: I love that articulation training your attention in the unimportant
Speaker 1: moments for the important moments. It's not dissimilar from my
Speaker 1: articulation of the reason we do hard things. You know.
Speaker 1: I am an avid cold plunger, way past the point
Speaker 1: where it's no longer trendy like it once was. And
Speaker 1: the reason I believe in doing that is because I
Speaker 1: fundamentally believe that when you take on voluntary struggle, you
Speaker 1: are more well equipped for the involuntary struggle that inevitably
Speaker 1: comes into your life. And you're sort of articulating the
Speaker 1: same thing when it comes to these moments, which I love.
Speaker 1: I do tend to think of life more on a
Speaker 1: season basis than on a day's basis, and I think
Speaker 1: that balance as a concept, attention as a concept is
Speaker 1: actually more well thought of on a kind of waves
Speaker 1: versus specific tiny moments like the Disneyland trip, because that
Speaker 1: is a really helpful framing at least for me, that
Speaker 1: has provided a lot of comfort, and it's provided a
Speaker 1: lot of security and how we think about our sun
Speaker 1: and this journey. I mean, like just to be fully transparent.
Speaker 1: The last three four months, I've been in a season
Speaker 1: of unbalanced, like truly sprinting to put these ideas out
Speaker 1: into the world that I care deeply about that I
Speaker 1: think are going to impact a lot of people, and
Speaker 1: being able to do that without stress and anxiety, knowing
Speaker 1: that it is in service of a season of balance
Speaker 1: to come. Yes, that my wife and I are going
Speaker 1: to be able to zoom out and spend tons of
Speaker 1: time together with our sun present moments energy there because
Speaker 1: of the fact that I sprinted and really leaned into
Speaker 1: this thing and was able to create that. That is
Speaker 1: a really important reframing of these things because what it
Speaker 1: tells you is that you don't have to stress over
Speaker 1: a lack of balance in the days as long as
Speaker 1: you understand on the zoomed out view that you're working
Speaker 1: towards the balance in the seasons.
Speaker 3: I agree one hundred percent with that idea because people
Speaker 3: talk about work life balance, and I think when you
Speaker 3: look at it in short chunks, you might see that
Speaker 3: it's really out of balance. If you're looking at a
Speaker 3: day or a week, you know, if your kid is sick,
Speaker 3: that week may be way more child than work because
Speaker 3: you're home and you know you're taking days off to
Speaker 3: take care of the child and you suddenly work is
Speaker 3: out of balance. But I think the trick comes like,
Speaker 3: I think you've been real intentional about Okay, once I
Speaker 3: get through this time, which is a book launch, right,
Speaker 3: A book launch demands a ton out of someone. Once
Speaker 3: I get on the other side of that, I'm going
Speaker 3: to be very intentional about how I'm rebalancing this. I
Speaker 3: think the problem that a lot of people fall into,
Speaker 3: and I did this, I think for a number of
Speaker 3: years was I kept believing that just on the other
Speaker 3: side of this project, I was in the software world.
Speaker 3: Once we get this release out, then I'm going to
Speaker 3: dial it back. And the reality was, particularly if someone
Speaker 3: else is said in your priorities like the gas pedals
Speaker 3: all the way down all the time. And so I
Speaker 3: think in those situations it did become more important to recognize, like, okay,
Speaker 3: I have to watch a little bit closer that I
Speaker 3: don't get stuck in the belief that, Okay, I'll balance
Speaker 3: this out later and the next thing you know, three
Speaker 3: years have gone by.
Speaker 1: Later is the most dangerous word in the dictionary. We
Speaker 1: say I'll spend more time with my kids later, I'll
Speaker 1: spend more time with my partner or my friends later.
Speaker 1: I'll invest in my health later. I'll find my freedom
Speaker 1: and purpose later. And the sad thing is that later
Speaker 1: just becomes another word for never, because those things are
Speaker 1: not going to exist in the same way later. Your
Speaker 1: kids are not going to be five years old later.
Speaker 1: Your partner, your friends won't be there for you later
Speaker 1: if you're not there for them now. Your health won't
Speaker 1: be there for you later if you don't invest in
Speaker 1: it now. You won't magically wake up with freedom and
Speaker 1: purpose later if you don't build those things now. And
Speaker 1: so the idea is that you have to design these
Speaker 1: things into your life in some tiny way today. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be dramatic. We know that life has
Speaker 1: seasons and you're not going to be able to massively
Speaker 1: focus on all of these things at all points in time,
Speaker 1: but they need to be designed in in some tiny
Speaker 1: way on a daily basis, otherwise you'll just end up
Speaker 1: regretting it later.
Speaker 3: You talk about these five types of wealth, I'm just
Speaker 3: going to put them out there, just real quick time wealth,
Speaker 3: social wealth, mental wealth, physical wealth, and financial wealth. But
Speaker 3: you have a concept in there of we tend to
Speaker 3: think about these things as like I'm investing in this
Speaker 3: or I'm not, And you talk about trying to take
Speaker 3: a dimmer switch approach to these five different areas of wealth.
Speaker 3: I think this piggybacks on what you just said talk
Speaker 3: to me about that mentality.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought this up, because I do think
Speaker 1: that this is probably the single most important idea to
Speaker 1: understand in your own life for building the life you want.
Speaker 1: The traditional wisdom around creating change in your life is
Speaker 1: that you have to pick an area that you're going
Speaker 1: to focus on. You turn the light switch on, and
Speaker 1: then every other area of your life gets turned off
Speaker 1: while you focus on the one. So if I'm going
Speaker 1: to be trying to build my career, build my finances,
Speaker 1: I turn that switch on, and two bad relationships, too
Speaker 1: bad health, too bad mental health, those all get switched off,
Speaker 1: and I'm just gonna be hard charging. And we actually
Speaker 1: pad a lot of people on the back for saying
Speaker 1: things like that. We say, like, oh, obsession is good
Speaker 1: and grit and like we use all these positive words
Speaker 1: for sacrificing all these other areas of your life to
Speaker 1: build the one. I fundamentally reject the idea that you
Speaker 1: have to do that all of these areas of your
Speaker 1: life exist on dimmer switches, and you can and probably should,
Speaker 1: have one area turned up. That is the area that
Speaker 1: you are focusing on during this season of your life.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean the other ones are turned off.
Speaker 1: It just means they're going to be turned down. And
Speaker 1: the important point here is that down is infinitely better
Speaker 1: than off. Yes, because anything above zero compounds positively. We
Speaker 1: know that when it comes to money, if you put
Speaker 1: fifty dollars or one hundred dollars in S and P
Speaker 1: five hundred today, that's better than zero because it's going
Speaker 1: to stack up and compound over long periods of time.
Speaker 1: The exact same thing applies to these other areas of
Speaker 1: your life, your relationships. Sending the one text to the
Speaker 1: friend when you're thinking about them is better than doing nothing.
Speaker 1: Going for the ten minute walk is better than doing nothing.
Speaker 1: But what happens is that ambitious people allow optimal to
Speaker 1: get in the way of beneficial. So they say, Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't have an hour to work out, so I'm
Speaker 1: just not going to work out. I don't have an
Speaker 1: hour to go on a coffee date with this friend,
Speaker 1: so I'm just not going to talk to them. That
Speaker 1: is the worst mentality. That is the light switch being
Speaker 1: turned off. And if you allow those light switches to
Speaker 1: be off for too long, you can't turn them back on,
Speaker 1: or they will be very difficult to turn back on.
Speaker 1: So what we need to do is just have them
Speaker 1: down low. Design a tiny investment on a daily basis
Speaker 1: in those areas, into your life on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: Send the text to the friend when you think about them,
Speaker 1: call your mom for two minutes in the car, get
Speaker 1: the group together for the annual trip once a year,
Speaker 1: you know, do the fifteen minute walk even when you
Speaker 1: don't really feel like it, journal for three minutes in
Speaker 1: the evening, breathe for three minutes in between meetings. Whatever
Speaker 1: those tiny things are, they stack wins because anything above
Speaker 1: zero compounds.
Speaker 3: I love that line. Anything above zero compounds. I used
Speaker 3: to say to coaching clients all the time. A little
Speaker 3: bit of something is better than a lot of nothing.
Speaker 3: It's this core idea. The other thing that I think
Speaker 3: speaks to why this is such a useful strategy is
Speaker 3: that these things tend to amplify each other. Right Like,
Speaker 3: if you are taking good care of your physical health
Speaker 3: or decent care of it, and your mental health, your
Speaker 3: professional world is probably going to do better. So again,
Speaker 3: I think there's these ways that not only are they
Speaker 3: each important individually, they work together to a certain extent.
Speaker 3: I have a friend Jonathan Fields. He wrote a book
Speaker 3: a number of years ago. The main idea was, we
Speaker 3: have these different areas of life buckets similar to what
Speaker 3: you're talking about, and that the lowest level of one
Speaker 3: of them can end up being a cap on all
Speaker 3: the others if you're not careful.
Speaker 1: I love that. I have often thought about that in
Speaker 1: the context of physical wealth, you know, your health. That
Speaker 1: the reason I harp on it so much, the reason
Speaker 1: I think it's so important, is because it is a
Speaker 1: catalyst for all of the other types of wealth. When
Speaker 1: you take an action in your physical wealth and you
Speaker 1: see an outcome, that rewires your brain to remind yourself
Speaker 1: that you are capable of creating change in your world,
Speaker 1: That you are capable of doing something and getting the
Speaker 1: desired outcome. That has ripple effects into everything else that
Speaker 1: you do. Because you start to see yourself that way,
Speaker 1: you start to recognize that you are capable. So if
Speaker 1: you're ever feeling down and you start doing that, you
Speaker 1: start to remind yourself of that fact. Suddenly you have
Speaker 1: this new energy to go and take on other things.
Speaker 1: Because you recognize that you have that power, you remind
Speaker 1: yourself of that power that you have.
Speaker 3: I agree, And for me, exercise is sort of this
Speaker 3: keystone type habit, right, and it is because of what
Speaker 3: you you just said, but it's also because doing it
Speaker 3: actually does give me more energy, and that energy then
Speaker 3: can be deployed to these different areas of wealth. Right,
Speaker 3: if I have enough energy, then I'll go out after
Speaker 3: dinner to see a friend versus just collapsing on the
Speaker 3: couch and watching Netflix. You know, if I have energy
Speaker 3: to do it. And so for me, that is the
Speaker 3: keystone that unlocks a lot of other things.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely right, completely agree.
Speaker 3: All right, let's move on to social wealth for a minute,
Speaker 3: which again I love this idea of just having a
Speaker 3: question that anchors this whole thing, which is who will
Speaker 3: be sitting in the front row at your funeral? And
Speaker 3: this comes from an exercise I learned it in the
Speaker 3: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, like twenty five years ago,
Speaker 3: where you imagine your funeral and you imagine what people
Speaker 3: will get up and say about you as a way
Speaker 3: of orienting what's important to you, but you've given it
Speaker 3: a slightly different spin. So talk to me about this
Speaker 3: front row idea.
Speaker 1: The idea is is to visualize your funeral, but not
Speaker 1: in a morbid sense, in an empowering one, which is
Speaker 1: to say, at your funeral, there will be a lot
Speaker 1: of people that will show up, and certain people will
Speaker 1: sit down in the front row. The recognition that those
Speaker 1: people hold a very special place in your world, and
Speaker 1: the recognition that you need to ask yourself whether or
Speaker 1: not you are cherishing those people, whether you are cherishing
Speaker 1: your front row people making sure that they know that
Speaker 1: special place that they hold in your world, and whether
Speaker 1: you are being a front row person to someone else
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love that idea. I love the funeral thing in
Speaker 3: general because it allows you to step back from your
Speaker 3: life and think about what's important. But I had never
Speaker 3: thought of it in this sort of front row way
Speaker 3: of really thinking about who would be in that for us.
Speaker 3: And also I love what you said where it's am
Speaker 3: I being a front row kind of per am I
Speaker 3: being the sort of person that would deserve to sit
Speaker 3: in the front row for these people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that's the important piece, is like
Speaker 1: flipping these things on yourself and recognizing your own actions
Speaker 1: and how your actions are either creating or pushing you
Speaker 1: away from that future that you want. In a lot
Speaker 1: of the visualizations that I run through in the book,
Speaker 1: there is this idea of identify and visualize the future
Speaker 1: that you want, then ask yourself whether your actions in
Speaker 1: the present are bearing out that future, and if they're not,
Speaker 1: you can change your actions in the present. That's great news.
Speaker 1: You can actually do something different today that will create
Speaker 1: the future that you want. But recognizing that there is
Speaker 1: that gap between what you want your future to look
Speaker 1: like and what it is likely to look like if
Speaker 1: you don't change is the important first step. That awareness,
Speaker 1: that self awareness which most of us are afraid to confront. Yes,
Speaker 1: the reason I talk about and I bring up all
Speaker 1: these questions in the book is because I fundamentally believe
Speaker 1: one important fact, which is the answer as you seek
Speaker 1: in life are found in the questions that you avoid,
Speaker 1: the questions that you avoid asking about your life. That
Speaker 1: is what we need to dig into. If we can
Speaker 1: sit with those questions, then we're able to actually uncover
Speaker 1: and act on these answers that will change our world.
Speaker 3: That's a great way of thinking about it. I've led
Speaker 3: groups of people through the funeral exercise before without the
Speaker 3: front row edition, and for some people it's a really
Speaker 3: difficult thing. It's a really difficult thing because they are
Speaker 3: forced to see, indeed, the way in which they are
Speaker 3: not living according to what they want their you know,
Speaker 3: quote unquote legacy to be. And a lot of us
Speaker 3: have a tendency when we when we come face to
Speaker 3: face with something that's uncomfortable, a question that's uncomfortable, is
Speaker 3: to run away from it.
Speaker 1: And it's very easy to do. Yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: there is nothing forcing you to confront these questions. It's
Speaker 1: much easier to just sit around, scroll on your phone,
Speaker 1: you know, void asking these questions, avoid making the changes
Speaker 1: that are hard. Like everything in the world today is
Speaker 1: about reducing friction. All of the technology we've developed over
Speaker 1: the last twenty years has reduced friction in your life.
Speaker 1: It's made it easier to press the eject button out
Speaker 1: of these challenging situations. You have more choices than ever before.
Speaker 1: Everything is easier if you want it to be. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: what you find is that the friction actually created a
Speaker 1: lot of meaning. The friction actually was a good thing
Speaker 1: because on the other side of that friction was the
Speaker 1: most beautiful things in life. And on the other side
Speaker 1: of the friction of asking yourself these hard questions is
Speaker 1: the life that you actually want to build for yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about mental wealth. What does mental wealth mean to you?
Speaker 1: Mental wealth is all about purpose. It's about growth. It's
Speaker 1: about creating the space necessary to actually wrestle with some
Speaker 1: of the big unanswerable questions in life, whether through spirituality, medicalation, solitude,
Speaker 1: what have you. Mental wealth is fundamentally about allowing yourself
Speaker 1: to pay the price for your distinctiveness in the world.
Speaker 1: I talk about this shareholder letter that Jeff Bezos wrote,
Speaker 1: where he says that the fight against normalcy is the
Speaker 1: most important fight of your life. You have to every
Speaker 1: single day pay a price to maintain your distinctiveness, to
Speaker 1: walk your path rather than the one that was handed
Speaker 1: to you. That is really what mental wealth is about.
Speaker 1: It's about paying that price, about doing the things, pursuing
Speaker 1: your curiosity, pursuing your growth, to allow yourself to live
Speaker 1: your life rather than consent to the default that was handed.
Speaker 3: Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.
Speaker 3: Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices
Speaker 3: didn't quite match the person you wanted to be. Maybe
Speaker 3: it was autopilot mode or self doubt that made it
Speaker 3: harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why
Speaker 3: I created The Six Saboteurs of Self Control. It's a
Speaker 3: free guide to help soup you recognize the hidden patterns
Speaker 3: that holds you back and give you simple, effective strategies
Speaker 3: to break through them. If you're ready to take back
Speaker 3: control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now
Speaker 3: at oneufeed dot net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts
Speaker 3: happen starting today one you feed dot net slash ebook.
Speaker 3: That line jumped off the page to me, It's a
Speaker 3: life that pays the price for its distinctiveness. Such an
Speaker 3: interesting way to think about what we're trying to protect.
Speaker 3: You say that the mental wealth is a life of
Speaker 3: victory in the fight against equilibrium, and that's another way of,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of pulling us back to what is
Speaker 3: kind of Well, that's not the right way to say it,
Speaker 3: because distinctiveness is actually what is its normality as you
Speaker 3: say it, or average.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right. And I just think that this
Speaker 1: is not about that being grand or impressed to anyone else.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this important idea of dharma, you know,
Speaker 1: ancient Hindu idea of your sacred duty. And the most
Speaker 1: important part of that is that your dharma does not
Speaker 1: have to be grand, impressive to other people, sound so
Speaker 1: incredible or big. It just has to be yours. And
Speaker 1: doing your dharma imperfectly is better than doing someone else's perfectly.
Speaker 1: That is so liberating to understand that your purpose, your pursuits,
Speaker 1: the things that you were excited about are doing, the
Speaker 1: path that you're walking, does not have to be impressive
Speaker 1: to other people. You don't need to go off and
Speaker 1: do these grand things or feel like you need to
Speaker 1: build the billion dollar company or be the biggest you know,
Speaker 1: best at whatever it is. You just need to live
Speaker 1: your life. You need to walk your path, not one
Speaker 1: that you've been handed by default. You need to live
Speaker 1: by your own design.
Speaker 3: Yeah, going back to what we talked about earlier, which
Speaker 3: is that even if you have your life pointed in
Speaker 3: the right direction, you can still get caught up in
Speaker 3: the concept of more, more and more versus enough enough enough.
Speaker 3: And I think that this happens to us in these
Speaker 3: dharma purpose type things, because we think that, you know,
Speaker 3: if we're not starting like a charity that eliminates hunger
Speaker 3: in Africa, we're not doing anything valuable or important. But
Speaker 3: as we've talked about seasons of life, like for a parent,
Speaker 3: that's a pretty critical it's a pretty critical dharma right there,
Speaker 3: which is in the years that your children are little,
Speaker 3: raising them to be good people.
Speaker 1: Amen. Amen, could not agree more.
Speaker 3: We're near the very end of our time here. But
Speaker 3: I would love to just end with one idea that
Speaker 3: you talk about, which is that falling in love is easy.
Speaker 3: Growing in love is hard.
Speaker 1: This goes back to that idea of friction. Falling in
Speaker 1: love is what you see on social media. It's the beautiful,
Speaker 1: manicured photos, the filtered moments, the perfect honeymoon phase, all
Speaker 1: those fancy things. But that's not reality. Real, beautiful, deep
Speaker 1: loving relationships are built through shared struggle. They're built through
Speaker 1: the growing, through the periods of crawling through the mud
Speaker 1: with someone, through embracing the friction and finding your way
Speaker 1: to the other side. And until you embrace that, until
Speaker 1: you recognize that we need to focus more on the
Speaker 1: growing than the falling, and recognize that that idea applies
Speaker 1: to much more than relationships in life. You will never
Speaker 1: find the things that you are actually seeking.
Speaker 3: Beautiful. Well, I think that is a wonderful place for
Speaker 3: us to wrap up. Thank you, sau Hill. I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed the book, and I've really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. This was a thrill.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get to chat again soon.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
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