Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: episode will be a slightly longer one part of the
Speaker 1: series where I interview fascinating people about how they take
Speaker 1: their days from great to awesome and any advice they
Speaker 1: have for the rest of us. So today I am
Speaker 1: delighted to welcome Tom Wrath to Before Breakfast. Tom is
Speaker 1: the author of the brand new book What's the Point.
Speaker 1: He is also the author of How Full Is Your
Speaker 1: Bucket and several other books. Thanks he, Welcome to the show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you on. Why don't you tell
Speaker 1: our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2: Kind of researching and studying what leads to great careers
Speaker 2: in particular, and how work intersects with our individual well
Speaker 2: being in health for the last twenty five or thirty years,
Speaker 2: and kind of got pulled into the book writing accidentally.
Speaker 2: But I've always been a researcher at heart, and I
Speaker 2: spent most of my time just waking up and trying
Speaker 2: to figure out each morning, how can I pull together
Speaker 2: some research, distill some discoveries that help people to apply
Speaker 2: things in a real practical way on a day to
Speaker 2: day basis in my books and writing mostly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which you know, your new book What's the Point
Speaker 1: is all about practical techniques, But fundamentally it's about purpose.
Speaker 1: And I know when a lot of people hear that,
Speaker 1: you want to set out that there's a difference between
Speaker 1: sort of like find your passion, which everyone sort of
Speaker 1: talks about in graduation season. Here, there's a difference between
Speaker 1: passion and what is that.
Speaker 2: Find your passion is relatively misleading advice because it assumes
Speaker 2: that these things you're really passionate about. When when I
Speaker 2: was a kid growing up, I mean, I was so
Speaker 2: passionate about basketball, and I wish that could have been
Speaker 2: my life, but my genetics did not have that in
Speaker 2: the cards. I know a lot of people a passionate
Speaker 2: about golf, passionate about causes. But that's starting with you
Speaker 2: and assuming that the rest of the world will just
Speaker 2: kind of get in line and revolve around who you are.
Speaker 2: And if you go into the work world with that orientation,
Speaker 2: things are going to come crashing down pretty quickly in
Speaker 2: my experience, And so what I've been trying to help
Speaker 2: people to do is to say, sure, it's good to
Speaker 2: work on your talents and know who you are and
Speaker 2: know yourself. But it's probably better to start with what
Speaker 2: the community around you needs, what the people around you need,
Speaker 2: what the world needs, and then work back to who
Speaker 2: you are to make sure that you're not only having
Speaker 2: fun each day, but you're making a substantive contribution that
Speaker 2: improves other people's lives, because that usually ends up trumping
Speaker 2: happiness five, ten, twenty years down the road.
Speaker 1: And you suggest that we ask ourselves a different question,
Speaker 1: not what do you do, but that as we think
Speaker 1: about our careers, it's more who do you help?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you for that all the day. We all deserve
Speaker 2: to and should and need to know who we helped
Speaker 2: or who's better off because of the work that we
Speaker 2: did to day, not just in some grand sense. So
Speaker 2: you know, and I've spent a lot of time working
Speaker 2: with people in the professions that I admire most personally
Speaker 2: teachers and nurses and hospice workers, and even in those
Speaker 2: professions and physicians, they're often not very good at ensuring
Speaker 2: that they connect what they did that day with the
Speaker 2: way it had a positive impact on another human being
Speaker 2: and reminding themselves of that. And we almost have to
Speaker 2: do that, because it's in that reminder that motivates us
Speaker 2: to get a good night's sleep and to be energized
Speaker 2: and wound up the next morning and to do even
Speaker 2: more of it. So you mentioned in the introduction that
Speaker 2: you know, the book's kind of about purpose. But I
Speaker 2: think when a lot of people, myself included here, the
Speaker 2: word purpose originally just kind of gave me anxiety and like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, I need to find this big hairy
Speaker 2: thing this ends from the heavens someday when it's sunny.
Speaker 2: But the more I got into the research and I
Speaker 2: actually took purpose out of the book's main title because
Speaker 2: of this, it turns out that purpose is just a
Speaker 2: practical daily thing that we can use to reorient and
Speaker 2: reprioritize what we do every hour throughout the day. And
Speaker 2: when you do that, it's much more convenient and practical
Speaker 2: and easier to get your head around.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about that. I mean, you say in
Speaker 1: your book that you know people want to find their calling,
Speaker 1: and yet you know we're in these jobs that exist
Speaker 1: now whatever it is, many of us are not, you know,
Speaker 1: saving people's lives on a daily basis. So how could
Speaker 1: we take a normal job and craft it to feel
Speaker 1: more like a calling. If somebody is listening to this,
Speaker 1: what are some things they can do over the next
Speaker 1: day or two to make their job fail long.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of it starts with reprioritizing what
Speaker 2: you do during the day and kind of your time
Speaker 2: allocation and figuring out, you know, one of the questions
Speaker 2: that when I worked at Gallup fifteen plus years ago
Speaker 2: we always ask was do you have the opportunity to
Speaker 2: use your strengths every day? And the wording of that
Speaker 2: was prett important because it's just meaning you get a
Speaker 2: chance somewhere in a day to use your strengths. None
Speaker 2: of us get to run around and spend eighty percent
Speaker 2: of our day using our strengths and living in that
Speaker 2: fantasy world. But almost anyone can carve out twenty thirty minutes,
Speaker 2: maybe even two hours where you really feel like you're
Speaker 2: at your best and you're helping a customer, You're helping
Speaker 2: a young person to learn and grow, you're mentoring someone.
Speaker 2: You're putting together content that really is of a quality
Speaker 2: level that you think can help people, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: And I would recommend to some of your work that
Speaker 2: people prioritize, ensuring that they get to be their best,
Speaker 2: use their strengths, really serve and contribute to another person
Speaker 2: as early on as possible in the day, and then
Speaker 2: maybe later in the day to get to some of
Speaker 2: the things that are more boring, monotonous, routineized tasks, such
Speaker 2: as doing your expenses, financials, catching up on email, and
Speaker 2: all those pieces that honestly are easier to start within
Speaker 2: the day because it's kind of low hanging fruit. But
Speaker 2: that's the wrong order in most cases.
Speaker 1: And if we're really focusing on serving someone, I mean
Speaker 1: that doesn't have to be in a broad sense. I
Speaker 1: mean you can make your colleagues life today.
Speaker 2: Walking into an office and having a conversation with a
Speaker 2: colleague that picks them up a little bit, even if
Speaker 2: it's about something social or going on the media, celebrity news,
Speaker 2: whatever it might be. That is a meaningful contribution. And
Speaker 2: when people talk to me about the purpose I serve
Speaker 2: in a given day, I mean, I think the biggest
Speaker 2: purpose I serve on most days is putting all my
Speaker 2: devices away and having a really good conversation with my
Speaker 2: seventeen year old daughter my fifteen year old son when
Speaker 2: they get home in the evening and asking some good questions,
Speaker 2: keeping my device dowed away, and really listening to that.
Speaker 2: And that is purposeful, and that is a big purpose
Speaker 2: in a day because when we really step back and
Speaker 2: say one of my big three purposes in life is
Speaker 2: being a good dad and a good husband, we have
Speaker 2: to prioritize those moments as well throughout the day.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways, I mean, we talked about
Speaker 1: how purpose isn't something that's descended from on high. There's
Speaker 1: lots of small purposes within the day, and something might
Speaker 1: be serving someone or improving someone's day, and maybe practically
Speaker 1: for this podcast, you mentioned that reducing someone's friction could
Speaker 1: also count as being a small p purpose.
Speaker 2: You don't talk a little bit about that. One of
Speaker 2: the things I've learned from doing a lot of research
Speaker 2: on well being all around the world is that if
Speaker 2: you have a customer who's calling into a eight hundred number,
Speaker 2: or you're in a retail store and there or you're
Speaker 2: Starbucks and they're irate and they're really frustrated about something,
Speaker 2: and you take them from a negative eight on a
Speaker 2: negative ten through ten scale, if you take them from
Speaker 2: a negative eight to a negative three, that's a really
Speaker 2: meaningful victory and you do need to acknowledge it in
Speaker 2: that moment. If you've even disarmed a situation because you
Speaker 2: took something that could have been horrible for a person
Speaker 2: in experience where they've never come in the store again,
Speaker 2: and you got them out of that rut in that mode,
Speaker 2: and that does count. And if you're a teacher in
Speaker 2: a classroom dealing with the kid who's really struggling to
Speaker 2: learn something and you get them to neutral, those can
Speaker 2: be big victories in the day. So it's a really
Speaker 2: good point.
Speaker 1: Yes, we're still moving in a positive direction. Well, we're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick ad break and then I'll
Speaker 1: be back with more from Tom Rath. Well, I am
Speaker 1: back talking with Tom Rath, who is the author of
Speaker 1: the new book. What's the point one of the topics
Speaker 1: you covered You just mentioned this earlier of putting the
Speaker 1: phone away and having a good conversation with people, whether
Speaker 1: that's your kids or colleagues or someone else. You go
Speaker 1: on for a bit about how people are, you know,
Speaker 1: tied to their devices and we have turned into spectators
Speaker 1: from creators. You know, how could we switch that mode?
Speaker 1: I mean, what are some effects we can do.
Speaker 2: One thing I've really learned and doing a deep dive
Speaker 2: on this and trying things out on my own, is
Speaker 2: that our phones are very useful and powerful and helpful
Speaker 2: device is when we're using the devices instead of letting
Speaker 2: the devices use us and run our lives. So a
Speaker 2: part of it's kind of just asserting some control to say,
Speaker 2: if I need to change my thermostat or lock my doors,
Speaker 2: or download a book on audible, or read a really
Speaker 2: good article in the New York or whatever, my phone
Speaker 2: can be a great learning tool and a resource to
Speaker 2: get things done faster and to save time and all
Speaker 2: those things if I use it in the right ways
Speaker 2: instead of just using it primarily as a mindless consumption
Speaker 2: device where I'm always just consuming and letting the next
Speaker 2: show play on Netflix and going through social media feeds
Speaker 2: and the like. And I think more and more people
Speaker 2: are realizing how those things are easier to do during
Speaker 2: the day. So we have to push back a little
Speaker 2: bit and create some friction and create some resistance and
Speaker 2: say I'm going to take control of this so that
Speaker 2: I'm actually creating things, And it can be creating conversations
Speaker 2: and relationships with people using your device or doing it
Speaker 2: in person. Or it can be creating a work of art, music,
Speaker 2: a new business Entrepreneurially, it can be creating something and
Speaker 2: writing whatever it might be, so that you're actually building
Speaker 2: something that other people can benefit from a week from now,
Speaker 2: a month from now, maybe even ten years from now.
Speaker 2: And I do where I almost didn't include the chapter
Speaker 2: in this book, what's the point about challenging people to
Speaker 2: be more creators than consumers? Because I had this mindset
Speaker 2: that there's kind of this not all people are creatives
Speaker 2: and the like. But the more I watch people who
Speaker 2: are just you see four or five people at a
Speaker 2: restaurant and they're all kind of scrolling instead of talking
Speaker 2: to each other in person, I do think that all
Speaker 2: of us need to kind of challenge our own conventional
Speaker 2: wisdom to get out of the consumption mode at a
Speaker 2: minimum and think about creating, even if it's just in
Speaker 2: the form of kind of relationships and purpose for other people.
Speaker 1: Well, it's about intentionally spending time and creating something in
Speaker 1: the world that wasn't there before. You know, whether that
Speaker 1: is a wonderful relationship, great ideas shared with each other
Speaker 1: that we don't all have to be a Michael Angelo
Speaker 1: to be creative, but part of you know, creating great
Speaker 1: things is sometimes having the time to do it. And
Speaker 1: you have some advice about carving out an intentional, bigger
Speaker 1: chunk of time to make progress on something that maybe
Speaker 1: has been lingering for a Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: The more I got into this, and one of the
Speaker 2: main reason I worked on this book and some of
Speaker 2: the things I've been doing for the last three to
Speaker 2: five years is because I took a deep dive for
Speaker 2: the sake of kids who are the age of my
Speaker 2: children right now, to say, how do we make sure
Speaker 2: that more people end up in the right jobs making
Speaker 2: the right contributions over the span of a career. And
Speaker 2: what I realized is that I would estimate eighty to
Speaker 2: ninety percent of people end up at the very end
Speaker 2: of the career, at their career and the very end
Speaker 2: of their life, and they never even had a preview
Speaker 2: of it. They never even saw, let alone worked in
Speaker 2: the area where they could have made the biggest contribution
Speaker 2: in life. And I say that after doing some real
Speaker 2: math on it, because if you wanted to understand what's
Speaker 2: out there from a job standpoint in the United States,
Speaker 2: you would need to understand about fifty jobs just to
Speaker 2: get half of the US workforce based on my math.
Speaker 2: And so most people enter college, finish college, and maybe
Speaker 2: they see what mom did, what dad did, They might
Speaker 2: see one mentor maybe or maybe they're pulled by financial
Speaker 2: or societal expectations into something, but they have about a
Speaker 2: five to ten percent aperture of what's out there right
Speaker 2: now based on all of my estimates. So I think
Speaker 2: we need to challenge ourselves pretty early on to really reprioritize.
Speaker 2: If you're going to say, I'm going to get to
Speaker 2: the end of my life, and what do you want
Speaker 2: to be known for. It's if you want to be
Speaker 2: known for being a good dad being For me, it
Speaker 2: might be a good researcher, someone who's communicated some of
Speaker 2: those findings. If that's what you want things to look
Speaker 2: like at the end of your career, the end of
Speaker 2: your life. How to what degree is that aligned with
Speaker 2: how you spend your time today? And so, to get
Speaker 2: right back to your original question, working through that for
Speaker 2: me personally has dramatically changed the way I structure and
Speaker 2: allocate and prioritize my time in a given day so
Speaker 2: that it's more anchored around what matters most especially in
Speaker 2: the first quarter and half of my day.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to get to that in a minute,
Speaker 1: I promise, because we always like to hear about people's
Speaker 1: mornings on this show. But I have a question then
Speaker 1: about I mean, so you you actually put in the
Speaker 1: book like fifty careers. I mean I didn't count them exactly,
Speaker 1: but it looked to be about fifty and how those
Speaker 1: jobs are sort of done, what they look like, and
Speaker 1: what the impact might be on different people. I'm curious
Speaker 1: why you.
Speaker 2: Decided what I do. So I mentioned I got into
Speaker 2: this just kind of thinking about it. I want my
Speaker 2: wife's a second grade teacher, I'm obviously a writer. And
Speaker 2: I asked my daughter when she was fourteen, three years ago,
Speaker 2: what do you think you might want to do, and
Speaker 2: just out of curiosity, not like a formal thing, and
Speaker 2: she said, oh, I think I might want to be
Speaker 2: a writer or maybe a teacher. I'm like, well, that's
Speaker 2: how and that's how I mean, And that's exactly set
Speaker 2: up in the job I'm in right now. And most
Speaker 2: people I interviewed ninety five out of one hundred. So
Speaker 2: I realized at that moment that even my kids, who
Speaker 2: are have great public school system and everything else, and
Speaker 2: good resources they're probably going to need to pick a
Speaker 2: major in college and a career with well looking out
Speaker 2: of a little pinhole of what's available and what's out there.
Speaker 2: So I've spent much of the last three to five
Speaker 2: years sending camera crews and production crews out to look
Speaker 2: at a day in the life of what it's like
Speaker 2: to be a veterinarian, what it's like to be a pilot,
Speaker 2: what it's like to be an engineer, so that young
Speaker 2: people can gain a broader sense and field of view
Speaker 2: around that. So, I mean, a big part of my
Speaker 2: personal mission is just helping people to think much broader
Speaker 2: about what they put atentially could be so that they
Speaker 2: don't end up. I'm fifty years old right now, and
Speaker 2: I really wish I would have known someone or seen
Speaker 2: someone in medicine, because I think that might have been
Speaker 2: my superpower. But it's probably too late now and I
Speaker 2: never got to see that, right, And I think we
Speaker 2: all have those little superpowers where it's kind of it's
Speaker 2: and there's some excitement about that. As job markets change
Speaker 2: with automation and AI and everything elsewhere. I don't think
Speaker 2: people should be as scared of reinvention because most of
Speaker 2: us are doing what we're doing today just because it's
Speaker 2: what we saw and we kind of fell into a default.
Speaker 2: And even we have a chapter that gets into this
Speaker 2: in the book. But I think even most people, if
Speaker 2: you ask them about their childhood dreams, they're not really
Speaker 2: their childhood dreams. So I think their childhood dreams of
Speaker 2: their parents and social expectations and a lot of other things,
Speaker 2: and we never really step back to challenge that because
Speaker 2: we get caught in the vacuum of expectations by the
Speaker 2: time we were fifteen or something.
Speaker 1: Well, if you did decide to go back into medicine,
Speaker 1: I bet you still could. Lives are long at this point,
Speaker 1: but it's a lot of work, So that's what you
Speaker 1: have to think about. Well, we're going to make another
Speaker 1: quick ad break and i'll be back with more from
Speaker 1: Tom Wrath. Well, I am back talking with Tom Rath,
Speaker 1: who is the author of the new book What's the Point.
Speaker 1: He's also the author of several other books, including Eight
Speaker 1: Move Sleep, How Full Is Your Bucket, several other titles
Speaker 1: you've probably heard of. So, Tom, do you have a
Speaker 1: morning routine? Then you mentioned earlier that you were very
Speaker 1: careful with how you spent the early hours of the day.
Speaker 2: My morning routine, the number one thing by fivefold, is
Speaker 2: just getting a good night's sleep the night before. So
Speaker 2: my morning routine starts by making sure I'm in bed
Speaker 2: by ten o'clock so I have a wide enough window
Speaker 2: to hopefully get seven or eight hours of sleep before
Speaker 2: I need to get up. And I've really learned that
Speaker 2: no matter how rough things are, whether I'm traveling or
Speaker 2: have a lot going on or stress, that if I
Speaker 2: get just one real good night of sleep at least
Speaker 2: seven hours, ideally eight, that's kind of like the reset
Speaker 2: by on a smartphone or a video game or whatever,
Speaker 2: I get a whole new energy level next morning. So
Speaker 2: starts the night before, the good night's sleep. When I
Speaker 2: wake up in the morning, I think if on days
Speaker 2: when I'm not traveling, I can exercise really early on
Speaker 2: getting ideally outdoors ten fifty minutes outdoors twenty minutes of
Speaker 2: pretty vigorous activity where my heart rates between one hundred
Speaker 2: and one hundred and twenty five to the point where
Speaker 2: it'd be tough to maintain a real good conversation. That's
Speaker 2: the key to having enough energy to get into my office,
Speaker 2: make sure my phones are still on focus mode, not
Speaker 2: getting into my email and response mode, and being able
Speaker 2: to work on whether they're entrepreneurial projects or things I'm
Speaker 2: working on with AI tools or new books, or getting
Speaker 2: into editing, kind of that substantive hard work that I
Speaker 2: feel good about. And I know that if I can
Speaker 2: do that in the first three to four hours of
Speaker 2: my day, then I will be able to kind of
Speaker 2: get into the responsive stuff and feel good about it,
Speaker 2: and then ideally I've spent ten years now working most
Speaker 2: of my days on a walking treadmill desk, and that's
Speaker 2: been one of the most transformative things I've done, because
Speaker 2: when I worked on the book Movesleep, I realized pretty
Speaker 2: quickly that as much as everyone's been promoting standing desks,
Speaker 2: that standing all day is no better than sitting all
Speaker 2: day and just physiologically, I mean like blood pools and
Speaker 2: your ankles and all these bad things. And I think
Speaker 2: people kind of make that mistake to say, oh, I
Speaker 2: need a standing desk, when really I've learned that unless
Speaker 2: I'm really doing something very creative and writing, that if
Speaker 2: I'm editing or responding to email or doing things on
Speaker 2: my computer, if I walk at about one point five
Speaker 2: to two miles an hour, I can walk more than
Speaker 2: fifty percent of my day. And if I do that
Speaker 2: really well, by four o'clock, when my kids are home
Speaker 2: and stuff, I can still go play basketball with my
Speaker 2: son and go for a walk with my wife and
Speaker 2: be real active and have as much energy as I
Speaker 2: did at ten o'clock in the morning. So I've learned,
Speaker 2: especially as I worked on this book, to structure the
Speaker 2: meaningful and important and purposeful work early on in the day,
Speaker 2: and then by three or four o'clock to do the
Speaker 2: expense reports and accounting and taxes and financial and email responsiveness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the stuff that doesn't demand the same focus
Speaker 1: later in the day. I'm curious about your evenings. Is
Speaker 1: there anything you do in particular to make sure that
Speaker 1: you protect that getting into that arm clock.
Speaker 2: I've been very careful about what I eat throughout my
Speaker 2: activity and sleep and what I eat in particularly throughout
Speaker 2: my day, so that I mean, I learned a long
Speaker 2: time ago that if I for lunch, if I go
Speaker 2: out and I have anything that's kind of a fried
Speaker 2: food or a sandwich or carb heavy, that wipes me
Speaker 2: out by about two or three in the afternoon. So
Speaker 2: I've learned to eat in a way that manages those
Speaker 2: energy cycles, and then to have kind of a light,
Speaker 2: healthy dinner as well, and to cut off most of
Speaker 2: my food and liquid intake by about seven o'clock. Ideally
Speaker 2: I rarely eat anything after seven o'clock. And then to
Speaker 2: just have some quality unwinding time with my wife and
Speaker 2: kids and have some good conversations. And again, I mean
Speaker 2: like when I'm talking to my kids or my friends
Speaker 2: or my wife, to make sure that my device is
Speaker 2: in my pocket, because even if I'm not using it
Speaker 2: and scrolling, it just sends the wrong message if it's
Speaker 2: out on the table. And I think we've all learned
Speaker 2: a little bit from that over the years. And to
Speaker 2: make sure that throughout the day I have my notifications
Speaker 2: working for me as well, so that as much as
Speaker 2: I can be, I'm in focus mode and I don't
Speaker 2: feel that kind of Pavlovian need to respond within three
Speaker 2: seconds to everything that dings or buzzes around me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I have a question. I mean, you open
Speaker 1: your book talking about how sort of you had to
Speaker 1: think about purpose or what you were doing because you
Speaker 1: were you had a diagnosis early in life that you
Speaker 1: thought was going to mean that your life was shorter
Speaker 1: than a lot of other people would, and yet here
Speaker 1: you are still with us. So I'm curious as how
Speaker 1: you think about time and your lifespan changed. I mean,
Speaker 1: as you realize that you're going to keep going for
Speaker 1: a really.
Speaker 2: Fun question that I haven't probably put enough thought into.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that I realized when I
Speaker 2: first got into all the research on my hereditary cancer
Speaker 2: condition when I was around twenty and the internet more
Speaker 2: information started to come out. I realized really on the
Speaker 2: over under for people born when I was about thirty seven,
Speaker 2: so I really did. But somewhere between being diagnosed at
Speaker 2: sixteen and thirty seven, I felt like I needed to
Speaker 2: pack a whole career in there, and a whole lifetime
Speaker 2: and a whole family and all that. So I did
Speaker 2: all that. But then by the time I hit forty,
Speaker 2: I kind of, yeah, I'm you're still here right now,
Speaker 2: in active and everything great. And I realized though, that
Speaker 2: most of what I'd done up to that point, especially
Speaker 2: with my career, was kind of living somebody else's life
Speaker 2: and living in social expectations that I grew up with.
Speaker 2: And it's what a lot of us do, and so
Speaker 2: I think I kind of got to that point and
Speaker 2: realized that the things I'm really passionate about, and that
Speaker 2: ranges from kind of helping my kids, who are my
Speaker 2: a number one priority, to figure out all the things
Speaker 2: that they could do in their life, and investing more
Speaker 2: time and energy and funding, and being a part of
Speaker 2: cancer research, which I do every day and have meetings
Speaker 2: about every week, and helping people to connect their daily
Speaker 2: energy with new purposes, especially as the nature of jobs change.
Speaker 2: It led to a complete realignment of my time and
Speaker 2: my work and what I invest my resources and my
Speaker 2: time in over the last few years, and it's been
Speaker 2: a lot more fun to kind of be open and
Speaker 2: honest with myself and with my friends and family about
Speaker 2: how some of those social expectations have shaped me and
Speaker 2: how now I kind of get a new do over
Speaker 2: to restart and do things because it's what I want
Speaker 2: to be working on.
Speaker 1: Excellent. Well, I always ask my guests, what is some
Speaker 1: thing you have done recently to take a day from
Speaker 1: great to awesome?
Speaker 2: You know, the number one thing that I do when
Speaker 2: I need to take a day from great to awesome
Speaker 2: is on a day of the day basis I go
Speaker 2: out for a long walk with my wife or one
Speaker 2: of my kids, or a friend or a family member.
Speaker 2: And I've found personally that that's kind of like the
Speaker 2: trifecta of what makes a day better and well being,
Speaker 2: because I mean, if I've eaten something, if I've had
Speaker 2: a heavy meal, and I mean it lowers your glucose
Speaker 2: and gets things going biologically. And when I'm out on
Speaker 2: a walk with someone, we always have uplifting, productive conversations
Speaker 2: that are night and day different from if we're sitting
Speaker 2: in the kitchen or rushing around the house or whatever
Speaker 2: it might be. And I think there's just something about
Speaker 2: being out in nature that makes a big difference there too.
Speaker 2: And then the other thing is I spend almost all
Speaker 2: of my discretionary financial resources on experiences with the people
Speaker 2: I care about most, with taking a quick trip over weekend,
Speaker 2: one on one with one of my kids, doing that,
Speaker 2: my wife, doing that with friends, going out to dinner
Speaker 2: with family members. The older I get and the more
Speaker 2: I realize this stuff, I feel like it's a travesty
Speaker 2: to waste money on something material when it could be
Speaker 2: an experience with other people.
Speaker 1: I love that well. I like to spend money on
Speaker 1: experiences as well. So, Tom, where can.
Speaker 2: We get a find information on all the books and
Speaker 2: some tools and new resources at Tom Wrath dot org.
Speaker 2: And so that's the best starting point. Excellent.
Speaker 1: Well, Tom, thank you so much for joining us. Thank
Speaker 1: you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback on
Speaker 1: this or any other episode, you can always reach me
Speaker 1: at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time. Thanks for listening. Before Breakfast.
Speaker 1: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
Speaker 1: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
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