The Dailey Edge Podcast
Join hosts Trent, TJ, and Todd Dailey as they explore the intersections of technology, culture, fitness, and personal growth. Through engaging discussions and personal anecdotes, the trio dives into topics ranging from childhood gaming nostalgia and cutting-edge fitness tech to the pursuit of happiness and lifestyle choices. Whether reminiscing about epic gaming marathons, sharing tips for staying on the forefront of fitness trends, or unraveling the complexities of modern life, The Dailey Edge delivers thoughtful insights, lively debates, and relatable stories for listeners of all walks of life.
The Dailey Edge Podcast
Episode 7: Embrace the Struggle: Finding Fulfillment in Hardship
Exploring the essence of fulfillment in our lives reveals a powerful connection between joy and struggle. We share personal anecdotes about challenges faced and why true happiness doesn’t come from easy entertainment but from embracing hard work.
• Discussing our childhood experiences of fulfillment
• The relationship between happiness and hard work
• Personal stories about overcoming challenges
• The downside of easy entertainment and digital distractions
• Why embracing difficulties creates genuine joy
• The importance of community support in meaningful growth
• Reflecting on how past struggles shape our lives today
• Insights on building resilience through adversity
• Encouraging listeners to redefine their relationship with challenges
Welcome to the Daily Edge where we bring you the latest insights, opinions and thought-provoking conversations to give you that competitive edge in life, business and beyond. Let's go back. Here we are, episode seven. Notice a little change of venue. Um, we are actually transitioned. I thought it would be fun to do some of this uh in the basement we grew up in.
Speaker 1:That's right. So we are. We're here at mom and dad's place, um, and we're probably gonna use this as home base for a little bit. So, um, if you're first time joining us, if you've been listening the last six episodes, thank you. Hopefully you're finding some good value. Today we're going to spend some time on fulfillment. Um, I think in life sometimes we feel like, uh, happiness, fulfillment comes from, maybe the leisure things in life, like going on vacations or just laying around, but I think we found that to be counterproductive in our journey, so I'm going to toss this over to TJ. He's got some really good insights and we're going to dive in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean this is a topic that's come up in conversation, as with a lot of our other podcasts conversation with children. I had a discussion this past week with one of my daughters who is, as you guys know, she's 11 now had a birthday this past week, and she wanted to know why she can't have TikTok. And at that age, you know, I have a nine-year-old, so I'm in the mobile phone industry. Both my children have phones and that's fairly rare my nine-year-old gets made fun of for it and my 11-year-old. We were talking the other day and there may be 50 of the kids in the class that have that, maybe a little bit less. And so I was like well, you already kind of have something more than other people. You're already kind of in that, um, you know, in that scenario where you're, you're, you're winning as far as your uh, access to digital entertainment and things of that nature. So we don't want to go further down the line and there was a lot, lot of back and forth. Well, why can't I have TikTok?
Speaker 2:And I started to explain as you guys well know and as everybody well knows, she is a runner, if you've listened to this in the past and I started to explain to her the difference between the excitement and the fulfillment she gets from going and completing a run and the excitement and fulfillment that is never going to be there via TikTok. You know we have limits to time on these particular devices. Every single day they blow their 90 minutes the second they get home. And I was explaining to her well, the reason you're blowing those 90 minutes is because you never get to the bottom of it. You just want to continue to scroll and more and more and more and more. There's more entertainment and it never satisfies you.
Speaker 2:And and then I say well, take, take a look at how you feel once you've completed a run. You know you're satisfied for that day. You feel like I can tell in your mannerisms and in your engagement with me that you're so much more satisfied, you're happier, you accomplish something. So the reason we're not going down TikTok is you don't need any more reason or any other avenues to pull you down that rabbit hole and suck up more of your time and essentially not help you build any of these things like self-worth and confidence that you do through accomplishing difficult stuff. So that prompted me and I know you kind of share, we all kind of share the same thing, to think about it, because suffering has such a negative connotation? Uh, how to come up with a way to help reprogram that word in people's minds? Um, because it does feel so good when you, when you get something accomplished that you don't want to do.
Speaker 1:Well, um, I gotta tell you, uh, I hate you both right now because, um, I've been playing bellatro or baltero, however you want to say it bellatro and um it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've been traveling a lot, so I've been on planes, but it's unbelievable the rabbit hole that that game can put you in. So thank you for introducing it to me because, uh, it is completely sucked hundreds of hours out in the last probably three weeks and it's never enough. I think to your point, it's an endless game. It's a fun game but I find myself yearning for it per se and I do never find the bottom of the well as I beat stages. I'm thankful there's an end to it. Yeah, and I know that when I go down that rabbit hole, mentally what that does to my brain, it almost frights me for the day when I spend two or three hours in that I have a hard time coming back from it.
Speaker 2:Well, it's like I mean, and you can speak like, how do you sprinkle things in, Because we're not saying eradicate all entertainment for your life, eradicate positive engagements and fun, and you're just this. Uh, I think I mentioned earlier david goggins those of you who are not familiar. He's the kind of the individual that, in our demographic, brought this do hard things, suffer mentality, and it's his is very aggressive. So, um, we're not saying you have to be like that, but maybe talk, I mean like sprink in. You know how do you balance that out?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know that, you know there's a perfect answer, but I think balance is the key there. You know, I think a lot of it, tj, what you're saying, what I'm picking up from that is just an overall orientation towards embracing suffering and maybe that's too strong of a word, but I think embracing suffering in a sense of understanding and again, I think we've talked in prior episodes kind of how we're wired from an evolutionary perspective and I think you know for thousands, hundreds and thousands of years, we had to do difficult things to continue to survive. Just, you know, on a day-to-day basis. I mean, people were chasing animals out in the wilderness and living in caves and things, and so there was no ability to just sit back and be entertained for for the bulk, I would say, of your satisfaction or fulfillment, and so I think that's what we're. I personally think that's what we're dealing with a little bit in society today. Is that cross-section of our evolutionary wiring and the environment. I think we all know that mental health. It's really causing some issues mentally.
Speaker 2:I think that paints a great picture of what's the endgame. If we always I think we refer to the movie WALL-E, where everybody's riding around in their things and they got their giant sodas and everybody is kind of and my point is, if that's where we get to and trajectory's showing that that's where we're headed, or a lot of people are headed in a lot of instances, what becomes of society? You know, one of the questions that I posed to kaylin during that conversation is, if everybody's just watching tv, watching movies, listening to music, scrolling tiktok, who's? You know? How does society get built? How does it maintain? Who's doing that work? Robots, right, well, we, yeah go ahead.
Speaker 1:Well, I think one of the interesting what you said, todd, what I think is really interesting is how we've evolved and what the need.
Speaker 1:So, like you know, we do cold plunges now because you know I was joking the other day, I was like a cold plunge used to be, you had to use the restroom in the middle of the winter, right like you go outside, like, think about so, the things that our body has evolved and how we, the things that make us survive I think is what I kind of heard you saying so some of those harder things which were normal things, which now you're saying they're like, oh well, we can just sit around and you know we're going to watch tv or we can play video games all day, those innately are not going to give us satisfaction mentally, those aren't going to keep us alive physically.
Speaker 1:So there's something I'm seeing here coming about where what people had to do to survive is intrinsically wired into us to living a more fulfilled life. Wired into us to living a more fulfilled life. Is that my and I would go as far to say perhaps why we've survived and lasted this long as a species? So I think it's, you know, I think, what TJ is talking about with the Wally comparison is basically the orientation of like the more dopamine the better, and I think that is it's a it's a dangerous road to go down.
Speaker 2:Like it masks, right, like the dopamine masks we were talking earlier. I just about a year ago. It was a podcast Andrew Huberman did where they were talking about the anterior mid-singlet cortex and I mentioned that as we were kind of rolling into this particular podcast. And this is an area of the brain that grows when you do things you don't want to do. And they were very specific to articulate that it doesn't mean hard things, it means something you don't want to do.
Speaker 2:If you you know all of us we've talked quite a bit about our endurance journeys If we go out and we run four miles at a 10 minute pace, that's not something we don't want to, that's not hard, right, that's become enjoyable for us. But if we do something that may be a little bit more aggressive, or we get on the treadmill to run a mile at 10 o'clock at night to keep the streak going, and we don't want to do that, that's when that part of the brain grows. And that part of the brain is involved in a lot of day-to-day activities or exercises and it's involved in helping us kind of angle our focus and maintain our focus. So it's a very important thing and so when you do hard things. It grows when you don't, or you're masking it with dopamine hits by scrolling or looking at how many people liked or commented on whatever post.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, what you're doing and this is a little bit anecdotal, but the connection they made is you're kind of reducing your will to live and the people that have the largest parts of the brain are people that restrict themselves on a daily basis. Sober people Every day. It's a battle, right, you know. I heard somebody make the comment that it's great, like there's a solution to being sober. The problem is it only works for a day and so every day, as you push back against those things that are your demons, you're continuing to grow that part of yourself. And again, I think you know they say that the people who've lived the longest that part of their brain is large and that's again kind of that will to live.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think a lot of this can be simplified enough to building psychological momentum, and I think that's what some of those more difficult things or things you don't want to do build psychological momentum. I think you have a lot of coaches out there that say the best way that you could possibly start your day is to make your bed, which is something very simple that you don't want to do, but it builds psychological momentum and it sets a standard of excellence for how you're going to go about your day, the things that you're going to. And personally, as someone who doesn't make their bed, I can see the implications of that. But there are rare times that I do or that I'm very thoughtful and intentional and I'm dotting the I's and crossing the T's on the things that I don't want to do and I can see that compound in my life on a daily basis to do, and I can see that compound in my life on a daily basis. And so, yeah, I do think a lot of this is about building that psychological momentum, because when you do the things that you don't want to do, you break down a lot of psychological barriers.
Speaker 1:I think that I mean I can say for me personally, a lot of things that probably make me more inefficient or struggle as a human being is out of fear.
Speaker 1:You know, I go back to the Tony Robbins thing.
Speaker 1:If you think you can't, you must right, and I think breaking down a lot of those psychological barriers, breaking down a lot of the fear, and being able to tackle those things on a daily basis that you know you can do, even if you don't want to do it or you know it's difficult, you know you can do even if you don't want to do it or you know it's difficult, I think just sets a tone and a standard of excellence that prevents you or limits you from shying away from things throughout your day for one reason or another.
Speaker 1:So what I hear you guys saying maybe you can talk on this for some of the listeners is doing hard things and the way you start your day. How would you, how do you currently approach this on a daily basis? How do you kind of lean into this? What are some of the things you talked about making your bed? What are some of those things that you would you try to do on a daily basis to help grow this part of your brain, to create this type of momentum as you've talked about.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm like anybody else. I, you know. I think we justify things, like you said, making the bet, why would I do that? I'm just going to mess it up again, like you know, and I do the same thing everybody else does, you know waking up to get the kids up at 6.30. Justify, I don't need to do that. Tara can handle it. My wife Tara can handle it. That day or whatever. What I do right now and I think we'll talk about it in a different episode I'm dealing with some injuries and something that I really don't like to do is physical therapy.
Speaker 2:It's crazy monotonous. It's really boring. It's crazy monotonous, it's really boring. It's the same exercises. They don't provide any resistance. So there's not a real in the moment challenge and I have to do them every day and it's like an hour and 15 minutes of some of the most boring stuff you could ever imagine.
Speaker 2:But the way I do it is I have an alarm set off at 1030 after I've kind of gotten my day started that like there's no, and I think this is a benefit of the way we were wired. This came up in conversation with our cousin last week. Is that there is no? No, there is no, not, there is no miss, it just has to get done. So you get down there, you get that started and a lot of times I do find that kind of catapults me into more productivity in the later part of the day where it, as I'm coming back from this injury, catapults me into more productivity in the fitness realm. So that's the way I start my day, it's not with something, and I think that's a lot of this misconception and we addressed it in the fitness episode.
Speaker 2:You don't have to start with some monumentally crazy thing. It doesn't have to be oh, I'm going from doing nothing to cold plunging for seven minutes. It could be something like that you just don't like doing and then, once you've accomplished it, it makes it that much easier. So I would encourage somebody to find that. I think I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole or spend too much time rambling or whatever. But I think maybe we've talked about it in the book Atomic Habits habits, where it's like start small, you know, it's like set your shoes out and stare at them and you know, and eventually get to that next step and then get to that next step. But you know, that's what I do on the days that I really I may have a large thing in front of me that I want to accomplish, like a big workout. Um, I'll start with something small, like physical therapy or whatever, to kind of lead me into that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say for me. I have an A-B test on this every week. I would first say, just in general, exercise working out is not something I particularly enjoy. Even running four miles at a 10 minute pace, I do not enjoy that, even though it's maybe not physically exhausting. And I would go as far to say that the physical benefits I get from working out every day probably pale in comparison to the mental benefits because I don't enjoy it. But it again sets that tone it lets.
Speaker 1:I think you know there have been times where it's been characterized for me as, like your mind is going to tell you a lot of things, what it shouldn't do.
Speaker 1:It doesn't feel like doing.
Speaker 1:You know who's in charge, and I feel like when you can send a signal to your brain that you're not going to follow its lead in terms of what it's trying, the path it's trying to lead you down, which is more dopamine the better, then I think you change the chemistry in your body, at least temporarily, for how you're moving about your day.
Speaker 1:So I really exercise is probably at the top of the list for me. But I will say one thing that I probably despise even more than that is waking up early and Tuesday mornings we have something called Track Tuesday. A group of guys from church get together, we go out to the local high school and we run at 5.15 in the morning, pitch black, and we run around the track and say the rosary. Most times and I absolutely like Monday nights, I dread it. But Tuesday at six in the morning, when it's done, I'm absolutely on fire and we all joke about like if you look at the activity of the text threads or the productivity of Tuesdays relative to other days, it's black and white. It's really stark contrast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you know I find that too. Here's one thing I found. You know I travel a lot. There've been moments in my career where I haven't, but as more recently I have been, and what I've found is that if I wait so most of the time I'm traveling out west and it's typically a 6 or 7 am flight and I find that if I wait till I get there and I check into the hotel and I go to the treadmill or I go to the gym, it's kind of a.
Speaker 2:I try to get through it and I'm glad I finished it when it's done. But the difference between that and waking up at 4, I've seen you get on the treadmill at 345 in the mornings and getting it done at four and then getting on the plane and flying across country, like the productivity, the excitement yeah, I'm tired at seven or eight o'clock at night, but that's okay, you're done with work by the day is so much higher. And so you know, 75% of the time and again, I'm not perfect, I don't do it 100% of the time I don't want to go to bed at 7pm and get up at four, but those times that I do, I find that it's really beneficial for the latter part of the day.
Speaker 1:So I hear you both saying that in the morning, on the days that you're committed to doing something that you don't want to do, you said, well, it doesn't have to be something necessarily hard, but something you don't want to do. You said, well, it doesn't have to be something necessarily hard, but something you don't want to do. Doing something of that nature in the morning propels the rest of your day from just a mental state 100%. I would say a lot of this. I've seen these. You see these cliche quotes all the time, and it's frustrating to see them. It's like what you do is what you become, and these things that you never really can connect the dots on. But I actually have connected the dots a little bit on this. I do find that you know, when you skip a workout, okay, the next time you go to do a workout it's that much easier to skip it, and if you plow through a difficult workout, it's that much easier to push through the next time. And so I actually do believe there is some truth to the decisions you make and what you do is what you become.
Speaker 1:So my middle child has an issue with impulse control. He has red hair and he lives right into that stereotype and impulses are something that just overwhelms him and we've had this conversation the other day and as I was having this conversation, I realized it applied much more broadly and to myself as well. But if you think about a teeter-totter and you think about every time you do something, you are putting a rock on one side of the teeter-totter and you think about every time you do something. You are putting a rock on one side of the teeter-totter and when you give in to an impulse or a mental signal that's being sent to do the easy thing, do the weak thing, you are putting a rock on that side of the teeter-totter and you're becoming more like that.
Speaker 1:If you do something that's difficult and you plow through something, you're putting a rock on the other side of the teeter-totter and honestly, on a day-to-day basis, if all that you're doing is seeking the dopamine and looking for the easy way out and looking for the shortcut, that literally is who you're going to become. I mean, I've found that in my experience and I thought it was just an interesting way to characterize it. And I thought it was just an interesting way to characterize it. I think there is some merit to that. Each decision that you make and every action that you take on a day-to-day basis is sticking with you in some fashion. Some may be more temporary than others.
Speaker 2:I think there's two things I'd like to explore here. I think Trent and I over the years not necessarily Todd have had weight issues here and there. It may not look like it now. I was at one point 250, 260 pounds, which is about 80 pounds more than I am today, and so I've been through quite a few diets and it was very rollercoaster for me In high school. I started high school at 145, and then I ended high school at 225, but that was 225 with zero muscle. I had never worked out. You know, I just would eat and eat and eat and then got in shape in 2003, and then got down to 160-something, working out a ton and lifting and whatever, and then back up to 250 with a little bit more muscle that time. But still really struggle with this and it really resonated.
Speaker 2:What you said, and I think you've experienced the same thing, is cheat days and it's like you eat clean, you eat clean, you know, and for me that's how things used to erode, right. So it'd be like all right, sunday's my cheat day and I'd have a huge cheat day, and then, you know, the next week would be well, I'll do a cheat 24 hours. So I'll start dinner on Saturday night and I'll cheat through dinner and then I'll cheat till 7 pm the next day and that's my cheat 24 hours. And the next thing you know, it's you know what. I'll just cheat for the weekend and by the end of it you're like well, you know the final justification. Well, at least I'm eating better than I was right when you're down to a day, or you're eating a clean meal here or a clean meal there.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not eating complete crap like I was, you know, approaching this. And all of a sudden, we know how finicky the body is when it comes to calories in, calories out. It's always much more aggressive than you believe it is, and we know that, especially as you enter your mid-30s, mid-40s, mid-50s, whatever, you can't outrun it. And so you've completely, you know, justified your way through again, putting more rocks on that other side of the teeter-totter. And all of a sudden, you're, you know, back to square one. Great, you eat two clean meals a day.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter, it doesn't do anything well when it gets harder to eat clean thereafter. I think the brain's a master manipulator it is a master manipulator.
Speaker 1:It's unbelievable. I want to try. I want to ask you a question because I feel like you experienced some of this, at least the commentary that I um observed from you. You were talking about being up at the lake over the summer, which is, you guys have obviously dreamed of having this for a long time. And you wake up and you have this beautiful setting and you have basically whatever water leisure at your fingertips and you have all these things. But you made some comments of just how hard it is to get motivated in that environment when you're just everything is so convenient. Talk to that a little bit, cause I think that's the other side of this. Well, I'll say a couple of things.
Speaker 1:We spent a lot of time in the first episodes on community and gamification, and I'd love to tie that back to this as well. So the only thing that saved me this last summer was the running streak. I'm terrified to stop. Everybody stopped. I'm the one standing at this point, for different reasons. I'm afraid to stop because the minute I stop, I know what's happening. I refuse not to run every day.
Speaker 1:This past summer was the first summer that I was up there full-time Every day. I knew I had to run and if I didn't commit to getting that in, I could have easily gone weeks without putting in any exercise. But the latter of this is is I got in better shape while I was up there, because there's a lot of hills and the views are better. And just by committing to, and so my commitment to the gamification, my commitment to the community, is what kind of kept me motivated. But it was hard. I mean food, lots of people, lots of drinks. I mean just, there's always something going on and you talk about having an excuse. You can make an excuse if you have nothing going on. There was an excuse to miss every single day. So I'll go back to my ability to get through. That was community and gamification. And so, as we approach some of these mental decisions, how do we incorporate that into continuing to put us in these spots where, like, how do you build a community that wants to do hard things, like track Tuesday, like you gotta be a little bit crazy, at least in today's world, and I'm and I'm I think I'm dealing with this with with my kids as well as like helping them build a community that doesn't want to you know, play Roblox and button mash all day, that wants to get out there and go for a run, or that wants to compete in sports, that wants to compete to build out that muscle. So I will just say that again, I'm not, I am afraid to quit running, because I know that the years prior was one day, went into two days, went into three days, and then I'd come back with a six to eight miler, you know, and then I'd do it again and then I would take three or four more days off. So, uh, there's something to that. How great is it though?
Speaker 1:Obviously I've ended my streak, but I will say, when you don't have to determine whether or not you're going to run and when you're going to run in a given week, it's so much easier to go out and get that run in. It's like, again, you're putting a rock on one side of that teeter-totter every day and it's so easy to go out and run right now. Once you stop, then you're running. You know whether it's three to four times or five to six times. I think there's a balance there. But even I know I spend a lot of mental energy. It's like, okay, should I run today, should I not run? And how far? And da-da da, da, when you're running every day, it's just like you're not using any mental energy there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things that I heard someone say is is it's like it's easier to fast than just to diet, right like once you get through the first for sure 24 hours and you get to the times where there's like a 15 minute window where you're hungry and then, once it passes, you find something to do. But it's it's, it's a hundred percent. I don't think about, and so I'm dropping rocks on the other side from my runs and it's not even a decision point. It's not like you said. It's like if you can get enough of those things in your life to where you're committed and you have the right things in place and, like I, do these things, whether that's make your bed, whether that's run, you don't. You don't waste the mental energy and the fight, the mental fight of like should I not, should I, should I not? And so there's so much, and I think this goes back to relationships and people is a lot of the purpose of why we're here anyways and how we can build communities around that.
Speaker 1:I guess I have a question for both of you, because I think a lot of people are, you know, maybe thinking okay, yeah, it's better to do hard things, but like, mentally, how do I get there to do things I don't want? But like, how do I get there? And so you guys have obviously had a ton of experience doing things you don't want, tj, other you, especially the amount of workouts that you do in the running intensity and putting in over 3000 miles a year, and a lot of those miles are high-intensity training. I mean to look at where you were when you started your running journey and the performance that you have now. Like what would you tell people or any tips and tricks of like how to get on the other side of that and obviously it doesn't happen overnight but like, what can people do to chip away at being more open to and excited about and finding a way to tip the scales to do that hard thing or the thing that they don't want to do?
Speaker 2:Well, there are two things for me, and one of them is community. But we'll start where. For me, when I originally kick-started this and this is back in 03, maybe even 02, I had another reason. There was an ex-girlfriend at the time and I was woefully out of shape and we look back at pictures with we're standing out in front of the house in Washington. We lived in Redmond Washington at the time and I'm huge and it was a like I used that extrinsic motivation, like I'm going to prove this person wrong and that was what got me kickstarted.
Speaker 2:And then, once you know and I encourage anybody you know to use anything you can find Once you get through and it's similar to the comment about fasting, even though it's a little bit longer period that first couple of weeks, that first six weeks, that first eight weeks, and you start to see a little bit of definition and you lose four or five or six pounds. The next thing you know that's all you need. You know the extrinsic to get you jump-started. And then, when it comes to, you know, and then for me, I built so much confidence going through that process that when running did come, it's like all right, I know I can do this. I've seen physiological adaptations take place in the bodybuilding world and in the weightlifting world. We're talking about going from somebody who could not rep the bar to somebody who could grab 120-pound dumbbells and rep them for 10 on an incline, decline, flat bench, it didn't matter. So huge improvements there. And then you build that confidence that, okay, I can execute this again. But the other piece of the puzzle is surrounding yourself with those people, and I've been really lucky that you guys have both been open to you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess it's interesting, right, you were the one that kind of pulled me back in to the endurance thing in 2012 after having done a marathon in 2007. And I think that's important. I want to jump back to that very quickly. Consistency is so key and you said that you know, with the streak, that's huge. You know so many people do one hard thing and like that's it scratches the itch.
Speaker 2:Somebody said something the other day one of the two of you about the old treadmill commercial with the clothes hanging on it right, like because so many people, it's just one and done. You pulled me back in and then you got into this and now I have two brothers that do it, and then you know, one of my best friends moved back from Pittsburgh and he was into endurance sports and he's social in the endurance community. So all of a sudden he's meeting people just randomly out on runs and seeing people in his community and connects, and connects, and connects. And then all of a sudden you know the three of us, or the four of us, um is MTC, which is over a hundred strong.
Speaker 1:What I think is interesting and I'm going to pivot a little bit because I think we spend a lot of time on running, because that's us but this, I think, can translate whether you're cycling, I know there's local cycling clubs. I know there's a lot of different places. There's Orange Theory Fitness, and they track by how many times you've gone. And there's for women, like Pure Bar, you've gone, and there's, you know, for women, like pure bar. There's like there's probably more opportunities now to find a community. It could be a pickleball club, it could be a guys that get together at 6am and play basketball, um, and so I would encourage people that I think you can find your community and for whatever it is you want to do, or you're passionate about doing, or you maybe want to learn to do something new and not to be afraid to put yourself out there, because in every single thing that you do in life, just like when we started this podcast, you're gonna suck right, like there's gonna be an element of like I'm not very good, I'm the worst in the room, or I can barely keep up, or I'm not in the best shape, or I'm embarrassed by the way I look or feel, or I don't want to get hurt.
Speaker 1:There's an element of that and everything I remember when I first started running. It was my knees. My knees bothered me. I'd come home and I had those big ice packs. I even bought special ones and for six months I would suffer through getting done and my knees hurt. And then something happened my knees got stronger, like there there's a. I know people say when you run too much, your knees get worse, and that's probably there is a point. It's like tires, but I wasn't doing anything at all. That was strengthening my body and I haven't had any knee problems, knock on wood, in I don't know years. So there is a community out there for anything that you want to do, and I even know in the small town that I'm from that there's tons of communities and there's tons of opportunities. So I would encourage you to find those people.
Speaker 2:You touched on something, too that I think is important is you're going to justify and excuse your way out of anything. Like you said, todd the mind's a master manipulator. There really is, and this is going to sound harsh. There's no excuse. There isn't, and I know that, and we see this a lot, and I won't tie it back because I've seen it in every different fitness endeavor that we've been on, and whether that's a game like basketball, football, soccer, whatever, or you know something else, that's more exercise related, you, your brain, will convince you that, like you said, you're too slow, you're too weak. You know, um, look at planet, fitness, their entire mo is.
Speaker 2:We're not going to let people shame you, which is interesting to me because, to be honest, I don't think that ever existed to begin with. I don't think there ever was, you know, and if it was, it was probably fairly juvenile. I could see, you know, me and my teens maybe, making fun of somebody who's bigger, uh, on a treadmill or whatever, but like from an adult perspective. You know, we we hear it all the time um, I don't want to, I don't want to exercise with you or run with you because I'm too slow. I'll slow you down, dude, I don't care, and I think the people that are at the elite level in their sports period, if they aren't doing something in their home gym or with their elite level team and they're at a YMCA, they're like it's cool.
Speaker 1:The brain has fabricated that, it's self-inflicted to your point, and that's why that message probably resonates with people is because, even though it's not necessarily out there being pushed onto people, they're self-inflicting and they have a, you know, a fear of that image, which is why I think it resonates.
Speaker 1:I wanted to come back to something that you said about failure and embracing failure.
Speaker 1:When we talk about doing things you don't want to do, or doing difficult things, that's absolutely part of it.
Speaker 1:It's not just that particular thing, but even your mind is going to fight you, putting yourself in a position where you are going to visibly fail, and so that is another example of something where your brain is not going to want you to do that, but embracing that failure, and I saw a meme the other day that was just like that your first, whatever, you're going to be horrible, your first, this, your first that, your first. That it is, it's going to be bad, and if you're intentional about it and you work on it, but even that ability to that vulnerability which I think you know as I've gotten older, is probably one of the most underrated characteristics is vulnerability, your willingness to put yourself out there and be vulnerable and fail and learn, because that's the only way you learn, especially in new areas, and you can only develop so much skill in private until you're going out and you're working on things and developing things. But I just thought that was a really good clarification that that being willing to fail is also a huge, huge part of this.
Speaker 2:It's so funny because it's so counter that behavior, so countered. Like you think of raising your kids. You're spending all your time convincing them that it's okay, like, go out there on the field, it's okay. And then you know, I'm looking at myself, my kids. We talked about gaming in a past episode. They all play Fortnite and I find myself, as trivial as it sounds and as funny as it is, I don't want to play this certain game mechanic because I'm not any good.
Speaker 2:And I think you see that as you get older, if you're not careful, you start to specify and you miss out on so much. And we see that in ourselves. We see that, I think, a lot in our parents. Like dad, we're at his house, maybe he'll listen to this, maybe he won't, but he's reached that point in life where he is specified and he does what he wants to do and that's it. And I think you miss out on a lot by not doing that. Yet here we are. He'll sit there and we'll sit there and he'll go to his grandkids and say you need to try this. You and you're absolutely right. Like vulnerability, like, yeah, okay, I'll play Fortnite with builds. I know I can't build buildings as fast as you kids, and it's going to make me feel, you know, insignificant when I used to be a phenomenal gamer, but you know you're never. You know I'm missing out on experiencing that with them again in balance, um does that?
Speaker 1:uh does? Does that mean you're going to try surfing this year?
Speaker 2:Sure, but that's a great point. I've justified away from surfing every year. I don't want to get hurt. My feet, my races, at the end of the day. If my kids Kalen's kind of started to figure it out, your kids do it and it would be, you know.
Speaker 1:I've got up. It took me a while, but I did get up.
Speaker 1:It's great when you get up, isn't it? Yeah, but you had to be willing to fall and fall, and fall and fall and it's no fun, especially. This is a great example, because there's nothing worse feeling. And when you have 10 people on a boat and one person is falling all the time, but, like as the boat driver, like I'm like this, this is, I'll sit down and be like, hey, you're going to fall 10 times and I want you to know it's okay, no one on the boat cares, you're not wasting our time.
Speaker 1:Like it's, it's good, like you're going to fall. You got to get a feel. There's like three steps. You got to feel this and then you feel this and then you're going to be up and nobody on the boat cares. But when you're the person in there and you keep falling, it is like you know you want to get out of there as soon as possible because everyone's having to wait on you. And I do think there's something to when you can control the environment a little bit and have a little bit of a safer space. I think it helps. Like when I tried it, it was me, you and Roman. Yeah Right, nobody was there and it was like an evening and as it was like, well, if there's going to be a time to learn, it's going to be now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so Well, no, you think about what made you look back. I think we're all fortunate enough to still be in contact with people we've met throughout our lives, especially with technology, whether it's high school friends, college friends, whoever and I look at what made my childhood and the stuff that gets brought up we'll talk about that in a different podcast on like the thread with my high school guys. It's doing those things that never in a million years we'd try. Now you know, hey, I jumped off the high rope swing before it was submitted into the ground, or, like you, just chances that you don't take nowadays because- Set the driveway on fire.
Speaker 2:Yeah, set the driveway on. Like those are the things, the things that were out there that were scary, that like there's no way who would pour gasoline onto a driveway, like you know, the the flames are going to come back up in the can and explode, and it almost did one time. But like we look back, and that was I'm not encouraging anyone or their kill to explain that there was ice on the basketball court.
Speaker 1:You guys wanted to play basketball and you were trying to burn off the ice, so it was a playable surface. So, instead of which, it worked, but then it was soaking wet and the basketball got just sopping wet. But we did play, we did a little while, but then you couldn't.
Speaker 2:It wasn't well thought out, but it was fun yeah, but the point being is, like those are the things, and I think the the other thing too is, the better you get at certain things. I think that goes back to your point with surfing. Like you get to an elite level or sub elite level or very competitive level and you don't want to do other things Cause it's like, oh, I feel so good, and we mentioned this from a status perspective. I don't want my status to reset. I'm this guy at this part of my life or this guy in this part of my life and, god forbid, I have to give that status up.
Speaker 1:But that that is such a good point because we live with that with our kids. Like I remember when Hadley was in gymnastics and she got to here and she was the best at this level. But then to get to the next level, you have to learn new tricks Right. And so at each level of even with surfing, where I can go in and out of the wake pretty good, I want to do a 360, but the time it's going to take me to learn to do a 360, it's going to have to go out there and Roman's gonna have to drive the boat and I'm gonna have to try and try, and I've watched videos and I thought I could hire a guy to come in and teach me. There's something I'm still not doing right, um, but like I don't want to do that in front of people because I, I want to be the I want to be. So there's, there's something here with humility and vulnerability I think we should spend some time on. That's not our natural place to go, no, but it's the way out, it's the only way out.
Speaker 1:And like when you talk about learning things and you know some of the most successful people and this could be even in the spiritual realm as well.
Speaker 1:They figured out how to learn and part of that is being able to live and lean into the pain of not being great at something and being willing to, there not being that psychological barrier.
Speaker 1:Okay, I've got to now learn new tricks, I've got to do a learned approach. I've got to learn this new skill, I've got to be an expert in this new topic. When there's no psychological barriers to that, I mean you're put in that position, I mean throughout life, on a daily basis, and if you hesitate every time to develop that new skill or learn that new set of tricks or put yourself back into that place where you're at the bottom of the barrel, I think it just really compounds in a negative way. I've never found a time where I was vulnerable and the minute I kind of said I'm not good at this or kind of openly admitted that to where I've been made fun of, right, it's like when you're trying to be good or trying to like, there's that mental thing. But the minute you're just like I'm not great at this, I'm just going to tell you I'm going to come out and try and I'm just going to give it my best, it's like it kind of takes the pressure away.
Speaker 2:I think you know a lot of what. What drives that is what? Because, as children, there's no confidence. Nobody has self-confidence at that point, and so self-confidence is gained via putting others down. So when you're kids, that does happen right, that does happen right away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things I just wanted to go back to. You know what people can do and I know not everyone's goal-oriented. My mantra I may have mentioned this in previous episodes is goals breed habits and habits breed change. So you talk about running, right, you set this goal of running a day every year and now you've got a habit that, mentally, is keeping you in the game. I have found recently I was doing a class and they introduced a concept called goal stacking, where you start with annual goals or even goals that are beyond that, maybe what you want to be in three, five, 10 years. But you really look into that and the way I've set those goals is almost looking back and saying you know, what could I accomplish at that point? That I would, as I look at now, would be like, wow, this would be a phenomenal year If I could do X, y and Z, accomplish X, y and Z, become X, y and Z, like this would be a phenomenal year or decade or whatever it happens to be, and that starts to then be able to be broken down. Well, if I want to be that at the end of the year and then at the end of six months, I want to be here, and at the end of a month I want to be here. At six months I want to be here, and at the end of a month I want to be here. At the end of this week I need to be here in order to accomplish that. What that goal stacking does is it really builds a lot of intrinsic motivation, because when you think about, okay, I've got to make my bed this morning or I need to go out and work out this morning, it starts to become connected to something larger. It's like I really don't want to do this. But gosh, if I ran 1,000 miles this year, if I ran 500 miles this year, if I worked out for 365 hours this year, an hour a day, like gosh, that's going to be such a great accomplishment and I'm going to feel so good. So I think, for those who are more goal oriented, I think that can really help jumpstart.
Speaker 1:And then, as you mentioned, trent, to gamification. This sounds really silly but as I've, I used to break. I had a year probably my best year yet where I was a grown ass man, 36 year olds, putting 36 years old, putting stickers on a chart. But I bought this daily chart and I had the stickers that I had made said you won the day and I would set three priorities for the day, and it wasn't always the things that I wanted to do, but it was the three priorities that got me closest to achieving my goals for that particular day. That then bled into the week and the month and the year and if I got those three done, I got a sticker for the day and I had this chart walked right in my bedroom, I put the sticker up and there was this satisfaction.
Speaker 1:Again, it's small, silly, ridiculous things that get you over the hump. So that's what I would say is, when you're looking at getting over the hump, there's no silver bullet, there's no big thing. You want to talk about vulnerability, like ordering a bunch of stickers as a 36-year-old to put on a chart that people could visibly see walking in. I don't know what Jenna thought about that. I still haven't really talked to her about it. She probably thought I was crazy, but that was part of it. It's like gosh, I got to get this done so I can get my sticker for the day and I think probably 250 of the 360 days.
Speaker 1:I got a sticker, but it's a small thing, so don't underestimate the small things. You know they talk even in the NFL and some of the elite sports. The line between you know success and failure can be a very, very fine line, and you know you got to embrace the details and take what you can. You mentioned bellatro. I was just watching a youtube video about how a guy beats these high level, very difficult levels, and it's about minimizing and maximizing everything it's. It is is paying attention to the details and and getting everything that you can out of it. So, um, I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 2:Just for everybody, really quickly, bellatro is a card game, uh, where you curate a deck. I know we've mentioned it a couple of times. Look it up, it is game of the year. Um, it's wild. But, uh, you know.
Speaker 2:One thing I wanted to mention, just kind of going back through my phone, because I think this is super relevant. This could be a much, much larger conversation topic, so I'll just say it in the context of this conversation. But we perceive through the accordance of our aim, and that kind of harkens back to exactly what you were talking about. If you set your aim on something, everything you perceive on a daily basis is in accordance with that, and you can take that as elementary as you want. If you're a track runner, you see a track in a different way than somebody else does. It could just be a rubber circle to them, and so I think, like you said, setting an aim and it doesn't have to be we're not saying that you have to go out there and spend 15 minutes doing everything under the sun to do hard things. You don't have to do an ice bath one morning and then sauna the next and then you know, um, orange theory the next day, or pure bar the next day, maybe it is for that particular year. Specificity around one thing, and it's okay. I'm going to learn this at the base level and then I'm going to layer on this and I'm going to layer on this.
Speaker 2:One of the things that keeps me motivated you asked about high intensity work that I do is different scientific approaches to things. So I've tried this approach and this worked this way. Okay, now I'm going to do this. First it was I'm just going to lay down miles and then, all right, I'm going to do heart rate training, and then I'm going to measure my lactate and now it's heat training and it's this. So it's these things that I've never done before, that I probably won't nail the first time.
Speaker 2:It'll probably take me a couple months, but I have that I mentioned earlier confidence, having accomplished it six, seven, eight different times now to try these things that I may not implement the correct way or that may. You know that people may and again, this is probably the mind, because I do think it's you know that people. But there is this, this perception that, oh, people are going to look at my Strava and be like this guy, what is he doing? You know this guy's ridiculous At the end of the day. Even if they do it and I know there's, there are conversations like that. Like you said, nobody's ever going to come to your face in any of these scenarios and say like, oh, you're this. There may be conversations behind your back, but the more confidence you built through accomplishing these things, the less that's going to matter to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think anybody. I think if you don't focus on that stuff, you just don't care. Yeah, I just wouldn't, you know. What's interesting is we've talked about all the suffering and all the different things and the correlation is is suffering, doing hard things provides true fulfillment and satisfaction, like when you get done, you've never finished a workout and said I wish I wouldn't have done that, right? So like there's that correlation on the other side, the things that we do that we feel like are going to bring long-term joy. We should spend some time there.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I've realized is and I call it worldly success the more things I have, the more things I buy, the more things I accumulate. The more things I buy, the more things I accumulate. I used to correlate a happiness with those things, right, so the conveniences in life as they got easier. There was this dream, there was this like walk out of my porch at the lake house and it's just like, ah, I just look at the water and it just, it's just beautiful, right, and it's just that's. And then you sit there for like 30 seconds and I'm like, okay, now it's time to get up and go run or let's go do something like that innate thing to keep, keep moving.
Speaker 1:Have you guys found in your life the things that you're chasing after? Let's call them more worldly things, or conveniences or vacations? Where have you found, where have you been searching for and where have you found it? And have you guys had similar experiences to where, no matter what I buy or what I get or what I accumulate, it really doesn't make me any happier long-term and, frankly, it makes me probably go the other way, because there's twice as many things that can go wrong in my life. I always laugh. It's like, with two homes and six refrigerators and several cars, there's something always broken in my life. There's the boats, the jet skis. Something is literally broken every day, something is, it's deteriorating, and so you could almost argue that the more stuff you have, the more yeah, the tougher life is, or the more disappointment for things that are going to go wrong each day. Yeah, a hundred percent. I'm going to go back to a quote that I think I referenced earlier, which is happiness is reality minus expectations. So I've found exactly what you're saying to be 100% true. The more conveniences I have in my life, the more that can go wrong, period, and I think we see that as a society, and I remember having this conversation with my boys when they weren't being as grateful as I would have liked them to be. I spent 30 minutes with them and we wrote down 150 expectations that they have and again, I'm no better, I mean living in the environment we live in relative to several hundred or several thousand years ago.
Speaker 1:150 expectations within the first 30 minutes of the day you wake up. You want to feel good, right, you don't want to have some sort of ailment, you don't want something to be sore. You wake up and you want to be able to have hot water and you want that hot water to come quickly. You don't want to have hot water and you want that hot water to come quickly. You don't want to have to wait too long for that hot water. And you want to make sure you want to have shampoo and you want to have all the hygiene stuff that you need to get ready for the day.
Speaker 1:And then you know I mean just the amount of things that rely on electricity and because you know we've gone down to the dominican, you don't always have electricity that that's spotty. But then you think about each of the things that you use on a daily basis. And even when you get in the car right, you get in the car and you want people to go the speed that you're going right, so you want them to break the speed limit and make sure they're going fast enough that you're not having to go slow, but you also want them to make sure they're following all the other rules of the road of turning, using their turn signal or whatever. And you think about how many people you're interacting with on the road and how many expectations you have. I mean it's mind boggling. There are thousands and thousands that's not an overstatement at all Expectations that you have on a daily basis for things around you.
Speaker 1:That is stealing your joy. I mean, that's not even some of that is not even speaking to the material things, but that's a thousand percent. The case, at least I found in my life, the more material things we've accumulated, the more that there is underneath right and I think that's going to continue to happen as a society is that you know, think about the conveniences of the phone and the internet and like the quickness, the expected response, response times, and we used to get on 56k modem and you had three or four minutes before you even connected and let alone getting the information. But now all of that is wired in as expectations and it continues to steal the joy and and it's uh, it's it's gonna be a really hard thing for us to turn around as a society yeah, well, you mentioned something about like, is there anything you've?
Speaker 2:And it's interesting, you know I would. Something popped into my head because you guys have experienced something very specifically that is a complete. This is tough because it may require you to throw your families under the bus, but you both been to Walt Disney world Um, you very recently actually and you've both been there in two completely separate capacities last January, right, and then, and even during that particular visit, in and of itself, the morning was something, the afternoon was something, and you know you talk about. Have you found anything fulfilling? I would love some. You know you can explain what I'm talking about first of, but some like retrospective on. Well, if I look back at the week and I did this in the morning and this at night this maybe holds more weight for me, or I got this out of this and I got this out of that. I'd be interested to hear your perspective on those two things, cause it was, it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we did. We did dopey. Um, for those of you that don't know, uh, dope, disney has a marathon weekend where they have a 5k, the next day a 10 K, the next day a half marathon and the next day a full marathon, and they let certain. I think they sell what 600 bibs, or I don't remember how many bibs, but there's a limited number of bibs. You can sign up and you could do dopey, which is mean you do all four and you do all four back to back to back to back, and so you talk about hard things. It started with getting up at three 30 in the morning to catch the bus.
Speaker 2:Thank goodness we didn't know about that because, honestly, if I had known we had to get up at 3.30 in the morning, four days in a row, I probably wouldn't have done it.
Speaker 1:And then we each had a kid with us and we took those kids to the park all day. And so the mornings were, you know, the first. The 5 and the 10K were pretty easy. And then you're spending, you know, six to ten hours in the park, probably doing another five to six miles walking around and Disney's interesting because of the waiting in lines and the fast passes and like trying to get on, you know, tron. And so there's, there's an element there of like you got to get up. You know, as soon as we got back from our run we had our phone, cause at 5.00 AM you had to enter the queues to kind of make those things happen. Uh, but I think your question is is where did I find more joy or fulfillment? In the park or in the run? Is that?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, is that kind of the balance of both?
Speaker 1:Um, I found it in both. Actually it was nice because I don't feel like I think there are times that I run it too tight. Um, but I think I was able to find joy in in everything we did. Um, there was the big accomplishment with Dopey. That was a lot of fun. It's like again, probably one of those things I'll never do again. But it was good to have community, to be a part of it and to train up for it. But it was also a really special time, kind of one-on-one with the kids, and the time that we spent in the park. Yeah, I would just say I think the enjoyment, the leisure of the park day was just a little more fleeting. I think it was a little more temporary. I mean, I still kind of hold some of the satisfaction from the dopey and what we've done there, but I think it's the sustainability of that joy is different.
Speaker 2:So there's two things that keep popping back up in my head. One of them is when I think about Disney and you talked about more things, more problems, and you talked about all of these expectations we have and you look at something like that and how complex a vacation like that has become. I mean, you know, to avoid the complexity of a Disney vacation, you know it's impossible. Well, and if you do, it's tens of thousands of dollars for a single family. You're going to spend 20 or 30 grand. So for most people it's this absolute and I think for us, the way we're wired, there's a portion of that.
Speaker 2:You reference it by saying sometimes I run things too tight. I think my wife in specific I'll speak for myself hates that because I just thrive, and I know you do. You do you know in like how tight can we, you know, configure this so that we, like a lot of the excitement that I get from these vacations is like all right, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam bam. And because of the expectations that have been set, I'm like, you know, fast pass didn't work, I was up at 701 and I was in it and then that that frustration comes. So you know, I'd love some thoughts about the different types of things.
Speaker 2:You do a lot of quarterly stuff with your boys it's way removed from like a Disney trip and you do a lot of different things. You guys go to a lot of different places. I'd love some perspective on you know, in terms of entertainment, what you found to be more entertaining, is it? You know there's plenty of people out there huge Disney families. There's nothing wrong with that. Maybe they figured out how it works for them. But if you found certain leisurely activities to be a little bit more fulfilling when there's maybe less intricacy involved, it gets, it gets tricky and difficult.
Speaker 1:I'll just say this briefly and then go ahead and jump in, because you're balancing several things. You're balancing your own enjoyment and fulfillment short term and long term, and then you're balancing your kids' fulfillment short term and long term. And I think a lot of this comes down to how you're oriented to Great Wolf Lodge a few different times and it's got it's. It's not Disney, but it's along those lines. There's a arcade in there, there's the water slides, there's the candy shop, there's like the bowling alley and there's a lot of mental stimulation. And so I would say for me sometimes it depends and you kind of walk these things back and forth and you balance. But for me there's probably a lot of different answers to that question, based on how you're oriented or what you're seeking. Trent, you were going to jump in. Yeah, I would say.
Speaker 1:The things that we're doing, that, I would think, where we're spending a lot of money and going to the games and running around and getting food, those are probably not the things. Those are the things that cause me more stress. But as we grew up, we were wired to like be the best get to go to those things and, um, where I think we find more joy is my wife appreciates just relaxing and, uh, recently we went to a concert and it was great, like we, we went and took the kids to see Billy Joel and and it was, it was a really good time. So there, I think the things that I'm finding that our kids find more joy is sitting around playing games, having more, and they're they're going to remember that, I think when we sit down and play sequence or some of those other board games, more than they are some of the other things that we have to, you know, go fast, run a lot, they're all planned out.
Speaker 1:They're a lot of travel, because I mean, when you think about, like, if we're going to a Colts game, for us it's an hour and a half drive, or two, two hours, and then there's parking and then there's getting in at the end of the day. My younger kids aren't super interested in football. They'd rather go to the pro shops and they want to go to the I want to buy something, you know, or you go to the store and you can buy something for 10 times what you could on Amazon, but it's part of the experience. So I think for us it's just more of slower pace, easy going, and then it's hard to find something that all the kids like.
Speaker 2:Right, we have four, four different kids and they all like different things, so I think that's an interesting perspective, just, you know, because there are things that we we talked about, I think episode four, different lifestyle choices.
Speaker 2:There are things we don't have access to right, that you know we just never will, but that we have been fortunate enough in a lot of circumstances to experience certain things. I think it's a nice perspective to understand. I think, looking back for us growing up, we probably remember most of the stuff we remember was leisure around the house and then we went to Florida a lot, but it was very chill, like playing basketball not going to Disney, that's what we remember hanging out at the pool or the ocean and the friends that we had down there and things like that. So, um, again, that's not to say that a particular type of vacation or particular type of leisure is suited, you know, for for that um, type of person. But I think I don't know, you know kind of putting a bow on it, finding something that scratches that itch, I guess, in terms of I don't know this again, kind of go ahead.
Speaker 1:Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, that kind of scratches that itch on both sides of the fence. I think we do have a tendency to optimize too much and want to find the perfect vacation that ticks all those boxes or the perfect hard thing that ticks all those boxes. But finding whatever works for you and being consistent with it and being reasonable with it and understanding that you know it may not be the most expensive thing or the hardest thing on the other side of it that fulfills you, just start exploring.
Speaker 1:Since you asked that question, I've been trying to think about what vacation we've enjoyed the most or what types of vacations and, honestly a little bit of a different spin on it, it's probably the ones where we've done the best job at managing expectations and I think you'll find with the more leisurely vacations there's fewer expectations to manage, so that happens more naturally. But we have had times where we've had really good times at like, a disney or something else. But it's required us to be very intentional about managing expectations and this is so, so important at home. We've been running into issues with this recently at home where I think that's one of the things that, again, expectations are just so, so, so important. It's probably an an entire episode in and of itself at some point, but I think for kids who have grown up in today's society, it's very, very difficult to the stimulation and the things that they're faced with, like, let's talk at Disney World, the number of gift shops that they're going to walk through and there's potentially going to be something to buy, the number of dessert things that they're going to walk past and potentially be able to, or the number of activities that they're going to be advertised in front of them that they could do. There are so many triggers for them and naturally, as kids like you're going to want to do that stuff and if you haven't managed the expectations ahead of time, it's a nightmare because it's no, no, no, no, like, do you know how much money we spent being here at Disney? Like, then the travel here and the hotel, and you know, and, da-da-da, you're so ungrateful, which is a natural reaction. But it's completely unfair because, of course, if there are other things that are enticing and tempting, they're going to have a desire to do that. When you tell them no, that's going to be a negative experience. But if you sit down in the morning and you say, hey, here's the deal, you've got two desserts today, you can have one after lunch and you can have one after dinner. Or hey, you've got $40. This was something that we did that worked really well last time we went to Disney and Falls. Like, you have $40 on these, you know, for these two parks and $40 for this park, and that's it, and you can walk through and whatever. Look, but they knew they've got $40. That completely changes the experience. Again, very small thing, that completely changes the experience.
Speaker 1:So I would go back to saying where we have been able to set expectations, and again on a more relaxing vacation. That happens more naturally because there's not as much to manage, and that's what I think. Sometimes those, those can feel easier. It's about the journey, right. It's like I remember when we used to go visit grandma and we used to drive down there. We'd look outside and play, I'd spy, and now it's.
Speaker 1:You know, kids want enough screen time to distract till they get there. But I think when you can, we can keep their attention long enough and make sure that we enjoy every step of the journey, because a lot of times the destination isn't the, isn't the excitement, right, because you get to the game or you get to the Disney and you hit the ride, and then it's like back to your point what's next, what's next, what's next? And, as we found, is that's a bottomless well of emptiness. Like you, there's just there. You go down this hole of what's next, what's next, and no matter how much you accumulate or how much you do, if you can't enjoy the journey along that process, it doesn't lead to anything. So let me ask you a question, uh, just to kind of trigger a little bit of debate here. So I think what's interesting about that like I think there are a lot of people that are oriented that way enjoy the journey, right.
Speaker 1:It's kind of about the amount of entertainment or enjoyment that you have if you're looking at the end game, right, and you're on your deathbed at 85 and it's like how much did I enjoy life, right, and you're on your deathbed at 85, and it's like how much did I enjoy life, right? And it's interesting because I look at it differently. In fact, I remember a time where Dad said to me he's like you know, there are times where I am just worried you're not going to enjoy life as much because I'm very wired for productivity and impact and purpose. Like for me, when laying on my deathbed and I look back at this, I have one in they say one in 400 trillion chance of being here. Certainly I'm gonna enjoy it and I've done things to that. But me it's like I feel like I've gotta leave this place better off than I found it.
Speaker 1:And I'm thinking about impact and like I had a one in 400 trillion chance of being here, I'm laying 85,. Did I do enough to leave this place better off than I found it? Like to me it's about that, and so some you know again and I think this goes to kids too it's like, oh, it's the memories and did they have fun, and did they have this and did they right, did they enjoy it? And yeah, you know. And so for me it's like, yes, there is part of that and you have to. I think you know you have to have those relationships and you have to have things, that where you can have opportunities to bond. But also is it also about and how much about preparing them and putting them in a position to maximize their impact and live out their purpose and the gifts that they've been given. I'd be interested in your guys' take on that dynamic, because I think when we talk about certain things are right for some families versus others, it's about how they're oriented, right, which there's no right or wrong answer here.
Speaker 2:It's back to the aim comment.
Speaker 1:Correct. Yeah, absolutely, and it's like I'd be interested to see where you guys fall on that spectrum.
Speaker 2:I think it's both sides right. I think that was the original premise of this conversation, was you have to? It may feel you know we talked about the context of the word suffering and that part of life, and you know, tying the word enjoyment to suffering is difficult to do. But you know, if anybody has experienced something difficult, whether it's it doesn't matter, right? I know we always talk about running, deal with it, because it just is what it is.
Speaker 2:But you accomplish this goal. It wasn't that, that wasn't a great thing, right, but you embraced the journey and I think embracing the consistency of that journey leads to you making your impact. Embracing it to whatever level and I think it's the same thing holds true is exactly what you said on the other side of it like you're never going to get to ultimate relaxation, happiness, whatever, whatever. It's just this downward spiral, but potentially, you know, and embracing the journey to whatever you've aimed at in terms of entertainment is going to fulfill those other human needs and that's back to that balance. So I think they're both cyclical, again, depending on where your aim is, for your family or yourself.
Speaker 1:I would also agree. I think you need both. I think you need both. What triggered when you were talking is, I believe, certain people are oriented in more one way than the other, which is, I think, what makes the world go round right. So we've got super serious, hardcore people and we got super laid back.
Speaker 1:I remember when I first met my wife, her family, when they said we were going to eat at two o'clock, it meant we're going to eat sometime that day. I mean it was like it could be four o'clock, it depends who would show up At the daily family. When we said it was at noon, we were praying at 1157. And if you weren't there at noon, we're starting without you. So I think it's important that we have a plethora of different types of people growing up a bunch of different ways, because I believe it balances out. You know the world because we can get so far down one side of that. I do think you need productivity and you need to add. You know value to the people around you and you can't just live in paradise. But I think there are different levels of that and I think we all have a little. I think even in our three families we all live just a little bit different, and our kids are going to be a flavor of that, based on the way that we've chosen to raise them.
Speaker 2:I think that's fair.
Speaker 1:Everybody feel good.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would. Just to cap this off, I would recommend a book that I've read. That's really really good, I think, in addition to the gamification and the community just educating yourself on some of this stuff and the importance and obviously we're talking at things at a very conceptual level, but there's a lot of scientific evidence out there that explains this much more convincingly and convictingly. One of the books that's been really important in my journey is Ryan Holiday's, the. The obstacle is the way, which is essentially that it's like the thing that you don't want to do. The obstacle, like you have to be oriented to tackle that and how psychologically, um, that can lead to a lot of positive things. So I would just put that book recommendation out there, and if it's not that book, maybe there's another one Um, I don't know if you guys have frog, Isn't that?
Speaker 1:isn't that another book?
Speaker 2:That's another one that kind of talks about Tom Cabot talks about doing, you know yeah.
Speaker 1:Eat the Frog is knocking that thing out first thing. That's the difficult thing about building that momentum. So hopefully you guys got some really good stuff today and definitely check out those books and we'll see you next time. Thanks,