Mindset Mastery: Andrew's Tactics for Living in the Present

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Them and me i love that you and the

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85 year old women yeah because they're all trying to burn

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off their hot flash so no it's all good nice okay

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recording has started are we all ready

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everybody got a drink everybody's relaxed ready to

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go you got your p-pad g-rex g-rex dirty skittles and andrew's going by andrew

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right yeah it can be me yay all right do you want to do the intro or do you

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want me to go for it okay you're ready yep three two one.

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Music.

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Welcome back to another episode of shit that

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goes on tonight we have an amazing guest andrew

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welcome andrew and my very special co-host

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very special i like that

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yes you are our discussion so it's

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a pleasure to be here with y'all yeah welcome so Bermuda

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you're calling us from Bermuda which is wild first of all I have to reiterate

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because in my mind Bermuda is like this mysterious place that nobody lives it's

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just a triangle that ships disappear yeah I did have this conversation with

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my wife a little while ago and she's English so maybe it was slightly different for her,

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but there was no point in my life that my life plan included living in Bermuda.

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There's any vision of myself growing up in Birmingham, Alabama,

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Greenville, North Carolina. I'm like, you know what? One day I'm going to live in Bermuda.

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That was even to the point when we ended up here, as I explained to people,

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we're entering our fourth year of a one month visit.

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So this was not an adventure that we have.

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Yeah. So what brought you to Bermuda? Let's start there. there.

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Yeah. So as I mentioned, my wife's English and a lot of people,

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if you didn't have, if you're not British and didn't have British family, you wouldn't know.

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But in when COVID hit, we closed the borders to Brits.

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If you were from France or Italy, like you would come in if you did test,

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but Brits, for some reason we said, Nope, you're not allowed in our country.

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And so our family couldn't visit us.

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And with traveling, we had a young child. We didn't feel comfortable flying over there.

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It wasn't the easiest to do, but Bermuda became this clearing house house that

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both of us could travel here.

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And my wife's father, my father-in-law's best friend, married a Bermudian 40 years ago.

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They grew up with their kids and everything. This was a place that they would come on vacation.

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And because there was no travel, they said, hey, we have this house.

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We normally rent on Airbnb.

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It's empty. Would you like to come stay for a month and see each other?

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So my wife forwards me this email and says, hey, let's talk about this tonight.

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See if we can make it work.

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And I forwarded her the email from Delta and said, there's nothing to discuss.

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These are the flights. We're going to take the free house.

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And so we came and then five days in, we're walking to lunch.

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You're looking at these gorgeous colors.

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We're with family. We're with friends. Everything's amazing.

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We said, there's a digital nomad program.

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If we're not going to the office, could we not go to the office here instead of there?

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And let's try it. So let's see our families for Christmas and do that.

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And then it just kept extending and extending and yeah

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now we just signed another year on our lease for a

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while longer that's awesome what is it like living in Bermuda because is it

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just like tropical life or is it completely different vibe yeah it is so it's

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funny because the things that I loved initially and that I miss changed so initially

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I was a swimmer right I'm doing this underwater.

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And the fact that I could just swim in the ocean every day, I was like,

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that's a hundred percent the best thing about it. And people say, what do you miss?

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I really miss how easy everything is in the U S right.

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Everything's on our phone. We push a button. We get whatever we want,

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whenever we want, you just push a button and you do it. You come to an Island

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and you're on Island time.

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So you can't have a car. If you aren't living in Bermuda, you can't have a car.

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So tourists coming, anybody like that, you can't have a car.

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And so we were dependent on the public bus system and they strike 10,

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20, maybe more percent of the time.

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And so you're trying to get your daughter to preschool or trying to get around

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and you'd wait and maybe the bus would come or maybe they're on strike that

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day, or maybe they decided to have a meeting and there are no buses for four

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or five hours, but they didn't tell anybody.

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Wow. And so at first that got me really frustrated.

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And then I realized, wait, I could just reframe this time, right?

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Like that year, it wasn't an accident

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that year. I ended up reading or listening to more than 200 books.

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It's like, wait, this isn't dead time. This could be time I could be learning.

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Let me just make sure I always have stuff that I can invest and do this.

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And it made me get on a much more selfless, human paced way of life.

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Living in the US where everything was a button away. It was a very selfish existence,

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right? Like my nest thermostat, the temperature was always exactly what I wanted.

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The music was always exactly what what I wanted to have because if the

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Sonos would play my anything I want this Amazon get

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it to me in 10 minutes everything was built around me and then

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coming here you're saying hey no I'm just one of the

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culture I gotta fit in I gotta fit in and flow with what's

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going on and there was the

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part of the life and then the other part of just swimming in the

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ocean instead of swimming in a city in a pool very clear

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rules going back and forth and early on I'd

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find myself and I'm fighting the waves like oh it's so frustrating and

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the weather and then i think man i'm

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just lucky to be here i'm not going to influence the

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waves why don't i just appreciate this and

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just flow with it just recognize what it is and the

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swimming got so much easier instead of fighting the wave i just ride with the

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wave and it's a totally different feeling and so i don't know that's a super

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long winded way to say it all changed with time of i when i found frustrating

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i now find wow i think I think I'm a better person because of that. Yeah.

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That's huge. Actually, just hearing you say, instead of swimming against it

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and fighting the waves, that's metaphorical. Like it's, I can relate to that

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in my life and I don't live in Bermuda.

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So yeah. So how.

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That mindset wasn't always there, right? Like you developed that.

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So where did you start before Bermuda? When you were fighting the waves metaphorically

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elsewhere, what was life like for you then?

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So much of life is pushing against things, right? And fighting against things,

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including there was an entrepreneur at a company and you're fighting against

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this pandemic that's shutting down travel and what you can do.

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And so it's this ongoing gift of

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humility that life gives us of you think you have it in control you're like

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okay yeah i got all my stuff i got all my shit together i'm good i'm good i'm

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good and then boom a wave splash you in the face whether it's covid or something

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happens at work or it's layoffs like whatever's going on you think you have

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everything i've fixed it i've solved it.

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Boom slap in the face and it's just that breath of that not breath but that

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that splash of cold cold water is wake up and say, wait, you are just this little

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piece in this huge ocean.

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You're this little piece in this huge universe and you don't get a control.

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You can adapt with what's going on and pay attention to what's going on.

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The only thing you fully control is your mindset and how you are reacting to these things.

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And so being more adaptable versus trying to build the perfect system,

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the system of adaptability is what builds that resilience.

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And so if you can have, for me, and I'm not perfect at this,

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right, let's not let everyone get slapped in the face, say, oh,

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no, I thought I was good on this. I got this, thank you for this wonderful reminder that I'm not.

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But yeah, I had this conversation, I think last week, a friend had just had a newborn child.

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He had older kids, like in college, and just had a new marriage, new child.

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And I was like, yeah, I just remember those early days, like you'd get to this point,

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And your child would sleep through the night. And then they do it two or three

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nights. Like, we figured out. We hacked the system. The system, yeah. It. We're set now.

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And then all blows up.

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It's just like, what a wonderful way to help you realize how little control you have.

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You can influence things, but how little control you ultimately have.

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And instead of seeing it, I think for a lot of my life, I'd see it as frustrating and fighting.

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And now i just say wow okay this is a real gift right this gift of humility

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thank you thank you for this gift to the reality that is my life man that's

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admirable i don't know i definitely haven't mastered that oh i haven't mastered let's be clear.

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My wife reminds me all the time i have not mastered it but i

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was all the way end at one end of the

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spectrum as a teenager early 20s right

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and so it's just been can i keep edging over as i

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they go yeah yeah i haven't mastered that either

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we're trying every day i'm trying

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but i'm certainly not a master at it yeah so

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you you mentioned that you built an app yeah i have

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a around the book actually a gpt that i built for that so out of the book you

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can listen to a podcast you can go to a talk you can read a book whatever it

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is and you feel great this ah oh my god okay it makes sense enlightenment has

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hit me and then you go to sleep and you wake up the next day and it looks just

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just like yesterday and nothing.

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And so with the book, I really very deliberately tried to put in tactical exercises.

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Worksheets, all these pieces to say, this is work.

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Our biology, all of us are saying, Hey, we're not masters of that.

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We intellectually know what the answer is.

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We understand, but we can't do it a hundred percent of the time.

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And it's because our biology is against us it's the

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same with nutrition right our

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biology is against us our biology loves butter and

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sugar like it tastes delicious our biology wants us to know that is delicious

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we need those high caloric density things because that's what kept us alive

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250 000 years ago now that we can go get boxes a little debbie cakes get 20

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boxes for 10 bucks that's not helping us destiny.

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That's not a good thing for us to have our biology is working against us.

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And so we have to deliberately think about what we eat.

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We're out just like trying to stay alive and eat whatever we can find.

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We didn't have to worry about that. Now we have to actually actively work against our biology.

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Same on fitness. We were having to go hunt and walk and constantly fight.

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We don't have to worry about going to the gym.

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Like, how much are you squatting, bro? That was not a thing everything manderthal

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was talking about they just went and did it right but now we sit on a desk all

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day and you have to think about okay what am i doing to get that movement and

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to try to to get that in my body and it's the same with our mindset the the

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mental processes baked in.

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To our minds, totally kept us alive for 250 years. They were great.

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We just don't live in that world anymore.

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And so the things that kept us alive are now positioning us to be really unhappy in so many ways.

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And we can't just intellectually know it. Oh, intellectually,

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I know butter and sugar are bad.

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That's not going to make them stop being delicious and me stop craving them.

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Just knowing that's not going to stop that.

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And it's the same with the mental processes. Just because we intellectually know

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it doesn't mean we're going to be perfect as soon as we realize that it's

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ongoing work we don't go eat really

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healthy food for a month or a year and be like okay i'm

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set for the rest of life because i did that thing or go

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to the gym for a day a week a month a year and say okay

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i'm good i don't ever need to do any kind of movement again or stretch like

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i'm set for the rest of my life but a lot of times we think oh this one book

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or this one workshop or this one thing like magically my mind will be there

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like no you still have the mind of a Neanderthal.

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The brain itself is not necessarily, well, we've learned a lot,

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but the biology is still what it was so long ago.

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And so we have to do the work just like we would in the gym or in the kitchen or wherever it is. Yeah.

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It's funny you say that because one thing that I've noticed about myself when

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I start a fitness routine, I do really good with challenges. I know that about me.

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So if there's like a 30 day challenge, I'm fucking crushing it every time.

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Like I am going to crush it because I'm competitive.

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But as soon as I see the actual results, like I see physically I'm changing, I'm losing weight.

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I know about myself that I think, oh, that's it. I've done it.

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Like I'm there. Like I worked out. Look at me. I got a muscle.

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And then as soon as I get that thought, it's almost like I lay off of the work. Right.

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Because you feel, at least I

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know for me, I will feel like I have accomplished it. But that's not true.

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Yeah. As soon as you lay off, you're back. Yeah.

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There's science behind it. Right. And so we didn't know why that was.

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But so the, we now know how dopamine cycle works.

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The higher the spike you get, the lower the trough and the longer that trough is going to be.

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And so it's not an accident that Michael Phelps would get in the most trouble

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right after the Olympics.

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He'd have the highest spike you could, anybody could ever have.

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You set all sorts of records.

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You're the most cool. Then you'd have this huge fall off and he'd be in real

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depression for, and he's not alone. long.

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It's very common for Olympians, for gold medalists to deal with that because

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you've got that huge spike.

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And so when you think about two people starting running and someone's milestone

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driven, hey, I'm training for this marathon. I'm going to be a person that runs a marathon.

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And the other person gets up and says, you know what? I'm just going to,

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I like to just move each morning.

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I like to be out when the sun's up and I'm going to just start with 10 minutes and see how that feels.

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And each day I'm going to do it just till it feels good.

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I'm not delaying the the gratification i'm just like doing it to feel

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good each day marathon comes and goes who's more

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likely to get up the next morning the person who had that huge spike delayed

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delayed delayed huge spike at the marathon huge fall off for long versus i just

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got these little dopamine hits it's each day it gets me going and it's the same

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with oh man i'm going back to my reunion or going to this wedding i want to

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eat i need to lose this amount of weight versus the person said you know you know what?

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When I eat French fries at lunch, I have a really hard time staying awake at my desk.

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So instead, I'm always going to get the same vegetables.

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I'm just going to do that because I feel so much better the rest of the day.

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That's just going to be my lunch thing. I'm going to start doing that.

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Versus a person like, I got two months. I need to lose 15 pounds.

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My high school boyfriend can be so jealous, right?

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Like whatever it is, who after the high school reunion is more more likely to

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stick on the plan and stay going.

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And it's, again, it's our biology. So it's finding ways to say,

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okay, wait, I know what's wrong.

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How can I trick myself into getting the joy and the dopamine hits from these

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littler pieces that make it more sustainable?

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I also realized you asked about the app and I never actually answered that.

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I liked the direction this went into anyway, so it's totally fine.

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Yeah. So the point being, so I had all the worksheets, the exercises in the

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workbook, you can download that website, but people love technology.

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So I created a GPT. So if you go to open AI and chat GPT, I created one called empire of the mind.

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That's an entirely customized guide to take you through all this.

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So you come in and say, Hey, here's what I'm dealing with, or here's something

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I have a question and it will guide you through every step that you need to do.

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Totally free. That's really interesting. interesting that is

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like super interesting so like for me i'm

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stuck in the middle i'm trying to

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write a book i have really bad writer's block right now and it's

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about my experience where i was

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this time last year i'm thinking that by the time

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christmas rolls around this year they'll probably be

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on the other side of it and i can sit down and finish that book

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but have a tool like that to just maybe put

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my mind in a different mindset yeah that

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that's what i mean i need a huge kick in

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the pants because i get set my own ways and i'm

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like yeah i'm gonna give this down and then all that self-talk yeah we're

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not going anywhere yeah yeah let me know it's on there let me know if it's helpful

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i'd love to get i haven't really shared it much with the public yet because

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i'm still playing with it but it's out there in the market yeah okay that's

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cool that's cool to hop back because I remember we all discussed before,

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just so the listeners are clear, we've had a meeting before.

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And I remember something that stuck with me that I wrote down was that you had

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this line that you said where you were questioning yourself and just what brought

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you to where you are today, where you were asking what you were running to and

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what you're running from.

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Can you talk about that a little bit more?

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Yeah. So this is actually, it's one of the the specific exercises in the book.

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And it's what I found so useful is that so much.

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So going back to the science, 47% of the time, we're not thinking about what

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we're doing. We're thinking about something other than what we're doing.

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So we're only living in one time ever. And that's the present.

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The past is in our imagination. The future is we're imagining again,

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all in our head, but half of our life, we're not actually living in the present.

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We're we're missing out on hyperlink.

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And I would find myself always, very rarely was it backward looking,

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it was always forward-looking.

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So when I'd be in school, I'd plan out every single course I would take,

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every other semester, and get so excited. Oh my god, these classes are gonna be so great.

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And then I'd get to that next semester, and I'd do it all over again.

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And at some point, I'm like, wait, I was so excited for this at some point.

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Why can't I just be in this and enjoy these classes that I picked out then instead

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of using the guide and going through and trying to just always look forward?

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And it'd be practicing forward to the meet or school looking forward to the

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job or job looking forward to the promotion.

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Each thing was, oh, let me kick it off. Let me kick it off in this future.

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And honestly, coming to Bermuda helped me realize that one, people may find

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it more, But I actually have no idea how long I'll live. Like, I don't know.

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Will I definitely be here 10 years, 20 years, 30, 40? Like putting off all these

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things of I will do all those things I want to do when I might never ever get one.

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Yeah. So G-Rex talking about like writing the book, I used to think,

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oh yeah, once I sell a company, I do this, like then I can go be a writer.

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And then wait, a writer is just someone who writes.

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What if I just crafted my days to make space to write?

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And I just started doing that now. What if, hey, I really love to swim.

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What if I just crafted my days to make sure I always have, even if it's only

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15 minutes here or whatever, always have time to get that in.

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Oh, I really like to play with my daughter.

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What if I just make sure that for 90 minutes every night, my phone and computer

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in a totally different room, there's no way anybody, even if the world was burning

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down, they can't get to me because she has my full attention.

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And instead of waiting, oh, once this happens, then I can do those things.

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I just started thinking, instead of this label of, oh, after acquisition or

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after retirement, started thinking, what are the things that I actually want?

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Instead of just putting this magical label like that is going to be the pie

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in the sky, what is it that I actually want from this? Let me get very tactical.

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And of those things, what can I start doing today?

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Because so much of the time, we put this label on it. And it becomes an excuse

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to not think through the details of what it looks like.

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And the tragedy is, we delay that joy, we delay the happiness,

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we delay the satisfaction, whatever it is, because we're saying we're going

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to get it when we get that promotion, whatever that thing is.

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And then we get it, and it's not fulfilling at all. It didn't fill any void that we had before.

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And so then we just go chase the next thing that's a label, but we never think

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through what is it that I specifically think it is, it's going to fill this void.

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And if you can do that and start creating it today, one, you can find out much faster.

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Does that fill the void? Did that actually solve the problem?

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If not, okay, I need a new hypothesis, right?

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Let me, what is it that I actually am trying to run to and be very specific

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to get those in and also run from, right? right?

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If it's to be a relationship, could be your job, could be anything going on.

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And some of the stuff we talked about of, I just, I hate my job. It's so demotivating.

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Okay. Well, do you hate your job? What is it you hate about your job?

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There's this one colleague that I have to meet with every Wednesday and,

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and you go through and you're like, oh, so what you're saying is Monday and

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Tuesday are good other than the dread you feel leading up to Wednesday.

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And you actually are enjoying a good amount of the stuff you're doing on Thursday

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and Friday, but you have that hangover from Wednesday of, I can't believe that

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person said that again, or we ended up in the same situation over,

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but all these other pieces are okay.

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So if you could change something about that and that interaction,

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is it a direct conversation?

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Is it getting out of that meeting? Is it, Hey, I need to change groups because

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I actually like the mission of the company or whatever it is,

00:21:23
but maybe there's something specific or a few specifics that you can start adjusting today to not say,

00:21:31
Hey, I have to wait or I have to change. I have to blow up everything. thing.

00:21:34
It's actually not everything. It's this 5% or this 10% thing.

00:21:38
What can I change on that? Because I may actually really like this other 90%. Yeah.

00:21:43
There's one thing that I keep thinking of. So after we first spoke of what we

00:21:49
were going to talk about in this podcast, it resonated so much with me that

00:21:53
I started to like, okay, you know what? There's truth here, right?

00:21:56
Why keep putting this stuff off?

00:21:59
I think maybe other people can relate because you almost feel like Like the

00:22:03
real passion or the thing that you want to do, you almost feel like you have

00:22:09
to work really hard on this other shitty stuff to be able to deserve that, right?

00:22:13
I got to put more time in at work. I can't afford to maybe just step off and

00:22:16
do a passion project or whatever that case may be.

00:22:19
But one thing that I noticed also that, at least for me personally,

00:22:23
that keeps me putting it off or putting it off is, and I'm curious if you've

00:22:27
ever felt this, is their fear to fail, right?

00:22:31
The fear to fail what it is that you really want to do.

00:22:36
If you take the steps to do it, what happens if it doesn't work? Yeah.

00:22:42
I would be like, shit.

00:22:47
Back to the grind. You know what I mean? That's how I felt about the podcast.

00:22:51
Is this going to work? Is this going to work? All the blood,

00:22:54
sweat, and tears that we put into it and look at pretty much everything that

00:22:58
we wanted to do has come to fruition and The fact that people actually listen

00:23:03
to us or even want to come and be a guest.

00:23:07
Yeah. For me, I'm like, it's almost either, I think it might just be like a scare tactic almost.

00:23:15
I feel like if I'm truly passionate about something, I know me and I'm not going

00:23:20
to fail, but you still wonder because it's something so different.

00:23:23
Fail is a label that you give it.

00:23:26
Fail is a label. There's no failure other than I decided to call this failure.

00:23:33
I decided to call this failure.

00:23:34
You get to decide what label you put put on it. So it's the fear comes from

00:23:40
aligning our identity too much to the outcome of something that is not us and saying, Hey, my worth,

00:23:47
my value is somehow tied to this thing that is outside of me.

00:23:52
I'm influencing, I'm putting my work in and I'm afraid if I put too much of

00:23:56
myself in and it fails and that's somehow a judgment of me. Yeah.

00:24:01
But we have to separate out one fail is only

00:24:05
a label we can give it they're objective facts of

00:24:07
this happened nobody downloaded okay was

00:24:12
that a success was that a failure was that indifferent those are just

00:24:14
label we get to decide then what we call that is separate

00:24:18
from that is not us that is a did at a point in time but it is not who we are

00:24:24
as people i and look this is one of those things that i can talk about intellectually

00:24:28
but it is terrifying yeah it i had a friend i swam with in college that would go in and do races.

00:24:36
And would lose and say oh it's fine because i wasn't trying because

00:24:39
he was so afraid that if he gave everything and still didn't win the race what

00:24:46
did that say about him so his it was always his fault oh i wasn't really trying

00:24:49
and what is life if we're not really trying again we don't know how long we're

00:24:56
here. Why not really try?

00:24:59
The old cliche is what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

00:25:03
The exercise I have in the book flips that on its head entirely.

00:25:06
It says, what would you do even if you knew no one else would ever know?

00:25:10
What would be worth doing for the doing itself?

00:25:14
If no one would ever know anything about it, you couldn't get any credit for

00:25:17
any of it, what would still be worth doing?

00:25:21
What would still hold value for you in the doing?

00:25:24
Those are the things to pursue. Not the, hey, I know I'm going to win.

00:25:27
We'll get no joy from that. but the things that we enjoy the doing itself that's

00:25:32
what makes life worth living that's so fucking true yes this is so oh man andrew i love you.

00:25:43
I'm now my like brain is like all the synapses are like clicking it's so fucking

00:25:48
true though right and when you were asking those the first thing i thought of

00:25:52
was this podcast because i I, we,

00:25:55
I maybe I don't want to speak for you, but I know I agreed to do something like

00:25:58
this because it's completely against my natural grain, right?

00:26:03
I don't like to be vulnerable.

00:26:04
I don't like to open up to strangers, right? But I agreed to do it because I

00:26:08
didn't think anyone would listen.

00:26:09
So it was that mentality of I have literally nothing to do, lose,

00:26:14
nobody's going to ever know about it. And here we fucking are.

00:26:17
But there's, there is such power

00:26:20
in that of not not thinking about what

00:26:24
i have to lose or or if nobody was

00:26:27
watching what would i do because i would be like unstoppable right like

00:26:30
i'm gonna do whatever the fuck i want it's gonna make me happy you know within

00:26:33
reason i'm not breaking laws but you know what i'm saying like yeah i mean get

00:26:37
you fulfilled right like this is where you have to the higher orders of emotions

00:26:41
right there's a feeling of pure pleasure right and then okay if that's all we're

00:26:45
gonna do we're just sitting here or eating ho-hos and watching porn.

00:26:48
It's not, a good life is not full fun, man. Right. That is not going to be a good life.

00:26:53
But you think of long-term joy, happiness, fulfillment, and saying,

00:26:58
okay, I, the person that gets up and loves running each more,

00:27:04
like, no one's going to see me finish the fucking marathon and wear the medal.

00:27:08
I'm going to show everybody I ran the Boston Marathon, whatever it is.

00:27:11
I'm out before anybody else is up there. It's dark. I'm going,

00:27:13
because I enjoy doing this.

00:27:15
The podcast whether anybody downloads or not you're like

00:27:18
me and t-rex we enjoy this conversation we're learning so much

00:27:21
this is great this is worth doing whether you people download

00:27:23
it or not i hope you find value for it from it

00:27:26
but i'm finding value regardless right this is what i'm going to do and we get

00:27:31
to decide the story we tell around the things everything else they're just cold

00:27:36
facts and then we get the narrative that goes with it it's very true so true

00:27:42
dang man like where were you in February when we hatch this scheme.

00:27:49
Let's just go with it.

00:27:52
So I have a couple of deeper questions.

00:27:56
They're not really deep. They're just, you know, I call them my inside the Acro studio questions.

00:28:02
Okay, here we go. G-Rex knows. They're a little different. They're a little

00:28:06
different. Okay. Are they? Yeah, yeah, yeah. First question.

00:28:10
Andrew, what is the best change you've made?

00:28:13
I would find myself, I'm generally, I'm lucky in that my general level is pretty optimistic, happy.

00:28:21
But there'll be days i wake up

00:28:24
maybe a little rainier a little cloudier like everything's

00:28:27
just a little more muted everything seems a little sad or

00:28:30
whatever and it seems like on those days a lot of times it's like i need to

00:28:35
ponder all of life's difficult questions everything that yesterday seemed fine

00:28:39
i'm not so sure in the light of today let me really dig in on this and i live

00:28:45
most of my life like that then i can't fall asleep at night because i'm pondering

00:28:48
and then like it goes in this spiral.

00:28:50
And then at some point it clicked. I was like, wait a minute.

00:28:54
I didn't sleep that last night.

00:28:56
And I wonder if I thought about these things on a good night's sleep,

00:29:00
what I would think about.

00:29:02
So let me write down all these things that I think are super important.

00:29:06
Maybe it's tactical work issues. Maybe it's these big life questions.

00:29:09
Let me just write them down. I'm going to get to them.

00:29:12
Let me make sure when I do it, I'm well rested. So I'm coming with my best self.

00:29:17
What I I find is 90% of the time I can throw the list away.

00:29:22
None of it was relevant. It was all just, again, me getting in my head on these

00:29:27
kind of grayer Saturdays. And sometimes the 10%, no, these are real things I

00:29:31
need to work through, but you know what?

00:29:33
I'm way more thoughtful and productive after a good night's sleep.

00:29:36
So I used to just think there were all these things at play,

00:29:40
but it turns out most of it was just sleep.

00:29:42
It was just like getting enough sleep to solve so So much of it.

00:29:46
So for me, that I would say is the most relevant thing I've learned in the past

00:29:53
12 to 18 months. Yeah. What about you, G-Rex?

00:29:57
Living in the moment. Instead of worrying about what's going to happen tomorrow

00:30:01
or an hour from now or what happened yesterday, living for what I have at this

00:30:07
very moment and being grateful for everything I have.

00:30:11
Love that. I'd mimic that. We just started. I say we. me. I really just started doing that recently.

00:30:17
Like I would notice if I had 30 minutes with my son at the playground.

00:30:21
Usually I pick him up from school. We'll go to the playground if he's had a good day.

00:30:24
And I used to feel I got to be on my phone because something at work happens.

00:30:29
I need to be there. Like I felt guilty for taking 30 minutes. Right.

00:30:32
And so recently I just started we're at the playground. My phone's in the car

00:30:37
and I'm here with him in this moment.

00:30:40
And so So that's been helpful for me, for him. It's been great.

00:30:44
Recommend. Okay. I highly recommend it. Next question.

00:30:48
If anything in your life, Andrew,

00:30:50
what is one thing you regret or wish you would have done differently?

00:30:54
Yeah, I think there's a meta answer of I'm really happy to be alive and be here.

00:31:00
And obviously, I'm a product of all that came before.

00:31:02
So the not knowing if I, the Mr.

00:31:06
Destiny, you change this one thing, everything else that could cascade from

00:31:09
that. I don't think there's anything I would change.

00:31:13
There's certain things I think I could have been happier sooner had I realized,

00:31:17
oh, wait, other people aren't the prop these kinds of

00:31:20
things but again if i had done it sooner would i

00:31:23
have written this book would i have been able to help the number of

00:31:26
people that i did help by having to go through that and so you you hear these

00:31:30
things of people the worst things people go through and say would you ever wish

00:31:35
someone to go through that i say oh god no i would never want anyone to have

00:31:38
to go through that say okay would you want to erase it oh absolutely not because

00:31:42
because that led to all this other growth and everything.

00:31:45
Yeah. I just, I wouldn't change personally. Same. Yeah.

00:31:50
I think I could, I could have been better in certain moments.

00:31:52
Like, Hey, if I had held my tongue in that moment, we certainly.

00:31:56
There are plenty of those instances.

00:31:59
Look, I've never made a mistake in my life. I have a long line of mistakes I've

00:32:02
made. I just, the concern of if I did that, where would I be now?

00:32:07
And I love where I am now. Same. No regrets. What about you, D-Rex? Any regrets?

00:32:12
Not a regret, maybe something I would have done a little different.

00:32:15
Maybe started setting the boundaries maybe sooner in my life than a year ago.

00:32:21
But if I had started setting those boundaries, I probably wouldn't have ended up where I did.

00:32:27
And then I guess the other thing is probably not standing up in the middle of

00:32:30
the office and calling everybody a bunch of fuckers. Thankfully, it worked out okay.

00:32:37
Knock on wood, live and learn. Also, side note, you said Mr.

00:32:40
Destiny. Are you talking about the movie?

00:32:42
Yeah you remember oh my god i fucking used to love that

00:32:45
movie and nobody knows about this movie i bring

00:32:48
it up all the time and you're right no one knows they're like does that exist

00:32:51
and i'm like i swear it does and i even remember going down a rabbit hole of

00:32:54
googling it to make sure it existed and that i didn't it's a really good movie

00:32:57
and especially because at the end he realizes what he had yeah exactly exactly

00:33:02
highly recommend people google mr destiny and watch it Mr.

00:33:07
Destiny I'll put that I'll put a link in the show notes yeah last question that

00:33:12
I have and it's similar to ones we've talked about already but what has been

00:33:17
the most impactful practice you've used that's made you more self-aware yeah.

00:33:23
This is not original and it's very cliche, but just the sitting for 10 to 20

00:33:28
minutes each morning and focusing on my breath.

00:33:32
It's lovely now because my daughter gets up earlier and she sits on my lap for

00:33:35
either all of it or half of it, depending on when she gets up and does it.

00:33:38
But this gets back to the, people say, how do you fix this?

00:33:44
And the whole point of these exercises, you don't fix it. You don't change the underlying biology.

00:33:49
You just get better at noticing when when these things are happening and to

00:33:54
be able to move it from the subconscious to the prefrontal cortex and then make

00:33:58
active decisions on, do I want to spend time doing okay.

00:34:02
My, my default pattern is I'm really worried about missing an email from work.

00:34:07
So I'm going to constantly have my phone on, but then I started noticing and

00:34:10
say, wait a minute, what is the worst thing that could happen for 30 minutes?

00:34:15
If I put my car, my, my phone in the car.

00:34:17
Okay. And then what's the worst thing that could happen or

00:34:20
the best thing that could happen if i have a pattern where i

00:34:23
get 30 minutes with no distraction with my

00:34:26
child every day and i can just get start to

00:34:29
notice that consciously and make those decisions and make them better and so

00:34:33
i think that that just focusing that meditation that breathing whatever it is

00:34:39
we're again not buddha not perfect but it's made me me much more aware when I start to get tense.

00:34:47
I'm still not 100% good at holding my tongue, but I'm probably twice as good

00:34:51
as I was a year ago and 10 times better than I was five years ago.

00:34:54
And so I think that's the thing that's helped me, whether it's be more present,

00:34:58
all of it, I think it has this cascading benefit for me.

00:35:01
I love that. What about you, Jurex?

00:35:03
I think practicing a lot more self-love and self-care, just really taking care

00:35:09
of myself, So realizing that what I do for myself will help me.

00:35:16
Like a hundredfold, whether it's getting out and going for a walk,

00:35:19
spending time with my wife, going outside, anything to just clear my head.

00:35:24
I'm thankful I have tools down that I didn't have a year ago.

00:35:28
And so I can, if I feel like I'm getting sad or something, I may now have tools

00:35:33
to help me come out of it. I'd be happier on the other side.

00:35:36
We put a Christmas tree up this year. I'm super excited about it.

00:35:40
I'm planning my office this weekend so I can put a tree in my office.

00:35:44
Doing things that make me happy help me find my everyday life.

00:35:50
I love that. I love that. I started going back to something that had worked

00:35:53
a long time ago and related to that workout thing where as soon as it starts

00:35:57
to work, I'm like, oh, done, cured.

00:35:59
But I went back to something that somebody had told me, which was,

00:36:03
and it's helped me be more present, but also more self-aware,

00:36:06
is to take pictures of things that I see that make me happy.

00:36:11
If I feel happy in that moment to

00:36:14
stop and take a picture of whatever it is so then I have this album

00:36:17
of it's like my happy album so I started doing that

00:36:19
again that helps yes this is

00:36:22
the thing people say oh live in the moment don't take the picture this and

00:36:25
the other but especially as a parent going back

00:36:29
to some of those pictures those videos like I love

00:36:32
it I love like in being conscious

00:36:35
about how much of that time I will live in the past without saying

00:36:38
hey I'm not living the the best i'm gonna go deliberately take these five minutes

00:36:41
and put myself into everything i

00:36:44
felt you know the yeah i don't know how

00:36:46
many months of my daughter's life every single night we

00:36:49
had this routine right where it's we would play macklemore's growing up and

00:36:54
i would dance with her around the living room built this whole playlist and

00:36:58
then you go through daydream believer and like all these kinds of things and

00:37:02
then i'd do her bath and then i'd do her bottle and then i'd read her a story

00:37:05
and then make up a song that I was singing and put her to sleep every single night.

00:37:09
And my wife made a couple of videos of those things and just to be able to be back in that.

00:37:16
I totally bring out the phone every now and then to do it. I think it's great. Yeah.

00:37:21
That's really awesome. So I actually have a question for you.

00:37:25
I'm going to ask Amber first. So Amber, when you were running your boat,

00:37:29
or when you're in a funk, what do you do for self-love and self-care in that moment?

00:37:36
Yeah, it depends if I can figure out what the cause is. So sometimes it's, I just need to move.

00:37:42
And so it could be put on music and go

00:37:46
to the gym it could be jump in and go for a swim like it's just

00:37:49
some kind of movement of look i'm feeling i don't know

00:37:52
but i just need to move and go sometimes it's i

00:37:55
may have done too much and i'm just over tired overworked and try to get a nap

00:38:00
in right like hey can i lower the bar on what the ask is for me today and get

00:38:06
a nap in those are probably the two biggest making sure i just get playtime

00:38:10
with my daughter like that's one of those that one of her favorite things are tickle fights.

00:38:15
And she takes it so seriously and it's word points and it's like all this kind of thing.

00:38:19
But it's just moments of pure bliss and like getting those in to just the world

00:38:25
disappears and that's all there is.

00:38:27
And reminding in those moments, regardless of what else is going on,

00:38:30
like there's this, there's always this. And this is totally free.

00:38:33
And this is here and this is right now. And this is my life. And so this is great.

00:38:36
And then I think the other thing coming back to...

00:38:40
What we were talking about before on just writing it down.

00:38:44
Like what are the things that have me in a funk and let me just put them down

00:38:48
and not necessarily deal with them right now.

00:38:50
This is not the day if I'm in a funk and I have things that are making it more

00:38:54
funky, that's a bad combination.

00:38:56
Let me just write it down. Like physically not type it, not put an account,

00:39:00
like physically write it down.

00:39:02
So it's coming off my, my short term memory. It's down.

00:39:06
My brain doesn't feel like it needs to keep playing that movie because it knows I've captured it.

00:39:10
And I'll come back to it when I'm in a better state.

00:39:13
I like that. I'm going to try that. I'm going to try that too.

00:39:17
I like that. I would highly recommend. There's something about physically writing

00:39:21
something down, the hand, pen to paper, to just get it off the mind.

00:39:25
So it stops playing that loop and say, I'm going to get to it just not now. Yeah.

00:39:31
So Dirty Skittles, what for you,

00:39:33
like what do you do for self-love and self-care when you're in a funk?

00:39:38
When I'm in a funk? Oh, I can get in some deep funk sound.

00:39:42
So we were just talking about this the other day.

00:39:45
We were just talking about this the other day and goes back to our interview

00:39:49
part when we first met you, Andrew.

00:39:53
I don't remember who or how it came up, but the thought of just walking away

00:39:57
from my computer and going outside and being in the outside and paying attention

00:40:01
to other things outside of that little bubble that I had. So I started doing that.

00:40:05
And just the idea that when I'm at work, I would always be glued to that computer screen in that seat.

00:40:12
I wouldn't even like go and get food. Like I was like there, right?

00:40:16
Knowing that I don't have to be there. The world's not going to end if I take

00:40:20
10 minutes because I just need a break.

00:40:22
And going outside, being with my dogs, playing in the yard for just a couple

00:40:27
of minutes has really improved everything.

00:40:31
Does that include hanging out with the spiders? The spiders are gone.

00:40:35
It's too cold now. They're out of here.

00:40:39
They're in the house now. No, I'm just kidding. So, Andrew, how do people learn

00:40:44
more about you? Do you have a website?

00:40:46
Can you tell us a little bit about your book? Things like that?

00:40:50
Yeah, yeah. So all things Andrew are on the website, mandrewmcgonnell.com.

00:40:55
I'm also on LinkedIn. Certainly connect with me there. on Instagram,

00:41:00
M. Andrew McConnell. A lot of it's around M. Andrew McConnell.

00:41:03
Not because I go by M. Andrew McConnell versus just Andrew.

00:41:07
Those are the handles I could get and the website I could purchase.

00:41:10
So I'll author the book and everything else. I'm going to go by my middle name.

00:41:15
It's a very practical reason that ended up there. But yeah, so the idea of the

00:41:19
book, it's get out of my head, creating modern clarity with stoic wisdom.

00:41:23
And there's a bit of a debate with the publisher because I said, well,

00:41:26
shouldn't we do ancient wisdom because there's buddhism in

00:41:29
here and there's taoism like i don't know ryan holiday moves

00:41:32
a lot of bucks let's go with stoicism stoicism is

00:41:36
the framework but it really is pulling from

00:41:40
this concept of we can't control the people who walk on the street by our house

00:41:46
right they walk by but we do very proactively decide who we want to open our

00:41:52
door to and allow allowed them to come into our house and sit on our couch and

00:41:56
have dinner with us. We decide that.

00:41:58
And our house can get hit by a tornado and get torn up or hurricane or earthquake,

00:42:04
whatever. The house can fall apart.

00:42:06
But the thing that we actually really, really own from birth that we didn't

00:42:10
need to borrow money from a bank to buy anything, the thing that we own is our mind.

00:42:14
And all thoughts and other people are the exact same. We can't control the subconscious,

00:42:20
the things that float by and go in front.

00:42:22
But we can, if we realize it, decide what we want to invite in to live inside.

00:42:28
And so it thinks about our mind like real estate.

00:42:31
Hey, instead of just giving our mind away to all these things,

00:42:35
why don't we act like owners and decide who we want to allow in,

00:42:40
under what terms, for how long we want to allow them in.

00:42:44
And so it uses... One, it gets into the kind of evolutionary biology.

00:42:48
Why is this? Why is that our default state? And there's a lot of science behind

00:42:52
it. But then two, what do we do about it?

00:42:55
And the funny thing on what we do about it, there's a lot of modern science

00:42:57
explaining why it works, but what we need to do about it... Mao Tzu,

00:43:02
2 years ago, figured out. Siddhartha figured out.

00:43:06
The Stoics and ancient Greeks, Socrates, some of them figured out.

00:43:10
I don't don't think it was an accident 2 to 3 years ago.

00:43:12
Because it was when we stopped having this brain that worked really well when

00:43:16
we were hunters and gatherers that we started moving into cities and civilizations

00:43:19
saying, oh my God, why are we miserable all the time?

00:43:22
Life is so much easier than technically what was there, but people are so miserable.

00:43:26
And it's because our brains were not built for this world.

00:43:28
And so all over the world around that time, you had these people coming up with

00:43:32
these solutions. They didn't know the science of it.

00:43:34
They just knew, wait, wait, these practices really make life so much better.

00:43:39
Hey, you know what? I don't actually ever get happier when I just accumulate

00:43:43
more and more. Every time I get more, I want more.

00:43:46
What if I subtract from the things I want, I'm happy right now.

00:43:51
Wait, I can just decide to be happy with the things I have. Wow, I can do that.

00:43:56
And Buddha, Lao Tzu, the Stoics, they all came to this realization,

00:43:59
right? Like they're all these truths. proves.

00:44:01
And so it illustrates this with my own journey, but also with Olympians,

00:44:08
social activists, entrepreneurs, artists,

00:44:11
all different kinds of people, and then has these tactical worksheets and exercises. So what I find is.

00:44:19
You need your own aha moment there needs to be some resonance

00:44:22
that you see oh okay this applies to me like that

00:44:25
story that person i really get that and so that's

00:44:28
why i really try to illustrate it with historical figures and modern figures

00:44:31
and all different things so you could see that aha and then put those tactical

00:44:34
tools at your fingertips to say don't just feel the harm but here's what you

00:44:40
can start doing if you want to start living this better life that is yours for the taking,

00:44:46
i am so excited yeah so i ordered your book it'll be here on wednesday.

00:44:53
And i'm super excited to read it yeah same

00:44:57
in the meantime you know the the workbook so the

00:45:00
exercises are available for free pdf download on the website if you go to mandrewmcconnell.com

00:45:06
so you can get that as a free bonus and then if you go into chat gpt and look

00:45:13
for empire of the the mind that's the there's an ai that will walk you through

00:45:18
those exercises all self-guided,

00:45:20
that's awesome so awesome so that's wonderful

00:45:22
thank you andrew i appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today i've

00:45:26
learned so much so thank you i appreciate it it was a lot of fun i always enjoy

00:45:31
catching up with the two of you yay hi y'all thank you so much for listening

00:45:35
to this episode i'm g-rex and i'm dirty skittles don't forget to subscribe rate

00:45:41
and review this podcast.

00:45:43
We'd love to listen to your feedback.

00:45:45
We can't do this without you guys.

00:45:50
Music.