One Life To Live

Welcome to Wabi Sabi. Jim, you and I are back again for the Wabi Sabi podcast, the art of imperfection. And this week, my goodness, it is a week of showing how life is so imperfect. And I can't find a better way to kind of start this. But you know, the other day, like earlier in this week, I think it was Monday or Tuesday, the earlier this week, and I know I'm time stamping this, but we know whatever I am.

Yeah.

Interestingly, you don't know the backstory for this. So in the morning, I We received an email actually from our school saying that's unfortunately one of our Parents one of the fathers passed away One of the founding fathers of our of our high school of our school passed away leaving three young kids You know without a father and this is the second death in in our school. Another one was lost due to a motorcycle accident. And these are fathers like, obviously my age or even maybe younger because they got younger kids. And it's so tragic, like it's just so raw, right? And that same day, like literally two, three hours later, my staff sends me a message. It goes, did you hear about a former client of mine, Elena?

Wow.

and that she passed away. And I'm like, you gotta be kidding. I was in shock. And mostly because, obviously I knew her really well. Intimately, obviously because we worked well together and she was a client and her husband was a client and we worked together for several years. And we ran retreats here and she was a powerhouse in terms of in the chiropractic profession, in terms of what she was able to do.

Hmm.

Even outside the profession, she was really a proponent of, you know, natural birth and really set up a lot of foundations and stuff for proponent to, you know, ensure that birth becomes more natural. And when I heard that news, I was shocked. She was, unfortunately had a very aggressive lung cancer that for six months and was very aggressive and she passed away that day. And those two news hit back to back in a single day.

Yeah.

it was pretty raw and I was quite shoken up, mostly, I mean, obviously because I knew them, but mostly because it really kind of shakes the reality of going how life is so precious. And I don't know about you, but every time I hear a death, someone that's close or someone that I knew, it really makes me change how I see the world. But the problem is sometimes, Jim, I have two questions, and not sure if the right appropriate time to ask this question, but one, but I love to answer this sometimes in this podcast. One is, why does it take something so tragic for us to kind of view our life differently? And two, why isn't it sustainable, in a sense of the changes that you go, I'm gonna make that change, why isn't it sustainable? Anyways, those are just my raw thoughts as I think about this.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, Lawrence, I think this was, it's a very important topic that you raise because I saw your post earlier in the week and you were amongst many people who celebrated the life of someone who was special. And it's when, it's when these things happen that it does really, there's an outpouring of, of emotion and we're going to miss this person and They're the ones that really do make you stop and think and look at this and say, okay, it's tragic. What quality of life did this person live? So it's not sometimes always the number of years, but the years in the life, you know? And so that's one of the first things that always happens for me is like, what did this person do? How did they live? And how are they leaving such a legacy that everybody- far and wide is looking at this and saying, what a tragic loss. So that's the first thing that comes up for me. And I think, you know, it's been happening quite a bit more. I mean, we're starting to enter an age, you and I personally, with our demographic, that these kinds of things do happen, right? And it's, it does make you stop and reflect and think and go, you know, maybe I should do things a little bit differently. I think life has a way of,

Yes. Yeah.

gently whispering in your ear and tapping on your shoulder and giving you some clues. Sometimes you don't get them, but a lot of times people do. And it's what they do with that information that makes them go, hey, you know what? I need to start taking better care of myself. I need to start changing elements of my lifestyle because I wanna be here for the long haul. And so some people do take those subtle cues, other people totally ignore them. And... The question I think you've posed is why? Why do some listen and some don't? And why do some people, given the shock of their life, still revert back to old pap?

Yeah, I think the patterns are so strong. And that's the challenge, right? The patterns are so strong, you've had to held so deeply for so long. It's, it takes so much to change. But yet, it's for some people can like these moments can literally shift the trajectory of life. And which is fantastic, right? Which is a part of me always feels that I want to and this is just a bomb, because it hasn't happened all

Yep.

There's moments in life, you know, obviously a lot of people have passed away along, you know, during my lifetime. And during those moments, it's like there's moments of where I feel the need, actually, this is what I go through in my head. I want to make the necessary changes so that to honor this person, right? Honor their existence, meaning like, not that they need it, but it's almost because, because they lived, I want them to feel like existence in this world matter, at least to me. And because they matter to me, I want to make sure I honor them by doing the right things to head in the right direction. And because they inspired me, because I feel like that will carry on somehow their legacy. Right. And like, but that's the thought process, right? That's the thing that you want to, but sustaining that so difficult sometimes. And that's the challenge is to kind of how do you how do you maintain and shift because I guess what it comes down to actually, and I was thinking about it out loud, what it comes down to, you still need to have the building blocks, you still need the foundation, you still need to have the desire on a regular basis to remind yourself that this is what you're doing. And I think this is what we lose track of because you fall back into old patterns because you just, you want to change, but you actually haven't created a new path or new clarity of exactly why you want to change. you haven't created a new why so therefore the new why hasn't really stayed with you long enough to be able to go, hey, this is where you need to create these you need to lay down the foundation or the tracks. The tracks is the foundation of process that you know, you will need to for example, what I mean by that is that if I want to, let's just say I want to Get fitter, you know? And if I'm gonna need to do that, I would need to lay down the, I can't just say wanting it. I need to at least literally lay the foundation and go, okay, when am I actually gonna work out? What kind of food am I gonna actually have? Am I gonna get the proper sleep? Like all these things have to be laid down the track so that the more tracks you lay, the more process you lay, the more that these process leads you to habits that lead to formidable changes. I think that's what we're, that's what most people don't do is that secondary step.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I was just reflecting on what you were just saying there too, that occasionally you'll have events like this that are just a shock that happens suddenly and make you sit up and take notice. It's kind of like a control, alt, delete, which is like a total reset. But some ways, age old wisdom that I have heard, particularly through, interestingly, one of my first martial arts instructors, always talked about the habit and the power of intention and, and deliberately. deliberate intention and basically with one statement, what is easy to do is easy not to do. And it becomes a habit. So for all intentions and purposes, you say, right, I'm gonna start making these changes. I'm gonna start doing this, this becomes a habit. This becomes a habit. And after a little while, you might get a little bit of slippage and one or two things drop off. And then suddenly you're not doing it. And that then becomes the more habit up until. we have suddenly certain pop-up screeners reality that says, hey, pay attention, something's going on here, something really important. And that may shock us back into our senses because a lot of the times people live a life of default and repetition and not really consciously deciding that's where I'm gonna put my focus and energy. And sometimes it's just habit and routine and default and that's what becomes the norm. But I think that the... The episodes that you've had of last week, and particularly carrying on from what we spoke about probably in the last couple of weeks, I think there is a general trend for you and I where we're getting this awareness of what's really important here. What are we really talking about? Because life can be perfect in your head in terms of the vision, this is how it's gonna go, this is how it's gonna be, and then suddenly life happens. The imperfections in life, people pass away, people leave, people... change, you know, basically priorities, people, you know, make different decisions and suddenly the perfect plan is no longer perfect. But you owe it to yourself to still keep working towards moving forward with these imperfections that come along your way.

Hmm. think the other thing that stops us from really making the changes that's necessary in these moments is also because most of our lives are actually pretty comfortable. Right. And the reality is that we all lives, most of us live a relatively comfortable life. Of course, we always want it to be better. We all want it life to be different. And we want more money, more fame or whatever, right? We all want more of, you know, because we're striving for more. But there's this, we, but most of us have reached this level of like, but we're comfortable though, right? It's not like it's, you're not, most of us are not in a position where it's so terrible that you need to make a change today. And I think that's sort of what happens. And it's like this, this sort of creep that happens in our lives. It is so slow that we get into complacency.

Yeah.

and we don't necessarily realize how far away we are actually from our goal. And the amount of time we waste, it kind of cumulates over time. And this goes with our physical health. We don't realize that we're no longer as fit as we could have been if we just actually did something a year ago or two years ago or 10 years ago. We have this creep of our health. that we, you know, we don't realize that, you know, by eating the poorly for X period of time, it just slowly creeps because it kind of comes to a point and our body's no longer able to handle some of that pressure. We have creep of complacency in our business, where things are slipping and you don't realize that things are not going as well. And it's not, you know, it wasn't like it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago when things were booming and we're in a totally different environment. You start to realize that your financial opposition is not as great, you know, and you're getting older. So which means the time to save and invest is shorter and shorter. And you realize like, man, I should have should have could have done it than this 510 20 years ago. And so I think all of these creep, you know, everything that kind of comes out, we start to realize that we're comfortable enough to not make a change. And so because not bad enough yet. Right.

Yeah. You're right. You're right. Things aren't great, but they're not bad enough that you're compelled to change this moment, this instant right now. And you're right. It's, it's like the pendulum and the pendulum hasn't quite swung into the parrot, into the, the arc that says, dude, you've got to do something right now because there's no more mucking around here is today's the day. So, but sometimes that's the

Mm.

the, that has to get tasked to overcome that inertia of not doing something about it. But, you know, I want to, you know, this is probably going to go down a potentially challenging path for both of us, but I think that seeing as we started off with this theme, we talked about situations where people go back to their old habits. But can you think of, because I certainly haven't, maybe I'll tee off on this one first, there have been people along my journey who have passed away that I've never forgotten the lesson from. And I still carry those learnings. So I might start off with that if that's okay, because I've got a scenario. So there have been stages along the way that people have passed away and they all had amazing

Go for it.

dreams and visions and they touched me in a really deep way. So when I was 18, 19 years old, so I was playing cricket at a very high level, didn't get to the highest level that I wanted to, but nonetheless I went off, graduated, studied chiropractic, went to a country town, I was playing cricket and there was an up and coming cricketer who was 17, 18, 19 years old and He would have, you know, by all accounts, he would have represented the country. He was that good. And he was tragically killed in a car accident, you know, um, and he was being silly, you know, and there was fault laid in there. So that really hit home for me about the fragile fragility of life. That was probably one of the first instances where I went, you know what? Um, it's not a game, you know, you can play around, you can clown around this guy. I was at, so I took that lesson, right. Fast forward a few years, there's a person that I was taking care of in our practice who, fantastic, full of life, didn't rest, did not rest at all. And yet at 32 years old, boom, dropped, had basically a stroke there and then passed away because he wasn't honoring what his body needed. Sleep, he was cranking out, it was constantly push, push. I went through a period of time where there were three or four people that I knew very well who committed suicide within a period of three or four weeks. And that really pushed something in me to actually start leaning into the importance of having honest communications. And for men traditionally, not suppressing and hiding and she'll be right, that kind of approach. So that was a really big catalyst for me. And then the final part with both my mom and dad passing away.

Mm.

I really took the importance of life. You know, when you do lose both your parents, suddenly you go, I'm actually, it's me, it's on me now. And there's a level of maturity, even though you're an adult, that forces you to level the heck up even further because you realize that, okay, I'm not the kid anymore. So I just touched on those, you know, we can expand on them if you want to or not, or you can share some others and then we can deep dive. But I just wanted to show that...

Mm. Yeah.

Yeah, there are times where we default back to it, but sometimes the lesson and the learning stays with you and it does alter how you go about things and what you place importance on.

Did you find that these moments or any of these moments you just mentioned, did they any of them have like a massive shift in you that you never went back? Like almost and what I mean by that, it's almost like taking an elastic band and then you're stretching it and you stretch it to a point where it never goes back to its original shape. Did any of them do that for you?

Yep. Yeah. I think every, every one of those ones, every one of those ones. And that's why I, because there are, there are many more people than the five people that I've mentioned who, uh, along the way we've, we've lost, but they're the ones that, you know, in an instant I went to straight away because there was something about me, you know, I changed either how I viewed life. I changed life in terms of how, uh, I took on more self responsibility. I grew up further. I made important, it helped me identify what the real important things in life are. So that were the elements that really made me stop and really reflect, you know, so.

Yeah, that. Okay, that's great. Because for me, it's a little bit different. And I'm trying to reflect upon that. Like, I mean, with all these deaths, I find that there's definitely there's been shifts, but not as profound as yours, I find. Okay. And so for me, it's been more. It's been more gradual, it's definitely in the moment. And this is why I brought that topic up. It's just for me just feels like it's, I feel like it's unsustainable, like it's unsustainable. And I don't go revert back to normal.

Right, okay. Yep.

But I will also argue against that theory because I would say that normal is no longer the same as it was before. It's just subtly different. And I know well enough that even if I change 1% slightly and then the next one happens, it changes me 1% and then so on and so forth. Like that trajectory of that my life has now, expand that 10, 20, 30 years. is completely different spot than I would have if none of these things occurred. So I I'm for that. But my changes have been very more subtle. And, and it's raw now because obviously it's it's, you know, in this moment. But I wonder if I speak to this about a month from now, will I, I'll remember it. But what I have actually made any, you know, significant change, and I would probably reckon that I would have made some changes in certain decisions. But

Yep. Yeah.

because I already know, like this week, I've already made some certain decisions that I've changed in myself. Is it sustainable? I don't know, I have no idea, I can't answer that. But I will say, stacked on top of each other, I'm a completely different person. I know that I'm a better person and a completely different person because all of these people have ventured my life and they passed away sooner than they should have. And they definitely made significant, you know, realizations in my life to accumulate, to recognize how life is so fragile. But it also reminds you of this thing that I heard today. Sorry, not today, but this week.

Yep.

I was listening to Morgan Hauso being interviewed. Morgan Hauso wrote the book Psychology of Money. He has a new book that came out or just came out which is called Same as Ever. And what was interesting, and he talks about it in Financial Returns, but it reflects back on health and everything else because basically one of the tenets he talks about is that the GFC happened in 2008 and when that happened, no one expected it.

Okay.

In hindsight, you can kind of go, oh, there were the clues, but that's in hindsight, right? And the global pandemic that happened, no one expected it, no one could have predicted it. And so what he was saying that he goes, the things that actually knocked us back, whether it be financially or health or life, are usually things that you just never planned for, which is what we kind of start off this conversation with. And it happens about one every 10 years. And...

Yeah.

And but that's the same as it ever was. It's always gonna be something that you didn't plan for. Now we can, and this is exactly sort of what Mike Tyson says, the famous quote is like, you know, you can always have a plan until you get punched in the face. And these are the punches in the face that you don't expect. And so he uses this story. I never read the book yet, but there was a story, it's a perfect example. I did not know this story. I know I can't proof. I don't have a Jamie like Joe Rogan does to fact check this, but he talks about, yeah, I got to shame, okay.

Yep. Yeah, you've got a gym, so I'll see if I can, if I, if it sounds okay to me, I'll, I'll give you the, uh, the endorsement.

Right, so it's actually about Houdini. Did you know how Houdini died? I don't know, I didn't know this, but anyway, so Houdini, obviously we know Houdini, who was like a great magician and a great person who lived and did these magic tricks. And one day, after one of his performances, he invited about, I don't know, let's say 10 people from the audience to come backstage with him. And when he was backstage, just this, I don't know, 20-year-old, something, younger fella, right, walks up to Houdini and punches him in the stomach. randomly. And he wins him. He's like, oh, knocks him out a little bit, right. And people go like, what are you doing? But he was basically what he was doing. He was reenacting one of Houdini's acts on stage. One of the things that Houdini did was he stand on stage and someone punches him and he doesn't even blink an eye. But the difference was during a performance, you're prepared for You know the punch is coming. You can brace yourself. You can, you know, strengthen your core and everything else, it doesn't phase you. But meeting him outside, you know, afterwards, after a show, he didn't expect it. And what happened later that night, Houdini was quite, you know, unwell. The next morning he complained of a stomach ache, so he kind of went to bed. And the next morning he died of appendicitis. I didn't know that. Anyway. So the thing is, so the story really illustrates is that when you just never know, even things that you would expect, when you don't expect these things and it happens to you, you could wipe yourself out financially. You could have a health problem. You could have a life tragedy that happens to you, which is unexpected, which has happened to me. I've talked about my father-in-law and the change is the directory of your life. And those instances are usually unexpected. You can't prepare for it. But reflecting back on this, and the lesson I'm taking away from this is that sometimes we can't live our life constantly trying to navigate perfection in our life, which is what this whole entire podcast is about, trying to be perfect to make sure that we're prepared for any things that bad could happen. Because the reality is, you can never prepare for it. the inevitable thing that will happen to all of us. And that's the challenge that we have to learn to do it. So rather than living life in fear, we need to kind of lead into life to recognize that there's a moment of opportunity where we can make decisions to go for the best because that's what your heart tells you to do, what your head tells you to do, what your spirit inside of you is telling you to do. I think that's one of the things that we moved.

Yep.

to have a great life experience is because we took that chance, we took that leap, you know, not knowing exactly what's on the other side.

Yeah. You know, I'm sorry. I was, um, as you were talking about that before, I was thinking of, uh, there's an economist or a currency trader called Nicholas Nassim Taleb, who wrote a couple of great books, the Black Swan and Anti-Fragile, Anti-Fragility. And that's really what I was taking out of what you were saying was these Black Swan events, they're the ones that you don't anticipate. No one expects them to happen. You know, a few years back,

Hmm.

in Brisbane in Queensland, they had these one in a hundred year floods. And then the next year they had another one and people were like, hang on, what's going on? This is only meant to happen once every hundred years. It's like, yeah, but you had, I know, all right, 100.

Ha ha. That is the worst term in the world. Like one in a hundred, like I don't know how many one in a hundred events I've had in like twenty years of living in Australia.

Correct. So that, that to me basically says, these are just statistics. They're just averages. And the whole principle of anti-fragility was really about saying if things are so, if you are holding on by a thread in all the areas, whether it's your relationship with your health, your, your finances, whatever, and you suddenly have this unexpected, um, event that stretches your parameters, you're, you're in some strife. You know, your body will tap out, your finances will tap out. And so the principle was always expect the unexpected. Anything can possibly happen. And there's a great level of uncertainty that is in life. So you can't anticipate all contingencies. What you need to do is to actually go, how do I mitigate the majority of these things that outside of my control, but adapt. And it's the capacity to be able to adapt, which is a fundamental, we talk about it a lot from a... our former lives in healthcare and chiropractic is adaptability. How are you able to adapt to what is going on to reboot, re load and keep moving forward?

Mmm. Well, I think we need to add into that. You need, that's why we train physically. We physically train because we're trying to adapt to ensure that to expect some physical stressor on our bodies at some point, maybe not now, but maybe when we're 80 years old, that if we didn't do the things we did now, we wouldn't have had that ability that could have broken our hips or something. I'm not saying that that won't happen, but it also, we're trying to do our best to make sure that that hopefully reduces the probability. The physical. right, then there's also the mental aspect, where you got to be mentally, physically anti fragile, you got to build those resilience, you can't just, but you can't train, like, sorry, you can't wait until something happens to you psychologically before you go, Oh, my God, now, how do I manage the situation, you have to put yourself through the situation and develop a strong mindset all the way through. But unfortunately, there is no return on investment when you do that. Like there's, it's like, it's something that you have to just continually work on. The third thing I think is about emotional, you know, building the emotional strength that that you have to be able to withstand some of these big swings of emotional things that are tragic, you know, could be a life or death situation in your family, someone close to you, how do you handle yourself in those moments? And that was I think you know, those are really important strengths that we have to learn to develop over time that is required. And we can see that in today's society, especially in the, you know, younger kids, for example, if we don't provide them with physical strength, we don't provide them with strong mindset, emotional strength, it's very difficult for them to now handle situations when it does come up at some point when you're no longer hovering as a parent. to show them that, you know, that it's just a harsh world sometimes, right? And that's my biggest fear for my kids is that, you know, have I done enough to prepare them? And that's a, because they go on to experience, you know, downfalls. That's what I feel like sometimes, you know, the society is moving to protect everything and everyone that everybody becomes hypersensitive to everything.

Yeah. Yep. Yep.

And we're now no longer having conversations or proper conversations because we're so sensitive to what you can say or what we can't say.

Yeah. Yeah, just in the last little while I read a book, I'm not sure if you've come across it, it's called The Coddling of the American Mind. And it talks a lot about that. It talks a lot about how universities, which traditionally were the environment where you went to expand and explore and learn about yourself and learn about the world, to be tested by conflicting ideas to work that out, have now become areas of intolerance, where if you don't agree with this.

No. Yeah.

You are canceled. You don't have the right to say things. You don't have a right to do this. So consequently what's happening is that people aren't able to have a conversation or a debate to find out reason and laws. It's like, I don't like what you say. And they were talking about test cases where in university, people would invite a lecturer onto the campus and the students would. shout them down. They wouldn't allow them even to open their mouth and speak because they didn't want to hear what they had to say. And so that was not helping these young people expand themselves. They were just like, I'm not going to pay attention to things that I don't want to hear.

Well, that happened when I went through school in Chiropractic College. Like certain speakers were not allowed to be on campus because they had certain views that the school and some students didn't believe was valid. And you start to realize, I'm like, how is that open communication or how is that open debate or how is that even possible in this environment where we're supposed to have higher learning and to allow us to have better conversations, to expose ourselves, are you so afraid that they're so persuasive?

Yeah.

that go into like, swish shift of mind. But if you don't provide that opportunity to learn both sides of the story, how can we make a conscious decision? Are we only putting out certain types of students or certain types of thinking, because that's the thing that you think it's right. And I think this goes beyond things like, it has ramifications down the road. Like for example, like let's say, AI is a really hot topic at the moment and thinking about who we should put rail, guardrails and regulations. I don't go, okay, well, who's gonna do that? Right? Like who, if you get the government, the US government and the Senate to make decisions on who can regulate, they should be regulating, the government doesn't understand AI. Most people in AI don't even understand that. How is there someone who doesn't know AI gonna create regulations that you don't even know what you're doing? Right? It doesn't make any sense. It's almost like taking a doctor to get them to regulate, you know, financial systems. It doesn't make any sense. And so, That's just one and it goes down this rabbit hole of you know, social media, you know Suppressing certain views or thoughts because someone is deciding that's right or wrong for society here And this is where we're heading these these really dangerous paths on on on these open comments And I think that this is where we're losing out Because we're not actually getting both sides of the story and you might not you don't have to and this is I think we're leading to a point where people can't even disagree because it leads to

Mmm.

like you said cancellation or we leads to people hating each other but rather than just you know what i don't agree with you jim i don't i don't really believe in what you think but we can still be friends right and that's that's the society where we grew up with and that's not what society is what we should be doing is because that's how society's supposed to function we don't have to agree we barely would ever agree on everything that's almost impossible

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Well, you know, when, when our kids went to school in primary school, they went to a Steiner education, they went to an alternative form of education and they had this really fantastic principle there where if you had two kids that just didn't get along, traditionally people would go, we're just going to separate these kids. You go do your thing and the other. Whereas in Steiner education, what they do is we're going to bring these kids together. They're going to work it out. They're going to find out the happy medium. And they always did. They always did. They initially, butted heads off, but they found a way to, I guess, develop tolerance to actually understand that, to respect that, hey, you see things differently, I see things differently. And for me, it's gotten to the point of, you know, how do we play the ball, not the man or woman? And how do we debate the topic, not each other? How do we? And so that's... But that is a skill to develop because you're not always going to the, the imperfection in life is you're not going to always like everybody. You're not always going to get along with everybody, but how do you work with everybody along those ways? That's, that's a skill and a tool because if you only just focus on the things you want to hear, the people you want to hear things going always perfectly, according to how you want them there, you're going to be set up for disappointment somewhere along the way and quite a bit of stress. So it's a case of a great skill is to be able to go, how do I,

Hmm.

navigate how do I adapt, how do I get along with people who I don't necessarily see eye to eye with.

Well, I think what's interesting, you know, tying it back to what we were discussing at the beginning of this podcast is that that's one of the things I've been trying to take some lesson from is like, life is limited. So therefore I really reflect upon decisions of when I do things or not do things, how I act or not act. and why I make those certain decisions. And I realized, you know, I'm sure all of us kind of really reflect upon like, I don't say certain things or don't act certain things because I'm afraid of how that looks from a perception point of view. So I hold back on certain thoughts or hold back on certain things because of perception. And I realized I'm like, well, that's not really authentic, is it? You know, and because we live in a world of perception.

Hmm.

and caring about what other people think. We oftentimes don't put ourselves in situations where it's creating conflict because we want to avoid it. And because we're not creating conflict, we're just kinda just moving along. And it's very difficult to put yourself in a situation where you actually stand in line and think of certain, like, you know, take a stand on something. And I just saw a brilliant interview of Leon Musk, actually, on, I think it was on CNBC, and he talked a little bit about that. He said, you know, he's not patting himself on the back saying that he's the greatest person who has made a change in the environment, but he believes that single-handedly, he has done more from, you know, in terms of, I'm not saying I agree or disagree with this, but he has said, I'm quoting, I'm not exactly quoting because I don't know exactly what he said, but he said something similar in line that he, single-handedly, has done probably more for the environmental movement. than any, but any other single person in the world. Now he's not saying it just like pat me on the back and go, hey, here I'm amazing. Because he actually says something that it's like, it's not about your perception of me that I care about. I care more about the action that I actually took. That matters more, the effectiveness, rather than saying I appear to be amazing and environmental, but what have I actually done? And so he's viewing the point of actual taking the measurement of someone's success in anything based on the actions and behaviors and the impact they actually make versus about what they look like. And we all kind of think about that as there's so many of us, so many people out there look and appear to have done certain things, but have they really effectively? And if you measure it just on the results. And I know it's questionable, right? A lot of companies would say, environmental or whatever campaign or charity, you know, but they're doing it because they get a tax return or tax benefit because they do that. Right. I remember hearing stories of, you know, the ultra rich, for example, they set up these, you know, corporations, I'm sorry, these charities, funds, like the, so I'd say, yeah, foundations, Gates foundations and stuff, but you know, not most of us don't really like, Oh, that's amazing. That's philanthropy. But most of them don't realize that I think they only have to run like a certain percent.

Foundations and yeah.

But 90% could be just expenses and actually don't. And it's basically another way of filtering some of their money, right? I'm not saying that that's what they're all doing. What I'm saying is that we don't think about that because we just think that they're doing the right thing all the time.

Yeah. You know, and look, you're right in terms of what I'm always curious is, um, what motivates people to get behind a particular movement or a cause. So why environmentalism, why environmental, why, um, looking after children, why, you know, and, and a lot of the times if we trace it back, yes, okay. The, the tax codes and systems support people. to donate and historically you go back, I read J.D. Rockefeller's autobiography earlier this year, a very despised person, very polarizing figure in history. Some people look at him and go, this is amazing. Other people just hated him for what he ended up did, but his foundations created a whole lot of philanthropy. So the tax codes support these kinds of activities. And a lot of people just use the rules sometimes been there, but work within what is possible to create the greatest change. And so a lot of the times they too can't anticipate what's going to happen. But what I'm always curious is, you know, what made, um, you mentioned, you know, what made Elon Musk go, I'm going to get right behind this thing. You know, what is it that, and I, you know, we have friends who lost children to suicide, who now have, have got this reinforcement of drive to go, this is really important to me. This is a cause that I'm gonna really get behind. So I think, you know, circling back to one of the questions, one of the points you had very well is that what is it that motivates people to keep doing things and others to just default into them? I guess it's the difference is that if you are touched, you know, if it's more than just, oh, this happened, you know, and you can't move on from it very easily, you're gonna be touched in so much of a form and you're gonna... totally reconfigure how you view life and through the expression of your energy and time, effort and money, you're going to put into trying to improve things. And so out of wound and trauma and heartbreak sometimes is some of the greatest levels of contribution and philanthropy that come about. And so I don't know what it was that was the catalyst for all these guys, but I know for a lot of people the catalyst for them doing great things is their own personal heartbreak and hard time.

Yeah, I was actually listening to an interview of Walter, Walter Isaacson, who obviously wrote the Elon Musk book, but also Steve Jobs books and several other ones, I think Frank Frank, Frank Franklin. And he was talking about like how, you know, does it take something tragic like some sort of like poor childhood to really create like these types of geniuses that just create, you know, amazing changes in the world?

Yep. Steve Jobs. Benjamin Franklin's. Yeah.

that define it and his answer to that is like, yes, he does think that, you know, like, it takes someone who's experienced some, some track tragedy in their life to kind of be wired differently, to go after it now doesn't mean that just because you had a tragic life, you will do something amazing. But it's like, but for those people who have done amazing things or like changes the trajectory of humankind, usually have come from a background.

Yep.

where there was some sort of tragedy or abuse or some sort of trauma that led them to kind of think or behave in a certain way that people don't understand. I look at Can't Hurt Me from Goggins, for example, you read his book and you're like, and I'm not necessarily proponent of what he says and does, but I'm reading that book, I'm like, I can see, I don't need, I just, I'd love to just get 1% of David Goggins in me, right? I don't need like the whole 100%.

Yep.

But you can see if you read up as like history, right.

The guy's running on broken legs, Lawrence. The guy was running on broken legs. That is insane.

Right. And you look back into history and you go, okay, this kind of makes sense. Like if you look at his life, like his first few chapters, when you look at his childhood and how he grew up, you're like, damn, I can see like how you're wired that way. But through his teens, he didn't make anything of himself until like much later that he somehow flipped the switch. Right. And it just, and it just goes to show that sometimes it does take, you know, some sort of like massive trauma to kind of create those. But for us, like for people who haven't experienced major traumas, who grew up in relatively healthy families. It's like, you don't have to be like good nor would you want to be like an Elon Musk or David Goggins or but you but you you can learn from them. You can get inspired by but you don't also have to be like them. You don't like don't try to force yourself to feel the pain that they had the pain they needed to go through, because it's not gonna be the same. I find that you can learn from them to kind of recognize I'm like, how does this apply to my life? And that's, everybody's gonna take away differently. But I think when we try to mimic that and go, and apply that situation to all of our lives, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna have the same impact.

Yeah. I think what I take out of, you know, David Goggin's story is, is a lot about the, you know, taking back power, taking back control of the situation, like in his own way, in his own authentic way. I think that's what I really appreciate about that. It's like, okay, not a lot of people will have the desire and, and You know, he, it's very clear for him that he was, he had demons that he was working through and he was sometimes when you hear long distance runners, they're running from something. You know, uh, it's like, kind of like Forrest Gump. If you ever watched the movie, he's running, running. It suddenly has this epiphany. He goes, I don't need to run anymore. And so what it was, the running process was either running away from something. But fundamentally what I've always, what I've always appreciated that he's always about saying personal power, personal empowerment. You've got capacity control. You don't like something, change it. If you don't like things will happen to you out of control, you know, that you don't anticipate, you don't expect. He's in seals training, he's in buds training. They throw him in the water tied up and it's like, you don't anticipate this. I didn't know this was gonna happen, but you have to find a way to, as you mentioned earlier, emotionally regulate exactly how you're going about things to get back to a point of going, what can I? navigate, what can I control? And sometimes, you know, you talk to people in those really tough moments, where the victory is not month to month or year to year. It's like day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. And that in and of itself is a victory. Just when you go, I don't think I can keep going any further. That's the victory. You know, that to me is, I'm always, I really reflect and I respire, because you only, there have been times where I've been knocked.

Hmm.

to those low levels where I just, I've looked at this and gone, this is just dark. It's such a dark place here, you know? And I didn't see this coming. I didn't expect that coming. It's horrible. But I just got to one step forward, one step forward, one step forward to regain that composure and momentum.

Well, that's the one thing that I've take away and I hope that you know The listeners can can really take that lesson or what we talked about and distill that into sort of one major lesson that I Want to share which is what you just sort of said which is Take While I'm taking away is like for example Just knowing this death has occurred and you know, I'm taking a cold shower in the morning and realizing going this is socks But I'm like at least I get to feel this You know, that's the perception I have. Like, I just constantly remind myself when I'm hurting in a workout or I'm hurting somewhere, I'm like, yeah, but I get to do this, right? I get to feel this pain. Whereas, unfortunately, some people can't. And I think that's the perception, like that's that perspective that needs to be shifted in us to recognize that, yeah, we're all gonna go through hardship. You're all gonna go through tough times.

Yeah. Good reminder, yeah. It's a good reminder. Yeah.

everybody else does like me included you included Jim like every every single one of us going to go through tough times. But it's like, what can you learn to build that resiliency, the anti fragility, physically, mentally, you know, and emotionally, that allows you to be that much better for the next round. And the next round after that, and the next round after that, and the next hundred and 1000 rounds after that, I think that's the person that I want to kind of strive for and remind myself.

Yep. Yep.

And the reason like, I mean, let's be honest, the reason why we're doing these podcasts as much as is for you listeners right now listening, it is just as much as it is for me to kind of remind myself to serve every single week to be in this podcast to say things to things that I need to listen to myself. Right. And it's it's these are things.

Yeah. Have you ever, have you ever gone through that? You, when you have you listened back to some of the podcasts that we've recorded? Yeah. And I have too. And it's suddenly I've gone, Holy smoke. I needed to hear that myself. I really did. You know, because a lot of the time we're like, we're in the zone, we're talking and, uh, we're really present and we're really focused on it. And suddenly I'll hear something that you've said and I've got, I remember him talking about that, that was really cool. I'll go back and suddenly I hear something in a different way and I'll go.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Holy smoke, I heard the doubt in my own voice and it's a really profound process, even though we get to support other people every day. All right, putting ourselves on this platform and actually, you know, cause there's a particular style of podcasts that we're talking about. It's not a, hey, do everything. This is awesome. This is great. We know everything about how to go about things. We're going, hey, We're working through this as well. And what endears us to the people who are listening and we share this week, Lawrence, we've got some people who this is their number one podcast, right? Which I'm hugely, hugely grateful for, but that's the part that people go, okay, they see themselves in what we're talking about. They see themselves in the challenges and by us happily sort of sharing that they realize, okay, right. Okay.

Yeah, it's awesome.

Life isn't perfect and it's not front of house and back of house. And the fact that you're prepared to do your own work gives me the, I guess the impetus to do my own.

I'm looking forward to re-listening to this episode when it gets released, probably like two months later, and then reminding myself to keep the momentum that I said I was going to probably lose and then restart that, reignite that momentum again. That's what I'm looking forward to. So Jim, it's been a great episode, and I really hope that people's lives are changed and somehow and be shifted based on the conversation we had. I'd love for you to really kind of think about...

Yeah. Yeah.

what we talked about and really is distill like is there one thing particular thing that really resonate with you? And my advice, my encouragement is that you do that one thing. Like whatever inspired you just go and do it. That action itself will shift you I feel I know will shift me and so I would just don't try to do everything we talked about a lot of things but just do that one thing I think that will make a massive impact. Do you have anything to say before we go?

No, I'm good Lawrence. I think that, yeah, this was one that started through loss that allowed us to get to accept that there is change and imperfection. But then also from what I'm hearing is just to get to gratitude as well. Just be grateful that you're here. You get to do what you choose to do. You get to choose the battles that you engage in. And as a result of daring to live a great life, you're gonna come across challenges and they're going to test you and that's how it's meant to be.

Life is never perfect and that's the way it's supposed to be. This is Bobby Savi, this is Jim and I. Hope to see you on the next podcast. Take care.