Episode 16: Joe Templin – I Died And I Have ADHD, So I Don’t Waste A Minute

0:07 Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to role models. Juicy conversations with beautiful humans. I'm Jennifer Norman founder of the human Beauty movement and your host, my guest today is Joe, templin, Joe is a human Kaizen expert and author. He has more degrees than a thermometer and is an ultra-marathoner, and A pendant geek, a special-needs single dad, and a martial artist. Basically a human Swiss army knife. His book everyday Excellence was the Kindle number one, new release in professional development. I'm so happy to introduce him to you. So welcome, Joe, Jennifer glad to be here, you know, I don't know why I am on a podcast about beautiful humans because I got the face made for radio. That is so not true, of course we always say beauty. Is from within, but I think everybody is beautiful and of the more unique the better.

1:04 That's what I say. I think that there's always something really magical about different faces. So I think that's amusing, but at any rate, please share something about yourself, share anything about yourself that you think that we would like to know what's your background? And how did you become that? Beautiful human that you are today. So I had to awesome parents. Encouraged education, my mom, the nun who I tell jokes about. Yes, my mom was a nun and then Had six kids. So that's an entirely different, interesting story and my dad was the first person in his family. To go, to college was Army ROTC got commission and then three months later was the Bay of Pigs. So, here we go. Thinking that the world's going to end, and that's how he started his military career. He got out during Vietnam and found his consulting firm. So, here I have these two very strong influences, that always actually encouraged us to respect. Authority.

2:00 But not blatantly accept it and to always desire to learn and better ourselves. And so that is the foundation from which my entire life literally is built off of. Yeah, you pretty much had a life filled with discipline and Order, didn't you? It was discipline order but I needed it because I'm ADHD and back in the 70s. We had diagnosed people that we just said that they were high energy but that gave me the overall structure to be able to explore within and be able to pursue what interested me. So whether it was physics, psychology poetry philosophy, martial arts music, my parents always encouraged me to explore and learn everything that I could and it is I think that combination of having reinforcement and discipline.

2:58 But also Freedom, that Creates a dichotomy that allows for growth. Yeah. And you said that you had to awesome parents. And so that's wonderful. That it seems like you had such a good relationship with them and that they were very encouraging of you pursuing. All of these different interests. Is that right? Yes. I mean my mom bought us bugs when we were kids. My mom was the youngest seven. Kids, she grew up on a farm. So, she also taught us to shoot. She taught me how to hotwire a car. She taught me how to distill alcohol. Very handy. As a nun to be able to have her car into still alcohol. Yeah, no. So these are just like some of these random facts and tools that in other parts of my life later on, when I was in college, or when I was mental officer came into play, but it was just this insatiable desire to learn. I think I was like eight years old but I told my mom, I wanted to learn everything there was to learn, and she's told me, well, better get to work and the encyclopedias over there. She also Something that infuriated me when I was a kid, if I couldn't spell something or know what, then she told me go, look it up.

4:06 I'm like, if I could spell it, I would be able to look it up, so she didn't like that. But so did back then exactly. And so, the modern equivalent of that is GTS, Google that stuff. So that's why I tell my kids all the time, but no thing, my mom taught me when I was reading early on, was always have index cards because if you don't know what something means, you write it down and then you can go look it up. Later, or you can take notes and so that was something that in college my fraternity encouraged and even to this day, I always have either my phone on me and take notes or if I'm actually wearing suits. Like today I can have index cards in the pocket but this is literally how I run the complexity of my life is just writing down the four or five.

4:51 Most important things that I need to do for the day, cross them off, as I get through them. And then I David Letterman and throw in the garbage. I already threw Today. So hopefully your third in the recycling. Yeah. Okay. We'll just say that you do fantastic. So that is amazing that, you know, it seems like you were just curious. You had all of this curiosity and you were willing to go through all of the details and the iterations in the permutations to find out everything that you wanted to know about any subject at all. And you know, this is one thing that I encourage people are in high school. Land College just afterwards is now's the time to figure out who you are college is the greatest, you know, Smorgasbord of all time, I mean you can try 500 different types of tacos. You can try a half dozen different martial arts, you can taste every food that exists on the planet. You can study different philosophies. You can audit classes that are completely outside your major that might be of interest and so you can learn and develop and an example that I use of why this is important. Was there was this one guy who actually dropped out of college, but he hung around a took all the like, what a 10 different classes that interest them, and he went and took a calligraphy class that guy was Steve Jobs and because of that class, we end up having all the cool fonts on the Macintosh and eventually all the other computer system.

6:20 So as Steve Jobs said you can't connect the dots looking forward. It's only looking back that you can make some sort of orry and figure it out. So that is one of the things that I encourage your listeners. Is I have teenage boys as you mentioned. And so the analogy I use is everything in Life's a giant video. We have this massive Quest that we're on. We all want to get to the castle, Beat the Boss, you know save the princess, get the treasure and all that and to do that though, it's not necessarily a linear path. You have to take all these side quests. The side quest might be going into the tavern. In talking to weird old men which is typically me, you know, to get some information.

7:03 It might be going into the end and just resting that's taking a couple of days of vacation to recharge your body. It might be. You need to get some more gold. So you take a side gig or you work for a company for a few years to get resources and relationships that are going to come into play. When you go back to your main quest, whatever that is so early on your 20s and 30s is figuring out what that question really is. Starting to build the mindset and skill sets to ultimately achieve it. Yeah for sure I love that analogy and I often have used that myself is that, you know, life is meant to be fun. So think of it as a game and so thinking of it as a video game is highly appropriate, especially in this day and age, where people are wondering if we're living in The Matrix or not.

7:50 Anyway, if we were living in The Matrix, I want plug on it and be able to go I know Kung Fu take the blue pill I don't want to know. Well, tell us then because, you know, you got multiple degrees as you had mentioned. Can you share some of the things that you had pursued as far as your education and whatnot and before you went into the military? So I actually never went into the military because I was early as Mac as a kid. In fact, for my asthma is legally dead at 10:00. I got better obviously in the early 90s, there was no exemption for asthma at that point. Those came later on. So, even though I was competing for a world championship in Taekwondo, I still was not allowed to enter the military. So I worked for DARPA.

8:37 I did research in a lab or cousin Intel officer. I taught individuals in the military, so I taught self-defense to them, even though I technically wasn't allowed to be one of them, I taught them. So this is one way as Muhammad. Ali says, service is the rent that you pay for your room here on Earth. This is one of the ways that I was able to serve and help. Individuals, which is something that I inherited from my parents lll. Always, as my mom always said, if you're having a bad day, go help somebody else out. Yeah. And just so that's one of the things that I did. But I started college at 13, because my parents said Paul was too young to start college and some of my friends from that point are still some of my closest friends on the earth. Some of these people are really, really smart and so I was at Hopkins and then I end up going to Rensselaer Polytechnic, RPI, oldest engineering school in the English-speaking World majored in I'd physics and Communications and minored in astronomy and literature and whole bunch of other things. And I was writing that entire time. So writing has been component of who I am for 35 plus years. Same way that martial arts has been a component of who I am for that long finish that up started, my MBA working on my degree, in engineering physics, fish, all that stuff up. Went into the professional world doing financial planning. I passed the cfp exam and At this point, written thousands of review, questions for it, got multiple degrees and finance like my chart advisor of philanthropy, chartered Financial Consultant and to

10:09 picking up my masters in executive counseling. And really the four Ps, are there to help explain the world. In my opinion, four peas are physics. Philosophy, psychology and poetry and those four different mindsets essentially. Just to try and answer the same set of questions but from completely different perspectives. And so, one of the things that I do actually is I shift between different mindsets on a regular basis and try and utilize, at least multiple of them every single day, because if you can actually look at a situation from two different perspectives, simultaneously, you generally get a better picture of what's going on.

10:55 Same way that we have two eyes to give us depth perception. Can you give an example? Advil of maybe a problem that you would tackle from one way from maybe a Philosophers perspective versus a physics perspective. So for example, if I'm working with a business owner and they are trying to do something with their business, maybe they're trying to land a new client, maybe they're trying to get funding. Maybe they're trying to figure out what area to move into for a new product line or something like that, we talk. About it. Both from the point of view of physics which is Hardcore, mathematical problem solving modeling and things like that.

11:36 But then like this actually happened this morning was talking with somebody that advised. I had talked to him from the philosophy, point of view of, if you do X, how are you going to feel? If you do, why, how are you going to feel which path is the path of Integrity for you? So we looked at it from a pure Financial which is more. Nicole and thus physics point of view, but we also explored it from that philosophy point of view, he's like, damn, you template make me ask tough questions. That's awesome. I went to Medical a really good problem. Would have been the art of the poh is not say everything is the old saying, so I would just like leave the pregnant pause there and make him very uncomfortable as he contemplates it.

12:29 A lot of ways. Sighs. Yeah, but as Robin Williams said, in Dead Poets Society poetry's there to movement, so there's awful. That's not untrue. Well, it's interesting because I agree with you. I think, you know, looking at a problem. Number one, you can't do it. You can't find a solution being in the mindset of the problem and so getting out of that zone and getting into a different Zone, whatever that zone is is number one, very helpful but then also channeling and getting into these different mindsets allows you to Liberty of just creative exploration in order to get two different Avenues and things that you hadn't necessarily or would not have necessarily.

13:17 Thought of if you would just thinking vary linearly to your points like the physics or the mathematical roots and people rely on that, don't they just like the physics, the math of the middle of the numbers people get almost pigeon-holed or biased in some ways and every situation is like life or an individual them. All's we're like a diamond, there's multiple different facets. And so if we look from different perspectives, we can see different things, different aspects, different facets and increases our understanding. And in many situations, it can improve our appreciation of the beauty of it. Absolutely seeing things from all different angles and then you find something uncovered, just like I see your beauty and you say you have a face for radio.

14:05 See, you know what, I got a sense of humor. Or so, that's a great thing. If you can't laugh at yourself, you know, you're again. Yeah. So, tell me about this little aspects of your aspirations, the martial, arts, and doing marathons and things like that. How did you get involved with? Just going for all of these, you know, more interesting and determined types of physical activity? As I say, I'm not naturally talented in any way, shape, or form. As I said, I was severely asthmatic. I was legally dead when I was 10 years old. So, My starting point in terms of physical capability is well below. Basically, anybody else's, however, one of the things about dying and coming back is that you don't screw around anymore, you know, as my friends joke I burn the candle at both ends and in the middle of a flamethrower and so I use all 86400 seconds every single day.

15:02 In fact, I tried multitask so I can squeeze in extra ones because it's not like you can put them aside and drawn. Them tomorrow or next week you have to use them up that particular day. So my martial arts started because there was a bunch of kids on the bus, harassing my kid sister so my mom signed my sister's up for Taekwondo and then I started a couple weeks later and for some reason it just fit with me with my ADHD the hyper-focus that was something that for some reason I could hyper-focus on and being Irish I'm sort of thick-headed it'll always and so growing up on the farm. I had the natural Farm Boy Work ethic and this, just a naturally appealed. So, I found ways to multitask. So like I would literally stretch my legs out in the stretch machine and sit there, and do my Latin homework while watching TV and stuff like that.

15:52 And so I just really got into it. And so, I got to the point where every single morning I would get up, and I would train. And 35, plus years later every single morning, I still get up and I train every single day, I still throw the basic punches that I learned. Decades ago, 100 plus times each and every morning. At this point I've thrown over 10 million punches. I don't even need to think about and I'm still faster and people half my age because I refuse to give in and acknowledge that leveling up chronologically. And so you know I just continue to focus on that from there. I drifted into a playing volleyball. Played Junior Olympic.

16:32 I played in college, I actually lettered in college and something completely different. I was mascot. So yes. I was a cheerleader on top of everything else. I started running to supplement my other sports and I swore to myself, okay. I'm going to do a marathon by the time I turned 30 year olds I'm never going to do one. I did my first one about month beforehand. Then I did another Marathon about a year later I'm like this socks. I hate running. I'm never going to do another Marathon again because it takes too much sacrifice. In terms of the time I'm tired I'm always hungry always hungry, you know their recovery and all that. So I put aside Add the long, long distance running was running shorter distances, but then my friends from high school about 7 years ago, called me like hey we got something crazy that, you know, you might be interested.

17:18 So I started doing a Ragnar's which are approximately 200 mile team relay races where you get two Vans of six people each and the first fan starts. Somebody runs and then everybody rides in the van. And then you switch Runners and switch Runners. And so you go through all six people, then you go and you rest or you sleep on the floor of a gym. Or maybe in the van, while the other Vans were cycling through. Then the first van runs again, then the second one first and second one, you run, three legs and you run anywhere from 15 to 20 ish miles and I got into doing that I did about 20 of those but then my one running team during covid when all the races were canceller like okay we need to do something crazy so we don't go insane.

17:59 So we started doing like virtual Ragnar's and all this and then we decide. Hey let's do a backyard Ultra. So every hour you'd run, one, two or three miles in the next hour you doing. Again, next, are you again? So I committed to the screen miles and unfortunately they start at nine. I thought we started at 5:00 a.m. so I had a four-hour Head Start. So I had 12 miles more than they did. Then by mid-afternoon I'm at like, you know, 30 35 miles. I'm like, you know what, why don't I just stretch this out and do a double Marathon because from a mathematics, point of view, two negatives, make a positive. So if I did two marathons, technically I didn't do a single Marathon. It was okay. Yes. I know I would bizarre logic. And when you're like 40 miles into a run, your mind starts saying weird things. So that was my first ultra marathon and one of the big things I learned during that I was about 40 miles into it, I was completely physically exhausted. I was starting to go a little weird mentally which happens deep into longer on my emotional reserves were almost tapped out and what my friends called me and she was going through a major crisis, emotional crisis.

19:06 And so I shifted all my focus Asan to her while I was still shuffling along because I wasn't really running at that point. And I spent the next two hours trying to talk her off the ledge and get her through her emotional things, and that's how I end up getting through the last part of the first ultramarathon was by focusing on somebody else as opposed to myself my pain. And that's how I was able to complete it and afterwards as I'm, you know, sitting there having a beer in the shower because shower bills, the best thing in the world especially after You miles and I'm like, you know what, with a little more training, I could actually do this better. And so, six months later, I actually started earlier had better nutrition.

19:48 I train little bit bar, and I ended up doing 100 kilometers. So, 10 miles more in four hours less, wow. So right now, I'm training for a 72 mile one in November. Oh my goodness, that is a lot on the body. Yeah. My physiotherapist like gets mad at me. She puts me back together again. And she's like, oh, Okay, you know you're limited today you can only do like seven miles today. Like really come on. Well, that is extraordinary because it's just seems like you know every time that you cross off something on your list you wanted like best yourself, you want to do a little bit more, and I don't know if it's something that, you know, consciously do, but it's subtle like, well, if I've done that, then I need to do this next logical step. I need to do this next logical step and you don't really think about the like it as a goal unto itself. Perhaps, it's just like, yeah, let's Do it. And, you know, that's very much a martial arts or Runner sort of mentality, you know trained in the martial arts and you get one belt rank your training for the next one, you Fay you compete in one tournament your next morning your training again because it's there's no finish line for those races. It's the constant desire to improve which is one of the concepts behind every day Excellence. Is if you can get just a little bit better every day, what can you become over time?

21:07 Where can we go? And so it's that concept some of my friends joke, acted to you know competition and Challenge and there might be some truth in that but it is just the continuous chance to see what else we can accomplish. Hmm. So that's the major theme of the book is that, you know, the everyday Excellence is unjust like the constant B of improvement that you can do no matter what they are in your life, right? And it's little things, every single A, we make somewhere around 10,000 micro decisions and a lot of them are routine. If we can make, just a couple of better micro choices per day, then the arrow for that day, it's pointing up instead of pointing down and, as clausius tells Deadpool and the movie, I'm a big comic book nerd by the like, four or five choices difference between being a hero or villain.

22:01 Now, for those of us without superpowers, it's those daily, tiny things, 45, better choices, you know, do I Eat the healthy snack, or do I have the donor? I love donuts. So, you know, that's a difficult one for me, but you can also set up your environment to default better choices. So, for example, if you've got problem that you drank too much soda, okay, don't have soda in the house. So you're stuck with water, tea coffee, you know, some a better option. If you have problem that you keep going on your phone to a places that you shouldn't go, whether it's a game that waste your time. More if you dating app on there that really shouldn't have delete it, then you're not tempted.

22:43 You don't even have to expend any energy to have discipline, the choice, just completely disappears. And this is why I say things that Feller end up winning Nobel prize in economics for is decision-making. Theory, concept of nudge of making it so that it's easier to make better decisions. And if you can do that, then you have more mental bandwidth for the more important things that you can accomplish. More. But then your routines which make up 75 plus percent of our day are better and move you in the right direction. That's why you should have your running shoes, next to the bed and your your workout clothes. So you roll out of bed and your trip over them and so you put them on instead of having to go and get them out of the drawer, the closet and have that extra couple of steps which make it so that you're less likely to make the good choice. Yeah, and that's the basis between other great books like Tomic habits and evolve Atomic habits. Yeah.

23:41 Thrive at Arianna Huffington. I'm, they're very much into like, the micro steps is, like, what are those very easily? Achievable like little tiny things that you can do to move the needle every single day to make those. Those improvements that can have overtime, accumulative and dramatic effect on your life. Did James clears concept of habit, stacking something that I actually utilized in writing the book and I still have a habit stack. I get up in the morning. I grabbed my half a cup of coffee. As it's ready to go. And I turn on the coffee pot, which I prepped the night before. I sit down, I brain dump anything that was in my brain. So I just write for a couple of minutes. Then. I read a couple of different things right now, it's the daily laws, by Robert Greene last year, it was daily stoic.

24:23 I read my copy of the book. I post a couple of quick things and then I get up and I go work out, I go run for 20 minutes, Taekwondo, whatever. And then I sit down I write again because those workouts My body was getting fully actualized for the day. My mind was processing, the stuff that had just read in. Typically I'm listening to podcasts or audiobooks or whatever when I'm working out. So I now have all this stuff that jumbled around there was working out and ready to then write for another 20-30 minutes. And so I start that day at 4:15 in the morning so my 5:30 I've already accomplished enough to set up my day that if my day ended right there, it would have been pretty productive already.

25:08 And this is before anybody else is there to help sit up. Yeah. And I want to thank you, first of all, for sharing with us, your diagnosis. Because I think that when people think about ADHD, they think about things that might be distractions, any think like, oh, if I'm on a path and then all of a sudden, something else happens, then it kind of blows up the day and they and they get off track. But in your being able to be disciplined and recognizing your ADHD, and taking that to a place where You're able to have it stack, you're able to really create functionality and all of these things that you love to do and compress the time and what you're doing it, because you're not messing around and doing all these things that are weight, quota quit wasting time, it becomes extremely productive and useful for you. I also use a lot of techniques that I've learned over time. So for example, I completely turn off the phone. So like now my phone can't even rang to disturb us because it's turned off completely.

26:05 You know what, the world's not going to end in the our conversation that were having If it does so be it. Yeah, so it's not going to be fatal during that time if I'm going to work on a task but whether it's writing or taking care of some marketing things all set a timer for 15 to 25 minutes. It's called the Pomodoro method and just hammer away. On if I'm writing, I don't need internet to research stuff. I literally turn the internet off while go into a different room and completely Focus. So I'll be in a bare room so there's nothing there too. Stratton. Now, am I going to try and do that for three hours? No, because I know my limitations, which is why things that you learn over time but any one of us can do things for 10-15 minutes.

26:50 You just fly all out and get hammer away. Then you get up and you do something else and bicycling, that way going from task to task to task, you can actually accomplish a lot of different things. Now, there's something called switching friction, you know, the trick, the cost of mentally. Shifting gears from X Y, but I shift very quickly because of the ADHD so I can go do, do do, do, do, do and just you go through serial tasks quickly and then, you know, I do multitask like a madman. So if I'm making dinner I'm listening to a podcast also. Supervising the kids getting their homework done know, if I'm working out, I'm listening to something and I stopped every, you know, 10 minutes while I'm running to take a note or write something down, you just because my mind still processing.

27:37 I wasn't I Our poems, and the basis of multiple articles, while on a 5-mile run all the time. So then I just give myself a voice memo or whatever and keep going. And so, capturing like that allows us to then be able to come back around and process as appropriate. So people should keep like a pad by their bed. Wake up. You have an idea. You just write it down and roll back over and go to sleep. If they're in the morning it's not lost in The Ether so that you can move on forward. So these are strategies that That I have learned over time. And one of the things that I found, because as we talked about previously, I've got to special needs kids ones.

28:17 That Asperger's ones autistic is reaching out to other members of the autism Community to find strategies that they have found have worked with their kids. So one thing that I actually done to myself is something I learned for using with my son, if he's having a really bad day, like you just got up on the wrong side of bed, things are not going, right? I'm like, buddy, we're We're hitting the reset button, literally hit the button, I bring them back up into his room. We take his glasses off, we put them on the nightstand, I tuck them in. I swaddle them tight like you do a baby because Ava autistic kid like that pressure and my kids still wears a mask because he enjoys it so you just turn it on by turn out the way. I'm like all right good night walk out.

28:58 I come back in about five minutes later and I wake him up again as if it's a brand new day and about 50 to 60 percent of the time it works. Tell them to completely reset. So why don't we? As big people do that, you know what? If you're being cranky, SOB, turn out the lights, take a five-minute power now. Reset your day, like that everybody around, you will be happy that you did. Mmm. Yeah, that's amazing. And I love the concepts that you were just talking about of like making sure that the things that could potentially distract you or derail your day, are not within your limitations, we're not within even your reach or your grasp. And so, you know, Turning off the computer, you're turning off the internet, you're turning off your phone. You're making sure that those aren't even available to you. I kind of liken it to the idea or the concept of vampire energy.

29:47 They say, you know, when you keep things plugged in, then there's still sapping energy. And so even like keeping a phone near you that could go off and that you might hear rang. I mean, your attention automatically goes to that if you don't necessarily just shut it down and remove that distraction from your vicinity and yeah. And I think it's actually a pretty valuable tool that other People can probably employ pretty easily if they have the discipline to do it, right? And so, one of the things is that if you set up the environment, you actually remove the necessity of discipline is discipline means that I need to physically choose to do this, but if that, this other thing is not even an option, it's completely off the plate.

30:27 Off the table, you can't spend any NGO. So going back to Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs wear the same outfit every single day. He had different Verizon at the black turtleneck, had the black jeans. And why Because that way, expended no mental energy. I so it's literally just grab it go. I have, I think, one or two shirts total dress shirts. They're not white dress. Shirts, blue, suits, black suits. I now have a gray suit, you know, white shirts ties with blue and them ties with black in them pies with gray in them. So, it's literally, I can grab any of it. And I even after thinking, just go and so that, then freeze up mental bandwidth. Every person has seven plus, or minus two mental channels that We can utilize any one point. And so like if you have three, kids guess what? Typically, your kids are taking up three of them. Unless, you know, they're off at school or whatever, they're off at camp and so you can shut those down, okay, we're worried about work or worried about your significant other, so it overwhelms us.

31:24 So being able to literally lay out and have something out. Buddy else, take those components. This is why financial advisors say I'm going to be your family CFO and they take the worry in the responsibility away for that. This is why You Outsource and I'll always mentally and allows you to then have more capacity to focus on what you're doing. So if you send the kids to their grandparents, for a couple of days, you're able to be that much more productive because you don't have the worry of what's this kid doing. Hey, it's too quiet in the house right now. They're up to something. You know, so it allows you to as my son's, taekwondo Master says, focus and finish. I love that concept.

32:06 Focus and finish. What about Out for the people who are just natural born worriers, or they start to ruminate and think I do have some friends who are also ADHD and they may be on the spectrum and their mind continues to play these mental gymnastics on them. Even if something is not in the room or they don't necessarily have to worry about it. It's the, it's almost like the the complexity of choice, even if they have two choices, they'll worry about making the wrong decision. And so they'll just contemplate that for the longest period of time. And so we you know it's like What would you say go? There's a couple of things that we can do and that's really anxiety getting into play in some ways. So one of the things, it's like you said it's just do it.

32:48 So if you can't make the decision between two things and you thought about and thought about flip a coin heads, you know, first one Tails second one. As you flip it, you're going to find that you're rooting for one side. So the flipping of the coin is not the decision maker, the flipping of the coordinate forces you into revealing, which decision, you transgender. Truly want they so heads, we do exhales, we do I come on heads, okay? Well that's why I really want, that's why I need to do, okay? So it's really almost like the exogenous event that forces you to make the decision. That's what flipping the coin is in some ways. Another thing is be like, Star-Lord, have 12% of the plant because the plans going to change as Mike.

33:29 Tyson says, Everybody's Got A Plan until they get punched in the face. Anybody who's going on a long road trip knows there's construction. There's detours as all this stuff. So have the preliminary They're a part of a plan and just start going understanding that you're going to figure it out. Understand that. Okay, when I reach here, I'll have, I'll figure out the next couple of steps from there. So instead of looking at this huge thing, I need to go from here to here. This is how I break down ultramarathons you know just even thinking of doing 100 km is overwhelming. I can do five kilometers, I can do a kilometer, I can go from here to that corner. That's not a big deal. I'll just go to that corner and I'll figure out where I'm going from there. And then another one, no one and all Son, you realize that you've done 35 miles and so that's another way to be able to get through it. Another thing for people who are really, anxious is write it down, because you're anxious because it's all rallying around your head.

34:22 Why told you about writing down my couple of key things, I need to accomplish, I write them down and then I don't worry as I knock him off the list. Like okay, awesome awesome. Alright, although I'm in the bonus round and then I can sit and think for a couple minutes about Waters the next group of things that I should do. And to make sure that I don't get overwhelmed by any of it because instead of trying to focus on everything, which allows you to focus on nothing and just be completely overwhelmed, you focus on a couple of things, get them taken care of, and then you can re-evaluate and focus on the next tier. Thanks again, coming back to what is taekwondo Master said, focus and finish for them. It's focusing on finishing.

35:02 Yo doing this technique 10 times or, you know, finish on your 10 push-ups or what have you In the business world where we're juggling all these different balls. Its focus on, getting these couple of things done, don't worry about anything else. Take care of those then re-evaluate move forward and that's how you can make consistent steady progress, even in a chaotic environment. Yeah. Now, you had mentioned, why take the hard path as opposed to the easy one? So I was hoping that you'd speak to that, okay? And here's the thing. In every situation, we have a choice, we make a decision. And if you break it down all decisions. Come into basically two critical paths. There is, what is easy in the moment going? What feels good.

35:47 I'm going to eat this donut instead of having this out. I'm going to take the drag on this cigarette instead of not doing it. I'm going to play video games instead of studying for my test. I'm not going to have that difficult conversation with my crush. We're just going to, you know, ignore this for now. And when you do what feels good in the moment to avoid the more difficult thing. NG what ends up happening is. Yeah, you feel good. But it's like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound or, you know, getting that Quick Fix, You know, it makes you feel good in the moment. But, at least something slightly worse. And then something slightly works. So if I continuously eat the doughnuts, guess what? I'm gonna have diabetes in my pants aren't going to fit. I'm going to have trouble getting out of bed and all that and nine out of ten leading cause of death in the United States. Our lifestyle diseases from at taking that easy choice, that feels good in the moment, okay.

36:38 Instead of taking that Easy Choice, the other group of choices is the harder Choice from a chemistry point of view, there's higher activation energy, it takes more work, you know, that's going and getting off the couch and running five kilometers. Instead of saying they're eating Cheetos, watching The Bachelor, it is cracking the book and studying so I get a better grade. So I get a better job as opposed to saying there and Dorking around having fun in the moment and not having a good career. It is the difficult discussion with the significant other which means that you avoid the divorce because you're doing the hard work on your relationship. It is, you know, going for the run in the rain. I hate running in the rain.

37:22 And yet, I do a regular basis and why I'm getting out ready to go on out, I'm like, all right this is going to suck. I'm going to get the sloggy feed, the winds going to be in my face. It's going to be horrible. It's going to take two days for those shoes to try out the progress. Stink. You know, I'm gonna get Squishy feet. Gonna be cold, this is going to be not fun at all, but if I do it, I have greater reserves. I do difficult things. And so it makes me stronger, it makes things easier overall. If I choose to do the thing, I don't want to do that's more difficult now. It actually leads to the easier path in life and so we can take the road of convenience or we can take the road of Excellence. Mmm, well, that's beautiful.

38:04 I also want to just match that up to the The stoics point of view or two, if you could even call it like a Buddhist flow point of view which is more about the relinquishing of suffering by changing your mindset towards those things, which would otherwise, cause you suffering. And so that's another way of looking at it. Because yeah, the do not all of the things that are like more of the lazy choices might be in flow with a certain mindset, but if you're able to level up, or shift your mindset to know that doing that is creating some Sort of coping mechanism on to itself. And if you look beyond that to look at the longer term prize, then you realize that's really what I want. That's why I'm going to get up.

38:48 That's why I'm going to run, that's why I'm going to do this in the rain. And I actually enjoy it because I know that it's going to be more fulfilling as I'm doing it in doing something. That's very challenging or you know what the prize is going to be at the end of the road and I love how you brought up both the stoics and Buddhism because they are so related, a lot of ways. Ways in that learn to love the process instead of, you know, trying to work to get that BMW fall in love with the process of working, like a martial artist, like, you know, you know, you carry water chop wood. So you're in the moment and enjoying it and what Jack LaLanne said years and years ago, the fitness girl was they if you learn to love a pepper as much as a chocolate bar, you're going to have a much better life and so, you know, yeah I occasionally have the donut and splurge and all that.

39:38 Healthy and I enjoy it. I don't need the big house. You know, I've got my training Hall down in the basement. I've got enough room for stuff, I can go buy a sports car. Why do I need one? You know, so it's being content with what you have or it's not being content, it's being happy, but, never content, I can improve, but I'm improving me. I'm not trying to get a bigger office or get a faster car or, you know more. I'm trying to become more, and if you You can do that, then you always have enough. Exactly, I'm so glad that you also brought that up to, because there is a difference between being content and being happy because being content could mean complacency and that's not necessarily what this is about. It's really about being satisfied with what you have, where you are in the moment, enjoying all of those experiences and being eager for more, being looking forward to that Improvement, that you are, continuously making in yourself each.

40:37 And Yeah, one of my friends, put it as I am enough. I'm good enough by can always be better. Exactly that's exactly right. And I think that's a good Mantra to live by for you know as the Stockdale Paradox says embrace the bitter truth but never give up hope you know assess who you are understand where your shortfalls in your strengths and all that and be ready to work on making yourself better. Not because of Any external thing any drive like that? But because working on yourself, if you're doing it will give you something that you can always focus on.

41:19 You can always make tiny improvements and you can see the results. And when you're doing that, you become more joyful overall and that has all sorts of benefits. Psychologically, relationship-wise translates into what we do for work health-wise. It will extend your longevity and so making yourself your task. Your greatest Masterpiece is going to have all sorts of wonderful results and it becomes highly attractive. Other people with that growth oriented mindset, see you and will want to be around you and you'll be around like-minded. People that want to see the best in you the best out of you. Yeah.

42:04 You'll find your tribe by law of attraction. Exactly. I actually want to go back to your early days. Because as you mentioned, when you were 10 years old, you had a near-death experience and nde and I wasn't near death. I was dead. You were dead. Okay? So I like that Dad. You were dead. Can you tell us about that experience? Sure. So being severely, asthmatic. The back in the 1970s, we didn't have the puffers that everyone does now. So basically, you'd go to the doctor and you get dry Nolan, go to the hospital. You be stuck in an oxygen tent and all this sort Stop. So I was 10 years old, I was having an asthma attack. My mom brought meat stock Marie. I'm lying there on the table and I was scrawny scrawny kid. Can barely be that Mike and all the sudden I could, you know, I didn't have that tightness weightless, I'm floating on up. There's lots of light, I'm looking down. See my mom?

42:59 She's freaking out, obviously, dr. Murray certainly looks like an octopus. He's got all these extra arms. He's try and do stuff. And I hear the Big D. Deep voice like James Earl Jones, not yet Time. Boom. All the sudden I'm back down my body again and you know I'm finally able to get a little air and then they take me over the hospital put me in the oxygen tent and from that day forward I've been like this. So you attribute the way that you are to essentially that particular period of time. That particular instance I've always been high energy but from that point forward it's been not even a conscious choice. It's been just who I am to not screw around to not waste time to maximize. I mean, my I went and saw one of my friends this weekend and her boys, my nephews and all that and literally she's like, you don't stop.

43:55 Even when you're relaxing, you're running Ultra marathons or you're helping other people out. It's like that's just the way that I am. And so my life is filled with you stress as opposed to distress so you stress is Exciting it re-energizes. So I do a lot of very intense thinking and mental energy and writing for work, but then I balance it by going and doing something very hard physically doing emotionally challenging stuff. So by this constant, shifting of gears and essentially using different mindsets and skill sets and muscles was mental and physical. You know, it's allowing the other ones to rest. And so, one of the things I recommend people is, if you got a very physically intense job, Your relaxation do something, very mentally Intense or emotionally.

44:42 And if you got a very mentally intense job, like an attorney from your scientist, things like that. That's when you go do something incredibly physical to offset it and so it becomes almost like active meditational, always allows your subconscious to process, what you have been working on and relax and recover. So once that situation had occurred, did you sense that there? Was any essence of like newly instilled purpose or something that you almost would consider like a Dharma, like the you are here for a reason. It's not your time because and this is what you are meant to accomplish. Or this is what you're meant to do, in order to fulfill out your time here, on our, right.

45:25 And you have to remember I was 10 years old. So what ten-year-old those what they want to do with their life? Right? You know, I was put on this Earth to serve others and to make other people better. I'm going to make a difference. My goal people have I want my gold, the book and the book actually is a subset of a bigger picture is that I want to be able to reach and help impact 100 million people this year. Whether it's through podcasts, like this articles, diorite TV, appearances, radio, appearances, people actually get the book, you know, service speeches, training individuals. If I can reach 100 million people and help improve their lives, they become little nodes that are then transmitting out to other people in their community. He's and their families and their businesses. And so, if I can directly impact 100 million, we can probably reach billion plus people and improve their lives. That's something worth working towards that as an awesome btech bi big hairy audacious goal.

46:24 This is gold. Yeah. And so you know we are going through some unprecedented times right now. Well it's just like the antonine plague back in. You know you think Marcus Aurelius just like the 1970s all over again? In a lot of ways. So you know what we've done here. We've done that yet. I find that interestingly enough. We still haven't really learned how to manage ourselves through some of these, you know, Global situations. Whether it be a pandemic of disease or whether it be a pandemic of racism or whether it be a pandemic of intolerance of any kind. What would you were still stupid? The unfortunately, we are still big dumb animals in a lot of ways.

47:11 We are naturally attracted to individuals like us because is subconscious makes us feel more comfortable. And really we need to remember that. What genetically separates you from me? Is almost nothing. And so the anecdote to fear is exposure. If you got fear of spiders you know what do we need to do? We need to look at pictures of spiders and then be in the same room with a spy. And get close to a spider and you not freak out. If you've got a fear of somebody who looks different, we need to have you communicate with them. We need to have. You talked to him, we need you them to understand. We're all humans, and we have more alike than what separates them. And maybe it's because I grew up Community, where we were all relatively not, well, off financially. So it didn't matter your skin color, or your race, or anything else.

48:08 We were just all people and you know, my best friend, it was originally from Vietnam. I mean her dad was a major in the South Vietnamese Army and so my sister, my favorite sister who I talk to every single day you know and her dad loved me, more than he loves her and my mom always loved. See, I'm when she loved me and so that's just the way it is. That's my sister, okay. And her kid brother is my brother so it doesn't matter. Yo what color hair somebody has or how much melon An engineer system or the shape of their eyes, or he'll, if somebody's Buddhist and somebody's Catholic, or what have you in the end, we are still humans. We are all brothers and sisters, and cousins that works and so deal with it open up. Learn from each other.

48:54 Yeah, and my Dharma is, it's the human Beauty movement and bringing people together. And the thing that I always am pondering is the concept of the algorithm and the fact that, you know, there is this concept of in the end it's always a two-horse race. It's always the US versus them. It's always black versus white, it's always good versus evil. It's always a journey of the or of the oars. And unfortunately, what happens with the, you know, the power of the algorithm, it's like it's creating polarity, it creates a divide and it creates a stance in which like we are always going to be right? No, we are always going to be right? And then the two are never going to agree. So how do we from a poetic philosophical or physical physics Way?

49:35 Start thinking about the solution to Bringing People together as so it's not a binary solution which is how everybody looks at things either 1 or 0 K. If you look visible light is a spectrum going from five hundred and twenty nanometers up to 700 ish, okay? And there's Shades, you can't tell where orange ends and ride begins. Okay, so have this understanding and have this perspective and perception that, okay? We're just seeing in slightly different colors, but we're looking at the same Nominal, we're looking at these same things. Let's try and understand, and I'm reference the tyranny of the or as opposed to the beauty of the and know we can be this and this yo we can have Traditional Values and allow people to be human beings and be themselves. Okay, so expanding our concept and remembering in the end that when the aliens come on down, invade like an Independence Day. Guess what?

50:33 It's US versus them. It's not you versus me or Inspiration. It's, it's us against the universe or us on the same team to be able to make the world a better place because that you know, I'm right, you're wrong. You're wrong. I'm right, that dichotomy is based upon zero-sum game mindset as opposed to having an abundance mentality. And hey, let's work together. You've got some ideas, I've got some ideas, we're not going to agree on everything. We're not going to disagree. On everything we've got this Venn diagram of overlap of concept. Let's see what we can do together to. Then improve things because if you, and I can sit down and swap some ideas and work together, we can expand the pie from 100 to 120.

51:24 And even if my share of it becomes slightly smaller, I've got a slightly smaller share of a bigger portion and as such, I'm still better off and there's that, and then there's no longer participating. The social media and the Instagram and Tick-Tock and say, oh look at them, they're so perfect. They are, they've got no worries. I need to be just like them. And, you know, fueling all this anxiety and fear of missing out and trying to be like the Joneses since that's all external. And instead, Focus, internal learn from other people. Appreciate what they have. Use them to inspire you, but not become jealous and hateful over it. And then just become A better version of you. And if more people focused on being the best version of them that they could be, we'd be a much better place. Absolutely.

52:15 It all starts from the individual and that's why I believe in the power of touching individuals and letting them see their worth. Letting them see their Divinity from within so that there's less of a tendency for comparison and for resentment and for jealousy because all of that like the seeking of external validation, external, validation is nice. Everybody likes the complement of Arse but it's not that you. If you feed off in you need it. If that is your existence then you become a vampire. You talk about energy, vampires that becomes a psychic vampire, that becomes ultimately the path to narcissism and, you know, there's nothing good that comes out. That's an extract of sort of relationship as opposed to a creative symbiotic where we can make each other better. Instead of I need to draw from you. Exactly.

53:06 Exactly. Well, So you've had such words of wisdom for us today. I'm so glad that you came on as a role models guest, thank you for all your words, and here's to changing the lives of 100 million people this year for you. I am rooting for you Jennifer. Thank you. This has been an absolute blast. I learned a lot on better for you. Make me laugh and smile. You improved my day. Yeah, excellent and grow today. Thank you so much.