#31 - Ryan Walker: Lonely to Connected, Embracing Community for a Better Life

There was times where I'm sitting here going, why am I so miserable?

Because I know I'm personable.

I know that I'm social, but I remember going, this just isn't aligning.

I can't figure out why I'm miserable, what's broken.

And there was a time where I'm like, you know, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to start writing things like, to get this, how do I acquire that?

Okay, how do I acquire that?

How do I acquire that?

I just kept going back and back and back, or breaking it down and down.

And there was two times where I did that, and separately, and at the end, it was community.

That word.

Welcome to the Talk to People Podcast.

My name is Chris Miller, and each week, I get to sit in this house at some random place, be it the dining room studio or the living room studio.

And I get to talk to a new person about how to improve your life with relationships, conversations, and community.

The world is becoming an increasingly isolated and lonely place.

And it's not your fault.

There's technology that encourages us to stay inside, work from home, increase mobility.

And what it results in is less social interactions, less time spent together, and more time spent alone.

From recent research, we know that relationships is the number one indicator for a happy life.

We also know that if you are socially connected with others, you are less likely to develop heart disease, to develop stress, to develop depression, to develop anxiety, and the list goes on.

So what we aim to do with the show is get different guests on to help you improve your social connectedness and ultimately become a socially fit person.

This week, I had the privilege of talking with Ryan Walker.

He's the executive director at Pioneer Ridge Independent Living, a local organization that he gets to lead.

We discuss what it's like to be lonely, and Ryan talks about a moment where he was very lonely and what it took him to go from being someone who was very lonely to someone who felt socially connected.

You know, so when it's gone, what do I do?

Well, you find something else.

Go through the whole process all over again, and that I need to be okay with that if I don't want to lose connection.

The thought is that you are officially live.

Welcome to the living room studio.

You made it.

So we have...

I'm famous.

I'm leaving now.

Yeah, you're like to your tens and tens of viewers.

There's this really popular podcast blowing up right now.

It's Bobby Althoff.

Have you heard of her?

No.

So she has this podcast called The Very Good Podcast.

And she's been doing it for a few months.

There's this viral video going around of her.

She recorded a podcast with Drake.

And they're in like a California.

So she's big.

Yeah.

They're in a California king bed and they're laying down.

She's on one side.

He's on the other.

And she's got this dry humor that's hilarious.

But in her podcast description, she says, I am an expert at interviewing people pulling from six weeks of experience.

I am so happy to have 90 followers on social media.

And my husband says I'm one of the top podcasters.

So it's all self-deprecating humor.

And it's really encouraging to me because she's made it to the top by making fun of herself and having fun.

And you don't have to be like this.

Yeah.

Warrior.

I was just having a conversation about self-deprecation as a humor, as a coping mechanism in some way, shape or form.

And I think self-deprecation is awesome.

I do it myself, but there is a fine line to toe with it depending on how you're utilizing it because I think that it is so self-deprecating humor is a good way of bringing yourself down to other people's levels, comforting other people whilst comforting yourself.

You know, it just can be manipulated and utilized in so many different ways.

However, depending on how you truly feel about yourself, it's a very incognito way of speaking how you truly feel about yourself, you know?

And I think that, I mean, it's just like any craft.

I mean, you got to fine tune it and you just got to be honest with yourself as to why you're saying it.

Like negative self-talk could lead through.

Absolutely.

So, but I was just having a conversation about that because that's one thing where I use it a lot too.

But when I'm doing it, I also, depending on what I say, sit there and go, how much did I mean that?

Yeah.

Do I really believe that?

Do I really believe that?

Or if I did mean that, is that okay?

And if it's not okay, what do I do about it?

You know?

And then of course, I probably just spiral out of control in my brain and then people will go, hello.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

Are you there?

Yeah.

Imagine the person who's doing what he thinks is self-deprecating humor, but really everything's true.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

I feel like this is an SNL skit to a degree.

Right.

Like, I'm so late all the time.

Yeah.

And everybody's like, you are.

You really are.

Yeah.

So that's the same thing with sarcasm.

Yeah.

Is sarcasm can be really pernicious and bitey, but then the people who do it well, like Ryan Reynolds, they're on a different world.

A wizard.

Yeah.

A wizard because I was learning humor is one of the best signs of intelligence, getting people to laugh and then knowing how to manipulate like the social fabric in a way that makes people chuckle.

There's a lot of work there with like the comics and the people who are super hilarious.

I mean, you really got to know what you're talking about to hit home on a really good joke.

And you know, not to jump into something heavy, but you know, free speech, you know, the last bastion of it being comedy.

And you know, I think it's pretty well understood by a lot of people that when comedy is no longer okay, like that's when we're like genuinely screwed, you know, and because comedy is there to address a real situation.

Man, comedy is so great.

It allows you to talk about really tough things while and make fun of yourself at the same time, but also just figure out a solution at the expense of, I mean, it's okay to do things at the expense of others.

Sometimes, you know, it sounds like it doesn't sound good when you say it, but you know, as long as you, yeah, but you get to throw yourself in with them.

And that's usually where the like punchline is in a lot of jokes, you know, it's like you're having fun at the expense of others.

And the punchline is I'm the others too.

Oh, right.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

So, I don't know, maybe that was confusing for people, but well, I know what I mean and it's okay.

One of the quotes that I heard though was the, and this is Peterson said, the jester is the canary in the coal mine.

So when, yeah, so true.

Yeah.

When the king's court decides to get rid of the jester, that is the foreshadowing.

Yeah.

That's when everything's going out the window.

Right.

Yeah.

Because the jester is the symbol of having that freedom to explore and express.

So this Bobby lady, she has honed her craft of self-deprecation so well that she's now laying in bed with Drake.

Laying in bed with Drake and then being dry.

So the comments are like, I can't believe you made it all the way to get Drake on your podcast and then you're this dry.

You're not fangirling, you're not expressing this big admiration, even though he's obviously an expert at his craft and a big icon.

And that's probably a reflection of her comfort and confidence, right?

Probably.

Yeah.

And it's really cool to see people be themselves whenever they're in situations where it'd be easy to not be yourself.

Do you ever think, I have only met a handful of famous people, one, but I often think, I mean, we see people, you know, messy, we'll just go straight to the top there.

Yeah.

You know, Michael Jackson, people fainting at the concerts, you know, people just losing their minds, right?

And then I sit here and always go, what would I do?

You know?

Right.

I know what I want me to do in that situation.

What would you want to do?

I would like to think I just treat them like a normal person because in my mind, I know that that's all they really want, you know?

And if I can be the one that's helping them attain that in the midst of the rest of the craziness that is their life and their fame, then I almost feel obligated to do that for them, you know?

So I mean, there is one guy who is kind of affiliate or he's been around just due to where I work and who he is related to.

And I've seen him a handful of times in the building and I just shook his hand and we talked for like 15 minutes about his dogs, you know?

It's one of those moments where you know they're normal people, but until you have that conversation, like, oh, they're like, they really are just normal people.

But anyways, do you ever wonder how you would handle something like that?

What do you think you would do if you ran into Messih?

That's a great question.

Yeah.

I would probably be surprised by how tall he is or how not tall he is.

Okay, as long as he ain't tall.

Right.

His stature.

Because I know he's short.

Yeah.

But I think I'd be surprised by how short he actually is.

And then I would love to get a picture with him.

Yeah.

Right.

I don't know that that puts you in the crazy category though.

Right.

I would love to get a pic.

But one of the things I've been thinking about with these high-profile individuals is the pictures I'm going to get with them are candids.

I don't want it to make it look like I asked to get a picture.

Like if I can get a picture of Messihow and I and I'm making him laugh.

Yeah.

Like you're having a conversation.

Yes.

Yeah.

Like I'm capturing me connecting with others is kind of something I'm really into.

So if I could get that, but it doesn't seem like it's staged with Messihow.

Or like his shirt is pulling like off in your direction and he's like, you know.

His bodyguards have their arm caught.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I want to avoid that.

So like due to that, it's kind of like you can't really stage that and Messihow, I would probably try and smile and say hey, and be like super excited to see you in Miami.

That's what I would do right now probably.

More than likely, that's not going to be the case because everybody's going to want to talk to him and they're going to be less worried about making a fool of themselves.

They're not going to have those boundaries.

So they're going to try and grab his jersey and it's going to be a weird thing.

So the same people don't even get a chance.

It's the squeaky wheel.

The last week though, I was part of a podcast with one of the women who just won a Gordon Ramsay TV show.

So I'm sitting there and I'm able to listen to her and she works with Gordon Ramsay all the time.

She just came into Kansas for a couple of days.

And there was, pardon me, it was like, oh, I really want to get a picture because I want to, for me, it was like, I want to make sure I put it up on social media because I want people to see me as a producer, because that'll help me get other clients for production.

So thinking about it in the business sense, but I do wonder how much of that also is connected to my ego or sense of self-worth.

I was about to ask, is there like any, is there any part of that operation that makes you, that bothers you or feels like it's changing you or are you nervous at all about changing as a person as you start to evolve into what you need to be for what you are desiring to work?

Yeah, yeah.

I think that made sense.

No, no, no.

So like, as I, maybe as the podcast grows or as I adjust to someone who I think I need to be for the podcast to grow, do I get nervous about how I change or how I'm changing?

And I don't initially, like when I hear that question, my initial response is no.

But there are things that I have recognized in my life that do make me a bit nervous.

For instance, social media, social media and analytics, the way that those two things are like operating with my brain.

I want to be able to see that the podcast is improving.

So if you go and you look at my dashboard, you'll see all my analytics and you can see in April, how many times the podcast listened to May, June, July.

And whenever you have a month that goes down, it's really like, oh, gosh.

What's happening?

Is this the end?

Is this the end?

What am I doing wrong?

Am I wasting my time?

And there are so many answers to those questions that could bring me back, shake me back and be like, hey, come on, bro.

But there are a lot of moments where I get stuck in that and I don't like that.

I hate seeing that.

So I have to make boundaries for myself.

And one of those boundaries that I've been making lately is I don't know if I'm going to have much of a personal social media presence.

I think it's going to be more podcast related.

It's like right now I have an Instagram account that's Talk to Chris Miller and then I have a Talk to People podcast.

There is a big argument to have a personal social media presence because I would love to consult, help organizations or individuals reach whatever they want to reach and if my expertise is going to help them get there, I'd love to offer that service.

I'd love to do speaking gigs, like give keynotes or go show up to organizations and help them by delivering a message.

And then I'd also want to be a podcast guest or want to be a part of different content that's being created.

And if you have a large social media following or if you have an individual brand, it's easier for people to reach you rather than like your podcast is real big.

Then they have to figure out, well, who's this host again and all of that.

Do you have anything in the works cooking in the hopper?

Regarding any of those?

Well, just like branding yourself.

I do.

It's talktochrismiller.com and it's a whole website that will have or that has currently places to access the podcast, the newsletter that I write, all of the social media that I have.

And then there's a button there where you hit it and it automatically composes an email.

And then I'll have a little blurb on there.

And I wrote it today.

And the blurb says, I've realized that humans are or I realize it's human nature or I realized.

Oh, boy, I wrote it today.

I wrote it today and it says, I realized that it's human nature or I realized that humans are social beings and that loneliness is a symptom of a lack of connection.

And then I start to talk about like a graduate of Wake Forest, all this stuff.

But that's the headline, because to me, we need to put in front of loneliness.

Everybody's like, loneliness, loneliness, loneliness.

It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, loneliness isn't good.

But what we need to focus more on is why does loneliness exist?

And the reason why is because it's a symptom because people don't have meaningful connection in their life.

So then we need to put more power on that.

There was a time in my life, I mean, there still are times, but there's a really low point where I was very alone, very lonely.

And I've always felt like I was a pretty social person.

I feel like I'm pretty personable.

I love talking to people.

I probably love to hear my voice a little bit, things like that.

And there was times where I'm sitting here going, why am I so miserable?

What was wrong with me?

What's wrong with me?

Because I know I'm personable.

I know that I'm social.

I'm not a crazy extrovert by any means.

I was never a party person or anything like that.

But I remember going, this just isn't aligning.

I can't figure out why I'm miserable, what's broken.

And there was a time where I'm like, I'm going to sit down.

I'm going to start writing things like, to get this, how do I acquire that?

Okay, how do I acquire that?

How do I acquire that?

I just kept going back and back and back or breaking it down and down.

And there was two times where I did that separately.

And at the end, it was community.

That word, community.

Yeah.

So, remember, and I think the reason I did it the second time is because I didn't like that that was the answer.

You're like, I must have done it wrong.

Yeah, I must have done it right.

I didn't carry the one, you know?

But I think the reason I didn't like that answer is because it's uncomfortable.

You know, and you've talked about things, you've touched on these, but you got to put yourself out there.

That's uncomfortable, you know?

I mean, I love staying home at the same time.

You're a home buddy.

I think I'm both.

I think it just depends.

I think I'm 50-50, but...

You're amphibious.

You do both.

I mean, I try to be, I try to be, I want to be good at everything.

I want to sit, have said, I've done everything.

So, but like I said, there were several times, I mean, this was years, this was years ago and I'm sitting here going, community, dang it, okay, let's do that again, community, okay, fine, let's do it.

But you know, sometimes also life takes over and it's not so simple as to just jump into things, whether it's your job, personal life, whatnot, and that's okay.

So I kind of was just biding my time, you know, and...

Why were you lonely though?

Like you...

There just wasn't any connection.

There was no connection.

No connection, yeah, with just people.

Why not?

Well, I mean, I wasn't exposing myself.

What were you doing with your time rather than connecting?

Let's see.

So I mean, there were times where I was just watching movies, you know, I love cinema.

I would just watch movies every night.

That's what I did, I watched movies.

I grew up with a close group of friends, but they all liked to do things that the big things, social gatherings, parties.

I'm not a partier, you know.

So when it came to those just hanging out big groups of people, I never really got to experience it because I would remove myself from it because I had issues with what was taking place.

And so I think maybe there was some element that conditioned me to react and behave certain ways also.

So but really I think, man, what was I doing with my time?

That's actually, it's kind of funny because now while I'm talking in the back of my head, I'm going, what were you doing with your time?

But often times we think about connection.

It is something that we literally have to like, for instance, you show up to soccer, right?

Morning Soccer.

And that's been a godsend, by the way.

So praise God.

But you invest your time in doing that, and whenever I hear people say that they don't have connection, one of the biggest things I think of is reach out, show up, replace and recover.

And replace means go in and look at your agenda or your schedule, and you need to replace maybe one of those movie nights with showing up to the same place every week and potentially putting yourself in active interaction.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, I've had no issue with wanting to do it with soccer.

The problem's obviously been the time of day, early in the morning, I'm not a morning person, so that's been the obstacle.

But whenever it goes away, whenever I change, I go somewhere else, it just falls apart because it could, you know?

Yeah.

That's the reality of it.

Enough people stop going, then it's like, all right, so.

What's next?

What's next?

You know?

And not getting down about that because life is always changing and ultimately, almost everything in my life is up to me.

You know?

So when it's gone, what do I do?

Well, you find something else.

And then I just have to go through the whole process all over again.

And that I need to be okay with that if I don't want to lose connection and be lonely again.

So, but yeah, community, super important.

It's been awesome.

I mean, the maturing too.

I love analyzing things and figuring out, I kind of, I enjoy calling myself out on my own BS.

I really do.

When I'm having conversations with people, I don't know how good I would be at calling myself on my own BS if I was just talking to me, you know?

But when I'm talking to people, I feel more accountable for what I'm thinking and saying.

Why do you think you like calling yourself out on your own BS?

I think because I think I have a sense of I'm growing.

It's like self-improvement.

Yeah, it's self-improvement.

Yeah.

So, and I do like the idea of being, I like being, I don't love being flawed, but I like being flawed because we're all flawed.

And so if I get to admit, you know, whether it be through self-deprecation, but if I'm admitting my flaws to people, I know that it's also helping them see that it's okay to admit their flaws.

I'll say something and I love going, hmm.

Yeah, I take that back.

I don't think that's true, you know?

And I don't know, I just, I don't know, something about catching yourself, being honest with yourself.

It's just, I have this, I feel like I have this duty to do it for not just myself, but for the world around me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that's what a lot of the chaos in the world, a lot of that derives out of that or the lack of it.

So.

That's good.

That's real too.

Yeah.

We need to be real.

Yeah.

So I try to be very real with myself.

I probably have really high expectations for others.

And that's where me as an individual, I have to cut back and say, hey, you can be hard on yourself, but you need to chill out with others.

You're pretty self-critical, you think?

Yeah.

Not in a down sort of way.

Just in a high standards.

Yeah.

Do you ever have to turn the self-analytical switch off?

Yes.

And I think that's why I watch movies.

Yeah.

I don't know that I can do it without something else doing it for me.

Yeah.

So, I used to analysis paralysis, that's for sure something that I have suffered from probably will sometime in the future too.

My brain's always going, go, go, go.

So, I definitely have to watch movies or music will do it for me.

Soccer, engaging with, that's another thing that's good about community too, is it shuts your brain off sometimes, or it shuts you up, you know?

So, letting other people occupy that space in your head is very healthy in a lot of ways.

It gets you out of yourself.

Yeah.

I don't know how people, hermits, or just people who live out in Alaska doing nothing.

It sounds very cool, and depending on how I'm feeling today, I'm like, oh, loneliness, being away from people, heck yeah.

And then my brain goes, wait, how long have they been doing it?

Yeah, no, they crazy, you know, there's screws loose up there for sure.

I think so.

But, I mean, it's good that we got places for those people to go to, I guess, you know?

I've never really thought of it that way.

That's true.

I'm glad we have Alaska so that people can go there.

If they want that.

Yeah.

And be away from everyone else.

True solitude.

Yeah.

Think about how miserable they'd be if they're here, if that's how they operate.

It's fascinating though, because you can be around a ton of people and still feel super lonely.

I mean, you talk about big cities where people are just stacked on top of each other.

Like whenever I was traveling a lot, it was so thought provoking to recognize I was in a city that I'd never been in before, shopping in a grocery store.

I don't know anybody here.

I don't know where anything is.

I get in a rental car that I've never driven before.

I check into a hotel that I've never slept at before.

That night, I have people 12, 15 feet, however far away, sleeping next to me in the room next to me.

I have people above me.

I have people below me, yet I feel completely lonely.

Yeah.

There's an image I saw one time.

I can't remember who it was, but it was a row of houses with a street.

It was nighttime and cookie cutter houses.

You just saw a glow from all the living rooms.

Whoa.

You know?

Everyone's just in their box.

That's another thing that's kind of scary about the times is you have like Fahrenheit 411.

Yeah.

Fahrenheit 451.

Is that what it is?

Something like that.

Ray Bradbury is the author.

Right.

I really enjoy that book.

When paper burns.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you got Brave New World 1984.

You know, you could just list off all of those.

I don't want to get all controversial or conspiracy, but I mean, that stuff's happening.

It is.

What do you think about the Apple Pro Vision?

Do you think that's part of it?

You know, I think I heard you mention that not too long ago and I was like, I don't always talk about.

Still the same?

I don't know what you're talking about.

Yeah.

It's the new thing that Apple's working on.

So they postpone.

Is this like an Oculus thing or something?

It's like an Oculus thing.

So they call it spatial computing.

You can look through it and see a screen and it goes around to where it hits your peripheral to.

Yeah.

So you can go and with your eyes, select things, scroll, do all that stuff.

But then there's a feature to where you can see through it to the actual outside being around you.

So it's this synthesis of, and they call that like augmented reality, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like synthesizing what's really happening and what's happening in the projection and the commercial that Apple put up.

It's like a guy and he's in the living room and he's getting work done and then he switches to a movie and then he's playing games and he doesn't have to move at all.

He's just chilling.

Yeah.

And it's funny because on this podcast, I talk a lot about how we are moving more towards a frictionless society, sedentary, and the points that I make are like, we don't even have to go, we don't even have to leave our house to get work done.

We can move from our bed to the desk and then we move from our desk to the bathroom.

Now with the Apple Vision Pro, you don't even have to move from your bed to the desk.

You can just watch the movie, turn the work on.

And that sounds miserable to me.

It sounds tough, but I wonder what it will be like with it on.

Are you interested in trying it?

I'm one of those people that's more skeptical and nervous about all of that.

You know, AI, all the ChatGPT stuff.

I try to stay away from it and some of that's more just personal beliefs.

I know what I don't want to turn into, so I don't want to entertain it.

I'm nervous about doing too little once I...

I don't know, I like being active.

I like moving around.

I also maybe think, you know, when everything blows up and everyone's been doing that for the last 20 years, I'm going to be the one that's still fit, who knows how to cook a meal.

Hey, I just want to be that guy that can outrun everybody else, you know, that can provide for myself.

And I think that I'm not a doomsdayer.

I'm not, I don't have any bunkers with canned goods in it or anything.

Yeah, I don't have any of that going on.

But I also think there's something about growing and persevering and going through the physical trials of sports, lifting weights, just manual labor, whether you're doing landscaping.

I always talk about, so there's the pavilion, they have the indoor track and on the wall, it says Virgil said it, but it says, the greatest wealth is health and I hate running.

It's weird, I can play soccer and run all day long, but if I'm just running, it's the worst time of my life.

I don't know what that's about.

It's like movies for you.

It distracts you chasing the ball.

Yeah, and I don't know, maybe my brain's not engaged enough when I'm just running on a sidewalk.

I don't know, but I thought my body breaks easier when I'm running on a sidewalk too.

But I remember I used to run around that track when it was winter, and every time I'd come around the corner like dying, I'd go, greatest wealth is health, greatest wealth is health.

But one thing that I worked out, maybe this was to help me get through it when I was training for a 5K one time, I kept thinking about that, and the greatest wealth is health, and I was like, what is health?

I broke it down to their spiritual health, physical health, and mental health.

Running sucks because it makes you tap into all three of those.

I go, physically, it sucks for me.

Mentally, I'm just trying to keep doing it, and three, I'm praying the whole time.

God make this not suck anymore, so what is health?

To me, it's not healthy, laying in bed with this piece of plastic on your face, eating too much junk food, I don't know.

Yeah, totally.

I feel like I'm just preaching.

No, you don't want to, like you said, I feel this way about talking to people.

So I feel like we will get to a point to where we interact with these language models more than we actually interact with humans, and then we begin to forget how to interact with other humans.

That's one of my kind of sci-fi hunches.

And I do think about that though, because OpenAI, the firm who founded ChatGPT, they are dumping a ton of money into their research and development.

And a big part of that is figuring out how humans connect to one another.

Because if they can get that essence and infuse it in whatever language program they create, then we're going to be hooked.

This thing connects with us really well.

And man, I love talking to Ryan because he laughs at all my jokes.

Well, he's not available tonight, but ChatGPT tells me this one will connect me.

It laughs too.

It doesn't sound as great as when Ryan does it.

Right, but it will laugh whenever I want someone to laugh, and it will make me feel funny, and I identify as funny, so that will reinforce my identity and feel really good.

So if OpenAI, and I don't know if you can figure out this is the essence with human connection.

This is what it is.

Maybe it's like a motion, right?

Yet I know that there's a ton of money going into studying human communication, and what makes people tick, and the more and more that is infused with our technology, then the more opportunities we're going to have to communicate with it, and it's going to replace us talking to people.

So we need to make sure that we don't forget how to talk to people, which seems funny me saying that right now.

But I do think that that is...

But five years goes by, you know.

I think that there's a lot of good that can come out of it.

I don't know definitively what it is, but I don't want to neglect that outcome or refuse to accept it.

I'm sure there'll be a lot of good things.

But I don't see the pros outweighing the cons with it.

With AI?

At all.

And so you're talking about the essence.

I mean, I'm going, yeah, the soul.

Right.

Yeah.

What is a soul?

Can AI acquire it?

That's all going to be dependent on probably your personal beliefs more than anything.

But I was listening to someone talking about AI not too long ago, and they were talking about forgiveness.

They were talking about it in relation to humans' ability to forgive and whether or not it would be able to do it or not.

I remember the other person said something along, well, yeah, you can basically instruct it to forgive.

I go, but if you're instructing it to forgive, is it forgiving or is it just doing what it's told?

Just following orders.

Yeah.

But then again, I'm an idiot.

I don't know a whole lot about AI.

And it makes me wonder, it begs the question then, can it be offended?

And if it can, what?

That's not good.

There's a funny, I do this thing with my, I don't ever use Siri on my phone.

And that's more so just because I've seen it go awry for so many people.

There's hilarious clips out there of horrifying things happen to people.

I'm glad it's happening to them because it's funny for me to watch.

But man, if it were happening to me, I'd stop going to community things.

But every time, I guess I do talk to my phone.

I'll say like, hey, what's the capital or what's this times this or things like that.

But I used to use Siri, and I used to always say, thank you, Siri.

And I would always joke.

I'm saying thank you, Siri.

That way, when they take over, she's like, oh, he's cool.

Don't kill him.

I say that half as a joke, and then I'm like, terminate Skynet.

Who knows?

I don't know.

Maybe I'm just having fun with it more than anything.

Your social credit score goes up a little bit with the AI.

Yeah, you say the social credit score, and that reminds me.

I'm sure you've seen Black Mirror and a lot of their stuff.

If you haven't, you got to watch.

Well, make sure you're in a healthy place.

Right.

Yeah, because if you're not, then it's only going to make it worse.

It's very much like a psychological thriller in a sense.

Yeah, it really is, which is fun.

But in Black Mirror, there's those moments where the social credit score goes down to the score.

Yeah, man, that stuff is so heavy when you're watching it.

And to a degree, that's already happening with the social credit scores.

I mean, that's where all the debate was with the, what was it?

YouTube took the likes.

Was it YouTube?

I think the dislikes, maybe it was.

I think there was a time when Instagram was planning on removing the like portion on there.

Yeah.

And so what would I get my value from?

People.

If I get Instagram likes.

Yeah.

I just know that that, I mean, that's been a topic of discussion for a while.

And then, of course, now you have all these CEOs and famous people ask that we're asking for a halt on AI research and engineering, the pursuit of it, which I find very bizarre because I think they said like, let's hold off on sick for six months.

I'm like, six months.

Yeah.

I'm like, that's nothing.

It's like clear heads.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But of course, any halt is not really a good idea because there's somebody somewhere in the world that's not going to abide by that rule.

And there's always geopolitics and whatnot.

I always wonder how much we really know about what's going on across the sea in a different country in a lab somewhere.

You know, we don't so.

Or we don't.

Yeah, we don't.

Yeah.

But we definitely don't.

But there may be people who do.

I was thinking as far as you talking to Siri and you avoiding talking to Siri, I should now that I just real quick, I should probably make sure she knows I still care about her.

But go on.

I need to remember that later.

She is listening.

Yeah.

You may get ads that say, do you struggle with how you talk to Siri?

That may be my new communication angle.

I get ready to talk to people, talk to AI, and it's all about how you can talk to Siri better.

We have that now with OpenAI.

It functions off of prompts, so you put a prompt in there, which will then determine what it spits out.

There's a big, a lot of work going into how to make the best prompt for the stable diffusion, which is you type in a prompt and then it creates an image.

There's like people who are artists with that because they're so good at typing in the prompts that it puts out something that's like, whoa, well, you sent me those, those pictures.

Like were those good pictures of me?

Heck yeah, man.

Yeah.

How much of it was you though?

Yeah.

And he's referring to the on TikTok, this trend of like, I got this perfect LinkedIn photo from these selfies.

And it's funny because whenever I did it, it looked so like, it looked very, it's that word of like, it may be able to pass, but there's something that doesn't look right.

You're talking about the uncanny valley?

The uncanny valley.

So like in CGI, they refer to that as the uncanny valley.

Yes.

Yeah.

Because our brains are so good at picking up like the tiniest of details as far as like, oh, that's odd that the head shifted that way.

That's not how I'm used to seeing.

That's not for the last 20 years or whatever it is.

Right.

My brain, the brain is scary awesome, but it is scary.

Awesome.

So the uncanny valley looking at the AI would, it'd be like you have a bigger nose.

So we're going to extend your jawline just a little bit to make your nose a bit more proportionate because it's bigger than average.

And then there was one where it made my forearm gigantic and it looked like I had this vein.

And so, yeah, so is there, when you sent those to me, I was sitting there going, wait, is that his actual body?

And it wasn't, it was just your face.

Yeah.

It was just your face because I was like, I mean, he's in shape, but that, and the face was fake too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it almost looked like it was you younger and more attractive.

That's what people do though, is they want to use it.

You take the picture to your plastic surgeon.

Hey, could you do this?

I want to just like this, do this, but better.

And then I go back to AI and said, Hey, this human did better than you.

And then I get put on it.

And then it breaks.

Yeah.

And then it breaks.

But you said Siri will sometimes do stuff that people don't want.

There's these funny TikToks where someone lays like hopping in the shower and their hands are, you know, they turn on the shower and some water gets on their hands and their hands are wet and they don't want to touch their phone because it goes crazy.

And they're like, Hey, Siri, could you just tell my friend James that I'll be there in 15 minutes and it'll be like texting your boo now.

And then it's like, I'm going to leave you soon.

And it like goes like your ex and it's like, how have you been?

It's like, no, no, no.

And they're like, no, no, no.

But their hands are wet.

So they're trying to stop it.

So that's what made me think of that.

Yeah.

See, I like to remove those things as much as possible from happening.

So yeah, I don't know.

It just all kind of terrifies me.

I don't know that Arnold will turn into a good guy in the end, you know, if it's a terminated reference for anybody.

Cinema is your favorite.

Could you share with me three movies that if someone's listening to this, you think if they watched these three movies, it would improve the quality of their life?

Oh, okay.

Terminator?

Yeah.

No.

The first one comes to mind is Secret.

I think it's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Ben Stiller.

No, no, no.

It's got Ben Stiller.

Kristen Wiig's in it actually, but it's about this business going under and they're firing everybody, and this guy's been with this company forever, and I mean, he goes on a final mission to complete his final task so he can say that he did his job, basically, but it's a little bit about the dehumanization of people almost by the corporate world, but he goes off on this grand adventure, and it just leaves you feeling like, man, there's a life to live out there.

You know, like, again, that kind of ties into the synthetic world that we're, you know, becoming more and more a part of, but, you know, there's mountains out there, there's animals out there, there's, oh, Sean Penn's in it, too.

He's kind of crazy, but he's a great actor, but yeah, it just left me wondering or feeling, dang, I need to live life more, you know, and it's not that hard.

It's just making those decisions that are contrary to what we're used to doing because we all get into the grind, right?

Second, oh gosh, I don't know what other ones there would be off the top of my head.

Secret Life of Walter Minty is a great one, though.

Yeah, that's a pretty big go-to for me when talking to people about, hey, you got to check this movie out, you know, and some people aren't going to like it, and that's okay, but objectively, it's the best movie.

No.

How do you feel about The Gladiator?

The like Russell Crowe?

Fantastic.

That's kind of funny jumping over that because like, yeah, you should go check that one out.

It'll make you feel great about life, but I love a hero story.

I like a realistic hero story.

I kind of struggle with Marvel movies.

It gets a little too wacky out there, but I love stories about persevering and standing up for what's right, and sacrificing the things you don't want to sacrifice to make it happen.

Okay, so anime.

I'll be a little nerd for a moment, but anime is really good at giving you a hero to root for.

I think anime is almost better at expressing human emotions than humans are.

They're better at doing nuance.

Yeah.

There's so much that they can do with it.

I heard that since it's Eastern, like typically Japanese, right?

Yeah.

That it doesn't really subscribe to the Western storytelling and it's more nuanced.

Yeah.

I mean, for anybody that grew up watching American cartoons, like for me, I remember Courage, a Cowardly Dog, Dexter's Laboratory.

Dragon Tales.

I wasn't going to admit that one, but I will admit Powerpuff Girls was awesome.

I mean, the old, but just cartoons, it's just so different the way, I mean, Japanese culture is so drastically different as far as how they just perceive the world too.

I'm not going to go a whole lot into that because I don't know a whole lot, but I do know that.

Yeah, sorry.

Those movies, I don't know.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is one that's really good.

I mean, do you have any that, I don't know that you're a huge movie guy.

That is one of the differences between my wife and I is she grew up watching a ton of movies.

Did you, with your family?

Would you all have movie nights?

I'm one of those people where I struggle watching movies with people more than because I don't feel like they get appreciated by the people I'm watching them with or they are a distraction from this experience for me.

Did you watch the movie Her?

I haven't seen that with Joaquin Phoenix.

Yeah, I think Scarlett is the voice.

That's one of the ones that I've been meaning.

I mean, it's kind of relevant to in a lot of ways, not kind of.

It is relevant, but I need to watch that one.

It's so fascinating because he has a stressful day at work.

Nobody asks him about it.

Then he goes home and he logs into the portal and Scarlett Johansson voice goes, you seem off.

How was work?

And it's like, boom, thank you for asking me.

And it unlocks that expression.

And it makes this big argument about how.

So here's something, I was listening to somebody talk about the positions we put ourselves in.

So somebody asking you how your day was, someone asking how you're doing, like, hey, you seem out of sorts.

Is everything okay?

I'm here for you sort of thing, right?

What sucks is that people who are suffering from depression, mental illness, what have you, they sit there and think about how nobody cares about me.

Well, and let's remove the mental illness part because that's complicated.

But I mean, depression is complicated too.

But if someone's starting to wonder why no one asked about me, that's where I think it's important for people to practice putting themselves in difficult situations and calling themselves out on their own BS because what they really need to be asking themselves first and foremost is, what am I doing about it?

What I mean by that is, am I putting myself in a position to even be asked by people?

Because say I'm feeling miserable and I'm like, man, nobody asked about me.

I'm like, but I'm home watching movies by myself all the time.

Being able to give yourself a reality check, and that ties it back into the community thing.

I think one of the most difficult things, and as you're existing in the world and you see all the hurt and negative things going on in the world is, what do I do about it?

How do I fix?

Nowadays, the thing I struggle with the most is seeing people who are asking for money and panhandling, begging, and this and that.

I don't trust any of them.

I wish I could, but what are they going to do with my money?

And so a long time ago, I said to myself, I'm never really going to give money to anybody that needs help, but I will offer to acquire things for them that will be beneficial.

Because if they really want it and if they really need it, they're going to say yes to that.

What's an example?

Well, I don't do this all the time.

I'm not sitting here trying to say I'm an awesome person.

One time I took a guy to the grocery store.

I was like, hey, what do you need?

Like, let's get you some stuff.

Rather than cash.

I'm not going to give you 50 bucks.

Because I don't know who you are.

I don't know what you're going to do with it.

I mean, you know my dad, he was involved with drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

So I know how addiction, the making decisions that just, you know you're making the bad decision, yet you make it anyways.

There's just so much going on around us that we're okay with ignoring and we shouldn't be.

Yeah, increased mobility, people are moving a lot more often, working from home, less people are socializing.

And I lately have been thinking about it this way.

There's a lot of things that are changing a lot faster than we're changing.

So we have to be really intentional and do as much as we can.

The big thing whenever I hear about addiction and when I hear about going to jail, those are two things that remove you from your community.

And no matter how hard you tried to build your community, no matter how great your network was, if you do fall into both those things, then it will remove those.

Now, community largely is this holistic thing whenever you did your exercise and you reverse engineered what you desired and you got back to community.

And you mentioned those three wellnesses for when you're running, the mental, spiritual, physical.

My grad school had these banners up and they had like seven different types of wellnesses.

They had like the financial wellness.

They had the social wellness.

They had the, it was emotional, a whole bunch of different ones.

So it's all holistic and collected.

Depending on how your financial health is, if you're in financial debt, you're going to be stressed out, which is going to be hard for your physical health.

So your financial health begins to operate and impact your physical health.

And then if you're stressed out and your physical health isn't good, you're not going to feel up to interacting with people.

So then your social health is being hurt.

So as we talk about how things are looking bleak and AI and social media, it's also really good to put the spotlight on how we have a lot to do about it.

Like there's a lot of, it's empowering.

Yeah, it's not game over by any means.

It's not game over.

Yeah, right.

And it's this idea of you can level up, you can work on all of these things.

This podcast is about your social health, but we touch on all those other things because they're interdependent on one another.

Yeah, and I will say when it's not game over, it'll never be game over as long as humans live.

Yep, as long as we don't quit.

Yeah, one thing we had talked about in the past, or I also had heard you talk about it with somebody, is going beyond, like for example, soccer.

Yeah.

So for me, I think I talked to you, I was like, hey, let's try to get a group of people together for bonfire or something like that.

But that's not the easiest thing to do.

I think you were talking to that one guy is Omri, is that what his name was?

He was saying to you, sometimes people don't want to do anything more than, I'm here to play soccer, bro.

Yeah.

Stop talking to me.

I'm here to talk with the ball on the foot.

When they say that, I mean, okay, cool.

No worries.

But for me, I think one of the hardest things with community, if it's something like that, is going ahead and put how to be intentional beyond that.

I guess I'm bringing this up too for us to try to figure it out a little bit.

Yeah, because we need to do better.

Yeah.

Let's just use the soccer thing.

I think part of it is maybe worried about rejection.

That's maybe something I would worry about more is like, hey, everyone come over to the house for a bonfire.

One guy shows up and it's like the guy I was maybe hoping didn't come.

Yeah.

I'm like, oh, cool.

Okay.

Well, but really there's an opportunity there.

Totally.

Not to make too much light of that, but-

That's the funny thing though.

The people who need community the most oftentimes don't have the best social muscles, so it's incredibly awkward.

It's this you really have to fight because you have to work out your social muscles.

Oftentimes when you put events on that you invite a whole bunch of people, then it may be really awkward, but it's like, man, I am doing my duty to make sure their social muscles get better, so it's hard at first.

But it's so rewarding too though when you are doing that and you see them start to blossom or whatever and you're going, man, I'm so happy for them because what are they going to get?

What's the rest of our life going to look like now?

Unlocking.

Yeah, compared to what it was going to be.

And so I think that's something where we definitely need to, and maybe I'm saying we need to do this when really it's, I need to go ahead and just throw something out there.

Pick a date and a time and say, hey, bonfire at my house.

Yeah.

Bring your favorite Yu-Gi-Oh!

card.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

Yu-Gi-Oh!

Yu-Gi-Oh!

Card.

We're going to burn it.

Bonfire at my house.

Quit being a kid.

Bonfire at my house, date and time, looking forward to you all.

Send it, schedule it a week out.

Then the next couple of times at soccer, hey.

Are you coming?

You coming?

Yeah.

Talking to them in person and then see who shows up.

I'd like to see you there.

It'd be cool if you came, man.

I'd love to see you there.

Let's talk a little bit more about what you're talking about at the Bonfire.

I think picking a date and a time, the hardest thing is being the social entrepreneur.

Actually creating the thing because it's risky, because nobody can show up.

I remember whenever I did it with soccer, that first day, LASL.

What was the first day like?

Was I there?

You weren't there, Lawrence Adult Soccer League sent it out, and then a few people showed up, but people were messaging me and guess what people were asking?

How many people typically come?

That grinded my gears.

I remember that.

I remember when that was happening.

Yeah, that grinded my gears because I was watching a couple of messages get passed around.

I was like, getting spicy in here.

What it communicated to me was, unless there's a certain amount of people, I'm not showing up, and that shouldn't necessarily grind my gears, because people can have preferences.

Like, hey, I only want to play soccer if it's full field.

Cool.

That's fine to have your preferences.

It could just be a preference.

Yeah.

But I think I attached it to like, hey, I'm working as hard as I can, and I'm going to show up regardless of how many people are there.

If you're a Fairweather fan, if you're only showing up when we get to play full field, don't even come at all.

Yeah.

But I shouldn't do like that.

But there's zero guarantee about it.

And I think some of the sentiment that was being expressed is if you're not showing up because you don't think it's going to happen, then that's for sure one less person that's going to make it.

Right.

That's going to keep it from happening.

And if you're not showing up because you don't think it's the cool party, lean into the uncertainty.

If you're interested, show up.

And I think the culture that I was trying to create with the soccer and people would be like, bro, you're overthinking.

It's just playing soccer.

But I would respond by saying, no, I'm actually trying to create a culture that people can be a part of.

And the culture that I was trying to create was we're here for soccer, but we also really value the people.

So it doesn't matter how many people show up.

It just matters whether people are showing up.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I do think though, in that situation though, there is probably something where, again, because like I was saying, people are just showing up and nobody knows each other.

So there's probably a lot of assumptive thoughts going on about, I mean, kind of, I mean, I would say you're probably like, I should have not done what I did there and so that like, hey, I don't know what it's going to be like, but if you show up, that's one more that might help it happen, I suppose.

So anyways, it is what it is to you can't always, I mean, that's just something that can't be controlled.

And it's a, and it's a knowledge gap on my end because I have all of this thoughts and opinions and then sometimes I'll think like, why isn't this other person thinking like that when they're just trying to play ball?

You know what I mean?

And like, they have a busy day, they have a busy life, they have their social fulfillment, other places, they're literally showing up just to play soccer.

Yeah.

Do you ever, I mean, you're a big question asker, do you ever feel like you're burdening people with all your questions?

I'm asking because of a way I feel about myself.

There have been moments where I felt like that.

And I think, let me think here.

Do I ever feel like I'm burdening someone with the question?

Well, here, I'll talk about me a little bit then to maybe help.

So I'm one of those people where I think I come off aggressive most of the time.

But I'm like, Hey, you doing okay?

I'm like, I'm fine.

I'm like, well, that response doesn't seem like you're fine.

What's going on?

I'm fine.

I'm like, okay, come on now.

You know, and so I'll start to do that.

Or say someone says they just give me an answer, I'm like, well, why didn't you think about this?

And I was like, I don't know.

I don't think that way.

And then I'll be like, well, don't you think you should think that way?

And so I almost, I want to break everything down.

I want to, I'm okay with you not landing where I'm at, but I would like you, I'd like to go through this whole process with you.

And so, I mean, so I, I will sometimes feel similarly.

I think I recognize that we can't control, I can't control, you can't control how other people process things.

And whenever we talk to somebody, this is, this sounds reductionist, me saying this, but it's new data coming in and the way we process new data coming in, it's different for everybody.

But there are moments where, when people make me feel like I am being a burden by asking questions, I think I've gotten to the point to where I kind of check out and I, and I think to myself, man, there must be something odd with that person.

So that's kind of like a self-protective mechanism on my end.

But for the most part, it's like, there's no need to be rude.

Like if people are like really being, what's that, like dejected or like stonewalling me.

I think I'm growing in my confidence when it comes to this, but there have definitely been moments where historically I've been like, bro, why do you always ask questions?

And my dad asks a ton of questions and I've heard people criticize him for asking so many questions and you ask so many questions.

So I definitely recognize.

Don't you want to figure this out?

Yeah.

Don't you want to know why you feel this way?

Another side of the house though is I also understand the importance of reciprocity.

So whenever I find myself asking questions, yet nobody is asking me questions, then I'll think about that and I'll probably try and dial it back.

And I tell this to people for dating, like whenever you're dating and you're trying to find a romantic partner, if the person doesn't ask you any questions, that's a red flag, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah, like you want to ask questions, but you have to intentionally be silent and maybe the person's not asking you questions because you're not giving them time to ask you questions.

So it's like, be silent, let them ask you questions, but whenever you're being silent, if it's awkward silence, then maybe give them another date or a couple more dates.

Maybe they're truly socially anxious, but if they're not expressing interest in you...

Yeah, that was just being, I guess, vulnerable or just sharing something from my past with dating apps years ago.

That was something that I struggled with.

Because you're so inquisitive.

I'm so inquisitive.

Right.

Well, not just that too, but at the same time, I'm trying to make a connection here and I'm like, okay, so ask a question, you know, answer, okay, where do I go now?

Question again, answer.

And then I'm like, man, they're not asking questions, you know, and then of course, there's just a spiral.

And then, I mean, simping, I guess you could say it starts going in that direction sometimes.

But that is, from my experience, 100% accurate.

If someone's not asking questions now, well, I don't want to say it's 100% the case.

Everyone's different.

You know, just give me a favorable statistic, maybe like 99.9, you know, right?

So very precise man over here.

You got to leave the point 1%.

But if you're intrigued by something, you're going to inquire more.

Yes, you are.

So if there's no question being asked, put that energy into a different location, you know, right?

Yeah, there's this concept of the parasocial relationship.

The idea is that one person knows a ton about the other person and the other person doesn't know any about the other person.

So this is common with like Justin Bieber, right?

Oh, I know Justin Bieber is from Canada.

I know everything about him.

He knows nothing about me.

He's on my wall.

I know he dated Selena Gomez and he married Haley.

I'm really curious how many facts you're going to throw out about him right now.

And you know all of this, but Justin Bieber doesn't know you.

And it's this parasocial relationship to where you think you know this person and you think they're interacting with you and really they're not.

And in dating relationships, if you ever find yourself in a position to where you know so much about this person or this person knows so much about you and it's not, there's no reciprocity there, there has to be two things, conversational turn taking and reciprocity.

All that being said, a really good indicator of someone who you should probably look further into potentially pursuing a relationship is if you all get lost in conversation.

Because if you all get lost in conversation, what that indicates is that the time passing is secondary to how fascinated you are with what's going to be said next.

Yeah.

You stopped wondering about where you needed to be, everything, what you had to do.

It's all what's going to come out of this next person or what's going to come out next at this person's mouth.

And that's beautiful because regardless of how much money you have or whether or not you get fired, you're going to find yourself in the living room on the couch.

Yeah.

And guess what?

You're going to have to talk.

Yeah.

I remember running into an old high school friend once at a coffee.

Well, I think we're like, hey, let's meet up and talk, just catch up.

And we met at a coffee shop and we talked for six hours.

And I just remember just being floored by that much time going by and just being just shocked.

I think that was one of the few times where I was like, wow, that's crazy that that happened.

I mean, I get into conversation with people a lot, but it's really something special.

And this was somebody who, I mean, we weren't trying to engage in a relationship or anything like that.

But it's platonic.

Yeah.

But it was just, it just flowed.

It felt good.

And I haven't seen that person since.

And that was years ago.

You know, it's a very fond memory of mine.

Yeah.

You know, how cool is that?

Yeah, it was very cool.

And you time traveled with that person.

Yeah.

Because in that moment, you lost track of time.

Yeah.

No, no, you go ahead.

What are you trying to do?

Well, I was going to ask how isolated I mean, is there anything about this venture for you that is isolating?

Yes.

I spent a ton of time reading about how like how ironic, right?

How ironic?

Yeah.

I spent all this time filming videos and reading about the importance of human connection.

By yourself.

By myself.

And I will have moments where I feel overwhelmed and I feel at capacity so then I don't plan meetings and I don't reach out to people.

I have to be really intentional about going, what's that?

Overdrive.

Like overdrive with my social health and my mental health and my...

One interesting thing is my wife, who's incredible and I'm so incredibly grateful for her and none of this would exist if my wife weren't here.

So to those watching, thank you Annie Miller for everything you've done.

But there will be moments where I am so drained from talking to everybody else that my wife gets like my leftovers.

And it's like, what the heck, bro?

Yeah, come home and you're a zombie.

Yeah, come home and you're a zombie.

And I hate that.

So I have to be really intentional about doing things like washing the dishes or like trying to make this world.

And when I say this world, I mean this house, a better place.

So whenever she comes home from work, she can relax more or like do things like that.

So it is isolating.

Another thing that's isolating about this is you can talk to a lot of people, but it's hard to find people who will be like, yeah, that makes sense.

How'd that be hard?

Or like it's hard to get people to feel the feelings you feel about something you created.

And I think that's with anybody.

If somebody creates something, it's like when you work for a business, you're kind of sad if you lose a customer.

But if you're the one who founded the business, you're like really upset if you lose a customer.

Yeah.

You know, it's so different levels of that was my blood, sweat and tears to get that person to walk in here.

And I let it slip away.

You know, failure.

What am I doing wrong?

I hired the wrong person.

Oh my gosh.

Hiring.

Oh yeah.

It was one of your like second podcast or something like that.

I don't know if you remember me telling you about this, but so you're talking to someone about management and asking them what the hardest part about it was.

Yeah.

So Mike said something great about what I learned is that just because someone is likable doesn't mean they're capable.

And I was like, okay, pause notes on my phone, you know, save that on my remember that.

So I don't know why I wanted to say that, but because you're an organizational leader and we haven't even scratched that at all.

And it's one of those things that's like, do we even hop into it?

Yeah.

But you are running the train at some capacity, bringing people on, letting people go, having to deal with a big organization that affects more than just you.

And that's pretty impressive.

Yeah, it's been, well, sorry, not yet.

It's impressive.

Yeah, it is impressive.

Yeah, it is.

No, I mean, it's a lot sometimes, but that's purpose in life.

That's one thing I struggled with a lot.

And I think everyone will and does.

And if they don't, they will again, 100 percent.

But finding purpose, I can't remember who was talking about this, but I remember hearing someone saying, the only way that you're going to give your life more purpose is by giving yourself more responsibilities.

You know?

Yeah, responsibility.

That's a Peterson thing.

Was it?

Really big about responsibility.

He would say something like that.

And I was like, dang, that is so simple and accurate.

And I was like, okay, I got to find a way to give myself more responsibilities.

And I think...

It's like a dog.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In fact, I mean, I got...

That's one of the reasons I did get a dog is to add another living creature as a responsibility to myself.

You know, partially I was like, preparing for a kid or something like that, too.

I feel like a dog is a good segue or a good starting point, at least.

But on top of giving so much to other people, hopefully, to have an impact on others, with all of that stuff, you need to start with yourself.

I mean, kind of going back to JP talking about, you know, clean your room.

You know, why are people trying to fix the world when they don't have a clean room?

Clean your room, clean your house, clean your yard, clean your car, be a clean person, whether it be literally like tidy or just the way you behave and interact with people at work.

I mean, it's just like anything.

If you want to be good at it, it takes practice.

And so you have to start with something that is manageable.

You know, you got to reduce the percentage or the ability to fail because you need to succeed in order to even tackle something else.

You know, I think, I mean, failure is good.

I think people who aren't failing at anything aren't doing life the right.

So stack your successes.

Yeah, they'll grow.

Yeah, and people talk about failure quite a bit when talking to you.

But if you aren't failing at anything, you aren't doing it right, doing life right.

But yeah, I don't know.

I think I went off the rails a little bit right there.

No, you're good.

One of the things I like about you is that you're an organizational leader and you could make a way bigger deal out of that, yet you don't use it as your calling card.

Like you've been on this podcast and part of it is the line of questioning and how we were riffing.

We're just talking about what we want to talk about.

And we're comfier with each other, so we can do that, but you could use that as your calling card and be like, oh, I do this and I do that and I get to...

It's weird to do that.

Good.

Yeah.

Good.

And I think that's a good thing because there is way more humanity than a title.

Titles, shout out to the titles.

Shout out to all the titles out there.

I hope you're listening.

Another thing, since you're saying titles, like one of my titles is director.

Yeah.

And I think on my name badge, it says executive director and so, but break that down and it's ED.

And I'm like, Ooh, I don't like that.

You don't want to be talking about my title a whole lot.

Yeah.

The only reason why is because it's synonymous with erectile dysfunction.

I wasn't going to say the words.

I was going to let the people figure it out, but...

Let the people know.

Yeah.

Shout out to all the people.

All right.

Give me a final message.

What's one message that you would like the world to hear?

Actually, I just said, I don't know, and then something just came to me, which is great.

Thanks, Brain.

Well, I'll say there's two things.

One thing I'm trying to work into my life more constantly and also at work is I think...

I'm going to go back to the Stoics or the Philosophers.

I think it was Socrates.

One thing I was talking about recently...

I heard this a long time ago and it just came back not too long ago, but there's like a triple filter test.

I think there's a story of one of his students coming to him wanting to tell him something gossiping and he has these three questions.

I think they were something along the lines of, well, one, is it true?

Do you know if it's true?

I think the student was like, I'm not sure.

And he said, is it going to...

Is it kind or something like that?

No, and is it useful for me to know?

Something along those lines, I maybe butchered it, I don't know, but I think everyone gets the idea.

And it's like, okay, so if you don't know if it's true, it's not beneficial for me to know and it's not kind, then I don't want to know it.

And I think you can take that and turn it around on yourself and say, well, then I don't want to say it to whoever.

I fail at it miserably every day, but it's my goal.

You know, and actually, this will segue over into the first thing that came to mind.

The reason that I want to pursue that is because I think this one might have been Marcus Aurelius.

Again, don't know, don't quote me.

Something along the lines of, you know, the obstacle is the way, you know, where I might be regurgitating something I heard somebody else on this podcast say, but basically where there's fear, you know, that's where you need to go.

What scares you is where you go and you can break that down into, it's the obstacle.

And unless you get over that obstacle, you're not going to see what's on the other side.

You're not going to know what you had in you, like what it took to do it.

So just whatever is uncomfortable, it's probably going to help you turn into a bigger, better person.

So even though it's uncomfortable, start practicing confronting small obstacles and just that's what life is.

It really is.

And I think that that's where it becomes beneficial and fun for you is knowing what you can and can't overcome.

Well, you can overcome most things, but just triumphing, you know, whether it's small or big, it doesn't matter.

Just triumphing, growing, learning.

So the obstacles away and triple filter test, try to be a good human.

I love that because it's all team human.

Thanks for being here.

I appreciate you and your willingness to sit down and I'm famous now.

So thank you, share.

I hope that you are a good steward with your fame.

Okay, I'm going to be watching.

I'm going to be watching how you steward your fame from now on.

And it's been a blast.

Yeah, heck yeah.

Thanks, man.

I appreciate it.

No problem.

All right, folks, we'll see you next time.

And that's it for this week's episode of the Talk to People Podcast.

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