The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Always Adventure: Five Powerful Practices for Living a Happier More Fulfilling Life by Andy Way

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

Always Adventure: Five Powerful Practices for Living a Happier More Fulfilling Life by Andy Way THE ART OF LIVING ADVENTUROUSLY Living Adventurously is about discovering how to change the way we experience life so that every day is its own adventure full of insights and opportunities. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed, unhappy, or unfulfilled. Sometimes, our problems can be as simple as wanting more out of life but not knowing how. Living Adventurously is made up of five practices that deliver distinct outcomes that, when practiced, lead to living a happier, more fulfilling life. Andy Way openly shares true stories from his life and the lessons he learned along the way. Having struggled as a father of a teen dealing with self-harm, substance abuse, an eating disorder, and severe anxiety and depression, there was a time when finding joy in life seemed impossible. Refusing to give up, Andy stayed committed to his son and to giving purpose to the pain of his past so others do not have to go through the same. As a passionate father, he now shares this story and what he learned from such an intense challenge to help others live happier, more fulfilling lives. Through years of reflection, practice, and research, Andy crafted a way to live with more peace, confidence, trust, connection, and fulfillment. In Always Adventure, Andy draws the map that is the Living Adventurously Method. Using five simple practices, Andy shows us how we can allow our lives to change by experiencing more gratitude, getting uncomfortable, exploring the unknown, and seeking excitement so that we can start living adventurously too. While life may not turn out the way we thought it would, it can also turn out even better than we ever imagined…if we let it.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

And now, a man who's just here for the brain bleed. I'm your host, Chris Voss. Welcome to the show, my friends. Thanks for coming along today. We certainly appreciate it. As always, refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives and tell them, you know, you want to meet great authors, great CEOs, great brilliant minds.

And of course, none of those people on the show are me. It's always when we invite the guests so course, none of those people on the show are me. It's always when we invite the guests so that we have the smart people on the show to offset, I don't know, the low IQ that I bring the show down to. So refer the show to your friends and relatives. I don't know, is that a good sales pitch? I don't know.

Refer the show, damn it, already. YouTube.com, Forge has Chris Voss. Goodreads.com, Forge has Chris Voss. All of our groups on linkedin facebook twitter instagram tiktok all those crazy crazy places the kids are playing but uh we are not on snapchat no the chris voss show does not send dms so anyway guys uh we have an amazing author on the show today as always i mean why do we why do we not have amazing people on the show other than me that is uh He is the author of the newest book.

Just came out December 7th, 2022. Always Adventure. Five Powerful Practices for Living a Happier, More Fulfilling Life by Andy Way. He's on the show with us today. And he just released his book. And it's been killing it. Number one release in a lot of different categories, he tells me. And he's just doing well with it and everything that's been going on that way. So we're talking

to him about it and what goes into it. He is an author, speaker, and coach who helps parents and young adults connect with their truth and power so they can live happier, healthier, and more fulfilling lives. We're going to find out how to get to our truth and power from him. Welcome to the show, Andrew. How are you? Hey, that's a heck of an introduction. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Chris.

There you go. We throw everything in, including the kitchen sink, and we just make it up every time. So it makes those plugs go down a whole lot easier, you know, and people are just like, oh, God, does he have to say the YouTube again? You just got to make it fun. So welcome to the show. Give us your dot com so people can find you on those interwebbages in the sky, those invisible magic things.

Yeah, andyawayofficial.com. Certainly I'm on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram as well, but andyawayofficial.com or alwaysadventurelife.com, either one. There you go. There you go. So, Andy, give us a little bit of background about you. How did you grow up? What sort of background got you down the pathway of where you are today?

Yeah, well, my background is actually kind of a common answer is that I grew up like Huck Finn with a motor down on the intercoastal waterway down in Savannah, Georgia. Did you paint fences and stuff and hide in caves and think about death like Huckleberry Finn? A little bit. Running around in the river. Yeah, I had a little boat from the time I was 13. Down by the river? Yeah. Sorry, I had to get that in there.

No, it's fair. Chris Farley fan. Go ahead, I'm sorry. That's right. That's where I live, in a van down by the river. So go on. How did you move, John, from there? Yeah, so I graduated high school shortly after.

I didn't grow up with my mom. So I was in Austin living on a sailboat and getting to know my mom and then joined the Navy. I was serving overseas, launching planes off a flight deck of a carrier. So we were forward deployed about eight months out of the year out of Japan, right? And then landed in St. Louis, of all places. Oh, wow. Yeah. St. Louis with the big arch?

That's right. That's right. Wonderful barbecue out there, too. Yeah. Well, that's for sure. That's right. Wonderful barbecue out there, too. Yeah. Well, that's for sure. That's right. I've been there. So what got you into being a real estate investor and business owner?

Yeah. I mean, it was kind of, you know, I wanted, I always knew that I wanted to be, I had a really great dad and a great family, great stepmom. Sorry, that must have been hard. Yeah. Most of us don't, and so the suffrage is real. Yeah, well, yeah, there's plenty of story there for sure, but I get it. So, you know, I just knew that I wanted to be available, and so I chose a career that I thought that would help me to make a good living

and give me some freedom to be a present for my son. There you go. And that launched you into a 15-year career as a real estate investor and business owner. Were you mostly doing real estate investing or were there other companies you started and then owned? Yeah, it was mostly residential real estate investing and remodeling and buying and selling property. And then I owned a home inspection franchise, a post-home inspection franchise, and ran that business for a number of years.

That's always good, doing the home inspections. I had a mortgage company for close to 20 years and was a real estate agent for six. And yeah, between home inspections and appraisers, man, they do some hard work, man. They have to crawl into all sorts of dark places in the house. You never quite know what you're getting yourself into. That's right. Yeah, my appraiser, we used to do one of my clients that would come back every year. It was really weird.

There was a husband and wife team, and they both lived in two separate homes. She had her home. He had his. But they were married. And he would call me, and he called me the first time he went to her house and he says, hey Chris, you ever been to her house and looked in the basement? Because back then loan officers would go to people's houses to write loans. And I'd be like, no. And he goes, I turned the light to the basement and the floor was moving. And I go,

well, it sounds like one of those exorcist sort of things. And he goes, no. He goes, on second look, she has about 110 cats living in her house. They're all in the basement. That's why the floor looks like it moves when they stand at the top of it because

it's just wall-to-wall cats. And that's why her husband doesn't live with her. But we would redo that mortgage every couple years. Oh, gosh. So you probably have some similar sort of home inspection stories, huh? Oh, certainly plenty of stories, to say the least.

You could probably write a book on that alone. Right. So talk to us about your son. I've seen you discuss your issues, your thing with your son where you're trying to be available to him as a single father and stuff like that. What's the pathway here? How does this happen? Yeah.

I mean, we know how the son thing happens. Yeah, right. Well, first, yeah, it was about a year and a half into me being here in St. Louis, and I found myself a single dad, unfortunately. And so here I stayed. I just I found myself a single dad, unfortunately. And so, you know, here I stayed. I just committed to being the best dad I could. So I stayed here and really around sixth grade. So I was single dad for seven years, did remarry. And then around sixth grade, he really started to struggle. And that became really our six year battle to save his life and our hero's journey kind of experience.

Wow. And what was he going through? Ultimately, it was a host of issues. A lot of people can't really handle the weight of it, but really not much that those kids haven't gone through that we haven't experienced. There was cutting and bulimia and anxiety and depression and drug and alcohol abuse. So really all of it, kind of like the kitchen sink. Yeah. I'm still doing that.

I'm 54. So, you know, I never grew out of it from teenage. I'm just kidding. I gave up the booze, but I kept the depression. Uh,

let's talk after the show. I know, I know. I need to call up the guy we had on a few weeks ago or a month ago who runs a recovery center. No, I'm just kidding. I talked to him. Uh, did had on a few weeks ago or a month ago who runs a recovery center. No, I'm just kidding. I remember.

I talked to him. Did you really? He's a great guy. We had him on the show, and he helps a lot of people back east there. So there you go. Ping the show people if you need help. There's a 1-800 number you can call, I think, too. Always good to talk about having people get mental help.

People have been telling me I should get it for years, but I have a podcast. So na-na-na- no, no. Let's see. And so, what comes out of this whole experience you're going through and leads you into the book? Yeah, that transition was kind of interesting. And it was in the middle of this experience that ultimately, you know, I had read all of the books, done everything I could to be the best dad I could, and I just couldn't save him. I alone could not save my son, and we really needed serious help. It was crushing me, the fact that just watching him struggle and all that. It was just brutal.

Late one night, I'm watching a YouTube video of these guys riding motorcycles in the back country of Colorado. And it was just it was I'd never seen anything like it. And I was not a motorcycle riding kind of guy. I was a boater and it really kind of lit something in me. And I didn't know why or what at the time, but it did. So I set out to kind of it was a month later that I was riding my own adventure motorcycle. Did you take Drew with you? Eventually, I did.

I did. It was his high school graduation present. He had purchased a bike for himself when he was 13, saved all of his birthday and Christmas money. And I rebuilt that motorcycle for him for his high school graduation present. And we went on a nine-day adventure motorcycling trip exactly like that video that i watched uh you know the years before that is so important i think so many young men this is my opinion are lost today i grew up with an alpha grandfather and it wanted to be alpha father who was more beta ties and feminized he was more beta ties than he was not feminized he was more beta tized than he was not feminized but um he was an alpha father but

we or he's an alpha my alpha grandfather we spent most of my time with and we did all the old world stuff we were fishing we were camping he taught us how to change oil he taught us how to weld he he taught us grit um not only as a man but but he taught a stoicism uh he was he was good and he was he was a real shaper of me and what i see in a lot of young men today is their loss between their innate natural masculinity and manhood and of course a society that tells them they should be shamed for it and that they shouldn't they shouldn't adhere to those uh thoughts and feelings um that that's a part of our biology and so they get lost they get this world where they're you know they're they're taught to be emotional instead of logical stoic and reasoning um and uh i think

it caused a lot of confusion we've had a lot of of psychologists on the show wrote books 20 years ago predicting what's going on today with these boys at a loss. So you get into being a speaker, you get into coaching people and stuff. And then when do you decide to write the book? Well, that video and that whole experience, when I started to ride, it really instilled in me this capacity to heal and grow stronger for the road ahead with Drew. And my wife didn't like that I rode, but she loved the way that I came home. You know,

I was, I had, I was good. I was happy. I was full. I was, I had capacity to just whatever she wanted to do. It just helped me to just heal and grow stronger.

Right. And so it was that that really caused me to dig into why is it relevant and who should care and why is it important? And so I started a five-year journey of unpacking my relationship to adventure. Ah. And so did you start doing more adventurous things or did you stick with the motorcycling or what are the things you get engaged in? Well, it was more. Yeah, it's a fair question.

I did start to ride adventure motorcycles more and take I took a solo four day trip. And then I did this nine day trip with Drew and would ride a lot. But I figured that I started to unpack this mindset distinction and kind of what I call living adventurously. And I do feel there's a mindset there. It's not outside of us. It's inside of us. That's something that I've really put together called the living adventurously method. And that's a methodology that I do coach.

So always adventure. Living adventurously doesn't just mean like, hey, let's go jump off of bridges with those bungee cords and do crazy things that may put your life on the line. Some of it's about in your head then. A hundred percent. That's right, Chris. I mean, the misnomer, my whole conversation is to redefine our relationship to adventure. Most people automatically relate to or think about climbing Mount Everest or sailing solo around the world. And my take is every single day is the unknown. My definition in adventure is exploring the unknown and seeking excitement. And so it's a different lens through which we can really approach everyday life.

Yeah, the adventure with your mind. And so you put into the book five powerful practices for living a happier and more fulfilling life. Why did you choose happier and not unhappier? Because I think it seems like a lot of people love being unhappy these days. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. But what are the, can you tease out to us the five powerful practices? People need, of course, to buy the book.

They do need to buy the book. That's absolutely right. Buy the book, damn it. Of course, it's on Amazon now, but you can get it through my website. But, you know, the five powerful practices, the two first ones, one and two, allowing is one, and allowing is the catalyst for all change. Nothing happens until we allow it, and it turns out a lot of people struggle with that. Number two is gratitude.

Let's get into allowing a little bit. So allowing stuff to happen to you or allowing your mind to be open, give us some deeper definition on that. I love it. Yeah, happy to. One of the things I invested in myself for the first time not too long ago. And I was in a real high-level coaching program with a lot of accomplished people. And one of the things I started to notice was there are a lot of similar common conversations that I'm not good enough or I'm not worthy or I'm not enough. These self limiting beliefs and all the time people have these self limiting beliefs that are rooted

deep in their past from their childhood. And so we're not able, we're not going to move forward in our life if we can't get closure and get complete with our past, let go of our anger, let go of our, right? Whatever it might be, or these stories that we've made up, until we get complete with those things and start to believe in ourselves and get closure with the past, we're not going to be able to move forward and have the minutes of life that we really want. Allowing people to pour into us, allowing ourselves to receive help, allowing ourselves to forgive.

Oh, man. I got to forgive people too? Well, forgive. Can I still hate them and resent them? Yeah, sure. Okay, cool. Don't to self, keep hating and resenting people, but forgive them. Or maybe, I don't know. Let's see how it goes.

I don't know where my phone was for that. Note to self. So allowing people to do this. So settling is really important. I think people really need to sit down and tell me what you think. Work out their trauma. Clean up the past, and make sure they're clear or clean if they can on that.

What do you think? That's exactly right. We have to get complete. I say it all the time, you know, loving yourself and others for all they are and all they aren't, for all you are and all you aren't. You know, people are typically doing the best they can with the frame of mind that they have to work with. I guess part of allowing would be, you can't allow other people to love you and love to come out from you

if you don't allow yourself to be loved or allow you to love other people. Yeah, I mean, how you treat yourself is a huge reflection on how you interact with others. It really is, especially if you hate yourself because that also. Then you're on Twitter all day doing, you know, sending nasty, and YouTube sending nasty comments to people. Yeah.

Trolls. It's not good. It's not a good place to be. It's not a good place to be. Note to self, stop doing that. And so let's move on to number two. Sure. Gratitude.

Gratitude. Gratitude. What a great word. Right. I mean, the single word outcome for gratitude is positivity. Mm-hmm. And so there's two states of being, a powerful state of being and a primal state of being. And when we connect with gratitude, we really help shift ourselves into a powerful state of being. So we move from primal to powerful then.

Yep. There you go. I think I need to do that because I'm always stuck in primal, especially when I'm at a stake. No, gratitude is so important. I actually have something I created. A friend of mine gave me the idea years ago. And I have every Sunday is what I call Gratitude for Gratefulness Day

and it repeats itself every week on my calendar on Sunday. And Sunday's the day when I'm supposed to at least set a little bit aside, set a little bit of time aside from Call of Duty to focus on being grateful for, there's a lot of that going on today, Gratitude for Gratefulness Day. And it's kind of where I sit and kind of, uh, not really meditate, but kind of reminisce and go, Hey man, you know, be thankful for what you got. Uh, I, when I turned, I think it was 53

or 52 or something, I posted on Facebook, some complaining, whining and moaning and, Oh God, hit 52 or hit 50 or something like that. And somebody just struck me with an arrow through the heart and they go, you know what, Chris, man, there's a whole lot of people that would trade places with you that didn't make it to 50. A whole lot of people. And maybe you should really think about that. And that just zapped me. And I think about it ever since.

And so, you know, like you say, you mentioned earlier, every day is an adventure. So, you know, every day is a new day, a day above ground. You know, you get to wake up every day. You get the privilege to wake up every day. This universe is a game of survivalism. If you haven't checked lately, it's kind of out to get you most times, you know, whether it's a virus or a bug or,

you know, a meteor falling on your head. You know, that happened to me last week. Almost. Uh, we had a giant earthquake this morning in, uh,

California for those of you watching. Um, so you just never know, man. And so every day, you know, adventure, live your life,

right? Absolutely. And every single day we get the, adventure, live your life, right? Absolutely. And every single day we get the opportunity to make a powerful new decision. So it really is a mindset. There you go. There you go. Mine's usually to launch Call of Duty on my stream app. I'm turning Call of Duty into a callback to this show.

So let's talk about number three. This is really where it all began, if you ask me. Exploring the unknown. And so the gift of exploring the unknown is trust. And exploring the unknown to me is the same as just taking on a challenge. And that can mean a million things to a million different people. And it doesn't have to be huge. It can be very simple.

That can just be turning the shower on cold at the end of your shower. And any time you take on a challenge, it can't help but to, you know, at the end of it, it's uncomfortable in the beginning. But once you get uncomfortable and take on a challenge, you can't help but to build a deeper level of trust in yourself and others. Your confidence goes up, and it really begins to kind of seep into just really how you take on everyday life. It definitely does.

Teaching yourself discipline and power and being able to control yourself. Like, don't turn on the call of duty and maybe do some work. Yeah. Yeah. See, there you go. That's the callback of the show. I don't know why I'm identifying it because everyone knows what it is. But it's funnier. I don't know. I'm just doing it. So, yeah, I mean, it's to me, a big word for me is discipline

because I sometimes don't have any. You know, I mean, when you're single with no kids, you're like, you wake up every day, and it is an adventure because you're like, I don't know, what should I do today? You play with the dogs, and then you're like, I don't know, let's go kick ass in the world. But, you know, whether it's dieting or whether it's, you know, just trying to live better, eat better, think better, read books and stuff like that,

you know, it's all about trying to, you know, square your life. And the more you read, the more empowered you feel, the more successful and control you have. Basically, the more control you have, the more empowered you feel, right? Sure, absolutely. I mean, I did wind up really digging into the neuroscience behind some of this approach. And so there's a whole body of work behind it that I started to discover that was really exciting to me because sometimes I'm a little bit geeky. But I like to dig into things. But yeah, there's no doubt that anytime

you're getting uncomfortable, you really, it definitely changes the way you, you know, your capacity and what you're able to have. It's fun to be uncomfortable too, because then you can really stretch yourself. You can learn new things, go new places, and you can open your mind. You know, it's like I told my niece and nephew when they were graduating high school. I said, look, I'm going to tell you something that I wish someone had told me when I was your age. There's three things in life that are important. One is knowing the things that you know. Okay, great.

Number two, know what you don't know. So, you know, like you and I probably don't know rocket science or physics or something. Maybe I do, but I don't. But I know I don't. But I know what physics are. And then the most important third rail that you've got to figure out is the things you don't know that you don't know. And that's where the real richness of life is for me.

And hopefully it is for the people. Finding those things you don't know. I'm 54 and I still have learned aha moments where I'm like, holy crap. Like I had no idea that was a thing. That's really cool. I wish I would have learned that earlier, but I know it now. And it just evolves your mind and expands your mind. And sometimes it can really expand and change your life.

I couldn't agree more. Yeah. Yeah, it's huge. So I lost track of if we're on three or four. Which one are we on? So we were on three. That was Get Uncomfortable. Yeah, those Call of Duty jokes threw me off.

It's the callbacks. So four, what do we have for? And that is Explore the Unknown. And it's a perfect segue. callbacks. So for what do we have for, and that is explore the unknown. And it's a perfect segue. You know, there's what you know, what you know, you don't know.

And then what you don't know that you don't know. And the gift of exploring the unknown as part of your just daily, it's just being curious, right? And that's insight. When you're aligning your actions behind your spiritual vision, your life vision, things start to show up and they're not for no reason. You'll notice when something's in line with what you're really seeking and exploring, stuff will show up and

you'll get these insights that absolutely support what you're up to. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it kind of, it was funny. I kind of led into that with what I was talking about earlier, didn't I? Without even knowing, I must've read the book. Um, the, uh, yeah, it's, it's, uh, doing those different things, exploring the unknown. You know, sometimes your brain will fight you and it'll be like, oh man, oh man, do we have to expand ourselves today? We're going to learn something today. Or, you know, it's like, and sometimes I listen to my brain and when it's kind of putting

up that fight, like I don't want to learn anything new. You're like, okay, we need to push through this because there could be something really cool on the other side. And usually there is. And usually it's a better gun on call of duty that you need to unlock and, you know, go shoot stuff with. But it can really enhance your life because, you know, you can learn new skills. You can learn new trades. I mean, I've always lived my life as a venture because I don't have a wife and kids.

So, you know, it's not, I don't walk around all day just stepping on Legos. So I've always got to go find my own new adventure that other parents have. And, you know, I've gone for five, ten years. I tried being a photographer for a while. I kind of enjoyed learning it, spending a ton of money on stuff, and then realizing I didn't have any talent for it. But I loved the experience, and it taught me a lot of things, and I learned from it.

There's other parts of my life that I've done different things. And there's kind of like these whole segments. And so it's fun because I can look back on my life now and go, what a cool bunch of adventures. And then I can wake up every day and go, what adventure should I go on today? Perfect. That's absolutely right.

I mean, and that's actually a great segue into the last, you know, the fifth one. But that's having the experiences when you are actively being curious and exploring the unknown without question enrich your life. There you go. And it all comes back to the number one thing where you're allowing that all to happen. You know, opening yourself up and going on these adventures, being grateful and, uh, you know, finding the things in your life and can make all the difference. So, uh, did you, did Drew help with any of the writing of the book? Uh, how'd that work out

with him? I guess indirectly, right? Cause he went through his own challenges and I'm always very careful. He has his own story to tell. Um,, I really talk about my hero's journey where I was just kind of an empty shell of the man and I have built and kind of unpacked all this as part of my experience. sharing his own story of overcoming the challenges that he experienced. And so does my wife and so do I. We get approached on a pretty regular basis to kind of, I guess, just kind of meet with different people and help how we can. So he has that heart for it as well. There you go. So I'm looking at your website, Andyway Official, and you've got the book, you do speaking, coaching. Talk to us about some of the things you do there. Well, I mean, it's been pretty interesting. Anywhere from speaking, starting out and just speaking at the residential therapeutic boarding school where Drew went and speaking to those

parents. Part of what happens when you're in a challenge like ours, it was just really kind of overwhelming, is your world can get pretty isolated. You can get pretty lonely. And one of the things that I really wanted to let other parents know is that they're not alone. And we were on the backside. So I wanted to offer hope. There you go. It started there. And then I wind up, you know, all the way to speaking at a geo convention to a geophysicist and scientist in Canada just early this year. So it really goes from parents to the corporate world as well.

I noticed people can reach out to you for a free one hour to have an introduction conversation on your website. Yeah. There you go. There you go. And you've got coaching programs available, different things to do, speaking programs available. There you go. And you've got coaching programs available, different things to do, speaking programs available. There you do. You know, one of the things that I think, you know, you spending time with your son and going doing like man things together, really important for men. One of the things we don't have in this world that has been destroyed is men not getting together like we used to.

Because that's what we used to do. We used to tribe up and go kill a woolly mammoth or whatever. There's a real caveman in that innate sense to our biology. My alpha grandfather, like I said, he took us fishing. He taught us to, you know, set the hook, put a worm on the hook. We were all like screaming, you know, but he took us through camping. We did man things together, and there's something that men need to do where they go do a tribe of men. And, you know, it used to be men would get together in bars after work or, you know, they would be in a workspace where it was just men.

And now a lot of those places are no longer available where they're just men, where men can just get together and do things together. And fathers and sons shape a lot. You know, one thing I've seen being single and dating all my life is, is what happens when fathers get taken out of the home and the families that are left behind. And, and we now have the highest amount of single parent homes ever.

And you see a lot of problems in our society. And there's things that both sexes bring to teach stuff, but men need to hang out with other men. They need to learn from other men, especially when they're young. And they need tribal elders, if you will, to hang out with them,

teach them the ways of men and to not be ashamed of the masculinity, to not be ashamed of their manhood and what being a thing that we bring to that, being providers and protectors. So I'm glad you did that. And I think more men, and I hope more fathers is the little PSA I'm doing here, do that with their sons because it's really important to do that, especially I think nowadays in so much noise in our society that tells men that they're bad, boys that they're bad, that their masculinity is bad.

In schooling, they're not surrounded by men anymore. They're surrounded by women all the time. And men need to go hang out with other men and do stuff, kill a woolly mammoth sort of stuff, like you said, going on your motorcycles and doing adventures and stuff together. It's a goal-oriented thing where it's like we're going to get together we're going to go do some stuff we don't know what it is but it's going to be good right yeah absolutely i couldn't agree with you more on the issues of fatherlessness and um you know i'm actively involved with an organization called fathers and family support Center here in St. Louis.

That's the topic that I've been researching for over 20 years, fathers and families and our culture. And I don't believe that's an either or conversation. I think it's an and conversation. It doesn't have to look like our industrial era grandparents. And it doesn't have to look like, you know, painting our fingernails and wearing a skirt every day in order to fit in. I think that it's an and conversation. I can be emotionally connected and smart and know how to communicate and be a masculine man. Yeah.

And it's also important for daughters, too, I should mention. Fathers are so important. They teach something that doesn't get taught by the other sex. And of course, the other sex is important. There's a reason that there's two people that are supposed to be raising children and the masculine and the feminine, and that's just so important. And so I want more people to realize that because I see it every day. I see it when I'm dating. I see either in the families or I see it with, you know, someone who was raised without a father. And so there's father issues there. I see mother abandonment issues and stuff like that.

I see it all as I walk through life. It's kind of interesting, the perspective I have. So I'm glad you did that with your son. And I think if more fathers are having issues with their children, they should look at that and say, hey, man, do we need more quality time together? Certainly critically important just to connect with your sons and daughters and show up. I send mine to sons and daughters at least a letter once a year

to the military school that they're, I think they get out when they're 18. So that's what I do. Is that working out? It is for me. Andy, anything more? We want to tease out of the show before we go. Say that again? Anything more you want to tease out of the show before we go? Yeah, no, I appreciate it. No, that's really it. I mean, at the end of the day when you're practicing these practices you have a reason to be excited and i think that's that's really the culminating point is that there's something to be excited

about uh when you're really being intentional and engaged in in your life and um and you're continuing to take on little challenges you know or small, it doesn't matter, and being curious. And so there's a reason for it all, and that's reason enough to be excited, and that's what has you living a happier, more fulfilling life. There you go. I mean, life is an adventure. Wake up every day and go, hey, man, what can I learn new today? What can I do new today?

One of my favorite things is I technically read a lot of audio books on Audible. And as soon as I get in the car, whether I'm going to Walmart or store, you know, going to exercise or the gym, I slap on wherever I'm at with whatever book I'm reading in audio books. And so, you know, I pick up five minutes of learning between here and the store or wherever I'm driving. But, you know, I try and utilize my stupid time. Like even if I'm preparing a salad or something like that, I've usually got audible book playing and just learning new stuff and going on new adventures and being like, hey, let's check out what that's going on. You know, finding out what my friends are doing. Maybe I'm like, would I be interested check out what that's going on. You know, finding out what my friends are doing. Maybe I'm like, would I be interested in that?

I don't know. Always live your life as an adventure. I love the concept. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. There you go. Give us your plugs one more time so we can find you on the interwebages. Yeah, that'd be great.

Thank you so much. You can find me at alwaysadventurelife.com or andywayofficial.com. I'm easy to find on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram as well. There you go. Order up the book wherever fine books are sold. Stay with us at Alleyway Bookstores. I got a tetanus. I had to get a tetanus shot when I tripped in one the other day.

I think I got mugged. I don't know. I can't find my wallet. Anyway, guys, go to wherever fine books are sold. Always Adventure. Five powerful practices for living a happier and more fulfilling life by Andy Way. You can check out

his website as well. December 7, 2022. Makes a great gift to give away for that holiday season. And so order like 10 and give them away to all your family and it certainly beats buying diamonds or something expensive. You can do that too if you want.

Thanks for tuning in, folks. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.