The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dont Forget To SMILE & Laugh

Episode Date: March 13, 2020

Dont Forget To SMILE & Laugh

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, it's, um, so I just got done cutting a prior podcast, uh, on the coronavirus, a little somber, a little trying to be as much as I can, but, um, oh, let's do another podcast kind of along the same vein, Surviving the Apocalypse, Surviving the Coronavirus. Let's talk about a couple different things. There are things I touched on in the previous podcast that I did on the coronavirus about looking for the opportunities, about getting back to basics and remembering what's important in life.

So I think I want to title this one. Don't forget to smile. Uh, and so in the prior thing, I referenced my good friend, Robert Scoble. He made a post that, you know, these are crazy times, they're dark times, they're troublesome times, and there's a lot of panic and craziness and fear. And he said, don't forget to breathe. Take a few deep breaths and just breathe. It's going to be okay. You know, about 1% of the population may very sadly pass away. There will be people that will suffer horrible sickness, and hopefully they will survive.

But the majority of us will survive. We'll get the coronavirus. 80% seem to do okay. The one thing about the coronavirus is it doesn't discriminate. Everyone and everyone can get it. So we're all in the crosshairs. But I think with education, with us acting proactively and everyone keeping out of big crowds and staying at home, washing your hands, being clean, everything else, we'll get through this. I would add to my friend Robert Skoll's thing, and this is the reason for this episode, was I think that the thing I would add is not only don't forget to breathe, don't forget to smile. And I know that sounds

like a weird thing to say. Don't forget to smile, Chris. I just lost most of my savings in the, uh, meltdown this week of the worst, um, one of the worst, uh, stock market crashes ever. Um, for me, I lost 20 grand this week. Well, South by and NAB, but NAB canceled a couple days ago. But I got to tell you, it's made me fall back. Today, I was pretty upset

the day I found out NAB canceled and it was pretty dark. I called some friends. And they made me smile, remind me of what's important in life. And today, I did something I haven't done in a long time. I went out back and I played with my dogs. And I took some videotape of them. And one thing I realized in the past two or three days because I realized what's important to me and these are the great times that we need to realize what's most important to us

that we need to get back to basics and go what's the most important things in my life and what I've what have a how have I been ignoring them chasing around money and cars and success career and all these things that we do as our family and our loved ones go by us. And then we wake up one day and go, crap, I wish I'd spent more time with them. So I went out today, realized over the past couple of days that I've been ignoring my dogs. They're the most important thing in my life. My family, what's left of them is very important in my life. And then I need to spend more time with them.

And this is the perfect time and opportunity to do it because necessity says that we need to, to help contain or curtail the spread of this virus. And to be honest, and we have to be honest with ourselves, we don't know who's going to be around after we go through this little bit of a dip. And we all come out the other side. We don't know who's going to be around. So this is a good time to build relationships, to love one another, and to make each other smile.

We don't know whether it's going to be your smile or my smile that comes out the other side, but, uh, that doesn't matter right now. What matters right now is that we still create some memories so that someday if one of us isn't here, the other one will go. Remember that great time Chris made me laugh or I mean, Chris you can make me laugh you're doing pretty good and so what I did today is I went out and spent time with my dogs I don't have a wife and kids so for those of you that might be your maybe spend some time with your wife and kids your significant other your loved one maybe you think you know I'm gonna be locked in a house with my with these people and maybe I maybe there's things I haven't explored about them.

Maybe there's scotomas that I have, or leak systems I have about them. So I realized that I haven't been spending enough time with my dogs. So I hooked up my cameras. I got a really cool camera that is on a pole so that it can go down to the dog's level. I got it from Osmo, DJI Osmo, and then it's got my Osmo pocket attached to the end of it,

which makes for a great gimbal shop. You know, it doesn't have the jiggity stuff because it's on a 3D axis gimbal. And I went out and played with my dogs. And I got to tell you, I've kind of been stuck in here all winter, so there's kind of that excuse, but I haven't gone out and spent time with my dogs in the yard.

And they had a ball with me. And we laughed, we played, and I smiled, and I uploaded. Probably for the first time in a long time, I realized I haven't been uploading videos of my dogs. I haven't been uploading videos to my dogs. All I've been doing is screaming about politics and the coronavirus on my social channels. And I didn't even realize that, well, that's important. It's important to educate each other. There are things that are more important to me, and I've been not spending enough time

with them. And so maybe look upon this as a great opportunity to spend more time with things you like and smiling. Because for all of us there are limited days limited amount of days we're on this planet and how we react to things they're super important I talked about in the prior podcast but I would advise no matter how dark it gets no matter how ugly it gets try and smile there were times when my father will be in the hospital, and I don't deal with this sort of stuff well.

What I do is I turn to comedy when I don't know how to handle stuff, and I just try and be funny. If I can make someone laugh when things are dark, to me that's like a good thing. I love that. So there were times when I'd call my father as he was going through a series of seizures and heart attacks. Well, it wasn't seizures. It was the brain thing. I forget what they're called.

There's heart attacks, and then there's the cranium part, and it escapes me right now. But he was going through a series of those and a couple times I called him in the hospital and he sounded really down and depressed and I started joking with him asking what the nurses look like if he was hitting on them if any of them were hitting on him and I got my dad to laugh and got him to smile and he was scared you could hear it in his voice

but once I got him to laugh got him to smile some jokes stupid as they were but that's kind of the beauty of some of my jokes they're pretty dumb and that's kind of the design of them I kind of like

sometimes it's funner to die than to kill with a good joke but I made him smile and those are the most important things that I remember of the last days of his life for the times I called and told him jokes and he smiled and that's probably the greatest gift we can give to each other guys these are gonna be dark times I'm not gonna sugarcoat it but we've got to lift sugarcoat it but we've got to lift each other up and we've got to remember to smile breathe smile and we've got to help each other learn to breathe and smile so smiling can do a lot of cool things for you let's educate ourselves smiling why is smiling

important in the age of coronavirus Chris Chris? Well, any age. The seven benefits of smiling, this is according to brightspringhealth.com, an improved mood comes from smiling. It releases endorphins, which help a person feel happier and more positive. There's pain relief. Believe it or not, a good laugh relieves some body aches or pains. I think I need to go watch some George Carlin videos for, I don't know, a couple years. Lowers your blood pressure. Now, we know that one of the things this virus does is it likes people with hampered immune systems.

So just think of it this way. If you smile more, if you get your people around you to smile more, they'll have lower blood pressure, maybe a chance to survive this coronavirus all the better there you go stronger immune system comes as for benefits of smiling see what is chris telling you good advice here it's also a stress reliever uh which is good you can blow off some steam because stress isn't going to help us when we all get the virus and stuff we all got to be healthy and uh tip-top shape can make better relationships hey we We all got to be healthy and tip-top shape. Can make better relationships.

Hey, we're all going to be stuck in a house together. Might as well figure out a way to make each other smile because otherwise we're all going to be each other's throats. And that's probably not going to be a good thing for anyone and all that good stuff. And for the ladies out there, smile gives you a younger appearance. So there you go. It doesn't really decrease your age, but smiling and laughing can give you the illusion that you look younger than you actually are. So even in spite of the world going into apocalyptic hell, if you can at least smile for it, enjoy the ride.

It's the highway to hell you might as well you know i don't know it's there's an old saying and it's one of my favorite sayings from no country full old men um and it's the line you can't stop what's coming it ain't all about you. That's vanity, which is very true. But I think this is going to give us a moment in time in our history to reanalyze our lives, to reevaluate our lives, our government, our priorities, what we think is important, what we argue about in politics. I think it's going to give us a new appreciation for everything. We're going to see the gaping holes in the things that we failed and, uh, hopefully we'll learn from them and build something better. But I think this is a good time

to smile. So my advice to you is to maybe put down the pandemic videos and the news and everything else. Go play with your kids in the yard. I had a lot of fun today. We made some great videos and I ran around and I had the camera at their level and, uh, they were playing and showing off for me and it made me smile. And I, and I, uh, uploaded to Facebook so I could uplift some more people with it. They always like to see the dogs doing their thing. And, uh, I realized that I need to go spend more time doing that. And that some of this other BS that I'm always flitting around with and doing whatever maybe aren't quite as important as spending time with them or maybe the remaining members of my family that are very important I've been spending time with lately.

So that's my voice to you. It's going to get dark. It's going to get whatever, but let's all lift each other up. Smile. Don't voice to you. It's going to get dark. It's going to get whatever. But let's all lift each other up. Smile. Don't forget to breathe. Don't forget to smile. And make each other laugh even when it gets bad.

Like I say, best thing I ever did for my dad was make him laugh when he's in the hospital when he had fear the most and seeing him laugh and start to feel better because it kind of put everything in perspective or it kind of reminded him that things weren't as bad as they they were at the time is super important so I implore to you that uh like my friend Robert Scoble says, find the lifters or be a lifter. And I would like everyone to know, if it ever gets really dark and you need someone to reach out to, reach out to me at the show. Call me on my phone number. Email me. Text me. You're certainly always welcome to call and chat with me. And if you're around and you really feel the need to chat,

I'd love to be there for you. Let's all try and help each other through this. And let's all not forget to smile. So anyway, guys, enjoy what life we have with the people that we have, including ourselves, in the time that we have including ourselves in the time that we have it and that's true whether there was a coronavirus here or not we all are on the limited timeline we're all immortal for a very limited time and times like these make us realize the most important things and aspects of the

world anyway guys I'm gonna spend some more time with my dogs. We're going to make some fun videos of us running around the yard, enjoying this beautiful nature. One thing I would tell you, I was thinking about this, I meant to mention earlier, you know, we're all kind of locked in our homes or we're supposed to be with what's going on with the coronavirus. But I got thinking today that maybe a better thing to do would to be go someplace. Now, we're in our cars, so we're kind of hermetically sealed, if you will.

Now, we can't go to places people go to. But I got thinking, maybe this would be a good time to like take a drive up the canyon here in Utah where I'm writing a book they have these beautiful canyons they have this thing called this Alpine loop and a couple of canyons I think up in Salt Lake kind of linked together and so you can kind of do this loop. And it's one of the most beautiful drives you can go on, especially the Alpine loop. It's a, it's a,

they have these Aspens that run as far as you can see. It's like a wilderness of, of Aspens that are so thick. I remember as a boy scout, we would hike down the road. And if you went into the Aspens, you get lost because you couldn't tell one aspirin for another and everything looked the same it was crazy so maybe it's a good time to get in the

hermetically sealed car you know don't go to crowds but get out man go see the nature go see the canyon go see some beautiful stuff maybe take a drive just make sure and wash your hands. If you put gas in the car, stop at the little 7-Eleven there. But if we go to nature, maybe the woods or someplace, I'm sure there's something nice around you. Maybe it's a good time to take the kids camping. You know, go do something. The nice thing is, you know, coronavirus doesn't camp. So as far as I know i don't know maybe it

does maybe it's a boy scout and likes to make campfires someplace i don't know but maybe it's a good time to go someplace where no one is go to the canyons go to nature you know take a drive uh someplace and go see something where you don't have to worry about a lot of people have been there and a lot of coronavirus people have been there. And, you know, you can enjoy beautiful drives somewhere. And if you don't get out, you can just sit in your hermetically sealed cart, if you will. I don't think hermetic is totally the perfect word, but you know what I mean. I'm just making it funny.

You know, and you go see see some stuff so you don't have to be trapped in your house maybe you could teach your kids some cool new lessons maybe you can get out in the sunshine and smile and you know technically when it really comes down to it we probably all should be spending more time in the sunshine and more time out in nature clean nature that is but every known don't go at once because then the coronavirus will be there. But, you know, you could drive through the canyon and you could watch out your windows and maybe do some bird watching or watch wildlife or something like that.

You don't have to, we don't necessarily have to be trapped in our homes. We just got to stay away from, you know, getting in large places. So there you go. Anyway, guys, uh, remember it's not what happens to us. It's how we react to it. And that's really important. So if you can't make yourself smile, try and make someone else smile, be a lifter or find someone who helps lift you up. And, uh, yeah, maybe, maybe that's what we all need to discover we need a smile about life when you'd be happy for the life that we have for the

health we have in the time that we have it and this is the most important time to take stock in its value so there you go that's my take any guys thanks for tuning in and I'm gonna see you next time because we're gonna be fine thanks guys