The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Life Crafting: A Master’s Journal by Charles Paul Collins

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Life Crafting: A Master's Journal by Charles Paul Collins Charlespaulcollins.com Charles Collins has spent more than three decades researching the world of traditional workshops, and their pursuit of high-quality craftsmanship as the guiding force in their work, and as a model for crafting a masterpiece of our own lives. In Life Crafting: A Master's Journal, the newest book in the Life Crafting collection, Charles has condensed the lessons from this ancient way of working into a simple, easy to follow framework that anyone can apply to guide and improve our personal lives, and the work we do in our trades, occupations and professions. Life Crafting: A Master's Journal scheduled for completion in 2024, is the companion guide to 'Your Life Curriculum' the first book in the Life Crafting collection released in 2012. 'Your Life Curriculum' - will help you organize everything you have and will learn in your lifetime, into five master categories called the Five Elements: Family and Personal Heritage Family and Household Management Family and Personal Finance The Human Being Tools for Living It's like having the master library of your life at your fingertips. "What You Learn, Makes You Who You Are". Major chapters in Charles' professional career include working in the international trade finance organization of a major London bank and managing international strategic alliances for a number of leading internet technology companies. He is the developer of the Polaris Performance Framework™, a business performance and operational excellence structure used to align individuals and teams with organizational goals and performance measures. Charles holds a B.S. in Speech from Emerson College where as an undergraduate, he also taught two full credit courses: Philosophy of Religion, and Religion in Eastern Culture. His continuing education includes certifications in Foundations of Intercultural Research from Georgetown University, The Value and Limits of Self Knowledge from the University of Edinburgh, and Finding Purpose and Meaning in Life, from the University of Michigan.

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That's really the best kind of family you can have, the non-judgy kind, because I think we all have someone in our family who judges us and all that good stuff. Some people have judges that judge them. So I'm still waiting to get my fifth ankle bracelet off today as soon as I get approval. But there's still four left on there. I don't know why I like that joke. It just sounds funny.

Have you ever met anybody who has multiple ankle bracelets from the court? That might be interesting. I mean, I saw the other day someone who had one on. They were washing their car and it was a funny meme. But anyway, I really don't have ankle bracelets, folks. That's just a joke. I hope everyone gets that. They're like, he's spent a lot of time in prison.

Not yet. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. As always, we have the most brilliant authors, the best minds on the show, the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the great authors. The minds share their stories of life and help you with the owner's manual and how to make your life better. And if you don't learn how to make your life better, listen to Chris Voss Show, there's really something wrong with you. I don't know why I'm shaming my audience at this point, but what the hell.

But I got to tell you guys, I sit here, we go through, what is it, almost 2,000 episodes, two or three shows a weekday. I learn stuff every day. And you'd think I'd maybe heard it all at this point from all the brilliant people I have on the show. I learn new perspectives, new paradigm shifts. I learn everything from every guest we have on the show. So if you're not doing it, you can go back and listen to every damn show over and over

again until you do. Or else. i don't know what the hell that means now i'm threatening my audience there he is we have an amazing gentleman on the show with us today he's gonna be talking to us about his insights of his life journey etc etc and you're gonna learn some great stuff from him charles paul collins joins us on the show he's got an upcoming book coming out called life crafting a way of thinking working and living a master's journal see what i told you i told you that we make we have people on that help make your life better and i like this term life crafting it certainly beats what i do

just life living under the dock down by the river in a van. There you go. He also has the book you can find on Amazon that is currently out now. It's called Your Life Curriculum. What makes you, what you learn makes, let me recut this and do it right here, boys and girls. Your Life Curriculum. What you learn makes you who you are.

Part of the Life Crafting Editions. Welcome to the show, Charles. How are you? I'm great today, Chris. Thanks. Big fan. Thank you. Very happy to be here.

Big fan. First time caller. First time guest. There you go. Charles, give us a.com. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? I would say charlespaulcollins.com. My name all strung together.

That'll give them the whole the whole can of worms and life life crafting masterclass.com will be another part that they might find interesting there you go and you have a udemy course too do you want to give that a plug do you know that that's at the light that's at the life crafting masterclass.com we'll drop them right there at the udemy front page there you go and so give us a 30 000 overview this new book you're working on that comes out later this year life crafting yeah the life crafting master's journal that'll be coming out later this year is is about a 35 year work and that is coming to its kind of final fruition here. And it's basically comes off the idea that

started 35 years ago when I started thinking about some sort of a curriculum for my daughter. I was just a little kid, six years old, looking at her wondering what she needed to learn and thinking about all the things she was learning in school and started spinning around in my head that you know if she had some kind of a little structure around things to learn rather than just bumping into them randomly, you know, in the kitchen and wherever else is going to happen. And that's kind of what got this whole thing going. And so over that 35 year period, not only did I create that first little book for her, Your Life Curriculum, which is on Amazon, But it led me down a journey that basically what I started to understand was probably the most universal thing I have found anywhere in the world that makes people happy and brings them pride is when they do something very well. High quality work.

Yeah. And it just makes us glow and what i started to realize is that where we learn to do that more than any place else is in our trades occupations and professions and our jobs and our workshops because we learn the skills to do something well you eventually end up becoming a master in that particular thing and that's how this master's journal the master's guide that you just spoke about is coming up there you go and i like i like the topic of life crafting you know i some i had an epiphany when i was young and back then you you would have the sears and jc penny catalogs that be sent to you and of course you know you had these voluminous phone books as

well and i remember looking through them and i remember thinking to myself, you know, life is kind of, at the time I had grown up in a cult. I was looking at, I had, you know, I knew it was full of shit from three years old, but I was looking at all these various things in life. I was looking at why, you know, why do these people believe this? Why do these people believe that? Why does, why does that guy's journey this through life? And this guy's journey over here is this through life. What, what is there some, is there a right way? Is there a wrong way is, you know, how come, how come there's so many different ways

to do life and, and what is it all about? You know, there's the, there's the hippie guy and then there's the sky in a suit over here. You know, there's, there's so many different variations of how people go through life. And, you know, I don't know, what am I supposed to choose? It was kind of that teenage-dom of where you're like, there's a lot of shit going on here in this life thing, and I don't know where to start, right? And I remember looking through the catalog,

and it occurred to me that life is like a giant catalog and that you can choose the journey you want to go on or you can try to choose the journey so you want to go on. And some of it's already set in stone with the way you're going. But from there, you can choose where you want to do and how you want to go. Maybe you want to choose the hippie route, choose the suit route. You can choose your degree. And I really started thinking about understanding, you know, okay, so what does the design of my life want to be? And a lot of people don't really think about that.

They just kind of accept whatever social constructs give them and say, what are you supposed to do? I don't know, go to college. What are you supposed to do? No, get married. What are you supposed to do now? Get a job. And then they wake up in midlife crisis and they go i don't know i don't

really think i wanted to choose what i chose without thinking that i chose and so life crafting seems like a whole much better way to think of things especially from early on it's exactly i i mean you could you you're you're part of the book you the everything that you just talked about actually is is is contained within the master's guide but it really comes down to the your first beautiful observation was the catalog concept and and that's exactly how it happens for most of us everybody's probably familiar with one if you go back in your life and think about something you did well, it could be a hobby, it could be a profession, it could be anything. Think about how long it took you, the thousands of hours of observation,

then practice, then incremental improvement. And all of a sudden, you started getting really proud of yourself with the skills you were building. And you started getting recognition from others around you with regard to those skills. A great many of us can self-teach certain things. But for a lot of things in life, we have to go through more of a formalized training. As you said, a school of practice. We're in to learn something particular. And if we look at those schools, they're all based on catalogs and curriculum. And you can see here's year one learning.

Here's year two, year three, year four. It's gradual. It's graduated. And eventually when you leave the apprenticeship phase, you go on to your journey work in life and your trade, your profession. So this is fundamentally the concept that life crafting is a neutral framework that says wherever you are, wherever you come from, whatever your worldview, every day of your life, most of the time, unknowingly, you've been crafting bits and pieces of yourself little by little by little to try to eventually make a masterpiece of your life, what you envision it to be. learning falls into then chances are you're patchworking it together you have a collage as a life rather than the masterpiece you had envisioned so back to you there you go that's what happened to me i i just ended up covered in paint pretty much that this is my masterpiece why is all the paint on the floor and it's so covered to me and i don't know somebody someone had a seizure

or something on the canvas i don't know what this is but that's the way i do art but no i mean a lot of people just don't think about it they just you know they do what their parents tell them and they wake up with enormous college debts and doing something they don't want there's i think there's somebody we had on the podcast in the last few days or recently who went to college and spent a lot of money in their parents' interest to be a, to be an attorney. And they got to be an attorney and they went, ah, I don't like this. And they went to be a teacher, which really didn't make their parents happy because there's no money in that. And then they eventually found their way to venture capitalism, which is kind of, so they ended up in the money in the end. But it was their journey.

They wanted to find what motivated them. And now they've gone from being a venture capitalist back to being a teacher in a way, in what they're doing, writing books and teaching and speaking and stuff. And so, you know, it's this journey, this yin and yang. I've met CEOs that they, you know, I always use the joke that they studied ballet in college and now they're powerful CEOs.

Usually it's like liberal arts. Like I've had a couple CEOs tell me that studying liberal arts in school actually helped them be better CEOs. And you're like, really? An MBA didn't help you be a CEO? You didn't get an MBA? You learned about, I don't know, liberal arts? And they're like, yeah, understanding people, human nature, things of that stuff that you can learn.

And so do you have an anticipated date for the book to come out yet so it's the the manuscript is complete but there's that whole editing process you know how this goes so it's expected before the end of the year before december 31st there you go there you go you gotta gotta get the editing editing is really is really important. It actually is. It's a pain in the butt. It's evil sometimes because, you know, they throw out a lot of your stuff. They're just like, yeah, that was really cute when you wrote. Yeah, we threw it on the cutting room floor.

No, write something else. But, you know, they take your little passion you wrote and they just cut it up and dice it in front of you. And you're just like, that was the work love and i i carried that child for nine months but i like i like the idea of giving someone young like what you gave to your daughter the advantage of being able to understand that paradigm at first because i don't think you know know, so many, I don't, I don't know that most parents, I don't know. I don't know what parents think, but you know, they, they work in this lot locks. They work in the same sort of paradigms. So, you know, I wouldn't go get a job. So go get a job. I mean, me, I would, I don't know. I beat my kids if they went and got jobs instead of creating

their own companies. And I teach them how to do their own companies I would beat them I'm just kidding people don't write me and but I wouldn't I wouldn't be very happy let's put it that way and is and so teaching kids at a very young age you know the opportunities they have and the abilities to be self-actualized and self-accountable you know nothing like running a company or starting a company or starting a business, that will change you and make you grow up pretty fast. I'm always jealous. I mean, I started my first company at 18, didn't even understand what I was doing.

And I see young people now that can start businesses very easily on the Internet and it just makes such a difference in their lives. And telling people to just go do a difference in their lives and you know telling people just go do what's in lockstep of everything else i don't know i was i was someone who was always able to figure stuff out i've always had some weird thing i think it's because i grew up in a cult and survival mechanism and an oppressive cult at that and so for me it was a survival mechanism to figure out how to get out of everything and but a lot of people and but i did do do my own studies i studied my own i basically

gave myself my own mba through harvard by reading what i wanted to and focusing on the education i knew i needed but you know i never had to go to college and i seem to be able to figure out things differently than most people and see outside the box. And so I have some sort of trick pony in my head. But I also understand that a lot of people, you know, they need college. They need formal education. They need somebody to tell them to sit down and shut up and listen. For me, that doesn't work very well.

But, you know, that's part of the kaleidoscope of, if you will, of, you know, the catalog, where you can kind of figure out what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, and you can craft the life that you want to take and do. How's that? That's it. Whether you acquired knowledge from, as you did, from institutions, authors who had a particular area of expertise that you wanted to learn, or whether you entered into a formal school of practice, you know, that gave you the degree and so forth and so on. At the end of the day, your first step, which and the things that you then spend the time to learn, but not only learn, practice to see if you can't affect achieve a result from what you've learned. What you learn is what makes you who you are over time, and you continue to add on to your life. I like you.

That should be in a coffee cup or a shirt. Give me that again. You are what you learn. Yeah, it's that what you learn basically is who you are. It's the subtitle of your life curriculum, that book, that particular book on Amazon. I like that because, that's right, it is, isn't it? I like that because that's why it's important to keep learning, right? And not just, you know, so many people, they cut off their education.

So, you know, they don't read a book after college or if they do they're reading i don't know something something mind-numbing you know i people always ask me they go why are you always out and about doing stuff and i'm like i don't know i can't sit home and watch netflix my brain will just melt mine too and i i'd just rather be out you know and and hey if you if you like that i realize a lot of people do that because the kids want to watch it and you've got kids and you know trotting them out around the universe is a little expensive these days but and kids use movies actually on repeat to master stuff so there's some help there but you know i just i just really don't i just really i have a problem going to movies like i went and saw akira kawasawa's High and Low again and I was having a problem because it's a two and a half hour movie it's just a long time I can think about a lot of

things I can do fortunately it's such a great movie I didn't even notice but it just burned no I did notice a little bit that's right about two hours in I was like when's this thing over again but that's probably my ADHD but yeah understanding you know looking at life through paradigm of what I want to choose what I want to do with my life. You know, this is why I love the Chris Voss show. This is why I love my podcast so much. Because number one, as I always joke about on the show, I'm sick of me. I know everything about me.

I've spent 56 years with me and I'm over it. Like we've been over it for a while. And so I love to hear other people's stories, other people's journeys. So I'm kind of at the end of the catalog going, oh, so what did you have shipped to you in 1968? And how's it turning out so far? Or how's the journey you're at? And so people are sharing their stories of sometimes how they've been wandering through life. And they've changed different modalities of what they wanted in the in the in the catalog and found something that

fits them better but if you can try not to waste half your life trying to doing something that you kind of accepted from the society's paradigms and bs that they just give you and pre-constructs and you can go hey hey, if I want to design my life, what would I do with it? How would I do it differently? I think it's a better approach. Yeah. And the question is, is that there's so many different things out there that you could do. Sometimes that's the overwhelming part of it. I mean, you could be brought up in one culture where what your folks did is what you do, or you could be brought up in a culture that there's so many things to do, it becomes overwhelming. But the interesting thing is you just mentioned that your particular life stage where you are right now in life crafting as a structure, which follows the ancient principles taught in the workshops, the master workshops for about the last 7,000 years.

There are four stages in any trade or craft that you pass through. And each stage has a goal and each stage has a sign-off point where you say, I'm going to take the test. Did I pass and go on to the next stage? You're in the masterworks phase of your life right now at age 56. So you're in the third phase. That's why it's so critical because the book that's coming out is based on the observations that you are making at this stage in your life. And perhaps you are, and I know you like to write and think and keep things down. When you get to mine, I'm in the mentorship. I'm in the fourth stage of my life. And I'm now taking my masterworks journal, which is from the old workshops, like a da Vinci and the master, passing a journal down to the next trade journeyman. What you're recording now for the next phase in your life, 20 years, is what you're going to be working on when you become my age to leave as a legacy to the next generation.

Wow. Are you sure? Because right now I'm pretty frustrated with the next generation, and I'm just kind of washing my hands of them, and then I'm spraying them with those and telling them to get off my lawn. So it gets better, you're saying? What I have to say is, first of all, the next generation is your own children. Let's start there.

Well, I didn't have any. That's the problem. You have some now, don't you? Didn't you just say so? No, I have no children. It's usually other people's children that I'm... Oh, that's fine because listen, you're already making a legacy. Look at what you're doing with your show,

with your program. Look at all the content that you're leaving. It's a lot of damn content. But you'll have to It's a lot of damn content. But you'll have to boil it down. Oh, okay. So this is what the master's journal is all about. The new book that's coming out is during this 20 years, when you have the time, you're, you still got energy. You're still bright enough to keep the lights on and going and striving. And you know, you're itchy every day for something new to develop whatever this is the time where you start understanding the purpose of what the master's journal is in traditional workshops around the world it was to leave only those thoughts ideas and plans that were the boil down to the next generation of skilled journeymen and journeywomen that were coming

up behind you. The master's journal would always go to one or several people, especially. And from there, because they were mature enough to now take up that knowledge from the master's journal, but you don't even start really boiling the master's journal down until the last 20 years of your life. So right now you're creating it. Wait till you get to the editing stage where I'm in right now, and you're going to leave it behind. That is a unique artifact that took a whole life for you to build. Oh, wow.

Well, that should be interesting. I'll look forward to that stage because then I won't be spraying people on the lawn. The judge says I can't do that anymore. So there you go. You know, it is what it is. So now let's talk a little bit about your Udemy course. Tell us a little bit about that that people can check out. What's the website for it again?

LifeCraftingMasterClass.com. There you go. MasterClass.com. And so people can do the Udemy course. Tell us a little bit about that. So that's really the combination that I would say that the that say, if you look in this catalog of life, anything that you want to learn, anything that you will choose to learn, and that's up to you, you're going to be totally surprised to find that it falls into one of these five categories from family heritage to family and personal finance.

And there are five of them. So the first part of the Udemy course is to help people feel comfortable with the idea that, gee whiz, everything I've learned in my life up to now has this simple, comfortable place to put it the same way you might organize your knowledge or your books in the workshop at your workbench when you're going to work every day there you go i like that so the stages of life

and putting it together you know it's it's it's hard when people start out in life trying to figure it all out i've seen my nephew go through it where he's like, what is all this stuff that I got to do? And I'm like, just find something you're good at. You know, one of the things that the Europeans do or British do that's different than America is America, they put you through school and they just throw everything at you to see what sticks. And over there, they do something very different.

Early on, they start figuring out what you're pretty good at or kind of what you tend to lean towards and maybe what would be your thing you know there's certain people that are really good with working with their hands they're just really good at it i just i'm astounded by the creativity and the power that people can do you know you i see someone like build a deck, you know, and they're like, hey, you know, I've got this image in my head or, you know, artwork or something, and then boom, they can make that work. I have none of that ability whatsoever.

And so they really kind of figure out where you fit in the context of trades and work that might be best suited for you based upon your skill set that they're kind of sensing early on. And I think that's really good because early on, you know, you're figuring out, you know, this is kind of what I'm good at. You're getting geared in where the American system just kind of throws everything at you and you're just like, what do I do with all this noise? And I hate all of it.

And you really aren't focused on anything by the time you see these people. They change their college degree major and so forth and so on. Wonderful. And that particular focus of humanity has what has created the workshops of the world, the factories of the world, the businesses of the world. To focus someone's attention in on a body of knowledge, a set of skills, whether it's a mind craft or a hand craft, this is where we're pointed to learn. However, if, and this is a big problem, the child coming up is not presented with the idea that there are several other parts of themselves that have to be crafted with equal skill and care, such as your inner being, emotions, and so forth, and your outer being, how you are physically, family, how you manage your family, how you

participate in your family, how many people go to crafts, make a million bucks, or they are raised up to be a master of such and such a craft, and their family life and their personal life is a disaster? And they're not balanced, meaning their life is not a masterpiece. Their profession work might be, but the rest of their life is a disaster. Yeah, it's true. You see a lot of people like that I went through that with my life where I grew up poor and I was like hey if I get all the rich stuff we get some money and get all the nice things I'll be happy and everything will be fixed and when I got there I was like wait this is I thought everything's me fixed it's actually not worse. I understand.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is where the Udemy class goes to. It takes you into the first part of it is here are the five categories that everything that you want to learn and will learn in your life fall into. So your workshop is not a mess anymore. In fact, you've been crafting your life all along. But now you're going to live your life in four stages. And just like in a master's workshop, each stage you progressively will get better.

And there are things to learn at each stage. And then you become a master. And then finally you're on life as a continuum of 80 years in front of you with a distinct set of developmental stages, like you do in a trade or craft for thousands of years, your life has a purpose all the way to the end of your days. And you're just not doing the midlife crisis that you spoke about at the opening of the show. Yeah. When I saw that as a kid, I started studying at about 11 11 or 12 trying to figure out what this midlife crisis was I was trying to figure out why people were unhappy this midlife crisis thing and

I'm like you know and and I would hear stuff you know you know some guys decided to ban his family go get a red car and and you know date some Victoria Sears bottle and run around in a red convertible. And I would hear, why does a guy decide to do that? I'd try and figure out all this data that was being thrown at me and belief systems that were usually debunkable. But I was like, God, it seems like a really bad idea to live half your life on autopilot and then wake up one day and go, that was a waste of my time. I mean, I'm sure people, you know, if you're, if you're, as you said, a craftsman, you know,

you hopefully you've learned some lessons from those years. It's not a, it's not a total throw it in the garbage and forget it with it, set it on fire. Although I know some people that probably should do that but hopefully you'll learn some things and that's okay is is it's okay to make mistakes it's okay to fail the main thing is you need to learn from them so you don't just keep doing the same things over and over again yeah and and that gets down to you said another key word that's part of the the class and the life crafting materials that I put out there, which is the concept called the way of craftsmanship. So not only is this based on the model, I probably

read close to 500 books on every trade and craft from mathematics and legislation to building a brick stone wall, and come down to these fundamental principles that no matter what the material is, whether it's a mental material or something you use in your hands, at the end of the day, whatever trade it is that you're going to be going toward, when you approach it in a craftsman-like manner

and there are very specific steps, anything and everything you do in your life can be done well. And I got to tell you, it comes back to that early single point in the conversation today. Whenever we feel proud of ourselves because we've done something well and others see it, it just lifts us up. And fundamentally, I have to say that I see my kid, the happiest she is, is when she's proud of herself and we're proud of her. So how is this thing that's at the center of human existence? It's all based on doing things well, not doing things terribly.

And you have to learn how to do them well. So craftsmanship is based on the idea of incremental improvement of your skills and practicing your skills, whatever it is you're going to do, including taking care of your family. There you go. I like the aspect of how you approach it, where you're thinking about designing your life and you're giving intentional. Exactly. You're giving intent to the design of your. Instead of just, I don't know, we're just flying by the seat of your pants, see how it works out. That's right out of the book, flying by the seat of your pants. It is. I know some people have done that. I've probably been

guilty of that in my life. I just found that instead of flying by the seat of your pants, you just fly with no pants. You just with no pants and and everything goes fine and in the book it's called life success by design versus accidental success that you can never repeat again because you didn't know where it came from there you go and you weren't wearing pants so this has been very insightful anything more you want to tease out about the Udemy course? You can, as I think we've got in the program, it's lifecraftingmasterclass.com. It's there and it's available. The book, of course, on Amazon, Your Life Curriculum. And then watch that space because the other book, The Master's Journal, will be available later this year.

There you go. Do we want to talk about we may have covered some of your life curriculum and stuff do we do we cover that enough in our conversation here if you'd like absolutely i mean my life curriculum interesting interestingly enough is is just like anyone and everyone's else until i hit about age 33 and i had a kid come into the kitchen one day, which was mine. And she said, Hey dad, you know, what's my life all about? And I said, are you kidding me? You know, how do I answer this question? I mean, what do you do, Chris? I don't know. That's a loaded question. Do you punt? And so my life, but most people, you know, I had gone to, I had gone to college and, you. And so my life... And go talk to your mom.

But most people, you know, I had gone to college and, you know, communication school in Boston, Emerson. And I had done writing and speech and communications and, you know, many things, lived outside the country for, you know, many years in Mexico City. And then eventually ended up my job being in basically the workshops of the world. The factories took me all over the world. And I traveled for my business career for almost 30 years. But it was that one day in talking about the life curriculum that I realized in my life curriculum, they'd never taught me how to answer that question for my daughter. And I thought, I beg your pardon? I don't think most people know.

They might give it like a religious default or something. I don't know. There it is. We go back to something which is in the life how you're crafting you, the human being, how you're crafting it into a masterpiece with skill and with, as you said, focus. This family heritage is the thing we default back onto. It imprints us in such a deep way. And as you've been talking about the different worldviews and some of them and where they came from and goodness knows, those are the things that we pull out of the reserves of our mind and automatically shoot them out of our mouth when that moment comes when you're reaching for something that you've never been trained for. So you make it up on the fly. Now, sometimes it's good, but many times you think, how did my parents do it?

Oh, I don't want to do it that way. Or how did my parents do it? That don't want to do it that way or how did my parents do it that's the way i'm gonna do it so you get all those mixed bag of answers don't you yeah you really do and that was the other thing i looked at i'm like you know are my parents happy like how does this this is how you are you married you know i looked at my two grandparents on either side and i had a really dichotomy or this is kind of a really opposing situation when one couple was very happy i mean for the most part and the other couple was very unhappy at least the wife was and i was like how come everyone's happy over here and happy over

there but thinking of your life as a master plan you know like you're building something i've always thought of myself as a builder and construction person and part of it always comes from me building companies so i kind of look at life the same way investing in my life investing in my relationships when i talk about investing in relationships like people's eyes glaze over there and just like, you think of me as an investment and you're like, yeah, I mean, I'm spending time with you. I'm spending money on you. I'm master planning a life for us. Yeah. It's an investment. We're not just, I don't know, sitting around and playing hide the weasel or something. I don't know what that means,

but you know, having a master plan and choosing the people that you have in your life as well you know i mean when i date i look at people and i go do i want to invest in this i'm sure they do the same women are are usually innate to do that but you know is this the person i want to spend the rest of my life with is the one i want to do an investment with or or does this vehicle seem a little seem a little off the rails off the it seems like it's got some bad engines and some bad parts. Do I really want to spend the rest of my life trying to fix this thing up, this old jalopy? Which is where I'm at now.

I'm an old jalopy. But thinking of life as an investment, thinking of your life as an investment, thinking of what you're doing as an investment, what you're designing to be a builder, this is your life. You're the one who's going to live with it. Fuck what other people think.

You're the one who's going to live with it. So you might as well do the work and make it what you want. You can actually be thrilled and filled with pride when you're doing the work if you have the fundamental understanding before you begin, that if I apply skill to this and walk through it in a workman-like, craftsman-like manner, it doesn't mean that it's, you know, machine tools and everything else. It's intention. You know, think anybody who's out there, think about, you know, if you've ever cooked something and that was that particular time in the year or whatever it was that you were going to try yourself to cook a meal that you were not only proud of, but you wanted to present to family members at a holiday or something like that.

Think about all the time that you went through. Every piece of that was crafting, was craft work. It was intentional. It was craft work. It was intentional. It was with focus, but don't ask if you didn't have a great time when you were doing it. And even a better time when, if it came out well and you were doing it at the end, why can't your life be that way? The human being, right? So you're looking at relationships. Why can't you approach them skillfully versus ad hoc fly by the seat of your pants and walk away feeling, geez, three out of four times I've been out with somebody,

I have a bad time because it's them or it's me. Wait a minute. Is it a skill that can be learned? And if it is, think about learning it. There you go. Or a skill at identifying, you know, red flags. That's a big one, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I had someone recently that threw me a curveball that was like you know i have some issues that aren't resolved and i was like have you seen those issues and got them resolved oh i haven't and they got upset when i asked this simple question and i'm like clearly clearly you don't have these issues resolved and I'm not looking to invest in a relationship or spending time in even casual dating. When you have these glaring issues that you need to go have fixed, I'm not a therapist. So you need to go find somebody who can fix that that's a therapist. And then you need to get back in the dating pool and that's done. So this isn't my thing. There were times when I had to look at my life and people that get back in the dating pool and that's done so this isn't my thing there

were times when i had to look at my life and people that were involved in my life whether they were friends or business partners or even relationships where i had to realize that they had issues that they were going to have for a life like addiction you know i'll call addiction drug addiction and i had to say is this part of the design of my life, as you put it? Is this how I want to live the rest of my life? Or, no, I don't think I want this to be part of the masterpiece, because I don't think it's going to be a very good masterpiece if I bring this person in permanently in my life.

And so, you know, that's what you have to think about. You have to think about the investment of your time. You know, one concept that i tell people and you may talk about this in your book i'll set it up but one thing i talk to people about is you know we we have the ability to make money but the one thing we can't make is time like i'll have guys that will be flipping about what they're doing with their investment relationships like whatever you know if i end up in divorce court, fuck it. And I'm like, that's kind of a shitty attitude because if you think about it,

those wasted years that you spent being with somebody that you just kind of went, whatever, I'll just kind of see how this turns out, is wasted time. You can't get that back. And your time has to be the most valuable investment that you're making because it's irreplaceable. You know, I've had, part of it is, you know, I've like divorce guys say to me, oh, I lost

the million dollars in the divorce. You know, I knew it was going to be bad, but you know, I don't know, whatever. I can make that money back. So yeah, you can make the money back, but you can't get that time back, dude. You lost the time. And so being flippant and not thinking of your life as an investment and the things you're doing and as an investment, you know, it costs you time. And you need to realize that because wasting that time is going to make it to where, you know, you're trying to make this

masterpiece, whether you're intentional or not about it. And it's probably, I don't know, either never going to get finished or being complete, maybe. I don't know either never gonna get finished or being complete maybe i don't know that's in the book absolutely and it goes back to the principle of the way of craftsmanship as we've brought it up to your audience so in the workshops and the traditions of the world for about the last five or six thousand years anyway one of the things that i've been able to find was what are the what are the universal principles that all of the masters who run these workshops, and I'm talking about even factories that build automobiles, what are the fundamental principles of what they mean by the word craftsmanship?

And the first step out of three or four is called commitment. It basically says, if you are going to become skilled at this trade, at this craft, it requires the principle of commitment. You must absolutely say, I am going to put the time into the observation, study, practice, and improvement of this, which is the difficult learning and hurting part, to come out the other side with a set of skills that gradually improve. So here's the point. If you start one day at some place in your life, which you have done, and say, I am going to commit to become something, a masterpiece in the way you envision it, then what you're going to do in all the other areas of your life is going to follow in that because you're setting everything up for that. If you don't commit to making your life a

masterpiece incrementally over time, then you're going to do the, I'll try this out and see how it goes and spend three, four, five years at, and you know, that didn't work out. So I'll just go down over here. And, you know, like you said, that, that river's going by. So you have to commit either your life is a masterpiece in the making, which you will become more skillful at over time and leave something of great work behind, or you're just going to fly along by the seat of your pants and, hey, that's okay. Ride the wave.

Surf. Ride the wave. Yeah. And if you're not careful, though, you may end up in a van down by the river. There you go. As the great SNL star used to say it. So final thoughts as we go out tell people where they can buy the book what dot coms they can go to and how they can get to know you better

yeah thanks once again if you'd like to learn the the bigger picture about the work that i'm doing go to charles paul collins.com and i will show you kind of everything the little podcast episodes and videos and so forth and so on. Go to lifecraftingmasterclass.com and you will see the Udemy program now. Over 3,300 students have taken it in the last two years or so. So there's something going on out there. And if you go on to Amazon and look for Life Crafting Collection or look for My Life Curric curriculum directly, you'll see the first book that I did for my daughter 35 years ago. And that's where all the new books, including the one that I just wrote about my ancestors, which is a 85,000 word novel.

So that'll be there too. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on and give us your insight. And hopefully you made people think a whole lot more about crafting their life. Thank you, Chris. There you go. Guys, be sure to check it out. Watch for the new book to come out in the marketplace

and all that good stuff. LifeCrafting, a way of thinking, working, and living, a master's journal. I think it's too bad you don't have a conversation with kids when they're young and go, hey, man, you're going to make a masterpiece with your life. Think about what you're doing now. And there go yeah because you don't want to do it you can do it when you're 50 or 40 i mean a lot of people restart their lives and start over again hey all the more

power to you there's there's so many great people that i think oprah and a lot of different people that they change their life at 50 the guy from kfc created chicken who created chicken what kind of show is this kfc chicken show chris is creating conspiracy theories on the show now but you know there's a lot of people that get started late in life and and decided to start crafting and so it's never too late i guess this is my message never too late thanks thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortress chress Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Chris Foss won the TikTok and he owns a crazy place on the internet. Thanks for tuning in.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.