The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – You’re Making This Way Too Hard: Find Your EASY Way to NJOYLFE by Angelo Valenti

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

You're Making This Way Too Hard: Find Your EASY Way to NJOYLFE by Angelo Valenti https://amzn.to/3GcQeoG Angelovalenti.com WARNING: DO NOT OPEN THIS BOOK IF YOU ARE HAPPY WITH BEING UNHAPPY What if I told you that the answers to finding your easy way to NJOYLFE already exist inside of you? Stop fighting the systems designed for you to fail! It’s time to realize that every problem in your life has a solution that you can take advantage of to make your life more vibrant, more successful, and most importantly, more enjoyable. Forget about keeping up with the Jones, winning the rat race, or getting those ever-so-important likes on social media. It’s time to start living for yourself. Join Dr. Angelo Valenti on an eye-opening journey that tears off the blindfold and points the way toward a life of fulfillment, purpose, and joy. If you liked The One Thing and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, you’ll love You’re Making This Way Too Hard: Find Your EASY Way to NJOYLFE. About the author Dr. Angelo Valenti, The Company Psychologist, is a consulting psychologist in Nashville, Tennessee. The focus of his practice is helping business leaders hire and develop the right talent for their unique businesses and helping individuals live their best personal and professional lives. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Georgia in 1976. He joined the faculty of Oklahoma City University, where he served as Chairman of the Department of Psychology from 1977-79. In 1980, Dr. Valenti joined the psychological consulting firm RHR International. He opened his own practice in 1982. Dr. Valenti is a member of the American Psychological Association and the APA Division of Consulting Psychology. He’s married to Rachel and has three children and five grandchildren.

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. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now here's your host,

Chris Voss. I'm host Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There we go. The Iron Lady. When she sings it, that makes the show official. I think that's how it works nowadays. Thanks for being on the show and being part of the show. Our audience is so wonderful.

For 15 years, you've been putting up with all of our silliness, our nonsense, our comedy. The brilliant minds that bring you the smartest stuff. I mean, you know, the bragging rights that you get being an audience of the Chris Foshers, you get to walk around and tell people how intelligent you are. Or maybe don't tell them how intelligent you are. Be sure the Chris Fosh show glow, or what we like to call

the Globies. We're not calling it that. We're just making that up. The CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the governors, the Congress members, the U.S. ambassadors, the astronauts, Pulitzer Prize winners, the people we have on the show bring you the most concentrated conceptualization of intelligence, knowledge, and things that will improve the quality of your life. And every show, I just get epiphanies. I learn something new. I learn new terms. And you would think after all these years and after all these shows that I would have learned it all.

But there's still so much to learn. The things you don't know, you don't know, are just an endless array of stuff. And so that's what we do on The Chris Foss Show. Maybe we should just rename it Things You Don't Know You Don't Know. We have an amazing author on the show. He's joining us today. And he's going us today he's gonna be talking about his book that just came out on october 4th 2023 it's called you're making

this way too hard find your easy way to enjoy life we'll get into what that means the book has a description warning on it so we'll parlay it into the show it says warning do not open this book if you're happy with being unhappy and we hope that our audience enjoys being happy so you're going to listen to the wonderful gentleman on the show dr angelo valente is on the show with us today he's gonna be talking to us about his book his insights and his massive amounts of knowledge and i'm telling you folks folks, it's massive. I've seen it. Dr. Angelo Valenti is a consulting psychologist in Nashville, Tennessee.

He earned his bachelor's degree from Case Western University, Reserve University, and his MS and PhD from the University of Georgia. He taught psychology at Oakland City University and worked as a consultant with RHR International before opening his own firm in 1982. See, I told you, he's been doing this for a massively long time. His firm, The Company Psychologist, helps companies hire the right people for their cultures, develops talent with their organizations, and coaches present and future leaders. He also coaches individuals who want to live their best personal and professional lives. He is the author, of course, of the latest book that we have aforementioned.

Welcome to the show, Angelo. How are you? I'm terrific. How are you, Chris? I am excellent as well. Thanks for coming on the show. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs?

You can find me at angelovalente.com, thecompanypsychologist.com. You can book a discovery call at reachangelo.com. You can find me on Facebook at Angelo Valente, LinkedIn, Angelo Valente PhD, and Instagram, although I seldom use Instagram. There you go. You've got to love the Instagram. It's a great place for dating.

Give us the 30,000 overview of your new book. The reason I wrote my book, You're Making This Way Too Hard, Find Your Easy Way to Enjoy Life, is that I work a lot with executives, organizations, individuals. And just in my personal and professional life, I started noticing that people aren't having as much fun as I thought they should have.

There seemed to be a lot of stress going on. They're worried about work. They're worried about their relationships. They're worried about how many likes they get on social media. They're worried about so many things that I think they forget that we were put on this earth to enjoy life, not to be miserable all the time

or not to be worried all the time. I think we have to be taught to be miserable, and I don't like it, so I don't want people to be miserable. There you go. Note to self, stop being miserable, damn it. Right.

Homage to Mr. McDonald. So there's a spelling in the name. I want to clarify. So when people search for this and look it on Amazon to order it, the way you spell enjoy life is with the letters N-J-O-Y and then L-F-E. So enjoy life as it reads. Is there a reason-O-Y-L-F-E. Is there a reason you did it that way? There is a reason.

That is my license plate. N-J-O-Y-L-F-E. It's been my license plate since 1991, and I've had it on every car since. I've been fortunate in my life that i've been i drive some pretty nice cars so always been on usually mercedes so i drive around nashville and wherever with enjoy life because i that's a message i want to bring to everybody and it 99.9 of the people that comment on my license plate will say that's a great message a good license plate every once in a while somebody will say why do you have no joy life

on your license plate and i have to correct them and say why would anybody go around driving with no law no joy life on their car maybe you're upset at the car dealership or something. I think it's interesting, too. You have a picture of a car on the cover of your book with the license plate there. And I notice it comes from the state of contentment. Is that the 52nd state? It should be. Maybe we should rename one of the states contentment that or we could just invade

canada i'm in tennessee and i feel pretty content here so we can we can go to tennessee we can change the name there then no one will be able to find the state they're like where did tennessee go so there you go so give us a 30 000 overview of what's inside you're making this way too hard i'm not saying you are i'm just quoting your book give us the 30 000 overview what's inside. You're making this way too hard. I'm not saying you are. I'm just quoting your book. Give us the 30,000 interview. What's inside? Sure. I start the book off with the idea that there are around us systems, large and small, that influence our life.

Some big systems, governmental system, educational system, selective service system used to influence people's lives. And within these big systems, there are a lot of small systems. Your social systems, your friends are a system. Your family is a system. And they're all impacting you to one degree or another. And to the extent you let those systems they can control your life now what i'm my message is it's okay for some of these systems to influence your life but it's not okay for these systems to control your life social media is another and the news media whatever is another system that's structured it's designed social

media is designed for two reasons one keep people arguing with one another and to sell a lot of stuff and and to the extent that you play into that you're either going to be arguing with a lot of people or buying a lot of stuff. And what I like to convey is you can let those systems work for you if you figure them out. You don't have to be a puppet to the system. In my book, I mentioned in life, you're either the puppet or the puppeteer. If you believe you control your own life, you're the puppet. If you believe outside forces control your life, you're the puppet. And if you believe you control your life, you're the puppeteer. So it's a choice you can make.

There you go. The main theme through my book is choice. You have choices where to work, where to live, who to have a relationship with, how to react to situations that happen to you. All of those are choices. You can't choose always what happens to you, but you can choose how you react to what happens to you. There you go.

You can choose how you react to what happens to you, people. You don't always have to be in victimhood competition. There's a saying that I have, you either run the game or the game is run on you. Yep. So there you go. I found a psychologist to actually agree with me the game is run on you. Yep. So there you go. I found a psychologist to actually agree with me on this. So this makes it official. Some people don't like that terminology and it's kind of interesting. We're going to delve more into this as we go

through the show, but let's get your origin story. What made you want to be a psychologist and become a doctor, PhD and everything else. What's your hero's journey through life? My hero's journey is I went to college with the idea that I was going to be a dentist. My father was a dentist. My grandfather was a dentist. So I was going to be a dentist. And I get to college, and all the classes I'm taking that are getting me toward my pre-dent classes, I hated. Organic chemistry, hated it.

Biology, not a big fan. Chemistry is okay. I didn't mind chemistry that much. But I took Psych 101 as an elective and really enjoyed it. And then I said, oh, I'm going to take another psych class. So I took Psych 102. Before I knew it, I had a minor in psych, so I just decided. And the class that really sold me on it was an abnormal psych class I took with a gentleman who was at the time the president of the American Psychological Association. Oh, wow. He was a dynamic lecturer, brilliant man. And I kind of fell in love with psychology at that point, so I decided, well, I'll be a psychologist. There you go. Once you get an undergraduate degree in psychology, about the only thing you can do with it is either get a graduate degree or not much else.

And then was your Ph.D. in the same venue? No, I went to Case Western Reserve, which is in cleveland and i went to georgia for my master's and phd because i got sick of the winners in cleveland and decided lost the cleveland crowd man all five people went no no no the people in cleveland know i love cleveland it's a great place to be from but i'm glad i'm not there now i think we saved it yeah so. So I got my PhD and that I was going to be a college professor. So I did that for four years. In the late seventies, I was a college professor at Oklahoma city university and taught psychology, loved it. Ended up being

promoted to chairman of the department after my first year there, which I was totally unprepared for. So I did that for a while. And in 1979, I realized you can't raise a family. What I was making as a college professor at a small liberal arts school. So I joined a consulting firm. And they moved me to the Memphis office. It's RHR International, great firm, love them to this day. They moved me to Memphis and taught me how to work with businesses. So I started consulting with businesses, helping them get better on the people side of their business. Many executives are great at running their business, but they're not good at reading people. So I help those businesses

hire the right people, develop the people, and also develop their own leadership skills. There you go. Go ahead. Leadership skills are really important because in being able to understand people, because as you do in your consulting, help people build the right teams and stuff. How do you help people with their leadership, help people build the right teams and stuff. How do you help people with their leadership, how to build the right teams and identify people that have the psychological fit for your team? Like most of my team are all insane sociopaths,

but they work with me well because I'm there too. That's the culture. You discovered the secret. That's the culture of your organization. So you want to have people who fit that culture. that's the culture that you discover the secret that's the culture of your organization so you want to have people who fit that culture that's the some yeah true what's up some people some organizations every organization has its own personality if you can understand what that person that's the culture of the organization how they do things how they treat themselves

a culture of an organization is basically how does an organization treat its people and how do those people treat each other? Some companies are real task oriented. Some people, companies are real people oriented. Some people are process oriented. And, you know, the companies that are demanding that employees come back to the office, whether or not they really need to come back to the office, whether or not they really need to come back to the office, are more process-oriented, more profit-oriented than they are people-oriented. Ah, and that probably gets communicated to their employees that like, hey, these guys give a crap more about dollars than... Sure.

There you go. That explains why they're so angry sometimes about getting that claw back to the office. So there you go that explains why they're so angry about sometimes about getting that claw back to the office so there you go so do you mostly do you do any private practice one on one with people like me where you're like you know you sit me down and go why did your mother hate you when you were a child or do you just mostly work with companies i would i do work one-on-one with people but but it's in a coaching capacity. It's not a therapy capacity. And the big difference between coaching and therapy is coaching is looking forward, and therapy spends a lot of time looking backwards before we start moving forward.

And so, no, I really, God bless the people who can do that. They do great work. I don't have the patience for it. I like working with business people. They're much more willing to put into practice ideas that you suggest. Because business people, they're looking to make their business better. They're looking to make their customers happier. They're looking to make their employees more productive and happier. A happy workforce is a productive workforce.

It definitely is. I mean, if people feel like they're valued, if they're inspired, if they're working towards a good purpose, you know, other than the sociopaths in my office, including me, you know, there's that. In the book, you talk about several different things. We're going to fall back to that. You talk about forget about keeping up with the Joneses. Forget about winning the rat race or, you know, the FOMO that social media gives, you know, sitting around going, did I get a like, did I get a like, did I get validated, did I get attention? How do we start living for ourselves? The first step in living for yourself is to take care of yourself and start to practice self-love.

People think self-love is selfishness, and it's not the same thing. Self-love is recognizing that you have worth, you have value. Nobody cares about you as much as you care about you, and it's time for you to realize that. So you take care of yourself. You can't take care of other people if. So you take care of yourself. You can't, you can't take care of other people if you don't take care of yourself first. And if you don't love yourself, why would you expect anybody else to love you?

Because I don't have any love for myself. And can people just fill the void? There you go. That's, that's really important because uh if you i mean you do have to love yourself you got to fill your bucket first on the cover of your book you have different terms like self-doubt anxiety frustration and then it looks like the pointing the same way your car is headed, but you have the easy way. Tell us what that all means. Well, the easy way is, as I said, taking care of yourself and recognizing what works for you instead of what works for everybody else. And, you know, take care of yourself physically. That means getting as good a shape as you can possibly get in without killing yourself. I'm not saying run a marathon.

I had a line in my book that every dead body on Mount Everest was once a highly motivated person. So don't get carried away. But it's okay to take a walk every day. You want to take a walk in the woods? Walk a couple miles. Get in touch with nature, you'll feel better. Your blood pressure will go down and you'll start the day feeling a little bit

more optimistic and positive. Unless you meet a serial killer when you're in the woods. That's all different. It depends on where you're walking. Central Park is a little different situation. There are a lot of places in the country where you can walk and not worry about getting killed. Yeah note to self stay out of the killing forest so there you go and so give us uh you work with companies to teach them to be better leaders you do coaching you've got

some courses on your website and coming soon looks like on the courses yeah walk us through when you coach people how do you work with them? What are some of the biggest things that you find people are coming to you with needs going, I really need help on this, that, or the other? Well, people don't come to a coach and they don't go to a therapist unless there's some pain. There's something that's not quite right. And for the more proactive leaders, they recognize that they've reached a certain point in their career where if they're going to go to the next step, they're going to have to build some additional skills or change their mindset a little bit. Many people who get very successful in kind of the middle of their career are individual producers. They're really good at their job. So they achieve a fairly high

level of success doing their job. But if you're going to be a leader, you have to get your jollies. You have to get your success from other people's success. I mean, they can't, you can't achieve what you want to achieve unless the people working with you are achieving something, achieving what they want to achieve. So that's the part of the gap that I try to bridge is going from getting your satisfaction from what you do to getting your satisfaction from what you can inspire other people to do. Ah, there you go. What do you find is the biggest difference between successful and unsuccessful leaders?

What makes a leader unsuccessful? It's almost an axiom at this point but there it's true that successful people are willing to do the unpleasant but necessary things that unsuccessful people aren't willing to do successful leaders will sacrifice their own uh status or whatever to make the team better, to make their customers happier. They have a helping spirit. They have a giving mindset. They have the customer is always right. It's still true.

The customer is always right. But they have the idea that their first customers are their internal customers, the people that work with them. Those leaders are always thinking about what can I do to make the internal customer experience as good as possible, help them be as productive, as happy as possible, and they'll take care of the external customer. That's very true. I really love that analogy because people don't realize that. If you take care of your people, they're going to take care of the external customer. That's very true. I really love that analogy because people don't realize that if you take care of your people, they're going to take care of the front line better. So is thinking of your employees as a form of customer a better way of putting into your

mindset? Well, it is because nobody, if you think about how you treat your customer compared to how you, you might treat your employees, if you treat, you're going to, you're not going to do anything to intentionally irritate, aggravate, drive away, piss off your customer.

So why would you do things that irritate, aggravate, piss off your internal employees? Note to self, quit pissing off the employees for fun on fridays yeah okay yeah we'll see if we can do that that's probably a bad idea in in you know stuff like calling people back to the office trying to force them to do stuff they don't want to do treating them poorly showing that you that layoffs are more important than everything else. One thing you help companies do is find the right people to hire.

What should companies look for when they're hiring new employees and why is it important to care about that? And how do you help people do that well? Well, as I mentioned, every company has its own personnel, just like an individual has his or her own personality and the mistake that companies make is they take in much too much into account skills and experience and don't don't take enough into account attitude and personality when you think when you think about for example a retail brick and mortar store that you might go into and if

you have a great experience with an employee there somebody has servers somebody on the staff you're more likely to go back right and if you have a bad experience you're more likely to go back, right? And if you have a bad experience, you're less likely to go back there. It's not because the person who waited on you doesn't have the skills to do the job. They know the products. It's all about how they treat you, how they make you feel when you go into that store. Well, that's an attitude issue. That's not a skills issue. Yeah, their attitude sucks.

Right. You're making me think of a recent place that I really enjoy because the owner's from Italy and he makes some spectacular Italian pasta and that related food. Please don't bring a sense on to me, by the way. Oh, okay. Well, if I can get their service to serve it.

But the problem they have is they have some sort of, you know, you kind of do a weird order system up front and then you go sit at your table and then someone's supposed to kind of make sure your drinks are full. But then they just kind of yell at you and go, Hey, just let us know if you need anything. And you're just like, but you're paying for full service pricing. It's kind of interesting. And it's really a turnoff. It was making me think of one of my experiences, but it's interesting in, in, you know, a lot of people who hire, you know, this will probably go on LinkedIn newsletter. So a lot of people who hire will pick it up. A lot of recruiters, a lot of recruiters and stuff they focus on the skills

base and a lot of it i mind i don't even be skills based so much anymore is it like how what how long are you your last job and were you there for several years or whatever it seems like you know the wrong metrics being used there well Well, you have to use some metrics to weed out the thousands of candidates who are applying for given jobs. But resumes, to me, always seem more like marketing documents. They're more like brochures

than they are mini-biographies. PR statements. So people have a tendency to embellish, exaggerate, or outright lie on their resume, and they're not going to put anything on their resume that paints them in a really bad light. So you have to dig that stuff out somehow. I put all my bad stuff on a resume, and I'm like, fuck it, I warned them.

So if they have to worry me. When was the last time you looked for a job? When I was 18, I think, or 20. That's one of the great things about being self-employed. It is. I'm unhirable and I do not work with people. I know what you feel. Plus, I've been on, I can't pull this joke out of my head right now, I guess.

Plus, I've been on court detention for 30 years or something. I don't know. Most people don't know the podcast is really just a court-determined community service. So there's that. But hiring for attitude and personality is really important. You know, I've had experiences like i'm not a big fan of walmart's new thing where i have to do all the checking out i think next week they're going to start where i have to start grabbing cases out of the back and shoving them on the shelf and then

getting what i want out of them that or eventually i'll just be the one who orders the stuff uh i you know i don't know where this goes, but it's really irritating. And so I'm a real asshole. I mean, I think most people know that by now, but I'll follow that up with the rest of that statement. I'm a real asshole at Walmart where I will ask for the hidden cashier that they've hidden on purpose, and I will ask for the cashier in demand to be checked out that way.

And they always come, and they're always ho--hum and they're always upset at me over it and they got an attitude and stuff and i i still don't care because i'm an asshole and you got that memo yet i'm an asshole uh i had a guy one time who came out and he started being friendly with me and a great attitude. He's like, hey, man, how are you doing today? I'm like, I'm doing good. Doing good. I hate this process, but we'll get through this. And he was just so funny and interesting. He was like, hey, what's the hat about?

You know, the Chris Foss show. And he goes, and I go, and I was honest with him. I go, you know, you're making this fun. I actually really hate that Walmart does this. He goes, you know, I do too, Chris. He goes, but, you know, we'll get through it. We're going to I was honest with him. I go, you know, you're making this fun. I actually really hate that Walmart does this. He goes, you know, I do too, Chris. He goes, but, you know, we'll get through it. We're going to have some fun with this. And he checked me out and stuff.

His whole attitude and his personality changed my whole attitude towards the company for the most part, at least in that moment, and made my experience so much different. And that was the power of just someone having a great attitude and personality. Absolutely. And your interaction with that person, he was Walmart at that time, right? So everybody working in a business. I'm sorry. The light just went out in this office. It's got one of those timer things just drives me crazy. Anyway, everybody can be the face of their business, of their company and good companies for good. In good companies, people go out and they're ambassadors for the place that

they work yes yes and in bad companies they're ambassadors for don't come to work there if you if you can help it really and and a lot of a lot of companies get their best employees get their best new employees by asking their current employees if they know anybody like them who'd like to come to work there no no my employees when you see my employees you're like but good good people tend to hang out with other good people. Ah, there you go. Yeah, you know, you mentioned that your employees are ambassadors, and that goes for everybody, I would imagine, not just your frontline commercial service people.

Oh, everybody. For many people, the company is the receptionist that they see when they walk in the door. If that person doesn't present the kind of image you want to the company, that may be as far as that person ever goes in doing business with you. phone and boy do i hate the automatic phone answering system where you gotta hit four five six different buttons just to get to a live person if you can ever make it to one you don't end up down some rabbit hole you know like i saw recently there was a thing on tiktok that went viral where a guy was being i think racist and racist. And I think, yep, I mean, just basically racist. And they doxed him and came out, you know, he works for some big athletic college stuff and he'll probably get fired. You know, that's one of those things.

And it doesn't look like he's like a frontline person. And so it's probably important for companies to recognize this, you know, the culture they have, the people that work for them, you know, when they're out talking to people, you know, if you've got somebody who's got some serious issues, you know, they're out toxifying the world about, you know, the people are looking at them going, there must be more of them back at that company, or this must be some sort of endorsed behavior, kind of explain some of the canceled culture that we have. It can poison a company's reputation in the public, internally and externally.

Yep. Even if you fire them and do the whole PR thing, like, oh, that person's not like us. You're like, why did you let them work for you for so long? Imagine some people might ask. Oh, yeah. There you go. in hiring right is so important one of the problems we have with our companies early on was we we hired everybody you know they came in for an interview and we're like hey you're pretty cool we didn't hire everybody

but you know the good ones but you know it was first it was the first interview sort of pickup and then we find out you know they were lying or lying. And as you put it, you know, they, they, they embellished their resumes a little, and then we would have to go through the process of, of getting them out, you know, two to three steps, you know, all that sort of crazy stuff of writing people up and dealing with their thing. And so we learned the hard way that by doing multiple interviews, by really getting to try and flush out people's personalities or attitudes, as you put it, doing three to four interviews made all the difference in the world. I concur with what you're saying in that level. Yeah. The more different perspectives you can get on an individual and the more chances you're going to, people,

people come into interviews today better prepared than they used to. They've, they've taken classes on how to enter, how to get interviewed or they've read a book on how to get interviewed. So you really have to dig deeper under the surface to get at an answer that they're not expecting, get at a question they're not expecting. And whenever whenever somebody when i'm interviewing somebody and they sit back and say oh that's a good question that means nobody's told them that question was coming i like that i gotta remember that one you gotta think about it for a second that's something they've got a canned answer for. I always like to get two or three. Oh,

that's a good question. When I'm interviewing somebody. Oh, there you go. What are some other ways that you help business and leaders do more of what they do? Anything more you want to tease out on that? Well, we don't want your whole proprietary system.

No, um, it depends on what the leaders have in issues where there are shortcomings. Some people have difficulty communication. I've coached leaders on how to be better public speakers before. Some people, public speaking, as you know, can be very anxiety-inducing in people. When I first started teaching, I was terrified. But when you're teaching, you have to do it eight to ten hours a week in the classroom every week. So you learn how to be better at it.

The problem most people have is they have very few opportunities to get better at public speaking. You think about how many times, unless're going to be preach a church or something i don't give a speech at a rally there aren't that many chances to speak in public so i i've coached leaders on that i've coached leaders on how to be more assertive without being aggressive there are there are a lot of different things you can work on how to be better communicators, not to ramble when they talk like I'm doing now. It's a podcast. Yeah, I get it. I check with the laws.

Yeah. So it really depends. Some people, I've done a lot of coaching with people toward the end of their career for what's the next phase of their career, of their life, I mean. A lot of people don't think about what if I have to retire at 65 because the company makes me retire at 65. What am I going to do with the next 15, 20, 25 years of my life? The retirement age of 65 was created when people were dead at 61 or 62, but now they're living

into their 80s and 90s. You're moving to a 100, baby. If the only thing that an executive enjoys doing is working, he's going to have a real adjustment when somebody tells him he can't work anymore. That's very true.

People have been telling me that I shouldn't work anymore for the past 35 years so there's that so there you go so what haven't we touched on about what you do and how you do it with people or any of the stuff that's in the book well the the another message i like to leave in the book is if you accept yourself you're gonna get in better relationships with me there's a whole chapter in my book on relationships and I think the secret to good relationships is accepting each other's quirks everybody's got quirks and if you find the other person's quirks endearing you got a chance to be in a good relationship if you find the other person's quirks endearing, you've got a chance to be in a good relationship. If you don't find another person's quirks endearing, you may end up with what the police call motive.

Wow. That escalated quickly. Yeah. That went right to murder there. You know, how do you deal with it? You're a psychologist how do you one of the problems i have is i'll have somebody in a relationship where they'll be like you know i have a whole list of your problems we're going to talk tonight about them and i'm

like oh i didn't we're making a list now of things that are annoying about each other oh okay well i'll do my life just just me yeah yeah yeah and i'll be like oh i i guess we're playing the game i should wait there's things you don't like about me i mean if i really want to be an asshole about it yeah i i mean if i really want to sit down and go like there's things i don't like about you yeah we can do that game but i'm growing up enough to to you know the the good parts about you overshadow the parts that I find mildly annoying. And that's always an interesting conversation to have, which is probably why I've been single all my life.

Well, I shortcutted that process. Oh, did you? I did. My first wife and I divorced after 20 years. And when I started dating my second wife, who passed away, I'm not a serial marriage person, but I'm back. What you referenced earlier with the motive now has me wondering.

Hey, no body, no murder. What can I say? She's probably going to listen to this. God bless you, Sue. You're the psychologist, so you don't have to talk somebody down often. Oh, no, no, no. So I got divorced. I started dating my second wife.

And I wrote down on a sheet of paper everything that was wrong with me. And some of that was based on what my ex-wife said. Some of it was for me. And I said, here, if we're going to get serious, this is everything that's wrong with me. If you don't think you can live with this, let me know now, and we can go our separate ways, and it'll be just fine. And she said, let me see the bank account next to the list, and I'll make a decision, right?

Yes. Well, that was on a different list. Oh. It was definitely on a list. Wow. There you go. So she still accepts you. That's pretty list. Wow. There you go. So she still accepts you. That's pretty good.

Yes. And the punchline of that story is we got married, we moved into a house, and one of the light socket switches didn't work. I got home from work. She said, will you fix the light switch? I said, no. She said, what do you mean no? I said, no, it's on the list. It's number seven i don't

do home repair projects so i thought you were kidding i said no call an electrician they need to make a living i'm not doing it i've had relationships like that like why don't you mow the lawn like we pay people to do that don't dohmm. Don't do that. And then, you know, like, why don't you do the dishes? Oh, that's what you're here for. So there you go. But at least you gave her a full disclosure. I did. It sounds like maybe you should have had, like, a contract written up with attorney advisories and, you know, signed notary, all that sort of good stuff so that she knew you weren't joking around.

Every relationship's a contract, whether you know it or not. There you go i there's if i start a relationship again ever a long term there's going to be all that stuff you heard at the beginning like i love you no matter what there's nothing you could do you're the superman i'm gonna all that's going to be like videotape depositions so that later a year later when all that bullshit comes back like hey how you do this and i'll be like tape number one please the deposition of the starting of the relationship let's get that up front i don't know why i'm doing bill cosby putting bops so there you go don't drink what we're serving here people angelo give us your final thoughts your final thoughts, your pitch on to people who are of your book, get to know you, order your services online, et cetera, et cetera.

Sure. If you want to laugh, first of all, the book's funny, and it's got plenty of wisdom, and it's only less than 100 pages. You're making this way too hard. Find your easy way to enjoy life, and you will end up with some nuggets that will live with you for a long time. You can reach me at angelovalente.com. You can book a discovery call at reachangelo.com. You can also check out my consulting services at thecompanypsychologist.com. And check me at Facebook at Angelo Valente, LinkedIn at AngeloValentiPhD.

And I'd love to hear from you. There you go. There you go. It's been wonderful, Angelo, to have you on the show. Thank you. I've had a blast. Thank you. It's been fun.

And order up his book, wherever fine books are sold. You're making this way too hard. Find your way. I'm sorry. Let's cut that out again. You're making this way too hard find your easy way to enjoy life and it starts with the warning do not open this book if you are happy with being unhappy give give up being unhappy it's it's overrated seriously folks find a way to be

happy that's more important thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com for chest christmas linkedin.com for chest christmas youtube.com for chest christmas the big linkedin newsletter the 130 000 linkedin group subscribe to all that over there and all that good stuff thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time