The Liz Moody Podcast - Proven Habits To Build Resilience: How To Handle Anything The World Throws At You

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Writer and entrepreneur Sahil Bloom teaches us how to build resilience, redefine success on the terms that are most motivating to us individually, and cultivate deeper relationships for greater happiness and contentment. He shares how he’s learned to overcome societal pressures and mental health challenges by building a resilient life.  We’ll discover practical strategies like 'life dinners' for stronger romantic connections, focusing on what you can control, and small daily habits for lasting well-being. Tune in to realign with your true values and create a life of fulfillment. 02:58 Defining Resilience & Its Importance 05:32 Finding Your True North 15:24 The Life Dinner Concept 25:27 Changing The Narrative Of Masculinity 33:22 Measuring Success Beyond Finances 38:27 Reevaluating Your Commitments 45:51 Questioning The Default Settings 49:44 Dealing With Rejection & Failure 53:13 Building Personal Resilience For more from Sahil, you can find him on Instagram @sahilbloom or online at www.sahilbloom.com. Order his new book, The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome. If you like this episode, check out These Micro Habits Will Make You Happier, Healthier, And Wealthier. This episode is sponsored by: Seed: go to seed.com/lizmoody and use code LIZMOODY for 25% off your first month. IQ Bar: Text LIZ to 64000 for 20% off all IQBAR products plus FREE shipping. ZocDoc: go to ZocDoc.com/LizMoody and download the Zocdoc app for FREE and book a top-rated doctor today. Olive and June: visit oliveandjune.com/LIZMOODY for 20% off your first Mani System. Pique: go to piquelife.com/LIZMOODY for up to 20% off plus a special gift. Osea: get 10% off your first order at oseamalibu.com with code LIZMOODY10. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 301. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You have to identify what truly matters to you. Not what culture tells you you should want, not what your parents tell you, not what your friends tell you, not what social media tells you. The life you actually want to live. And then go take actions to build your life around those things. Life is very much about direction, not speed. It's much better to climb slowly up the right mountain than to climb fast up the wrong one. Social media has convinced you that falling in love is what matters. But growing in love is what we're actually all trying to do.

It's not about just you when you are vulnerable with someone. it is about the fact that you empower them to be vulnerable back. Five minutes is what I'm talking about. If you can create five minutes between meetings, your whole life can change on the back of that. Hello, friends, and welcome to the Liz Moody podcast, where every week we're sharing real science, real stories, and realistic tools that actually level up every part of your life. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and longtime journalist. Sal Hill Bloom is back today by popular demand, after you all absolutely blew up his first episode of the podcast. It was one of our most downloaded episodes of last year, and it's all about micro habits to make you healthier, wealthier, and happier.

So I will link that in the show notes if you want to go and listen next. I highly recommend that you do. Sal Hill is a creator, a writer and entrepreneur. And his twice-weekly newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicles, is read by close to a million people. His new book is called The Five Types of Wealth. It is one of the best books that I have read in a while, and I don't say that only because he's a friend. It's a deep dive into building wealth not only in our finances, but in all of the things that matter in our lives. I wanted to create today's episode because things feel tough right now.

Every time you read the news, it feels like there is another unprecedented, horrific event that's happened, and it's just a lot to process. And that is on top of all the things that are happening in our personal lives, financial struggles, health struggles, loneliness. So this episode is all about building our resilient. So no matter what the world throws at us, we know that we are strong enough to handle it. We are going to get into building financial resilience, relationship resilience. We're going to talk about being resilient to the news. And these aren't just like, feel better, tell yourself everything is great. Cover your eyes.

Tips. No, these are tactical action steps that are going to make you feel like you can take on anything. And it's one of my favorite episodes that I have ever recorded. I cannot wait for you to listen. There is a lot of information in the episode. So if you want some key takeaways when you are done, head over to lizmoody.substack.com and sign up for our newsletter, which has action steps for each episode, as well as bonus interviews, meal plans, workout plans, and more. Sahel, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a thrill to be back. I'm so excited to have you back. Your book is absolutely beautiful. And we're going to get into some of the concepts in your book today. and also this broader concept of resilience, which I think is incredibly important right now. So I would love to start with how do you define resilience

and why do you think it matters? I really think of resilience as the ability to navigate the inevitable chaos that enters your world. And the analogy I always like to use when it comes to life is thinking about an explorer that sets out on a journey. When an explorer sets out on a journey, they are not trusting that the seas are going to remain perfectly calm and that they're going to be able to get from point A to point B perfectly according to the plan they set out.

They are trusting in their ability to adapt when the inevitable storms come and their ability to navigate through that storm to their true north on the other side. You are the explorer and life is your journey and your ability to adapt when those inevitable storms do come is where you find the true joys in life. And that to me is what resilience really means. Have you read, is it called Endurance, the Arctic? Oh, one of my favorite books of all time. So good. Where they get like stuck in the ice flows and then is this crazy, what's his name? It's Shackleton. Shackleton's journey. Yes. And they like get stuck in the ice in the Arctic and they set off by foot and then they're in a tiny boat like their rescue boat thing and they're in reindeer sleeping.

bags that are disintegrating and filled with slime. In Antarctica, I mean, like, the story of the endurance, if you haven't read the book, it's an incredible audio book in particular. It's like very cinematic feeling. You feel immersed in it. If you go on a walk and you're listening to it, it's amazing. But like, you have to just think about the era. They didn't have any technology. They were stuck in Antarctica, got frozen over. And then these few people, I think it was like three or four people, had to go out on a voyage to go try to get help for all of them. They went out on a little lifeboat into the Arctic ocean. With the navigator, like, doing pen and paper, like, navigation and being like, I think we

should veer left a little bit, guys, because they're aiming for these teeny tiny islands in a sea of icy ocean. A sea of icy ocean. And they managed to do it, and everyone survives. It's insane. I mean, it is, I think they're making a movie of it right now, actually, which will be amazing. Yeah, it's incredible. In your quest to kind of figure out what the meaning of life is how we should be spending

in our lives. You talk to all of these different people. You talk to people who were dealing with brain tumors, losses of spouses, somebody who had just finished a decades-long prison sentence. I'm curious if there was anything that you found all of these people had in common in terms of lessons they learned about dealing with harder times in life. The one thing that I would say was the common thread across all of those people, people who had experienced incredible pain and trauma and seen the their way to the other side was they kept a focus on what they viewed as their true north, if you will. And the reason that's so important practically is if you just think about those periods

of chaos in your own life, it manifests as blindness almost. Like you were in a blizzard and it's a total whiteout. You can't see anything. When people are saying, oh, well, just like navigate, well, I can't see anything. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to navigate. And so for those people, when they've experienced that, the idea of keeping your focus on something on the horizon, like far off, that is your center, that is your true north, that is what kind of keeps you, no matter what, even when you can't see in the close in of what is going on in your life, it allows you to just keep moving slowly and steadily towards what you know is good on the other side of it. And I think that that notion is a really powerful idea for all of the

different periods that you go through in life because sometimes it's going to be bright sunshine, beautiful, those summer days, like everything is going and you're in flow in your life. And during those moments, you want to embrace those present moments and also continue to keep an eye on that horizon. The idea being life is very much about direction, not speed. It's much better to climb slowly up the right mountain than to climb fast up the wrong one. But during those periods of chaos, when your vision does close in and everything is conspiring for you to get completely lost, trying to train yourself to stay focused on that true north is what allows you to weather those storms that come.

Okay, so I have to ask, what are some examples of true north and how can we find our own true north? The most common example for most people would be your people and relationships. The young man that you referenced, he had a brain tumor. Age 28 has all of his life in front of him, just got his dream job. He's about to go and take on the world, move to the big city. Everything is going great. And one day he wakes up and gets diagnosed with this inoperable brain tumor.

Entire life thrown into chaos. Everything in front of him. And he went through a period for months where it was just total uncertainty and chaos and he was lost and very down. And when I asked him what allowed him to get out of that, he talked about the fact that he had the ability to choose who to surround himself with. He had the ability to choose to be the type of person. person that those people would want to have around. And he said that the people were what lifted

him out of that. The people were the ones who kept encouraging him, who kept pushing him to say, this isn't a death sentence to you. You can continue to show up. You can continue to learn, grow, develop. And that is such a powerful thing. And so I think that over and over again, you hear people talk about, yeah, it's the people. And then you tie that to the science. And there is clear scientific evidence that the people you surround yourself, with determine your outcomes. The pygmalion effect is the term for this behavioral phenomenon that we actually rise to the level of expectations that other people have for us. If you surround yourself with people who believe you are capable of more, who tell you to think bigger, who push you to think

and dream, you will rise to the level of those expectations. So if those people are your center, if those people are your true north in your life, that you are building those deep relationships, you will continue to see your way to the other side, no matter what chaos hits you in the short term. How do we find those people? If we look around our world and we want those people who are going to push us, who are going to help us live our best life,

but we don't see them around us. What can we do? The most tactical thing, I would say, is find value-aligned rooms. What I mean by that is you have a core set of values, interests, energy creators in your life, things that you feel really strongly about the world or about how to live well. There are people out there that share those values. You need to find your way into the rooms where you are likely to meet those people. That is very tactically

something that you can do and exercise around on a piece of paper. Write down on one side of the paper, those values, interests, those things that you really care about. Maybe it's you really care about health and you're really interested in new health technologies, you're interested in foods, you're interested in all of the latest things that are happening. Write those things down. Then think about Zoom out and brainstorm. Where are places that other people like me would be spending time? Well, gyms tend to be a good one. Farmers markets, health food stores, outdoor parks, hikes. Those are places where you were going to find or be highly likely to find other people that share that common value with you, which are going to be people that are aligned with you on this core

thing that you really care about. Those are going to be more likely the people that are going to lift you up in these different ways in your life. And so it's an example of just thinking a little bit differently, thinking almost strategically, about how to position yourself to catch the right waves in life, to be prepared for those great waves of these people that you might be able to meet and engage with. So let's say we're at the gym, we're at the health food store, we're at the park. How do we spark up a conversation with these people? How do we turn them into these relationships that are going to change our lives. Create doorknobs, not stop signs.

Door knobs in a conversation are things that invite the other person to tell us story. Stop signs are just a question that invites an answer. So most of us have a tendency in a conversation to ask a question. So I might be talking to you for the first time and I say, where did you get married? That invites an answer, a simple answer you would say the place, versus the doorknob version of that, which would be, how did you choose where you were going to get married? Now, you might light up. There's usually a funny story about how you chose.

Maybe it's a family reason. Maybe there's something going on. Suddenly, you're getting the other person a little bit more excited. They're telling a story that creates conversational momentum with someone. So the reason I say that's so important is because I am sort of naturally more introverted and a little bit more socially anxious by nature. And for me, having these kind of set of like doorknob questions that I can go to and just pull out of a toolkit, if you will, when I get into a new conversation with someone is really nice because it's an easy way to create

conversational momentum and actually build relationships more effectively if you aren't a natural extrovert that just feels kind of easy for you to do. So how do we know if something's a doorknob question? Is it just something that wouldn't invite a one-word answer or are there words we're looking for like how or why? It would be anything that would invite a story as a response. So you think, what is something that you're really excited about right now? That could be anything, but it gets someone talking about something that they're excited and passionate about.

So you know they're going to light up in the conversation. How did your parents choose your name? Simple things like that, they get the other person talking out of the normal line of questioning that they're used to. The most standard thing people go ask the first time they meet someone is like, what do you do? What do you do? And usually people are either uncomfortable answering it or it invites the like one-liner cookie cutter response. And both of those are bad outcomes. So get people out of that norm.

Ask some of these more interesting questions. What was your hometown like? How did you choose where to go to school? Ask about key decision points in someone's life. Ask about what they're excited about. Ask what they've learned recently that they found interesting. Getting out of the norms in these conversations breaks the patterns. And it makes the other person remember you more actually as well.

So just as a follow-up thing, it's a stickier conversation. Even if you want just the slightest variance on what do you do, how did you get into your job? is like just the teeny-tiniest-tweak, and it invites so many more interesting questions. That's true. And that's a great example of a key point, which is the most basic questions you ask, you could write those down. Think about in normal conversations. What are the questions you typically ask? And then think if there's a tiny tweak you could make to those questions to make them more interesting. I love that you say that because you noted that you tend to be more socially anxious, you tend to be an introvert. I do as well. And people are always like, yeah, but you're such a good

conversationalist. You host a podcast. And I'm like, yes, because I think about these. things. I analyze them because they made me nervous. So like your suggestion of like, you can make a list. I'm like, that's something that I would do. And people would perceive on the other end that I'm a good conversationalist, but it came out of being anxious about it and wanting to do well. Which is a really important point as a macro point on all of these areas of your life, which is you can work at these things. They are skills. They are muscles. People tend to think that you are either an extroverted, incredible conversationalist, very confident, or you're introverted, you're not great at conversation, and you're never going to be able to build tons of relationships or build these deep connections.

And it couldn't be further from the truth. You can just work on these things. The same way, I'm a nervous public speaker. Full disclosure, super nervous public speaker. I used to like me. Stuttering when I would get out in front of people, I'd get really like sweaty, hot, really nervous. Now if you see me give a talk or even if we're having a conversation, you would not believe that that was the case. but that's just because I've worked at it. And you can all do that, but you have to be willing to invest in those things in the same way that you invest in any financial investment. It's just making investments in your social wealth, like in this other area of your life that is going to compound probably just as effectively, if not better, than any financial investment that you make. Okay, let's zoom in on relationships a little bit more if that is such a key part of building a resilient life.

So do you have any advice for building some more resilience into our closest relationships? There is this concept called a life dinner that I absolutely love when it comes to creating resilience in your romantic partnership. The idea comes from this entrepreneur named Bradfeld originally. It was the first time I came across it. And the concept is to create a single monthly date effectively that is your life dinner. On a monthly basis, you get together at your favorite place or whatever it is to have a meal. And each person has an opportunity to share and have the floor around goals, opportunities, things that they've been struggling with, things that have been upsetting them, good and the bad in their life. And you each individually share, and then you talk about together the different things that you're experiencing in your relationship.

What it does is it forces you to have this zoom-out touch point in a relationship that doesn't necessarily happen on a daily basis when chaotic things are starting to happen in your life. In a perfect world, that is happening on a more ongoing basis, daily, weekly basis in your life. But we all know the realities of life often conspire against us doing that. When you have a kid and you're not sleeping as much, if you have grief, loss in your family, when the storms come, you lose sight of the ability to have those touch points. And so the life dinner forces you to actually have that on a regular ongoing basis. And it builds that resilience muscle for when that storm does come.

Do you have specific questions you ask each other? So the idea would be that you are not actually asking the other person. Each person sort of comes with these topics. The things that have been bothering them, the things that they've been struggling with, the things that they're excited about for the future, the things that they're concerned about. And you come with kind of your list of topics, the things that have been top of mind for you. And, you know, that might take you 15, 20 minutes to think about prior to going into this. Each person comes with that. You give the other person the floor entirely to talk about it.

I'm not chiming in on anything you're saying. So if you are voicing something that you're frustrated with with me, I'm not pushing back on it. I'm not asking further questions. I'm just giving you the floor to voice those. Then I get the floor to share mine. Then we come together as a unit to confront whatever problems we are facing together. The idea is that this process shifts you from this me versus you mentality into an us versus the problem mentality so that you end up coming together around these things so that you can face them together. What if your partner's like, that sounds like a lot of work.

That sounds silly. I don't want to do it. Relationships are a lot of work to build and grow in. And there needs to be a mindset shift in both partners. and there needs to be an alignment of values in both partners, that growing is much more important than falling. Social media has convinced you that falling in love is what matters. And falling in love is what you see on social media.

It's the glamorous pictures, the beautiful vacations, these nice date nights. But growing in love is what we're actually all trying to do. Long periods of time requires shared struggle to release oxytocin, to create these feelings of connection of love. It requires sitting in the mud with this person. through this chaos, being resilient, that necessitates doing work. That is fundamentally a challenging thing that you have to endure in order to build a meaningful deep relationship on the other side.

And unfortunately, I think because of social media, a lot of people press the eject button too early in relationships. They know that right in front of them in the touch of their hand, they can find 100 other options that are out there. And so when something gets hard, first thing, instinct. I'm just going to press the eject button. This is no longer the honeymoon phase, eject button. And for all of those people out there that are like that, unfortunately, you will never experience a deep relationship if you hit the eject button the second it gets hard.

The same way, you will never improve your health if you hit the eject button the second it gets hard. You will never build a great business if you hit the eject button the second it gets hard. And so these rules end up being things that you see commonalities across every area of your life, but they apply so closely to relationships and to building that resilience and to building that strength and that depth of connection. Can you share maybe a harder time that you went through in your relationship with your wife and how you grew in your relationship and how your resilience that you'd built prior to that played into it? My wife and I, we've been together since I was 15. She was 14 when we first met, which is something that you just don't hear about anymore. I mean, back in maybe like the 50s, 60s, high school sweethearts was a big thing. Now it is definitely not. What that is meant in a very beautiful way is that we have grown together across very different seasons of our life. We have had to navigate these crazy ups and downs and storms and long distance for seven years and me being a total insecure mess for most of my life and trying to find who I actually was and stopping hiding from the world in all these ways. I mean, mostly me. Actually, my wife has been incredibly consistent and loving throughout. The greatest challenge we ever faced through all of that was our

journey with infertility. This is a topic that not a lot of people talk about publicly, especially men. It is something that people suffer with in silence. And for my wife and I, it happened during the loneliest period of our lives because it was during COVID when we were stuck at home. It was really like 2020, early 21, where we lived in California, lockdowns. We didn't have the support networks that you normally would have had during a period like that. And the way that infertility journey manifested, which is I think something that a lot of people will have experienced, is this monthly build up and then disappointment in darkness. Every month, it's like, I hope this is the month. You're building it up. You're praying every single night. And then boom, bad news,

darkness, you know, fight, despair. Like all of those negative things. It was, very much amplifying the fact that I was not in a place mentally or physically that I needed to be in in life to show up for the people that I loved. I was still so focused narrowly on making money and on success and status. And when you focus so narrowly on one thing, you lose sight of all the other things. And the other things were the most important, which was showing up for my wife during this time when there was this burden that we should have both been carrying that I wasn't. wasn't showing up to carry my portion of. And fortunately, we made a big change during that period. And after about two years of struggling on this journey, we made the decision to uproot our life here. I left my job. We sold our house in California to move to live closer to our families, to both sets of

parents. And the reason for that was we decided, we spoke, we talked about the fact that that was clearly our center, that we were so far away and we were creating all of this additional struggle and strain in our lives that was in our control to change. There were all these things that felt out of our control on that infertility journey that we were really upset about. But we recognized in that moment that there was one big thing that was very much in our control, that we could move, that we could go and make this big change. It might have been scary, but we were in control to do it. And the most beautiful thing in the world was that we made that big change. We moved back to the East Coast to live closer to all of our parents. And within two weeks of getting back into

our new place, my wife got pregnant. I love that you said that not a lot of men are talking about this because I've had infertility conversations on this podcast. I've never had it with a man. And I've talked about with my girlfriends quite often how there's a huge tendency to blame the women for infertility. And I have a girlfriend and she's a public figure and her partner, the man, was very much the person who's tested to be the cause of their infertility. And on the internet, every single person was like, you need to try this. You need to do this to her. They were all assuming it was because of her. And so I just wonder, is there anything you would want to say to men listening? If there's anything you'd want to say to women in terms of

talking to men about this? It's such an interesting conversation. because it's so complicated for both sides. I think that there's a lot of judgments, there's a lot of perceptions, and there's a lot of blame, and I don't know, I just would love you to open up that conversation a little bit. I completely agree with you

that there is this default to, oh, the woman, there's something. It is scientifically, very much not the case that it is the woman in all situations. If I were to reflect on our experience, I can almost say conclusively that it was me and that we know scientifically that stress levels impact fertility.

I was as stressed as I've ever been in my entire life. I was drinking seven nights a week. I was not sleeping a whole lot. I was focused on all the wrong things. I wasn't showing up in my relationships in the way I need to. There were all of these reasons why I can point directly to say it was me. And we made this big change. Suddenly my stress levels dropped.

I wasn't drinking anymore. I was around the people I loved and she got pregnant. Come on. more evidence do I need to say that it was me? It's so funny because, yes, the public narrative is all around like masculinity and oh man, all these things. I'm like, masculinity is about accountability and ownership more than anything else in the world. And if you can't be accountable and take ownership, look yourself in the mirror and say, okay, I'm going to shoulder my piece of this burden, whatever it is, and I'm going to do the things I need to do to show up for my partner

in the way that we need to. That is masculinity. And, And I don't care what any bro influencer out there says to the contrary. That is what masculinity is about at the end of the day. And so I hope that this is a message that someone will hear, recognize, and come together with their partner to work on and address these things, to show strength in different ways. And I hope that that's empowering to someone that is just suffering with these things in silence, to hear it and say, like, there are other people out there that are experiencing these things. It's always a different situation, but you are not alone.

I hope that touches someone and reaches someone out there. That's the other thing I think that men really suffer from is they feel much more alone than many women do because they don't have as many avenues that they can talk about their real feelings. Do you have any advice for somebody who either has a partner or somebody who's listening and is a man and wants to form those really deep soul relationships where they can feel emotionally open and free? I do think that there is a paradigm shift that is underway where the definition of masculinity has started to change in some circles that you can open up, that you can be vulnerable about things that you're experiencing. Vulnerability creates a ripple effect, right? It's not about just you when you are vulnerable with someone. It is about the fact that you empower them to be vulnerable back to you and out into the world. I have this amazing network of friends where, like, yes, we can talk about, you know, bro, gym stuff and working out and fun things that we like doing.

But also when any of us are struggling with something, we open up about it in these group chats. I mean, I have group chats that are like dads and like guys that on the surface you would look at and say like big, you know, tough guy who were like opening up and crying about these struggles with infertility, with work challenges, with relationship struggles, opening up. to others and seeing that that vulnerability breeds strength. Look, I'm never going to make everything that I wear organic, but your sheets, your pillows, your comforter are literally touching your skin for eight hours every single night. That is a third of your life right there with one simple swap. And if your bedding is worn out, it's trapping heat or it's made with questionable materials, your sleep is going to suffer.

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It's a weird time to be a man generally, and men seem to be reacting in weird ways to what a weird time it is to be a man. On average, no, men are not okay. There are pockets of greatness and beauty and incredible, I have incredible male friends, and I am so deeply blessed for that. And one of my missions in life is to create more of those communities and spaces so that more men can feel what I feel and the value in their life. But on average, no, men are not okay. There are so many people that are lost and you don't need to look much further than who they are following on social media to understand that a lot of men are lost. And a lot of men are looking for something to attach to and a message and someone that tells them that they can make it, whatever that means in some way. I mean, I posted a picture on Twitter recently.

that was a picture from a group chat of one of these empowering group chats I have with a group of guys, where I shared something really vulnerable that I recognized at the end of last year as I was doing this sort of inventory personal annual review, that oftentimes I do not give 100% effort to something because I am afraid of what will happen if I do give 100% and still fail. You just summarized my entire academic and professional life. I think it is a very common thing that I struggled for 30 years to articulate, that I was holding myself back from things, not giving everything, not going all in as a self-protection mechanism because I wanted to have the out if it didn't work out, to be able to say, well, I didn't really put it all out there.

Like, oh, the book didn't hit whatever list. Yeah, I didn't, because I didn't really market it. It didn't. Yeah, of course. And I shared that into this group chat with this group of dads. that I really love, and I posted it saying, I hope this helps someone else out there. I got a number of incredible responses, people that were really empowered. Then the number of responses of people being like, if you sent this to my group chat, I would

have called you gay type response. I was blown away. To me, it was one of those moments where I was like, whoa, we are not, like, the world is not my group chats and the people that I am surrounding myself with. And it reminded me that this mission is a really important one. that the world will be a better place if more men feel like they have communities of other men who they can lift each other up rather than make fun and drag down. But how you get there, that is a different story.

I think examples are a big part of it. Like, I think people being able to scroll through their feed and see things like the things that you're posting are really critical because sometimes if you look around your community in real life, it can feel lacking. The challenging thing there, structurally, I'm trying to do this. So we don't have a lot of role models of men who are embracing these other types of wealth, who are saying that, like, yes, money is nice, but it can't be the only thing, that having loving relationships, having a family, taking care of your health, finding your purpose, growing,

learning, that is a beautiful, wealthy life, one that should be, that is a flex, just as much as the fancy car. The problem is when you share those kind of things, a lot of people will say, you know, it's fake or performative. Versus, if I share me getting onto a private jet, people are like, that's awesome. Oh, you're the man, you're great. And it'll get a lot of clicks and a lot of likes and people will share it. But you share a thing with your family and people are like, oh, you're not really enjoying

the family moment if you took a video of it. I literally, like a week ago, I shared a video of me reading the dedication of this book to my wife and son. I posted it on LinkedIn and Instagram, 100% positivity, very nice, kind people sharing it. Twitter? Like, I had to delete it. because a bunch of people started sharing it saying mean things about my wife, about my son, about me being, you know, creating fake moments with my family.

And my point to most people out there is, okay, okay, I understand you can feel anger when you see things on the internet. But how am I supposed to inspire more people to take being a loving father and husband as something that is sexy and cool? How am I supposed to do that if I can't share things like that without being dragged in the mud? If I can't convince you that it is cool by just being able to share these things, then how can we change the narrative? How can we?

Like, what do you think are the action steps for people listening in their life? And they're like, Jesus Christ, what's happening to the men in this world? Like, what can we do? I think we need to start celebrating men who are living differently. I am no male apologist. I have, and I know many of my friends have, done things in our lives that, like, yeah, we're not proud of. And I wish, like, I feel a level of shame of the type of person that I was in high school. Like, when I think about how I hid myself from the world, how I had myself from the world,

how I like tried to play a role of what I thought the cool guy looked like the athlete, whatever. Like I feel a level of shame. I also feel like duty as a result of that shame to change that narrative for the future, to make sure that my son is not that way, to like make sure I create a legacy that is more positive around that. And I think that the way we do that is by celebrating people who are living the way that looks different than the like bro influence or treat women this way. You know, they're subservient to you.

Like whatever, all of the nonsense that you see people sharing. I'm not going to name names because it's not what I do, but you know who I'm talking about these people. And we need to celebrate the more positive stories. And the more diverse stories. The more diverse? Yeah. Like a million different ways of living a great life. Yeah.

That's really the whole point of this book and everything that I'm trying to share is you have to identify what truly matters to you. Not what culture tells you you should want, not what your parents tell you, not what your friends tell you, not what social media tells you. What you actually want, the life you actually want to live. and then go take actions to build your life around those things. My map of what a successful life looks like does not match the terrain of what you want. And that's great, that's okay. What I want is for everyone to build their definition of a successful, wealthy life. One of your core theses in this book is that we all over index on trying to achieve financial success

when there's all of these other types of success that we should be focusing our energy on achieving. Why do we do that, even though every study shows that that's not going to be the thing that's going to make us feel fulfilled at the end of our lives? Peter Drucker, the famous management theorist, said, what gets measured gets managed. That is the idea that the thing that we can measure ends up being the thing that we focus on. It's the thing that we narrowly, myopically hone in on and optimize around. Money is the most measurable thing out there. It is the easiest thing to look at and say, okay, I know exactly where I stand. how I can progress against it. I know how I stack up against others. I know how I can compare myself.

Ooh, I just had an unlock too. The focus on weight, too, is really similar. Like, women obsessed about their body image and they obsess about the number on the scale. And so do men as well, but they've been less societally trained to do it than women. And that's measurable. Very measurable. And it is staring you right in the face. And you were told that, like, you have to have a scale in your house and you weigh yourself every when I was a kid. Feeling healthy is not measurable in the same way as like this is what the number on the scale is. Exactly. And it's getting better. There are more tools now that you can start to use to measure your overall health in different ways. And that is empowering people to start taking

care of their holistic health in these different ways. That is a beautiful and incredible thing because it's empowering people to live the way they want that is allowing them to feel healthy, not what a scale or a BMI number says about your health. You're absolutely right. It's a great analog. And so I think that the point here is we need a way to actually think about and measure these other areas of our life and start taking the right actions to build against that better scoreboard, that broader measurement of what makes a wealthy life. Because when you measure the right things, then you take the right actions and then you can create the right outcomes. If you measure for the one battle, which is money, this one battle in your life, you may actually

win that battle, but you will lose the broader war, which is about everything, this broader set of pillars of what contributes to a great life. What are some concrete ways that we can measure other parts of our life? There are a variety of statements that I offer in the book for thinking about these other areas, time wealth, social wealth, mental wealth, physical wealth, and how to think about establishing a baseline and then tracking against that. That's what measurement's about. You want to know where you are today and then be taking actions so that you can build

against that baseline. within time wealth, the one that I think is most important is the idea of control. I have control over my time and priorities, over my calendar and my priorities. That is ultimate time wealth, because it's not about I just have free time all the time. That could be time wealth to one person. If they want to just do nothing and be a surf bum and live on the beach, great. That's awesome. I'm happy for you.

But if I want to spend all my time focusing on one big project that I'm so deeply passionate about, that's also great. That means I have the control. Assessing your actual control is a good starting point for thinking about your time wealth. Look at your calendar and try to come to an assessment of on a scale from like strongly disagree to strongly agree, ask to the statement, I have control over my calendar and priorities. Figure out where you fall on that scale. For most people and for me like in 2020, I would have been probably at a strongly disagree or disagree on that.

Very, very little control. entrepreneurs generally start to move more over to the control end of the spectrum, although the problem is when you say yes to everything in your life, you end up saying no to control. You say, I'm going to take on every new thing that comes into my world, every new opportunity, every new personal commitment. And you accidentally shoot your control in the head when you do that. Yeah. Most of the entrepreneurs that I know, including myself, do not feel like they have a lot of time wealth because there's, this notion that you have some control over your success, so you want to keep putting in and putting in and putting in, whereas if you're working for a corporation, when I work my corporate job,

I would go and do my job every day, and then I would come home. Yeah. Modern society has convinced you that space, creating space in your life, is laziness. And that is one of the biggest lies you've been told, because the reality is that that space is exactly where you are able to create the outcomes that change your life. So what would you say to somebody listening who's like, there is no space? I wake up, I brush my teeth, I make lunch for my kids, then I drop them off at school, then I go to work, then I work all day, then I have to stack in these health habits. I got to go to the gym.

I got to make myself some broccoli for dinner. I have to feed my kids. And then I'm just to bond with my partner on top of that. And then I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I'm going to watch TV for a little bit. And then I'm going to go to bed. Where is the space? Take a look at your calendar during the course of the week and think about what you have said yes to that you maybe didn't need to, that you maybe could have pulled back on, that you maybe could have shortened, that you maybe could have condensed. There are almost always things in your calendar that you have committed to doing that actually should have been a no, that you regretted saying yes to later. There's this thing. called the yes-dam effect, which is this psychological phenomenon where we say yes to something with the assumption that we're going to have more time for it in the future, and then it comes, and we say, damn, because inevitably you don't have the time. You don't have more time in the future

than you have now. Fighting back against that tactically is about asking yourself this right-now test, as I call it. Would I do this thing right now? You get asked to do something a month from now. personal commitment generally, but it could be a work, you know, drinks, or it could be some coffee chat that someone wants to have or something like that networking thing. And you say yes to it. But ask yourself in the present moment when the person asks you, would I do this if it was tonight? And if the answer is yes, then do it. But if the answer is no, don't take it on because you're not going to have more time for that thing in the future. When you start thinking that way about these commitments that you're taking on, you start breathing little bits of space. into your calendar. And those little bits of space start to compound because all it takes is five minutes. Like when I talk about space, I'm not saying, oh, okay, create four hours in the middle of the day.

I have a two and a half year old kid. My wife and I are both at home spending time with him. We don't have space. Five minutes is what I'm talking about. If you can create five minutes between meetings, your whole life can change on the back of that. Microsoft did this amazing study where they put EEGs on these office workers heads and they had them go through a day of back-to-to-back meetings versus a day of meetings when they had a five-minute break in between each. The group that went through the back-to-back meetings saw stress levels just rise consistently through the meetings. They just kept going up, and their performance tanked across all of them. The five-minute break that got inserted meant that stress levels never rose.

They were flat, and performance was consistent throughout. So it is this tiny little intervention that you can make that actually has a dramatic impact on your outcomes. So creating space is one side of the equation, and I think the other side of the equation is pushing back against the forces that tell us we always should be wanting more. Every ad we see on social media, every person who's trying to get us to buy things to be dissatisfied with our faces, our houses, our partners, our clothes, our lives. How do we push back against that? That is the nature of capitalism and consumerism that you are fighting back against because the entire economy is based on. the idea of here is this terrible life you were living today. Here's this beautiful life on the other side. And here's this product that I'm offering you that's going to allow you to get from here to there.

And that is what they sell you, that entire vision. And marketers are very, very good at it. The way that you push back against it is truly visualizing what your version of enough looks like. And the reason that I say the visualization is so important is because a number doesn't work because you don't know what that number actually means. I used to do this all the time. I would be like, well, I'm going to be happy when I have a million dollar net worth or five million dollars or 10 million, whatever the number is. And we know scientifically that the number just changes. It typically actually just goes to two to three X whatever you have today. So Michael Norton, this Harvard Business School professor, did this study where he went and asked a bunch of high net worth people, anywhere from

a million dollar net worth to 100 plus million dollars. How happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? then he asked how much more money would you need to be at a 10 and across the board they all said two to three X as much it makes no sense it makes no sense but that's how the human brain works with numbers it just inflates so what you need to do is you need to actually visualize the life the life of enough what your enough life looks like where are you how are you living do you have a home do you have two homes do you have what car are you driving who are you with What do you care about? What are you spending your time on?

What are you thinking about? All of those things contribute to you having real clarity around what actually that life looks like. So that as you start to work towards it and get close to it, it's not just a number that will just disappear and turn into this mirage on the horizon. It is real. It feels clear and tangible to you. And I love that you point out in the book that that doesn't have to be the lowest possible level of something. You're like, I want a vacation home because I want to entertain family. and friends and build these memories together, it can be a little fancy feeling. And that's cool, too.

Enough sometimes conjures a vision of, like, what is the minimum acceptable thing? And you're like, it can be lavish a little bit. I totally agree with that. And it is a really important point that, like, nowhere in this book do I say that you should give up all your worldly possessions and, like, move to the Himalayas and meditate for 12 hours a day. If you want to do that, by all means, go do it. I won't be joining you. I like having some money. I like being able to create these nice experiences with people I love. But I don't try to earn money for the sake of money for a number on the scoreboard. I'm doing it because it is a tool to create experiences or things that I really enjoy with people that I love. That is a really important mindset shift. There's a story that I share in the book of the investment banker and the fisherman that I think brings this exact idea to life.

This investment banker goes down to a Mexican fishing village and he's walking along the dock and he sees this fisherman who's caught a few fish and he says, how long did it take you to catch those fish? and the fisherman replies only a little while. And the banker says, what? Why didn't you fish for longer? And the fisherman says, well, I have all I need. I fish for a little while in the morning. Then I go home. I have lunch with my wife. I relax. I take a nap. And then I go into town and drink wine, play music with my friends.

And the banker's like, you've got this all wrong. You got to fish for longer so you can catch more fish. You can use the profits to buy another boat. Then you can use those profits to buy another boat. You can build a whole enterprise of boats. Move to the big city. take your company public and you'll make millions. And the fisherman says, and then what? And the banker says, and then you can retire and move to a small fishing village. You can fish for a little while in the morning.

Then you can go home and have lunch with your wife. And you can go into town in the evening and laugh and play music with your friends. And the fisherman just smiles at him and walks off. And the lesson of the story is funny because the traditional interpretation says that the banker is wrong and the fisherman is right. And I actually disagree with that. The real interpretation is that they have a fundamentally different definition of what it means to live a good life. The banker may believe that building something huge and building scale, maybe that is his purpose and what he wants to do. And that's fine. But for him to apply that map to the fisherman who's already living his version of enough, who's living his good life, is silly. It makes no sense.

And yet, that's the world we live in. You're constantly being hit by other people telling you the way to live your life. Well, that's what I'm thinking is, like, even the investment banker has been subject to so much messaging that, like, who knows how he can unpack what his version of a good life is. Do you have advice for breaking free of those shoulds? Question everything that you feel you have been handed. David Foster Wallace, in this famous commencement speech, talks about these default settings, these things that we're going to be. these things that we have unknowingly embraced in our life just through like cultural osmosis.

You just grew up and they were just literally being incepted into your brain every single day without you thinking about it. There are so many things in your life that are that way. And if you just start asking why, a little bit more. Every now and then, just ask yourself why? Pause. Why do I actually care about these things? It's uncomfortable, but very effective.

And I do this with my friends now all the time. I had a friend, close, close friend recently, a conversation with, I asked him what he was trying to build, what he was doing. He was like, well, I want to make $100 million. And I said, why? And he got almost angry, like, uncomfortable because I kept saying why. He was like, well, you know, because I think that would allow me to do this. I'm like, why? You know, why would it allow you to do that any more than right now?

And he was like, well, no, I don't know. You started getting that, like, tension that you feel. usually it's a sign when you start to feel that tension when someone asks you a question, that it's hitting on something that you haven't thought about deeply enough. So learn to ask yourself the question why. And then if you start to feel that discomfort, recognize that the discomfort is a sign of something that you need to sit with more. When you think about strength and resilience,

like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out or good nutrition, and yes, course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes, every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here is the thing that

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Liz. I'm genuinely confused how masterclass gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly, like the cooking class from Thomas Keller has all of the wisdom that you would normally have to go to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't hear a lot of people talking about. I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do something that's far more interesting than scrolling. Christina Aguilera taught me to sing. Shan Boudrum's Art of Mastering Confidence and Sex Appeal class is 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's script writing with Mindy Kaly. Literally, you name it, they're on masterclass and it is such

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free. Right now our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. Another big fear people have around career stuff, around money stuff is job loss or feeling that they won't be able to get through unstable time in their career. Do you have any advice for building resilience so that we can feel more confident in that arena? One of the best decisions that I made financially was to really prioritize having this like safety net before I worried about creating all this upside in my life in other places. And it's fairly common now from people who are like deep in the financial wisdom space to talk about having a, you know, a few month or six month safety net. I created like a 12 month

safety net, that was the first thing that I did when I started working. And that as a tool for feeling financially empowered and not having fear when we made the big change in our life, honestly, that might have been the one thing that actually allowed me to do it clear-eyed. Because I knew that neither one of us are big spenders, so we were able to manage our expenses, and I knew that we could be okay for a little while. So I was able to then go take the risk that felt a little bit scary because we were going to be okay. I really think there are certain things like that financially that on paper maybe feel like overly conservative, but what they do psychologically is extremely powerful. And when you're talking about money, and I think Morgan

Houssel has done a great job creating this as an idea in the world and accepting this, is money is not a thing for on paper fundamentally. All of these areas, actually, your life doesn't exist just on paper. There's plenty of investments that makes sense on paper that I have zero desire to make because my life is not lived on paper. My life is lived up here. Owning a home has become this hot topic of like, does it make sense to own on paper? I don't really care whether or not it makes sense to own on paper because I feel an immense

feeling of joy and pride of being able to have my parents and my family in my home to like have breakfast in a home that I earned that I bought. That makes no sense. I'm not even going to try to justify that to anyone or say that it makes sense, but it makes me feel really good. And I wouldn't trade that feeling for anything. Even if you told me it made no sense on paper, I don't care because life is not lived on paper. Your life is lived in your brain and in your heart. And that is what actually matters. So you need to think about that when it comes to these different decisions that you're making. What's your best advice for dealing with rejection or failure?

Generally speaking, you are not afraid of the failure itself. You are afraid of what other people will think of you if you fail. And the best advice I've ever gotten is that no one is actually thinking about you. Every single time I have experienced a failure, I've had this deep-seated fear that like, oh, everyone's going to say that I fell off, right? There's this like meme of like, oh, he fell off. No one's thinking about you. They think about it for a second and then they move on because they're thinking about themselves. We are all egotistical creatures. We're worried about ourselves. They might think about you for a second, but they've moved on to someone else a second later. And so all of these things that we build up as being such a huge consequential failure in our

mind are a blip when you look back on them later. And just remind yourself of that in the moment. Remind yourself that every single failure actually contributes to your story being much more interesting. When you think about every favorite story that you've ever read, every movie that you've ever watched, it's the failure that makes that movie or that story that much more gratifying in the end. And you're just experiencing that thing that has just made your eventual rise and success that much more incredible. What about that little ping yourself worth takes when somebody breaks up with you or a job says, ooh, you weren't the right fit?

I love this story of the blue stone. This boy comes to his father and found this blue gemstone. The father tells him to take it into the village and hold it up into the village market and hold it up. And when someone asks how much it's worth to just hold up one finger and the boy runs off and goes and holds up, goes into the village and someone comes up to him and asks how much the stone is and he holds up one finger. And the person says, one dollar, okay, I'll take it. And the boy turns around and runs back home. Tells his father what happened. He didn't sell it.

He comes back, brings the stone back. and the father's like, okay, now go to the museum and do the exact same thing. And the boy goes to the museum and he walks in and he's holding up the stone and a man in a suit comes up to him and says, how much for that gemstone? He holds up a finger. And the man says, oh, $1,000, okay, I'll take it. And the boy turns around and runs away and runs back to his father and tells him what happened. And then the dad says, okay, now go to the rare gemstone store and do the same thing.

He goes. and the man in the store asks him how much and he holds up a finger and he says oh a hundred thousand dollars okay i'll take it the boy runs back to his father and the father tells him this lesson which is the same thing can be worth very different amount in different contexts you need to place yourself in an environment where people understand your true worth you get to dictate your true worth by the environments that you place yourself into and by surrounding yourself with people who understand your worth you get to decide. It's your choice. It is the most important choice you will ever make. And I always think of that in these contexts that you get to choose your worth. It is not up to anyone

else to tell you what you are worth. And it is not up to anyone else to be able to take away from that worth. Just because you've had a failure, you've had something falling out, you've had a breakup, you've had a loss, whatever has struck your life, you ultimately get to decide where you were going to place yourself and that you are going to place yourself in an environment that truly understands and appreciates what you are worth. I love that. I want to touch on kind of where we're at in the world right now. It feels like a trying time for a lot of people, whether it's the political situation, whether it's these climate crises that keep happening, the wars going on around the world. We see all the stuff on the news, and many of us are impacted by things in our personal lives.

and it just feels like a really hard time to be alive. How can we build our personal resilience so that we feel like we can get through this? More empathy and more love, I think, is the personal path to creating change in the world. I think we are in a time where it is very easy to create these walls around yourself, to try to protect yourself from all of the bad things that are happening out in the world. and the sad thing is that I think that is effective for you. But on a societal level, when we all build walls around ourselves, there's no progress that has created.

And the changes that you actually envision for the world are not created. You create that change by opening up and by reaching out and by having empathy for your fellow people, whether or not they agree with you on some of these issues, understanding where people come from, why they have these certain beliefs, why we don't have a shared reality around certain things. That is the scariest part to me of where we are in the world is that social media has contributed to us not even having a shared reality with certain people. The definition of truth is so gray in certain cases that you can speak an entirely different language from someone. And if we don't have a shared reality, you can't have a conversation.

If I think that, you know, this chair is black, and you tell me it's orange, I'm like, this chair is black. We cannot have a conversation. And that does not get fixed through walls and through continued separation. It just becomes more and more separate. So I think that just opening up more, I think that the vulnerability we talked about earlier is what breeds strength during trying times. I also think that, look, vulnerability is a double-edged sword. and vulnerability can be context dependent and environment dependent, meaning if I walk outside and there's a bear, me opening up to the bear and saying that I'm scared is not perfectly, not super effective as a strategy.

And so if you encounter someone, I think it was Maya Angelou that said when someone shows you who they are, believe them, I'm a big believer in give people a second chance, but never a third. If you do open up to someone and you experience them negatively, maybe they get a second chance, but never a third. I would not continue to open up to people who do not act in good faith around these things. But I do think it is important to try. Can you share some tactics for talking to people who have different views than us if we're sitting there and we're like, the chair is orange and they're like the chair is black? It can feel like a very unproductive conversation. Default to curiosity.

I think that defaulting to curiosity as a path in life is a very good practice. Whenever I feel envy or jealousy about someone's life, I try to default the curiosity to see what I can learn. I do that with anyone that I have a massive disagreement with on politics, on values, on, you know, I had a discussion with a close friend recently who said something that I viewed as like, I felt a fury inside me when he said this thing about a certain geopolitical issue. So, so opposed. And he's a dear friend. And my initial reaction was to say, like, how am I friends with this? Like, this is so, it morally, it, like, really hit me. And then I paused and I said, okay, let me try to understand where this person is coming.

Like, what is actually creating this belief and this understanding? And we had a conversation about it. And I do not agree with him. We are never going to agree on this issue. But I actually do understand what contributed and what created this perspective within him. It was created by a series of events in his youth and in his life. through family experience, through a few losses that created that, that have firmly cemented a completely different perspective on this issue in the world than mine.

And I didn't have those experiences that he had. So I cannot possibly say that he is wrong in his belief. If I had had that same set of experiences, I might feel that way too. And I think the ability to be dynamic in that way in your mind is actually a very, very useful tool for living that provides a lot of peace. sort of brings you to ease when you would naturally feel a sense of fury and anger. What do you do when you feel hopeless about the future? I feel that way a lot nowadays with technology in particular. When I see AI and some of the things that I view as terrifying about the future of AI,

and then I see my son and I think about the life that he's going to have and what it's going to look like and the uncertainty around it, I get really scared. And I do feel a sense of hopelessness that we're not doing the things we need to do to protect individuals, human safety in that future. I really try to ground myself in the present. And I find that most of my unhappiness in life comes when I am sort of time traveling out of the present

into these far distant futures that require a number of sort of leaps of logic and a number of complete uncertainties that I am making certain in my mind. And what I come back to over and over again, and my own experience with studying history is that humans as a race are remarkably resilient. And our ability to navigate horrific world-ending crises on a number of occasions, our ability to navigate those and our track record is basically perfect. We have not killed ourselves off yet,

despite several instances where I thought historically, if you would have lived through that time, you would have thought we would. And given I sort of view us as being at one of those potential points over the coming hundred years with some of the technology that's developing, I have to turn to history to say that we will find a way. And I wouldn't be having kids if I didn't believe that. Having children is a sign of, in a belief that you are showing in your hope for the future. And I agree with that. I've never thought about it or articulated it that way, but I would not be having kids if I didn't believe that we could figure it out and that I could hopefully contribute

in some positive way to us figuring it out. What would you say to somebody listening who feels very frustrated or scared by all of these things in the world and feels powerless in the face of that? And that powerless is chipping away at their belief in their own strength or control over their lives. Turn off the news a little bit. My life improved dramatically when I reduced my news consumption by about 90%. I will also say I'm going to add to this. Seek out your news. Don't let your news come to you. 99% of the people listening to this, myself included until very recently, I would let news come to me.

I'd be scrolling and then news would hit me in my feed and I had no control over the time, the space, the energy that I was giving it to it, the mental state that I was in when I received it. Seek out your news, have your sources that you go to at set times. You don't need to sit there and passively receive all of this information. Set times is an important point because my experience with social media is that, I'm, algorithms turn very dark and negative at certain windows during the day. Oh, that's interesting. I have personally experienced that, like, doom scrolling hours are the worst, most negative type of content on the algorithm.

And I think it's for a reason. If you just think of the incentives, like when you are doom scrolling, it's late at night, generally, and you get hit with way more, like, dark negative content that is likely to send you on one of those spirals that makes you feel helpless. Well, and that is when the middle of the night is when I'm like everything is unsolvable. And then in the morning, I'm like, oh, wait, everything's like much better than I thought it was. And you're tired and it impacts your sleep and your stress levels and all these negative things happen in your life. So I love your idea of creating set times when you were going to consume.

I would turn inward more on these things. I firmly believe the Gandhi quote of be the change you want to see in the world. I think that the things that we create internally manifest externally, whenever I feel hopeless around my life or around the world or around anything that's going on, I try to remind myself that I have power over certain things. And if you think of your world as kind of two big circles, there's the things that matter and then there's the things that you can control and there's an overlap of things that matter that you can control, focus there. And if you focus there every single day, good things happen. I love that. The last thing that I want to touch on is resilience in terms of our health. What do you think people get wrong in terms of building resilience in terms of their health? They get caught in the, what I think of as the complexity trap. It's 2025. Social media has convinced you that living a healthy life means doing this long series of insanely complex and expensive health protocols, movement, nutrition, recovery, things.

And if you were a beginner and you're just starting out, being fed that daily drip of, like, all of these protocols, is the impediment to action because you convince yourself that if it's not optimal, it can't be beneficial, and you just don't do anything. You see this enormous wall in front of you, and you say, if that's what a healthy person does, I can't possibly do that, so I'm going to do nothing. Being resilient means understanding what the daily non-negotiable basics are for making progress, understanding that anything above zero compounds positively in these areas. And so I really think that for anyone, all you really need to focus on is move your body,

for 30 minutes a day. Walking, hiking, biking, rowing, dancing, whatever you like doing. Move your body for 30 minutes a day. Eat whole unprocessed foods, 80% of your meals. 17 out of 21 meals during the week. Pretty good. And sleep for seven hours a night. If you can do those three things consistently, you are getting ahead of 90% of people right there for free. There's no fancy protocol, no fancy thing required. From there, if you like it, you're getting momentum and you're building this energy, you can start to build. But those are what I would view as the building blocks

of a healthy, resilient life. Are there health habits that you feel like have made an outsized difference in your life? Walking. Walking more. I mean, walking, I think of

as the single greatest habit you can build because it is a life hack for all of these areas. It is a health habit, for sure, but it is also a mental unlock. You end up having your best ideas while that unlocks.

It is a relationship hack, scientifically, walking alongside someone creates feelings of connection with them. They've done studies on the fact that when you were actually in line with your gait with someone, it creates more feelings of connection after a conversation. So if you need to have a hard conversation with someone, do it on a walk. If you want to bond with your partner, do it on a walk. All of those things, great for relationships. I just think that walking more on a daily basis would be a huge positive intervention for most people's lives. You've interviewed people who have dealt with some really extreme health challenges.

What have you learned about having resilience in light of health crises? The people that have navigated those challenges have not done so without enduring the terrible waves of helplessness. That's one thing to say that we all need to be clear about. There is nothing wrong if you experience something like this and you go through an enormous period of feeling hopeless and helpless. That is life. And for anyone to come in and say like, oh, just stop feeling that feeling is incorrect and wrong and shouldn't do that. That's not the way we experience. If it's grief, if it's loss, if it's a health crisis, whatever those things are. But on the back end of that, all of these people have navigated those periods by focusing in on

what they can control and focusing in on specifically on a daily basis what they can control. Not on the macro big picture level, but today. What can I do today? The young man that I interviewed Rohan, who has become a dear friend and is an incredible figure, recently texted me an update that he's gotten this really positive news on his brain tumor. And he just received word that he got a job, this job that he's been excited about. It's his first time going back to work after three and a half years of dealing with this terrible diagnosis. And it has been so magical to see him and this journey over the last three and a half years because he has used physical health as a catalyst to helping him in all of these areas. He realized that the things that he could do

were controlling that he could get out of bed and do the like one side of his body was really struggling with the brain tumor. But he realized that he could do. He was really struggling with the brain tumor. he could do a one-arm standing row machine. And so every day he would send me a text saying, like, did 10 minutes today, did 12 minutes today, was able to do this, I was able to do a push-up today for the first time. He was controlling what he could control. And that is such an amazingly empowering, like when I was having bad days, I would get a text like that from him, of him doing like a reverse sled drag. He's like, the first time I was able to do this. I mean, God Almighty, like, what am I complaining about on a daily basis? If this guy can show up and do the one tiny thing,

that he can control on a daily basis. So I just really think for anyone out there, whether or not you were experiencing one of these terrible tragedies, I hope none of you have to. We all encounter something, but I hope none of us have to. Focus on what you can control. And if you do that, the sky's the limit.

Has it changed the way that you approach your health on a daily basis to be friends with people who have experienced these really big health crises? It certainly provides perspective. I think there's something really important that comes from having these relationships, having these touch points, having these connections, having this understanding to instill daily gratitude for the things that you do have. We all have struggles.

We all have challenges. And if you don't have them now, they are coming. And I hate to be the one to say that, but it is true. We all have to face these things. Being there for someone during the time when they experience it is an important. point because you want other people to be there for you when you inevitably have that. I mean, I just think as a matter of policy on life, reach out to someone and just let them know that you are with them when they are going through a tough time. You recently experienced the loss. I sent you a text.

Not because I thought I could help, not because I wanted to offer advice on how to deal with it, but just to let you know that there were people out there that were with you. And that is what we all want. We just want to know that we're not alone during these different periods of life. We want to be able to experience gratitude during the good and then no, we're not alone during the bad. And if we can all be that to someone else, the world does become a brighter, happier place. I love that. Is there anything else that you want people to know when they're thinking about building their own resilience? I just want people to know that you have a lot more power than you think over your world. And there are a lot of forces that conspire.

to tell you that you don't. You need to reject those. And remember on a daily basis to take the tiny little actions that remind you that you do, whether that's the tiny little thing that you can do to go for a walk when you're feeling stuck or when you're feeling like down, whether it's the one text that you send to the friend to tell them that you're thinking about them, whether it's the two minutes that you take for yourself in the midst of a crazy chaotic day when your kids were sick and all these things were happening. Just take those couple of moments to to remind yourself that you still have the power, that you still have that control, that you are still in control of determining your own worth. If you do that, that's all I can really ask for.

We usually ask for one homework assignment. I was going to ask you for a homework assignment to help build our resilience. Is that yours, or do you have a different one? I have one. I have a question that I would love for everyone to ask themselves this week. If you were the main character in a movie of your life, what would the audience be screaming at you to do right now? We've all been We've seen the movie, watch the TV show, where we want to just jump through the screen and grab the person and shake them. What would the audience be screaming at you to do right now? I love that. Your book is packed with so many of these, like, tactics and tips and stuff like that.

I'm curious, are there, like, one or two that you feel like have made a really big difference in your personal life? The journaling method in the evening and the think day are probably the two. The one-one-one method is a three-to-five-minute journaling method. at the end of every evening, sit down with a blank sheet of paper, and write down one win from the day, that's something you felt good about, one point of stress or tension, something you need to get off your brain and onto the paper, and one point of gratitude, something you felt grateful for during the day. It takes three minutes, and it immediately creates this incredible sense of calm and peace, helps you go to sleep, and it leaves you with this fresh sensation to end the night.

And then the second one is the think day, which is this practice of once a month, taking two hours to just step out of your normal routines and to just think and journal on some of these bigger picture questions of your life, one of which is that main character question that I just shared. What are some other ones? One of my favorite other ones is to ask yourself, if a third party were to observe me for a week, what would they say my priorities are? There are two types of priorities in life. There are the priorities we say we have, and then there are the priorities our actions show we have. And for many of us, myself at many times in my life, there's a big gap between the two. Recognizing that gap requires you to kind of zoom out

and think from a third party's perspective, what would my actions actually bear out and then start changing your actions to align with what you would say they are. Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your beautiful book? The book is fundamentally about identifying what truly matters to you. It is all about asking questions. This book will not give you the answers for your life. I say that. in the first few pages, my publisher was like, are you sure you want to say that, a self-improvement book? I very strongly believe that because I do not have the answers for your life. You already have them within you.

You just haven't asked the right questions yet to uncover them. And so this book is all about sitting with those questions, asking yourself the questions so that you can identify what matters so that you can create the right outcomes, take the actions to go and build that life. I will also say, less somebody think that it's going to be really like esoteric and you're not going to get a lot of practical value. You have more specific exercises and specific, it's like filled with answers so that you can find

your own answers. Yeah, the idea was to create sort of a guide, like create your own adventure to the answers. So you can go pick and choose. And each section, there's one section for each type of wealth. And at the end of each of those sections, there is a guide that is filled with science-backed, proven tools for building that type of wealth in your life. But that should be a create-your-own adventure. Not all 10 in each section will resonate with you.

Grab one that does and start on it today. Love that. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share all of this. I always love our conversations. That's so much fun, and I'm blessed to call you a friend. Unfortunately, that is all for this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would so appreciate if you would share it with somebody that you think would love it too.

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Okay, I love you and I will see you for the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist or any other qualified professional.