TrueLife - Rob Maloney - Mathematics, Finance, & Dyslexia

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://open.spotify.com/show/78hIcCt8WybpRA5vdwQlGf?si=7ifPwRExRXmG_5edJzl92wHeart is not always seen, heard or can even be described, but it is felt.Heart and Hard Work has been my North Star since growing up with the worry of being evicted any day, my mom getting sick twice and thinking we would lose her, my Dad's health until his passing in 2019 and how letting go of the debilitating and erroneous fear of "vulnerability as weakness" continues to take me beyond my limits.I'm Rob, a "learn it all" leading with a "Growth Mindset" and working to share perspectives that empower those who believe there is more to all of our stories.We will all face challenges that are out of our control, but to choose gratitude and passion to find the joy in supporting others along our way is true Heart.Heart & Hard Work Podcast:www.linkedin.com/company/heart-hard-workFor management consulting, business strategy and planning, leadership development, team building, conferences, keynote speeches, seminars, and more you can contact us directly or schedule an appointment: www.calendly.com/ robmaloneyHome One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. Hope everyone's day is beautiful. Hope the sun is shining. The wind is at your back and the birds are singing. Got a great show for you today.

We have a very interesting. interesting individual that I got to admit he is really fun to talk to. And I think everyone that is watching or listening to this is really in for a treat. Rob, I can give you a quick introduction, but you did, I think you do a great job at explaining who you are. And I thought that I would just kind of throw it to you and give you the canvas to paint, my friend. Well, I appreciate that. It's, uh, it's great to be here. And it's, um, an honor. I'm honored just to be a part of this podcast. It's truly the spirit of what we're all about and just making it happen and living life and really building relationships with the people around us. So we had a chance to have a conversation just before this and it just spurred into, hey, let's throw it right into the podcast.

So I'll spare all the stuff. I'd rather, you know, you can learn a little bit more about me. Originally from Long Island, New York, I grew up, got my master's degree in mathematics. I've traveled the world. I lived in China for two and a half years. I came back. I got my MBA. I ended up at Microsoft.

I got a degree in finance. It's been all ups and downs, but all that stuff just can kind of describe a lot about the past me. Who I am right here right now with you in this moment. This is going to be us sharing a real, a great intellectual conversation, and I'm looking forward to that. Wow, that was so well-put.

You left out the captain of the rugby team, man. Oh, I forgot about that. I know you liked that one. Yeah, so, you know, I think we can just jump right in. It seems that both of us have found ourselves, it's sort of a crossroads in life. And I think it's more than just us. I think it's the world finding its way.

And a lot of times I think it's, I don't know if it's this generation of boomers that are passing on or if it's this world of finance. Or let me jump in with this question. Since you have a background in finance and mathematics, it seems to me that we're suffering from the abstract nature of functional models, Rob. What is going on with the world of these abstract,

functional models finance and mathematics what's going on with that well that's an interesting question actually something that comes to mind is one of the first things that our finance professor talked to us when we when we're thinking about investing and we're thinking about the future so when you're thinking about investing in a 401k or your retirement plan or something one thing that you have to think about is not just the amount of money that you want when you're retiring but the utility of that money and so that requires you that that's not actually a logical question. That's an emotional question. That's a question of what is $5 worth to you today versus if you invested it for 30 years and it turned into $130 or whatever it might be,

depending on the interest rate. How much do you really value that cup of coffee today and getting to sit down and have a really phenomenal conversation with someone and really enjoy the moment where you are? And so, yeah, we can get really wrapped up in the logic of where we are today and we have finance and we have math and we have all these tools that help us better prepare for the future. But we also can't forget that the future is an imagined construct. And it's not a guarantee. It's not something that we have for sure. So how do we make the most of where we are today? And I think we're losing a lot of that in the in the conversations and the logics and the formulas and the math and everybody's trying to get everything so perfect for the future.

But what are we losing sight of here today? Yeah. What do you think? think we're losing sight of here today? I would say it's sitting down and having a meaningful, thoughtful conversation. That's one thing. You don't see that a lot. Social media more and more is pulling our heads. Gravity is getting, I'm not a physics major, but it seems like gravity is increasing as our heads are getting heavier and heavier and more tilted downward. It's that much harder to just look up and ask someone a question and to ask them, or even to compliment someone or to bring the energy and the enthusiasm that you do on a daily basis and with this podcast, that's a rarity.

It's not something we see. It's not the norm. And it's becoming easy and easier to just write that off as an excuse. Yeah. Thanks for the kind of words. For me, I get excited about seeing a real people. I get excited about real conversation. And it reminds me that everybody's got these personas.

Everybody has these ideas of who they think they are or better yet who they were. told that they are or who they think that they might want to be. But the truth is when you sit down with someone, if you talk to them for an hour, you really begin to understand that that person's kind of just a different version of you. And when you do that, you can begin to start seeing them as, hey, this person has these kind of problems or, hey, maybe they can help me out with this thing. Or maybe they have a different perspective. And it's such a holistic approach to overcoming adversity.

And it's so simple, you sit down and you just talk to somebody. and you begin learning about their journey and comparing notes. It's almost like all of us are on this giant yellow brick road and we're trying to figure out a way and we all have a map. And some of us has different destinations, but people forget to stop and talk and ask directions or look at the signs. And so that's why I get excited about it. And I'm stoked to talk to you.

And I've had so many cool guests to get to come on here. And I get to learn so many different things. And the truth is, as doom and gloom as it is right now, there's so much beauty around you, there's so much life around you. And more than that, There's so many opportunities if you're willing to take a chance on yourself. I definitely agree. I'm definitely all for it.

I can say that the nature of us connecting is very true to you put the energy out in the world. You have this podcast. I have my podcast. And I think we've bonded a little bit over what it's been like to go through that process and to not have it all figured out, but to be seeing the joy in that process and to be showing up, getting a little bit better and relating and connecting to extraordinary people and their stories on their path. Everybody is walking a different path, but we can sit and we can walk alongside them and

reflect with them. We can't go back and talk to ourselves in the past, but we can prepare for the future. And so I'm certain I'll get a chance to talk more about a little bit of the ways I think, but just for everything you just said, we do have value in our experience if we're willing to share it the right way and the right time in place, right? can't just be walking around trying to preach like we have all the right ideas. I've certainly gotten myself into trouble acting like I have it all figured out. And I never, I never try to, truly. It's just a matter of just, I think it's just when you come off, when you try to be

confident, you try to portray your ideas, it can be received the wrong way. And that can be equally as dangerous. So I'm always, I'm always trying to be careful with that and my tone and making sure that it's the right time and place. But a podcast is definitely, if you're listening to this, you signed up to listen to some people share their thoughts. And so with that said, is like a disclaimer, you know, we share them a little bit more passionately. And anyone that's listening knows, we're trying to listen for intent, trying to listen for what is the true value that we're trying to get at.

And we're trying to try to have the answers, but we're trying to ask better questions and get closer to better answers together. That's really well put. You had mentioned the idea about logical thinking and emotional thinking. Maybe you can drill down on that a little bit. Right. So this is so obviously I became interested in finance because well, I never had any kind of formal experience with it. Growing up, I grew up pretty poor and I wanted to learn, you know, how I can better put myself and my family in a position to be more successful and to not have to be riddled with the same constant problems.

You know, if you if you're paying the same bill late every month, this is just, why not pay it on time or ahead of time? If you're on the same cyclical pattern of just being late and paying a fee, it made me start to think about how the decisions that I make, how the decisions that the people in my life make, how they affect us where we are now and in the futures. Now, we can't go back and change the past, but we can use these lessons that we're talking about, our experiences, the reflection, the valuable learnings.

We can use other people's experience. And then from that we create wisdom. because knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing. Intelligence and wisdom are not the same thing because wisdom really only comes from reflecting on experience. And so I try to spend as much time as I can doing that and welcoming as many of my close friends and colleagues and peers and mentors, teammates, the people I love and care about to join.

But you can't force people to do that. But for me, it's been a large process of connecting with that emotional side of my brain that says, like, wow, I'm really not happy about the way that the past went. but I can't change the past. So what can I do right now to prepare for the future? And that's kind of the logical progression. What can I do right now to prepare for the future? That's the logical side of the brain.

The emotional side comes in and says, well, you right now is going to be the past you very soon. And you're either going to be upset or you're going to be happy about what the past you is doing. Or you're kind of neutral. But basically, let's say you're either going to be happy or you're going to be upset. about what the past you is just doing. So how do you make sure that the past you is constantly taking care of the present you? And the reason I like to think about it that way is because present me exists. Present me is real. I'm here today. I'm able to have this conversation with you. The future me is not guaranteed, whether it's one day, 10 years, 20 years, how are you going to get

someone to really start caring about the idea of something that doesn't really exist? And the past me is already done. It's happened. It's in stone. It's solid. Even a minute ago before we had this conversation, there's nothing I could do to change that. So how can I make sure in this continuous ongoing loop that the past me is taking care of present me? Because that's the, that's the relationship I can control with who I am right here, the way I feel, the way that I show up, the relationships that I have, those are all based on my past decisions. And those past decisions are based on what I'm doing right now. So I'm focused on that side of the loop versus you know, how can I make sure I set myself up for the future, but burn every bridge along the way

and do whatever I have to do and grind. Like I'm not willing to let go and forget about the people in my life that are most important, the relationships, the things that I need to do. But in every step in every capacity, it's about how do I show up as I want to right now so that I can in the future be saying this is present me now. And I'm glad that past me made those decisions and took those actions. Yeah, that's, I love that, man. I'm going to have to, once we stop this, I'm going to have to play this back and kind of go over it again.

And it's, yeah, there's a lot of meta thinking and there's a lot of jumping from, from, from presence to future to past. So it's a lot of thinking. I admit that. So it's beautiful. If anyone has gone along, it'd be a good time to, to play it back. Well, it makes sense because, you know, it actually reminds me of a George Orwell quote that says he who controls the present controls the past.

He or he who controls the present controls the future and he who controls the past controls the present. And so, you know, in a weird way, I would add to that maybe the future us exists, but it's not concrete yet. Because if you're in the present, you can visualize what you want to be like. And while it doesn't exist, you can point yourself in that direction. And that might affect the relationship on some level. But a lot of people, if you take that whole example and you just think to yourself, man, if I burn all my bridges, I could have lots of money over here. But that's not looking into the future at all. Like you could burn those bridges, but then you can never cross them again. And then what kind of a relationship are you going to have to that from

which you came if you can't cross those bridges? And it almost seems that in today's world, the idea of money or the idea of wealth or the idea of success seems to be, for some people so powerful that they're willing to burn those bridges. And I think that that's one thing we're seeing in the world today is people like you, people like me and people listening to this are coming to this idea of like, I don't want to burn those bridges. I'd rather have less and keep those bridges there. What do you think? That's an interesting perspective, right? And it's like the wholesome approach. And what I was, what I'm, what I'm thinking about heavily is like, how do you maximize everything that you have and still be making the smart decisions? So

from a finance perspective, just because it makes sense to everyone, if you have, if you have a thousand dollars today in 10 years if you did nothing with it it's not worth a thousand dollars anymore it's worth less because the idea of interest and inflation the idea basically you you discount that value back by 10 years so in in 10 years how much money would a thousand without getting too much into finance in 10 years how much would a thousand you know would would a thousand dollars need to be like you'd have to grow it by whatever it is and inflation rates right now are crazy so let's say again It grew by a simple number.

In just one year, let's use an easy number. In one year, let's say if inflation was 10%, then that would mean that you would need $110 in the future to be the same as $100 today. So what I would really, without giving like financial advice, is just saying, if you did nothing with your money, you're losing automatically. So what do you need to be doing to make sure, and this is just a financial example, But what do you need to be doing to make sure that you and your money and your experiences and your relationships are growing in the way that they should be so that they're growing on par with you and you're getting to where you need to be? And you can be happy about what your previous decisions were.

Because if in 10 years you did nothing and then you just look back at that pot of money, you know, that $1,000, you're going to say, wow, this really dwindled away and is not worth nearly as much as if I would have done something smart and invested it. And the moral of this is not about what to do with your money. It's about to me, this is the lesson is what to do with my life. And when I'm in these in-betweens, like, we started this conversation by talking about the fact that, you know, actually, I was laid off from my job. I was working at Microsoft until January. And while I, you know, a lot of people are going through really hard, challenging things right now. For me, what keeps me optimistic, what keeps me, you know, being able to choose joy is the fact

that I know that this is going to be an interesting story in the, an interesting chapter in the story. And I know it's not to sound like, well, life is so cool. They're like, oh, look, I'm not enjoying pain. Like, like, I'm sort of like psychotic. Just I know that I'm going to keep taking action. I'm going to keep working with people in meaningful ways. I'm going to take my time, slow down, grieve where I need to be there to support the people in my life where they need.

And then make the next decision that's right for me. So without overwhelming myself with anxiety in negative emotions or inappropriate emotions during this, this challenging time of my life, I'm just preparing and I'm continuing to take the actions where I'm going to be able to say when all this is said and done, I'm glad that I was doing these things during that challenging time period. Yeah, that's really well said. I couldn't agree more that, you know, this is kind of out there, but I think that the world is moving in a direction that really you or I, we can't control the direction of it, but we can control the meaning of what's happening. And I think that's true for trauma or events in your life.

You can't control what happens in your life, but you and you alone get to control the meaning of that event. And maybe because this thing happened, I'm going to work harder on my podcast. I'm going to build better relationships. I'm going to become the best that I can. You know, sometimes you'll see people in traumatic situations go one of two ways. And it's either because this happened to me, I'll never love again. Or because this happened to me, I'm going to love better than I've ever loved again. If you can see those opportunities, these things that happen to you as an incredible.

incredible opportunity, then I think that you can react in a way that's going to be beneficial for everything in your life and everyone around you. And the truth is, it's not really that much different than yesterday. You're speaking from a guy who lost his job. You know, one minute, I'm 26 years UPS driver. The next minute, I don't have a check coming in to feed my family. But there's something that is happening, not only with you and me, but to the world today. And maybe it's perspective. Maybe it's, maybe it dovetails with. your ideas of finance. Like, let me ask you this question. It seems to me in the world of finance today that we are seeing the idea of money change. Like, we're spending trillions of dollars at Ukraine.

We're throwing trillions of dollars to Silicon Valley Bank where the CEO was also on the board of the directors for the Fed. Like this idea of money, this is almost synonymous with corruption. And it seems to me that money has a discount rate. The older you get, the less it's worth. And it almost seems like the inflation rate is so quick and so moving in such an accelerated path that it's disintegrating in front of us. You know, you have FTX just billions of dollars in value. Poof, gone. There's no doubt in my mind that the market in which, if people look at the stock market, they're just looking at a rigged game. So what do you, when you, is it possible that you and I are going to be looking back on this time and 20 years from now and being like, oh yeah,

that's when we had paper money. That's what we're. we had a different idea of money. What do you think? Undoubtedly, right, as everything gets more and more digital, there's going to be less and less need for the paper money. But it's also what's important is, I think what you'd be paying attention to, what everyone should be paying attention to what I would try to pay more attention to is the fact that money, paper money, any money is all an imagined construct. Yes. It's all actually, it's designed to allow us to have the flow of commerce. to it represents trust between us as human to human in the way the phenomenal book sapiens

talks about human evolution and maybe i know you you listen to a lot of audiobooks and your time driving um but just talks about the way that we've established trust and the way that we've been able to grow as human beings is is through trust and 97% of the money in the world is credit is not actually you know is not even tangible or backed by anything it's just us believing in the potential of each other as organizations, as humans, as companies in every aspect, it's based on credit. So it's us believing in each other. And we use money as a vehicle to express that exchange.

But I actually even also was listening to an interesting podcast by Dr. Huberman. And he was really talking about the only actual currency in the world. You know, we have money, but the only real currency is dopamine. And that's the only thing that is real. and tangible and everything else we use is as a way to express and exchange our means of obtaining more of that but without abstracting too far into the biology because I'm not the expert there is just the reminder to myself is money is only as valuable as what I'm able to do with it and so if I have if I were to pass away with two million dollars locked away in a super

secret safe that no one knows about it's not worth anything to anyone if you're stranded on a desert island and you have 600 million dollars in cash, at best, it can give you a little bit of shelter and maybe you can burn it for a couple seconds of warm. But it's not, it's not truly worth. It's, what it's worth is it represents what we can do with it. And when we say we want more money, when we say we want less bills and less stress and things like that, what I've had to spend a lot of time reflecting on it. But what we're really saying is we want the things that that money can lead can lead to. What they, what it represents we can get with that. And you have to go even deeper too into when we talk about the things that we really want.

You go into Maslow's hierarchy of needs and go from physiological, the basic things, food, water, shelter, sex to safety and security, love and belonging, self-esteem, and actualization at the top. We want the things that we think money can actually get for us. But we're losing sight of that because all we can do is stare at money and go on social media and see how much everybody else is making and what everybody else has. and there's this the massive gap that just leads to us being miserable. But the reality is what we're saying is we don't want more money.

We want the things that we think money can do. And I know that that's true for me. And whether anyone else wants to admit it, I know that that's true for everyone. Yeah, it's almost like you want the feeling. Like you want the feeling of buying a new car. You want the feeling of having this giant mansion. You want the feeling of being able to travel or the feeling of freedom. And that's an interesting concept, too, to think about in some ways, you know, we want,

our wants are somewhat imprisoning us. This idea of money is sort of imprisoning us. It's not only imprisoning us, but it's, it starves us from the things that really matter. And I'll give you an example in my life as someone who has worked, you know, as a UPS driver for a long time and knows tons of people that have maybe felt the same thing. You spend your whole life working. You get up at like five in the morning, you drop your kid off at school, you don't see your wife, you don't see your kid, you don't see your parents, and you go work for somebody else for 10 or 12

hours, and you come home with this piece of paper at the end of five days. And, you know, it's just so sad that you give up everything you love in order to make money or to provide production for somebody else. And I think a lot of people are waking up to that. And that's what I mean when this concept of money is changing, whether it's dopamine, whether it's a feeling or I really have so much respect for the younger generation that are beginning to see through the lies that were perpetrated by the boomer generation. It was probably perpetrated on them. It's an interesting concept to see the values changing. It's almost like you can see the generations changing as you look through them.

It's a fascinating thing to think about. I guess the way in which we're living is changing so rapidly. The ideas of money are changing. What is it that you think are the biggest obstacles in the world that you were living in, in the world of finance and mathematics? What do you think are some of the obstacles that were in the way for you to move forward? I would say a lot of when I was dealing with math, a lot of the things that that threw me off in terms of obstacles was actually dealing with other

people's reservations and other people's hesitations towards mathematics because when you start talking about math, people immediately throw up flags and they're like, all right, I'm out of here. I'm not a math person. They immediately write themselves off as not being in that conversation. I think really just to save themselves mental stress and mental energy because in large part, and a lot of what you're talking about reminds me is like math and learning anything challenging including finance, including data analytics, including entrepreneurship and learning how to start a podcast, it requires mental energy.

And we have to strain ourselves to do it, whether you're learning a language or you're working on your relationship or working on yourself or just you're reflecting on a challenging experience, which is one of the hardest things in the world to do, which is why it's nice to be able to do it with someone else. You have to use your mental energy. And that's just something that we don't want to do. our brains are not programmed to do our brains are designed to keep us safe and use them least amount of energy so that we can continue to enjoy our lives and stay safe and survive right our brains

are programmed for survival but we can also reprogram them and think differently to be able to convince our brain that if we do x then it will lead to y and y is a better outcome than if we would have not done otherwise and i should go to the gym well why your brain's like don't do that Just go, you know, like, just go, just go take a nap. Just go eat a bag of Cheetos and relax, you know, like focus on conservation of energy, if all else. But when you can convince your brain that doing that will make you healthy, okay, like, all right, at the same time, like healthy, why do I care?

Like, why don't I'm healthy? I'm young. Like, but there's no problem. But then you go, you get into, I relate everything back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like, what are the things you really care about? You know, I want to be healthy so I can, what, get a partner? Some people are like, I don't care. I don't want to care about my kids.

All right, I care about my kids. I want to be able to show up for them. I want to be able to play with them. I don't want to be out of shape. I don't want to be falling over myself or passing out in public. And I don't want to be, I want to have good health so I can be around for my kids and be involved in their lives. You know, these different levels of why that really motivate people like, oh, I'm going to get healthy because I want things to change. I don't want to be this negative.

I don't want to be in this in this negative situation, right? I want to avoid pain. I either want to seek pleasure or avoid pain. And in finance, too, I would say that in that capacity, you're always looking for opportunities and you're always assessing the what I do now, what I sacrifice now as an investment, and what I get in the future. So whether you're talking about money and investment in a project, you say, what are going to be the future cash flows of this project?

And if the future cash flows are not more promising than the initial investment, then it's not a smart idea. But if you have to put money up front, if you, you know, simple, let's use money. So if you have to put $100 up front to get $200 back in the future, okay, most people say it's a good deal. It depends. It depends if you could go somewhere else and have another opportunity. But generically speaking, that's a good deal. If you put $100 up front to get $100 back every year for the rest of your life, that's probably a good, a good deal. If you're going to go $100 up front to get $200 back in 20 years, you're like,

is that a good deal? I don't know. What's $20 worth in the future? And then finance gives us a tool to be able to map that back. But really, it's all about capturing patterns that allow us to make better forward-looking decisions. And I think that that's why I've come to want to learn more about finance in addition to everything else. And one of the biggest motivators for me, right, why did I choose to learn finance instead of something else when I went back to school for my second master's degree? Because everybody else ran away from it. Everybody else said that's the most challenging subject.

That's like I don't want to do that. I want to do something that's easier so I could just get my degree, get on and get by, which is the way our brain is designed to work. But I also was smart enough to listen to the wisdom of all my seniors, everybody who graduated, everybody in the conversations where I'm constantly looking to seek the wisdom from experience from people that have gone through it and I'm asking them those questions what was challenging for you what was interesting for you what made a difference for you and when they tell me oh I loved it this was a great experience I really wish I took more finance classes if I could go back

I could have done something differently I would have learned more about finance I would have invested in the opportunity to learn the challenging subjects while I was in this low stakes no stakes environment because then I would have been in a better position or I would have had these skills I could have learning the other things on the job. So I leaned into those things that everybody else ran away from because they, you know, they wanted to pursue something else. And I said, if I can learn these challenging situations, these challenging skills, I make myself more marketable. And I'll be learning the insights and the nuances that everybody else is missing. That's well said. It's interesting too. You know, there seems to be such a seductive quality about finance. Like it's the super

sexy thing or it appears to be. Maybe not when you're going, the classes, maybe it's not sexy. Maybe people don't think math is sexy, but ultimately when you, when I think of finance, I think like Jamie Diamond has all these mansions. I just, I just think of excess. And I'm wondering, is it that finance, do you think, what is the relationship between finance and mathematics? Is finance something that is sort of limiting mathematics? Or is there, what's the relationship between finance and mathematics. It seems like finance is sort of found a way to coerce mathematics into doing things for it instead of allowing mathematics to just be free and help out the rest of the world. That's a cool point. Finance, you know, I think finance as it gets

marketed is marketed as like a sexy thing. And it's like a Jordan Belford. I'm throwing money like or investment bankers. But it's also like it shouldn't be because so much gets missed because there is a gap. Right. And start with mathematics. Mathematics is is not the enemy. Mathematics is not even mathematics isn't. Mathematics is the tools.

It's the patterns of recognizing the patterns. It's it's again, human invention, like construction of like these patterns that exist. And when we paid attention to them, we realize, oh, we can organize things a lot better. We can keep track of things, like having a counting system. We use mathematics. It's a way of thinking. And we channel it into a way of thinking with numbers, but really it's about logic.

It's about constructing patterns, critiquing the reasoning of others. It's everything that we want in human beings. But then we try to distill everything down to one singular point. Like, that's the human condition is we want the one thing. that everything is and we try to understand everything by looking at one data point and then saying, I don't really have time. So I'm just going to understand whatever I can about this. Like you say, oh, you're a math person.

Oh, okay, nerd. Like, move on. Like, you know, or, oh, like, you're math person. Like, oh, you're, you must be intelligent. It's like everyone has the capacity. And, you know, to digress a little bit, probably where everything starts to go wrong. And the reason why more people don't take the time to invest in learning mathematics or think that they're not math people.

Like I said, one of the challenges is people thinking that they don't have the potential or they just remove themselves from the situations is because the way that school systems are set up. And I'm not going to turn this into a full-on rant on school system. Go ahead. Do it. I don't have a full one prepared for that. But I would say I have a full-on rant on the way that our self-conscious mind works

and the way that we start comparing ourselves to others. So when you're a kid, you're living life to the max. live in life as good as you can. You play, you laugh, you dance, you fall down. You ever watch a kid? I mean, I'm sure you have, but none of that, that's a creepy question, but you ever just watch a kid playing and having fun? Like, you know, compare it to watching an adult, like, do anything. Just adults miserable, always has a frown on their face. Little kids, you know, when I'm helping take care of cousins or nephews and, you know, just, they're just playing, they fall down. They they pop right back up. Like, they don't care. They don't look, you know, like, almost oblivious to the

world. They get covered in mud. They don't care what they look like. They got their food all over them. It's adorable. And we don't care because they have no inhibitions. And then you get older. And in fifth grade five years old, six years old, you enter into kindergarten. And that's the first time when you're constantly surrounded by other people, then you don't know them. And they're all judging you. And you're just told you have to start conforming, you know, subconsciously and consciously. You have to start going through the motions and going through the routines. And then, you know, then you have to start learning in front of all these people. And you just develop more. more and more of the self-conscious part of your brain.

And that's also, I find it interesting. Maybe one day I'll look into this on the PhD if I haven't had enough school. But when you're about five, six years old is when you start getting the most self-conscious because you're surrounded by your peers and you're surrounded by everyone. That's also people say before you're six years old, that's when you can learn the best. That's when your brain has the most plasticity. And my theory, the one that's motivated me to continue learning and to say like, okay, Maybe it does, but I can still learn no matter what age I'm at if I can remove the self-consciousness.

It's not that your ability to learn is hindered. It's your self-consciousness is flared so far up that you no longer are willing to try. And as you get older, you're less and less willing to try something new. You're less and less willing to try mathematics. And so mathematics, the pivotal point when I used to be a mathematics teacher. And we said the point where you really start to see a very vivid distinction, between people, the students who get labeled as math students and the students who are not is somewhere around fourth grade when fractions are introduced.

And you start asking them, you start asking students like, what's three fourths plus seven eighths? You know, what's, what's five sevenths plus nine 13th or something, you know, as you as you, as you, when you get to that point and, you know, you have to start conceptualizing what does a fraction even mean? what is an improper fraction? What does it mean to have one in one third of something? Or when you start dividing, it's a huge, it's a huge dividing point because we go through it so quickly and students never get to close the loop on, I understand this fully and they simply don't have enough time.

And if they had more time and if they weren't surrounded by everyone else, making them feel inadequate by the external time construct, man, how much more would be possible for everyone? And unfortunately, that's where most people start to lose the sight of themselves being able to engage with mathematics. And probably that leads to so many other negative interactions with mathematics to come because you really just start to lose your footing there. You start to slip on the ice a little bit. And then everything from there on just feels like tumbling down the mountain. Man, it's so, it makes sense. You know, you start losing people with the introduction of fractions and you're left with a

fraction of what you can have. That's crazy to think about, right? That's metaphorical. Yeah. But yeah, when you start dividing and you start introducing fractions, you really, you really start to, you start to see people fall. And not because of potential. My, my, I'm not the expert, of course, not the expert.

But I'm an expert in believing in people and believing in students and every, for all the years that I've been tutoring. I know that people have so much more potential. Students have so much more potential than, than we lead ourselves. to believe, then I lead myself to believe. But everything else that gets in the way makes it way more messy. It makes it so much harder for us to be able to see that, to be able to witness our potential and to be able to see the process when we're in it, when we're in the middle of doing

something challenging. So if I can lean into that and say, this is exactly where everybody else would expect me to be self-conscious. This is exactly the point where I look the most like a fool. How do I start laughing right now? How do I start having fun with this? How do I rebrand this as a kid? For me, I literally did rebrand.

I turned into the class clown. And I was always laughing and a joke. And I never would let anyone else control being able to make fun of me. I would do it myself, beat them to the punch. And you become funny. And then you can kind of mess with everybody else. You always, if you're the controller of the jokes, right, then nobody else can kind of pull one on you.

But if I could rebrand that as every time I'm going through something challenging, I can find a way to find joy through it. I can find a way to find laugh through it. That led to a lot of challenges as well, as we could talk about toxic positivity and an inability to deal with emotions, but I'm glad that I've come to a place where I can cope with those things better. But I would say that a lot of that is just so deeply rooted in our self-consciousness. And for every time we go through something challenging, whether it's mathematics or on the emotions or getting laid off from a position, they also, like you said, that present us with an opportunity. So how do we build structures and frameworks and ways of thinking that allow us to make better forward-looking decisions during the times when we're the most fearful, when we're the most anxiety filled, when we're the most challenge, when things are the most ambiguous.

That's what finance gives us. That's what those tools give us. You know, the stories of the past make us feel good, but it's finance and mathematics are the tools that help us make better decisions for the future for the challenges that we're in the middle of. The ethical use of finance and mathematics provide us those tools. That's probably what I can speak more of because clearly I'm not, I'm not on the penthouse, Jordan Belford throwing money out the back of my, you know, my, my Bentley or my Rolls Royce.

I don't have, I don't care as much for the material things as many people can say. Like those things have not motivated me because go back. Those things have not given me the fulfillment. All right. I haven't had experience and I haven't seen anybody who's had experience being very fulfilled with those things. For some people, they can. And you're welcome, too. So I've stayed focused on the relationships and the actions and the things I can do to improve myself. And a lot of that's

rooted in athletics and teamwork and things of that nature. But those are the things that have really motivated me the most versus why I'm not, I'm not just chasing salaries right now. I'm really searching for the next opportunity in this in between time to have conversations with people in meaningful ways and think about what's going to matter if tomorrow's not promised. You know, how do I make the most of today with the people I care about the most? Yeah, that's really well said. And I couldn't agree more. I think that we have some real opportunities to reimagine tomorrow. And the way you reimagine tomorrow is by reimagining who you are right now. And that's what happens when you find yourself in a challenging situation, whether you're being

bullied at school or whether everybody gets an A on their test and you get an F. And the teacher's like, way to go, buddy, you got the E. you got the only F, you know, or whenever you find yourself in a position where you probably have all the rights to be self-conscious, it's that moment. It's being, you could probably distill it down to being aware. Hey, this is one of those moments right here. Maybe I should try to laugh. Maybe I should try to find the opportunity. Maybe I should try to find what this is teaching me right here. And before I, before I continue down that road, I wanted to just take one step back because you would mention something about fractions and math and learning. And I was curious to get your thoughts

on like abstract geometric forms. Like, you know, these, these geometric forms that, do you ever, do you ever do psychedelics? Have I done them? Yeah. No, not, no, I'm a huge fan of them. Like, and sometimes when you do them, like, you get these closed eye visuals and you can see like a tesseract or like a three-dimensional cube or something like that. But for someone who's a mathematician, I'm sure you're familiar with all those different forms. Do you think that those forms are actually like organizational and coding patterns? Would you could you call those forms organizational and coding patterns? And if so, what would you use them to organize and code for?

That's an interesting question because I've never had to. quite think about that but uh i do think that there there there are degrees and there are subsections of mathematics that get into fractorials and fractions and it's all about the splitting of visuals and the way that kind of like refractions and lights kind of move and the they're in large part responsible for the reason why our graphics are so interesting yes on video games and explosions and movies and it's it's this this idea that they can create like massive fragments and in in X to the exponentials these factorials um but i don't know enough about that particularly to be able to speak about where that comes from and and how it might be related but i i do think that there's there's

everything about mathematics is rooted in patterns and our brains are i i think there might be something interesting to consider in the way that our brain is able to pick up on patterns yeah And perhaps maybe there's probably something, I mean, when you, I think using any kind of psychedelic or drug probably, it probably has a means of unlocking a part of your brain that's previously inhibited and previously repressed by that part, you know, from my understanding a little bit about psychology. And I try to study the brain a lot for metacognitive lenses. You have different parts of your brain, which most people, you know, really didn't understand until a few years ago, except for the experts. but you know you have your amygdala which is your fight or flight response you have your your frontal cortex which is in large part responsible for the narratives and and think whether or not things make logical sense and you you have your hippocampus which is responsible for memories and so there's these

different compartments and that's why it makes sense to say like compartmentalization of experiences and they all work and they function together but and i think the more that you understand how they work. And I would say how the brain sends signals. It's like, oh, the frontal cortex is responsible for feeling self-conscious, let's say. So, oh, like people are looking at you. People are nervous. Then it sends the signal that the amygdala flares up. It says, you're in danger. And that's where the feeling of anxiety starts to come from. But that anxiety was an evolved, an evolved trait that allowed us to survive when we were in actual real danger. They told us how to get out of it.

And now it's just, it can be kind of confused because it's like, uh, the danger that we're in is probably more perceived. But maybe it's like a status based danger. Like it's it's, oh, I'm going to do this and I'm going to be embarrassed and then I'm going to be like you go down a real rabbit hole because that's how anxiety works. I'm going to be outcasted by society, which means I'm not going to be able to eat dinner. I'm not going to be able to, you know, mate. I'm not going to be able to stay. I'm not going to have a safe place to sleep. So you're like this, this evolutionary anxiety seems highly related to.

the fear and the embarrassment that we feel about kind of walking into public and why don't why don't you know you or i just start dancing on the table you know for for no particular reason then you see people that's interesting is when you see people who have a few drinks they start dancing more they start talking louder they're they're less inhibited because alcohol the first thing that it does is it shuts down that part of the brain that's responsible for feeling self-conscious and so with when you when you if you can understand that there's a part of the brain that's working you could say working against you it's working for you it's trying to keep you safe but it might not be exactly what you're trying to achieve so the the pattern for me and there is

is less on the mathematical side it's it's it's it's that the brain is working in patterns and it develops heuristics that are designed to keep you safe and comfortable and use the least amount of energy if you're willing to critique those there's you know the daniel coneman in thinking fast and slow he talks about system one and system two too in behavioral economics and the reasons why we make these decisions. If you're willing to critique the initial thoughts that you have, you have to expend more mental energy up front. But if you do, you can, then you can make a change.

And then you can develop new habits. You can develop new heuristics. You can develop new ways of thinking. And you can develop yourself the way that you want to be taking care of yourself today so that you can say that past me was taking care of present me. Do you think that we have an opportunity to change our heuristics? or we have an opportunity to change the triggers for being moved into anxiety or depression when we is being in the situation we talked about earlier where oh my God I'm super self-conscious

is that an opportunity to change the way your brain create the pattern of your thinking like if you can interrupt that pattern and you become aware of it then you can change the way you think Do you think that that's an accurate statement? For myself, absolutely. And that's the experience that I'll speak on. So as much as I want to believe that it's true for everyone, and I do, I'm not going to, I'm going to avoid getting into the trap of saying, like, this is the, you know, this is the true thing for everyone because that just gets me, like, into trouble,

I'm sure. But some, that can be just taken out of context. But in my own experience, absolutely. Every time that I, like, I feel self-conscious all the time. And I'm not, people are like, wow, you're really good at public speaking. and I'm like, yeah, because I suck at it. Like, because I'm not good at it, because I get anxious, you know, I get anxiety and I'm tired of not being able to express myself.

So I lean into it. So I practice it. I made a podcast not because I'm a great host because I want to be one. And because I want to be able to align the way I see myself with the way that I want to be and a way I want to show up for the people I care about. I want to be able to express myself. I want to be able to have a freedom from that anxiety. And the only way I can do that is by facing it.

The only way I can do that is by practicing it. And so I have to just on a daily basis, really, I just kind of subject myself to these situations that make me uncomfortable, that make me miserable, more or less, feel the brain response that's like, you look like an idiot. You know, you get real flush. You get warm. Yeah. The back of your neck gets hot.

You start sweating. And all these, just these are the ways that the body's responding to try to tell you stop doing that. And I'm like, I know why it's telling me to stop doing that. but I'm more interested on what's on the other side of this discomfort, because on the other side of the discomfort is a better me. Yeah. It's in some ways it just reminds me of,

there's some really great quotes that I remember when I think about this subject. And one of them is that, you know, every, every night you get the chance to die, and every morning you get the chance to be reborn. And I think that that holds true to difficult situations where, okay, you're standing around and something is, happening and no one is standing up, what are you going to do? What's the risk versus the reward? Is there no reward, but it's still the right thing to do? What does that fit in into your own values and stuff? And in some ways, I think the more you subject yourself to difficult situations, to

suffering in some senses, the more you, the old part of you dies and this new part is reborn that can be better at helping others around you. And that's almost like a currency in its self if you if you kind of manipulate it under the finance can you share a story with us where one time you had to actually do that i can yeah you hit on a bunch of things there that really like at least i couldn't catch them all because i was trying to be attentive listener right that's that's the trouble of being a podcast host i go up on a tangent sometime too man no you're coming from me like i'm i'm so good at tangent thing but um well you talk about risk and reward so that becomes mine is like how do you how do you assess risk and reward

finance is a complicated and mathematics are complicated and complex tools and systems that allow us to assess risk and reward on the spot and be able to come up with ways to measure them. Right. So that's really like why I think it's such an important tool because it helps us for the future. And that's the challenge is like how do we predict the future? It's easy for people to tell stories about the past because that happened. It's definite. Yeah.

But how are those tools helping us create a better future? And how are we help? How are they helping us in the present? because we have to make decisions in the present. And stories from the past don't tell us exactly what's going to happen in the future. That's why whenever you're waiting around, like you hear all the people that come out and they talk as if gurus, as if they have all the stories of all the past. In mathematics, you can have a thousand different examples that show why, let's say,

theorem A is true. But that doesn't prove it. You don't prove something until it's concrete until you prove that you prove that there exists no counter example. So it's not enough just to have a thousand examples, a million examples, a hundred billion examples. You need concrete proof that there's no way that it's not true. And most people, they can't have that because the future is, like you said, it's incomplete. It's uncertain yet. It's not written yet. And so the part that we're all worried about is the suffering. And that's the second part you really brought up is a suffering. And while I was in,

you know, I got laid off and I'm in this challenging, painful, like experience. of this weird in between purgatory of life and career. And I connected, actually. I traveled to Southeast Asia with a friend who was on a trip. He had just graduated. I had just been laid off. It was a very interesting intersection of the two worlds. And two people mutually, as I love to, just invested in the relationship with each other to improve together.

We traveled. And in part of the trip, we ended up in Thailand. And we ended up at a Buddhist monk monastery, like a retreat of sorts. It was a really phenomenal experience. And what I reconnected with is actually from the book Sapiens as well when he touches on some spirituality things. And he touches on Buddhism. And if you, if you're not familiar with Buddhism, the crux of it from my understanding is all suffering. We're all human beings and we all experience pain and pleasure.

But suffering does not exist in pain. Suffering exists because we crave. We either crave more pleasure than we currently. have or we crave that pain will stop. So when you're going through something challenging or do you something painful, the suffering doesn't exist because of the thing, like you said, we're not victims of the situation. We what matters is how we're controlling. Like we control how we respond to the situation. Right. And so when you're in pain, when you're experiencing something challenging and going through that in the moment, the suffering that you experience is only

because you crave. You crave that the pain will go away or that what you currently have is not good enough and you crave some greater pleasure than you currently have. So because of that suffering, it leads us to think, what am I doing now? How am I making the best decision for the future? I don't want to make the wrong decision. I don't want to stand up when everyone else is sitting down. I don't want to say the wrong thing. But like you said, if you go with that logic, every night you get a chance to to die every morning. You get a chance. It's interesting that you say you get a chance to die, but I do enjoy that.

We'll come back to that. Yeah, totally. You get a chance to be reborn. There's an interesting perspective. Like, imagine right now, you imagine you got to the end of your life and you had been given a second chance. And you'd been given a second chance to come back and live your life right now. And in a large part, this is often part of my decision criteria. maybe in another, I'll tell you another one, but I'm getting, I'm getting to the story.

All this is just really convoluted. It's awesome, man. Keep going with it. Go with it. But to get to the story, but, you know, how do you make decisions in the moment? And imagine getting to the end of your life, 90 years old, and then you got a chance to come back and do it again. What would you do differently? And then how can you look at the decision you're about to make with that critical lens?

You know, who am I valuing in this moment? If we don't have a system when we talk about ethics, when you talk about mathematics, you talk about all these things, sureistics, if you don't have a system, for evaluating the principles that are most important to you. What's most important to me in this decision? My relationships, the amount of money I'm going to make, my happiness, the time that I'm going to have off from work, whatever it might be, it's hard to talk about in a general. But for that situation, what am I going to get out of it when you say not just risk and reward, but what do I value?

What's most important to me? Like showing up to this, showing up to this, you know, this workout. What does it say about me and the person that I am? I am someone who follows through my commitment or finishing my work on time or, you know, all these things that you care about and you value in the relationships around you. What is most important to me in the decision that I'm going to make? And so in a combination of those are kind of two of the things, when I was 23 years old and I finished my first master's degree, I had a choice between taking a full-time job at a school

and teaching mathematics or moving across the world and I, and to go live and China. And I would start an education startup company. And this is the story that came to mind because among many others, this is one of the like the biggest ones that people can relate to like China. You say China and people like China. China? Like China China. And yeah, like China, China. And I was the decision, you know, a massive amount of ambiguity. What like what happens if if I go over there? What happens if you start thinking what happens if something goes wrong? What happens if something goes right, you know, are you going to come home? How will you get back?

How are you going to afford it? How are you going to make a living? All these questions. And I just kept thinking to myself. But from having conversations with everyone else, when I'm 45 years old, let's say, or when I'm looking back on this decision in 20 years, I'm thinking to myself, how am I, what am I going to say about what passed me did, what past me chose to do or didn't do? Am I going to be glad that they.

played it safe and chose to get a job and, and maybe I will because we're really good at telling the story backwards. Or am I going to say, man, I had an opportunity to travel the world that probably are never going to get again. I had an opportunity to go experience a different culture, be completely immersed, be completely engaged with people, languages, dances, and just traveling in a way that you can only do when you're younger. I mean, I shouldn't have said that per se because really you can do it. it at any time in your life. But again, it gets harder and harder because of those social constructs and expectations. But when I had this beautiful opportunity, am I going to say I had it and I blew it?

And I went to a place. I said, I went to a conversation with myself on my deathbed. And I'm sitting there contemplating the decisions of my life. And I said, this is one of those decisions. And I'm going to look back right now and I'm going to say, I either went for it. I took a chance. And I, you know, however, I don't know how it's going to work out, but I'm going to. know that if I say no to it, that's going to be one of those things that's going to come back and halt me. And it's not the mistakes. Like when we say we look back, we regret the things that we didn't do.

It's like even in finance, Warren Buffett is well known for saying the biggest regrets in life and finance are not mistakes of commission. They're mistakes of omission. They're the times when you passed and you should have acted. And those are the things that we think about the most. So I find that when I'm harnessing my own life and my own everything that I need to succeed, I have a bias for action. I have hyperactivity.

And we talked about a bunch of other stuff. I just when I make those choices, I have that bias for action because I know that I'm going to be way more regretful of what I didn't do than what I did. Yeah, that sounds like a lesson learned. It sounds like you have had something happen in the past that you were regretful from. like, I'm never going to let that happen again. That's been my understanding is that, like you said, you know, you lean into situations because they're uncomfortable. But the only reason you do that is because you know what the consequences are.

Like, you know that you're probably never going to forgive yourself if you don't do them. Or, you know, I read, I love reading or my wife says, like, you don't read them. You listen to audiobooks, George. You're not reading them. She's all mad at me because I use the different words. I'm right there with you because I'm right there with you because I'm I struggle to read in a massive way. The other comment, I'm just going to interject.

Yeah, please. We do a podcast. I'm sorry. You know, you say like it sounds like a consequence and a lesson learned. The question in that I've been constantly and actively trying to critique on my own podcast too is why do we have to make the mistakes in order to learn? Or can we open our brain to be willing to learn? Because we don't learn from experience.

We learn from reflecting on experience. So how do we take other people's, let's say regrets or lessons learn, compartmentalize them, make them our own so that we can make better decisions moving forward? Why do we have to wait until we make the mistakes? And it's interesting you brought up mushrooms because one question that I was asking while I was in, or you brought up psychedelics, one question while I was in Thailand was I, and I was arguing this point to someone. And I said, we don't grow, we don't learn from experience.

We learn from reflecting on experience. They're like, what do you mean? How do you prove that? And I said, well, think about poison. poisonous mushrooms. Think about poisonous plants in the world. Why do you know not to eat those? You have to think about it because like when you're a kid, you're just like, oh, don't eat strange things. It's just, it's just a second nature to you. But why is it second nature? It's just conditioned into you because somebody went ahead and made those mistakes for us a long time ago. And we learned

from it, right? We are, because someone else went first and they ended up, you know, passing away because they ate poisonous mushrooms. You're smart enough now to have the experience to learn. from that, you know, tragic experience, the consequences, then you don't have to repeat it. The same thing, like, do I have to, do I have to burn my hand on a stove to know that I shouldn't touch it? You know, in a less drastic example, but why do I have to burn myself in order to know I don't, I shouldn't touch fire? Like, it's hot enough and I can tell and I can look, I can get the severity of it. If someone else burned themselves and they said, don't touch that, it's really hot, I don't, I'm not going to go, let me go check for myself. I'm going to

take their word for it. I can learn from their experience, but only if I'm willing to reflect on it. Only if I'm willing to reflect on the fact that they said, this was bad, don't do it. Just having the experience alone, or rather, you don't necessarily have to have the experience yourself or suffer through the trauma of it to be able to learn from it. You don't have to. But if you thoroughly want to understand the lesson, then you have to have the experience. You have to be able to compartmentalize it somewhere. You have to have that place to reflect and hold it.

Yeah, that's for sure. Well, I think, like, I would disagree. Like, I, like, you can. Like, you can tell me, don't touch that. It's hot. Or you can tell me, like, listen, you know, when you start your company, George, and you gain all this success, you're going to be tempted by all these women around. You can have all this money.

Don't cheat on your wife. You know, like, there's all these things people can tell you that you should listen to because they're probably true. But you don't know they're true until you have. found yourself in that position because I you know it's it's human nature because just because someone ate this batch of mushrooms that killed them it might not kill me it might give me a euphoric experience like my body's a little bit different and 90 they could be right 90% of the time but that 10% of the people that make an attempt to try something that no one else can do like that that's kind of

what moves us forward hey don't do this don't do that finally someone steps up and is like I'm going to do it and then they do it. They fly across the Atlantic or they, you know, if we only use the reflections of our elders, I think we would be caught in a world of stagnation. Like on some level, ideas and rules are only temporary and they change. And they change because someone has the courage to change them or someone is crazy enough to try to change them. You know, but I think that you can't get an idea of the experience. But if you really want the experience, you're not denied it and you can take it.

And there's real value in there. Like it's kind of like if you go to school and you learn from a, let's do this. So you went and you got a school, you got an MBA in business. Was the teacher that taught you was one of your professors better at business than the guy that was actually running the business? Was there similarities and differences there? Because the guy that actually run the business has the experience of it. The guy that's teaching business may not have had the experience of it. Those are two different things.

Like you could have that guy's reflection, but it's probably better to have the guy's experience. I think experience trumps reflection. So I don't think you can thoroughly learn unless you have the experience. I'm not saying you can't learn, but I don't think you can thoroughly understand the learning process. I don't think you could thoroughly be able to call yourself a real teacher unless you've had the experience. What do you think? I would say, yeah, because that's kind of a different argument. I think that the danger is thinking that you should have one or the other.

You have a both and. It's always an end. I would just, we're also just going to, we're going to put the asterisk over the fact that. That, besides the fact that that conversation or that analogy or anecdote started with the cheating on your wife. I'm going to argue that that was meant to be omitted. I'm not in charge of anything on this one. I don't think anybody should ever. do that. Like, that's probably one you can hold from reflection and know. And because, too, you can,

you can think about what you value in that moment and what's more important to you. Right. So, so with that said, though, it would never be one or the other, which, which is better. But rather, that's the point is like, we all have these experiences. We all have our individual process. Right. And then it's up to us to make those decisions. But we could, you know, walk into every wall, walk into every glass window on the way. I see what you're saying. Or we could. Or we could. we could choose to take on, to someone, a good example would be like, you're stuck in a maze. Someone found a way out of it and they kept track. They move on with their life.

They experienced it and they moved on. They never, never anything else. To add a reflection to that, they experienced it. They got through it. They reflected on it. They made a map. Now that map is a useful tool for themselves. Should they ever be in that situation again?

or someone else might find themselves in a situation. And in large part, I think that's the value of having conversations like the ones that we have and like the ones on my podcast where we talk about walking through challenging situations with someone. You've had these challenges. Now you have these reflections. Now they're valuable.

The experience alone, not necessarily valuable. If every day in that same, like you brought in the business analogy and like, yeah, like is it valuable to have someone who's been running the business versus someone who just teaches it theoretically? Yeah.

Absolutely. Do they both have value? Absolutely. Would you prefer, if you had your choice, would you choose to learn from one or the other or both of them? I would say both of them. Why not have both of them in the room? I can learn from them together, right? But if you did just have experience alone, then every day you have to walk through the same maze and you just continue to get lost and you never remember. You don't save any memory. You don't save any bandwidth because you didn't reflect on it at all. You just get lost every single day. And you eventually, you work really hard and get out of it. but what did you really learn for it? If you didn't take that time to reflect,

and in the same concept, if you have someone who's just a master mapmaker, is super good at making maps, but they're like for these like really abstract and non, you know, non-needed places or they don't connect to the people where they are, then again, that's really useless because it's just like all of the books

and all of the information that's out there in the world that we can't directly apply to our experience. But if on our experience, on our journey, we can connect with mentors, we can connect with leaders, we can connect with the point of view of what we need in that moment. If we're open and willing to learn from it, this is what I tell myself all the time, then we're going to maximize the benefit of having the experience and the reflection of the experience. Yeah, I think that there's like a lot of great things on your podcast when you're bringing out the people

and mining these experts, ideas and their experience. And one thing I think that people get from listening to your podcast or listening to experts speak that have experience is the ability to slow down time. And what I mean by that is if I get this nugget of truth from you about the world of finance and I really take it to heart and I took time to reflect on it. When I find myself in the situation where I need to apply the lesson that you spoke about, it's almost like time slows down because I can hear your voice. And I now have an awareness. Oh, I've heard about this before. And it's just that it's that split second between action and thought. But there's time in between there.

Most people don't see it or most people are not aware of it. It's familiarity. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well put. Well put. It's there.

And that's what that experience can give you. I don't think there's any monetary value on it. There's not enough money in the world to explain how valuable it is what I'm same to becoming aware of what can happen to be coming aware of that situation when no one else is is it's worth its weighted in gold and that's why we have mentors that's why we have people who we admire like we talk to them because they share experiences with us they share their perspectives on the experiences and they say ah you're going through that now aren't you like oh that's yeah i remember that and you're like i've been there i've seen that and and because now we're going back

to the brains for me it's like because for them It's definite. It's in the path. Yeah. It's concrete. We can talk about things that are concrete because they're not going to change. When we're experiencing them ourselves, they seem crazy because on another episode, a recent episode of the podcast, you know, we had a psychology master's come on. And he talked about anxiety.

And the reason why we have anxiety is because we have hope. If we didn't have hope, then we wouldn't have anxiety. We would just have despair. We would just be lost. and we have the anxiety because we're in a situation, we're hopeful of it working out the best, but there's a chance that it will not. And that is what brings us a torment.

That's what torments us, is this uncertainty, this navigating ambiguity. And so that anxiety exists in that capacity. If we can be aware of that, we can make better decisions, at least like you said, to slow down because the other way that our brain wants to work against us is that amygdala hijack, it flares up, and that part of the brain lights up and it says, you're in danger, run away, everything's a threat.

And then it makes everything just, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, everything is the worst. But if you can slow things down in the face of that anxiety, in the face of those chemical reactions, we can make better decisions and use that wisdom from experience. Yeah, it's well said. I love learning about those things because I think at some point in time we all suffer from I read a good quote too that said anxiety is being trapped in the future and depression is being trapped in the past. And if you hold those two thoughts for a moment, like you could, I could see, you know, you can almost, when you speak to someone who tells you, look, I have an anxiety problem, you can ask them a few questions. And it does seem to me that they're worried about the future.

They're worried about these things that they can't control. You know, they are doing exactly what you explained. And the same for people that are depressed. It seems that they have found themselves sometimes willingly wanting just to stay this old version of themselves. You know, it's fascinating to think about the way in which we think because especially when you take the role of a mentor. Like you would just mention that here is someone that can see where you were and it's like, oh yeah, I remember that. And in a weird way, it's almost like moving through time. This person has the ability to point out the potholes in the pathway when they walked it.

It may not be the same path, but they can show you the pitfalls. Oh, hey, there's a, watch out for the dog leg on, you know, the seventh hole over there. Right. Right. Learn from someone else's experience. Or do I have to go out and immediately, you know, just immediately hook my ball into the woods because I didn't realize, you know, can I learn from someone else's perspective and that's extremely relevant to me right there on the spot and i think that the operative word on on that quote that was interesting is people and and i'm not trying to

belittle anyone's experience in any capacity with depression or anxiety i i am a human being so i'm someone that experiences these things of course we all do you know everybody is willing to admit it at one level or not and i think a large part of that the of the challenges that are unfortunate with dealing with things like depression and anxieties is of course the worst part is feeling like you're the only one and not you know not realizing that it's it's something that we can work through together and and i hope that that's coming across everything would come across as a message of hope and not like i'm not trying to look down on anyone because i'm someone who certainly experiences these things as i'm you know i don't want to infer anything about you but you know we all we all

we all go through human emotions as part of it but the the idea of being trapped like you said it's the idea that i'm trapped in the past or trapped in the future um i think that that that's where you lose hope and without that without that part is when you start to fall into the I was listening to another interesting podcast is not that any emotions or any thoughts that we have are good or bad it's that they're either appropriate or inappropriate and I thought that that's an interesting perspective that's where it's something worth reflecting on for myself because there are times when you need to be when if you need to destroy something or break something down then anger is a perfectly valid emotion yeah it's a very

appropriate emotion, right? In the middle of, you know, there are times when sadness is it's, it's right to grieve and there is time and place and you create those safe spaces. And the same thing for joy and happiness where it would be appropriate in some situations, but it probably wouldn't be, you know, when you're at the circus is one time where it's great to be joyful. When you're at a funeral, it's not. So it's not that emotions are good or bad. It's that they're either appropriate or inappropriate. Do you distinguish between like, emotions and thoughts? Are thoughts laden with emotion,

or are they connected, in your opinion? That's a really cool question because another interesting perspective that I got, I think it was, maybe it was by Susan Kane, but she talked about quiet. I don't want to get the wrong author here. It could be Susan Caden or it could be Liz Wiseman. I don't have the direct resource,

but you can look into the emotional intelligence And there's groundbreaking work on when you are able to distinguish your personal emotions from the person who experiences the emotions. The difference when someone like myself and I've noticed like positive self-talk is one thing, but also being careful with the choice of our words. You say, I am sad versus I feel sad or I am happy versus I feel happy. I am depressed versus I feel depressed. I am anxious versus I feel anxious. In one situation, you are establishing it as part of your identity. Your emotions are part of your identity.

And in the other, you're able to distinguish your identity from the person who experiences these emotions. And I would say that that's been a really groundbreaking, that's a really groundbreaking breakthrough from myself to become someone who can distinguish myself and my identity from my emotions. I am not depressed. I am someone who has been depressed. I am not happy. I am someone who's been happy.

I am a human being and I experience emotions. And that's a really important distinction that isn't always made clear enough, especially as we need to improve our emotional intelligence as a species. Yeah. I think language patterns are a big part of that. Not only are a big part of it, but language patterns have been a big problem with it. You know, I think that we just think about the way language is structured. You have a subject and an object.

But what you're describing is an observer. How much better is your language or how much better is your life when you can be all of those people? But for so long, it seems to me that especially in Western thought, we have decided that verbal and linguistic skills are a higher order of thinking than mental imagery or, you know, the idea of the observer. Like this subject-object relationship is something that has penetrated Western thought, Western business, Western everything. And it's so narrowing and so precious, I guess, in some ways. It's so limiting.

And we talk to. Thank you. We talk. And that right there was the case and point. Like the struggle to find the word, the struggle to articulate. Yes. If you said one word versus a different, like I could. jump in and give you a one.

It kills me. Maybe there's a better one. And you're like, yes, that's the white word I was looking for. Thank you. And like how many times that's happened to me when I'm looking for the word on the spot because that part of the brain is playing up. But like we talked about this prior, you know, in the hour before we talked on this podcast. Like, yeah, we rely so heavily on transcribing the human experience with language.

And what you say is like, what? What do you just say? But it's 90, 90% of this. 90% of the time, if you're talking about something that you're not completely fluent in, or you're not like an expert in, which is, you know, almost everything in the world, you are very likely to say the wrong thing. And it's going to trigger someone. It's going to get you in trouble.

Because people aren't, not only are we imperfect at it ourselves, but we're so quick to beat down everyone else who's attempting. It's so rare that you find someone who's willing to sit with your thought and see the intent of it and wait and really. try to understand what you're talking about. Like even with the previous example, you talked about with experience versus the theorem versus the application or the reality versus the someone who's actually done it versus the someone who studies it vigorously. Like, what are you really trying to say? How many times can we say that we really sit back and we seek first to understand what

someone's really trying to communicate to actually listen with full empathy and give them a chance to be to see them even the way that they wish that they could be seen because we struggle so much to find the words when we're trying to transcribe them ourselves yeah it's it's it sounds to me like you have a podcast where you've talked to a lot of incredible people and learned a lot let me ask you this you might say that it's um i'm honored to have had that opportunity and and to build that opportunity with so many incredible people yeah it's you know i heard a good another good quote that said the the things that you're interested in those things are interested in you and so there's there's some sort of qualities that that you could probably you know since

we're talking about mazes we might as well talk about the eriodony thread that runs through the maze have you found that thread that runs through the majority of people that you've spoken with is there something similar about all those people i i think i have and i sum it up in in the hardest way possible because it's such an intangible thing. I sum it up is there's there's two things that you see in every quote unquote successful story because success is something different to everyone. Everyone has their own individual maze. Everyone has their own path that we walk, but we can learn something from the reflections of each person on their walk. And I like what you said, you know, that you're bringing a quote into it. There's another quote for for listeners because

listeners like quotes, working hard doesn't guarantee success, but no one is successful without hard work. So on everyone's path, you see the same, everyone's working hard. Everybody you talk to, they can tell you, they can tell you about how hard they're working. And we have what's called, you know, this is another psychological principle, but there's the fundamental attribution error, which when we're telling our stories and we're looking at other people's stories. This is a psychology principle. It's a when we look at our success stories, we see everything that we did. We see all the hard work that went into it. We see all the long

nights. We see every challenge that presented itself to us and how we persevered and overcame it. And every time we had a bad experience or something went wrong, we have, oh, this was the excuse that got in the way. This was the thing, you know, like, oh, like I couldn't come because my car didn't work. Okay. Like, it's a legitimate, we have all these excuses because we have the full explanation for our own story. When we look at other people's stories, we say, wow, you got to where you are because you're really lucky. You got to where you are because you had a great head start. You had financial resources. You had all of these external things go really well for you. And everything that went wrong, wow, you were really lazy. You, you didn't work that hard.

You didn't stay up for like, you must have not been working long late nights like I was, because I do that. And so we have this attribution error and they study it. And you can look in books, David, Daniel Conman's thinking fast and slow where they literally prove this. And they say, if you experienced these things, what would you say happen? And people would say, oh, I would say that if you experienced these negative things, you'd say, oh, well, it was these external factors. There was all these excuses, all these things. Like, if you saw someone else show up late because of these things, what would you say? Well, they were probably disorganized. They're probably lazy. They're probably not on top of their stuff. And we get this disconnect. It's like,

how can you have both? Like, how can you split and say like when someone else is successful, it's because of their luck. And when you're successful, it's because of your hard work. And when you're not successful, it's because of the external factors. And when someone else is not successful, it's because of their own work ethic. It's just flipped. It's wrong. It's an error. And so I wanted to find a way that we can get better at telling people's stories, really getting to connect and see them, witness them, go through the process of evolution with someone on their journey and learn together. And because of that, I would say what I've really come down and I've seen everyone's stories, no matter what path you're walking on, no matter what challenges

you're facing, everybody will face challenges in their road. You can never be fully prepared for the road ahead, but those people prepare themselves and they lead with their heart in one hand and their hard work in the other. Heart and hard work. That's the name of the podcast. And that's why I love to be able to share the people's stories and what it's like to be on the journey with someone, what it's like to walk alongside someone reflecting and growing and realizing like we started this conversation by talking about we're not

the victim of our circumstances. I have another quote, life is 10% what happens to us and 90% what we make of it. There's just throw some math in there for people because we started talking about math. Life is 10% what happens to us, 90% when we make of it. And so we have the power to control that. The things that we can control, I learned this from sports. I learned this from rugby, football, basketball, growing up, triathlons. We can't control everything that happens to us, but we can always control an effort and our attitude.

And those things, the relationships, the empathy that we have for other people, you can put those things into the heart category. And then at the end of the day, you got to sit down, you got to be willing to grind. You got to be able to work hard at something. And so that's the heart and hard work. Though it's kind of intangible, it's the North Star that says, when in doubt, put your effort into it and care about people. Wow, that is well said. That's really well said. I can't think of anything more I would add.

It's beautiful. I like the way that heart and hard work go hand in hand together because you have to have, your heart has to be in it to do hard work, right? Yeah, there's plenty of room for puns in there. Like heart, when you're a coach, when you're an athlete, you always, you use heart to describe the intangibles. And what's interesting, too, if we talk about finance one more time. More than ever when you're evaluating companies, especially in Silicon Valley, especially startups, especially companies that don't have years and years of financial data. And even those that do, most of their valuation comes from adjustments for intangibles. And intangibles come from things like intellectual property, the talent, the culture, the way that organizations and people work together.

And so you can't really, there's no section on an accounting sheet for that. There's no, there's no, that's not a tangible asset. It's an intangible asset, but it's undeniably valuable. And for you to ignore that would be falling behind in the way that those things are adjusted for intangibles. And even on some financial street, um, spreadsheets, they use those things in terms of they make the adjustment by looking at the the salaries and so they add extra valuation based on the salaries and they say the more you're paying people the more valuable they must be and therefore let's include that in the valuation of something but that's just

to say for everything that is intangible we as humans even try so hard to find it i i stop trying to i stop trying to put a full thumbtack on it and full describe it because like we said it's it's imperfect language is imperfect some things can only be experienced but to me heart has always been that special thing that can only be experienced when you feel it and heart and hard work are the true north stars for everybody that i talk to who is successful who's in the pursuit of success who's challenging themselves to take on any form of any path that leads to their personal greatness so let's say in 20 years like you become the next joe rogan and you're sitting down as mentor like what would you want the person that you are a mentor to to be able to learn from you

if nothing else and because as i'm trying to be a mentor as i'm mentored by many i mentor some and i try to give giving along the way right i'm i who knows 20 years isn't guaranteed i would hope the thing that i could impart is ask better questions is is because we're always looking for answers and no one has the answers. When you're a kid, you think parents have the answers. You think teachers have the answers. You think adults just grow up. And then you hit a point and you're like, I have to learn how to be an adult. And part of that is like, I have to make the decisions. Who's going to tell me I'm right or wrong? Probably only society. And like the people care about you. They can try to help you. But no one can tell you really if you're right or wrong if you're making

the decision for you. So the only thing you can do is ask better questions to give yourself more perspective. And I would hope that anyone that I'm working with, and myself included, I'm constantly asking questions. I'm constantly being curious because the stories from the past have lessons, but they're nuggets. Like you said, they're not going to give us everything for the future. They give us nuggets to make sure we avoid what we should. We learn from what we can. But then we have to make the decisions for ourselves. And the only way we can make the most informed decisions is if we're curious and we're directly trying to apply all of the wisdom, all the experiences, in ways that are useful for our path and our journey. Yeah, that's awesome. Do you use the questions

like tools like do you think like the how question is like a crescent wrench and the why question is like a screwdriver or are there different methods for using different kinds of questions that you've found that's a fascinating question in itself which i love it because no one's ever asked me that before but i love when people ask me questions because i'm always asking people questions yeah i help them think and i'm always when someone asked me a good question i'm like i've never had to think about that before then my brain lights up you know i have a very pattern recognizing brain which is associated with dyslexic thinking, which I use eye harness as a superpower. But it makes me try to think of the analogy.

It makes me try to think of the way to explain. It makes me try to think of the way to compartmentalize it, to hold it and be like, ah, yes, this makes sense to me. Now I can close the loop and move forward. And so trying to answer like a good question, like screwdriver and a why. I don't, I have never been so granular about them as a specific tool function. Although I do like Simon Sinek's approach to start with. Why? Have you read that book?

I haven't read it. I've seen it, but I haven't read it. Start with why. It's really great. I'm sure you can watch a YouTube video and get the crux of it. But it really just says like when you start with why, you're really connecting with a great sense of purpose. And then how, how is when you close the loop on achieving that why? Like what is the plan, is the strategies in the things that it will allow you to execute and get closer to the why. and that what so it's why how what and the what is what specifically needs to get done because at the end of the day there needs to be action taken but what's interesting and you go back to kind of any any philosophical thinking any psychological metacognitive thinking and the things that we find a way

to make possible on life and in our experience and in the world is always because they're solving a great problem and for ourselves if we can trick our brain like we talked about previously or like convince our brain that this is important this is meaningful. If we have a big enough why, if our why is strong enough, we can sustain anyhow. If your why is great enough, you can sustain anyhow. And that's a quote that's truly been another North Star for me. And it's something that makes you think like, do you want to learn Chinese? Do you really want to learn Chinese? Do you want to learn Spanish? Do you really want to learn? Or is it just like a cool party trick? Because do you want to lose 10 pounds? Do you really want to lose 10 pounds?

You have to think about that hard and guys like David Goggins and Jocko Willings, discipline equals freedom, all those kinds of things. Like, do you, you're going to be really motivated to want something in the moment, but do you really want it? And if you don't have a strong sense of why, this is me and myself talk. If I don't have a strong sense of why, I don't really want it. And as soon as it gets hard, you come up to the first wall of adversity, you're not really going to come through.

So if there was a strong tool, I would say questions that are related to why are the strongest and the most important because those are the ones in math when you're a teacher when someone really understands why you're doing something you'll figure out the how and then from that you'll learn better what to go do but if you have a strong why if your why is big enough you can sustain anyhow yeah that's well said i once heard someone say on the topic of why to think about it they used it as like a they called an r pm plan a results focus purpose driven massive action plan. If you can come up with that, that will help you get to why.

And so, you know, what are the results? You know, you're going to focus on the results. And then what's the purpose of it? And then what's your plan? And then that's kind of, you know, there's, it's also like a car, like an RPM plan. Like the more you put into it, the higher up it goes, the more energy it gives your why. But yeah, it's interesting.

I've found that how questions are a great way to stop looping thought in yourself or in other people. If you're sitting down to like a crucial conversation and you're having this discussion about things, you can reflect with something like, well, how, it's, for example, someone will say, you know what, George, I think that you were doing these things wrong and you could have gone and done, you know, this is wrong here and that's wrong there. If you just stop and say something like, well, how would you have done it better? That interrupts people's thought patterns and they have to stop saying things and begin thinking things. Instead of internalize it. Yeah. And then it's a great way for you as an individual to kind of level the playing field or catch a breath for both people. And it's almost like a tactical empathy, right? Like where they, where you're trying to force them to see it from your point of view. But how questions work that way? And that's where I got the idea of a tool, like a screwdriver. I'm going to turn it a little bit. I'm going to turn the tables a little bit. I'm going to use this screwdriver known as how.

I like that. That's an interesting technique because asking questions as well is a great way to gain influence for your idea. is because if you ask someone a question, you bypass their dismissive filter. If you give someone an idea, they're like, nah, it's not a good idea. If you ask them, how do you like, you know, like, what's a simple example? Like say you want to buy paper towel A instead of paper towel B. Maybe paper towel B is twice as expensive. And I guess, I don't know, like you're, this is just a random example that's totally coming to mind because I'm looking at a roll paper towels.

But you want someone to buy paper towel A instead of paper towel B or make any business deal a instead of business deal, B. Yeah. You say, hey, I think A is a really good choice. And they're like, no, I like B. But if you can instead ask a question, it's like, why is B better? You know, like you can, you can get to, like, have you like, why is a, you know, why not A?

Right. Asking them that question and having to have them justify it. I think both parties end up more satisfied because you either, you either get a full explanation and a full detailed reason and you go through like a principle based analysis of decision making, which we talked about previously. or someone has a genuine reason why B is better than A in the decision. Like, there's a reason why I needed that one because I've bought A in the past and it didn't, it wasn't up to the quality that I needed for the project that we,

you know, that I need to clean up for the messes that my kids are making or whatever it is. I don't know. Like, there's a decision. The point being, like, if you ask someone a question instead of telling them an idea, then they're more likely to like, hey, how do you think we can, how do you think we can clean up this mess? You know, I don't know, maybe we should get like paper towels. oh, okay, we got paper towel, hey, here they are.

And you're like, oh, okay, great. You know, you never even came to a decision criteria. You can kind of bypass that because you slipped in with a question. And it's an interesting way to gain influence as well. Yeah. Not meant to be deceived, but it goes to show like how questions, when you're interested in solving problems of people asking the question, how, that is, in my own reflection, a great way to get people on board as well.

Yeah, there's a great book called Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. And he's like, yeah, I read that. Right. pretty good. Yeah, it's great. I'm great. Yeah, it's great.

Empathy. Why do you think when I say A, you automatically say B? Like, why do people do that? Uh, autonomy. Yeah, I'm not the expert. There's, there's tons of reasons, right? We're just talking, if we're just talking in the most general constructs, like there's another book, uh, influence by Robert Chaldey, who's, who's heavily involved with,

with Chris. Um, they, they, they, they have some overlaps in the work, not that they're heavily involved, but there's a lot of, um, references between the two. And, um, when you, when you, when you have the, the premise being when you take away someone's autonomy, they almost, they almost want to do something in spite. Like, think when you're a kid and your parents tell you can't do something. You're like, don't jump on the couch. You're like, all I want to do now is jump on the couch, right? Because I'm not, whatever it is. I don't know. Like, if someone tells you that you're not supposed to, you're,

you know, you're not supposed to run. If you're an athlete, don't, you know, don't run in the morning or like, running, you're like, whatever, I've been doing this forever. If someone comes up and tries to correct you in a way that takes away your autonomy, for me, it makes me, it makes me. It makes me, it makes say, forget you. I want to go do this. I'm going to do it my way anyway. You know, like, you think I can't do it? Like, most of the time, there's like that gut reaction because it's trying to take away

autonomy or, you know, whatever, proving you're wrong or maybe putting you in a box, you want to prove them wrong. But if someone would come up to me instead and say like, like, oh, like, why are you doing something that way? And then I gave my explanation to be like, oh, okay. And they walked on. Then I'd be like, why do you ask? And then maybe I'm like, well, how would you do it?

Like you said, would you do it better? And then, you know, it invites the conversation for improvement versus. The way when you come up and you try to give someone an advice that they didn't ask for, it makes them almost just want to dismiss it. So for me, personally, I fall into the category of giving people advice when they didn't ask for it because I often conflate the people who come and ask me for advice with the people who are just trying to vent. I mean, I think any guy that's ever been in a relationship can relate to, you know,

trying to solve a problem when you were just supposed to listen and just the trouble that will get you in. But if you instead just say, like, wow, that really stinks. Or like, how does that make you feel? and waiting for someone to invite you into the solution, that's a massively different scenario if you're invited into the solution with a question versus trying to interject one. Yeah, that's a great distinction. And I think people would be well to remember that distinction, especially in relationships.

I get myself in enough trouble, but I'm lucky my partner is very understanding and patient with me. Yeah, that's where you really learn about influence and, and, you know, and, you know, conversation and empathy is if you can have a long lasting relationship, I think it becomes fulfilling because you thoroughly understand communication or hopefully both of you understand communication or you're learning together communication. But I'm curious. When we talk about these different techniques in Caldini. I think Caldini ran, I think he ran Hillary's campaign. I don't know if he ran it, but he was like an influence in it. We started thinking about influence. And then when I started thinking about influence,

I think about Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. And that takes us all the way back to economics in a way because in some ways, economics equal influence and influence equals sort of finance, right? Like there's a lot of influence in finance and a lot of decision making in finance. And it seems to me that a lot of people spend lots of money, especially advertising agencies, trying to harness these powers of influence and decision making. so that they can get you to spend a few extra dollars. What do you think is a relationship between influence and finance? There's certainly correlation. But when you think about finance, everything, what's interesting is when you have a

relationship with someone and you're shaking hands and you're just, hey, I trust you. I want to work with you. I like working with you. Let's have a podcast conversation. Yeah, totally. Not when you get into a financial discussion, it immediately becomes, what's it that that that cost benefit analysis what am i giving up now for the future show me the data why is this decision a good decision to make right now instead of like i i just trust you i enjoy

you and i'm going to go with my gut and and in large i would say like finance in large part brings people influence because it says like hey why should i do this why should i spend my time with you right well look at these numbers in a concrete way if you spend this time with me here if we invest in this decision together, we get back two times as much. Okay, I'm in. Versus on the other side, like, hey, I really like you. I just don't know. I can't really, I can't really prove. I can't really justify this to my, to my, to my, to people who I have to, you know, answer to. So I would say the finances becomes that tool that helps us be more certain in our decision making and be convinced that what we're doing is justified.

Yeah. The more that I learn, the more I, I, I, I, I, I, really admire the idea of the relationship between things. You know, it's almost like, and this brings us back to abstract geometrical forms. You know, I think that one of the things that I never really learned about in geometry was that they are showing us relationships. Like if you think of like a tesseract or some sort of abstract geometric form, no matter how big or small, what's really beautiful about it is the way it relates to itself. And I think that if you spend time just looking at like mandala's or, you know, if you have long periods of high doses

of psilocybin or psychedelics, I think seeing those forms is a great way to understand relationships. And it would be an interesting way to teach kids math. Instead of teaching it. Instead of teaching it from like a in the way it was taught to me like this dry format of like these are the numbers this is this like i'm going to teach you about relationships today like look at this will see how this number fits over here like they kind of fit together and that brings us to the idea of you know if you look at different alphabets like the greek alphabet or the hebrew alphabet those are numbers and letters you know how much better would our world be if the language and letters that we use corresponded directly to mathematics you know or maybe it does we just don't know about it

kind of birdwalk in here, but that's crazy to think about, right? It is, it is interesting. And you know, it's, the question is always like of the critique of the education system, too, is like, why don't students get creative-based learning, discovery-based learning? And the answer always comes down to time. It always comes down to, like, if you could put people in a setting where time didn't matter and they were free to just explore and they could, you know, like, hey, like, wouldn't it be fun to build this tower and they'd be like, oh, yeah, let's do it.

You know, like, and over time, as the town, the kid, I can just picture kids, like, myself with my, like, Legos or, you know, the blocks. Let's say not Legos because they would stick together, but you start to build up the tower and then you notice it falls down. Like, oh, what, like, how could we build this tower that goes higher? Like, you know, like you get, get the student to ask that question. Like I said, like, find a way to ask better questions. How can we, you know, because once you ask a question, you burn the place in them,

in your mindset, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, burn the little hole for it. I think about it like searing a little, like, but I never learn, I never learn what I need to learn unless I ask a question or until I try to answer someone else's question and I'm unable to, then I'm like, I got to go back and learn this. And then my brain remembers it. Because I seared a little place for it, now it has a little tiny hole. There's a little tiny home in my brain. And I call on that next time it's needed because it's like, you learn from that mistake. You learn from that little, you know, that little paper cut. But if you could create that that inquisition and like when I used to teach and we used to try to create that and when there

when there was time that's when students learned the most had the most fun and just it was the most enjoyable experience for everyone and if if students are in that environment now it's really hard to create I'm not saying like teachers aren't doing a good enough job it's it's there's so many external pressures that make it challenging but what what I do know is when students are in that position where they can ask the questions themselves it's like well how could we make this tower stronger. Like, well, well, maybe, maybe it has to be symmetrical. Like, oh, it has to be symmetrical.

Like, like, it should, it shouldn't be leaning to one side versus the other. Like, oh, like, how could we do that? Oh, well, then the angle at the bottom must be the angle at the top. Like, you're like, okay. And then you're, just because you said geometry, like, well, wait a minute. Is that always true? Is that angle? You know, and then, like, through the process of discovery and inquisition,

leading to, like, oh, these angles are, they're, they're on the alternate side of the inside, so maybe the interior, the alternate interior angles, they're congruent. You know, and you're like, oh, that's cool. And if they're congruent, we'll have a symmetrical tower and we can, we can have the tallest tower possible, you know, because kids are really motivated. They want to, they want to succeed. They want to learn these things. But when you're just sitting in a classroom, when you're like, memorize this and memorize

this and memorize this because we're going to be assessed, it makes it really challenging. And it's, it's, it's, I'm not critiquing any one particular person other than the way that the system like that is set up that makes it really challenging to create discovery-based inquiry-based learning, but how effective it would be, how cool it would be if everybody had a chance to interact with every subject like that, just going through from an inquiry-based, you know, curiosity-based way of approaching learning and being a growth-minded learner in our world. Yeah.

I got, after we're done, I got a ton of books I'll send you. They're all audiobooks. One of one that talks about this is a guy named John Taylor Godo, and he was like, have you read that guy's stuff? Wow. I don't know. No, maybe. Oh, I'll send it to you.

Don't worry. And it's, it's fascinating. He was like teacher of the year for like five years running in New York, I think. I think up, maybe upstate New York or something. And he's taught it like these really prestigious schools. And he just got fed up with all the politics. He's like, I'm going to go teach it like the worst school. And so they're like, yeah, good luck with that.

But he goes to like the worst school. And he figures out. You. Yeah, totally. He's one of us. He's like, oh, yeah? Okay. Let me show you this.

And he figures out that like, you know, there were kids that were having gun violence. And he, like, brings the kid. He's like, one of the kids brought a gun to school. And he's like, you know, that thing works. They guys like, yeah. He's like, well, let me see you draw it out then. Kids like, tries to draw it out.

And he's like, not really. Let me show you how it works. And he's like, how would you make it better? You know, and like, he started giving kids time off. Like, look, I want you to build a business. And kids like, I don't know how to do it. And he's like, well, congratulations. Nobody does when they're your age.

What do you want to do? And the kid was like, I want to, I want to be able to like, build a swimming pool gym. And he's like, well, how would you do that? Because I don't know. And he's like, okay, well,

here's what you're going to do. Every day, instead of coming to class, you're going to go down to the water gym down there. And I want you to take notes, start talking to people. At the end of the week, you come back here and you tell me what you learn.

And he did this for like the whole class. He ended up getting in trouble because like the principal came in like, where all the kids at? He's like, they're on a fact finding mission. But like all the kids, it's such a beautiful book. And like,

the guy just really talks about teaching and how, You know, it's not that every now and then we find an Elon Musk in the populace. It's that we, everyone's an Elon Musk in the populace. Just they've never really had the ability to have it brought out because they haven't had the time or they haven't had someone believe in them enough or, you know, there's a lot of maybe not everyone's in Elon Musk, you know. But I mean, there's a lot of genius out there that's not being fed. And when that happens, when we stop feeding the genius, we're left with poverty. because we're not feeding the farm around us. There's a quote that says, you know,

if you're a farmer and you have 100 acres, but yet you only farm one acre, you shouldn't blame anybody for not getting the yield. You have 100 acres and you're only using one. It's the same with the people in the country you live in. Like, everybody's a potential acre of land that could be producing beautiful fruit or something. And they're just not given the opportunity, I think, in some ways,

whether the opportunity is education or something like that. Sure. I think, you know, as I'm, like, I'm sure as a listener, like listening to the gun story would have to like, what, are you kidding me? Like, like, for no mark of saying, like, condoning anything that he did one way or another. Right. Just to say what, you know, to your point about maybe not everyone's neon must is that does everyone have to be? And like, just the point being that there's a vast. amount of untapped potential.

Whether you're at an Elon Musk level, if we're going to try to objectively say that that's a very high top level, or you're at an Einstein level, or you're at a Mozart, whatever you're going to use as you're like, try to make an objective standard. Just look at ourselves and understand there's so much untapped potential in ourselves.

I know there's so much untapped potential in myself. And I would love if the people around me also saw that instead of writing it off to every other excuse because anxiety because of external social insert insert excuse um just there's so much untapped potential and if we did have the time and the tools and the mentorship and someone to help look over our shoulder and help us get a little bit closer or take the next step on our personal path or on our personal journey in our own development one step closer towards that potential how much more we could all achieve. And it's just the one thing that keeps holding us all back is ourselves and our limited

view of ourselves. Yeah. It sounds to me like that's part of the heart in your podcast. The message that you're getting out to people is this idea of how to tap the untapped potential. And it's so, I like. Monard, you would say that. Yeah. Well, I mean, just listening to you, I get the, I feel the heart. But more than that, I can see, I can see. I can. can see it on a couple levels. Like you're talking to someone with more experience. Meanwhile, you're gaining their experience, but simultaneously mentoring other people. And that person that's that you're mentoring, they can see the different levels, the same way that you can see the different levels and the same way the guy above you can see different levels. But you just have different

perspectives of those levels. It's a beautiful chain of learning. It's a beautiful chain of education. And it kind of harkens back to classical times, I think. And right now more than ever, I think the world is in, you know, is changing. And it's really, I think it's really phenomenal. I'm grateful to get to talk to you because I think people that are wanting to change the world with your podcast, with my podcast, everybody out there that wants to change the world, you have a real opportunity to do it right now. And I think you'll find it very rewarding and beautiful.

And it'll change you in ways that you didn't know you needed to be changed for the better. It'll change your relationships. It'll change the way you see the world and change the way you think. I know we've been talking for quite a bit here, and I don't want to keep you too much on time, Rob. I've got a few things. I'm sure you got a couple of things coming up. But before I let you go, please tell people where they can find you, what you have coming up and what you're excited about. Most definitely.

And I'll say, first of all, I really appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation with you. Me too. Thank you. And on this podcast, like you said, people trying to change the world. It's the world is changing so rapidly. So the same methods that worked in the past are not going to continue to work. What got us here won't get us there. So I want to be a part of helping people realize that potential because I want to be a part of myself.

And anyone who's been in a teacher and a learner mode or on both sides of the equations for myself from having been a teacher and being in the lifelong learner seat, I know you're always learning in both situations. And so I am truly grateful. for the chance to learn on this podcast, for everyone that I'm with and have a chance to learn. I have my own podcast, which is Heart and Hard Work podcast. You can find it on Spotify, Apple. It's really designed for the people who want to ask those questions, want to have a chance to take a walk with extraordinary people, going through their process, sharing reflections and reflecting and growing together, asking questions of ourselves, looking on things that we,

I don't say, wish that we could have done differently, but just reflecting on our experiences so that we can make better decisions and show up as our teammates, leaders, and friends today. And so that's exciting me for the future as well as I'm going to continue having this podcast for years to come so that I can look back in the next 10 years, in the next 20 years and say, look how long I've been doing this for and how much better I've been getting at it. That's what's really inspiring me and lighting me up is not because I'm the best podcast host in the world or because I had all these opportunities because we're out here building it. We're rolling with it. We're changing with the world. We're growing.

and we're reflecting together. And that's all anyone can do. So to try to capture the spirit of that in the heart and hard work of someone in a 30-minute conversation while you're drinking, you know, having your drink in the morning, going for a walk, making your coffee, whatever it is. Like just taking a little bit of time to reflect and grow together, I think is what inspires me the most and just knowing that it's only the beginning. So I'm honored to have shared this experience with you.

Yeah, I'm grateful for it too. And I really enjoyed the conversation. And I think people will, if they enjoyed this conversation, then they're going to enjoy the conversation you have with your guest 10fold. And they should definitely check out the links. I got your LinkedIn and I have the hard and hard work podcast link in the show notes down there. And yeah, I will look forward to future conversations with you. Yeah, I'll look forward to welcoming you on an episode.

The challenge will be limiting it for time. But that's something that I can look forward to. You can look forward to. We can look forward to an episode together with we share some of those reflections. from your phenomenal experience, what it's been like on this podcast and just going through the stages of life. So that'll be excellent to share. I'm on.

Man, I'm super excited for it. So ladies and gentlemen, that's all we got for today. I really appreciate your time. Check out, Rob. Check out the True Life podcast. And we'll be back tomorrow with some more for everybody. Aloha.