Bursting the Happiness Bubble

Today I'm busting that happiness bubble. We've all been sold. If you're expecting 24/7 rainbows and unicorns, you might want to check your gps. Because sometimes we feel we're in the twilight zone. Let's not chase happiness. Let's chase meaning unifit sometimes means chasing our tails. Sometimes we're not happy because, well, we're just human. Life is tough. But don't worry, it's not all doom and gloom. The things that make life worthwhile bring us delightful cocktail of emotions. Happiness, love, joy, fear, shame, and even a bit of hurt. It's like a roller coaster, but with fewer safety regulations. Let's discover your personal values. They're like your life's gps. Instead of recalculating every time you make a wrong turn, they'll help you power through those moments when life feels like a game of whack a mole. Let's face it, if life were meant to be easy, it would have come with instructions and a remote control. I'm Curtis, my pal and human gps right over there. He's Joe. And we are dudes in progress. Hey, Joe.

Kurt Stone. What a shaking, my friend.

How you doing today?

All I want to do after that introduction is not drive you into a lake is a hilarious. I'm a big fan of the office. If I have a. If I have a favorite show, quote unquote favorite show, it's the office. At least once a week I watch a couple episodes. But there's one particular episode where this now understand when the office was made of. I guess the office is probably 20 years old now. Maybe, maybe not quite, but understanding when the office was made, GPS was first introduced. But Google Maps and GPS will still do this to us sometimes. Where Michael is with Dwight and they're trying to figure out how to get somewhere. The GPS is telling them to turn right and Dwight is trying to say, no, it's the right up there. And Michael is saying, no. The GPS is telling us to turn right right now. Michael, if you turn right, you'll turn right into the lake. Well, GPS is telling us to turn right and he turns right into the lake. It's hilarious. It's hilarious, man. Well, I appreciate the office.

Yes, that's a great one. He's so literal. That's not a time you want to do that. I know you won't drive me into the lake, Joe. I'm pretty confident of that. I think you're going to be very supportive of this one. This episode. I thought of you a lot as I was reading this chapter again. I've been reading a book called why Hashem? Nobody told me this before. I'm highlighting one of the chapters in that book from Julie Smith, and it's really about creating a meaningful life. Probably should have covered the movie meaningful life.

Every once in a while, you will latch onto something, and I can tell that you've really latched onto this book. So I'm excited for you, and I'm excited for what we're going to glean from you reading this book. And very likely, as it goes, I mean, if I latch onto something, typically you'll grab it and read it. And same goes here. I will. I'll certainly grab this book and give it a read.

This is a topic I have latched on, this whole idea of happiness, a lot of happiness philosophy books I've read through. So this was a different twist on it. I heard little whispers of Joe in my ear, though, as I was reading this. And she talks about, there is a problem with I just want to be happy. So she's a clinical psychologist dealing with folks on a day to day basis in therapy, but she's saying, be happy, Joe. Is it a fairy tale to chase constant pleasure and satisfaction with life?

It's interesting that you ask this question, because we talk a lot about our founding fathers. Right? We talk a lot about, how about history and american history and what is it in the Declaration of Independence? What's the phrase that they use in the Declaration of Independence?

Yeah. The pursuit of happiness.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Yeah.

Not happiness. There's some genius behind that, isn't there?

There's a lot of genius in our founding fathers.

There's one simple phrase, the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness. We're not guaranteed happiness. And I. The pursuit of happiness brings about contentment, I think, and I think that our founding fathers understand that and recognize that while we're not necessarily chasing happiness as a goal, that as we are pursuing meaning and therefore, what we think, what we may define as happiness isn't necessarily happiness. You know where I'm going here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Thomas Jefferson was getting that, of course, in that document that the government shouldn't get in our way of.

Right.

Our pursuit of whatever we want, that liberty.

Exactly.

Happiness is one of those things. But we're often sold the idea that happiness is the norm and that anything outside that could be a mental health problem. So she's saying that's like a problem, if that's what your thermostat is set at, that I should always be happy. Sometimes we're not happy because we're just human and life is difficult.

Do you have anybody in your life, Kurt, that when you see them, when you interact with them, when you engage with them, they're just always happy, though? They always seem to have this happiness, this sense of contentment about them, this sense of they are fulfilled right where they are somehow, and they always are a positive impact on whoever they're around.

You and I had a wonderful conversation earlier this week. Our previous episode will be how you can build your personal community. And you spent a lot of time asking me about the community I built with my podcast and the Disney geeks. That is one of the things that I noticed with them. They seem to have a real positive outlook on life. That's maybe a better way to describe it, instead of being happy all the time, right? Things that make life worthwhile bring us more than just happy feelings. They bring us a mix of happiness. You got all these feelings of joy and fear and shame, love and hurt sometimes, too. But getting clarity on our personal values can guide us on setting goals that will bring meaning and purpose. This is this. We've talked about value versus goals. This is the piece where I know it might have hit with you, Joe, because you have talked about your issue with goals, and you talked about value. Sometimes that word value is difficult for me to get my arms around unless I have examples. So we're going to do a little bit of that. But keeping our values front and center also helps us persevere through painful points in life, knowing we're on the right path.

I don't have a necessarily negative connotation about goals. If goals are the first step, then that's a problem in my life. I'll just speak for myself. We did our. I think our very first episode was goals versus values and how to establish values and what we talk about when we talk about goals versus values. And I'm not a fan of goals, necessarily. I am a fan. Establishing our values and our values can change over time. Our values are not set in stone. Our values can certainly change as we grow and as we mature and as we learn more. So identifying our values and looking to our values is the very first important step.

Yeah, and she does talk, just like you have about having a big goal is fine, but a lot of times when you accomplish that goal, you're done. It's not like it's contributing to that value that is the bigger thing that you're after.

If goals are first. So many times we, as social beings, we will latch on to somebody else's goal, and we will make that our goal without establishing our own values first, because we may be chasing after something that we really don't want, but because somebody else that we may like or admire or respect wants that goal or wants that thing we think we need to want that thing, that boat, that trip, that house, that bank account, that relationship, that person, whatever it might be. And unless we've established our values, Kurt, this is very important to me. Unless we've established our values, we are just at the whim of whatever goal we think is important in the moment.

Yeah. It's a fleeting accomplishment, that, right? Yeah. It doesn't add to your. The meaning of your life. So I love this relationship between value and goals. So I did go through this exercise that she has, and that's one of the parts of the book that I like. I like when books have action steps you can take or little exercises to do to think about these things. Evaluate your values first, and then those values lead to some goals you may be working on. And also, another thing we've talked about, how does that all break down to daily to day behaviors? And these are things that continue. Think of some of these goals is not just like a marathon that you run, and then after you do that, it's done. It's what is that health thing you're going after? Because if health, like, I put in my. Just to give you some examples, I think, again, examples are good for me. I read a bunch of hers and looked out on the Internet for others that I could relate to. It just helps me. Whatever. I'm trying to learn to have examples. So I did this. I asked Joe to do a little bit, too, and I found that hers were very similar to mine. I think one of them I read in the book was lifelong learner. We've talked about this. It is important to me. I love it when I'm doing courses. I'm watching YouTube and even producing this podcast. To me, this is part of my lifelong learning value, Joe. It's more important to me because of the things I research and that you share with me. These are goals to produce this podcast. And I always want to have some kind of course or something I'm learning that enhances my life. And I wrote down if I was going to add that to a day to day behavior. I'm really at my best when I'm doing at least 30 minutes of learning every single day. So that's my first one.

Yeah, I didn't. I have my values. And I struggle with goals because, okay, I can set a goal, but when I set a goal, it's. It's got to be very specific. It has to be, you know, I don't want to go down the whole smart goals thing or the action goals and all that other stuff, but when I set a goal, I have to know the end in mind. It's got to be specific. I have to know what I'm done. I have to know what I have to do. So it's. I can establish my values, and I think goals are important, but I'm not. These goals that I might talk about aren't necessarily goals in the purest sense in the way that I think about them. But I'll talk about my first value.

Yeah. What's your expectation?

My first value is a simple life, living a life unencumbered by unnecessary complexity and clutter, whether it's mental, physical, or emotional clutter.

That's a good one. That's the minimalist.

Yeah. That is a. I am at my best when I'm simple, when my life is simple, when what I'm doing is simple. I'm not talking about dumbed down, and I'm not talking about ignorance. I'm just talking about simple. I don't know who said this quote. Probably Mark Twain or some other historic figure that we quote a lot, but somebody said, I would have written a shorter letter had I had more time. Right. Think about it. It almost seems oxymoronic, right?

Yeah. Typical of. It.

Takes a lot of work to create something simple and clear and concise.

Yeah, it's a talent.

I tell you, when I get an email, and if that email is more than. More than a paragraph long, I'm probably setting it aside for. So if you want me to respond to an email, keep it simple and concise and clear.

Okay. True.

So that's one value for me, is to live a simple life unencumbered by unnecessary complexity.

Would there be a goal or a day to day behavior behind that?

I struggle with this a little bit. If I were to set a goal, that would be the goal. Right. And I know that's not really a goal in the purest sense. A day to day behavior is just ask myself, is this necessary?

Okay.

Is this necessary?

Yeah.

Or am I being impeded by my thinking, by my environment, what's around me?

This goes. Yeah. That's one part I was thinking. A day to day behavior is to keep your office clear of clutter.

Yeah.

That's important.

Yeah, absolutely. Keep my office clear of clutter keep things simple. It's almost like an underlying mindset.

Yeah. It's also, as you've talked about, saying no is important to you, the things that take up your time that aren't important to you. Yeah, I get it. That's a good one. I could have put that down. I don't. I don't know how many of these, now that I think about it. I know she talked about four or five. I think I put down six. Not sure how many is the right number, but I like that one, too.

I don't know either. But I will tell you this. As soon as. When I saw your notes for today's show, as soon as I saw that you established some things, I immediately went. I immediately went past it and didn't look at it because I didn't want to be influenced by what you may have put down. Right.

Okay.

Because you're a person I respect and you bring value to my life, and I want to understand who you are and what drives you. And when I see. If I were to see your goals, I think, oh, that's a neat goal, too, or, that's a neat value, too. So I purposefully went through, went, scrolled quickly past it. I don't think I saw any of your goals. I think I saw something about taking a vacation, but that doesn't surprise me at all.

You're much better at this. Like I said from the beginning, I need examples. I struggle with that word values, and not for long. I get it once I get rolling.

But what I'm curious about is how close ours will be.

Okay.

I think, as humans, we all share some fundamental values. I'd be surprised if ours don't overlap somewhere. But go ahead.

Health. Now, this one came up recently, probably soon. It should have come up sooner than later, but my weight was starting to really bother me. I just felt overweight and lethargic and slow, especially as I was doing my walks. I'm thinking, Boyden, this would be a hell of a lot easier. I wouldn't be breathing so hard if I was down 20 pounds, 30 pounds. And I started working on that. This is, of course, a very common example of a goal to set. And I wrote down, lose 30 pounds to start, but it's also that weekly really focusing on the next kind of level of that, too. I didn't write here in my notes, but I was listening to a podcast talking about, hey, I just want to lose five pounds in the next two, three weeks. I think that's great. I like. I love when that number gets under, gets to something. Nine.

Yeah.

Instead of that even number, like, just under that one pound. Under is usually.

What's the new threshold.

Right, exactly. Ooh, that scale just changed. It's not. Yeah. I don't want to say what my number is, but, yeah, that's what. That's fun to do. But. And then really, that goal is to maintain that optimal weight. Now, that's a good goal. Right. That's a lifelong goal to be that person. How do skinny people think, Joe? I wonder what goes through their mind?

You know, that. That's interesting. My. My values weren't necessarily put in any kind of priority, so I will skip to health is one of my values.

Yeah.

And when I think about health, I think about mental and physical health both. Right.

That's a good point.

I want to have vibrant energy. Would I like to, in my mid fifties, have a six pack? That might be cool, but my kids love me, my wife loves me. Need to give her a little something to hold on to. My grandkids love me. My closest friends love me. I don't need to. I don't need to impress anybody on the beach. Right. But I do want to have vibrant energy when it comes to health, I want to have vibrant energy. But I know that when it comes to vibrant energy, the lighter I am, the more energetic I am. That's just the way it works. So I do have a goal here when it comes to physical health, and that's to have vibrant energy. And I know it when I see it. I know it when I feel it. I don't know how to measure it. I just know it's there. But I can measure weighing 170 pounds by December 31. I can measure that.

Yeah.

Now, and I'll let go you. I'm not going to share my weight right now, but I will tell you that I'm five six. So 170 pounds at five six isn't terribly thin. Right, right. But it's a healthy weight. It's a healthy weight. But also I want to maintain sharp mental focus. I want to have vibrant energy, maintain sharp mental focus, and be a certain weight. Now, I know what that's going to take and how I make. How I pull this into my day to day behaviors. Kurt is daily exercise is watching my calorie count. Think like a skinny person. I don't know what that looks like because I've never been a quote unquote skinny person. I can read about skinny people, but I think also skinny people have their own mindset and their own metabolism, and they don't have the, they don't have the hurdles that, that I might have. So I can't necessarily go down that road. But I do know exercising every day, keeping my calorie count to a certain number, and taking care of my mental health. And I know strategies to do that. Actually, taking care of your mental health and your physical health are so interconnected that physically, when you're healthy, you're more likely to be mentally healthy. And when you're mentally healthy, you have a better chance at participating in activities that will help you stay physically healthy.

I love how you added mental health there, which I didn't think about, but it's important to me, too, as we talk about that a lot, relationships, that's just, we've talked so much about that. We just had this community episode that Joe did such a great job on. Everyone knows our family's important, us, our friends. It's something that I need to pay attention to in terms I put down day to day behaviors like texting or phone calls, in person activities, and really to serve others. I really enjoy helping others, especially in my work. I put that in my work and contribution value also. But this is just so good, again, for a meaningful life. It's part of this chapter. It's a whole chapter on the relationships. But we've talked about this all the time.

So what's the label that you put on this value?

I call it relationships.

I have a couple values here that overlap what you just said because of how I focused on the values. So I'm going to use this one. I'm going to try to. It's interesting how much overlap we do have. One of my values is time with people I love. I want to spend time. And that means an annual family vacation. It means some of my goals. I want to keep an annual family vacation. I want to be more hospitable. I want to have people to my home more often for dinner or games or whatever it might be, personal hospitality. And I want to build and maintain deeper relationships. But more importantly, I want to spend time, not think about. But I'm talking about time almost, I think. Matthew Kelly I'm trying to think of how Matthew Kelly, the author of Rhythm of Life, put it. It was like unscheduled, unencumbered time where you're not like quality time versus quantity time. You remember that old thing from the eighties? I'm not spending a lot of time, but it's quality time. Quality time is quantity time, right. You can't build deep relationships with your kids in two minutes a day.

Yeah.

So one of my values is time with people I love.

That's a good way to put it. I knew you'd be better at this than me.

Quite honestly, Kurt, you're one of those people I like this time that we spend together.

Agreed. I talked about my low mood that I was having because I had no vacation planned, and Joe understood that. So I put play and leisure is part of my values. It just. It just is that balance in my life. I even wrote down work life. Balance has always been important to me. If I've ever been in a job where they are overworking me, I am not happy. I feel cheated. I don't like to feel cheated. I like it should be a balance. Luckily, I work for a place that does value that also. And talk about our vacations, but I love going to shows. We talked about things that we do with our kids. It's always in our win for the week. And I even wrote down, this one's been at me for a long time. What if I lived near a resort area now? It could be Disney world. At least I talked about that, being in the. The wintertime as a snowbird. Or it could be near a beach, because I do love beaches, too. To get out and just walk that beach. I was really jealous seeing Joe taking pictures of the sunrise in North Carolina. So that's something that's always. Of course, that's where my podcast came from. But to always have a future vacation planned is definitely one of my behavior that I wanted to practice.

So this is somewhere where my values have changed. Kurt, I used to think, okay, I'm going to spend a few months a year down in Florida or some other nice, warm place. But because I value time with the people I love, I'm not sure I want to do that. I don't know. I'm not sure I want to spend that much time away, that far away from my grandkids and my kids and the personal connections that I have. I'm not sure I want to do that anymore. I'm not sure that's one of my values. One of my goals is to have that resort life somewhere. And it used to be. It used to be one of my. One of my goals, but I don't think I have it anymore. I definitely like vacations, and I'm not sure how I would engage that with my values. So I don't really have that as a value as time off or travel. I don't know how you worded it there. Maybe I could look back at your list here and figure it out. Play and leisure. Yeah, I definitely value playing leisure, and I can shimmy it into several of these places, but I definitely value play and leisure. But I would say my next goal, and I'm not sure if this should be under financial or. But it has its own goal. Intimate generosity. Now, this is something that I've really thought about, what motivates me. Intimate generosity. I want to give more money and time to human beings. Now, that may sound like a weird way of saying it, but I, and I want to be intentional about it. I'm not motivated by giving to the United way. I'm not terribly motivated by even writing a check to my church or writing a check to whatever cause that I like. I really like to give money to human beings. I like to. I'd like to overtip a server. I'd like to. I'd like to help. Help a friend take care of something if somebody is down on their luck. I like to anonymously give to a person. This is a new value to me that I've lived out, but I've recently identified, is intimate generosity giving to human beings. Now, listen, we need to give to institutions. They do a lot of good. We can think of a wide variety of charities that do a lot of good, including our local churches or whatever. We need to give to those institutions. But that's not what motivates me. Where I get more fulfillment is intimate generosity. Giving time and money. And that, that may sound cold just to say money, but, man, thoughts and prayers are cool, but sometimes you got to write a check. Dude, I love how you so intimate generosity is one of my values.

Yeah, it's very fulfilling. Makes a meaningful life when you feel like you're giving, especially when you're really close to the situation. No doubt. Great explanation there. I got two more. I'm going to talk about financial security. Well, Joe's giving me more. I think we see eye to eye on many things. Financial security. My list is growing. Thanks, Joe. In order for me to live a meaningful life, I got a lot of work to do. Financial security is always that thing that's always been a part of my life. I'm in a different season now, and that is a great thing to say. Definitely reevaluate your values depending where you are in life. With Joe and I, we both, our kids are out of the house. I'm in this season where retirement's around the corner, and it's always been there, but it's getting to be closer and more real and something I want to focus on to have some financial security after I'm doing the day job day in and day out. I do love my side hustles, and those are important to me. It'd be great to have some extra income in retirement that comes from something productive, like work or a side business that just adds extra income. But there's all. This is an area that I don't do a lot of goals in terms of the to do list. I feel like I let these things slide too long. So if I'm doing those things, it does feel good. But there's a bunch of to do lists that I need to work on in that space. And I love doing the little business things, too. But financial security is important.

We've what I've covered so far in my list, simple life, intimate generosity, time with people I love, and health, physical and mental. So I have two more, Kurt, and the. This next one is something that, if you've labeled yours financial security, then we are exact. We identified the exact value. At least we've labeled it that way because my. I have financial security as one of my values as well. I definitely want to excel in my current job. I want to make sure that I'm doing what I need to do to bring in money right now in my current job, but also, I want to. I need to continue. And I've done some stuff for this and built a little bit of a. I don't want to call it nest egg, but let's just call it a nest egg. And I've started that process. You and I have talked a lot about that over the past, but I want to secure my retirement, and that's not necessarily having this big pile of cash to work from, but I want to do work that I enjoy. I want to do work that I enjoy and can do it anywhere. So if I do want to spend a month down in Florida, I can do that. I want to look into real estate. I think for hundreds of years, real estate has been a financial vehicle that has provided a lot of security and a lot of cash flow. I guess you could say, I want to look into real estate, and I also want to look into helping people start businesses and become an owner in those businesses. This is an idea that I'm playing with because I have people that come to me regularly that say, hey, I want to start this little small business. And how do you think I can do that? Joe? And I give them some foundational advice, but I think I want to be able to take that deeper, Kurt, and say, okay, let's do this together. I'll help you build this business. Now, I can help you build this business. And my compensation would simply be I'm a part owner of the business, 10%, 20%, whatever it might be. And if I have a lot of those small businesses that I'm a part owner in, and I can provide advice and guidance, because I've owned a few small businesses in my life and I, all of them have been relatively successful. My problem is I just got bored and. But financial security is important to me. I want to. I'm close to retirement as well. You and I are within a few years of each other, and that is coming fast. And I want to make sure that I'm well positioned not to retire, not to sit around and just watch tv all day long, not to retire in the purest sense, but retire in the sense of I'm doing what I want to do, when I want to do it, how I want to do it.

Yeah, you sum that up perfectly as we've shared those same sentiments. And that's all related to what you just said. Working, contribution, contributing, that's 80% of my life is the day job. But I enjoy my work. I enjoy serving and helping people. I enjoy learning all of my, a lot of my values, quite frankly, it's awesome that they're built into my day to day work and I enjoy excelling. I get such satisfaction helping people. I'm doing some, we're doing a two day seminar next week at work. I'm going to go into Hartford and be there for both days. It's an enterprise event and I am speaking at that. And I'm also helping out with a couple of other booths. So trying to help people with automation using the office 365 platform. I have specialty, as we've talked about in that area, and I'll be sharing that. It's amazing that we. I was in a meeting yesterday. I couldn't believe some of the questions that were coming out from people that are part of this effort that didn't know some things. And I. Oh, my mouth almost dropped of things that they. That are available to them. So this is an area I could do this, I could do this type of work. Like you said, work from home for forever, even when I retire from the day job. Yeah. Work and contribution is a big value on my values.

So far, Kurt, I've done simple life, intimate generosity, time with people I love, financial security, health, both physical and mental. And I just have one more. I don't know how many more you have but I just have one.

I'm done.

Okay. My next belief is personal growth. I want to. I want to be a person that continually challenges my beliefs and what I, not what I hold fundamentally dear. But I don't mind being challenged. I don't mind being thinking whether or not I'm wrong. And I want to. And that helps me grow. So personal growth is very important to me. I want to make sure that I'm always reading some kind of personal development book being some kind of personal or professional growth. Right. But mainly learn and challenge my own beliefs about many things. I'm not talking about necessarily faith based beliefs, but my faith based beliefs have changed in some ways over the years. The foundational belief in Jesus Christ has not. But how I express that faith. But I'm also talking about how I look at the world and how I look at people and the things that I think are important in life. I want to be somebody that grows, that is always growing, always learning, always understanding more about life and about things and about people and about this universe that we live in. I know that sounds broad and. But personal growth is very important to me. To be somebody that continues to grow.

I think we share that value, too. I started out with lifelong learner, but I like how you said challenge your beliefs. That's a little different than what I was going for. I love the challenges of learning new things. I think that's where a lot of my meaning for my life comes from, which was the whole purpose of that exercise. If you want some help with this, Joe and listeners, there's some questions to consider. I'll just give you a few as an example. If you're going to look back in the next chapter of your life and feel proud and content of how you face life challenges, how would you be approaching daily life? What would you be doing daily? If you're living your meaningful life, what would the next chapter look like? If your answer to try to focus on your own choices, actions and attitude, not other people or events that are out of your control. Try to consider how you would approach life. Whatever happens, what do you want to stand for in your relationships with yourself, your health, your personal growth? As we talked, what is important to you about these? What kind of person do you want to be for the people in your life? How do you want to interact with them and contribute to their lives? Seems like these are all questions we were answering, Joe, for ourselves and our values. How do you want people to feel in your life when you are around? What do you want to represent in your circle of friends and family. I love this one. I think about this one. Not enough, but I think this is great. I like seeing, like you said, that person that's always happy. Why not be that person? At least when you interact with each other, if you only get to live once, what impact do you want to have while you are here? If no one knew how you spent your time, will you still be doing this as you move forward through this day or this week? What is one value that you will be? You'll try to bring each choice in action. Examples might be today I choose to bring enthusiasm, courage, compassion, curiosity to each experience. So choose and then do the action. I'll do it by maybe the end of the week. Something like that. Good things, good questions to reflect on the.

Yeah, these are good questions. Man. When I think about our values. When I think about my values, I'm not sure if there should be a hierarchy of values. Right. Like the most important thing. And I think if you have a hierarchy of values, you may have too many.

Yeah.

If you have to start listening, listing them from most important to least important. Now, I'm not sure what to do with this thought that I'm in right now about the hierarchy of values, but in my pursuit of a simple life, unencumbered by unnecessary complexity. Gosh, if I have a list of ten values, I'm not sure that's. I'm not sure. The simple life jives with a list of ten values. Right.

I have an answer for this.

Go ahead.

In the book, she draws a five star, five pointed star with each value there. The exercise is to rank all of your values. Now, there would only be five on this star, but give them a rank from one to ten, with ten being the one. Yeah, I really feel like I'm living this one. So you wouldn't really have to focus on it, because you're already doing it. Right. It's a habit that you're already doing.

Right.

But if you got one that's a seven, maybe that's the one you focus on to try to increase the activity there.

Boy, I love that, Kurt. Because it doesn't necessarily rank your values in a hierarchy as the most important to least important. It ranks them as what do you need to work on?

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

I might think that I may have a value of intimate generosity, but I may be already doing that. But it's still a value of mine. But I may be already doing that in a certain level. But one of my values is also financial security, where I probably need some work. And another value, the health, where I probably need some work. So that's. I love that. So you're not necessarily ranking your values, but you're identifying those that you need to concentrate on right now. Like it a lot.

Yep. Get more balance in all the values that you hold dear. How do you create a life with meaning, Joe? As we've said before, simply having goals is not going to ensure that your life changes and stays changed. What does is the everyday details of your repeated behaviors that keep you moving forward in that direction. Does that ring to you?

It does.

Laughing. Because you say this all every week.

Taking your values into goals and then day to day behaviors, that's quite a task. That's nothing. That's not something that can be accomplished in a 30, 45 minutes segment of a podcast. It's quite a task, though, right? You need to really spend time, and I love habits. You know that. I love habits. I love developing habits. And if we can take our values and move them from day to day, not only day to day behaviors, intentional behaviors, but move those even further into day to day habits, where you are just almost automatically living your values. Wow, what an impact that can make.

That's the power. So when we decide it's time for a change, there can be a tendency to come up with a huge, radical new goal. Simply having a goal is not enough to ensure your life changes, stays changed. Spending time thinking about and visualizing the person you intend to be and turning those ideas into concrete, sustainable actions can change how meaningful those efforts feel. Linking your intentions to your sense of identity allows the new behaviors to continue way beyond the initial goal. I think that's the goal right there. Linking your intentions to the sense of identity allows you the new behaviors to continue way beyond the initial goal.

When I first saw this subject, I thought, man, we've talked a lot about this, and I thought, okay, what value can we bring here? This was a great episode, dude. This really. It's almost timely for me, and I'll bet you it's timely for a lot of people to really establish, to look at our values and understand what our values are and take it further than that to our day to day, to our day to day behaviors, and think about what we can do today, to first establish our values and then start living out our values and keep them. I like what you did, Kurt, and I tried to do it here as well. I tried to keep the values themselves simple and clear and easily able to articulate. But, man, I really think this was a good show, dude. Thank you.

I thought you would. And it's not one of these things that you discuss once and it goes away. You really should reevaluate all the time. Thought it was fine to bring it up again, but even get more clarity around it. I felt like this did. So I'm glad you appreciate that. Now we like to have wins for the week. You have a win for the week this week?

I do. This week, the company that I work for celebrated our 180th year anniversary. 180 years. Think about that. That's before Abraham Lincoln was president. Isn't that amazing? 180 years.

That is amazing.

It's before the automobile. It's before the telephone. The company that I work for has been around for 180 years. And we, in that celebration, I was asked to give a tour of our facility of some of some folks that came to visit. So I took them through, I took these folks through our entire company, from sales and marketing to engineering to purchasing and product planning to manufacturing, throughout the whole plant and our whole facility. And there was some anxiety around this because, quite honestly, I was given this task. I wasn't even asked to do it. I was told to do it. So here, here's what you're doing, Joe, for our 180th anniversary celebration. And I gave that tour just yesterday, and it went very well.

I think that's quite an honor to be asked to do that. I'm sure you felt it that way, too. And what were they doing 180 years ago? Were they doing the same thing theyre doing today?

Not exactly. We had a different product line, but we have had the, for all intents and purposes, weve had the same product line since the early 19 hundreds.

Wow.

We were in a different market at the time. And then, as a favor to a friend, one of the founding, I think one of the founders of the company or founding partner, developed a new piece of equipment for this friend. And that equipment has been the has is the foundational equipment that we sell today.

I got you beating that. My company's over 200 years old, and we sold insurance to Abraham Lincoln.

You're a bragger. Yeah, it is. It's an old company. You're right.

Gotcha beat. That's, it's great to honor the heritage, though. My win is aligned with my values, my meaning in life. I'm down 19 pounds in.

Nice job, man. Nice job.

Feels good. Like my wife says, nobody can notice yet till you're down about 30 or 40 pounds.

No, I was going, for me this. I was going to tell you this. I can tell. I can tell in your face that you've thinned out just over video. Now, typically, I just see you from shoulders up or elbows up, but I can tell in your face that you've taken off some pounds. So that's good. Congratulations. And more than the pounds, I assume that at some level, you're feeling a little better, right? And even mentally to know. Even mentally to know that, hey, dag on it. I'm moving in the right direction.

Just hold 20 pound weight in your hand and think, that's what I was carrying around on my walks every day. And now I'm not.

Congrats, dude. That's awesome.

20 pound weight vest. Do you have a resource or tip or hack for us this week, Joe?

I do. I'm a big fan of Jordan Peterson. Twelve rules for life. Twelve more rules for life. And he's got one more book out. And he's, and he is. He's done some interesting faith based stuff as well. But I came across a video not necessarily put out by him, but he's the, he is the subject matter of the video. And it's a video of him talking. And it's how to improve yourself right now. And I would just invite you to go onto YouTube, click on. Just, just type in this, the search how to improve yourself right now, Jordan Peterson. And a couple videos will pop up. Pick any of those. They'll be good. But this particular video really just talks about identifying some of the simple things that you can do right now to improve your life and gain momentum. And it's a lecture that he's giving to a small group of people. And you can tell it's been around for a while, almost in a. He's almost, I think he's, it feels like a, maybe a college environment or college class environment, I'm not sure, but it's really good. How to improve yourself right now.

Can you think of one tip from that you could share with us? And I'm going to watch this morning.

It's the tip that, and I think this is in there. It's the tip that he always talks about, clean your room, look at your, look at the environment around you right now and say, how can I improve what's around me right now? Whether it's your desk, and I think he uses the desk as an example in this particular video. But how can you improve what your, what's in your physical environment right now? And if you need to declutter, if you need to clean up a little bit, start right there. And momentum is a magical thing, dude. Once you get momentum and you're able to latch onto it. That little piece of work of improving your physical environment somehow can give you momentum to do one more thing to improve your life.

I like that one. I did that this week. I had a bunch of receipts and papers all over my desk. I cleaned up a little bit. I got a little more to do, but does feel good. You put it off and then when you finally do it, it feels so good.

Sure.

Does my resource play fantasy football, Joe? I don't know that we've ever talked about that. I think it's something you would enjoy. I really rather new to this. I was invited to a league through work. So a bunch of people I work with brought me into the ESPN version of fantasy football. Some people say there's others that are better, like one of the guys that runs our league for work. And I. My gosh, I latched on. I really wasn't paying attention to NFL football. I kind of lost favor with it until I started playing fantasy football. There's so many aspects of this that enhance my life during the week. I analyze it. That's the person I am. I enjoy. We got the draft. I've been scheduling the draft. I'm running two other leagues and they are made up of ten. Each league has ten people, managers from my geek and community, so enhances that, too. And a little bit of a wager is there, too. And we give out prizes at the end of the year based on the, the funds that they feed into the beginning of the season. But it's, it's small, but it just makes it really fun. And I enjoy watching the games, watching the scores. There is some just close things to happen. There's a lot of rivalry going on. But, man, I'm really enjoying, and I have been for like five years playing fantasy football, which starts up in September.

I might give this a shot at some level. I know a lot of people who play fantasy football, but the people I know who play fantasy football, Kurt, they put a lot of time into it, dude. They put a lot of mental energy and they think about their draft and they do all kinds of research. And, man, I just don't know if I have that in me. If I can do something very simple. Again, leading a simple life, if I can do something very simple. Because here's what I know about me. When football season comes, I'm going to watch football. I'm going to watch football. So how can I increase my enjoyment of that, of that event, of that activity? Maybe it's fantasy football. I'll give it a shot. Maybe you and I offline will talk a little bit about how it works, but I've always avoided it, quite honestly, because I, when the people that I know that play it, man, they put a lot of work into it. And I'm not sure I have that time, energy and mental capacity.

I will encourage you to. Don't worry about that. And we've got people in. We have such a fun time with ours. Yeah, you can get obsessed with it. Are you on your phone a lot and checking what's going on week to week? And it can help, especially when your player gets injured and you gotta replace them and you're looking. The waiver wire is actually really fun. Who's available, who's doing well that no one expected, and now they're available and you can bring them onto their team. So there's a lot of that. But you could do it and still have fun. You don't have to be that close to it to still enjoy it, I think. So we'll talk.

I do like innocent, not minutiae, but innocent wagers. I'll give you an example. This happened the day before yesterday. I sent out an email to somebody, to somebody that doesn't respond to emails very well, and somebody else was in the room with me that understands that this person doesn't respond to emails very well. And I said, and I pulled out a dollar and I said, I tell you what, give me an over and under on when he will respond to this email. And it's just a dollar. And he picked 230, which means that he thinks he'll respond before 230. And I said, okay, I'll take that. I think he's going to respond after 230. And the guy responded at 215. I'm like, son of a gun. So I walked over to his office and threw the dollar on his desk and said, there you go. I do like fun. Innocent.

Yeah.

Meaningless kind of wagers like that. I do like to do that. Sometimes it's not money, sometimes it's, I'll buy you a donut or whatever it might be, or I have to. I have to clean your desk or something like that. I do that a lot, actually, at work to keep things light and fun. Well, maybe fantasy football will be my thing.

I would love to do another one. I don't know, talking about keeping my life simple. If I had four leagues, I don't know that my life would be simple anymore.

You're a nut, dude.

What's your quote for the week?

My quote comes from Steve Jobs and I like the way he thinks here. And this won't surprise you, especially considering one of my values. Steve Jobs said, of course, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, and he passed away several years ago, but he was considered a genius of all sorts. And even his philosophical stance on things and his business acumen and his ability to provide beauty in value. Right. Steve Jobs says, I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do. I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do. Isn't that profound?

Yeah. And it's really fascinating coming from Steve Jobs, who, of course, accomplished so much in technology. Just incredible ingenuity, challenges that they solved, and the products that they created, that have created just millions of people who love their products. So the fact. I wonder what he didn't do, right? Maybe someone else could build a company of all the crap that he didn't do.

And the thing is, they. It's not that they weren't marketable or they wouldn't provide. There wasn't people who might buy it, but it didn't match his values at the time, the values of apple at the time. And so he said, okay, does this match our vision? Does this match our values? Does this match what we want to accomplish? And if it didn't, he was very proud and very quick to say, no, I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do.

The thought leader and author, Simon Senick, talks about knowing what your why is, especially as a company, and obviously uses Steve Jobs and apple. So that's where I feel. If, like you just said, does this product match our values?

What?

Who are we? Because people latch on to why you do not what you do.

Mmm hmm. That'll preach right there.

Good stuff. My quote, the quality of your life is directly related to how much uncertainty you can comfortably handle. That's from Tony Robbins.

That's cool. And that's meaty right there. The quality of your life is directly related to how much uncertainty you can comfortably handle. Wow. I think I'm better at this. I'm better at ambiguity than I used to be, that's for sure. How about you?

For me, it really speaks to when you look back at a meaningful life, the things you're gonna be proudest of are those things, those challenges that you overcame. You had uncertainty. It wasn't comfortable at the time, but you not only got comfortable with it, but you handled it and you overcame. It's not those times that you breeze through things and that things were easy. It's those times when it was uncertain and it was hard and it was tough. It was stressful. You embraced that. You looked at it as an opportunity. You were growing and getting past it. Those are the things when you're uncomfortable.

And you're uncertain, you're moving forward anyway, right? And you're moving forward any despite being uncomfortable or despite being uncertain and unclear of what maybe ahead, you're moving forward anyway. Good stuff.

So the idea is if you're feeling a little uncertain about something, embrace that. Figure out how you could bring that certainty back, because that's something he talks about, certainty and uncertainty. Everyone's looking for a little bit of both in their life to make it exciting. Take us home, Joe.

Of course. Our website is dudesinprogress.com dot. Dudesinprogress.com dot. If you want to reach out to us and discuss this show or any show that we've done or you have a subject that you want us to talk about that's important to you, heck, we might even have you as a guest on the show to explore that subject. Email us dudes in Progress.com, dudesudesinprogress.com and as we wrap up this week and we think about our values, we don't have to be hard set in our values, right? I think our values are always a work in progress. I know as I look at my values, Kurt, they've changed over the years. They're always a work in progress because progress is better than perfection. We got to keep moving forward.

Yeah. Start by doing what we did with this exercise. Evaluate, take a look at them, set some goals, but also keep doing them every day. We'll try this and do a better job next week, Joe.

We sure will talk to you soon, my friend.