How to Stop Avoiding Hard Conversations ft. Sahil Bloom

What if the life you’re rushing through right now is the life you’ll one day wish you could get back? Sahil Bloom joins me to talk about our complicated relationship with time—and what happens when we’re so focused on what’s next that we miss what’s right in front of us. We talk about success, relationships, breaking our addiction to our phones, making better decisions with our time, and learning to appreciate the season of life we’re actually in. If you’ve ever felt too busy, distracted, or like life is moving faster than you can keep up with, this conversation is for you. Buy Sahil’s book https://the5typesofwealth.com/ Join me on Supercast for ad-free episodes, bonus content, and AMAs: https://jefferson.supercast.com/ Leave me a voicemail to be featured on the show! https://www.jeffersonfisher.com/ask-jefferson Order The Next Conversation Workbook: https://www.jeffersonfisher.com/workbook Thank you to our sponsors: ZocDoc. https://zocdoc.com/jefferson to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. Our Place. Visit https://fromourplace.com/JEFFERSON and use code JEFFERSON for 10% off sitewide. Cozy Earth. Upgrade Your Every Day. Get 20% off at https://cozyearth.com/jefferson or use code JEFFERSON at check out. BetterHelp. Click https://betterhelp.com/jeffersonfisher for a discount on your first month of therapy. Order my book, The Next Conversation, or listen to the full audiobook today. Like what you hear? Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a 5-star review! Suggest a topic or ask a question for me to answer on the show! Want a FREE communication tip each week? Click here to join my newsletter. Join My School of Communication Watch my podcast on YouTube Follow me on Instagram Follow me on TikTok Follow me on LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You know, when you were talking earlier about aging parents, do you have a different mindset that you've started to explore now that they're, he's now in his 70s?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the opening line of my book was about that, like, that single moment realization of recognizing that my parents weren't going to be around forever. You know, like, I went out for this dinner with, with an old friend and he asked how I was doing and I told him that it had started to get difficult living so far from my parents, 3,000 miles away. We were living in California, they were living on the East Coast, two of my best friends in the world. And he asked how old they were at the time, this is 2021, and I said mid 60s. And he asked how often I saw them and I said, about once a year. And he just looked at me and said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  And that was really the moment that changed everything on this journey for me.

• 1:04Speaker 00

  Wow, yeah.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  I think that recognition, when you place time in the context of these moments that are so easy to just rush by, is a really powerful thing. One of the most challenging things when it comes to parents in particular is this identity shift that you start to see happen where, as a child, you've built up this entire identity around your parents being the caregiver and you being the care receiver. That your whole mental model for your parents is that, right? It's like, my parents take care of me and for them, it's, I'm the care provider, I take care of my kids.

• 1:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  And then all of a sudden, your parents are in their 60s or 70s or 80s and it flips. And you are placed in a position where your parents actually need you. And that's very difficult on both sides of it. And it's something that we don't often talk about. Like, there is a, there's almost a grief associated with the loss of that identity in that relationship, that I perceive, of your parent feeling like they can no longer be the provider that they wanted to be and resisting that change. And then of you feeling like you need to flip a switch to be the caregiver, but you're so used to your parents taking care of you that it's really challenging to do.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I find that, I'm, I'm close with my parents and I love my parents deeply. And when I start to think, you know, every time I see them and they look, it could be just a month or so and they look just a little bit older, or my dad has a little bit more gray hair, or, you know, just things about their body are changing. It's hard for me to see that. Now, it's different a little bit, I think, for grandparents because grandparents in your mind have kind of always been old. You know, like, that's just for my kid. And seeing that, but then knowing, I'm at a stage in life now, and I know you and I are in a similar spot,

• 3:10Speaker 00

  where I am now old enough to remember, like, my son is eight. How old are your kids?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Four.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, so my, you only have one or two?

• 3:21Speaker 01

  One so far, hopefully more soon.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Well, let me tell you what, if you're going for two, buckle up.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  I just want to stack them up and I want, like, I want five.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. Hey, more power to you, man. I see, if I see somebody with three kids in a grocery store, I'm like, you're, you're insane.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  You kind of lose your, you forget how hard the early years are when they get like a little bit more independent. And so I feel like we've passed the PTSD phase and now we're just like, oh, we should have a bunch of kids.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, because it's so, everything's wonderful. Yeah, well, it's still fresh on our minds, I can promise you. Of knowing that my son is eight and I remember being eight and thinking my dad was everything. He knew everything, could do everything, they were taking care of me. And now I'm at that age and realize, man, I don't know squat. And now looking at my grandparents, who, some of them are still living, my parents. So, I think you're right, I don't know what we call that, of knowing, this, this different kind of awareness, like, our, the, the blindfolds off to be able to see that age is really just a number. Because there are people out there who would say, we're old.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  And I, I am, for me, I, I think I struggle with the idea of my parents getting old. And I'm not sure exactly why, why that is. I'm sure it's not wanting that to happen. At the same time, I get sad seeing my kids old, but we keep going, we keep going that way. So what have you, what have you learned in, in some of the other statistics or things that you've done in, through your walk that have gained some light on, you know, how many times we're going to see that parent or how many times we're going to be, have summers with kids or anything like that, that you're taking to heart in your, in your world?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  You know, I think there's the two sides of this, right? There is the aging parent side, which we talked about, that moment of realizing how few times I had with my parents. And then there is the juxtaposition of that with this period of having these young kids in your life. And the truth with children and the statistics around this is a terrifying one. I did this research for the book, I went through the American Time Use Survey. It's this incredible, rich data set of tracking how people spend their time over the course of their lives. And one of the things that we looked at when we were looking at the data was how much time you spend with your children over the course of your life. So on average, looking at Americans, how much time are we spending with our kids at different periods of our life?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  And what you find is that 95% of the time you have with your kids is over by the time they turn 18. 75% is over by the time they turn 12. It's terrifying. You see it in a chart form, it's like, all of the window that you have with your children is in this very, very short period of time.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  I don't like that, I don't, I don't like that at all.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  You don't like it one bit?

• 6:24Speaker 00

  No, I don't like it.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Because the truth is, there is a 10-year window when you are your child's favorite person in the entire world. And after that, they have new favorite people. They have their own best friends, they have boyfriends and girlfriends, they eventually go off and have partners and spouses of their own, they have kids of their own. You never occupy that same place in their world. And yet, that 10-year window is yours, but it often coincides with the period of your life where you are told to go and chase every single more that the world has told you that you should want. Go and chase every single professional ambition, every single new hobby,

• 7:10Speaker 01

  every single thing that the world is pushing you to go after. And for a lot of people, that chase for more, that external pressure that they fall victim to, comes at the expense of one of those 10 years of time, or of five of those 10 years of time. And you blink, you wake up, you're 50 years old, your kids have moved on, and you wonder what happened. My entire goal, as I sit in the middle of that, my son is four years old, is just to wrestle with that tension, to help navigate that balance of where I want to fall on that tension between presence and ambition.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Like, the answer cannot be, I'm gonna quit my job, just do nothing but be present with my kids, right? We have to provide, we also do want to go and chase our ambitions, go and do things in the world. It's important for our kids to see us working hard on things we care about. That's a critical lesson for them to learn. But there is some balance somewhere in the middle. It can't be all one or all the other. So being able to ask yourself that question, to actually wrestle with that tension in your own life of how do I want to show up during this magical window of 10 years that we have? That is where I am currently at in my life.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  What can we do to be more present at a time where we're wanting to be most ambitious and at the same time, be most present with our, our kids and loved ones?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  For the vast majority of people, the answer to that question is to slow down.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  The vast majority of listeners, people that are trying to learn, improve themselves, they're highly ambitious people. They're high performing, they're doing great in their work, or in their job, or in their life in some way, and they're wired to go and push harder, to do more, to go like, speed run from here to whatever future that they're trying to create. And when you do that, you may accomplish a lot of those things, but at what cost along the way? That's the question that you need to ask. What is the cost of that? What have I missed out on? What have I said no to by saying yes to all of those new things? And so the answer for most people is insert these tiny acts of slowness and presence into your life.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  What does that look like?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Leave your phone in a lockbox for the one hour that you get with your family every day. Literally put it into a different room. Don't have it on you. It can be as simple as that. I think there is more benefit to be had from simply being present during that short window of time that you might get every single day than in trying to expand that window. The default for a lot of people is to say, I currently only get this 30 minute window with my kids because I'm working this job and their school schedules and all these things. That's the problem to be fixed. The 30 minutes needs to be longer. That may not be possible, depending on the season of life you're in. What is possible is the energy and presence that you bring to that 30 minutes. And usually, the greatest barrier to that energy and presence is this thing that we carry around in our pockets every single

• 10:20Speaker 01

  day. The single most dramatic life improvement I have ever had was from breaking my addiction to my phone.

• 10:28Speaker 00

  How do we break the addiction to our phones?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  There are really three things that I did to break my addiction completely in the course of 30 days. Number one was I bought lockboxes on Amazon. Super, super cheap.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  Like boxes you can put in?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Literally a lockbox that I would just put my phone in and lock it, so that it was physically separated from my body.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Is it like timed lock?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  It can be timed, or a code, or anything. I mean, it's like a $30 thing on Amazon. And for me, I needed a physical implement because I was not good enough. It was so commanding. It's sort of hold over me, that if it's sitting out, and I see it light up, I'm grabbing that thing to go and look what's going on. So I bought lockboxes. And the second piece was a rule attached to that, which was, I created what I called no phone zones, which were windows of time during the day when I wasn't gonna have my phone on me. So for me, that was deep work in the morning, and it was family time in the evening. And what I said was, during those windows, phone goes in lockbox, and it's set away.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  It's not gonna be on me at all. And then the third and final thing is, put your phone on grayscale mode for at least 90% of the day.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Grayscale?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a simple accessibility feature on the iPhone. It's like color filters within accessibility features, and you can quickly toggle it on and off. Basically, it makes your whole phone show up in gray, which kills all of the naturally addictive color palettes that they've created. Like, all of these companies have teams of behavioral science PhDs, whose entire jobs are to make them as addicting as possible. That includes things like the colors and the notifications, all of those things. Grayscale mode kills all of that, so your phone literally just looks gray, and it makes you much less likely to do the kind of just check that you constantly do. It's boring. It's not quite as interesting to look at.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Imagine playing Candy Crush, and it's all gray.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  You make your phone more boring. Now, all of a sudden, you're not as interested in looking at it. You're more likely to show up for the thing that's right in front of you. All of that goes to say, you can very quickly create these tiny interventions that make it just a little more likely that you're gonna show up for the in-person interaction in front of you. And if there's one thing I've learned from all of your work, it's the importance of showing up slightly 5%, 10%, 15% better for that one interaction, and the compound effect that that can have over a long period of time.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  You'd much rather have like, a very concentrated effort, rather, you know, even one hour versus seven hours of highly distracted time with your kids. Because I can tell you, I truly am worried of the future of these, this generation that's gonna be in a therapy chair and say, my parent, all I saw was the back of their phone. You know, they cared about their phone more than me, and here I am saying, look at me, watch me, watch me do this, that. And instead, there's, one second, maybe just a minute, let me finish this. Just one minute. And I wonder what kind of effect that's gonna have. Before we keep going, I'm gonna take a moment to tell you about, you know it, Cozy Earth.

• 13:36Speaker 00

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• 14:20Speaker 00

  use the code Jefferson to get 20% off. And now, let's keep going.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  I was on a vacation with my wife and son recently, and we were at, we were at the pool at this, this beautiful hotel in Napa. And I was sitting there, and I was finishing up some work before getting to hang out with them. And I was looking out at the pool, and I saw this amazing scene play out of, there was a woman with her child, and her kid was trying to call her, and she was on her phone scrolling on social media. And then I saw my wife in the pool, like soaking wet, makeup all destroyed, like playing, jumping around with my son. And I just had this flash forward almost moment of like, 20 years

• 15:10Speaker 01

  from now, who is gonna have a better chance of having a close, loving, deep relationship and bond with their child? Like, is it the person who's passing the time scrolling on Instagram, looking at other things? Or is it the person who's getting soaking wet, ruining their makeup, sitting in the pool? It made me really proud in a lot of ways of like, the type of person that I feel like my wife is, and what she's doing and prioritizing. But it's also a recognition that like, it's very hard to do that, because these things are commanding. I mean, I feel it all the time. Like, if I have my phone on me, I'm taking it out. No matter what. And I am someone that selfdefines as being present, as being like, loving, connected. But if my phone is in my pocket, it is going to pull on me.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  I mean, there is clear scientific evidence that if I even have my phone out on the table in front of us, you and I are gonna leave that conversation feeling less connected. The draw that it has on our attention, our cognitive energy is literally pulled by it just sitting on the table, not even me touching it.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. I wonder how many people, you know, it's gonna be on their tombstone, it's just gonna say, I didn't wanna get my hair wet. You know what I mean? Of, I would have, sorry, I would have wanted to have a great memory with you, but, you know, I was, I was busy responding to an email, I was busy doing this. I didn't wanna get my hair wet, I didn't wanna, whatever. And in comparison, that adds up to a lot. I think that's gonna, see, when I hear about all this, it makes me think of all the people that I hear when there is family estrangement, when there are big, difficult conversations that started back

• 16:53Speaker 00

  when they were, back when they were kids. I want to kind of go back for a moment, and ask, ask the question, what are practical things that we can do to make sure that we're making the most of our relationships with our parents as they get into that older phase of life?

• 17:17Speaker 01

  I think one of the most challenging things to do with your parents, and most important things as a result, is to have the conversation about that shift in identity. About that shift from being caregiver to care receiver. That's a conversation that I think a generation ago, never happened. And I think the biggest reason was, there was a lack of vulnerability and openness around that vulnerability that existed particularly with men. The idea of my dad opening up about the way that he's feeling about his health changes, about his aging, is very difficult, naturally to him. Because he's born in the

• 18:02Speaker 01

  50s, he comes from a generation where like, men, no, you tough it out, right? Put your head down, you just keep working. You, as the child, being the one to actually prompt having that discussion, and to plan for it, to plan for that transition, to talk about how each person can show up in those relationships and with those shifts happening, that I think is the most important thing that you can do.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Because no one is going to naturally do it. It's not something that's going to just happen seamlessly. It only comes through having the uncomfortable conversation. And it's the truth that life gets better when you do uncomfortable things sooner. Across all things in life. That conversation is not going to get any easier if you avoid having it. If you brush it under the rug, time doesn't heal anything when it comes to relationships. So either you have that conversation now, or you're going to end up paying a big debt burden, if you will, later.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  I'll tell you one thing I've noticed when it comes to communication and older parents

• 19:11Speaker 00

  is that I find that they start talking more about themselves rather than asking questions about you. It's been a theme of what I hear about and what I, um, comes across my path and even what I have in my own family. And it's typically been when I reach down and have the conversation with my dad or my grandfather, who as soon as I get with them, they immediately starts talking about something that's happening uh, in their world that has nothing to do with like the kids or what's happening. And I typically find that it's because they want to feel relevant. They want to feel like what they're saying matters. They want to feel like they're kind of part in the game because I think it has a lot to do with the fact that they

• 19:57Speaker 00

  are feeling like life is kind of passed them by in a little bit. And I have myself, I have missed out on the opportunity to ask them the very questions you talked about of. So what's, what's, what's it like? What, what, what's something you didn't expect getting older? Or did you ever think you were going to be this old or whatever? My grandfather just says, it's hell getting old, boy. That's all he ever says is to say it's hell getting old.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  It is, you know, it's. I had this conversation recently with my parents that a lot of the advice you get as you get older and as you start to experience the natural

• 20:41Speaker 01

  mental challenges of getting older, the struggles.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  A lot of the advice revolves around the past, meaning people tell you, but look at all the great things that you've done. Look at you raised great kids. You, you accomplished so much in your career. You did all these great things. They tell you to basically look at the past and feel gratitude for all these things that you've done, for all these memories, these experiences. The truth is that the past is not particularly helpful when it comes to happiness. In order to feel happy, you need to basically have two things. You need gratitude in the present and you need excitement for something in the future.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  People know about gratitude in the present. They know you need to wake up and feel grateful for the things you have.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  People don't often think about that second one. You need to wake up in the morning and feel like there's something in the future that you're excited for. And as you get older, it's harder to see those exciting things in the future. Because a lot of the things that you have considered to be given in your life are no longer guaranteed.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  You're not sure if you're going to feel healthy enough to go on that hiking trip in the Swiss Alps.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  You're not sure if you're going to feel healthy enough to go and do that outdoor activity that you love, to do the gardening, to go run the 5K, like all of those things that you have previously in prior seasons known of as exciting are no longer necessarily there. And so my guidance to my parents has been basically one phrase, which is squint harder. And what I mean by that is like, it's there. There are things that you can be excited about, but as you get older, you have to squint a little bit harder to see them. They're not going to be as obvious as they were in your younger years. That's part of getting older, but you are in control of putting things on the calendar that you're excited for, taking up those hobbies that you're excited about, putting the experience on the calendar, doing that,

• 22:39Speaker 01

  and then squinting a little bit harder to actually look out into the future and see it.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  I think that tracks because most of the time grandparents like to retell the same story over and over again. And it makes sense because things are tied to those memories and how they felt about the past. I do think it's a great idea to start asking them more of what they're excited about in the future, like what they have coming up. And I like to squint harder. That's just like, try harder. You keep, keep, keep, keep looking because you're going to find something.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  I mean, sometimes in life you have to squint, right? Like there are definitely moments when life beats you down, no matter what phase of life you're in. And you can certainly choose in those moments to see all of the chaos and negativity and lack of peace in your life.

• 23:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Or you can squint a little bit and identify those little glimmers that still exist. And I think as you get older, it is an exercise in doing that. The other thing scientifically, which we have to point out, comes from a recent conversation I had with Bob Waldinger, who is the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. It's this amazing study. It was done over the course of 85 years. They followed the lives of 2,000 plus individuals. Considered the longest running study on happiness in the world. And he's out of Harvard and the conversation we had was really revolving what makes people happy in old age.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  The number one trait that they found leads to happiness in old age is an outward turn to service of something bigger than the self. By far, people who turn inward, who focus on themselves, who focus on their own experiences, who focus on their own struggles are significantly less happy than people who find something to be in service of. Whether that's grandchildren, being an active grandparent, whether it's a community, it could be a religious institution. It's something those people always turn outward to service rather than to something that feels more selfish.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think that probably applies to everybody. I mean, I, I know there's a certain point where you know, giving starts to feel a lot like receiving where you're just continually being in the service of others and making you feel like you're part, part of something. Before we keep going, I want to take a moment to tell you about our place. I myself, I'm a big fan of things that make life a little bit more simple, and that's where our place comes in. I have been cooking, our place is a cookware. I've been using our place for almost two years now. And I'm telling you, I wouldn't use anything else. They have this pan called the always pan and I use it. I'm, I'm breakfast dad. So I make all the eggs, I do bacon, I do all of it in this pan. And you know how I upgraded my game? I got two of them.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  That's right. I have two of these things. And so it's fantastic and they're easy to clean. They're ceramic. There's not any of these harmful forever chemical things and we can just use them right there. They're fantastic. So if you're looking to upgrade your cookware game, look no further than our place. Go to fromourplace.com/jefferson, use the code jefferson for 10% off sitewide. That's fromourplace.com/jefferson. Use the code jefferson for 10% off. And now let's keep going.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  In all of your, I know you talk to a lot of business owners. I know you know a lot of people in the business world. What have you found to be some of the top?

• 26:18Speaker 00

  Let's say, what would be one of the number one things that a business leader can do to make sure that

• 26:28Speaker 00

  they don't put business over family?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  I always talk about this as understanding the real cost of your success. Like when people think about achieving success in life, the first things that come to mind, like what's going to be required are sort of what I think of as like the kind of the list price, if you will. It's like, oh, I need to work hard. I'm going to have to be disciplined. I have to do all these things, right? The real cost is all of that, plus the things you sacrifice along the way. And for a lot of people, they made a deal thinking it was just going to be what was on the surface. But then in reality, it was a whole lot more than that. They sacrificed much more than they meant to.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  The biggest way that you get out of that trap is to think about what are the trade offs that you are not willing to make? Call it like an anti-goal, right? Like I know my goal is to become the CEO, but my anti-goal might be spending 300 nights out of the year away from my family.

• 27:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Yes, I want to become CEO, but not if it means me being a zero present factor in my children's lives. I want to go achieve the goal, but here's my guard rail on achieving that goal. That's the first thing I would say. Make sure you're establishing those anti-goals on your journey so that you have those course corrections that you can make along the way.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  The second piece of advice that I think comes from the people that have done this most successfully, people like Michael Dell, he's one of the wealthiest, most successful business owners in the world, married to the same woman, great kids, close relationship with all of them, is make sure you are including your children in the why behind what you are doing. Make sure you are including your spouse in the why behind what you are doing. The reason that's so important is because in the absence of including them in that, what you create is this world where you have your work. And then whenever you're not at your work, you happen to be home. And the truth is that if you're a business leader, if you're a CEO, if you're building something,

• 28:32Speaker 01

  there are going to be periods of time when that equation is heavily skewed towards the work. You're really pushing on something, you're grinding. If your family is not included in the why behind that, they fill it with the worst version, which is dad just doesn't want to be around, or mom just doesn't want to be around. They're just, they're just focused on themselves on doing this thing. When the truth is usually far from that. The truth is that you're trying to build a life for the people that you care about. You're trying to serve people through your business. You really care about it, the mission, the vision. When you include those people in the why, it becomes like a turbocharger for the entire vision of what you're trying to create. You're able to show up in both of those worlds much more effectively.

• 29:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  And when you leave, when you're away on that trip, your kids know that they're a part of that thing. It's part of the life that they're trying to build.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  What's been one of your favorite conversations that you've had of somebody you look up to? Cause I know you've, you know, I know a lot of your stuff that you have on Twitter and social is you talk to a lot of people that you look up to. So what's, what's been one of your favorite conversations?

• 29:39Speaker 01

  I recently had a conversation with Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, who has been a mentor and friend for over a decade now. And the conversation was in conjunction with him announcing that he was stepping down from this role as CEO, which he's occupied for over a decade. And I was relating to him an experience from a handful of years ago that I had when I saw his name kind of listed amongst this like group of, of celebrities. And I told it to him, knowing that he would find it funny and he sort of laughed. And I asked like, how do you stay grounded as you've achieved more and more success? Like what keeps you from feeling, you know, that like natural puffing of the chest

• 30:23Speaker 01

  as you've gotten more and more successful? And what he said was this recognition that it's not about me. The people don't love me, they love the role that I'm in. They love the role that I occupy. And as soon as I'm not in that role, they're going to move on to the next thing. And I remember at the time being really moved by it as this idea of someone who has achieved what we think of as the pinnacle of success, who has the wisdom to separate their identity from that title, from that success that they're having. And that I thought at the time, that is someone who's going to be able to successfully navigate

• 31:05Speaker 01

  these transitions in their life, whenever they come, that these transitions that we all face. And so now seeing that transition and being able to have that conversation as he's navigating it, as he's able to go through that period gracefully, and as he shows excitement for whatever it is that comes next, it's not surprising to me because you were able to actually separate it along the way and on that rise. It's very similar to me to that concept from, I think it was Simon Sinek's book, Leaders Eat Last, which I don't know if you've ever read, but there's this story that he relates in it of the undersecretary of defense speaking at a conference. And he goes to this conference and he gets on stage.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  And I think at that, at this point, he's the former undersecretary of defense. And he gets on stage and he says, you know, last year I came to the same conference when I was the undersecretary of defense and they put me up first class. They flew me out here, they brought me in a nice car and they gave me this beautiful ceramic cup with coffee in it. I came through the backstage and out on stage. Now I'm back and I'm the former undersecretary of defense. I flew here in coach in a middle seat. No one was waiting for me. I came in through the side entrance. And when I asked for coffee, they gave me this Styrofoam cup. And the point that he makes to the audience is that you need to recognize that you were never worth the ceramic cup. You were always just this Styrofoam cup.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  And as soon as your role changes, the ceramic cup goes to whoever's in that role. It's like this idea, this lesson of never attaching yourself to these things that we are claiming as who we are, these, you know, sort of external material things in the world.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  And I think it's so important to just constantly remind yourself on these quests and on these missions that we're going on, that you are never defined by the things that you do, that you achieve, the titles, the names, all these things that the outside world places on you. You are defined by the people that you impact, these relationships, these things that you're able to go and create in the world. I, I have found a lot of wisdom in that on my own journey.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  I like that. I, I heard somebody speaking once that, um, they said something along the lines of legacy is not something that you leave, I think. Uh, it's something about legacy is not something that you leave out, something that you leave in. In other words, it's not what you leave behind in intangible form. It's what you leave inside of somebody. And that, that to me struck, struck a really good chord. When you turned 30, you spoke to, I think you said like 50 plus 90 year olds. What is the one thing that you've learned from that experience?

• 33:59Speaker 01

  It is very difficult to point to a single thing. I think one of the wisest pieces of guidance was I asked a 95 year old woman, what advice she would give to her younger self, to her 30 year old self? And she said, never fear sadness as it tends to sit right next to love.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  I don't think.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  That's so good.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  I don't think you can capture in a single sentence more of life than she did with those words. Because what it's a reminder of is the fact that the most beautiful things in life dance on this razor's edge with the most painful. Like you cannot hope to open yourself up to the full extent and texture and depth and richness of love without exposing yourself to the full depths of sadness of loss. And that applies to everything. You, you can't hope to go and achieve the greatest heights without the pain of the struggle of going and achieving that thing.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  That has impacted me profoundly in the years since.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Is there anything else that you've learned from that group? I know I said one, but I'm sure there's got to be more.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  90 year old man said, treat your body like a house that you're going to have to live in for the next 70 years. I loved that one too, because your body is quite literally the house you are going to have to live in.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  And yet, how often do we treat that house like crap?

• 35:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  And if you think about it that way, you do what you would do to that house, right? You, you make the investments in a solid foundation. You make minor repairs along the way before they become the major repairs, before they have the big blowups. You treat your house with reverence, in other words. And I think that that mindset, again, applied to almost anything is a good way to live your life. It's like, how do I want to live my life so that my 80 or 90 year old self is proud of the decisions that I'm making today?

• 36:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  I, I think more broadly, something I've been thinking about a lot as a 35 year old is these conversations that I'm now constantly having with people in my general same age range who are going through what they would self define as a midlife crisis. You're like, all of a sudden wanting to chase and feeling these impact, these impulses to chase things that would impress your 18 year old self.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  I feel like we're, we're too young for a midlife crisis.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Life expectancy is 77. Midlife, we are in it.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  No way. Are we really? I feel like midlife crisis is something that's like when you're 45 or 50. No?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  I should be, oh dang, I should be having one now.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, we are, we are, we are very much.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  All right. I need to get my, step up my game. I need to find my midlife crisis.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  The crazy thing about time too, is there's something called Janet's law. It's named after this French philosopher, Paul Janet, who talked about the fact that your perception of time changes as you age. So for example, when you're a kid, summer feels like it lasts forever.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  The longest.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Now, at 35, how quick does this summer feel like it's going by? It's in an instant.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  School starts next week and I'm like, you can't.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  And the reason is it's math. At, at five years old, one year is 20% of your life. For my son, a year is 20% of his life. When you're 50, it's way less, right? Like as you get older, the percentage of time of your life that a year implies is far, far smaller of the overall pie. And so as a result, time feels like it accelerates as you start getting older. Time speeds up on you. So as a result, you have lived well over half of your perceived life at a much younger age than you think, which leads you to start feeling these impulses, to feel these kind of typical midlife crisis type things. Which for me, I would define a midlife crisis as starting to take actions

• 38:02Speaker 01

  that would impress your younger self, like doing things that, um, you know, would, would make your younger self excited. And for me, I feel like I'm in the middle of a reverse midlife crisis, which is taking action that would make your 80 year old self proud. Like making the person that you're trying to become proud, rather than working in reverse.

• 38:28Speaker 00

  I wish there was, we could just flip midlife crisis and turn it into like midlife resting spot. You know what I mean? Of like.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Hopefully not a permanent resting spot.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, what would that, oh yeah, exactly. Yeah. Midlife eternal rest. No, I mean like, you know, midlife crisis to midlife peace of mind. You know, what do you, what would that, what would that need to look like?

• 38:51Speaker 01

  I think Andy Bernard on The Office said it best. He said, I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days while they were still happening.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  And the truth is that you can do that. You can listen to something, you can hear something and just stop and pause and catch yourself and recognize that the good old days are happening right now.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I think I know in my life, Sierra and I will talk about just being busy. And she'll often say, you know, once this happens, once we things slow down, then we'll do this. Or like, once, you know, once we get over this hump or whatever, things start to slow down, then we're going to get to this. And I have to, we always get into this conversation of, no, I think this, this is life. Like this is, this is what it is. Let's not miss this.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  My grandfather used to say, later we'll all be dead. And I used to just shrug it off as like, oh, this, you know, grandfather, you're saying this thing. But there's so much truth in that statement that we constantly use the word later about things in life. We're like, oh, well, I'll do it later. Yeah, I'll spend more time with my kids later, once I get through this phase. Or I'll spend, you know, more time with my spouse or with my friends later. I'll invest in my health later.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  See my grandparents.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, whatever the thing is. And, and the truth is that you won't, right? Like later just becomes another word for never.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  And it's because none of those things are going to exist in the same way later. Right? Like, your kids aren't going to be 10 years old later. Your kids aren't going to be eight, seven years old. Your spouse won't be there later if you're not there for them now. All of these things are a ticking time bomb. All of it. And so if we don't find some tiny way to design them into our life right now, you're never going to.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  It is just a sad, it's a sad and very human thing that we make our own happiness, our own contentment, our own fulfillment, conditional on something. That statement of when I get X, then I'll be happy. Put whatever you want in the X, certain amount of money, a certain title, a certain life stage, then I'll be happy, then, then we'll go on the trip, then we'll be fulfilled, then I'll feel content. And scientifically, it's called the arrival fallacy. We build up these things as being the destination when we're going to wake up and feel that sensation of having arrived. And it is a fallacy scientifically.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  We get the thing, you feel that kind of momentary blip of dopamine induced euphoria, whatever you want to call it. And then you reset. You have that familiar dread of needing to do more, never doing enough.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Very, very human and very damning if we don't catch it in the moment.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Before we keep going, I want to take a moment to tell you about Zocdoc. Raise your hand if you have a doctor's appointment that you should have booked probably several months ago. I know I have. I am bad about scheduling appointments. Like I had a dermatologist appointment or dentist appointment, all these things I'll get to eventually. It just takes a little bit of work. Why? Because life is happening. Zocdoc takes all of the problem and stress and anxiety away from you. It's an all in one platform that you can find doctors near you from PCPs to any specialty that's out there. And they will find ones near you, they'll find ones in network. And the best thing is they will actually help you set the appointment. So you're not having to be on the phone and play phone tag with the doctor's office time in, time out.

• 42:26Speaker 00

  So right now, go get that appointment that you need to. You can go to zocdoc, that's Z O C D O C dot com slash Jefferson to find your doctor and get that appointment today. zocdoc.com slash Jefferson. And now let's keep going.

• 42:43Speaker 00

  I heard this podcast, I forget where, who it was, but it was something along the lines of, as humans, we're really bad predictors of how we're going to feel in the future. Meaning for good or bad. Meaning if it's something good happening, like a promotion, or this is going to be the best feeling. And you get the promotion or you get the award and you're like, this isn't nice, I guess. But you don't really feel nearly as happy as you thought you were. Or when things go south, like if you feel like, if I lose this job, or, you know, I go through this divorce and I don't know what life is going to look like.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  And it just feels like everything's going to be dread and I'm going to, and then it happens. And they go, oh, wait, that wasn't, and that was tough, but I'm still here and I can still go on. Not as bad as I made it up in my head. That we're pretty bad at that subjective type of intent.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Very bad at predicting the future and very bad at appreciating future time. There's a scientific finding called the yes damn effect. Have you heard of this?

• 44:00Speaker 00

  No.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  So the idea is that humans are really bad at thinking about time in the future. So we always assume we're going to have more time in the future.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  You look at your calendar today, it's packed, you're stressed, you're busy. You look at your calendar two months from now, it's empty, there's nothing there.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  So someone invites you to something two months from now, you say, yeah, for sure. I look at my calendar, oh man, there's nothing going on.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  And then two months from now comes and you say, damn, why did I say yes to that thing?

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yes, damn.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  And the flip of that, for how to counter it, is what I call the tonight test. You ask yourself, would I want to do this thing if it were tonight?

• 44:41Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  And that cuts through the noise on all of it. Because if you wouldn't want to do it tonight, you're not going to want to do it two months from now. You're going to be just as busy, I guarantee it. Time doesn't all of a sudden become open and flowery and beautiful. You will be busy. So either you wanted to do it or you didn't, and you know that right now.

• 44:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  You're just putting it off to the future.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that would settle a lot of things for me. It's like, ah, not, not tonight. Nah, it sounds fun, not tonight. Another thing I love that you talk about, and things that you talk about also in your book, Seven Types of Wealth, I think you're just, it's wonderful stuff, solid, salt of the earth type of wisdom that, that I enjoy reading. I know you and I like to pick on, is this idea of seasons of life. I know for me, I'm a young dad, son is eight, daughter is six. And then I look at other friends that are older and their kids are, or they might be even the same age as me,

• 45:40Speaker 00

  and their kids are older, their kids are teenagers, and they have all the time to go play golf. I've played golf for the first time in like eight months, and I used to play it pretty often. I did terrible, okay? I did terrible. And I was mad at myself of like, if I, you know, if I had time to practice and I have these kids and these things and all this stuff, and it's easy to wish I was in a different season. And once I have accepted of, that's not my season yet, better things have happened. What have you learned about seasons of, of life and their meaning?

• 46:21Speaker 01

  So first off, the recognition that your life has seasons is a necessary first step to all of this. Your life does have seasons. What you focus on or prioritize during any one season will change. The most challenging thing for any person in the modern era is to avoid a disassociation with the present season. What I mean by that?

• 46:48Speaker 01

  There is a heavy bias towards feeling nostalgia for an earlier season. This feeling of how beautiful and stress free your life used to be. Or some excitement and anticipation for a season to come. So you sit where you are in the present, you're stressed, you're busy, because that's what life is. Life is hard, stressful, busy, all these things happening. You think back on when you were younger and you think, oh my gosh, so stress free. I didn't have any responsibilities, I didn't have kids, everything looks fine. Because everything worked out in the end.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  So you forget how stressed you were then, because you know it all worked out. You already know the endpoint of all of it was pretty good. So it's very easy to only see the good of the past. So you have nostalgia. Then everything you do in the present is about anticipation for some future. What we just talked about, this feeling of when I get X, then I'll be happy. Everything about the present season is a disassociation for some future season.

• 47:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  And you're never present, you're never in this moment. I recently sat next to dinner, I recently sat next to a gentleman at dinner. He's the founder of this multi-billion dollar tequila company, Classe Azul. The name of this tequila, it's this beautiful white bottle, you've seen it, it's this gorgeous bottle.

• 48:09Speaker 00

  Like a genie looking bottle?

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a beautiful, beautiful ceramic bottle. And I was talking to him about this exact thing, that I sort of feel like I'm in between these two peaks in my life and navigating this valley. And he just looked at me and listened for a long time, very quietly. And he looked at me and he said, where are you going and why are you in such a rush? And it stopped me in my tracks. That one statement, why are you in such a rush? Sort of pulled me back into the present to recognize that I was disassociating from this season that I'm currently in. Everything was about like, okay, what is this future thing that I'm going to do? Oh, like, we're going to try to build this business or a second book or something's going to come out.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Or there's something in the future that I'm going towards and trying to create. And that idea of forcing a little bit of slowness into your life.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Just become difficult to rush.

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  The world will pressure you to rush into everything. Every decision, every relationship, every future. There is so much power in rejecting that trend and just slowing down and being present so that you can have and take more control of the present season that you're in.

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Let me tell you one thing that's been, oh, I, I've been talked to me very early on of what is one practical thing you can do to start implementing this idea of why are you in such a rush? Is driving. When you're driving.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  One, you're probably not going to speed limit, you're going over. And then you're getting mad at the people who aren't going 10 miles over the speed limit. And you have nowhere to go that has, it requires a deadline. You just need to rush there because you, you feel the need to pass people up and go faster and rush. And if you have the ability, what was told to me is if you're rushing to nowhere. Hey, if you're rushing to nowhere. You're, you're, you're, you're rushing to, to your own end. And it's like, can you, can you drive? And just let your foot off the gas. Go to the speed limit and choose not to rush and just know you're going to get there. I've just like that little in practice of how fast are you walking?

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Right? Is it possible you can walk just a little bit slower than you typically do? Are you just, just the fastest speed walker when you go down the street? Like all these little things that you can do to try and remind yourself that. And that, that question of what do you, what do you?

• 50:46Speaker 00

  Where are you in life and what are you rushing for, I think is a great one.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  I'll give you a couple more. Tie your shoes. Slow down and tie your shoes. It's so easy to just like jam your feet into shoes that are already tied.

• 51:00Speaker 00

  Oh, just call me out, man.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Slip your shoes on like that. Tie your shoes, slow down enough to tie your shoes. When you're in the shower, slow down, how fast do you wash your hair or wash your face? What you'll find when you're feeling stressed and in a rush is that you like go like. Like really rub your face really quickly.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  You remember that picture of like how we were trained to wash our face was just get that water and just splash. Like the ads, Nutrigenic ads are just like waters everywhere.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Slow down enough to do that.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  I can do that.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Again, scientifically, you turn off your nervous system. When you slow down in those moments, your parasympathetic versus sympathetic nervous system get triggered by the different ways that you approach your life. And when you slow down, your parasympathetic nervous system can be flipped on. That is recover, rest, recover. And there is a lot of science about people who are able to flip that switch and be in that mode for more of the day. Your stress levels are lower. You actually perform better because you're not constantly in this fight or flight mode that the sympathetic system activates.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  And those tiny things like driving a little slower, like walking a little slower, like tying your shoes, like washing your face a little bit more slowly can really help with turning that switch.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  Do you think that some of that's just life phases? Like my grandfather, okay, who is one of the slowest drivers ever. Slow, he does not even go to the speed limit. Okay, he's one of those just gonna get there when we get there kind of thing. But I know when he was our age, he loved to race people in cars. Okay, so he had. Some awesome muscle cars and that was like his thing. So I don't know if also it's. Just our wiring for a certain age to just go, go, go fast, fast, fast. And then when we're older, we move slower, we talk slower, we do things slower. Cause I think it's also part of like no physical ability and cognitive ability.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  I think there's two pieces. Number one, um, there is clear science that you don't actually really get places faster when you drive a whole lot faster. Like they've, they've done this study where like people driving 15 over the speed limit versus uh, driving the speed limit. Didn't actually get there faster when you adjusted for tickets received and accidents caused and created. And so like, you're actually just better off driving the speed limit when it comes to getting places.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  The second piece is.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  I have.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Constantly, I would say, experienced uh, in my own life that. Having kids has made me more nervous and risk averse.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  I, I went on this trip uh, to, it was to Richard Branson's island. Like really random, but basically like they, they host these retreats there. Um, business owner retreats. And so I went to one of these things.

• 54:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Like anyone can go to them, you just have to pay some fee to go to these things and it's a great group of people. And um, I was co-hosting one of these retreats shortly after my book came out because I was going to speak about the, the concepts to the business owners that were there. It was a blast. It was a lot of fun. And they do it on this beautiful island and there was this, but every day there's kind of a physical activity because Richard is extremely into fitness and doing physical things, which is amazing at his age. And one of the days is this bike ride. I don't really bike and you're biking on this super hilly island in the British Virgin Islands. And there's these long like downhill bombing stretches. And a bunch of the younger people that I was there with were like really competitive or doing on the climb, going all the way up.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  And then they were like bombing down these hills, going crazy and making fun of me because I was sitting there like a toddler, pressing the brake every two seconds, the whole way down, going like 10 miles an hour. And when we got to the bottom, one of my friends was making fun of me for how slow I went. And I was like, dude, you don't get it. You don't have kids. Like I, I have gotten so much more, I have slowed down so much since, since having kids. Like I, I see people now go skiing and I see like kids bombing down the mountain. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm going slow. And I kind of understand my dad more now.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Because it bothered me how much my dad was like slow when we were in my young years. Like he would just do things slowly and like methodically and be very careful. And I was like, wow, I don't get it. And now I'm that exact same guy.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Like, and we talked about this earlier, that feeling of.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  You don't think of, you, you think of your parents as young and you think of yourself as young. Your, your image of your parents in your mind is the image you have when you were about eight years old. Uh, there's probably science around this, I'm not sure. But basically the image you have of your parents is when you were a kid. It's the first image, it gets cemented and it's there. The image you have of yourself is like in your young adult years, like your coolest version of yourself, like your early twenties version, right? I, like a few weeks ago, I go, I do all this marathon training, like running. And I'm out at the track at our local high school and I'm like running this really hard running workout. I'm like, you know, I got my like cool shirt on, I'm like, got my sunglasses. I, I think I look awesome. And there was like a group of, you know, high school athletes out there training for whatever they were training for.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  And in my head, I'm like, man, they must think I look really cool. Like I'm out here doing this hard workout. And I left and I just thought to myself, hmm, no, they probably think I'm like that weird old guy that's trying way too hard, working out at the local track. Because that's what I would have thought when I was 18, if there was someone that looked like me.

• 56:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  And I had this snap realization in that moment of like, oh my God, where did my life go? I'm the weird old guy that I used to make fun of when I was 18. Like your life just goes like that. And all, and it's terrifying to think that like, you can go like this again. And it's like that Kenny Chesney song, Don't Blink, right? Like you, I, I married, like that whole song still makes me tear up when I hear it because I did, like I married my high school sweetheart. Now we have kids. Snap your fingers again and your kids are grown up and getting married on their own and they're gone. Your parents are gone.

• 57:03Speaker 00

  I'm not, I'm not ready for those snaps yet, so we're gonna.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  What do you want your kids to say about you when they grow up?

• 57:10Speaker 01

  That I gave my full energy to. The things and the people that I really cared about.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  To me, life is all about energy. You have finite energy. And the things that you choose to give that finite precious energy to determine how you are living your life.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  How aligned those things are with what you say your priorities are. Is. What makes the man or the woman that I think you are. So I would want them to be able to say with clear eyes that I gave energy to the things that really mattered to me.

• 57:53Speaker 00

  I like that. For me, it's the, I, I don't ever want them to say.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  It's somebody else got the better version of them. Of, you know, well, I'm glad you liked him. He was never there for. Me, in other words, I was, he wasn't, I wasn't around, I wasn't present enough. I was always present for somebody else. I think that would absolutely, that would crush me. What's something that someone can communicate right now to their parents to tell them, show them love without saying, I love you?

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Tell them one thing you appreciate about them.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  I believe that lack of appreciation is where relationships go to die. And as parents get older. One of the biggest reasons.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  For struggle. Particularly for them is that they no longer feel they are needed in any real tangible, clear way. That they aren't feeling that appreciation from others for the things that were natural on a daily basis when they were younger, when they were your care provider. So mention those things, just be vocal about them and they can be as small as some tiny thing that they did for your kid. Some tiny thing that they sent you. My dad has this habit of sending me articles, like he'll email me, he'll, he'll email me and it just says, it just says FYI. And with no context on why I should care about the thing or what it is, but it's just some article.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  And.

• 59:29Speaker 00

  All the siblings.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  What it is, is it's his way of showing love, right? It's this act of service. And. Engaging on those things, appreciating those things, vocalizing that appreciation, it goes such a long way.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. I can tell you one, a game changer for me. And I think this would be wonderful for anybody is when you send that text or that message is letting your parents know, beginning with the phrase, I still need you for. I still need you for your wisdom. I still need you with X, Y, but just that feeling of knowing that they're still needed for their guidance, for their love, for their reassurance.

• 1:00:09Speaker 00

  That doesn't have to do with something transactional, like I need you to just watch the kids. Tomorrow night, it's something that saying, I, intrinsically, I, I still need you. And. If my son is 37 and tells me that.

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  I mean, I'd run through a brick wall to go make sure I'd be there for my daughter.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  So. And if it feels uncomfortable to say it, just show it.

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Show that you still need them in some tiny way. Ask for a piece of business advice, ask for.

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  Any advice, life advice.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Advice, relationship, whatever it might be. Because sometimes I know it will, it'll feel uncomfortable to vocalize those things if you don't have that kind of.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Emotional connection, relationship, which not everyone does, but you can still show it.

• 1:00:58Speaker 00

  For sure. Man, thank you so much for coming and.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  Spending some time with you, man.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  That's a pleasure always.