0:20 good afternoon and welcome to the wade wow show i am your host kevin bemel and i want to thank you for joining me here on wednesday august 3rd i have to think about that it's it's amazing that the year is uh you know very soon will be two-thirds over it's it's it's just zooming by so uh i i want to before i start today's show i want to take a minute and um remind you about last week's guest uh steve bram and and he was joined by his
0:55 wonderful wife julie steve is a long time friend of mine colleague in the real estate business he's a co-founder um president of george smith partners one of one of the most active mortgage brokerage commercial mortgage brokerage companies in the country regularly doing several billion dollars worth of business each year and and just recently they merged with the technology company and they're looking to bring uh
1:30 real estate uh commercial real estate lending into the you know vaunted 21st century so steve has had an enormously successful career and i i hasten to add an enormously successful marriage as well and and if that is uh if those are things that you want i can't encourage you enough to take a look at last week's show with steve he's just a a among everything else just an enormously humble man and i think he will get a lot
2:05 out of listening to and watching what he has to say so uh you can go to our youtube channel of course um the way to wow show on youtube and as always uh feel free to comment there's also a link there where if you wanted to get in touch with steve you certainly can steve does a tremendous amount of work uh helping other people um in in in both business and and community and charitable work um and i know both he and julie uh would would be happy to hear from you um as as to how they could they can help you so that was last week's show this week uh i
2:42 i'm gonna do a solo effort um i've done a few of those um over the last couple of months and and that's because i want to help set a foundation for our professional success so you know i remember um when i was uh first a chaplain i started my chaplain career in the navy uh i was stationed in okinawa japan so uh you know i mean i i've been outside of the country before then but never for more than i think about a week um and i and as i recall only once i was i was in
3:17 hungary i think for a week um and and i've been to mexico and canada for a few days here and there but that's really it and so all of a sudden you know here i am in um you know okinawa japan which a very different culture uh than the united states and for that matter then you know the western hemisphere and and europe uh lovely lovely people and it was really kind of an opportunity for me to broaden my horizons and one of the jobs i took on was what's called the brig chaplains now
3:52 so for those of you who are not a member of the what we call the sea services that's the united states navy the united states marine corps and the united states coast guard um and the merchant united states merchant marine as well i i i better add so brig means jail and as you might guess a marine corps brig was populated mostly with young men for the most part under 30 years of age probably under 26 years of age who committed what i called the big stupid things like going out on a
4:27 weekend having too much to drink getting irritated and you know putting their fists through the window of the taxi of one of the local drivers um idiotic to say the least um you know these are not for the most part they weren't you know criminals who had you know robbed or mugged people or or worse um although on occasion unfortunately had those as well they were you know young men who had made colossally bad choices and that's how they ended up in the brig and so after being brick chaplin for uh maybe about a month i think um i i you know most of when when you're
5:03 in the military um if you're sent to the brig or what they call in the army or my dad used to call from the army sort of the stockade right if you go to jail in the military uh there's a good chance that that's also going to be the end of your military career so you know after you get out um you're going to be separated and you know sent home and and that was certainly the case for well over 50 percent of of the again primarily young men um that i
5:38 worked with in the brig and so you know here they are many of them had joined the military and uh to um you know to better their circumstances because life was just not going so well um you know civilian life was not going so well and now they're going to be thrown back into civilian life um for the most part they're not going to have any gi benefits um typically the kind of discharge you get after you leave um confinement in the military um is one that you were no longer eligible for you know um educational benefits uh housing
6:14 benefits any you know like va loan that kind of stuff you don't get any of those things so you know they were going to be kind of right back where they started from in many cases and so i decided to teach a class on how to get a job you know life after the briggs so to speak and uh um i was aided well i can't say officially i was not aided because he was one of the um prisoners there um but there was a fellow in the brig he was a um i believe he was a staff sergeant in the marine corps um and he i'm not going to get into the
6:51 tragic circumstances of why he was there although it was he and i became pretty good friends and each uh i believe it was tuesdays i used to visit the brig he would get all the guys there into the chapel where i held the glass in order for them to hear what i had to say and uh he you know being a staff sergeant he commanded a lot of respect even though in the brig there's no rank and all that kind of stuff but uh you know he would he would get them all there and very early on in this one of them raised because i said anytime you have a question just you know let me know
7:26 maureen raises his hand he says you're a chaplain why are you teaching about business you know and i was tempted to make you know some kind of you know jewish joke hey look i'm jewish and you know business and all that um i wasn't quite sure if they did that and and i said to him you know it's been my experience that um when someone is worried about how they're going to pay their rent how they're going to buy food how they're going to clothe themselves or even worse how they're going to close their you know spouse and children um they're they're really not particularly interested in in bible study they have
8:02 more um important things on their mind um and uh i i you know that's not true just of you know guys who are in the brig i think that's true for all of us so until we have you know those those basic needs met i forget that you know there's a guy the hierarchy of needs right so at the bottom of the pyramid is you know shelter food clothing um those kind of things until people are i think reasonably secure in in those needs um it's very difficult for them to
8:37 um engage in in in spiritual matters or for that matter i think even in uh you know emotional and and mental emotional issues and mental uh situations so um at least with any in any way that will you know be at all satisfying for them so i i like to start with foundational issues that's that's really where i come from and so that's why although i've i know i've talked about the three pillars of attainment throughout um the run of the show uh we're in season three now uh i think you know i i did a you know real
9:13 short introduction um with uh one of my uh bartender friends um back uh probably about two years ago now and we talked about it for maybe 10 or 15 minutes so i want to take a deeper dive into it so you you can really understand how this is relevant how this can help you organize your your life and and when i say organize your life i don't mean like you know get your closet straightened out um what i mean is figure out those two central questions that we're dealing with here on the way to wow show who are you and uh what you want right those
9:50 those are the seminal questions uh for our time i think for for any anyone born post-world war ii um you know life opened up for us with just an enormous range of possibilities um you know prior to world war ii you know where you were born the economic circumstances into which you were born um they weren't determinative but but in in many ways they they did kind of set a life course for you and it was you know
10:25 more difficult to break out of those circumstances but world war ii showed a lot of people that the american dream was alive and well it worked uh of course not for everybody um but uh you know coupled with the gi bill and and the the sort of worldwide growth that was experienced um starting in the very late 40s and into the 50s and on into the 60s there was so much opportunity there for people who you know before that just
11:00 it wasn't there for them or they couldn't see that it was there for them um and and and so you know for for i'm a baby boomer so we're the first you know post-world war ii generation there were just an enormous range of choices for me and i think it's gotten even more so for succeeding generations i mean when i was growing up as a kid it was understood you know you're joining the boy scouts you know you're going to college you're going to be a professional right and i remember i was uh i just started driving so i was 16 years old and i was
11:35 driving my mother somewhere because this is how it worked in my family once one of her children got his or her driver's license we were now my mother's chauffeur right so i'm driving her somewhere again i don't know where it was and we were she was able so you know what do you think you want to do you know when you when you grow up and i said well i'm thinking about being a writer i mean you would have thought i had said i don't know mom i want to be a mass murderer she was like you want to be a what and uh yeah that was that was not going to work in my family so you know i finally settled on
12:11 architect because my mother's father had been an artist and my mother loved art and she loved architecture and my dad was an engineer and so he had all that sort of technical knowledge and you know the math and the science and all that stuff and i figure i'll put those two together that should make both parents happy which indeed it did and uh you know lucky for all of you out there i never actually i went to architecture school but i never practiced architecture and therefore you do not find my architectural designs polluting the you know urban landscape
12:47 lucky thing uh so yeah you really didn't don't want to see you know my buildings out there um but the education was was good um architectural architecture school was a an education and problem solving and and that's that that's a good thing so um and i i digressed away from my my topic sorry about that uh so in in any event um you know even when i was a teenager you know my uh choices were somewhat limited although they were much greater i think than they
13:22 were for my parents certainly much greater than they were for my grandparents and before them um and again you know generations after me i think have had even more choices and that that really can make life difficult you know my my daughter turns 15 soon and she's been struggling for years you know what she wants to do with her life i said well you know you don't have to figure out right now baby you've got time and all that but she she just looks at sort of the multitude of options that are available to her and i think it makes her head swim a little bit and i and that's understandable uh
13:59 you know um if you go back to one of my very first episodes on the show i interviewed dr barry schwartz who wrote what is still one of my favorite books of all time the paradox of choice and dr schwartz's theory which i think bears out in our own lives if you think about it is there's kind of a sweet spot for the number of choices if we have too few choices it's very aggravating but if we have too many choices it causes kind of a an inability to decide and so it makes it difficult to for you know for life to
14:34 progress so i think what we need to do is set a foundation for ourselves and then work from that foundation and build up and that's really what the three pillars of attainment allow us to do so i'm going to actually i'm going to move my drawing over here because i'm not sure if it's going to so what i'm going to do i'm going to bring up an image of the three pillars of attainment so we can talk about them and you know it's probably a much nicer thing for you to look at than me certainly and uh here we go and okay there it is
15:10 so so you know this is this is and by the way um if you for those of you who've seen some of the early episodes on my show the three pillars of attainment looked different um i i revised it a few months ago and i think the the the new version is is much more reflective of how life really works right and so um the biggest change is what the pillars are so before the three pillars were physical mental and spiritual one of the things that bothered me about that is there are spiritual
15:45 mental and physical aspects to all parts of our lives um and so i i was never quite happy with the way that those fundamental divisions and so uh i you know one day uh like i said two three months ago whatever it was it struck me that what what the a more sensible division of our lives works out to be and and and this is it so the three pillars then are there's the self pillar ourselves there's the relationships pillar which
16:21 is the people we interact with okay and i forgive me for categorizing god as a person i i i know god is god and he's he's not a person but the the individuals i guess um because you could also put you know pets in here as well by the way um and then pursuits the things that we do right so those are fundamentally the three main categories in which our life develops and for for a while and when i say a while for many years because i um as some of you may know i i first developed
16:56 this to use when i was a chaplain in the navy i looked at figuring out who we are as a first step from which the others would grow i.e in this in in this graphic it would be you know sort of the top of the pyramid and then working down from there and and i've i've realized more recently that's not how life works um much much more sensibly life works from a foundation up so who we are i'm not saying we have no
17:32 you know self-identity apart from these other things of course we do but i think it develops over time who we are is the product of the influences we receive through relationships and the activities that we pursue okay so if we think about uh a you know an infant or let's say a toddler because a toddler is walking now to be you know beginning to experience the world so a toddler
18:08 is engaging in two primary uh pursuits one is play and one is learning and you could argue that that you know for a toddler there probably isn't a a particular you know distinction between these two because through play a toddler learns right and as the toddler learns you know he she uh figures out more ways and more interesting ways to play right so these these two what i call realms each of the three parts of a pillar i call a realm so um they
18:43 they you know there's there's interplay between them right so out of play and learning comes one part of a toddler's child's identity and and through family you know friends and and and well i mean taller probably doesn't have colleagues but you could say at some point you know schoolmates maybe toddler goes to daycare daycare mates we call it and if if they're growing up in a religious family or or at least a a family that recognizes god so then in in in some ways you know in inner interaction with god those also
19:20 help form the identity of that that child okay and so those these two pillars are in many ways the foundation on which our identity pillar sets and i do think that this is one of the challenges in the world today is we're trying to create identities that are somehow divorced from these other parts of our lives and i don't think the identities feel particularly authentic okay
19:55 and um and so when we talk about the self right we've got we've got health mindset and identity as as the self right so you can say well you know what if you know god forbid a child has health problems isn't that going to in some way impact their identity and and i i yes i think that's that's very true um and you know mindset you know as well um i mean you know this is not my area of expertise so you know are we born with a mindset is this something that develops environmentally is it a combination of
20:31 both i i tend to think it's probably a combination of both so there's probably some inherent things that are driving mindset in a child um and then a lot of it is you know environmental the influences the pursuits that the child has and and those two then also provide a foundation for in the end this is this is what we're we're shooting for to understand you know who are you and what you want that that's your right your identity okay and um you'll you'll notice in in the uh you know pyramid scheme
21:07 here or the pyramid uh you know diagram whatever you want to call it i have some words mentioned so you i have the word here internal so the self pillar is really something that for the most part is happening inside of us whether it's our mindset our health our identity these are coming from they're coming in they're internal they're you know internally [Music] derived um or internally i should say figured out um and then our relationships
21:43 and our pursuits are external so in order to have a relationship we need to interact with someone outside of ourselves right we can't uh um we you know we can't um i mean we have a relationship with ourselves but that really is that that's somewhat of a a misnomer isn't it because a relationship implies um interaction between us and someone something else you know a dog a cat the lord what what what have you so relationships
22:19 are external and as our pursuits right i mean you could say well you know meditation is a pursuit and that's internal to us okay i mean i'm not gonna i'm not gonna argue you know a a point like that but for the most part um our finances that's something that's happening outside of us whether it's our work whether it's our investing um are protecting our finances you know uh through you know various uh financial services all that kind of thing that's external to us uh play two is generally speaking it's something external to us i mean we can play games in our heads uh-huh but generally that's not you know
22:56 that we that has a connotation of something we you know shouldn't do right so whether we're playing you know games on a computer or we're out you know enjoying sports um even if it's a you know sports you you play by yourself you can play golf by yourself but it's still an external thing as is learning learning is is the confronting of new ideas the the mixing with them the attempting to understand them to ingest them and to make decisions about which ones are going to be a part of us and which ones are not so those that those are external pursuits
23:33 right um as opposed to you know again our our health that's internal to us there are external things that impact it but our health is you know our body our mindset our our minds and spirits make up our mindset and then our identity things like our values okay so those are internal to us we need to figure those figure all those out and people can influence them but in the end um you know we're we're alone in in in these these in these realms okay you'll also notice there's two
24:10 words on the sides here purpose and mission okay so when i talk about purpose what i mean is who you are you're answering that question who are you the first part of the way to wow way who are you and that is too it's it's emerging of an internal identity with an external how we're relating to other people okay so you could say well
24:45 i'm a monk okay that's my purpose is to be a monk it's like okay notice though a monk is still defined in relation to other people so whether you're going to be a monk who literally separates off from the rest of humanity for the rest of his life or whether you know he's a monk who joins a monastery and he has a fairly cloistered set of individuals that that he interacts with that still is an interaction with other people okay so our purpose is the part of our
25:23 identity if you will that says who are you so in my case um i'm a servant of god i'm a father i'm a businessman i'm a rabbi right um i'm a you know an athlete not a great athlete okay but i engage in you know physical activities on a regular basis and i i compete against myself to try and improve my physical fitness etc etc okay that's my purpose to be this individual that i've outlined for myself okay and every other day i read
25:58 my statement actually i take it back every day i read my statement of purpose so i can remember i can understand who i am and it does change from time to time okay so i don't think our purposes are set in stone what i do think is the older we get the better we understand this idea of purpose and so the less need there is for it to change we become more comfortable with who we are okay so we're you know that question and
26:33 i don't think that question ever becomes settled but it becomes uh uh more um concrete if you will uh you know concrete sounds like it's you know cast and it's there forever if you especially put steel in it right so maybe that's maybe that's not a good word but it becomes instead of it being you know sort of a you know free-flowing you know melted plastic it becomes you know free-flowing free flowing you know rubber right it becomes more like uh you know a a rubber ball you know you can
27:08 you can it's still malleable um but in general it's it's keeping its its shape okay the other side is our mission and our mission is what we want to accomplish in the world so our mission is an activity if you think of it that way and it combines ourself with our pursuits okay so in my case my mission is to help people live better
27:43 lives using as my primary tool the three pillars of attainment right that that is my mission in life now by the way i have many submissions not submissions sub missions missions that are make up you know the overall mission right and and and i do those through a number of ways one of which is is this show so in in part of my mission is to help people live uh i'm sorry to help people find a a way of making money
28:18 that is more fulfilling and that meets their financial needs right so um i i'm not coming from this from the standpoint of you know everybody should want to make a million dollars and they should devote their the first 20 years of their life to making money that's not where i'm that's that's not for me to say now i know people that that's that's what their choices and that's what they do and and good so so i'm i'm absolutely delighted to help them in that mission i know other people who for whom as long as they have enough to meet their basic
28:53 needs and the basic needs of their family that's really all they care about and that's i think equally admirable and i'm equally uh happy to to help people who look at it from that way as well so it's not i'm not here to dictate what your success looks like what i'm here to do is help you get that success as you define it okay and so that's my mission what i've found is by understanding my purpose and
29:28 mission i'm much more comfortable making decisions throughout my day and and more you know over a longer time period throughout the years of my life um and it it also helps me make decisions so if someone presents me with an opportunity my first question is is this opportunity in line with my purpose and is it in line with my mission okay so if someone comes to me and says excuse me kevin you know i'm working on this project
30:03 and um you know it's going to make a ton of money um don't really care how it impacts people um you know it may help some people it may not it may not help other people don't really care but it's going to make us a ton of money okay well there you go so i already know based on understanding my purpose and my mission which together the pinnacle is my identity that's not anything that i want to be involved in because that's that doesn't meet my mission and it's not the kind of person that i am to look at money as
30:38 being the sole factor in measuring um the success of my life that that's that's just not me um for other people that may be that may be their mission and okay good for them right um again this is not i'm not suggesting any particular purpose or mission is better than any other although obviously there are some that are better than others i hope i hope nobody has their purpose you know to be the best criminal who ever lived gosh that would just be you know sad and their mission is to you know uh
31:14 steal all the gold and fort knox wow you know um i hope none of you have that identity um because if you do you're going to be disappointed by this statement i suppose that is not a good purpose and mission okay um however uh you know i i i will say the the to have the purpose and mission of being you know someone whose sole purpose in life is to be a you know multi-billionaire and their mission is to make as much money as possible no matter what its impact on humanity
31:50 uh to be honest with you i i i i think there are people like that out there i i don't understand how they can sleep at night that's me okay so how does this all then work together as we look at building a foundation for ourselves especially in the context of our professional lives well so if we're going to build successful professional lives well it's it's true we're probably going to need to be healthy and our mindset is important
32:25 a lot of look i i i've mentioned this to a few people over the last week i was listening to uh oh i mentioned this actually in my last show you know i was listening to this um uh motivational speaker and he said you know i really believe in being positive and my goal is to be able to think positively for one entire day right so i'm not saying that mindset isn't important of course mindset is important however i think that this was the case for me i got too involved in thinking well if i
33:02 just have the right mindset everything else is going to fall into place and i don't think that's true i don't think that's true mindset is a factor that impacts our ability to pursue those things that are worthwhile for us pursuing and for building relationships so let me give you an example of an issue for the very early days of my career so i i was raised to be at best very skeptical of the ethics of
33:37 wealthy people um and on on more than one occasion um my my father um who should be remembered for blessing um sort of gave me this idea that you know anyone who was really really wealthy they they got that way by basically not being a good person they cheated people or these kind of things now i you know honestly it was it was a a belief that kind of got conveyed to me when i was a child and and i'm not sure because i never actually asked my father about it later
34:13 on in life i'm not sure if that's what he really thought or if it was just you know it was the kind of thing that he would say when he was was frustrated with his own um you know professional prospects or or you know a particular person had he felt taken advantage of him to be honest i don't know what i do know is those statements by him had a big impact on me as a small child okay so then fast forward 26 years later i start my first business and in the real estate business um you know if you want to be successful you got to deal with people who have money
34:48 and uh and here i have this terrible attitude toward people who had money who are supposedly going to be my clients which you know why would you want to have someone working you know on behalf of your you know financial interests who thought fundamentally you were a creep or a crook or whatever right so i realized after struggling for a year or so my mindset was off and i started also i started meeting very successful people who
35:24 not only were very nice people but they were charitable and they wanted to help me so uh one of them was a a man that my mother worked for um a guy by the name of uh swabota now i'm going up on his his first name um god i can't think of his first name shoot anyway he was the um president of a thrift and loan that my uh mother worked for she was a bookkeeper there and whenever i would come to visit her as i was leaving if i walked by his off if i if he was in when i walked by his office he would ask me
36:00 to come in and he would talk to me for uh some oh robert swabota robert swode sorry he would ask me to come in and he would talk to me and ask me about school and life and what were my interests and and he gave me a book called the richest man in babylon which i highly highly recommend and it's about obtaining financial success and he was a very very nice man um he helped a lot of people he was he was a religious man um you know which which is nice to be able to say you know a religious person who was also a decent
36:35 human being um unfortunately not all are right um and um and he really took an interest in people he really was uh he really helped my mother out um because uh when she was working for him my parents got divorced that was difficult for both of them and um you know he and and he was very successful i i can't tell you what his net worth was all you knew was he was very successful and and widely seen in the community as being very successful very concerned about the people he worked with very concerned about his
37:10 community um and and just a genuinely good good man um and um uh you know there were other people that that i met um when i was a primarily a teenager um they were oftentimes they were men um that my mother worked for another one who actually she also uh i also met when she was working for that same thrift and loan was a man by the name of herschel brewer herschel and i are friends to this day and herschel is such a great great guy
37:46 just you know salt of the earth um and and he was also quite a successful man and and you know it really these were two of the men who were it's when i realized i had this you know bad attitude towards successful people and then i would reflect back and say well gosh you know was were mr swabota and mr brewer were they bad people no they weren't they were so nice to me right when i was a you know a young guy a teenager whatever so something's wrong here either
38:21 my belief is wrong my mindset is wrong or i i miss me and all these other people misperceive these you know these two men and uh what it was was my mindset was off right so here's the thing though oftentimes i don't think we realize our mindset is off until it gets in the way of our pursuits or our relationships and and therein lies the challenge right so it's really likewise think about our health
38:58 it's really easy to ignore our health until you know one day you're out you know trying to uh you know ski and you can't anymore or playing tennis or whatever you just don't have the ability like you you know you do anymore so much of our self i think we learn about as we reflect it off of these two foundational pillars and i call them foundational pillars just because they're at the bottom of the pyramid right so um in figuring out who we are in dealing with
39:33 our mindset and dealing with our health and dealing with our the pinnacle there our identity i think we need to engage in relationships and pursuits and see ourselves not just as as we see ourselves in in our own mirror but also reflected in the mirror of other how other people uh relate to us and how successful we are in these various pursuits that we've chosen right so
40:08 let me give you another example from my life well so um i all all my childhood i i i never thought of myself as an as an athlete uh and my dad by the way he was you know he he was like a he's six feet tall you know strong he played football in college he was a lifeguard in the summers he knew how to handle small arms he was a small arms instructor you know he was he you know outdoor pursuits he was a you know a boy scout
40:44 and he camped and all this stuff you know he could shoot a bow and arrow all this stuff and and and they were really his passions right um he loved to watch football especially but he loves sports in general and i never saw myself as an athlete or or anything like that and that was always kind of a i think a disappointment to my father and so starting in junior high i was going to a school called laguna blanca school so we didn't have football there we had
41:19 soccer and we our two the two key sports were soccer and and baseball and for the first time in my life um because it was a fairly small school so like it or not you know um i had to try out for the jv squad um for both soccer and baseball and lo and behold i'm scratching my head right lo and behold i got on both which meant nothing of course because every boy got on those teams right but um you know from my dad's
41:55 perspective the sort of um it being obligatory for me to engage in these in these activities really heartened him and what i found by engaging in these activities was my identity started to change for the better so you know not only did i play those two sports but then you know on uh recess or whatever lunchtime you know the boys in my class and i would go and we might play softball or whatever and
42:30 um and i i look i was just i was kind of a wimpy kid i mean when it came to running it was like i was always bringing up the rear and all that kind of stuff um but you know so one day we were playing um softball and i was pitching don't ask me how i got chosen his picture probably because i was such a terrible fielder or something like that and i um i pitched the ball and the kid hit a line drive right into my groin and i drop bang and i hear them screaming and they're
43:06 screaming and out of the corner of my eye i see a guy rounding third base and i'm like oh no he's gonna score a run my team is going to lose and i don't know how i did it but somehow i got to the ball i threw it to the catcher and they he the catcher tagged the guy out i mean you would thought i was i don't know sandy colfax right to use a jewish baseball example um my my you know schoolmates were incredulous that come up and they're slapping me on the back wow that was amazing i mean after getting in the
43:43 groin you were able to throw the guy out and for the first time in my life i i you know really felt like a member of a team and i could feel why you know um people you know why sports can be such an important part of people's lives number one and number two i also showed myself that i could really kind of grit it out and and do something you know physical right so it was through the engaging in sports that i was able to
44:19 change my identity i think if i had said oh i'm i'm a sportsman i'm a great baseball player you know or i'm a great softball player i i'm not i don't i don't find that that wouldn't have been believable to me and i i don't know i'm not saying i'm like everybody else or everybody's like me i don't know maybe some people they can come up with an identity in their head and then go bring it into actualization in the you know out in the world but i think many times we need to learn by experience and so that's why i recommend as you're as
44:54 you're trying to figure out especially this realm right here identity i think we need to engage in pursuits you know really engage find out what what really you know we this is what you say in the 70s what really turns us on you know does sports turn us on does um you know racing cars does hiking does you know going to the movies uh that that was another thing i mean i i you know i i i was already uh you know i mean my dad loved um
45:29 uh big band and swing music um and so i always loved that and and and through that and and and seeing old movies and old tv shows and such i've you know part of my identity now is someone who who just really loves sort of classic popular culture right so you know if you if you uh drop by my house you know and there's music playing ten to one it's either the great american song book or swing big band music playing right um that and that's become a part of my identity through through learning through you know through uh
46:04 through in this i guess you you know music is more maybe a play thing but then there's also a learning aspect to that as well i've studied music and movies and tv and all that stuff right so through the pursuits i've figured out my identity and by the way going back to that softball example the idea that i was able to sort of muster up the ability to get that ball to the catcher and get the guy thrown out that had an appreciable impact on my mindset that i was able to do something like that if you had asked me before that incident could i have done something like that i'm pretty sure it would have said no
46:40 because i had no proof that i could after it though now if you were to ask me now if i could do something that i hadn't done before i'd be much more likely to say yes because i've seen that i can right so so that's that's kind of the pursuits side of things here on the relationships side of things i think in many ways this can be even more crucial to our identity so you know we start out with our family relationships and of course i i fully
47:15 recognize for for for some people i would probably too many people um you know they don't have great uh familial relationships uh when they were a child um and and that's they're really as a result you know starting with kind of you know uh one arm tie behind their back or maybe both arms and you know kind of two feet in a hole or something um and and i i i chuckle i don't mean to make light of the situation only my silly metaphors so the ability to create strong relationships
47:51 with our siblings with our parents as we're growing up is i think an absolutely crucial aspect of developing our identity as well as our mindset and even our health because health is not just physical health it's it's it's mental health emotional health spiritual health etc so um you know our family is the workshop in which we are schooled if you will in how to develop relationships okay and because unfortunately
48:27 too often um familial relationships aren't good so then people don't learn how to have good relationships elsewhere in their lives okay now that's not always the case um i mean i grew up in a time when it was fairly common for a boy to be scared of his father you know um i think it's a is it a uh it's a bill cosby joke he tells me his father says him i brought you in this world i can take you out i'll make another one just like you right hahaha i mean i don't my dad never said that to
49:02 me but you know uh my dad would not hesitate to correct my behavior if he thought that was necessary and he was you know not particularly um uh you know careful about my feelings when when he did that so um you know um you know it it it helped me i suppose develop some toughness or i hope it did um that was just kind of how things were back then um and uh you know in some of those some of the things i learned in developing relationships with
49:37 my parents my sisters my my my grandparents really my grandmothers i never knew my paternal grandfather and my my maternal i never knew my maternal grandfather and i didn't know my paternal grandfather very long although he had a big impact on my life so these relationships with our family members really kind of set the foundation right that we've been talking about um and then from there um you know we're going to start uh you know developing relationships with friends and colleagues so you know as when we're uh you know a child so we
50:13 go play with our friends and you know how we play with our friends again builds on that foundation that we develop for the rest of our lives so um you know the the more we can learn in our families about how to create durable solid relationships the better we can be about that in terms of developing similar quality relationships with friends and later colleagues colleagues could be anything from schoolmates to um you know your fellow boy scouts like in my case to
50:49 you know your your uh you know people that you work with or or if you are a business owner you know your your employees or whatever um they all fall into that category and by the way and i mentioned this a couple times already you know when i think of friends in general i think of you know human being friends but uh you know i think i'm i i can imagine um you know especially for um you know someone who um is is is shut in it has you know difficult difficulty with you know mobility and such and they have a a beloved pet a dog or a cat or whatever so i can you know they have a friend
51:26 relationship there i mean i i hope they have some human friends as well but i can i can understand um having a friend relationship with with a pet uh you know i certainly think i had a a friend relationship with my dog jiggers um we used to in the uh you know when we when we first were together we would walk uh almost every day um and and and got to know each other pretty well you know we kind of knew how each other was going to respond to different things so um i wouldn't say that my relationship with jiggers was a replacement for human relations at all um
52:02 but on the other hand um there were a lot of you know happy moments i spent with my dog and and uh you know there were times when um either i was very upset or whatever and i put him on his leash and we go for a long walk and and just the process of of watching him kind of explore the world or or interact with me however how he used to do was you know it was very very very useful for helping me kind of you know calm myself down or get calmed down and and sort of you know get back on track so um so so i think that you know
52:37 those relationships then also help create our identity okay and and and you know um i think part of my um purpose in life of being you know a good father um really comes from the sense of um feeling that you know they're while i i i respect and and love both my parents i i think they made you know some significant mistakes and i don't want to make those mistakes with my daughter and so i you know being a father is one of
53:12 the most important aspects of my purpose in life um you know and and having said that believe me i am not the perfect father by any stretch uh but it but it's it's a crucial part of of my identity and likewise um being a good friend and a good colleague as well they're very very important i i highly prize relationships right and the so the third realm in relationships is god so um look i think it's it's you know reasonable to say that you know most of us especially here in the united states um
53:47 we we either have a well i mean of course it's reasonable we either have a relationship with god or we don't right those are the only two choices um many people in the united states and in other parts of the world as well having a relationship with god is a defining part of their lives so um you may have heard the term you know living a god-centered life so um i do my best to do that um you know the the jury is out on whether i accomplish that or not um and uh you know one day i'll have as as
54:22 they call it in in the movie glory my great getting up morning may it be a long time from now and uh you know the the heavenly tribunal will render their verdict as to whether i i was or wasn't um in the meantime i do my best to do so um and and yet at the same time one of my closest friends is someone um whose life is defined by um not believing that god exists right and if you go again one of the early uh episodes of my show i have my friend michael uh hartman on the show he's he's an atheist although he's clear he's not an anti-theist he's an atheist
54:59 so he's talking about his um his not believing in god um and uh that also defines his life in a certain way okay and so so too uh now by the way um many people who are atheists as adults um grew up in um families that were god centered to a certain degree you know to a certain degree right um that was certainly the case um for my friend michael um and and it was so um
55:35 his embracing atheism was something he did uh later in life um so i think that you know as we look at the foundations of our lives um i think this is another central question you know do we believe in god why how does that impact our lives right i used to do a brief when i was uh in okinawa and i would mention to people that it was there was an article i think was in the washington post um so this this would have been back in uh the early 2000s 2004 five something like that i think the article came out it
56:11 said you know 91 i think it was or 92 90 plus percent of americans believe in god no it's like and so then what right i i believe in god okay what does that mean you know in one's life does that mean that you uh subscribe to a particular code of conduct does that mean that you um accept certain things and don't accept others how does that manifest itself in your life and and that is what indeed what our relationship with god
56:46 is about right so um some people will say well as long as i think about god um periodically i have a relationship with god okay other people would say no i've i've got all these things that i have to do you know every day and i have to do my best to always have god in mind in order to really have a strong relationship with god okay right um my my personal belief and i'm not voicing this anybody is is is that because i claim to have a relationship with god so then when i am interacting with my family interacting with my friends and colleagues when i'm pursuing
57:22 my financial endeavors and and doing my learning and playing um all of these have to be done in a way that reflects positively on god okay um as well then my relationship with god becomes part of the foundation of my self and indeed my identity so when it comes to health issues when it comes to mindset issues which in the end um are so crucial in in in determining our identity um you know
57:58 how god factors into those is is a is a a an ongoing consideration okay so you know as as we you know move on and we have more guests on the show um i i hope you'll refer back to this episode from time to time and think about how actually doing things building relationships pursuing our pursuits and i know in the show we're working primarily here in finances but how we pursue our pursuits how those will help us
58:33 create our identity which in turn then will reflect back on our relationships and our pursuits so if part of our identity is being a kind person for example well so then we can be kind to ourselves of course but then we also need to be kind to our family our friends and colleagues kind to god kind to our pets and we also need to be kind in the sense of in this in this sense maybe it's more would be more accurate to say decent in how we handle our finances and how we play the game right and how we do our learning right
59:09 and so there's there's somewhat of a cycle here and then there's a cycle here right and of course there's a cycle here as well our relationships impact our pursuits and vice versa so all three pillars work together they work in pairs okay these two support the relationships and pursuits support self self in turn changes the way we view our relationships and how we pursue our pursuits so it all works together and if
59:44 we're trying to figure out who are you what do you want i recommend you start with some activities and see how those impact you how they make you feel how they make you think how they impact your mindset how they impact your health especially your mental health and your spiritual health and then how all these things together then add up to an identity in terms of your purpose internal your mission activities okay and if you need any help with any of this feel free to reach out for me there should be a
60:20 ticker going by the bottom of the screen for the whole show giving you uh my email address where you can contact me feel free to do so it'll also be in the show notes for this episode that'll post after we end the show so thank you very very much for watching i really do hope that you found some um really nourishing food for thought in this and i just want to wrap up by saying two things one is if you think you would be a good guest on the way to wow show if you have a remarkable way of making a
60:55 living or you know someone who has a remarkable way of making a living please let me know drop me an email or go on any of our social media the links will be in the show notes facebook linkedin whatever and let me know about them i'd be happy to talk with them talk with you about being a guest on the show that's number one and number two as i always do to sign off the show i want to remind you about my very dear friend marie and just say marie darling you are still my bell so thanks again for watching we'll see you next week
61:38 you