Ever wondered how breakfast creations could lead us to enlightened conversations on our mindsets, generosity, and the pure joy of giving? Picture this - a deliciously decadent sausage avocado toast sprinkled with charisma, a dash of humor, and a heaping spoonful of philosophy. As our breakfast sizzles and the aroma fills the room, we're spinning the conversation to the virtues of giving and thankfulness. As the holiday season approaches, we share our thoughts on "shrinkflation" and hoarding, and we unravel how generosity can shift our mindset to a happier, healthier space.
Our morning meal takes us on a journey through the intriguing territories of scarcity and abundance mindsets. Get ready to challenge your perceptions as we spotlight Carol Dweck's growth mindset and its alignment with an abundance mindset. We also lay bare the signs of a scarcity mindset and its impact on our giving. Our discussion underlines the significance of not being focused on outcomes, but giving freely and generously from a place of abundance and gratitude.
We round off our breakfast discourse by exploring the broader impact of generosity on the world. With a strong cup of Nespresso coffee in hand, we probe into the concept of unconditional giving, asking if it truly results in the positive outcomes we assume. We also tease you with a sneak peek into our upcoming episode, "The Spectrum of Generosity." So, pull up a chair, grab your toast and coffee, and tune in as we cook up some food for thought on generosity, abundance, and the art of giving without expecting anything in return.
Ever wondered how breakfast creations could lead us to enlightened conversations on our mindsets, generosity, and the pure joy of giving? Picture this - a deliciously decadent sausage avocado toast sprinkled with charisma, a dash of humor, and a heaping spoonful of philosophy. As our breakfast sizzles and the aroma fills the room, we're spinning the conversation to the virtues of giving and thankfulness. As the holiday season approaches, we share our thoughts on "shrinkflation" and hoarding, and we unravel how generosity can shift our mindset to a happier, healthier space.
Our morning meal takes us on a journey through the intriguing territories of scarcity and abundance mindsets. Get ready to challenge your perceptions as we spotlight Carol Dweck's growth mindset and its alignment with an abundance mindset. We also lay bare the signs of a scarcity mindset and its impact on our giving. Our discussion underlines the significance of not being focused on outcomes, but giving freely and generously from a place of abundance and gratitude.
We round off our breakfast discourse by exploring the broader impact of generosity on the world. With a strong cup of Nespresso coffee in hand, we probe into the concept of unconditional giving, asking if it truly results in the positive outcomes we assume. We also tease you with a sneak peek into our upcoming episode, "The Spectrum of Generosity." So, pull up a chair, grab your toast and coffee, and tune in as we cook up some food for thought on generosity, abundance, and the art of giving without expecting anything in return.
Welcome to help yourself. Food and philosophy with Brian and Nick. I'm Nick and I'm Brian. The government is very generous With other people's money which eaten Brian.
Speaker 2:It's true, it is true, there is no such thing as government money. It's just it's all other people's money at that point. Anyway, what am I eating? So I wanted to talk about what I made this break, so this morning for breakfast, and it is I Don't know if I've said this before on the on the pod or not, but my fantasy is, if I had all the money in the world and I Could just do whatever I wanted, I'd probably start a breakfast restaurant, because I love breakfast foods and I have, like all these, I think, so many of the creations that I make quote-unquote creations that I make for my own breakfast.
Speaker 2:I've never seen them on a menu anywhere. I've never seen them like anybody else talk about making that type of a thing, or combinations or anything like that, which could be a reason. You know, there could be a reason for that. Like, other people tried it and they're like, yeah, that's, that's not good, or it could be just that it's just not feasible. I don't know, I've never been in the restaurant industry, but so this morning I made gosh. What could I even call it? I'll call it a Sausage.
Speaker 2:It's my version of sausage, avocado toast, okay, and although it doesn't have any toast, yeah, Please, before I throw up, all right so what I did was I took two tortillas right, and I had some turkey sausage patties that would be good on like a sandwich, a breakfast sandwich or something like that, mm-hmm. And then I, so I I heated up the tortillas and then I put a little thin layer of cream cheese and and a little thin like a couple of you know shreds of shredded cheddar cheese, and I melted that down a little bit okay.
Speaker 2:And then I took one whole avocado and I like crushed it up with just salt and pepper and I heated up the you crushed, you crushed the avocado.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so not with, not with salt and pepper. I mean like with a salt and pepper in it. Okay, who's my salt shaker to crush the? So? So I, so I crushed the avocado, put a little salt and pepper on it and then Heated up the sausage patties, because they were frozen sausage patties. So I heated those up and then I Put like, took the two tortillas you know they were on each other, like I pulled them apart, put the sausage in there, put the avocado in there and then put the whole thing together, like it was like a top and bottom tortilla, and then cut it into like pieces that I could eat, right, so it was like a. It was, like you know, avocado, cheddar cheese, cream cheese, sausage patty between two tortillas, right, two flour tortillas.
Speaker 1:So the tortillas were placed such that they're kind of like a sandwich. But then yeah, cut them up into what wedges or something, yeah like wedges.
Speaker 2:I did it in like quarters and I just picked it up and and so and it was really really good. A lot of flavors like very sort of decadent because of the avocado in there.
Speaker 1:It's like very sort of rich, you know and this is pretty, pretty creamy with the avocado and sour cream and the most cream cheese.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah cream cheese. Sorry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, so it was very creamy.
Speaker 1:What do we call those things that, like they'll serve them at parties, though, basically roll up a slice of ham around some cream cheese?
Speaker 2:Yeah, pinwheels is pinwheels. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I've seen those like pinwheels. They call some. I think they call those like some of those have like pinwheels sandwiches where they'll take a you know bread and everything and roll it up into little Like rolls like that and slice it, you know, but I'm pretty sure that it's something like that. But those are really good.
Speaker 1:I want, I want to try that what you described. Yeah and I want to name it. Yeah, yeah, I want to name it more than I want to try it right. I'll probably be noodling on it through our episode in the background, like I'll just blur it out the right, the genius name, I'm so proud of it, like actually, no, that's, that's disgusting.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't eat that if you called it that like Well, that has to do with how, that, what the theme of the rest? Because there could be a theme to the restaurant and then that game name would like play into the theme. You know I mean so. Yeah so it could be like you know like the ham-fisted miracle or something. Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, nothing to do with ham, has nothing to do with fists. It has another different miracle. It's just right to name you.
Speaker 3:I guess that could work.
Speaker 1:So you in the face and you love it so.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think, like I said, I feel like there's no way that any restaurant would ever do that. What I did this morning, which is take an entire avocado, because that would probably be like a $20 breakfast thing, because it's, like you know, because avocados are so expensive.
Speaker 2:But but to have something like that where it's like a little bit of cheese, avocado, you know all that stuff tastes really good. I will say that it probably didn't need the Cheddar cheese on there, like it didn't really add anything per se, like maybe maybe if it was like a thin slice of Really extremely sharp cheddar cheese, but I didn't have that, you know. So like so that you know that kind of cheddar cheese that has a real strong bite to it, you know.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm that might help, but the the one that I had this morning was just mild cheddar and it really wasn't Didn't really add much to it.
Speaker 1:Anything, I might have added some texture a little bit, yeah, a little bit yeah, but not like, not any kind of significant flavor change.
Speaker 2:I would think so. But it was like I said, it was really, it was really good and, and it will be a memory, will be an item on my menu. You know, so cool, that's what I ate this morning, before we recorded. And then I've got Brian's beverage corner. I've got my handy-dandy Flask, iron flask, not really flask, but it's called an iron flask. It has water in it, and then I am drinking just regular. So here at my office where I'm recording, they have an espresso machine. Have you ever had a nespresso coffee?
Speaker 3:huh yeah.
Speaker 1:You had me a Nespresso.
Speaker 2:No Nespresso.
Speaker 1:You know the brand.
Speaker 2:Oh, I thought you said espresso.
Speaker 1:I did. It, say espresso. That's what you said.
Speaker 2:I said Nespresso, nespresso. Oh, there's a name brand in their name brand Nespresso.
Speaker 1:So from like Nestle or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whatever exact something glomerate, exactly. This is actually good. It will do like the one. It's like a one cup coffee maker, right, but it also whips the coffee as it comes out. So it has Basically it has like foam. You know, you get like a good layer of like coffee foam on top of it. And so I had one of theirs, I think it was called. It was like double caramel or something was the flavor of the coffee, and then I put in a coconut like coconut cream creamer, a little bit of that in there, and it's really, really good. It is afternoon right now, so I'm having an afternoon cup of coffee, but but really good Nespresso.
Speaker 2:You should, you guys should pat yourselves on the back. This episode brought to you by Nespresso, no. And then the other thing that I'm drinking is I found another kombucha at the market and I had to get it, and you'll see why in a second. So I'm drinking this. It is by a company called hum H U M M and it's pro, pro, probiotic kombucha. But if I'll hold this up, you can see all isn't all kombucha probiotic. Yes, I believe so, but if you look in your camera. You can see yeah. I'm drinking it.
Speaker 1:You see, yeah, it is the magical lemon cupcake. Unicorn edition.
Speaker 2:It's the magical lemon cupcake unicorn edition, so I had to get that and, uh, tastes really really good. Does not taste a lot like kombucha, where you get like that really really strong Sort of yeasty kind of flavor to it. Only 40 calories for the can, but I'm drinking that today and it has 1,500 of my b12 Vitamin b12 needs for the day. So, so, hopefully that will clean out my gut and or clean out my gut or whatever it's supposed to do, so I'll be sipping on that for the rest of the record today. What about you? What are you eating and drinking?
Speaker 1:Well, you can, you can hear me, okay. Yes awesome, nice. See, I I'll do my breakfast too. I had the bacon gouda sandwich from starbucks.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice, I like that one was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was tasty and satisfactory. A little small I might have said that before. On the podge shrink flation. Yep shrink flation. Uh, if you can't, if you can't raise the price, make it smaller. Yep, also another right, I'll go another record profits for a short time another one of your favorite things.
Speaker 2:It's a portmanteau of shrinkage and inflation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wish my only. The only thing I don't like about portmanteau is that portmanteau is itself not a portmanteau.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be way better if it's an onomatopoeia.
Speaker 1:What? No, that's, that's different.
Speaker 2:I know, I know I'm on a pee like no. I thought onomatopoeia it's sound, oh it's. It's. Reads like it sounds. No, reads like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like boom bang, like those words, the name of the word sound like the thing that describes what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah pop, but it would be cool if it was a portmanteau and an onomatopoeia. I mean the portmanteau, if the word for portmanteau was a portmanteau and it was an onomatopoeia, that would be awesome. Like it would be like word, word come, word combined or something like.
Speaker 1:Anyway, sorry, yeah, smushy, it's a smushy or something. It sounds like a made-up word and it is, and it right, and it takes smush and Up together right.
Speaker 1:Hey, back to my food. So I had that and that was it for breakfast. Actually, I've been nursing of Cold brew coffee with just a scotch of sweet cream added to it. Nice, natural cold brew, just just cold brew, yeah. And yeah, the only reason that sweet cream is in there is the cashier. She looked at me, she knows me. She's like you just want a black? Okay, yeah, I mean, all she had to do is like raise her eyebrow and and I was like okay, fine, put the cream in.
Speaker 1:You had me an eyebrow raise. So yeah, there's that, and I've also been nursing my bottle of water and a glass of lid.
Speaker 2:No lid today.
Speaker 1:You're just not drinking out of this bra. You know I have trouble putting a lid on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I don't want the straw. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good. Hey, this by this class bottle. It's better for you. There's no plastic. Yeah, it comes with a straw. Uh, what's the straw made of? Yeah, plastic. Yeah, so it had a yeah, but it's fine, I solved that problem I I haven't quite thrown the plastic straw away. Yeah you know, recovering order, I guess. But it is right there, ready for me to throw out, I guess.
Speaker 2:You know you couldn't. You can eat it. That's the mindset of a hoarder right there.
Speaker 1:Hey, you never know what you're gonna need this you all are hearing it here first live. Oh, he's got a record episode he's doing it.
Speaker 2:It's going in the way back and went underneath his desk into Witnessing it right now.
Speaker 1:There we go. Ting, was it in the trash can?
Speaker 2:forever, no more straw.
Speaker 1:All right, it's wasted. Well, that's good. This, that was my breakfast tomorrow. Breakfast beverages.
Speaker 2:All right, well, thank you for giving us that. That was very generous of you to give us that description of your food and your drink. Just you to ask what I was eating. Hey, you know, I just have the mindset of generosity today and Really tell me.
Speaker 1:Yeah what is the mindset of generosity? It?
Speaker 2:is, tell me more doing research for a podcast about generosity. Well, if you haven't already figured that out out, there we are going to be talking about because it is we're recording just before Thanksgiving and you guys are gonna be hearing this in December. But this time of year is, you know, all of the giving, thankfulness, generosity, all of these, I would say, virtues. Come out and maybe we focus on the virtues a little bit more than we do, or Should the rest of the year right?
Speaker 2:At least hopefully, you know, maybe maybe take a little bit of time at the end of the year to reflect on things like that and and also just Get in a different mindset of hey, it's maybe not think about all the things that I need to think about that. Maybe, you know, put get out of myself a little bit and so.
Speaker 1:So that's a war format let's follow our format fine define.
Speaker 2:Do you have a good? Do you have a? Do you have a good definition for us of generosity um?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think, common daily parlance, it's more than expected and it it has its roots, interestingly enough in nobility like to be. Yeah, the generous like of stock, like good, it's just saying good stock, that's the Latin roots of it. It kind of reminds me of you know, we have the word gracious.
Speaker 1:Yeah and that's. That's an adjective that's applied to people you know broadly. But you know there was a time where you're talking to royalty and nobility and they were referred to. They were referred to as your grace, right, right. So it's just like maybe there's some loose relation there, but anyway it's more than expected. So I think that has a lot that we can play with right.
Speaker 1:Yeah where it's. It's not only good things that you can get more than unexpected Right or if, or depending on who you're giving to and their expectations, the same gift might be considered generous or not generous. Yeah because the expectation is very well.
Speaker 2:Well, I know I've heard the, I've heard the language in Christian circles of extending grace to someone. That's sort of the to me the same thing, it's like that, the whole graciousness kind of you know, feeling that you're, that, you're being I don't know it's. It's weird because I feel like I feel like I define both by saying each. I like saying the one, I'm like, well, if you're, if you're really generous, you're extending grace and if you're Gracious, then you're extending generosity. Like I feel like it's like a circular thing for me.
Speaker 1:But they're definitely connected, I think even Not just the grace, but also another loose connection be noble versus nobility, right like to be noble. Yeah and in good right, like yeah, the gracious to me Is something that you are when, when someone makes a mistake and you don't make a big deal out of it, right.
Speaker 3:It's right it's so.
Speaker 1:It's sort of somewhere sitting between being generous and forgiveness. Yeah, but I'm not a whole lot more thought into it than that.
Speaker 2:I think it's a nice way of so far being being able to. I Think both people in that circumstance like this it's a potential talking about somebody makes a mistake whether that being like a relationship or in a work situation or anything else and Both people have acknowledged that there's a mistake. Like both people like, yeah, you made a mistake. But it's almost like a way of not beating the person up about it, saying, yeah, you made a mistake, but okay, how, like where do we go? What are we gonna do?
Speaker 3:You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean it's like okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could spend a lot of time berating you and and dwelling on the mistake, or or you can't you're a peacekeeper.
Speaker 3:No, I say.
Speaker 2:I meant the, the general term I like meaning.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:I'm physically capable of it, I suppose.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry I interrupted your point, though.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I think that I think that's yeah, and I think that's you know sort of where where that lands is. You know, in that extending grace is, yeah, it's, it's almost, it's almost an acknowledgement of I feel like Well, like not without dump, like going too deep into it. I feel like People are always looking to make a connection with other people and I feel like one of the closest connections you can make with another human being is to to have some common ground of hey, okay, so you made a mistake. I make mistakes too, you know. In fact, I might have made, I might have made the mistake that you made before, and In some cases, if it's like a parent-child relationship, you might have. Yeah, I made that mistake too, and I almost knew that you were gonna make that mistake, but Basically I might have let you. You know, not let you make the mistake, but I you got. You have to learn from the lesson. So so it's, it's that connection that you're making and you know you can, you can basically form a bond because of that.
Speaker 1:Well, that's kind of the common ground that we all have is a world human. Yeah and what's that quote? To air is human, to forgive is divine.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, that applies somewhere in all this.
Speaker 1:Who said that I? Don't know, you can look it up. I'm content to have not butchered a quote for once. That's. That's though. I know a Hallmark of progress for me. And then there's also the grace period. I think that's another example what you were talking about of Acknowledging the mistake. It's like, yep, you missed your deadline. Yeah but we'll give you three days grace right, yeah, so is.
Speaker 2:If there's a grace period, isn't the actual deadline the end of the grace period?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I know it's, maybe, maybe that's like Chris, the Christian roots of usury Usury. Oh yeah, you siri, because yeah, was it? The deadline right is when you died and then three days later you're resurrected.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like well, you can. You can come back from the dead if you pay us within three days. You know like right. That's so. That's like where there's ad hoc, bad, ad hoc hypotheses, right spirit, spirit, speculative historians is what we are.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, so I mean in terms of, you know, in terms of the I guess, give, the giving mentality or the. You know basically what am I thinking of? Generosity, you know, I feel like, at least when I was doing the reading, about a lot of this stuff. There's a lot of things that I didn't realize about it that you know. There's basically a lot of things that happen physiologically and psychologically by being in the mindset of Giving grace, extending grace, being gracious, being giving, being generous and I guess, giving. You know, it's interesting because giving I Guess we can just use those terms interchangeably, like giving and generosity, and to some extent because at first I was thinking of giving as like a physical thing, like you know, giving someone money or giving someone a gift or whatever. But it doesn't have to be that, you know it can be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the generosity part is More like an, an adverb or an adjective to giving you know right give generously. Yeah, you could give Not generously right.
Speaker 3:Give stingily.
Speaker 1:You know, like, if you, if you give a 2% tip, you're, you're giving. Yeah but you're not necessarily generous, you know right.
Speaker 3:In fact, you're not generous because that's not more than expected.
Speaker 2:You're based, you're generous with your stinginess because you're more stingy than expected right, right, well, and, like I said, a lot of the things that I read actually had studies, psycho, psychological studies that we're talking about, like this. One has a. This article that I'm looking at right now says you know, studies are showing that generosity is actually in your best interest. I'm practicing generosity is a mental health principle and it could be very key to a happy and healthy life. And then it goes on to say a couple you know other things about. You know about that generosity mindset and I Just like I said I feel like, well, I feel like it's.
Speaker 2:No, I just can say I feel like it's. It's difficult to Sometimes, it's difficult to be generous if you feel like you're, you know, You're, you're not in the place where you want to be, or you're you know Like financially or anything else, and I feel like, I feel like that's part of the reason why. Let me I keep on saying I feel like the. In the church, at least the Christian church, many times there's tithing, which is not necessarily mandatory, but obviously in some cases in churches it is, but in a lot of cases it's just heavily, heavily, heavily encouraged and many times that's you know, 10% is the number that most people arrive at is, hey, you should give 10% of everything to the church. And you know and I feel like I Said it again the, the, the lesson that you that is said there is you give that in times, in good times and bad times and medium times, and you just give that no matter what, right, yeah, so you feel like you maybe feel like gosh, I'm going through a real tough time Financially, I don't have a lot of money, but the church is still. Yeah, that's, you still need to give the 10%, even if you feel like you don't have the money and it's a it's. I feel like that type of a consistency Outside of the Christian belief of it is what creates a mindset.
Speaker 2:You know a habit, and we've talked about habits before, right, well, I think habits create your mindset. You know you have a habit that you do repetitively, pretty pretty much. Eventually your brain's gonna catch up. For some people that's quicker than others, but your brain is basically saying, hey, okay, we do this, no matter what. This is just a thing that we do. I'm a person that gives right. It's part of who I am, yeah, yeah. And Turns out the research backs that. You know the research backs that if you're, if you're consistently Acting in a way it's generous or giving things, then your mindset is that and you're, and that's a mindset of somebody who is happier and somebody who is healthier.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, you know so, but Does that dilute the concept of generosity if You're giving Because of how it serves you the health benefits and the psychological benefits and you know, like yeah yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2:The interesting that you asked that? Because in one of the one of the articles I'm looking for right now, one of the articles that I read it was talking about Giving, basically giving for the sole purpose of oh, I'm doing this because I Need, I want to get these health benefits. I want to give, you know, I want to give because it's gonna make me better health, it's gonna, you know, give me better health or whatever. And they, their assertion was if you're doing it just for that reason and I can't remember if this is backed by a study or not then as soon as I find it, I'll I'll say but if you're giving just for that reason, then Then it's not gonna give you as a big of a benefit as it would if you're just giving for the sense of giving and You're getting those other things as a fringe benefit.
Speaker 2:Interesting so does that make sense? I the funny thing is I bet it.
Speaker 1:I bet it's like self-reinforcing too, like the more, the more you see yourself as a generous person, regardless of Quote, how you got there, right you they becomes more subconscious and more abstract yes, and. The benefits become less concrete, right, the reasons become less concrete and you end up just Giving, because giving is good right. Like you know, you can't necessarily Itemize the list of benefits to yourself and others, but you just you've developed this since that this works right this right.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's funny because in my head I, as I said a second ago, in my head I'm always thinking of giving something physical, like something tangible, but you know, a lot of times it's giving your time. I mean, you and I both know we give our time to toast masters. I give my time to the band boosters at my children's high school, and that's that, that's a volunteering mindset, which is also you're giving something, you're giving a Commodity that everyone has the same amount of. So you're saying I will carve out this amount of time and I will give that to this organization or this cause that I believe in, right, and so you know, that's it's interesting.
Speaker 1:But, as you know, like those people you're serving, have different. I want to just chime in on the different expectations bit. Right, yeah, if some people in band, some parents and band boosters, have been in it for ten years, yeah, whereas you've only been in a couple.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:They may not appreciate your quote. Generosity of your time. Yeah as much as somebody who Doesn't have the time, like maybe they have the desire, for some reason they don't feel like they have time to contribute, so they they see your exact same contribution. Right, it's? Yeah, it's the same number of hours per week or whatever that you're giving, but depending on who's witnessing it and what their expectations are is sort of. I guess I'm saying the generosity is in the mind of the beholder.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To some extent if the garden expectation well, and I I have found that there is, when you get into not so much in Toastmasters, I haven't I haven't encountered this in Toastmasters, but in other organizations I feel like sometimes there's a comparing by other people of how much they give versus how much you give, and it's almost like it's this trying to figure out who's giving more or who's, you know, done more. Yeah there's more generous like it's almost like a generosity competition, you know like no, no, I'm winning the general you know, and yeah, it's like oh you, congratulations, you got your your Distinguished Toastmasters award.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so nice. That reminds me I needed dust off my three distinguished Toastmasters. I was so young and naive.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly.
Speaker 1:Mean girl compliments in Toastmasters. That's terrible. What else there was, so much you were saying that.
Speaker 2:Also anyway, like with that competition, it's funny because to me I always give because I want to give and I always volunteer because I want to volunteer. Actually, I mean, that's probably not. Sometimes I get volunthold, you know, but but I do. I do get the you know, the fringe benefits of being in those positions and so I basically I feel like I I don't know just like I get I get the benefit of being in that volunteering kind of mindset, but I don't have anything in my head that's like, well, I'm volunteering more than that person is or that I really do. Really I'm thankful for the other people who contribute, even if it's different levels of contribution. You know everyone needs to contribute on some level to make an organization work. That is, of all volunteer organization. But you do recognize that some people are more effective and some people Volunteer you know more hours or more effort or more whatever for that thing. But to me you everyone.
Speaker 2:I guess the optimist in me is like everyone's doing what they can do. You know what I mean, and If they you know me being a lazy jerk.
Speaker 1:I know in my projection like you are generous and so you project that on the the world, right. You, you sort of operate from that assumption. I am a lazy and skeptical and so I I assume the world is more like me. Yeah, maybe not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's a normal thing. That I think it's a normal thing that happens is, you know, projecting onto the world, you know, sure, trying to figure out, you know. Basically.
Speaker 1:Some of what you're talking about, too, makes me think of keeping score. Yes like you're talking about. You know, generosity in terms of effort or time. Yeah, money, and those are, for the most part, things you can quantify. Efforts probably most difficult to quantify, but money and time is easy. It's either dollars or hours in our country, of course, but yeah, so At the same time, though, I think that little thing on our brain that tells us giving is good. Mm-hmm is part of what we've been optimized for.
Speaker 1:Yeah like I've learned so much about myself and human psychology with the more I learned about this. What's the word?
Speaker 1:because the advent of productive AI or useful AI, right like GPT and all that Mm-hmm in this, in the reinforcement learning. So you know that the AI gets points. You know the AI programmers and they're more like trainers right, right, um, give more points when, when things they want to be done are done and done, well, right, the more well, the more points. Well, I think, whether, whether we have Creators or not, we are optimized for our own game and that's the infinite game right and so the things that we do in the infinite game, just you know, short, short preamble on game theory, right?
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, there's the finite game, where you, you play to win, and Once you win, the game is over right the infinite game is you play to win, but when you win you just keep going like, yeah, like the game doesn't end. And the way you win is by keeping the game going. If you're, the more your behavior makes it more likely for the game to keep going, the more you win.
Speaker 1:Right, that's what I think life is right. Yeah, the purpose of life is for the purpose of the life to continue. Sure, that's what procreation is, that's what getting food is, that's what mm-hmm. And I think, being social creatures, being generous, giving to others, right. The more people there are alive, their strength in numbers, the more People there are to procreate, right, the more likely of the species will survive. So it's right um we. We all win, when we all win right that's.
Speaker 1:That's sort of the recursive nature of Giving and generosity and grace and all of that is. Tritting each other Well Means, we stay well. Yeah and that's what well-being is right.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and I think you hit on some interesting on In terms of, like you know, procreation and having having kids is, you know, a lot of a lot of your life.
Speaker 3:Just to say a lot of yeah, no, a lot of a lot of what, yeah, no.
Speaker 2:So a lot of what being a parent is is give. I mean you're giving a lot, you're you know, You're, I would say that if you had to.
Speaker 2:You know I Don't like not compare types of parents or anything, but I think probably Parents that are, the better parents are, get. They give a lot to their children. They, you know, not necessarily give without any need for something in in return, but that they provide, let me say, provide a lot for their children and, you know, say, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you the best chance at life here, best chance to survive and strive. I mean survive and flourish, I should say. And you know that's that's interesting to me.
Speaker 2:I did find, by the way, this section in this article talking about and it's just, it was just a mention that made me think a little bit. It's it's an article that has Just entitled the health benefits of giving and it has like four or five different things in here, but at the end of it it says you know what when giving becomes too much? And it says it might not be a good idea To volunteer just to improve your own life. Some studies have found that the reason you decide to volunteer makes a difference. Volunteering to help others might be more beneficial to the volunteer than doing it to benefit yourself.
Speaker 2:So you know, basically, if you go into this like with a selfish mindset, it's almost like a self-correcting thing. It's like, oh, you know what you can get health benefits from being generous and this. But you have to have a mindset of I'm really doing this to help others. I'm not. I'm not doing it because I think that I'm gonna get something out of it, right.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm and which is sort of what I've Going back to, that comparison thing, the comparison Mindset of oh, I'm volunteering more, I, I do better, I do more for this organization than that person does. To me that's going back to exactly this is like who cares, right? Yeah, we're all here for we're not trying to compare who's the best volunteer here. We're trying to make this organization the best that it can be, and so who cares? Who gives more or who more hours? Or if you you perceive that your effort and everything else is more, you know, beneficial to this organization, then this sort of goes in line with. That is like you seem to have the wrong mindset here, right? So interesting, I will say that what? The other thing that this sort of led me back to a little bit is We've we've mentioned the word mindset quite a quite a few times, and we we've talked about a book that's actually called mindset on this podcast.
Speaker 3:So we probably should.
Speaker 2:I should discuss that a little bit, but if you have listened to the podcast for a while or if you're just in the know in terms of the self-help kind of arena, carol Dweck wrote a book called mindset and she talks about Different mindset. She talks about a scarcity mindset versus a growth mindset in her book Close fixed, mindset fixed. I'm sorry growth.
Speaker 2:That was, yeah, that's right, she, I, I'm, I'm thinking of scarcity because I'm that's what I was talking to you about before, which is mm-hmm, you know, fixed.
Speaker 2:And growth mindset is what Carol Dweck says, but then I Tend to think that those are parallel to an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset, which are, you know, the same thing.
Speaker 2:A growth mindset is the same as an abundance mindset is, hey, that the the world of possibilities is out there for me, and, and it's more of a positive turn on it. The other side is a more pessimistic, negative, you know, scarcity, like there's only so much pie to go around, and if that guy gets a bigger slice of the pie, I get a smaller slice of the pie, you know, and and so the interesting thing was that the article one of the articles I pulled up is the. So this is, it is going into, like my own thing, this is parallel to her, but it's scarcity mindset and how to overcome it. Right, and a lot of it talks about money, because Many of us are in that mindset of like, you know the thing, that how I know if I'm winning or losing, or how I evaluate my success in society, is by how much I have in the bank, or how much money I'm making, or what are my, how big my house is or whatever that else is, and different, different kinds of keep and score.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and yeah and so I've. The first part of this article talks about signs of a scarcity mindset and this. The scary thing is that I there are a couple things here I was like, oh no.
Speaker 1:Feel a little bit, a little bit of conviction there in the soul.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like oh no, this article was written for who? It didn't say Brian. I just scroll back to the top. He didn't say Brian, this article is for you, to the, to the brands that may concern. So a couple of them. There's a couple bullet points, but one of them is over scheduling yourself is a scarcity mindset. Perfectionism is a scarcity mindset and fear of failure, scarcity mindset and fear of loss. So you know, they talk about a lot about with money. Where you're, you're saying like you're gonna, you're gonna hold on to your money. You're not gonna give your money away.
Speaker 2:You're gonna hold on to as much of it as you can because you have this mindset of oh my gosh, I could lose it all. Fear of loss I'm.
Speaker 1:I'm feared that, yeah, because, yeah, fear fear of loss is like as soon as there is no more to write it right. I think exactly same of fear of failure is the assumption that There'll be no more opportunities to succeed. Yeah, this is your last chance to do something with your life, you know, like cheese that's yeah that's not well, and it's not realistic.
Speaker 3:That's not rational, it's that's just like fear.
Speaker 1:You know, right, you're talking yeah exactly, and and I think one of the.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the first things that is going Towards the fighting, the, the scarcity mindset in this article. The number one thing on their seven tips is that article. The number one thing on their seven tips is practicing gratitude and I feel like that that goes hand-in-hand with generosity. I feel like you know the just going back to what I said is hey, if you, if it matters what your mindset is when you're giving, if you're giving it with a group, if you're giving it with a grateful mind, if you're saying, hey, I'm gonna give this money away, it's almost like have you heard people say like I've heard these people that write like little Notes on there like they they'll pay their bills and in the memo section They'll be like, oh, thank you for providing gas for my house this month, you know to, when they pay their gas bill or whatever.
Speaker 2:And it's this mindset of oh, my god, I'm not just sitting here writing a bill and money's going out of my account. Man, you know what I got in return for this? I got to stay warm for this whole month because they gave me gas and they made sure that it was coming into my house and I'm gonna gratefully pay this gas bill. And so Again leading back to a. This isn't a scarcity mindset, this is a and and in that case you're not giving your money. You know you're not. It's not like you're being generous to the gas company, but the practicing gratitude thing is saying my mindset's important here and yeah, obviously Carol Dweck completely agrees with that.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think hers is her if to be. It's almost like a specific form of that scarcity and abundance mindset, because I think her stuff hinges largely on, like that, perfectionism, fear of failure. It's more like the scarcity of changeability yes or the abundance of learning that you can have. You know the learning. Basically believing that you can change and grow, that you can do and be better, is a growth mindset.
Speaker 1:Yes and then the belief that the aptitude test scores you got when you were in elementary school Are the ones that you're stuck with and that's all you'll ever be good at and you'll. You won't change your learner grow right right your first assessment is also your final assessment, and you're carved in stone. Good luck, right. So right, yeah Well it's that's there's again like I'm thanks to you explaining it the way you have I. I am seeing a lot of those same parallels you're describing right between a fixed mindset and scarcity mindset.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm a growth mindset and abundance mindset.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I think I'm looking at, actually, a summary that I have of Carol Dweck's book and the interesting thing is there's a bunch of things that we always talk about in that I'm I Embrace fully in my life. One of them is not worrying about outcome of things, us a very and and obviously, in order to give freely, in order to be generous, you're You're not, like focused on the outcome of that. You know you're focused on, you should be focused on the giving of it, the. This is what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're not. I mean, if yeah, you're not, if you're giving, quote giving and generous, then You're not thinking about what they're gonna do with that money, right? It's starting to look more like a loan, right, or? Yes conditional love. You know that most, most people who actually give to someone who's panhandling For better or for worse, doesn't think about what they're gonna do with that money. Right yeah, you know it's true charity, yeah.
Speaker 2:So here you go, there's strings attached and also like when I choose to do that which is sometimes I don't always, but when I choose to do that, my mindset is more of a no matter what that person does with this money, it feels like they need the money more than I do, Like I feel like I have a pretty good life. I have the ability to work. I have the ability to make more money if I need to. I have my own business. I can grow that if I want to. And you know the person that's on the side of the road selling the newspapers here in Nashville, everyone will know what I'm talking about. Or if it's just the person that's just asking for some spare change, you at least you know. And sometimes that doesn't pan out, because sometimes those people I know.
Speaker 3:I know I know there's been.
Speaker 2:I didn't even realize sometimes it doesn't and handle out Anyway, but sometimes those people make a considerable amount of money. I know there was, there was a like I don't want to say it was a study, but they were trying to figure out how much people were making, like in Los Angeles standing on a freeway off ramp, and some of those people were making, you know, $60,000, $70,000 a year panhandling. So you're thinking in your head but again you sort of get into the weeds because it doesn't matter what they're doing with the money. You know it makes. It made me feel good to say here here's a couple of bucks, you know this person, go do with it, do with it what you see fit, you know yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to, I guess, argue with myself a little bit here, all right, because I'm, like I mentioned before, I'm a bit skeptical and no. Yeah, and I assume the worst of panhandling not the worst, but like I assume they're going to use it for alcohol or yeah or whatnot. And that is experience based off of, actually, when I was in my more goody two shoes Christian days try to make a mission out of it, and I would.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Interact with them and learn. I learned with experience the con right, I did follow ups and such, and even that's all anecdotal. So anyway, I'll argue with myself a bit like even if I give the guy a $5 bill and the odds are 95% that he'll go and buy alcohol and Right. More than he needs. You know, there's still that 5% and I'm still that five bucks is giving him an opportunity for another good choice. Yeah Right, and maybe it takes a thousand bad choices before he finally makes you know the good choice.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And maybe I'm only 555, you know out of the thousand bad decisions, but I'm getting them closer to the time when he'll finally choose. Well, hopefully, before his body makes another choice, you know right, yeah. At the same time, like because I don't know the odds, because I don't know the situation, and I'm a bit more frugal in that regard and practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it reminded me when you were talking about that, going back to our episode on unconditional love we did a little while ago and it. You know, that's the kind of thing that I feel like if you're giving with conditions, then it's not really giving Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You're, you're. If you're saying, hey, I'm going to give this to you, but I want you to what?
Speaker 1:I just I made me think of oh no, the gift cards are evil then, because it's like here's money, but you have to spend it here. Yeah, it's got conditions.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well that's why I usually.
Speaker 2:That's why, as a, as a number nine, I usually get like a target gift card or something, because I'm like, oh, you can get anything at target Like you. Can you know, I'm not going to restrict you to buying growth. You can go buy groceries with this, you can go buy clothes, you can go buy lamps, you can go buy battery, whatever you want. You know, Anyway, um, no, so I guess the, the, yeah, that that conditioned kind of thing is. I think it's, and I know some people want to be a little bit.
Speaker 2:I will, I will say evangelical, and I don't mean that in the Christian sense, I just mean that in the sense of you know, trying to condition and say, hey, you know what, here's how you, I'm going to help you, but I'm also going to request, or I'm going to, you know, require that in order for me to give my help to you, here's what you need to do.
Speaker 2:And, um, and so I feel like in my mind um, hey, you know what, if, if, that, regardless of whether it's good for the person's health or not, if that guy goes out and for that person goes out and buys, uh, you know, a pint of alcohol and has that, and that's the way they get through that night, because their life is somewhat miserable at that point. And you know who am I to say I don't do everything healthy for myself either. You know what I mean. So not that I want to, you know. I want to be an enabler for somebody to continue to live a life that is not healthy. But at the same time, you know someone's asking for help. I'm going to try to give it, and so yeah, and this is a genuine comment slash question.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:There's a thing I listened to on YouTube recently that, um, I was driving to that Toastmasters training this weekend, yeah, and one of the quotes they kept coming back to in their broad topic of discussion was from Thomas Sowell, and about 20 years ago he said much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. And I was like I'm kind of nodding my head. I, before that quote came to mind just a moment ago here today, I've been sort of nodding my head along with you that you know, giving, giving with conditions, is not good, it doesn't work or right. And, and I'm wondering it, just some part of my brain maybe the devil's advocate or whatever just hit me. It was like well, is that what works or is that just what sounds good? Right, and I think that what conditions is better than giving with conditions like?
Speaker 1:Um, and it again, it's just a. I don't, I don't even think. I know I don't have an answer for it. That's why I'm saying it's a genuine question. Right is Does it make more than sense? Does it actually? Does the giving result in the good we assume it does? And how do we know?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess it. To me it depends on T, depends on how micro or macro we're talking. So if you're giving, let's say you give to the person that's on the corner and that person is making bad choices and that person is not, you know, is not doing what they're supposed to be doing, healthwise or life wise or whatever else you want to choose. That depends on whether or not you believe in Sort of the greater good the overall does. Is there an energy there that, like sort of, is Increased in the universe because you're being generous, because you're being virtuous, you're doing something that's good, or is it just not right? And In my belief at least and you may, you may think differently of this, but in my belief that I think that that it does that your, your energy levels increases, the, the group or the, the overall energy level of the earth. You know, and if everyone was in a positive growth mindset in on this planet, we would be in a much different place than we are With people that have a scarcity mindset or a fixed mindset. I mean, I think that a lot of people that we see, and particularly, in my opinion, in government, you know they have a very fixed mindset or they're trying to make you believe that there is a limited amount of things, so that you, you know, to force you into a choice, or to to say like, yeah, you, this is what you need to do, because we only have so much. And In my mind, I'm always resistant to that saying no. No, we don't, we have plenty for everything that we need. You know, we could figure that all of that out, but we've got people who are like, well, no, this is mine, this is yours and this is this.
Speaker 2:Goes back a long time, I think, in in our, even in our, history as America. You know, we came here when the Native Americans were here and, in essence, controlled the whole Area that is now the United States, and, you know, in essence, came in, we usurped that land, and you served as a very generous term in my but, but I feel like it's like getting back to your question, though, is I Feel like, yes, it does help the overall greater good to, you know, to be like that in life, to be positive and to be open-minded and to be why, I mean, I guess I guess all these things I'm saying our growth mindset, to be in a growth mindset. I Do believe that if everyone was in a growth mindset, that we would all be better off, right?
Speaker 3:So yeah, I.
Speaker 2:Have a just why you're. I hear your keyboard going, but I have a little graphic up that talks about it's a growth mindset versus fixed mindset and it has. It has a few quotes on it. So the first one is growth mindset says failure is an opportunity to grow. Fixed mindset said failure is the limit of my abilities. Right?
Speaker 2:Growth mindset says I can learn to do anything I want. Fixed mindset says I'm either good at it or I'm not. My abilities are unchanging. Challenges helped me grow our growth mindset, but I don't like to be challenged fixed mindset, which to me that goes into comfort zones. So do what we do all the time is sure Comfortable. You know challenges. A challenge is hey, if you're being challenged, that means you're getting outside of your comfort zone, that means you're feeling a little nervous, you're feeling like I'm in uncharted waters for me, or uncharted territory. And you know, here's another one that's toast masters. Growth mindset feedback is constructive and the other one is Feedback. Feedback and criticism are personal in the fix mindset, which that was a.
Speaker 1:That was a missed opportunity for symmetry. That could, it should have been. Feedback is destructive destructive.
Speaker 2:Well I, feel like.
Speaker 2:Interesting because I one of the battles that I've had to fight in my own life is not taking criticism personally, like I have had to feel like and I still I still sometimes have to back up and go. They didn't mean that personally, they weren't talking about me Also realized that when somebody says something or does something that's critical, many times it's more about that person than it is about you. It's about their mindset and about what they're worried about or whatever else. Right, but you know, it's interesting to me. I think that the yeah, I mean that's a long way of answering your question, but I don't know what do you?
Speaker 2:I mean, you don't know what are your, what is your, what is your potential answer to that question, though, like do you feel like?
Speaker 1:And I'm like, forgetting what, what just Tom Thomas or was quote of? Yeah, whether whether giving with with out condition, unconditional giving is, is what sounds good, or right unconditional giving what works or, you know, could. Maybe it's a false dichotomy, maybe it could be both right. Well, I don't know that. I still don't know that I have an answer. Like you'll think I said, it was a genuine question.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's really hard to know, like because if you do give, especially if you give without strings attached, you're not gonna do any follow-ups. Yeah, there's not like a follow-up study to find out if the $15 you gave somehow had an influence on them turning their life around, and Right is that even mean and how do you, you know, quantify that?
Speaker 1:like it may just be unknowable. While I was listening to you, the kind of sort of give your answer about, like what I was hearing, was sort of like you, he's just sort of to have faith in the process. Yeah, that the giving is good, because we've always believed giving is good and it's worked out pretty well so far. Like it's almost not. You weren't doing like an appeal to your tradition or even an appeal to faith. I'm not. I'm not trying to put a straw man here, but you seem to be agreeing with my truncation of what you said. Yeah, and it and it reminded me only vaguely of something I remember reading in the gay science by Frederick Nietzsche. And it's not gay like homosexuals, gay like the happy science. Yeah, got it. And and so I'm just gonna butcher in paraphrase, because all that clicking you heard was me trying to find it you know different search terms while also listening to you and yeah, it wasn't working.
Speaker 1:So, but it's something along the lines of, basically, that no one person can actually do evil to humanity because everything everyone does Is for the good, right, yeah, we either.
Speaker 1:Learn from their mistakes we learn to treat each other better, like I don't. I don't. Yeah, I have no idea about the chronology when he said this and when Hitler did his thing right, but Even even Hitler, like, we learned a lot of lessons, or a lot of. We had a lot of opportunities to learn a lot of lessons of About ourselves. Yeah, from that you know, like yeah, you know, I was genics was something that sounded good, yeah, but didn't work.
Speaker 1:you know right. Um, I would make this. America had that History of almost done had that history of sterile forced sterilization of its citizens. Like you know, government governing bodies and, yeah, well-meaning doctors. And then Hitler took that idea and ran with it even further and said that you know, the Aryan race, had the good genes, the eugenics, yeah, and did what he did, whether whether he believed that sincerely or not. He certainly used it as an effective tool, sure, whatever his real ends were. So I'll back off the the hitler topic?
Speaker 1:and well, no, that's what I was just gonna say. My assertion would be that, because you were saying can one person change?
Speaker 2:You know like you know, in essence you're in that, the gay science, you know, can one person, and my assertion would be the Hitler, you know he, he had to gather, and aren't? He had to gather A group of people. He had to influence a large sector of people In order to get him to go, whether or not they knew what they were doing or not. You know, he had to get a bunch of people. He couldn't have done that by himself, by sitting in his living room painting paintings and spouting the things that he spouted. He required an army and an election and a whole bunch of other things to happen before he could have Enough power to do something like that. To, to, you know, to change Us, you know, change a section of history. I mean, in essence, what he did, he changed the mindset for a section of history.
Speaker 2:So you know, and and if you want to go into like and this, I know we're like, I'm not sure if you're gonna be able to do that, you know, and and if you want to go into like and this, I know we're like, we're running up on our time here for this episode, but like, I feel like racism is a fixed mindset. You know racism many times is a, you know it's, it's fear-based, it's um, it's a. Again, it's a scarcity kind of mindset of oh gosh, you know, many times it's, it is Couched on economics in some way. Hey man, if there's these other people around and and we can go even back, and I don't want to go weighed into it, but we can go back into like slavery times, and why we had the civil war in America was for mainly economic reasons, even though they said it was slavery. It's just like, yeah, it was slavery, but it was because those people were getting free labor Out of a certain and so they were saying, if you do this, then you're gonna hurt us economically, because now we have to pay for people to work the fields, which means we're not going to be able to make as much money, and so it's just again a scarcity mindset of. You know how, going back to like the financial aspect of it and money it just seems money is a is an easy way to deal with or an easy way to measure Whether you believe in scarcity or not, is because a lot of times giving, giving money away or giving gifts away, is financial, and so you know.
Speaker 2:One last thing before I guess we'll close this and we'll go on to our next episode and, and uh, for our next episode for december, um, this quote by carol deweck sort of I don't know summed it up a little bit for me, says um, the passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even or especially when it's not going well, is the hallmark of a growth mindset.
Speaker 2:This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives. So, sort of going back to what I was saying, is it the mindset part, is the more important part of being gracious or giving or anything else? And I feel like, again, what she says is even in the worst of times, you still have to have that mindset, and that's the, that's the time that it's the hardest to have that mindset. The hardest the time you want to go back into that scarcity mindset or that fixed mindset is when things seem to not be going your way, and um, and so I just thought that was that was cool and I think, because I'm a huge proponent of perseverance, I feel like that's, uh, that was a good quote to potentially end on.
Speaker 1:So well when? I guess my closing thought would be even if you have a A scarcity of something, whether that's Time or money, like that means you have an abundance of something else. So, if chances are, if you don't have a job right, then you have an abundance of time, so you could be generous with your time. Or if, um, I don't have a lot of Furniture, then you have a lot of space and you could be, generous with your space or talent.
Speaker 1:You can be generous with your skills, um. So you know, be generous with what you have.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and I think, yeah. Going back to that, I feel like there's I know a lot of people who don't have much and are very generous and I know a lot of people who have a lot more than they could ever need in their entire life and aren't as generous. Um, but again, you know, go back to the sort of try not to compare. You know, I don't think I've ever seen somebody who is has zero Generosity, which is interesting to me, like I don't think I've ever seen somebody that's like no, I give zero money to anyone or anything ever. You know, whether you're tipping your, your server or whether you're doing anything like that, it's, um, you know, at some point you're giving to some extent.
Speaker 1:So so there's a spectrum of generosity Exactly.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's, that's what we should call this episode the spectrum of gender generosity. But the thing we didn't talk about, yeah, exactly the thing that yeah you just, whatever the last words of the episode are, we're just going to title it that.
Speaker 1:So so the people who stick around can have that, yeah, that little dopamine. Head of the titular the titular let's check off gun.
Speaker 2:All right, all right, that's. I think we're up on our time, but we will talk more about this in our next episode. All right, all right, we have more to give. We do we're generous with our talking clothes.