Lead On with Greg & Mark (LOwGaM)
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Lead On with Greg & Mark (LOwGaM)
S5: E5 Words of Wisdom from A 90-Year-Old
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Embrace your quirks with us as we delve into Regina Brett's 42 life lessons, spotlighting the joy and strength found in authenticity and in the security of having wisdom from a life well-lived.
Join us for a lighthearted yet profound exploration of life's wisdom and eccentricity.
Let us know in the comments what advice you might give now to a young adult just starting out...
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You're listening to Lead On with Greg and Mark, brought to you by the Pennsylvania Association of Intermediate Units. Join us this season as we engage in conversations on leading on through times of complexity. Now for your hosts, Greg and Mark.
Speaker 3A couple of folks said I really prefer it. They like the beatbox no.
Speaker 2Listen, I didn't do beatbox, I know, and you were like sitting on your hands like you, you, you were just really fighting.
Speaker 3I was clicking my fingers, yeah, snapping my fingers, yeah, right in my ear, yeah. I'm like, I'm like a grumpy old man today.
Speaker 2Yeah you, you really are you really are, or is it every day?
Speaker 3um, yeah, I think it is every day, every day. Yeah, I helped gel that a little bit quell I quell it a little bit.
Speaker 2You, you, yeah, I like it, yeah, so what have you been up to?
Speaker 3So I'm into this new thing. I drink a mushroom coffee. I did. I'm trying it. My wife was busting on me. She's like you're always into these new fads and but I like it. It's actually cut down my coffee consumption.
Speaker 2Yeah, coffee before. What is it like? The chaga and the lion's mane and all that stuff. It's all that stuff in it. Yes, it's like called like mud water.
Speaker 3Right, you got it. You got it. It is, it isn't, there's not, it's not. It's a weird, it's an acquired taste, but I don't even want to say it's acquired because it never gets better. But it's just like coffee, yeah, but uh, it helped me cut down on my with my commute. I'd always drink a lot of coffee, so why not just a lot more water? I don't know, I don't like the taste of decaf. Decaf, they take out all the good stuff.
Speaker 2So you'd rather drink liquid mushrooms. You prefer the taste of mushrooms over decaf.
Speaker 3I have the first thing, and then when I'm on my commute, I have less coffee. All right, and during the day, I'm not. They say it's good and we should send this episode to the company and see if they sponsor our podcast.
Speaker 1And they'll be like they'll listen to the first three minutes and they go. What is this? What are they?
Speaker 2talking about yeah. So I wonder if Regina Brett drinks mushroom coffee. I would wonder.
Speaker 3I mean, she's 90 years old, that's what I heard. Yeah, great health there, Great genetics. So who is she? So she is from Cleveland, ohio. She happens to be a woman who wrote 42 lessons on life, and 42 lessons that life taught me is what it was entitled. And she did this for a column and she was asked over and over to repost this. So I did see this on social media and thought it. It resonated for me, uh, with me on a couple of different accounts.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I think the context is when she hit 90 years old, she compiled in a list of 42 things all the pieces of advice she wished other people knew or what she wished she knew when she was younger.
Speaker 3Maybe when you're approaching the end of your life, like the wisdom and how that you know, how that really shines through. So, yeah, no, that really shines through. Yeah, no, I love it All right. So what? Let's, let's each pick a couple here. She's got 42 of these things.
Speaker 2I don't think anybody has the tolerance for 42 things but, I, do think folks would appreciate one. You could Google it, of course, and see what resonates with you. But here here's one for me, number 21,. Regina says rule number 21,. Be eccentric now. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple Now. The reason why I like this okay one is I like the be eccentric now sort of you know, buy the goofy glasses, grow your beard a little longer, you know whatever. Wear sneakers to work, whatever.
Speaker 2It is that resonates with me especially given my experience, having been in like a punk band and all that stuff. We were a little eccentric, right? Yeah, absolutely you were. But the reason why I like this one less about me is, yeah, once she's 90 and she's saying this right, so it's. I'm automatically thinking of one of my grandmothers. And then she says don't wait for old age to wear purple. See like I love this, because my my one grandmother was eccentric in the best possible way.
Speaker 2She wasn't weird. She was lovely and nice and beautiful and outgoing and social. But she was herself. She didn't care. I love that. She was just. She was just. She was who she was and from that she got a lot of strength and confidence and just likability and her color was purple how about that? She always wore purple and, like at her funeral, we all wore purple we all got, you know, new purple shirts, new ties.
Speaker 2All of us all my cousins, my uncles, my father, of course, and, uh, all the women had purple and, and to this day, anytime I wear purple and I have a lot of purple in my wardrobe, it's because of my one grandmother. What's?
Speaker 3cool too, so listeners to be able to see Mark like his face lit up when he's talking about his grandmother.
Speaker 2So that's really cool so if anything, that's one piece of these 42 pieces of advice and I just love it that it's from a 90-year-old woman and she says don't wait for old age to wear purple. I actually wore purple to work two days ago.
Speaker 3Yes.
Speaker 2I had like a purple sport coat with like a pattern and then like a solid purple shirt and a purple tie. Different shades, it worked. Four, five, six, seven people at work, including my kids and my wife. They were all like you look really nice today. There was something about that purple, yeah, that even then reminded me of my grandmother, and it's funny, this is the first time I've seen this list and, man, they hit me like a ton of bricks.
Speaker 3That's good stuff. I love that Good stuff, Mark yeah.
Speaker 2A lot of wisdom.
Speaker 3This is a much better list than some of our past ones.
Reframing Life's Challenges and Perspectives
Speaker 2A lot of people, by the way, loved the last episode or two episodes ago. Whatever it was, it was all.
Speaker 3AI generated.
Speaker 2We tear apart those five rules of life. Somebody said he was drinking his coffee. Spit it out. Because we were like this is garbage, he's like, he's like. I was thinking this, this list is garbage. And then you finally said this list is garbage. I was like I felt validated that the list is garbage. They were. I think they were happy that we found something.
Speaker 3We didn't like. Yeah, we, we definitely didn't like it and we do think it might've been AI generator or something it was not good.
Speaker 3It was not good, all right. So here's a here's my first that I like when in doubt, just take the next small step. So I think in many times in life we we hit a brick wall and we don't know what to do, and what it's saying here is take that next small step, whatever that might be. You know, in life I really do feel a lot of times we miss out on opportunities because oh, it's a brick wall, we can't, there's no way we could ever do this. So taking that first step. I think that resonated with me.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I like that it can be a small step. Sometimes we think, especially in a leadership role, that the step you take has to be decisive and large. We even think about that with innovation, right? Oh my gosh, I need to come up with the next big thing, this next big step.
Speaker 2I don't know research and, at least my opinion and the things that I've read about, I'm always reinforced with this idea that incremental innovation is much better and much more reliable and a much more sustainable innovation than disruptive innovation. So I think this idea that, no matter the circumstance, no matter the situation, take the first small step. It could be a tiny step, right, whether it's towards solving a problem or designing something new. I just, I, just, I just love this idea that incremental, intentional innovation usually is better than disruptive. And we know, like the old cliche, the tortoise and the hare, right, disruptive innovation is the hare speeding through things Slow and steady. You know, it's that rabbit, to use the cliche again, that's incremental, slow, methodical. It doesn't have to be a transformational first step, it just has to be what A step forward A step forward.
Speaker 3Love it, remember, steady as we Go.
Speaker 2The Bracketeers oh yeah, that's a good one, that's a great song yeah.
Speaker 3So that's I mean, that's what I always think in the back of my mind.
Speaker 2Yeah, number 24 is frame every so-called disaster with these five words, greg, are you ready? I'm ready. Frame every so-called disaster with these five words. Okay, we're not five words, but these words, excuse me. In five years will this matter?
Speaker 3do you know I picked that same one, did you really? Yeah, so I'm gonna have to pick another one no, let's both talk about it. Well, yeah, let's talk about it.
Speaker 2So I love that she says every quote so-called disaster yeah she's not saying every disaster, she's saying frame every so-called disaster with these words in five years will this matter? Let's talk about that first. So-called disaster with these words In five years, will this matter? Let's talk about that first.
Speaker 3The so-called disaster Because she's intentional. She is very intentional in saying that So-called disaster Well, because I'm thinking I'm sure the listeners are going. Well, what does that mean? Well at any time, any given time, it feels like a huge disaster Is it really a disaster. That's what she's saying, right? That thing like a huge disaster.
Speaker 2Is it really a disaster? That's what she's saying, right, like that thing you thought was the end of the world you made it through, right? My wife reminds me of this all the time. Actually, if I'm like facing, like some sort of I think I brought this up before but shout out to Lisa, so like if I'm perseverating on an issue, perseverating you like that word?
Speaker 3I learned that word from my wife. You often do Well, because you do, I don't really know if I do. Okay, you're doing it right now. I'm perseverating on the fact that I'm not sure if I perseverate.
Speaker 2This is getting very meta right. Yes, it is All right. So if I'm thinking about something, she knows what button to push to get me off that ledge. She'll say well, don't you remember five years ago? So this thing or that thing. And what she's telling me, what she's signaling to me, is that, like five years ago, I thought this other thing that she's bringing up now was also the end of the world. And it's not.
Speaker 2And we got, we got through it. And so she's telling me hey you, it's going to be okay, this is just going to be that thing for you in five years, the thing that you thought was the end of the world.
Speaker 3You don't even think about it now, right Five years later, as she's saying right here, 10 years later.
Speaker 2Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 3It's just a blip.
Speaker 2In five years. So that's actually like it's a reframing of things. And it's a lot of course all of this is way easier said than done. Oh yeah, that so-called disaster feels real.
Speaker 3Go ahead. Yep, okay, make peace. Number 10, make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present. And I think some of this making peace with your past sounds easy, right, but a lot of that has to do with forgiveness. It could deal with forgiveness, and that is not an easy thing. I know we've talked about it on this podcast, but forgiveness is tough. I know we've talked about it on this podcast, but forgiveness is tough. Making peace with your past is tough because sometimes we dwell on those things that may have not gone the way that we wanted them to and we need to let that go and really just. And then when you do that, you know you can really focus on your present.
Speaker 2Yeah, make peace with your past so it won't screw up your present. Yeah, and I think that's also like live in the moment, yeah, yeah, if you're just going to spend all day worrying about what happened yesterday, then you lost today.
Speaker 2That's right, I mean. I mean, all of this sounds so obvious, right? It really does. You have a good luck implementing any or all of this with fidelity every single time. I think that's probably the beauty of advice. Some of these things are so universal. The fact that this woman could write down, after 90 years, 42 things and we're just picking five or six and we agree on one of all. Like what?
Speaker 2are the chances of that, right? Yeah, the idea that these things are so simple, like there's not one thing on here that's more than one sentence long, exactly, and they're universal human experiences that everyone can relate to. Here's one, number 27. What other people think of you is none of your business.
Speaker 3How about it? How about it?
Speaker 2Listen what other people think of you. What other people think of you or about you is none of your business. None of your business. I love that. Yeah, so I know what it means to me. What does it?
Speaker 3mean to you, it just means like so we can't walk around thinking that all these people are taking all their time worrying about us. Yeah, because they're not. Yeah, who are they worried about? They're not, they're worried about themselves. They're worried about themselves. They're doing the same thing, of course. But how about all that wasted time, mark? I know, you know that's a lot of wasted time and also like who cares what they think?
Speaker 2be eccentric. Now, some people aren't eccentric, or they're not them true selves, because they're worried about what other people will think about that eccentricity or eccentricity. Um, this reminds me of another quote, which is not one of hers, but it's something I read a while ago. It was something like I'm not responsible for the version of me that you've created in your head wow, you like that, I do, I'm not responsible for the version of me that you've created in your head.
Speaker 2Yeah, Like I can't apologize for things that you believe I've done, that I haven't done, right, yeah, so, yeah, so what other people think of you is none of your business. I love that. Yeah, I think the opposite is true. Right, don't worry about other people either. Yeah, yeah, worry about other people either. Yeah, yeah, stop paying attention to other people so much. Worry about yourself.
Speaker 3And if you're going to worry about yourself, don't, don't dwell on other other issues, Don't dwell on what people think of you.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's my. Those are my three.
Speaker 3Yep. All right, I have one more yes sir. And this is something I think, um, it taught me back in the year 2020. Um, this taught me, but it's number 36, get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere and I'm a hiker, so I, I just love getting out there with the dogs and I, that's where I, I, I tend to reflect a lot, as you know, and that's really where my best reflection is is when I'm out on trails, out by myself, with the dogs. I mean, it's just it. To me, that's life changing.
Speaker 2So yeah, and it sounds like to me it's more for you than being by yourself, but more about being outside. It's more about the whole nature. Yeah, cause you could be by yourself indoors. You're probably not having those epiphanies, exactly, exactly. So what is it for you about hiking? Cause it's different for everybody, right?
Speaker 3Yeah, I think there's the obviously the exercise component getting out fresh oxygen, getting outside of a dwelling.
Speaker 2getting out of a dwelling, I said dwelling outside of a house or outside of your office, those kinds of things. For anybody who might have missed season one or two. Do you mind taking a little aside with me here? Oh yeah, we can, let's do it. So tell everybody about the time you were hiking and you were confronted by a mountain goat.
Speaker 3So this actually goes back.
Speaker 2This is one of my favorite stories.
Speaker 3And the thing is is I think I actually underestimated the amount of miles. It was 19 miles.
Speaker 2Where were you? It was a national park.
Speaker 3It was Banff National Park. All right, I was there with three other guys a friend that I knew really well, chris Choplin. I'm going to put his name out there for him.
Speaker 2Just totally doxed your friend there.
Speaker 1I totally did.
Speaker 3What's his home address Greg, but he is a middle school principal.
Speaker 3Oh, you're really doxing him now, I think he's yeah, so with Chris, he invited me to go on this and we go end up. It ends up being throughout the whole week. It was like, say, say, it was six days, there were five days of hiking and it was a cumulatively almost a hundred miles. So you're doing 20, 25 miles a day. But I backed up the last day cause I, you know, I wasn't in the right shape for it. But this day, this in particular, this hike in May of 19 miles, and we go and we're about seven miles, eight miles in. There's no turning back, no turning back and we, we are up on the top of a trail, yeah, and all we see is this mother goat and then all, as we said, the kids that, all the other little baby goats that are around, and they're just surrounding us. So the mother goat took me as a threat because I'm walking up there with my sticks of course hiking.
Speaker 3Yeah, you know. So I'm, I'm going up, so this mother goat charges me. Oh my god, come straight at me like full force. So I had to dive out of the way. Just missed getting like impaled, yeah killed murdered by a goat. And then my buddies are back trying to get the best picture they can, so they had to jump out of the way, oh my god. And so they actually have a picture of it. So I have it in my office, so I'll send it over I think if you ever start a band, yeah, like you know, yeah right, it should be called murdered by a goat yeah.
Speaker 3So I told, I said to the guys I said what would happen if I did get impaled you? Would die well, not only well, not only but they'd have to send a helicopter in right, that's the issue.
Speaker 2Right, because if she got like an internal organ or something, yeah, yeah, it would have been bye-bye, greggy, you know.
Speaker 3Oh, my god, yeah so so what.
Speaker 2But what's the lesson learned there? I'm not sure I even understood it's a lesson learned just sometimes you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Speaker 3I, I think it is. I think, uh, one of the things is be prepared. You know, like, if you're going to go on a a number of these big hikes, get your body ready for it, like like, just like people would for a triathlon or anything else. Yeah, I knew I wasn't quite ready, but I definitely was not ready for that.
Speaker 2Maybe have a bleeding control kit? Yeah, but I know what I can handle now.
Speaker 3And that's why my hikes are really like I think they're like three miles now. Don't agitate the mother goats.
Reflective Conversations on Life's Wisdom
Speaker 2Don't agitate the mother goats. Don't, yeah, don't mess around with the bull, you get the horns. I like that. What movie? Oh, come on, it's a breakfast club, so, um, all right, listen, we started with mushroom coffee. Yes, we did. We end with uh, impaled, impaled by goats and that would be a great band. That's a great name impaled by goats yeah, yeah, because it's three words. Yeah, it's like an emo band, right, I like it all. All right, dude, so thank you. What's your name? Regina Brett.
Speaker 2Who knows when this was written, but when it was written she was 90. Yep, that's good stuff and life lessons, my friend. I think that takes us to the exciting conclusion.
Speaker 3The exciting conclusion of Lead On with Greg and Mark.
Speaker 2Yeah, what do you say? We wrap this up.
Speaker 3Listeners appreciate all of your support. We are back. We have a couple episodes that'll be coming out, yeah. So we appreciate your support and in the meantime, let's make it a great day and innovate. The USA, that's right.
Speaker 2Goodbye Later, people. What kind of noises did the goat make? I'm hearing a voice from the goat. No, no, no, no.
