You're Not Broken, You're Out of Position | David Phillips

David has spent more than a decade walking alongside people who look like they have it all together on the outside — the career, the family, the responsibilities — but who are quietly wrestling with drift, numbness, and the question: is this really the life I'm meant to build?

His own path was anything but a straight line. Born in Saskatchewan. Architecture degree in Winnipeg. A gap year at Bible school in Sweden and Austria, where he met his future wife. Immigrating to Arizona in 1994. Cutting his teeth managing PetSmart construction projects in what he calls a "white collar sweatshop." A bed and breakfast in Jerome. Vocational ministry in Colorado. And a son, Julian, born with hypoplastic lungs and end-stage renal failure who has needed two kidney transplants.

Then came what David calls his season of darkness — three years of anxiety-fueled depression from late 2016 to late 2019. Coming out of it is what produced the book.

In this conversation, we dig into:
- Why he believes people aren't broken, they're just out of position
- A Gen X childhood with a ridiculous amount of freedom in Regina, Saskatchewan
- Bible school in Europe and the question he's spent a lifetime on
- Prototypical architecture and burning out on the career he'd wanted since age nine
- The bed and breakfast, the ministry, and a pattern of "this isn't what I thought it would be"
- Julian's birth, the NICU, and two kidney transplants — both 40 days from clinic to surgery
- The autism diagnosis at 10, and letting go of expectations
- Leaving architecture a second time to become a homeschooling guide
- The season of darkness and what came out of it
- Suffering minus meaning equals despair. Suffering plus meaning equals passion.
- "The Freaking Basics" — sleep, water, food, movement, before the existential crisis
- Working ON your life vs. working IN your life
- Why comfort is the most dangerous thing about a good life
- The sigmoid curve, unconscious competence, and why stasis is a myth
- The biggest lie we tell ourselves when we know we need to change

Transcript

TEASER

SPEAKER_03 0:00

What struck me was the suffering is a constant, like from a mathematical point of view. The constant is suffering. Everybody experiences suffering. It's just kind of built in the human experience. So anyone said, if you haven't suffered in your life, just wait around.

INTRO SPLIT

SPEAKER_03 0:15

It'll find you.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

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SPEAKER_04 0:39

Today's guest is David Phillips, a writer, speaker, coach, and the author of Surfing the Invisible Wave. David has spent more than a decade walking alongside people who, from the outside, may look like they have it all together: the career, the family, the responsibilities, the normal-looking life. But inside are wrestling with drift, numbness, transition, and quiet question. Is this really the life I'm meant to build? His work is about helping ordinary people craft extraordinary lives by paying attention to the invisible currents already shaping them. Their beliefs, values, identity, purpose, habits, and the inner work most of us try to avoid. David lives here in Gilbert, Arizona with his son Julian, and today we're going to talk about meaning, midlife, reinvention, the courage to wake up, and what it actually looks like to stop drifting and start riding the wave on purpose. David, welcome to the podcast. I'm delighted to be here.

MAIN CONTENT

SPEAKER_04 1:38

I think I'm delighted to have you. We'll find out. I may have should have probably moved the tissues to this side of the room, but we'll see where this goes. It sounds like we're gonna have a cover a lot of ground. We we well we might. We'll see where we go with this. I didn't want to go, I don't I don't want to give your book away without it being out yet, but by the time this hits by the time this hits the streets, that should be really, really close if not already on, because I think we're a few weeks away. So let me start off by this. Your work seems to speak to people who looks who look fine on the outside, but is quietly drowning on the inside. When you say people are not necessarily broken, they're just out of position. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_03 2:23

I don't know that I believe that people are broken. They just may be chasing the wrong dream or moving in the in the direction that's not actually aligned with who they are. I think a lot of us were handed scripts when we were young about what success looks like. Yep. And then by the time we get to midlife, we start to figure out this is not really living up to the hype, yeah, or working the way that I thought it would. And so what I wanted to do was set out to offer a framework where people can go through and examine who they are, understand themselves better, understand relationships better, and then start to delve into things like, you know, what do you believe? What are your values? What are your talents? What's your unique design? And then start to craft a life that is actually in alignment with who you are instead of who society told you you should be.

SPEAKER_04 3:12

Well, I'll come back to that because I have a lot of questions in there. And today may be psychoanalyzing yawn. So we'll see where this goes. But before we get there, before do before Dave became a coach, before you s went down this path where you are today, talk to me about what life was like for David growing up, where are you from, and what did that look like?

SPEAKER_03 3:34

My my I'm Canadian by birth. Um, I'm American now, but uh but I was born in Canada. My parents still live in Saskatchewan. Uh uh, my sister lives in Manitoba. This is like the cold flat park. So if you go to like North Dakota and go north, that that was home. You go go colder? Yeah, go colder. Turn it turn it down even further than a little house in the prairie. And you're getting close. But yeah, no, I grew up there, uh, grew up in Saskatchewan, went to school in Winnipeg at the University of Manitoba for architecture. That was the lifelong dream. You know, since I was nine years old, I thought that that some a family member had had planted the seed. My aunt, Janet, had planted the seed when I was like nine years old. She saw what I was doing at the kitchen table one time and said, Wow, you should be an architect. And that was the seed that planted and eventually kind of flourished into the, you know, it influenced the classes that I chose in high school and the schools that I chose to go to college, and then eventually my career in architectural project management when I finally moved down to the United States and then got in in the mid-90s, started working in architectural firms and cutting my teeth in in actual practice.

SPEAKER_04 4:41

So are there sports other than hockey in Canada? I'm not sure. I mean, Winnipeg whalers, right? Is there anything else?

SPEAKER_03 4:50

I think it's the Winnipeg Jets. Oh, is it the Jets? For the hockey. Who are the Whalers? I have no idea. That sounds like a New England thing. Anyways, did you play did you play sports? Um, I uh no. I didn't say my Did you play hockey? I did not play hockey. The thing that the things that I was always drawn to were individual sports, like you know, you against the clock or you against kind of yourself kind of thing. Rubik's cube. I liked watching car racing and downhill skiing when I was a kid. It drove my sister crazy. She just couldn't understand like why would you watch cars going around in a circle? That's just it made no sense to her. But she was into horseback riding and that didn't make any sense to me. And so, you know, we all had our things. But the thing that I probably the the sport, if you can call it, that I gravitated toward the most was cycling. Okay. And not competitively. I never, I was never on a team, but I I started riding when I was very young. I had a ridiculous amount of freedom growing up. It was one of those things, it was Gen X childhood. You know, as long as you're home before the lights come on, then you're golden. Isn't that I mean, I feel like that was everywhere. I cannot even imagine doing that today.

SPEAKER_04 5:59

No like especially not here in the city. No. Well, I mean, we're the suburbs, but where I grew up, this is the city.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

There's more people that live on my block than the city in the country. Yeah. And we're like, I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:12

Like seriously, I think there's more people uh in my section of the neighborhood than there were in my entire town.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

Oh man. It does, it does kind of baffle me sometimes how how the the generation that had the most freedom and took the most risks ended up becoming the helicopter parent generation. Yeah. I don't know how how that happened to us, but it's I I see it playing out in my own life and in my own story with with uh with our son. Now we have kind of some special circumstances surrounding his situation, but still, even if it you know, neurotypical children like just roaming the neighborhood, it's it's it's almost like when I see it happening, when I see other kids doing that, I have to remind myself that no no no, this is a good thing for them to be out and about, yeah, and not being, you know, followed by a drone or by their parents or right or whatever, making sure that they're safe. No, they have to figure it out.

SPEAKER_04 7:04

Yeah. Well, yes. We did, well, for sure. And and kids will be, it's funny because I say, well, kids will be kids, right? Yeah. And boys will be boys. Absolutely. And I and I think that there needs to be that. You have to be able to have that exploration.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:19

But I feel like today's kids are like there's a respect factor. Like I knew that if I got caught, not just by my parents, but anybody's parents, yeah, I was in trouble.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

Yes, also true. It's you know what's funny? You know what would be a funny thing to do would be to show the movie Stand by Me to a bunch of high schoolers or junior hires now.

SPEAKER_06 7:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

And ask them how close that is to their childhood experience. Oh, probably not at all. They'd be like, what? What and for us when we watch that movie, I watched that movie in the theater, you know, like, yeah, that tracks. Yeah. Let's just leave for a few days and we did that with your buddies with a sleeping bag and go and go on a on an adventure.

SPEAKER_04 8:02

We did that, and I feel like we went way out of town, and I'm sure it's so funny because my parents just moved away from my hometown that I grew up in. And there was a lake called Rocky Lake that we used to go trout fishing at all the time. Like I swear every weekend we were trout fishing at this lake. Probably not because it wasn't fishing season all the time, but I felt like it. Why are we going fishing again? And we go camping up there. I felt like it was hours from our house. It's like five miles from town. And but we used to do that. We'd I can remember my friends and I we'd jump on our bikes and take off and and and and be gone. You know, oh hey, we're gonna go camp, whatever. Yeah, you know, we're gonna we're gonna go sleep under the stars for the night somewhere. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

Yeah. I remember there was the one when I was in seventh grade, one of the big things that happened, something like you know, 11, 12 years old. And one of the big things that happened was that there was a water slide park that was being built on the other side of town. Now, I grew up in the city of Regina, and it is yes, it is pronounced Regina. I know it rhymes with China.

SPEAKER_05 9:07

I've heard all the so many comments come straight to my brain. I'm like, I can't say any of them.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

So I grew up in the northwest part of town. Okay, and this water slide park was built on the east side of town, it's not there anymore. But it was like clear on the far side of this of the city, and it's the city's about 200,000 people. Oh wow, so it's not small, it's not a village, it's not a town, it's a city. If you had to drive, probably like a 15 or 20 minute drive. Okay. Or so and I was so enamored with this idea that they're building this thing, which is the closest thing we had to a theme park. And my architect brain was already kind of you know percolating on all this stuff. I wanted to see how it was coming together. So I said, Hey, can I, would it be okay if I went to check out the the water slide or the construction, because it was still under construction. And there my parents were like, sure, just you know, pack a lunch and you know. No kidding. Just ride your bike, jump on the phone. I would leave at like seven or eight in the morning with all my stuff in a backpack, and I'd be back by the time the lights came on. I was gone all day. That crazy. And I did I remember doing it three weekends in a row. No cell phone, no air phone. No cell phone, no pager, no nothing.

SPEAKER_04 10:11

No air tag. No, no air tag.

SPEAKER_03 10:14

I don't even think I had a spare tube for my bike. Like if I had or I may I may have had a quarter for a payphone. Yeah maybe. Yeah. I don't know if I was that forward thinking back then. That's insane. But I had lunch, I packed my lunch and I would rode my bike all the way across town and I would march my way. I I don't remember if there were any construction fences around this thing. I do remember getting into the site and climbing up the hill. So when I ate my lunch, I was actually looking down at the construction site. No kidding. Well, yeah, like up at the very top of the park. How cool.

SPEAKER_04 10:41

And so such a cool memory.

SPEAKER_03 10:43

Yeah, and I did this three weekends in a row, the the three weeks leading up to the opening of the of the facility. So they're like almost done with this thing. And I'm like, I'm just a curious kid who wants to go see. And my parents were like, Yeah, sure, that's normal. How old were you about that? Like 11 or 12. No kidding.

SPEAKER_04 10:58

Crazy. When I when I was in kindergarten, we lived on Whidby Island in Washington. Oh, yeah, okay. And the school, the elementary school was across town. I mean, not a big town. I was in Coopville, so it's tiny. But when I was five years old, we used to walk from home to the school, I'm guessing a mile, maybe two, every morning to get to school. We didn't get on a bus. We didn't parents didn't take us. Anyways. Just crazy. Crazy thing about that.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

Parents driving their kids to school was not a thing when I grew up either. And this is like in the you know, dead of winter, it didn't matter. You're like, you just re just put more layers on. Yeah. Rap, rap, rap, rap.

SPEAKER_04 11:38

Did you I remember we would do the uh the the sandwich bags over the socks and the no, never did sandwich bags.

SPEAKER_03 11:44

We just had just had big giant boots and snow pants and like the everything. But I do remember getting up in the morning and we would call, because there was no weather app, we would call the weather lady for the weather report to find out what the wind chill was.

SPEAKER_04 11:59

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 12:00

To find out like exposed flesh will freeze in 30 seconds. Oh, okay. Or they would give you like the you know, we'd have the chart magnet with the eight and a half by eleven photocopy of a photocopy of a chart, the windshield, on the side of the oven. And she would give us the number, and then we would we would look at the at the chart and find out like how fast you would freeze if you were exposed. You know, and it was like, okay, well, I need today. I need two scarves. No kidding. And you then you just walked a scar.

SPEAKER_04 12:23

Boy, it was cold where I grew up, but nothing like that. It was insane. I I was tell I told this story, I think it was Dallas Sloan was on, and we were talking about stuff because she grew up in Canada too, north of Idaho, I think, kind of by Calgary. Yeah. But um, we were talking about my parents, we got into cross-country skiing, and one year I was I had it had to have been fifth grade, maybe fifth grade. I decided we gotta I don't know where my parents were, but I decided I was gonna cross-country ski to school. Three hours later, they're sending people out looking for me because I'm trying to make my way to school. Oh my word. So, I mean, that was that was cold for us, but not the wind chill stuff. No, that's crazy. There was math involved. So you went to you went to college in in Canada, Winnipeg?

SPEAKER_03 13:12

Yes, University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. And what did you study in college? Uh it was the School of Architecture. The degree was uh environmental design. Okay. So that's like the undergrad, like the bachelor's of architecture. Gotcha. So at ASU, the I don't know if there's Bachelor of Architecture would be the equivalent. Okay. And they've changed the name a couple times. It used to be environmental studies, but then around the same time, in environmentalism and recycling and all that kind of stuff was coming to the fore. And so it was getting confusing. Changed, yeah. So I think I we may have been either the last environmental studies class or the first environmental design class. Gotcha. When we finally graduated. And I did not go back for my master's. I was so done with school by the time I got out. I'm like, I am not going back. I why would I go back to school if I can just go work somewhere and get paid instead of paying to go to go back to school? I don't know if that was the right decision in that context. Um, I I actually once you get your bachelor's, I don't know that it makes a tangible difference. That'd be an interesting conversation.

SPEAKER_04 14:44

I I would I would think it'd be interesting to to look at that today versus when because I think we're probably pretty close to the same age when we went through school. Because I think just having a degree was just starting to get I shouldn't say starting, it was a pretty heavy requirement to get a job, was you had to you had to have a degree, right? And and getting a master's kind of took you to that next level. Where now I feel like it's almost like you have to have a master's to get, you know, some of these jobs that are out there, these corporate type jobs. So um what brought you to what brought you to Arizona? I mean, because you're going from the coldest place in the world to one of the hottest. Yep. How did you get how did you get here?

SPEAKER_03 15:25

How did I end up in Phoenix? I met my uh my now ex-wife in in uh at a I took a gap year after high school, went to Bible school in Europe. Oh wow. So I spent six months in Sweden, took a month off, and then took two months at a school in Austria. Oh wow. And then so she had taken six months at a school in England, same same network of schools, and then she uh took the same month off, and then and then she landed at the school in Austria as well. And it was a very small student body. I think there were less than 40 students when we were there, and so it was a pretty small class that year. But we were uh we were just in the same place at the same time, and so we just we just hit it off. We weren't we did we weren't dating when we left uh the school. The school term was only eight weeks long. And so, but but we hit it off. We started writing letters back and forth back when people actually wrote letters on paper, right? Pre-email, yeah, pre-cell phone, pre-smartphone. So it was landline phone calls at like 40 cents a minute and uh and and lots and lots of postage.

SPEAKER_04 16:24

Yeah. Did so you so you went, was it seminary school or was it just like a Bible?

SPEAKER_03 16:29

Just it was just a Bible degree. It's like the the way that they kind of sell it, it it's the the the network of schools is the Torchbearer Missionary Fellowship, and they have I don't know, like 30 schools all over the world. Okay. And it's like if you took a four-year seminary degree and just took just the Bible classes out of that and concentrated that.

SPEAKER_06 16:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:53

And so I think it's a great way to spend a gap year if you're a person of faith, because it's going to help help you solidify your knowledge of the Bible. That's really what it's for. And then the thing that I was the question that I was this is a larger conversation, but the question that I went to Bible school to find answers to was I'm very methodical that project management, you know. But the question that I that I what kept coming back was, well, how kind of how then shall we live? Okay, if I'm a person of faith, what does that mean in terms of how how like okay, so the Bible says be filled with the Spirit. What does that mean? What do you do? What are the actions? What are the the still like what are the what are the what are the things you're you know, how are you supposed to fill up your minutes and your hours and your days? Okay. What are the things you're actually doing as a person of faith? Where most people in the faith space are very feelings-oriented, and that has always driven me kind of crazy because it's not very actionable, it doesn't feel actionable to me, but that's I I the way your brain works. Yeah, I brain my way through life. I don't really heart my way through life. Makes sense. I'm I'm learning, yeah, but I'm still very much in my head and not very much yet in my heart or my gut. That's kind of a a a dance that I'm that I'm still learning. But it's funny because just recently I've I've come to the conclusion that the answer to that question is just yes. And it's not that I I don't think it's taking me into my 50s to figure out, like, oh, maybe this is just the question that God gave me as a thing to occupy me as a like as a quest. This is the problem you're going to work on for the rest of your life. Yeah. Well, it's not you're not gonna go to school to find an actual answer, but this is the thing that you are going to wrestle with.

SPEAKER_04 18:37

Yeah, yeah. I I find it fascinating, and and lately I feel like things have been coming up where more and more I see things like, you know, if you ask God for patience, he's not gonna give you patience, he's gonna put you in situations to allow you to practice patience. Yes. Right. And and I see that more and more, and it just rings so true in my brain where I think back on my life and I think about the things I've asked for and think, why did I do that to myself? Wow. Okay, I get it, you know, type of thing. And I feel like I'm hearing you say kind of similar words like you're like, I've got this question.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:16

And he's not gonna say, Well, here's the answer. Right. But he's gonna give you the opportunity to go seek and find it. Spend your life exploring this question.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

Right. It's a it's a good way to live a life. Right, right. It's taken me like, you know, half a century to go, oh, oh, maybe okay.

SPEAKER_04 19:32

So did you end up working in ministry at all?

SPEAKER_03 19:35

Or did you just go to the kind of go back to your question? Like, how did I get to Arizona?

SPEAKER_06 19:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

So I uh so Stacy and I, my my my ex-wife, we met, we you know, fell in love, we got engaged, got married while I was still in school. She moved to Winnipeg for a couple of years. We got married at Christmas and then drove to Winnipeg. Got married here in in Arizona, and then drove to Winnipeg. What was really funny was we got to the border, and you know, we were I was all worried, like, oh, they got they're gonna think it's a marriage of convenience or whatever. That one that was one of the things that came up. But we had taken she a American?

SPEAKER_04 20:09

Yes. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

And so we we had uh yeah, she'd born and raised here in Arizona.

SPEAKER_06 20:12

Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_03 20:14

And so and so we got to the border, and and we we we were already in the system because we'd you know filed all the applications and all kind of that. I'm definitely a rule follower in that way. Um so we were already in the system, but the the lady at Canadian immigration, like it was like 10 o'clock at night when we're on on at the border, it's like 40 below. And she's like, just go. And she's like, this is obviously not a marriage of convenience.

SPEAKER_05 20:40

If she's coming here, if she's coming here, like either she's really stupid, welcome, man.

SPEAKER_04 20:46

On you go. And and probably back then too, because I can remember in my late teens, early twenties, we used to go up to Canada because I grew up basically 40 miles south of the border. And we pull up a a bunch of rowdy 19-year-olds. What are you here for? Going to see the uncle? Yeah. Okay, be safe. Come back a couple hours later. You know, it's like I think at that point it was I mean, because you didn't ask board for anything. We never showed ID. It was just, what are you doing? That's pretty funny. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

So now it was so we lived there for a few years. I graduated, and then we decided the economy in Canada was so bad at that point that we decided let's let's immigrate to the US and go back to Arizona. Because this is this is where the opportunities were. And so, you know, again, the application process got my visa, got my green card, hit the border in like 94, and then uh been here ever since.

SPEAKER_04 21:39

Okay, so I'm I'm gonna um you didn't have a very straight line there. And you seem like a very methodically thought-out, straight line person. You so you came to Arizona because you're now ex-wife, but she was from Arizona. But she had moved to Winnipeg first.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

And then you moved back down here.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

Correct. Stops along the way? Well, no, we were just in we were in Winnipeg for two years for me to finish school.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Okay. And then uh and then we and then we moved down. It is brutally cold here.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

Yeah, and the prospects for work were not good. One of one of my classmates decided I'm gonna pack my stuff up in my car, I'm gonna go to Victoria, British Columbia, and start applying at every firm I can find until I find work. Work just work my way across the country. And I think he made it all the way from Victoria through Vancouver, the metropolitan area in Vancouver, all the way to I think Edmonton and then Calgary, and then finally got a job in Calgary. Oh wow. That's a lot of firms to that's a lot of paper resumes. It's a lot of moving. Right. Yeah. Just just to find one complex.

SPEAKER_04 22:42

And the US is vast in this. Right? Yeah. I would say Canada, because it's so much space in between, almost seems more vast.

SPEAKER_03 22:52

And Western Canada in particular, especially like Saskatchewan, Manitoba, which is kind of which is kind of the like the center of my world growing up, like it at least in Calgary, there's like that north-south Calgary Edmonton access. But in in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, there's no north-south. So when we move I moved here, and you can drive in all directions and find places to be, and they're only a couple hours away.

SPEAKER_06 23:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:14

That's weird. Yeah. Like in Canada, like if you're going from Regina to Calgary, that's an eight-hour drive.

SPEAKER_04 23:21

That's crazy. And in the winter longer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me about getting to Arizona. Did you get a job right away in engineering or architecture, excuse me? Or did you bounce around? What what was that period of time like?

SPEAKER_03 23:41

There was a little bit of bouncing around, mostly because we were flipping a house. Okay. At the time. We were we Stacy's dad had found a place for us. It was not quite abandoned, but almost right near like 40th in Indian School. So kind of an arcadia. Solid neighborhood. And so we we got it and we doubled the size of the place and then you know took that first year to kind of really get it livable. Oh wow. And then and then in so that was like, you know, 94 to 95. And I worked a couple different jobs while that was going on. And then in 95, I started at my first architectural firm in Scottsdale and cut my teeth in project management. It was basically a white collar sweatshop, but you learned the business. This is what our this is what the practice of architecture is actually like. And it was nothing like what we experienced in school, where it was like all very artistic and conceptual. And you know, now this like, no, no, no, there's liability insurance, and there's like all these, you know, things that you have to do to like procedures, and and it's not like we my biggest client that I was working for is a large, it was a big box retail client that is headquartered here in Arizona. And uh, and we were the firm that I was working for was doing actually two two different Arizona big box clients. One was Fry's Food and Drug, and one was PetSmart. And so PetSmart was the world that I got kind of pushed into. And by the time I when I two years later, when I left, I had eight PetSmart projects in in some phase of development from initial signature of the project where PetSmart would say, Okay, this is a go architect go. And then they would say, Okay, they've your project. So I get assigned to that all the way through the construction and certificate of occupancy. Oh wow. And so, and it was a it was a we it was a uh it was a mill kind of thing, where it's like where you had basically one month to generate the construction drawings, and then that one went on to the next phase, permitting and bidding and construction, and then I would get the next project.

SPEAKER_04 25:46

And we were just out of out of curiosity, yeah, big organizations like that, do they have a cookie cutter where they say this is what we want everything to look like? Yes.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Yes, absolutely. It's called prototypical architecture. Okay. And so, and and in fact, one of the guys in our office was responsible for maintaining the prototype and about once a quarter or so. Like it was always in development, it was always iterating. It's like the it's like the iPhone, right? Where it's like, you know, I have this one, but they're already moving on to the next thing. And so like in a year from now, they're gonna say, Ta-da, here's the next one. Okay. And so it's the same kind of thing where somebody's updating the prototype on a regular basis, and then every quarter, every six months or so, they'd say, Okay, here's the new prototype. Now everything that's currently in production has to be updated. So we had to go back and retro update projects that to the greatest degree possible. Yeah. And then anything new that was coming in the pipeline would be would be that new spec. Gotcha. And then and then our guy would would be in constant contact with PetSmart and they'd be continuing to update the prototype, and then they'd release the next version of it, like you know, four to six months later. Yeah. And it was just a constant thing. And I think it's that way, it doesn't matter what the big box client is. That's just the process. If you're if it's a fries foods or Best Buy or Costco or anything like that, that's all it's always gonna be the same because you're trying you're trying to keep things as similar as possible in order to keep the costs as as low as possible. Or predictable, probably.

SPEAKER_04 27:46

Yeah. So how long did how long were you in the architecture world?

SPEAKER_03 27:50

I was at that firm for two years. I was at another firm in Phoenix for another couple years, and then played some, and then we we decided to buy a bed and breakfast. We bought a bed and breakfast in Jerome and ran that for a couple of years. Oh wow. We sold that to move to Colorado to get into uh we both had opportunities to get into vocational ministry.

SPEAKER_06 28:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:09

And so Stacey was working at a a Bible school, another one of the Bible schools that is a part of that network, an international network, in Estes Park. And then I was working for a church in Lafayette, Colorado, which is just east of Boulder. And so we lived in the little town of Lions, in which is kind of like one of the little gateway towns to the Rockies. So the the when I grew up in, you know, I grew up in Saskatchewan, but when we would go visit Alberta, when you drive from Calgary to Banff, it's like the slow kind of undulation, it kind of builds. Yeah. And then eventually you're in the mountains. Yeah. In Colorado, it's like planes, planes, planes, boom. Yeah. You're in the mountains. So Lyons was like right there at that little inflection point.

SPEAKER_08 28:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

And so it was really pretty. We had this fun little, you know, we had three acres in this old ranch house again that we had to flip because this one was truly uninhabitable when we bought it. We've we've done some silly things in terms of like, I don't know, like I think back and go, like, what were we thinking? Like, what what possessed us to think that this was a good idea? And really, it was the location. Yeah. Because I remember when we first moved to Colorado, one of the one of the staff members at the school where Stacey was working had a staff party at their house. And it was on this road in Lions. And I just remember looking around going, This place is magical. It's on a it's on a place called Apple Valley Road.

SPEAKER_06 29:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 29:30

And if you have listeners in Colorado or in Boulder area, they'll they'll know where it is. And I just remember looking around, and it was at sunset, so it was like magic hour, and the lighting was just so, and the mountains were up here, and it was like, this is incredible. And and in my mind, oh my God, if there was, if there is any way that we could. The funny thing is, if I had turned around 180 degrees and seen through like the the four foot tall grass and the trees that were hadn't been trimmed in 10 years, yeah, I would have seen the house that we eventually bought. No kidding. That was it was right there across the road. Yeah. And so that was that was kind of like you know, God's little joke on me, I guess. And there was that place needed so much work. I remember like we had to like there was these beautiful hardwood floors that had been like linoleum over. It was yeah, and so we had we had somebody come in, we had them completely redo the linoleum. We had to replace all the appliances, we had to, we had like new kitchen, new I I put uh radiant flooring in the kitchen. So I put you know ceramic tile in the kitchen on the radiant floor. It was amazing, but it was just this little teeny little kind of farmhouse and on this little three-acre spread, and it was our little sounds very pleasant right now. A little slice of heaven, yeah. Yeah, it was amazing. So, I mean, that's why we did it. Yeah, but it like looking back at the amount of work that we had to do, and I have to say also, Stacy's dad was always game to help us with these things. He helped us with the house in Phoenix, he helped us with the house in in Colorado. He was always game, he was just like, well, pack up the RV and move to Colorado for a few months while we you know get this thing. And he was just he was always willing to participate in in that kind of thing. And he funded a lot of these projects as well.

SPEAKER_06 31:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:07

Um he kind of you know floated a lot of that, a lot of that uh those endeavors. And so he but he was always such a good sport about all that stuff. But that's how we ended up in Colorado. So I worked for the church for a couple years, Stacy worked for the school for a couple years until until Julian was born.

SPEAKER_04 31:24

Was was it a conscious decision to get out of architecture at that point and get into working in the ministry, or were you doing both?

SPEAKER_03 31:32

No, I was not doing both. I think I had been, I think I kind of burned out. It's funny because there's a there's a version of that trajectory in the book where up front, where in the book the book is framed as a story where Seeker, main character, meets Sage, the mentor, okay, and they're getting to know each other. And so Seeker is telling Sage his story, and he's telling him like his professional career and all the kind of the hopscotching that he did. And it's it's a version of my story. Okay. And so I I got burned out on architecture up front and in the those first two firms. It was just a lot of work, and it was one of those things where it's like, and this was just the beginning of this, but the unmet expectation of this is not what I thought it was gonna be. Yeah, I'm gonna go do something else. And so we went and ran a bed and breakfast, and then lo and behold, that was not what we thought it was gonna be. Yeah. Let's go and get into ministry. And then lo and behold, that was not what you thought. That was not what we thought it was gonna be.

SPEAKER_06 32:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:30

And so when it was time to leave, it was definitely time to leave. And then, you know, and then Julian was born, and then I basically went, Well, I I I know of the things that I have done in the past, architecture is the one where I actually have some gifting and some talent and some history. So I'm gonna go back and get involved in that again. So I found a firm in in Longmont and went and worked for them for gosh, five, five, six years. It was a while. Even after we moved back to Arizona, I worked remotely for for Dave and Tom for at least a year. So it was like you know, four or five years that I worked for them.

SPEAKER_04 33:05

Talk to me about Julian a little bit, if you don't mind. Yeah. Because obviously he's got some special stuff that he needs. How did that impact the relationship with you and Stacey? How how how did how did that how did he fit into the dynamic, if you don't mind sharing?

SPEAKER_03 33:23

Yeah. Well, he was born with some pretty serious health issues, like right off the bat. I mean, he was born and suddenly the doctors are like, well, he's got hypoplastic lungs, so he can't breathe. And he's got something going on in his abdomen. We're not really sure what that is. It's like this large mass. We don't know what's going on. This is an Estes Park. And so we're gonna, you know, this is like three o'clock in the morning, he was born. And and so they told us this, and we're like, okay. And they're like, we've already called for Medivac for Denver Children's. So they're coming to get him. So they came and got him, they brought him down to children's. We followed, we made it down to children's later that evening. And when we got there, he was in the NIC and he he was just surrounded by machines and probes and pipes and tubes and all kinds of things. We're like, what's going on? So they well, the the closest diagnosis that they had at the time was Potter's syndrome. It it wasn't Potter's syndrome, but it was related to the kidneys. Potter's syndrome technically is a malformation of the kidneys from different congenital reasons. Children don't usually survive it. Julian had what is referred to as posterior urethral valves. So the valve that allows urine to release from the bladder was inverted. Oh wow. And so it just blew up. It distended the bladder and it backflushed his kidneys. Wow. So that was the thing in his abdomen that they couldn't identify. And so and so they gave him a procedure, they gave him the vesicostomia, which is just they just cut an opening to let through to relieve that pressure. And then they did what they needed to do to keep him alive until his body could kind of come online. And it was probably, I think, day three that his kidney, kidneys, I I I can't remember one of them was more damaged than the other one. But one of them, at least one of them came online enough because he was just getting more and more edemic. He was just swelling up and swelling up. Yeah. And then he sort of produced urine. Okay. And then he and then the system just drained.

unknown 35:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:24

And so that was kind of a series of miracles, but it's also like the most stressful thing that you could ever go through as a parent, is this joyful occasion where this precious little person is born into your life, and then suddenly your world is just collapsing.

SPEAKER_06 35:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:41

And so he was in the NICU for six weeks. He came home on oxygen still. And we brought him home, and we knew that he had serious end stage renal failure, so kidney kidney he had damaged kidneys from the get-go. And uh by the time he was three and a half, he needed his first transplant. So he had his first kidney transplant in 2008, and that was at the Ronald McDonald's house. We were living at the Ronald McDonald House in Palo Alto, California, because he had it at Stanford Children's. And so we had we had just moved from Colorado to Arizona, but we were already talking to Palo Alto about the transplant. And so we basically moved here and then a month later packed everything up and moved there. Well, actually, I should say Stacy and Julian moved here, and then I was still living in Colorado because there while this was going on, Blue Cross, Colorado was saying you can't you can't leave the state. Yeah. And Arizona Blue Cross was saying, Well, no, we can't we can't take them with the pre-existing condition.

SPEAKER_06 37:17

Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_03 37:19

And so I spent the next year flying from Colorado to wherever they were. Oh my gosh. And so like every weekend I was I was making friends with the the Southwest Airlines crews. Yeah. Going back and forth to wherever wherever they happened to be. And it wasn't until so we had this transplant in May of 2008. And then it wasn't until early 2009 that we finally got the go-ahead from Colorado Blue Cross to say, you you can you can you can go. Yeah. You can be across the you know the the state border. State border. Wow. Because all that was kind of loosening up at the at the time.

SPEAKER_04 37:55

So how how how did that impact you and Stacy's relationship?

SPEAKER_03 38:00

Well, it gave us a serious point of focus. Yeah. At the time. It just brings everything into everything, it just makes everything very clear. What are we doing? Well, it's it's it's really all about what is best for Julian. For Julian. Yeah. Right. Because there was so much, there was so much on the line just in in terms of maintaining his health. And then after the transplant, now you're on immune suppression medications. And he had some pretty serious food allergies as well, at the time, food and animal allergies. And so we had all of that to balance. Then he had the the surgery and he responded really well to the surgery, but then now you're on immune suppression medication. And so your your immune system is low. And so that meant when a couple years later, he went to pre-K and then he went to half-day kindergarten, and that was okay. But then as soon as he went to full-day kindergarten, that level of exposure was more than he could handle. And so he started getting sick. And it wasn't like he just had kind of a cold and he needed to take a day off. It'd be like he would get croup. Oh, wow. He'd be out for like three weeks. He'd go back for another week, he'd be home with pneumonia or the flu or RSV. I think he'd pick that up at some point as well. And it was all it was to the point where his kindergarten teacher was like, he's going backwards academically. I'm like, I didn't think that was possible in kindergarten, but apparently that was a thing. And so we had to have a kind of a we had to figure out what to do at that point. And so, and so the the the solution we ended up landing on, because I was working for an architectural firm in Chandler at that point. And um, and so this is around 2012 that we decided, okay. Well, we initially brought them home to be homeschooled. Stacy was building a coaching business. I was working in architecture, and plan A was that she would build her coaching business and do the homeschooling. And she just she had a very hard, she she was great with the coaching piece. She had a very hard time getting her hands around the the the homeschooling thing. And so the discussion became well, the coaching thing doesn't really have a ceiling income-wise. Project management has a definite ceiling, project or uh income-wise. And so, and my project manager brain, I thought, well, I I think I can get my hands around this. So we decided I would come home in 2012 and I would I would leave that chapter again and and come home and be joined homeschooling guide, they call it say guide. Don't call yourself a teacher, you're a homeschooling guide. Fair enough. And um, and one of the things that I learned in that process, people people would ask, how's homeschooling going? Well, I'm learning a lot. I don't know, learning stuff I should have learned in the second grade, getting anything out of this, but I am learning a ton, mostly about myself.

SPEAKER_06 40:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:40

So that was there was definitely some hard knocks in in that process, mostly for me. But by the time we got about three years in in the third grade curriculum, well, one of the things that I learned, I was gonna say this, was that I I had I gained such a measure of respect for teachers during that process. Because, you know, you order a curriculum, you f you pick a curriculum, you order it, and it arrives in these giant boxes. Pardon me. The curriculum arrives in these giant boxes, you have to unpack it, and you have like all of these books, and you find like the master schedule. And it's like, okay, you have 160 days of curriculum, and each of your days is going to look like this and this and this and this and this and this. And I just went, wow, like I had no idea that that's what went on in a teacher's in a teacher's world. I just, when I was a kid, I would just show up and whatever happened, happened. Right, right. And now I'm like, they had lesson plans, like unique lesson plans for every day that we were in school. Yeah. And they had to keep up with all that. And you had to wrangle when I was in school, it was like 30 students at a time. I understand now why some of the kids kind of fell through the cracks. Yeah. Like if you didn't have support at home, you're in trouble.

SPEAKER_06 41:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:51

Because the teachers just simply cannot shepherd everybody through all of that material. Yeah. It was just I had a class of one, and it was all I could do to try and keep us headed in the the right direction. And then by the time we got into like third grade or so, it was becoming apparent more and more that what I was teaching, um, there was a gap was opening up between what I was teaching and what what he was retaining. And so we we we uh kind of a convoluted process, but we intervened talking to his pediatrician because we thought, like, is it we'd heard about sensory processing disorder and you know, read some things and talked to some people and we talked to his pediatrician. He says, Well, the challenge with sensory processing disorder is it's not in the DSM, which means it's not something that an insurance company or a care provider can code for. Yeah. So unless you're gonna pay for support out of pocket, which you know, now you're getting into specialized treatment, it gets it very expensive very quickly. And so she said, let's get him evaluated at Barrows at Phoenix Children's. So we got on the list and an open something opened up. We didn't have to wait like it was like a nine-month waiting list just for a for a psyche valve. I don't know what I don't know if that's what it was called, but it's basically what it was. It was a psyche valve for kids. And so we got him in, and um, it was like five days of two or three hours at a shot of testing. And they came back with an autism diagnosis, and this was in he was like 10 or 11 at this point. And so at that point, like I had had some you know, preconceived notions and expectations of what my son would be like. When as a father, I think it's kind of natural to go, yeah, I want to, you know, help my kid to grow up to be whatever, right? Yeah, yeah. And when he had the transplant, and then you start to see all the limitations that are imposed because of the medications and all the, you know, you have to protect the abdomen, like there were like no contact sports, like ever.

SPEAKER_06 43:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:56

Be careful with BMX spikes, because if you get a handlebar in the gut, that can be catastrophic. So we're like, what the heck? And so a lot of expectations had to kind of be pulled out of my hands at that point. And then when we got the the autism diagnosis, it was like whatever was left of my expectation just went, I just have to, I had to let it go voluntarily, otherwise they're just gonna rip my hands apart. Yeah. And and so, and so the the upside of that is that we started to get support that was actually helpful through the local school district as well as through the state. And so we had teachers coming in who were qualified in special ed, and they would actually come to the house. And because he was immune suppressed, they actually did like a homebound program for him. So Higley Unified um really came through for us in that way. And then we had, you know, the different therapies through the school and through the state, and different support in that way. So we actually got this the support around him that I that I think was useful through the rest of his school career. So so that was that was very helpful. In about 19 or so, I think that we started to notice, you know, his appetite was going, his, his, his creatinine, his creatinine was going up, his kidney function was starting to go down a little bit. And then right around the beginning of 2020, it's just like his kidneys just went, okay, we're done. And they started to go down. And so he was hospitalized three times between January and June of 2020 for just different, wildly different things, all related to kidney function. So it was like stuff like blood pressure and electrolyte regulation and just like these crazy swings. And um, and then and then we finally got the the notice from from the doctors in Stanford, because we were gonna do it again in in California. And it was to the point where like we were planning on being we had an appointment scheduled for I think it was like July um 16th or so of 2020. Bear in mind there's a pandemic going on.

SPEAKER_04 45:56

Right. Well I'm thinking this in my head. Yeah. I'm like that was that was his background noise.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

Yeah. Like so like during transplant 1.0, there was like the financial collapse and all that was going on. That was background noise for us. And during the the second transplant, it was a pandemic and all like the world was shut down while we were there. And that was his background noise because we were focused on this. And so but it was to the point, his health was to the point where like we talked to the doctors in California and they're like, well, and we asked them toward the end of June, because he had just gotten out of the hospital for something else. And we asked them, Do you think it's worthwhile? Is it serious enough that we it would be in Julian's best interest to come and meet because they only did clinicals on Thursdays, to come on the 9th instead of the 16th? And the doctor was like, Yes. And we're like, oh, okay. And this was like on the 2nd of July. And so we're like, I guess we're I guess we're packing.

SPEAKER_07 46:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:52

So we had to pack up everything that we thought we might need for a relocation that we didn't know how long that was going to be. And so we basically drove from Phoenix to Los Angeles, stayed with some friends, and then we drove from Los Angeles to Palo Alto the next day. Wow. For and then that was on the eighth. And then we checked in the ninth, we checked into the doctors. And the and the the doctors actually called us on the eighth and said, Hey, would you be open to us just admitting him when he gets like after his clinic visit? And we're like, Yeah, I'm assuming that's what's gonna happen. Because they're like, we think we need to start dialysis immediately. Because we they had been like looking at his records and all that. And so that's what we did. We got him into the clinic, got him, it was like a 10 a.m. appointment, got him onto the examination table, he just laid down and fell asleep. And so I had the appointment with the doctors, and they kind of poked and prodded, and uh, and then they said, Okay, well, why don't you go guys go get lunch and then go check in at the hospital, and they'll they'll have a room for you at like one o'clock or something like that. And so that afternoon they put the hemoport back in, and the next day he was on dialysis, and the turnaround is like so fast. The the the crazy thing was, and I to me this is another god wink, but transplant 1.0 from the day that we had the clinic visit to the day that he goes transplant was 40 days.

SPEAKER_06 48:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 48:17

Now we had a we had a live donor, a friend volunteered to say, hey, if if if if it's viable, I'm willing to do this, and it worked out, and and and we were able to do it. And at that point, he was three and a half years old, and I was witnessing him like deteriorating as we approached the transplant. Because one of the things you have to do when you go for dialysis is you have to weigh in on the way in and on the way out, because they're keeping track of how much fluid they've pulled off of the patient. And he went from, bear in mind, as a three and a half year old, he went from 12 kilograms to just under 11 kilograms in like six and a half weeks. And so so it was it was kind of alarming to see him go that quickly. Yeah. Yeah, it was like six, yeah, so six weeks is yeah, it was 40 days. And so, and then as soon as he had the dialysis, or even even with the dialysis, but as soon as he has the had the transplant, the crazy thing was the doctor came out, they did the transplant, the surgeon comes out. Okay, he's doing great. They they put the new kidney in and it started working right away, and they're they're closing him up right now. And I'm like, what? Wow, it's it's working already. Like, oh yeah. Like I thought in my mind, I was like, it's gonna take days for it to come online and wake up. Nope, it's like plug and play. You put the new kidney in and it just goes to work. Huh. It was wild.

SPEAKER_04 49:35

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 49:36

Blood in fluids out.

SPEAKER_04 49:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:38

And so that was pretty cool. And so the and the same thing kind of happened uh the second time too. The second time though, we did not have a live donor, we didn't we didn't have somebody in the wings. And when we got there, that was one of the first questions that the the coordinator asked us, do you have a live donor lined up? Like, nope. She's like, Well, okay. Yeah, but just so you know, if you if you if you're waiting for a cadaveric organ, it could be years. And we're like, okay, well, we're we're on board. Yeah. And so, and I didn't realize until after, and I I tracked back and did the math. But on, so we we we got checked into clinic and got him in, you know, put the hemoport in, and the next day he was on dialysis. 40 days after that, he was doing so much better. He wasn't losing weight like he was the first time. He was doing much, much better. And we got the call from the transplant coordinator. Now, we had decided to live in the area. Stacy had done an amazing round of fundraising, and so we actually had the money to rent an Airbnb. Oh nice. And so we were able to do that. We didn't know for how long, but she was like, she just had an inkling that no, this you guys need to be there because she just had a suspicion that if this comes online, you're gonna need to be close by so that there's not a there's not a delay, right? You know, okay. To me, in my mind, it's like this is like Airbnb plus a car rental plus whatever, whatever, whatever. This is like, you know, hundreds of dollars per day that we're you know tapping into our our fundraising. She's like, don't worry about that. Just you you need to be there. And sure enough, and I also found out when we got there, one of the options was for us to go back to Arizona and wait for a transplant, do dialysis in Arizona here, and then when an organ became available, do a flight for life to back to California or get on a plane. And I'm like, I don't know. I think to me that didn't make sense because like the the delay that it becomes problematic, but it that is how it happens a lot of times. But Stacy was determined, like, no, you guys need to be there so that when it becomes available, you'll be there. And on day 40, got up, went to the grocery store, came back. Julian had his little online class, and then he was just out in the backyard, kind of stretching his legs, and I got a call and I saw it was the transplant coordinator. And I was like, This is unusual. I said, Hey Jerry. And she said, Hey dad, how far away are you? Wasn't not like how are you? What's yeah, how far away are you like, Well, we're in Woodside, so it's like a 15-minute drive. She's like, Perfect, we have a kidney.

SPEAKER_06 52:16

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_03 52:16

I said, I will pack. Yeah, she's like, Good. They the it was like 11 o'clock, 10:30 or 11 o'clock. She said, Okay, but the uh the surgery's booked for one o'clock. Get here as fast as you can. Oh, wow, amazing. And so, and so, and that's how it happened. Huh. That's incredible. And so, what happened? So, the cr the crazy thing to me is like it it was 40 days the first time and 40 days the second time. 40 days the first time kind of made sense because we had a live donor, somebody who was already on board and and was jumping through the hoops and passed all the all the medical exams. The the second one was like, like, this is impossible.

SPEAKER_06 52:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:51

It was it was so that was kind of a miracle in its own right. And it would not have happened if we had been like if if if she'd said, Hey dad, how far away are you? And I'd said, Oh, we're back in Arizona.

SPEAKER_04 53:02

Right.

SPEAKER_03 53:02

Would it have right and the reason that it became that that it was emergent like that, I think that we had kind of bubbled our way back up to the top of the list because the the the organ was such that well, I I learned later from the surgeon that the organ was already out of the body, which is I guess unusual. They try and keep the the body on life support for as long as they can. Gotcha. Before they harvest everything. And uh that was not the case this time. For whatever reason, the organ was harvested, and then they had, I guess they just my logistical brain is trying to figure out how in the world did we end up getting this. I mean, there's like you have to line up like all the blood types and antigen testing, all the medical testing that had. So that's those things have to line up perfectly. But there are potentially thousands of people on that list, and probably dozens or hundreds of them probably match the criteria medically. And I think the only reason that I can think of that we bubbled our way up to the top of the list is because the organ was out of the body, it had a very real expiration date or time, not even a date, it was that day, and everybody else is too far away. That's incredible. And if we had been in Arizona, she would have said, Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_04 54:17

That's incredible. That's incredible. Well, and and 40 is a pretty pro profound number. Right. If you think that I mean it is a very profound number. So let's let's shift a little bit because I want to talk about the book.

SPEAKER_01 54:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 54:31

When when you from my understanding, and and I have not read the book yet, which I would love to say that I've read the book and I could talk from it from knowledge on this, I can't, it's just really kind of research. But with regards to quietly drowning, is is that something that you feel like you were experiencing? And so you're so the book is coming from personal experience?

SPEAKER_01 54:53

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 54:54

Yeah. Talk to me about the invisible wave. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_03 54:59

It's a it's a metaphor, obviously. But it's the to me, it's the it's the current of your of your life, of your existence, which is either propelling you forward or pulling you under, depending on how you approach it. Okay. And so this book is designed to help people to navigate that approach. Okay. Because I think a lot of people are drifting in their own lives. And especially midlife, you get to a point where you're like, I'm I'm not really sure where I'm going anymore. Again, like we touched on this earlier, but like all the all the things that I thought were gonna be fulfilling, not so much. Yeah. I'm feeling burned out at work. My relationships are kind of tenuous. I I think I might be screwing up my kids.

SPEAKER_04 55:39

Well, and and I I think you can't help but throwing words in in your mouth, and I apologize. But I feel like you said things that were important or seemed to be important aren't as important anymore. Yeah. And I and I feel like that is I I remember going through my situation years ago. And and growing up, we we didn't have a lot. So for me, it was always I'm gonna be able to give my kids more than my parents ever gave to me. And that was that was a monetary thought process, right? Now looking back, and my kids are grown, but looking back, I feel like my parents gave me a very strong home, not necessarily a lot of stuff. I didn't have all the video games and all the cool stuff and you know, whatever. But I can look back and say I had a very strong foundation that was provided me, whether I agree with all of it or not, whatever. But my focus was always I'll say the monetary.

SPEAKER_02 56:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:40

Right? It's my job to provide as the the the man of the family. That's my job. So I'm gonna go do that and and not that the family comes second, because in my mind what I'm doing is for the family. Right. So I'm putting the family first by doing what I'm doing. But then you get to a point where it's like you're standing there out in front, and I'm using that proverbially. Is that the right word? Proverbially. Anyways, can't say the word. But you get to that point, and all of a sudden you stand and you look around and you're like, I don't like what I am. Right. Or where I've where I've gotten to. Right. Right. But you've now created all of these responsibilities that have to be taken care of that you can't just factory reset. Right. Which would be great. Would be amazing. Let me start this over again, right? I would make these decisions a little bit different. So so the book from conversations we've had, I understand it's meant to be a workbook in essence, or no? Kind of.

SPEAKER_03 57:45

It's I'm taking I'm taking readers through a sequence of ideas. Okay. And so but it's also in the it's also framed as a story. Okay. Make it accessible. So a lot of the a lot of the lessons are delivered in the form of a of a dialogue between two people. And sometimes some other third parties get involved as well. Sorry about that. And so but I but I recognize that there are like certain things have to be discussed before other ideas are kind of introduced. And like kind of an example of that is a lot of people in the personal development space will they'll ask you, well, what do you really want for your future? What do you really want? And it doesn't take into account the idea that it is possible to want wrong things. Sure, right? Or things that are not in that don't honor your commitments to your family, things that maybe don't don't honor your commitment even to yourself. Yeah. And so, and so one of the things that I wanted to make sure that was was discussed was the idea of examining beliefs, like what do I believe? Not just personal, like not just like what are my limiting beliefs, that kind of thing. That's in there as well. But the idea that like, well, what what's actually right? And and so what I the the framework is the the beliefs kind of set the boundaries, and your values set are kind of fill in inside the things that you love fill in inside the boundaries. But then when sometimes when when a value conflicts with a belief, then one of those things has to take priority. So if you I kind of you know go through some examples in in the course that I'm I'm constructing right now, but like if you value family, but you also value independent adventure, how do you decide which one of those front seat takes front seat? Right.

SPEAKER_07 59:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:37

And so and so you have to make some decisions about what you decide is most important in your life, and then let those be the framework. And if the some of the things that you that you love or are drawn toward don't fall within the boundaries of your of your your beliefs or your credo, which is a set of examined beliefs that you are saying you are deciding this is what I believe, then you have to go, okay, I love that thing, but I can't I can't do that. I have to I have to leave that out outside the boundary for the time being because my life just doesn't my credo just doesn't make make uh uh allowance for that right now. Like one of the ex one of the examples that I I I just recorded, I'm in the process also of developing an online course that's gonna complement the book as well. And it's not framed as a story, it's just the lesson. So each each lesson is just like one little idea. But I gave the example of since I was a kid, I have always loved motorcycles. Like since I was like eight or nine years old, I remember having a giant poster of like a Honda Nighthawk on my bedroom wall. And somehow when I was 12, I convinced my parents to let me take the Safety Council motorcycle training course, which is the course you would take when you're trying to get your license. Okay. Right? I'm 12. I'm not getting my license, but somehow I convinced them, and they somehow convinced the the course people that this was a good idea. And so I went and took this motorcycle safety course, and I've been in love with motorcycles ever since. And then I got married. You know, it wasn't so much the danger factors, it was just extraneous, like it's just kind of a lower priority. But then you have a kid who is like utterly dependent.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:12

And now the safety factor is a factor. And now in the situation I'm in right now, where my my special needs adult son lives with me full-time, that's that's just not an option. Yeah. It's not like I'm getting it because it's an economical transportation solution. It's you're getting a motorbike for a reason. Right. And it's not necessarily just to go get groceries and only, you know, get 50 miles a gallon.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:35

Yeah. Yeah. Right. So talk talk to me about talk to me about how the book came to be and what what was going on in your life that that got you into this mind frame.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:47

I think the the my earliest notes on the book were more about how can I help someone understand how to extract themselves from anxiety and depression. That was the original kind of genesis of the book. And it had a different title at the time, instead of surfing the invisible wave. I think the title was Wrestling the Invisible Monster. And it was just about how do you can have a series. That's also dawned on me as well. It's like, hmm, that could be the next book in the series. Well, it'd be interesting to see kind of what where where the heat map kind of lights up in the book. Because I I go through every chapter is a different topic. Okay. And some of the chapters could be books on their own. And so it'll be interesting to see kind of where where if I can start to get feedback loops set up, where where are people really resonating? Yeah. So but the the the depression and anxiety recovery piece was a big deal because I thought I had some insight once I finally came out of it. Once I finally came out of it, I thought, if I can figure out how to share this with people, I'll bet there's people who could use this.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:54

And then it evolved from there because in for whatever reason, the idea of, I don't know if it was just because of the water or if surfing was a part of it from the from the beginning, but it quickly developed to the point where like, okay, if I can get somebody's head above water, that's good, but they're still drifting. How do I get somebody now so that they don't just end up sinking back down and they're not, but they're not drifting toward the rocks? How how how do we go somewhere? And because I think that's a the there's a central theme in the book, and I I touched on it early on, this idea of meaning, right? What constitutes a meaningful life. And the conversation that takes place in in the book around the kitchen table is and he draws, you know, Sage draws these equations on the on the chalkboard. And this is inspired, and I talk about Chip Conley in the book. Chip Conley wrote a book called Emotional Equations. And the one that really resonated for me says, and I kind of turned it around for the sake of the book, but in in Chip Conley's book, it's despair equals suffering minus meaning.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:02

And so the equation that I put in the book is suffering minus meaning equals despair. So I just kind of flip it around. And then and then I said, and the corollary is suffering plus meaning equals passion.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:14

Hmm. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:15

And so, and that's where we get like the passion of the Christ. Yeah. Right? His his suffering was meaningful. So that's why it's called the passion. And what struck me was the suffering is a constant, like from a mathematical point of view. The constant is suffering. Everybody experiences suffering. That's just kind of built into the human experience. Somebody once said, if you haven't suffered in your life, just wait around.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:39

It'll find you.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:39

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:41

And then um, but the outcome of each equation is it could hardly be more different. Suffering on both sides, the constant in both equations, but one produces despair and the other one produces passion. And so, like, which which life would would you rather have? And so the equation becomes the variable in the equation is meaning. So if I have meaning, I get passion, but if I don't have meaning, then I get despair. So the question becomes then, okay, where does meaning come from? How how do I get that? So that's what the book is about. And and that's where the whole idea of if I can get somebody's head above water and they can breathe, they can be inspired again, literally to breathe life into, they can be inspired, but if they're still just drifting, they're still in danger. So if we can get somebody moving, and this is where the meaning piece comes from, because the the meaning is definitely tied to what direction you're headed, but also trying to figure out what direction is right for me to be headed. Because everybody's different. You're gonna pursue life in a different way than I'm gonna pursue it. Hopefully, by the age that we are, we started to figure out who we really are. This process of kind of excavating who you really are, like these things that are the, you know, they're coming coming back for you that were buried for a long time. You know, and I think that's not an uncommon thing for people. I think a lot of times that we go back to childhood and just getting in touch with who we sense we're actually made to be, and then getting in touch with that. So much of child development is learning how you should get along with people. Now, getting along is important because you have to learn how to be in relationship and be in connection and accommodate and adapt, and it's like a dance. But if you can also lose yourself in that process, if you make your life about fitting in, now you're getting into self-abandonment. Yeah. And so as we grow up and as we mature, you know, as as when we're little, my parents' beliefs become my beliefs. But as I grow into an adult, it's incumbent upon me to take responsibility for my beliefs and examine them and see if they're really mine.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:53

If they're really true, if they really I I use the word veracity in in the book, if they're voracious, if they are are these beliefs true beyond my subjective experience? And so we, you know, we talk about that in the in the chapter on beliefs.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:07

Put to put you on a spot for a second, because a question just came to my head. How do you balance, and I don't know if this is something you talk about in the book, but how do you balance the life that you've created with the feeling of a direction you want to go? And being able to go, this is the life I've created.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:27

How do I now, you know, balance those two with When you say created, do you mean like running the old scripts? I've got myself into this place where I'm feeling burnt out and like I'm sinking? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:36

I mean like you're yeah, yeah, absolutely. Where where you're you're in, let's say you're in a relationship or you're in, you know, you're you've you've had kids, you've got a a a good job, you're running a business, whatever it is. It's like, okay, now I've I've got all this this stuff I've packed around me to create my world. How do you how do you know? And I'm trying to formulate the question, how do you know that it's not just I'm burnt out here and this just looks good. I mean back to the motorcycle, right? When you think about, yeah, it'd be great to get on a motorcycle and just go, but the responsibility of having somebody else dependent on you right to be able to go and realize sure that's something I'd love to do. You know, I think about I would love to have 50 acres and develop that property and and just you know be have my my garden and my dogs and you know I realize now at this point in my life that's probably irrational thinking, although it's something that I would love to do, have my shop and have all this woodworking stuff and I got I and I don't know if my question's coming clear because I'm kind of walking in a circle but how do you how do you figure out okay this is not a bad thing that the stuff that I've packed around me right this looks shiny and glittery and wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:00

Yeah right I don't think it's an immediate overhaul I think there there's a c so a couple of things are kind of coming into my mind here. In the introduction the dedication I say this you know if if you've ever looked at your life and wondered is this all there is and you've wanted to go and leave it all behind and go find yourself but the circumstances of your life prevent you from doing so this book is for you because this you can be a proxy to the character in this book who does that. He buys he caches in his 401k and buys an adventure motorcycle and goes on a trip to go find himself in the back roads of America.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:32

So so every time I say I would love to just get a little cabin on the top of a mountain and disappear with no electronics I need to read the book.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:42

Well I think so so there's a there's a principle that kind of comes up in um oh gosh what's the guy's name Gerber Michael Gerber the the book The Emith Revisited This is where I first encountered the site of it. If you're a an entrepreneur or a business owner or an operator there's a difference between working in your business and working on your business. Yeah right yep and so if you're if you run a bakery you're gonna spend a lot of time making pies and croissants and bread but if that's all you're doing you're probably gonna get burned out because you're just in the trenches all the time. Yeah right you have to set aside time to work on your business where you're like okay where are we going? Are we expanding? Are we experiment are we changing the menu or are we am I am I hiring you know what what am I doing? Am I content with just this one location or is this the chain that I want to see go across America? Like what so you have to start getting into that creative space where you're working on the business instead of just kind of in the business. And I think the same is true in our lives as well. I think we have to set aside time for reflection especially if we're in a season where we're going something needs to change because some I am just this is this is not working the way that I was thinking it was going to work out. Yeah. I need to do some introspection. So you have to set aside time to work on your life not just in your life because if you're just in the trenches in your life and you never get away I think that's one of the reasons why things like vacations and recreation are so important because it gets you out of the trenches. It gets you away it gets you a little bit of distance from all the stuff that you're in all the time and it gives your brain time to process something different. But then but then you also need to go okay is my life going the direction that I really want it to go and if it's not what do I need to do and I think in the same way in a business you wouldn't just go in that bakery hypothetical bakery business you wouldn't just go well we need to stop baking everything and just and just start making hamburgers instead we're gonna completely change the business model. Right. Or let's be a fabric store now instead of we're not gonna get out of food altogether. So we're not making like massive changes and I think the same is true in life as well if especially the more people that are dependent on you the more it has to come in the form of course corrections. Yeah if you're just a solo operator if you're single and you live in a van down by the river you can pretty much you know pull up stakes and go to the next town right and you you can't you have that luxury but if you have a spouse kids employees friends a social circle community civic involvement if you have things that you're involved in you can't just pull up stakes and disappear you can't just ghost your life.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:22

You could but you might show up on the news yeah yeah I don't recommend it. No yeah why why do you think so many people who hit will say their 30s 40s 50s or later why do you think this is such a common reality because I mean you hear people talk about midlife crisis all the time right and I haven't bought a Corvette yet so I've not hit a midlife crisis.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:48

Whoa the newest model I kind of think they're cool.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:51

No I mean is it because of that we put our head down we're just we're we're in the business all the time and we've not taken the time to step back and look at the the full picture.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:00

I think I think that's part of it. I think also it's that uh there's a bunch of different things I think there's a bunch of there there's a lot of things competing for your resources and your attention like one of the things that I just did my my publicist and I kind of worked this up and my web person put it together made it interactive is we put together what we call the midlife reset bracket. And so we did it like a like a sports bracket like we're inspired by you know we had the NBA finals and the world cup is going on all these things like let's put a bracket together. And so we actually put together this thing where you can go onto my website and the link is invisiblewave.surf forward slash midlife.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:35

Midlife. Yes. I'm gonna do that tonight.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:37

Okay. And what you do is you fill in 16 competing things okay not necessarily problems to be solved but they could be issues that need to be resolved.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:47

Maybe I'll do it this weekend. Sounds like I'm gonna have to think about this.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:50

Yeah just things that are anything that is competing for your attention and it could it could even be dreams that you've kind of put on the back shelf for a season. And then it's it's it's mostly for fun but also for some illumination. But even just articulating those 16 things can be an exercise going okay these are the things that are competing for my for my attention and my energy and now the fun part begins where we start doing the head to head thing and going okay which one's going to survive we're gonna narrow 16 down to eight and then eight down to four. And then each time we do a round we do a head to head uh we ask questions like is this borrowing from my life or is this building my life? Is this borrowing from my future or building my future? And if you're married you could say is this borrowing from our our future or is this building our future right because you've got other people involved now. That's not just you it's it's you and your partner. And so for each one of those pairings you have to figure out okay which one's more important and you and then you pick one and then it makes advances to the next round and then you go to four and then you start then you start using your imagination to go okay if I were to make this one a priority what would my life look like in 12 months and you do that with all those four finalists and then you and then you pick a finalist.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:04

Yeah that's gonna take me a while I'm not doing it tonight.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:07

It could be it you could do it in as little as half an hour.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:10

Well but yes but the way my brain thinks it will take me much longer the way I know myself and I know that that is going to be one of those things where I will get stumped.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:20

I will get to the grade eight and I'll be like man knocking down the final four how do you you know so it's the yeah that's but that's one of the things that's that's that's pre that's pressing on us in midlife I think there's also the idea that like we're starting to get if you're starting to get tired in your career and you've got all the the the the competing responsibilities around you know family and maybe church and civic involvement and you're like I'm only in my four I've got a long road ahead of me yet and I'm tired now. And so it it I'm not gonna say it forces you to do anything but it is an opportunity to reflect on your priorities. Am I taking care of my body? A lot of people get into midlife and realize I put on a lot of weight I should I maybe I should do something about that. Or I've let my physical fitness go down. Maybe I should hit the gym those kinds of things. Start to take their nutrition seriously start to take their physiology seriously their their sleep habits um I talk I talk about all that in the book as well and but also I think one of the things that happens in midlife is we start to become aware acutely aware that the again we've kind of touched on this already but the scripts that were handed to us by our early caregivers not just parents but you know parents and priests and pastors and peers and partners and all the all the people that are influential influential in our lives growing up you you learned a script oh this is the way life is oh this is how I create success oh this is what I'm supposed to do. And that goes all the way through college but then once you get out of of structured institutional education now you are responsible only to yourself and then eventually if you work for somebody your boss. Yeah and your boss is really only concerned that you produce and so now you're on the hamster wheel. Yeah and if you get to late 30s and you go man none of this is what I thought it was going to be what am I what am I even doing? And I'm only 38 not me but hypothetically right you get to the you're approaching midlife going I'm only in my late 30s I'm only in my mid for I'm early forties and I am I'm I'm ready to tap out. This isn't sustainable.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:32

And I I I want to add to that because I think I think there's a piece of which at least for me where when I hit a certain age it dawned on me the finality right where you it in your twenties, in your thirties in your forties I don't think there's you still have time. Even even though it could end tomorrow we could have the widow maker heart attack and be done right but we still have time. I'm in my 40s I got 20 years I'm not gonna retire for 20 years 25 years 30 years whatever it is. You get to 50 and you're like I'm still okay. You get to 55 all of a sudden you're like well crap. If 65 is the retirement age air quotes like I know I'm on the back nine but like I'm like way in the back nine.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:21

Yeah and you start thinking crap you know yeah especially if you've been through a like a divorce a bankruptcy a foreclosure had to deal with a lot of medical situations and stuff where it's like now all of a sudden you're looking at it going God I'm I'm tired. And I don't want to be working until I'm 85. Right. Anyways just a thought that came to my head where I think in addition to kind of all that stuff there's this realization that at some point and I tell my kids if I'm ever eating green slop in a wheelchair just roll me to the edge of the Grand Canyon. And you heard it right here so it's recorded nudge me over. Just take the locks off the wheels and just put me close to the edge. I'll figure it out. Just let the wind happen. Yeah but but that whole thing where you're like you wake up with aches and pains that you didn't have before. And it's like wait a second why am I getting out of bed and I'm in more pain than when I went to bed those things but I think in addition to what you're saying is like now all of a sudden there's this reality that there is an end to whatever it was and we can't factory reset.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:32

No, we do not get a factory reset. All we have is really all we have is the present moment. But one of the things that you know I I talk about in the book is how passion is the antidote for a life half lived and I've heard people like Jordan Peterson say things like the goal in life is to live a life so oriented toward meaning that the fact that it's suffering becomes irrelevant. And so and I'm I'm in a season right now where you know I've written the book it's been the most amazing roller coaster but I've written you know wrote the book I'm doing the course I wrote the curriculum for the course I'm in the middle of shooting that hoping to have that all ready to go by the time the book drops in August August 4th and I'm having the time of my life doing all this and it's an unbelievable amount like I look back and go holy cow I did all that. The course is like 50 modules long. Wow and it took me like two months to write and this is after the book was finished.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:31

Yeah. But you you asked me before we came on about the podcast and if I'm enjoying it. Yes and and I'm sensing the same thing about you and the book and and the modules and the and the this the study stuff that you're that you're working on the coursework. It is litting a fire inside of me that I didn't realize was actually there. Or was possible. Right. Yeah and and really and I'm not gonna say you know obviously in the world we live in today the society that we have making money is important. But I would do this without the thought of even needing to to make money which is a weird spot to be in because like I said earlier my focus has always been monetarily be able to provide provide and and not that I don't care I'm not saying that at all. It's just a weird crossroads that I've come to where it's like this this fills me up in a way different than anything ever has. So I think that's very cool. How do you how do you combat and I kind of asked this before but I'm gonna ask you again how do you combat or how do you deal with the thought that what somebody may take away from the book or the concept of the book is shirk your responsibility and just do what feels good.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:54

I think if they read the book they'd understand that that's not the message. Okay. Even though it kind of looks like that's what he's doing. On the outset. At the beginning but there's there's also some very real conversations because you learn by the end of you know chapter three the first four chapters are really mostly about setting the story up right so chapter one is like you're introduced to the main character and his like what brought him to this place? Why is he doing this? And then at the very end of the chapter he meets Sage chapter two is sage welcomes him into his home and and they start getting to know each other starts to ask him questions about like oh so so what what what brings you what why are you doing this this this quest that you're on right and and then he gives him a he decides near the end of the conversation he's like okay I'll take you on but on on condition. And you have to buy the book to find out what that condition is. Yeah but he's that's a cliffhanger but at but at first and look so here's kind of a a technical storytelling nerd detail I I I've done I spent a lot of time learning how to write screenplays for for Hollywood never sold anything. But I learned a lot about storytelling. And so when I set out to write this book I decided I'm going to use screen that that story template because this is the this is the way Western audiences are programmed to receive stories and it just works. Yeah and once you understand the template and if you want to know kind of where to start go look up Blake Snyder's book Save the Cat and you will learn all about it. And then but I will warn you once you read that book you can't unsee it. You will see everything you will see it in every movie and every novel you ever experience for the rest of your life. Yeah and you go oh there's like the mysteries kind of like it's like seeing how the magic you know exactly where it's going. Yes but I thought well that's how and so that's basically the structure that I use for the story of this and there there's a there's a story beat called Refusal of the call where the the main character is offered an opportunity to go on the adventure and he says no I can't do that. That's irresponsible or whatever the whatever his excuse is right so think of Luke Skywalker. Luke come I can't my aunt and uncle I have to go I have to go work the the water vapor farm or whatever it was going right yeah and it's not until Aunt and Uncle Owen were are eliminated that now but but think about it he could have said you know what this is a decent piece of real estate here there's some few there's some potential here I could stay I could stay and run this evaporator farm now. Obi-wan you go do your mission thing I'm gonna stay here all that resistance stuff you go do the I'm just gonna stay here on the on the evaporator farm and harvest vapor from the desert air for the rest of my life. So there's absolutely thrilling in that equity here and I probably they're they they just died I could I'm probably gonna inherit this right that would be a very different story. Absolutely right so eventually the hero has to choose to go on the adventure but there's always a story beat where he says no I'm not gonna go on the adventure and then he goes back and then of course Luke Skywalker things happen then he says okay well I guess I'm going on so he goes on the adventure and then of course you know yeah everything happens. So there's a similar beat where Sage says I'll take you on on condition and then and then at first he says no I'm not gonna do that and he leaves. So at the end of chapter two he kind of leaves and he's in a bit of a huff. So then in chapter three he goes and he calls his wife and and that's when we learn that their marriage is like fraying and in serious trouble. And she basically puts lays it out for him is like well look I've been doing some thinking while you've been gone and like if if you come back and nothing's changed like what do you think is going to happen? He's like what do you mean? And so they have a very very honest conversation about what's at stake. Yeah. And she says I think you should go back and do the thing he's like well I already kind of told him off and I'm really embarrassed now. And so he's like well you know I think you should do this. And she kind of leaves it at that and goes like okay so chapter four he goes back kind of hat in hand can I come back and then and then that's when they start to get into the like the meat potatoes yeah and then then that chapter is about decision making yeah motivation and decision making. Talk to me about the freaking basics. The freaking basics are the elements of self-care and it's it's basically chapter five. Oh so it's like I don't want to go too deep I don't want to give this this is this is the foundation and basically the freaking basics came to me out of that season of darkness. I don't know if we've really tied the dates down yet but from about late 2016 to late 2019 that was my my my season I call it my season of darkness. It was three years of anxiety fueled depression is what it was like for me. And and so when I came out of that that was when I went oh other people need to know about this and but the freaking basics were basically about self-care. And it was there there's a quote by Jim Carrey that that's actually in the book and he's like look I understand depression is real but if you're not you know getting good food hydrating sleep getting fresh air surrounding yourself with good things you're not giving yourself a fighting chance right and so I I was in a a pretty poor state back then and Stacy who saw me slipping away but did not know what to do but she was able to come and at least challenge me going well are you at least eating right? Are you getting enough water? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you are you moving your body are you doing like are you still doing the things that you actually enjoy doing like physically are you going you need to go for a bike ride. And she and so she kind of she put that in front of me and that was really helpful. And then the one that I added to that for like so you know for for the rest of our relationship that was the we called it the TFBs the freaking basics and and that's kind of a a baseline if you're feeling down before you start spiraling out into an existential crisis just check in with yourself did I get enough sleep last night am I is my blood sugar stable am I eating well real food not sugar junk am I properly hydrated that's a that's a big deal that's a big deal for me. The crazy thing is my son has to drink three liters of water a day and I'm like religious about when he gets his water bottles and I will not apply that to you to myself like I'm just like I'm just oh well good whenever it's empty I guess I'll refill it.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:38

It's crazy I've had ice tea sitting here and obviously a drink but there's times I get to the end of the day and I'm like did I drink water today? I know I've had coffee.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:47

Yeah I know I've had tea about the coffee drink water yeah and so and so there's a quote there's another Jordan Peterson quote in the book it's one of it's from uh 12 rules for living and he says one of the rules is paraphrasing take care of yourself like someone you're responsible for helping wow that's deep so if if you are responsible for helping someone like you would never let them go. Yeah like I would never let my son go hours without water days without food or bathing or hygiene self-care that kind of stuff I would never let that happen but for some reason when I turn that attention on myself I'm like I had other things I need to do yeah shower schmour I've I've heard the same thing about the way we talk to ourselves.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:32

Oh absolutely I would never talk to other people the way that I talk to myself I put myself down all the time yeah and I realize it and I think about it and then I'm like why did I say that? And anyway.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:44

Yeah. Yeah. Those internal conversations. But the freaking basics are basically laying the foundation for how you care for yourself because ever everything is built on that. You're gonna be the better care you take care of yourself, the more powerfully positioned you'll be to do everything else that's in the book.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:03

So all of this introspection we talk about around beliefs and talents and values and vision and actions and all these things, if you're not taking care of yourself, all of that is going to be diminished. If you are taking care of yourself, you can crank that up as high as you can w w uh and and accompl and accomplish more. One of the quotes that I love that I it's in the course, it's in the book somewhere, Greg Lamond, American cyclist. He says, It never gets easier, you just go faster. And so it's about developing capacity and and and margin so that you can still accomplish the things and maybe even more that you were before, hopefully things that are in alignment with your talents and your beliefs and your values and the vision that you have for your future, being intentional about all of this stuff. But as you're developing your clarity around those things and as you're also taking care of your body through the freaking basics, you're putting yourself in a position to develop the capacity to go faster as in cycling parlance.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:05

So episode that we're dropping tomorrow had a guest on, his name is Boaz Galad, and he's a he's a coach, we'll say. One of the things he he said, and and it's a it's a uh spot that we just shot out, and that is that he doesn't know very many truly successful people that haven't been through life without a coach or that don't actively have a coach. You consider yourself a coach in this. Tell me what that means to you with regards to the book, the the sessions that you're putting together, yeah, the curriculum. What what is what is it that you're looking to be able to do as a as a coach for people?

SPEAKER_03 1:31:46

I think so. My my my coaching background started in the wellness space, helping people uh get to a healthy weight, so you know, fat loss, get to a healthy weight, and then and then develop the habits that they need to sustain that life. Okay. One of the things that I've learned on that journey is that most of the journey takes place in here in your head. One of my friends, he's a physician who also is in the medically supervised weight loss space. And so we've had some very interesting conversations because we're both kind of doing the same thing from different points of view. Yeah. But he says the har most of the time, the hardest thing about losing weight is believing it's true. So people will get to their goal and they they don't recognize themselves. Because if somebody's been overweight for a long time, yeah, and then they'll catch a glimpse of themselves in a mirror or in a window reflection as they're walking down the street, and they'll go, Who's that? Yeah. And they don't un and there's something in their subconscious going, no, we gotta fix this. This is not what we're used to. And you'll start to sabotage yourself to try and your because your ego, your conditioned mind, is trying to get you to go back to that old space. Interesting. And if you're not intentional about no, no, no, we're maintaining course, we're going this direction, and we just have to continue on this path long enough so that this becomes this new trajectory once we have enough track record or enough history along this trajectory. Now our conditioned mind will defend that instead of the old identity. And so there's a identity is involved in a lot of this. Much of what I do in this and in the coaching that I'm embarking on through the course, and then I'm still piecing it together. I don't know if there's going to be one-on-one coaching or group coaching. There's gonna be some kind of community element added at some point. But a lot of what I think that I am able to help people with is developing clarity around what they should be doing with their with their life. And that's why I wrote the book. I wanted to help people to understand how to create meaning. Yeah. Mean meaning, meaning in our lives is not bestowed or doesn't kind of fall out of the heavens on us. It's something that we're responsible to cultivate and create on our own. And a lot of that is just our mindset going, okay, this is I'm I'm go I'm going to take responsibility to do this thing. But a lot of that has to do with alignment. If I want to be, I don't know. The first illustration that comes to my mind is like a short person who wants to be an NBA player. But like for me, let's say I I let's pretend I love horses and I want to be a jockey. Well, I'm six foot three and I weigh 200 pounds. Right. That's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:20

In in what world is maybe a very big horse world.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:24

So I'd I'd be I'd be out of alignment with with my nature. And you can't you can't fight your nature. This doesn't make sense. And so a lot of a lot of what I'm doing is helping people to shine light. I call it I call a lot of what I do a process of illumination, shining light into people's dark areas and to figure out what's actually there. Gotcha. Whether it's you know talking about your talents, talking about your like your natural inclinations, how to develop those talents into strengths that you can deploy in the service of other people, and then getting getting clear on things like you know, what's the vision that you want for your life, understanding the architecture of goals, goal setting, the different kinds of goals and what what you know how they how they work and how they serve your future. And then the practice of actually getting into action and then maintaining that practice. And then and then ultimately how to how to actively pursue your life while also developing the capacity to be content with the life that you are actually living and holding both of those at the same time. And so I think the illumination and the clarity thing, that's that's the primarily how I think how I how I see that I help people.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:33

How how would you define or or what is what makes somebody coachable?

SPEAKER_03 1:35:39

A growth mindset, I would say.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:41

Going back to like Carol Dweck's book, Mindset, where she talks about the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. Fixed mindset is where you're like, well, this is just the way it is. I am who I am. In the book, he says, I'm as me as I can be before he storms out. And um, and he realizes, oh no, I'm just and then Sage kind of playfully kind of he says, I'm not, I'm not suggesting that you abandon who you are right now. Because he he miss he misunderstands. He says, You want me to become someone else? What are you talking about? No, I don't I want you to view it as like an expansion. You're developing yourself, you're expanding into more of who you already are, recognizing that who you are today is the is the soil and sometimes the fertilizer or the the the seed and sometimes the fertilizer for what what we can become.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:26

Somebody working through all of that and and going through the book and going through this journey with you, I will say, seems to me you're working towards being having a good life. What is the most dangerous thing about having a good life?

SPEAKER_03 1:36:42

Probably comfort. I think there's a tendency I talk about comfort zones in there, and I define comfort zone as the collection our our collection of unconscious competencies. So the things that we've learned to be able to do that don't require much new thought. I can drive my car without thinking about it, I just kind of put it in drive and suddenly I'm home. Right? I can do the job that I do, I can do the chores around the house, I can take care of Julian's medical needs, I can do all the, you know, I can all the all the things that I know how to do. I don't really have to d do much. The the trap or the lie that we're sold in our culture is that the goal, the lie that we're sold in our culture is that the goal is to develop a comfortable life. Like you'll know you've made it when you are comfortable. And I don't think that's true. I think that you can have I'm not against nice things, you can have nice things. You can have a beautiful house and you can have wonderful furniture, but that's not the goal. I think that there's there's no such thing as stasis in nature, and I think that when we get to a point where we're like, finally I made it, now I can ease off. We're at risk of stagnating. One of the the things that I talk about in there is we call it the swell. And it's basically a curve that starts like this and then it goes like this. And that's called it's a mathematical function called a sigmoid curve, and it's it's used to model growth cycles. And what happens is whenever we're learning something new, we go through this. We're like, we're we don't first we don't know what we don't know. We're we have un we're um unconscious gosh, how's the phrase? Unconscious incompetency. We're unconscious and competent. Then we get to we start to build and we go, oh, this is way harder than I thought. Now we're on the learning curve. And it's still it's frustrating. That's the the the that's the emotion most commonly connected with learning, by the way, is frustration. If you're learning stuff, because by definition, you're trying to do something you don't know how to do, and that is frustrating. Yeah. And so we get to this point right here, now we're consciously unc incompetent. We're still incompetent, but now we know we're incompetent. Then the curve starts to bend back the other way. Now we're consciously competent. We we know what we're doing, but we still have to think about it. And then eventually we get to the top where we are unconsciously competent. Now it's just habit. Now it's just something we do. The risk of getting to that top piece right there is thinking, I made it, I don't have to try anymore. But the problem is that we when we do that, we're at risk of starting to stagnate, we start to go down. We think we're gonna we're gonna maintain stasis. I think stasis is a myth. There's no such thing as stasis in nature, and I don't think there's any such thing as stasis in in us either. We we like to pretend. Yeah, because our ego says, no, let's just do the same thing we did yesterday, today, which means same. We're gonna maintain the same thing as we go along through our through our life. The problem is that we're getting older, we're we're changing whether we realize it or not.

SPEAKER_06 1:39:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:56

And the question becomes, am I directing where I'm going as I change? Or am I just letting that happen to me without even paying attention to it?

SPEAKER_04 1:40:03

Yeah. You you talk about lies. What would you say is probably the biggest lie somebody tells themselves when they know they need to change?

SPEAKER_03 1:40:12

I don't know about the biggest one. One of the ones I think that people tell themselves is they convince themselves that if they just gut it out, it'll get better. If I just allow for the passage of time, then maybe things will just magically get better on their own. And the problem with that is that sometimes it actually works. But it's not it, it's not a real good strategy. Waiting for things to get better randomly without any intervention on your part is a strategy, but it's not a very effective one. It's not a zero percent strategy. It's it's not like it never works, because sometimes it does work out. You're like, oh, that's I wasn't, I didn't think that would actually happen. Yeah. That's kind of cool. And then things magic magically get better because of reasons outside of your own control. I think that that's the and this is a lesson that I've had to kind of learn the hard way. I remember somebody talking and they're saying, I'm the phrase that landed was I am predisposed towards taking action. Like if I'm not sure what to do, I just take action. It doesn't even matter what the action is, I just take action. And I I really had to wrestle with that because I that's not my predisposition is to sit down and think about it. And I'll do that for days. And if I don't consciously get off my butt and go take action, like I have to consciously think about okay, I've been thinking, I've been working on my life, now I need to go work in my life and go do the thing, right? And then I can come back and reflect and you know, monitor progress and that kind of thing. Yeah. Um but I think that I think I think stasis is probably the most dangerous thing that we allow ourselves to believe in. That would be my probably the if there if that answer has one word, it would be stasis.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:48

I like that. The book is called Surfing the Invisible Wave. David Phillips. Comes out August 4th. It does. You have a website with invisiblewave.surf. Invisiblewave.surf. And you can take the test.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:04

The midlife reset. Now there's no link for that on the on the website, so you have to actually type it in midlife invisiblewave.surf slash midlife. Midlife.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:17

I have a ton of other questions. I'm just feeling like I think there's this point at which I'm like, I want to read the book and then I want to have you back on so we can talk through some stuff, yeah. Because I feel like at some point I'm gonna need an intervention. Uh so I have a closing question that I wrote out, and I and I'd like to ask this when someone finishes

WRAPPING UP

SPEAKER_04 1:42:37

the episode, this episode, they get back in their vehicle, they get back in their truck, they go back to their life. They're sitting quietly with the feeling that something needs to change. What is the first small honest step you want them to take? Buy the book. Fair enough. Probably should read the book.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:56

Yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah, read read the book. That's a strong move too. And what I would even say, and this is not just because I'm like, maybe instead of just buying one, buy five, but seriously, buy do it as a group. Yeah. Because there's there's a there's accountability built in there as well. Now you are in an active growth cycle with people that you know and love and trust. Okay. And maybe wrestling with their own versions of these midlife kind of questions, then which I would anticipate probably the majority of us are.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:34

Yeah. I mean, I I really truly think as much as we like to put on the perfect face on the outside, yeah. I mean, I just I I I truly believe, and part of me starting this podcast was that was like dealing with business owners on a daily basis who are all really dealing with the same thing and not talking to people about it. And I feel like, man, it's like at what point in our life did it become okay? And I don't know if this is just a guy thing. I don't think it is. I think women probably deal with the same thing, but coming from a guy perspective, at what point in our life were we told repeatedly, because it's so ingrained in our brain, that we should just stuff it down and just deal with it, you know, right? Anyways, I really appreciate you coming on. I've had a great time getting to know you a little bit of obviously about your backstory, but obviously the book, and I'm excited for it to come out because I'm going to read it, and then we're going to have you back on because I'm sure there will be some to talk about. So, um, really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Um, I do have a gift for you.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:46

Oh.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:46

Everybody who comes on gets a gift. How you use it is up to you, but it is personalized. I don't know if you're familiar with Rock's ink telligraphy. But uh, Roxy does all sorts of I'll get this wrong, engraving, etching. I don't know. But she she has uh personalized these for you. Because you came on the podcast, you went above and beyond, and so I greatly appreciate your time and your willingness to share your story. Thank you so much. You're very welcome.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:19

This is David Phillips, and I went above and beyond.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:26

The message carries on.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:29

Keep reaching the bug, keep going beyond.