E56: From Paycheck to Purpose with Larry O'Nan

What if work isn’t about the paycheck—but about purpose?

At 82, Larry proves that purpose doesn’t retire—and that thriving is a choice we make daily. Larry shares decades of wisdom on redefining work, discovering your true strengths, and living with intentionality. From walking away from dreams of theater to building a life centered on impact, Larry reveals how to shift from chasing money to creating meaning.

You’ll learn how to:

•  Identify your unique strengths and “sweet spot” 
•  Build trust and influence through relationships 
•  Navigate career pivots and unexpected life changes 
•  Lead with intentionality instead of reacting to life 
•  Balance strengths, weaknesses, and personal fulfillment 

If you’re feeling stuck, burned out, or questioning your path, this conversation will help you rethink what work really means.

Connect with Larry:

https://larryonan.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:12

What if work isn't just something you do, but how you live? Today's guest is Larry O'Nan, and this conversation completely reframes what work actually means. Larry has spent decades helping people thrive through nonprofit leadership, governance, and intentional living. But what stands out most is how he sees work today. It's not about the paycheck, it's about helping people accomplish what matters. We talk about discovering your strengths, navigating unexpected life turns, and why intentionality is the skill that separates surviving from truly living. Larry brings wisdom from over 80 years of life. Let's roll right in. All right, welcome to the Work Sucks But I Like It podcast. Today we have Larry Onan. He's a recognized specialist in nonprofit board governance, nonprofit management, project management, major gift strategy design and implementation, and funding campaigns. He's also the author of two books and has devoted his life to helping people thrive through intentional and effective stewardship. Larry, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Well, thanks a lot for the opportunity, Anthony.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

No, looking forward to this. So, Larry, all the years you've been living life and working, how do you define work today for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Well, there was a time when work was a paycheck for me. That was when I was in high school and college. That was a means of uh, you know, having money to spend. Um I pretty went I went through a pretty radical thing right at the end of my college career, thinking I was going to go into theater. I knew I was gonna end up at either New York or Hollywood. I just was captivated by the whole theater arts business. And um then I really started to come to grips with who I really was and what it was all about. And work to me is really not a paycheck anymore. It is helping people accomplish their objectives. Uh I still, even at 82 years of age, I still consult, I still work with people, I still mentor. And that's all work, but to me, it's this is a good day. I've got a lot to do. Um, many people my age are contemplating their neighbor and watching way too much uh television. I don't have time for television. I don't own a television. So work is not is not a means to my end. It's it's life living, I guess it is. So yeah, I take a very different perspective of it. I love the energy that I get because I get up every morning and have a good day.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

So I'd love you to break down for the audience here, because I feel like, you know, people, you know, coming out of college or high school, whatever, they have these dreams like be the astronaut, be the Hollywood actor, whatever it may be, right? And sometimes life presents us with these other opportunities. How did you navigate that sort of decision? When did you realize that it was okay to not be the Hollywood star, but to live your life and be the star in that life?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Well, there were a couple of wake-up moments way back in those college days. I'm a University of Colorado graduate, and I was in my junior year knowing that theater was my passion. And I saw that as vocational work. Uh, the directing more than the acting, but I enjoyed the acting as well. And one day I was in a class, literally, and I was looking around the room and I realized all of us, there was probably 20 of us in this theater arts class, and I thought we've all learned how to play a role, but we don't know how to be ourselves. And pretty soon, you know, I enjoyed the fact that I could play a role for a couple of hours on stage, get into character and do my thing. Now I was realizing that all of us were living a fake life. Interesting. And that really shook me up because I thought, what am I really doing here? What's this really all about? And it came, it was a spiritual revolution that happened in my life over a few months at the University of Colorado in the fall. And that really said, okay, now I when I really came to grips with who I was and what I was all about, I thought, okay, now this is what I can really help other people discover. So it really was a process of moving from I need to have a job to survive, to where I can use my skills and my gifting to help make things happen. And I think when you start to realize that you're fearfully and wonderfully made, it's an Old Testament principle out of Scripture. And if I really believe that I'm fearfully and wonderfully made, then I'm here for a purpose and I've got to live out that purpose. So it really shifted my gears from how much money do I make to how much impact can I have. And, you know, I've seen my life over 50 years now, over and over and over again, really play that. Now, that doesn't mean life has been easy. I've had some real bumps. I remember one time, Anthony, I was in a job for about five, six years. At that time, I was using some of my theater giftings and I was putting music groups together and traveling one in Europe, one in Asia, and five in the United States. And I was working with other people, but I was really taking something from nothing and turning it into something. And I wasn't performing in these groups. I was taking concepts and putting them into a contextual environment where uh a show can mean a lot to international students. We had a folk group, we had a rock group, we had a group for adults. And, you know, when I say adults, that the sound of the music was more adult-oriented. And all of a sudden I realized one day in front of 85,000 people and they didn't know what was going on, but I heard it announced that there was a new person in charge of music. And I literally lost my job with an announcement. And the person that I reported to came up, well, I tried to find you earlier and tell you what was going on. And I said, No, you knew exactly where I was. You told me to be here and help you do this. But, you know, now I found myself thinking that I was doing my vocational best, and I had nothing to do for 90 days. And that is an earth-shaking experience when you think you're on your way, and then there's a left turn, and you didn't create the left turn. Now, uh, I realized that left turn really put me into my vocational track for the rest of my life. But it was 90 days of wondering what in the world happened to me. That was really the beginning of my turning point. And I never ever expected I would get into fund development and be a consultant and work with major donor development for many, many nonprofit organizations. I still am on four boards of four different organizations, still actively involved, but I never knew that was coming. I never saw my training in school to even take me down that road. And I think a lot of times we think, okay, now we're educating ourselves to do X. And no, all you're doing is acquiring ability to think and process so you can do Y. And Y is really what life was for me. That became a vocational track that I ever I had no clue I was going to be on. But I had to be open to those options, or else I would probably have been having a pity party. And then the work really did suck there for about 60 to 90 days. It was a suck eating experience. Because what do you do with yourself at that time? What's your options? How do you find vocational satisfaction?

SPEAKER_03 7:34

So one of the things we like to talk about on the show is that success is not a matter of good luck, it's good skills. What would you say was the skill? I like that the play on, you know, the fact that you love acting and stuff. I think of you going from like sort of backstage to on stage, right, with your life. What is the skill that you've kind of developed to allow life to sort of happen for you now?

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Well, in that period of crisis in my life, I was introduced to a book years ago called The Truth About You. And I had to discover who Larry O'Nan was. And it was it was a precursor to other things. There's other tools that are out there. But that book helped me start to analyze what made me tick as a person. And when I started to realize that it wasn't about acting, it was about uh the five-year-old kid playing with a complete railroad train. I love trains at that time. And I had a huge table of trains and five engines running and gobs of track and all this kind of stuff. But I discovered that once I got it working, I got bored with it. And then I'd want to tear it apart and redo something. So I was always creating and molding and doing this. And I'd started five and six years of age. And I think what we've got to do as an individual is you've got to say, who am I as a person? What is my skill package? What's my gifting? And I think gifting's in a spiritual realm as well as a very practical realm. Yeah, I was gifted in the sense that I was pretty good on stage, but really I was just taking a character and making it become reality off of pages, something from nothing. And I had to interpret what that character was. Or if I was directing, I was taking a playbook and in six weeks turning it into a production. And I enjoyed the actual uh directing because it gave me the chance to continue to create. Well, I started figuring out who I was. Now, in this day and age, I think if you know listeners are out there, I'm a big one on Strength Finder by the Clifton Strength Finder Group. Yes. Because if you know who you are and you specialize in your strengths, every day becomes a day of energy. If you're working in your weakness, Anthony, it's, it's, you're going to be bored and sick. Um, I can do things in my weakness categories. You know, for instance, I'm not good in the mathematics side of the world. That doesn't mean I can't do my budgets, I can't manage money. But I'll tell you, if I'm working on that kind of stuff, I'm exhausted in a couple of hours. But if I'm doing something in my strength, I can do it all day long and not even realize that I've eaten. I don't, I can just go and go and go because I'm doing it within the areas of my strength. So strength finders and the disc tests and a few other tools out there have helped me solidify objectively who Larry O'Nan really is. And I've got to realize that there's other people with other skills. I know when I retired 10 years ago, I thought, well, I'll get into editing and I'll get into the details of doing podcasts and I'll get into creating my own website. And I've thought, this is, after about a month of that, I thought, this is exhausting. This is not me. Now, I have found other people that do those kind of things well. And I am choosing to use them in their area of strength, and I stay with my in my sphere of strength. I stay in my sweet spot. And I think even in marriage or in raising kids, you've got to realize that you're a unique father with your giftings that are different than somebody else. That doesn't mean I'm right and they're wrong. It means that my giftings are applied in a different way. So, you know, if a person's struggling with who am I and how do I fit in, I know years ago I was coaching a guy that really wanted to be a CPA. He had a cousin that was really doing well in the top eight firm, and he was that's his life. He wanted to go there. So he majored in all the stuff that took him into a credentialed CPA. And the first assignment he had in his large firm was to go in and do an audit for about six months in this company. And nobody would talk to him for six months. He was there as a necessary evil to get a job done. And he was actually told, found out later he was told by management to the rest of the staff, you leave him alone, let him do his job, don't get too close to him. He's doing what he's required to do. Well, this guy's a people person. Well, he was in exactly the wrong place to do that. You know what he does now? He's a headhunter for CPAs and accountants and things like that, because he needs the people's touch to energize his own life. Now, it still means he can use some of the skills, but he had to find out who he really was before he could really start to flourish. And I think we got to be very intentional in saying, who am I and how do I make life really work for me? And if I know that, now I can run down that track quickly. And I just stay in my I stay in my sweet spot.

SPEAKER_03 12:51

So who am I is a pretty intimidating a question, right, for most people. I love how you offered take the strength finder test and all that. I guess what are your thoughts, Larry, on the question when you get asked sometimes, what do you do? How do you define that? Why do you think it's a question that we open up with when we meet with people? Because I find that when we ask that question, it's very limiting, right, with the response we get back. But what are your thoughts to that question? What do you do?

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Well, I've had people ask me, what do you do for a living? And I said, Well I help people thrive. Now, I am a development consultant. I know how to do process work, I know all the techniques of doing those kind of things. I did that for 35 years. And when I was with Crew International, I did it for 12 or 14 years there. I was using skill packages, and there was a job description, and I had a title. But what I was really doing was creating something out of nothing and helping other people survive and thrive. And if I found, you know, in I hate to even say I wrote a book. A team of people and I put together content, and then I was tasked with the ability to be the author and a speaker and all those kind of things. But I wouldn't have had the book without the team really involved in it. So I didn't write the book. I maybe put my craft together to create content in writing, and I have spoken many times on the subject that we that I deal with. But I look back at all the time, I thought this would never have happened without a team of people really engaging for four or five months. They're the ones that really created the content. All I did is communicate content. So I think we gotta just just be very much aware. We're not here to carry out a job description, although we do have a job description.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

Yeah, I got you. Yeah, right, right. It's a tough question to answer. And I love I love the fact that you brought in like you're bringing, you're giving credit to the team around you. What are your thoughts? Can you share more of like, you know, we live in America, let's let's face it, you know, we have a sort of narcissistic sort of you know society here. What are your thoughts with that today? Why, how can we improve the team effort, if you will, in work?

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Well, I think in my own experience, when I start to give credit to the other people, a couple of things happen. Number one, they feel affirmed. Uh, I get more, frankly, from a selfish point of view, I get more out of people if I compliment them rather than I'm being negative on them. Now, I don't, I'm not complimenting them. I honestly do believe people, I want to find their worth and help them do it. But it is not just to get to my end. It is because they really are valuable in the sight of God. They're invaluable in my sight, and I want to lean on them. The guy that does my website, he understands the back of the curtain and the front of the curtain and that whole realm of technology far more than I do. So when he says, write and do this, I obey him. Now I'm paying him to tell me what to do, really, because I'm reliant on his strength. But I wouldn't go to my 10-year-old grandson and ask him for the same opinion because he's a five-year-old, or not five-year-old, he's 10th grade, five, fifth grade, and he's got great insights for a fifth grader. But I wouldn't trust him with that kind of work yet. Now, maybe someday he would be a good one to go to. So, yeah, there may be growing people in there, and we need to help people grow. I like to help people thrive in their own experience. And if I can have a little influence on their life and that process, then that becomes fun for me. I'm fulfilled by seeing them be fulfilled.

SPEAKER_03 16:40

So I feel like a lot of the transactions in corporate today feel cold, right? We look at employees as employee numbers. We don't call them by their names, you know, a credit card swiping. Everything just feels just very, again, like a transaction. How do you warm up sort of the relationships you have with people? What is one thing that you think about when you are interacting with someone working with them?

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Well, you know, in my experience, I came up with three things that I do with almost anybody I work with. Number one, before I ever get into content with them, I want to acknowledge who they really are. And so if it's 10 or 15 minutes of conversation that has nothing to do with what we're working on, but it just is about people-to-people stuff. It is how we feel when we shave in the morning, you know, type of thing. It's it is real life stuff. And if I can get even a few sentences and connections that way, it starts to bond relationally who we really are as people. Now I can also say after a few minutes of that, well, the reason why I wanted to talk with you today was, and there is a transition to let's get into some content. And then the content becomes here is what I need to have you do, here's how we go about doing it, here's the enough education to help you come on board with me. And then I got to transition again because I the reason I'm talking to you today is I would like you to do X. Now I'm asking them to participate in this thing. But if we don't start with a relational context, uh I I I you know leaders, narcissistic usually skip over that relational context.

SPEAKER_03 18:18

Why do you think they do that?

SPEAKER_00 18:19

They don't know we've anybody else exists. I mean, it really is a blind spot, I think, in their minds. And it's about them and the life of their life centers around their personality or how they can manipulate me to meet their needs. And I don't think it's it's so blind that they don't always see it. But you know, I I think, for instance, the presidents of the United States, you go back to every one of them from George Washington right on through, the ones that were the failures and being a president were probably not our narcissistic. The ones that were really able to handle the load of the culture and the dump that the culture gave on them in their own culture, they had to be resilient. And they had to be able to put up a lot of stuff and a lot of hate and discontent. And we see in our own culture today. We have a president today that's hated by a lot of people. And he can he's able to just stay on focus and not have that bother him too much. Now, that doesn't mean he hasn't got a few narcissistic uh slide remarks here and there, but generally he is so focused on what he's doing that he can handle the resistance. And I think sometimes we gotta, you know, the compliment on those kind of personalities are we really need those people around us a lot of times to move us ahead. But, you know, that's not my personality. I had a guy I worked with for a number of years, and he would love to have a good battle. He wanted to have a knockdown drag out. He was really loving to wrestle. By that time, in a conversation, a word conversation going on, I was exhausted. And then his comment was, boy, this has really been a good conversation. We've really got a lot done today, and I'm thinking I'm wiped out because my personality wasn't his personality. And I think we got to respect who each other is, but find a way to have real conversations with each other. And if you don't have a relational uh component to that, it's almost impossible to dive in to do that.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

Now I love how you start with the acknowledging of the person. So let's go back to your kind of three points here. You said acknowledge, transition, and then the content, if you will. Change initiatives always sound great, right? In a corporate setting. You know, people come up with what they say, the flavor of the month, right? Why do you see change initiatives sort of fail, right? You want to get the person to do X, but they don't do it. They keep going back to their old habits. How do you break someone out of the habit and make effective change in their work?

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Well, that's a tough one because there's got to be a desire. When I look at people in leadership roles or business roles, I'm looking for a person that's got two things a heart for God and a teachable attitude. And if I if the teachable attitude is not there and they're resistant, it's really hard to move that person uh forward in in goals and objectives. So I I kind of, you know, it's very simple to my mind is do they have a heart? The heart for God also means they got a heart for people. It's got a heart for living, you know. Uh yes, God is very important to me, but I'm looking for what the attributes that come off of that are. And then the teachable spirit is okay, let me listen carefully. Are they listeners or are they always retorting what I've got to say? And uh so I I'm looking for those qualities in a person. And if you find those qualities, uh even if an honre personality, if he's got some teachable spirit in him, you you can make things happen. And that doesn't mean that I'm the right one. It's the one that's listening and saying somebody else is going to give input to my life.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

So you have over 80 years' experience of living on this planet. I'm really curious to hear your generational thoughts with this teachable attitude. Let's start with the younger generation. What are your thoughts on the younger generation with teachable attitudes in work today?

SPEAKER_00 22:23

I have got two grandsons, a 24-year-old and a 20-year-old. And both of them are different as day and night. One of them is highly people-driven. He's got to have people around him to find his energy. And the other one can go out and play disc golf for two hours and get refreshed by playing disc golf by himself. So now that doesn't mean either one of them, or, you know, the one that likes to play disc disc golf is good with people, but he doesn't get his energy from people. The other one was taking an online semester in his graduate school, and he said, Grandpa, I can't handle this. I can't stand being at a computer all day long and never really interacting. Because he was on some Zoom calls and cohorts and stuff like that. But it was not what he needed to energize himself to do it. And so, you know, in those kind of experiences, I see the young generation as quite teachable if you give them the chance to express themselves. I think it's when I try to tell a 24-year-old what he's supposed to do with life, and I have not built a trust relationship in both of those grandkids' cases. I've got guys that want my input because they trust my input will help them accomplish what they need to do. Now, there are some that out there that can't figure out where life is at. You know, uh, I think the young generation does not appreciate stability. So if they don't like a job, they can change the job five or six times in a year. That's not healthy. Uh, but they're changing so fast, and they change based on emotional knee-jerks to circumstances. They're not changing because of the longer goal. It's like, well, she didn't treat me right, so I broke up with her. Well, maybe you weren't listening right. Maybe she was trying to help you. Oh, she would help me? How would she help me? I mean, there's really blind spots. And the young generation, though, it's interesting that the young generation, the Z and the Alpha generation that's coming, are really tired of fakeness. And there is a on a spiritual side, there's a huge uh return to biblical truth for that audience because they're tired of being playing the games. They want to know real substance. And I'm seeing this in a lot of them is let's get down to real stuff. Let's quit playing this game. We don't need to be entertained. We know how to find that. What's really truth?

SPEAKER_03 24:57

No, I love that. So, how about the older generations? What are your comments? What are your thoughts in terms of the teachable attitude with the older generation, relatively speaking?

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Well, it's interesting that I find a lot of my peers have got probably blinders on them greater than the younger generation.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

And they feel like their old experience is actually truthful rather than the alternative of when they were growing up. I'm writing another book, and uh, I've been going back to what it was like when I was born. I was born eight months before Auschwitz was found. 1944, because Auschwitz was, you know, that was captured by the uh the Russians, I think it was in April of 45. So, you know, that was a very different generation, very different life experiences. Uh it was a pathetic time. But we could say this is a pathetic time too, in another generational context.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

And I think sometimes my my peers are all wishing they could go back to the good old days. No, those weren't really good old days. They were just perceived as being good old days.

SPEAKER_03 26:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

So I think sometimes the blinders on, I've seen people say, Well, I will not go to XYZ church because I don't like their music. Well, that is a pretty lame excuse about why you're gonna turn something down that could help you. Now, you may want to put earplugs in or you may want to want to come in until after the music's over. I mean, there's ways to adapt. But the older generation sometimes is thinking that they're always right and they're thinking they need to correct the younger one. I think there's got to be a lot more collaboration.

unknown 26:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:44

So can you build on that, please, just to for the audience here working with older generations that maybe are their boss, right? And they're sort of stuck in their ways, like you're saying. What do you recommend to like navigate that, right? And have and stay face with the person that you're working with.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

I've I have found I a couple of just a couple of weeks ago, I was consulting with a guy that's probably 50 years of age. Now, that's still on the old side, but in that sense, but he his whole purpose of wanting to get with me is help me look at what I'm doing and am I doing it right? In other words, I think there was there's times when we got to say, let's just talk about why we see things differently. Let's just talk about why I see things in my political side and you see it differently. Not to me convince him or him to convince me, but I need to understand the context of what sometimes a person's thinking about. And when I start to appreciate the context of what they're thinking about, I'm not saying I'm always right and they're always wrong, but now at least we can have dialogue. I grew up in my generation, I grew up with people that were on the opposite side politically, and we were really good friends. Today you can't do that. It's polarized.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Because you can't have a good decent conversation. People will not come to Thanksgiving dinner over an issue of political environment. I think we got to do a lot more listening and just let people talk and communicate their thoughts. That doesn't mean you have to agree or disagree. It means we're just in conversation. So I think that there's a lot of room for generational communication going on. If I was a young guy and I was having difficulty with a boss, I'd say, can we just sit down and talk about how we see life a little bit differently? Can we dialogue before we get into the content? I want to get this job done, but let me tell you where I'm coming from. And I think it should, I think it should happen on the older side too. Uh before we get into this job I'm wanting you to do, tell me why you're thinking like you're thinking. And let's just talk about that so we better understand each other before we try to take on the task.

SPEAKER_03 28:59

No, I love that. To create those spaces, psychologically safe space to talk about these things. Now let's picture ourselves in this conversation with another person, right? And what are your thoughts surrounding the word feedback? Right? So people are having this dialogue, they're giving information to the other people. What are your thoughts with feedback in the workplace? Do we give enough of it? What is the best way to do it? If we want someone to change or not, what are your thoughts with feedback?

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Well, our culture has built a lot of rules around that. Um, I've got a couple of daughters that are teachers, and one of the things that frustrates them because they've been at it for a while, is in this day and age, the child is always right. The parent is always right. There's no room for the teacher to ever be right. So if a child believes that they're being abused, it's the teacher's fault. There is no uh there's no window where is this child really behaving anymore? It's almost like you're wrong to begin with, and I'm gonna correct you in what you're doing. I think we've got to, uh again, it's a dialogue, but I think uh I think people feel like their jobs suck because they are not given the freedom to truly express themselves. Yeah. Now they may not be always right. That's not the point. Um, my daughter was telling me yesterday I was in a conversation and she was doing an IP for another child, you know, an evaluation. And she had to stop the meeting three times because the people with the great knowledge were overwhelming the parents who did not understand their lingo. And she'd say, Oh, excuse me, I want to explain to the parents what you just meant by that. Because they were using, quote, military language to diagnose a child in the first grade. And the parents were not as familiar with the military language. They didn't know what was meant by that. And my daughter said, I was in the middle of trying to help the experts communicate to parents that really wanted to help their child. But the language was so over their head that they were not getting it, and it had to be pulled back to where the parent could start to say, Oh, I get it, I get it. And I said, Well, how did the meeting come out 45 minutes later? Well, it came out really well because we at last got to where they were understanding how this was going to benefit their child rather than it was not gonna that it could hurt the child. But I think but it takes almost an environment where a person is doing the interpretation. There's there's language gaps. Uh I I really dislike the internal side of almost any business that's got its slang, its internal wording. Probably the military is the best because they put initials behind everything. And we don't know what they're talking about by those, but to them, they communicate well within their culture. Uh when I'm working with nonprofits, I never let them get away with using three or four-letter terminology. Internally, yeah, I can be working with an organization called ABC, but when I'm dealing with the public, we're gonna call it the alpha, the beta, the C. We're gonna put the words to it to help somebody else understand what we're doing. And I think we've got to stop and say, are people, are we really communicating or are we just leaving huge gaps and assuming that because we said it, they now understand it. And I just feel like we got to work a lot more intentionally. The book I wrote was called Intentional Living and Giving. And the word intentional is equally as important as living and giving. Because if we're not being intentional and while we go about doing things, we're gonna have a mess in our hands.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

So walk us through what you mean by intentional. Like walk us through what.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Okay, let's just take this morning. I woke up, I thought I got these things to do on a day today, and I thought, okay, before I get off of out of the bed, first of all, I've learned at my age I need to move my ankles before I start walking. So I sat on the edge of the bed and I stretch my ankles and move them around, and I've had a little bit of an issue with a knee in the last couple of weeks. So I want to make sure it's functioning. And then the next thought is, okay, this is a new day that I've been created for. And my intentionality is I'm choosing to make this a good day today. Now, I'm already telling myself ahead of time that I'm gonna have a good day. If I don't take an intentional step toward being in a good day, I could end up doing something that's not a good day. Now, that's mean that doesn't mean I'm gonna have a perfect day. It just means that my intentionality is I'm gonna be taking steps in the right direction. I'm gonna take the initiative. I'm not waiting for somebody else to take the initiative to get my attention today. And I will move through my day with like, okay, here's my checklist. So I have things that I will do today and I write them down. I have a strong conviction for anybody. If it's not in writing, it doesn't exist. Write it down so at least I can edit it. If I don't write it down, I can't make a change in it because otherwise my brain is almost, I'm I'm I'm a my brain is full of drones without any destination. And I think many of us live that way in our head, and we've got to say, okay, these are the five things that I will do today. And I may only finish three, but at least I was intentional on working on those three. Otherwise, the entire day can go by, and you still haven't accomplished anything. So, intentionality of life, it's a spiritual perspective because I have a strong conviction on my spiritual side, I'm doing things that are God given to me, and I want to make that day as full of life and giving and living as I can. There's spiritual development, there's principles behind all of that. But even when I am working on those things, it's because I'm refining it. This morning I'm preparing to, I got a next week, I've got a board meeting I've got to go to for another organization. And I've got to coach the board on how to be an effective board. So I'm working on, you know, elements of communication, elements of dealing with conflict, those kind of things. So I intentionally I said, I need to get my outline figured out for this group of people. Now, I've done many board presentations. This is not something that's brand new to me, but I know the needs of that particular group are deficient in certain areas. I've been told enough that I know what I'm walking into. I can refine that with an intentional perspective to prepare for seven to ten people in that room that day to help them be better in their role as a board member. And in that case, in the board world, uh, not everybody in volunteer board service knows really what they are supposed to do as a board member. And they think the board is managing and board really is about governance. Well, then if you're going to do governance, how do you put parameters around and boundaries around you where you don't get into management? I want to help that board at the end of that time with them. I want to help them move ahead with a sense of intentionality to help the organization that they're with thrive and be a good organization. I want them to thrive. I want the organization to thrive. But that's an intentionality. I'm driving 45 minutes. That's an intentional decision to take time into my day so I can go do that to help them. And then I can leave there thinking, okay, maybe I'm putting them on a course to where they can be intentional in anything else they do.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Thank you for the clarity of intention there. So, Larry, what is one thing that sucks about your work today? And what are you doing to make it not suck?

SPEAKER_00 37:13

The parts that suck for me are the parts where I've got to use my weaknesses to accomplish my objective. So today uh I'm I'm just in the process of doing income tax. Well, that's numbers. Uh I've been collecting numbers for the last two weeks. I it's a lot of work for me to do that. For some reason, I've chosen to do my own taxes. I don't take off to somebody else and dump them a pile of stuff. And I'm thinking, okay, that is not fun for me, but it's a discipline that I've got to stay with because when I get ready to start going to TurboTax and filling in the information, I want everything there so I can do it pretty quickly. So when I have to work in my weakness, I think, okay, I've got to take a big gulp. And I often tell myself, go work at it for one hour. And then take a break, go for a walk, go do something else that you like to do. I can't. So I think it's almost like we're helping train ourselves to accomplish major tasks. And it that that's where the intentionality again comes into play. It's a choice that I'm making. Uh, Anthony, a few years ago, about 10 years ago, my wife died of a ghelioblastoma brain tumor. It's known as GBM in the medical field. It's a terminal disease. Anybody that's got one is gonna die from it. You cannot really get away from the fact that death is looming over the shoulder. Now, you can die within six months or you can die within 15 years. But Ted Kennedy died of lioblastoma. Um, uh Bo Biden died of agileoblastoma. It's a it's gonna be fatal. Sooner or later, you're gonna die. In fact, if you go onto a website today and go GBM Medical Issues in the Brain, it'll tell you this terminal disease is treated in the following ways. And Mayo Clinic or John Hopkins is gonna use the word terminal. Okay. As a result of living through that experience, I came away from it. My wife changed addresses and moved away from me for a bit of time. And that's all that I see that she did is shift gears. But I said, okay, Larry, you got you're healthy and you've got 20 years left. And I I made a half a day and I said, What will I do well for the next 20 years? And I came up with the 10 I wills. And it's I wills from how I take care of my property to how I take care of uh spending time with my grandkids, and I've got a 10-year-old and a 24-year-old. So there's different ways you spend time with each of those kids. And because I have I wills, and that doesn't mean I go back to them every single day, but about once a year, I want to edit my I wills. Is there something I want to change in the I Wills? And it so is again, intentionality is letting me live life to the fullest. And I'm not winging life. I'm not just kind of rolling the dice and see what comes up in the next hour. And I think uh some people say, well, that you're taking away my free spirit. No, I'm probably giving you more free spirit just by getting a little bit more intentional alike. Get the spiritual act together on your life, and it a lot of things are going to come into play. But you've also got to be time management driven. You've got to deal with things. Uh, I've got 24 hours a day, and when they're gone today, that's gone forever. So I like to help people think, okay, make this life what it can be. Make it so that it doesn't suck.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

And stay away. If you're not good at something, find somebody to help you do it well. Because you can find other people to help you, and you don't have to get stuck or ignore it. I think uh uh the old ads that come up, you know, I was having trouble, I got so far behind in my taxes, I owe$50,000. You know, what I hear on that ad is you were neglectful in doing what you had to do. That's what puts you in trouble in the first place. So if we just gotta be upfront about it. I there's there's things in our lives that we don't really want to do today. But some of those things we just need to bite the bullet and go do, and sometimes we gotta delegate it to somebody else and let them do it for us. Well, you can get a lot of insights in what I put on my website. I've got a Larry O'Nan, L-A-R-R-Y-O-N-A-N. My name's got an apostrophe in it. It looks Irish. It's not really Irish, but it looks that way. Except in the computer world, that's a symbol. So you have to remove it. LarryONAN.com. Uh, you can get the book there. I've got a tool on there on the website that's called the Personal Stewardship Inventory, where you can evaluate how you're doing with your time, talent, and treasure. And it's just another tool to help you objectively think about what life is. It's helped a lot of people say, okay, I'm doing well here and I need to work on this here. Uh three chapters of my book are free for anybody to download if they want it. Uh, you can my blog's there. Uh, you know, our conversation here will eventually be up there because I put all of those kind of things in there. Love it. That's one place. Uh you can get the book any place, Anthony. You can go out to uh Barnes and Noble or you can go to Amazon or whatever. The intentional living and giving as a book is just a tool. It's a it's a roadmap to help you get your life figured out. But uh, and if they go to LarryONAN.com, they can, you know, my I'm opening my email address is Larry at Larryonan.com. And if there's interaction, I'm glad to interact a little bit or point them in the right directions and help people get going. I want to help people thrive rather than survive. And if I can be of help to anybody, um, that doesn't mean I'm gonna put you hours and hours of time into you as a person, but I might kick you into the direction that might help you find a solution to your life. Awesome.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

Well, Larry, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much today.

SPEAKER_00 43:46

Well, it's great to be a part of it, Anthony. Thank you very much for the the sucking time with a lot of There's one thing to take away at this.

SPEAKER_03 43:53

Work doesn't have to suck, as you know, when it's aligned with who you are. Larry reminded us that success isn't about good. Luck, it's about good skills. And maybe the most important skill is intentionality, choosing how you show up, where you spend your time, and how you use your strengths to help others thrive. So here's a question to sit with today are you just working or are you living intentionally? If you got value from this episode, share it with someone who needs it. And as always, keep doing work that might suck, but you like it. See you next time.