Notes for An Awesome Life with John Spence

Mailbag: Flexible Minds, Defining Wisdom, Work/Life Balance

• Notes for An Awesome Life with John Spence • Episode 13

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In this special listener driven episode of Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence, John and Josh open the mailbag and tackle real questions from the audience.

The discussion moves from the hidden dangers of “helpfully” putting butter away to deeper territory: mental flexibility, blind spots, wisdom, curiosity, work-life balance, honesty versus kindness, and what it really means to show up for the people you love. Along the way, John shares practical frameworks, personal reflections, and the kind of perspective that only comes from decades of experience and a willingness to keep learning.

It’s an episode about unlearning, asking better questions, navigating relationships with care, and understanding that growth often happens in small, uncomfortable, human moments. This is a conversation meant to meet you exactly where you are at the start of a new year.

  • Email us: awesomelifenotes@gmail.com
  • Learn more about John: JohnSpence.com
  • Familiar Wilsons Media: FamiliarWilsonsMedia.com

About John Spence: John is a globally recognized business thought leader, former owner/CEO of five companies, and advisor/coach to organizations from startups to the Fortune 10. He’s lectured at more than 90 universities and was named by the American Management Association as one of “America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch.”

About the show: Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence focuses on personal growth, happiness, clarity, and the everyday habits that compound into an AWESOME life.

Credits: Hosts John Spence and Josh Wilson • Produced by Josh Wilson for Familiar Wilsons Media • Special thanks: Amanda Wilson (writing and production), and Domingo Jimenez (writing and marketing).

SPEAKER_01:

This is a familiar Wilsons Media Production. John Spence is recognized as one of the foremost business thought leaders in the world, a global top 100 business thinker and advisor to companies from startups to the Fortune 10. But it didn't start that way. In college, John hit rock bottom, kicked out of one university and rejected by another. That's when he made a decision to change his attitude and take a systematic approach to building the life he wanted. Through hard work and relentless learning, he went on to create a life full of meaning, joy, and connection. I'm Josh Wilson, and this is Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence. We invite you to join us in conversation as John shares with us the lessons, habits, and tools that he used and that you can use to build an awesome life. Welcome to Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence. I, of course, am Josh Wilson.

SPEAKER_00:

And I apparently am John Spence.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, John, last episode that we did, we talked about New Year's resolution, and I don't really have any New Year's resolution except for one that I came up with this week.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

My New Year's resolution is never assume that if the butter is on the counter, that I should put it away.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, you can explain to them to me quickly because I have no idea what you mean.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean it is quickly. It's one of those things where I go down, I think that I'm being a helpful husband. I see the butter on the counter. I take it, I put it in the fridge. Half hour later, Amanda calls up to me upstairs and says, Did you put the butter away? I said, Well, of course I didn't. And I'm expecting for her to be so overjoyed that I've done this. And she was so annoyed because she was trying to soften the butter for a big dinner. And I screwed it up, boy. Let me tell you.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm one of those guys that's real lippy that if someone goes, To tell you the truth, I go, Does that mean you've been lying up till now? And the other day my wife called and she goes, Hey, are you still here? And I'm like, No, I'm gone. I've been gone for about 10 minutes. I'm driving to the office. This was not the way to handle this. Jackson just, could you cut it out? I'm like, okay.

SPEAKER_01:

I have that same thing that I have to hold back because I I work in an office where mine is the back office, and you can't see my office from the entryway. And people will kind of knock on the door and say, Is anyone home? And every single time I have to stop myself from saying, No, I'm here. Home is about 20 miles that direction. Let's talk a little bit today. We are at the uh the beginning of 2026, and I've gathered and collected a whole bunch of questions that people have had for you. These are just kind of one-offs. Mental flexibility for someone listening who feels stuck in their thinking patterns, where do they even begin to build a more flexible mind?

SPEAKER_00:

Great question. Couple things. Uh, it's the questions you ask yourself. You know, uh changing small words changes the way you look at things. Instead of why does this always happen? What can I learn from this? What would have to be true for the opposite to be true? Uh, what am I not seeing here? What's a different way to look at it? I wonder how that person sees this. So uh getting outside of your normal thinking, using questions to force yourself to look at things in a different way. Uh, and then also reflecting back on things that you were positive it was one way. And after you change your perspective, you realized it it really could be another way. When I used to teach this in in workshops, I would draw a semicircle on the uh whiteboard and say, is this convex or concave? And a nice discussion would ensue with people, one group, you know, demanding it was convex and the other one absolutely positive as it was concave. And I'd say it's both and neither. And uh it depends on how you look at it. And that's a very simple exercise, but it's also when they say even the most mundane things have multiple ways you can look at them.

SPEAKER_01:

That bleeds right into another question. A lot of these questions are kind of talking about perspective, ego blind spots. So we all have cognitive distortions about ourselves or our situation that we don't necessarily see. And so, how would someone identify and work through these?

SPEAKER_00:

First of all, good friends that can tell you uh this is not the right path for you. That probably wasn't the right thing to say. Uh, you might want to think through that through again. Uh, family, good friends, things like that. But the um I saw something the other day that said when when other things other things make you uncomfortable or angry or upset, you have to look in the mirror and say, what is it about their behavior that I see in myself?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I've seen that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And what is it about this situation that embarrasses me or that makes me, you know, gives me anger or whatever? What's happening in me that that would cause me to feel that way? And I'll back up sometimes and you know, in a certain situation and go, I wonder what it feels like from the other side of this. I I wonder why I why I'm pursuing things and I have this particular perspective about how it should be. Does that make sense, Josh?

SPEAKER_01:

It does, and it resonates with me because with my when my first uh child was born and was growing up, he would do things that I'd find myself getting irked at. I really had to stop because he was just a he's a little kid. It's not his fault, and he wasn't doing anything particularly egregious. But I realized that the reason why it was yanking my chain is because as a kid, I never would have been allowed to do the things that he was doing. And so, in my mind, way back when that behavior was wrong. Well, of course, it wasn't wrong. That was someone else's perspective. So I had to unlearn that learned response because it it wasn't being fair to my kid. Yeah, that was a blind spot that I had, that an interaction uh with my child forced me to consider. And I did start asking those questions, and I did eventually come up with that answer.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's uh what you just said, uh unlearn is the foundation of uh AQ, your adaptability quotient, is the ability to learn quickly, uh unlearn quickly, and then relearn and take new actions. And I think, especially with technology and stuff moving so fast that our ability to unlearn things is is now a real skill that a lot of us hadn't focused on or worked on. You know, you get pretty set in your ways. Uh, and for a long time, what was true now lasted years. And what was true today may not be true tomorrow. Things are changing so fast. So that ability to, and and that's also where flexibility. There's flexible thinking, which is learning, unlearning, and relearning, but then there has to be flexible behavior to back it up, which is now that I've unlearned something and relearned it in a different way, how do I change my behavior to adapt to this new perspective, this new way of thinking?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and you know, the other factor there is this is unlearning emotionally as well. You know, there was uh we've talked uh ad nauseum about um our fathers, and my dad was a very strict authoritarian. As I grew, I grew to be bigger than him, taller than him. And cognitively, I knew that there's nothing that he could do to me anymore. But emotionally, you know, if he had a harsh word for me and I was in my 30s, I would still flinch because I still had that physical reaction from the emotions that were going on inside. So unlearning emotionally, too, very important and probably a key to, you know, we have cognition, but then why doesn't it translate to behavior? Well, because we've not yet dealt with the emotional part of it, which is a thing that we need to do, and and I would suggest therapy. Oh, goodness. Okay, well, that covered a couple of the questions, so that's good. How do you personally define wisdom? And has that definition changed over the years?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, that's an interesting question. And um, I don't know if my answer will approach it, but when I turned 55, I think, or so in there, I came up with a saying that I now realize I know very little about almost nothing and nothing about almost everything else. And to me, a sign of wisdom, and I'm not saying that I'm wise per se, is realizing how little you know uh and constantly being curious and trying to grow and trying to learn. And then being able to look back, and you're gonna see these things come because I'm about to say over patterns uh and building some sort of intuition about based on years and years and years of doing something, you might have accumulated a few good ideas, aka wisdom about how things might be going forward in the future. But I think a big part of wisdom is understanding how little you know and how much there still is to learn. Uh, so that because I think wisdom is the opposite sort of of overconfidence of I, you know, I have the answer, I'm the guru versus I have some ideas that might work. Uh, let's look at this together.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I'm sure that that wisdom has something to do with um recognizing your proper place in the universe.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think humility, curiosity and humility are to me two of the most important characteristics of an effective leader. Honesty, number one, period. Uh, and then curiosity, vulnerability, humility, those are all aspects that feed into other things, like being a great communicator, being a great team player, having compassion. Uh without those elements, it's kind of hard to be what I would call a servant leader. Not meaning that you're subservient to people per se, but that you put them, I'm trying to think, not above you, because I don't like the above you, below you, but you give them a sense of importance in your own mind to say, I'm here to take care of them. It's my responsibility to serve them, make them uh better, help them be better, help them have a better life, run a good company so they I can pay them well and they can take care of their families. So you're seeing my philosophy of leadership and business right there.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, sure, sure, which is a personal philosophy as well. And in a past episode, we talked about this idea of interbeing, how we are all uh connected and how we all benefit from each other benefiting. Um, and I think that's what you're talking about there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that would be a wise thing to say.

SPEAKER_01:

And you mentioned uh curiosity, and so that's actually it's interesting how your answers are dovetailing into these other questions. You mentioned curiosity and also having a sense of adventure is pretty important to me. So I think you kind of answered the first part of this. Why are these so essential? And then how do we cultivate them in everyday life? Now, first of all, though, I got to get your buy-in to this idea that curiosity and adventure are important, especially the adventure part.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, uh, so this is great. It's gonna tie back into uh something we talked about earlier about perspective. Years ago, I was I remember teaching uh my this class where we're talking about strategies for success at a university, and I had two guys that I had was teaching to a fraternity, and I had two guys that were roommates and they were talking about their values. And one guy's like, I'm value adventure, you know, like I'm the guy that wants to throw the mattress out the window, the second story, and jump down to land on it. The other guy's like, I don't want anything but things to be level. I want a government job, I don't want to ever take risks. And I thought, you guys must be fun as roommates. Uh one guy wants to go ballistic and the other's like, nothing, nothing. Let's just keep it vanilla here. So my reason for saying that is adventure is defined a lot by different uh different ways by different people. Uh and curious to me, adventure is the ability to go out and uh take a prudent risk. Try something new, try something different, try something out of your comfort zone and being adventurous that way, uh, which is another way to gain wisdom. Uh, but not everybody is willing to go do things where they might fail or do things where they might uh look, you know, look stupid for you know, it's fun to uh funny. I saw something the other day that said, I'm not afraid of failing, I'm afraid of other people watching me fail and say something about me. And I went that one kind of strikes home. I don't mind if I fail, it's fine. But when other people look at it too and then don't say, Oh, he failed to go, he's a failure. That's a whole different perspective as long as we're talking about that. And I think that that can happen to individuals. You've you feel like if people are looking at you, you look like a failure, and you're not, you're being curious and adventurous.

SPEAKER_01:

It's funny because we we don't have the right perspective because we don't we don't remember how many times we see someone fail and then we just blow it off or we continue on to the next thing, and yet we think that when we fail, it's it's nuclear war, and it's not so.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's not a big deal at all, most of the time.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, next one here work-life balance. Everyone wants it, few people feel like they have it. What's your take on that?

SPEAKER_00:

Doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, oh, good. Tell me, tell me why, tell me why the question's wrong.

SPEAKER_00:

In my opinion, uh, it's work-life integration that you you can't balance them out, they're wound together. You can't, you know, in my opinion, can't walk out of the house in the morning and all of a sudden I'm focused on business all day. And then I, you know, come home, I take put a take off my business hat, put on my mom or dad or husband or son hat, and now I'm gonna do family stuff. You've got to find a way to, in my opinion, uh integrate those two things. Some work, some play. Make make them fit together in a way that sometimes you're gonna have to focus a little bit more on work. Other times you're gonna take the time to be reflective and relaxing and take care of yourself and your family. But if you think it's gonna the word balance sort of throws that whole idea off, like it's supposed to be 50-50, and everything's it doesn't work that way. Years ago, I was um teaching at Merrill Lynch and I had their very, very, very highest level senior executives. This this was a meeting where people came in in helicopters to give you an idea of the level of the folks. And it was their holiday sort of last meeting. And after I finished presenting, a woman in the audience, an extremely accomplished executive there, said, John, um, how am I supposed to have work-life balance? How am I supposed to have the job I have and be home in time to spend time with my kids, you know, and make dinner ever, you know, and be involved in my community and my faith and stay healthy and fit. I look right, you don't. And if anybody told you that you could have a job at a you know, a super high-level job at a multi-billion dollar company and have any semblance of life balance, they lied to you. And she just smiled and she said, Finally, somebody told me the truth. Yes, I mean that doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, you these two things are don't don't belong together. So I think that's an idea of it depends on your values of how what is important enough to you that you're not willing to sacrifice, and creating some clear boundaries there, and everybody's boundaries are different. Sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep, yeah. Okay, very good. How about this one? There's often there, excuse me. Let me try that again. Oh, I just failed and people saw it. I'm not gonna edit this out.

SPEAKER_00:

Ah, you're a failure. I'm done. That's it. No more podcasts. That's the end of it.

SPEAKER_01:

There's often this tension between honesty and kindness when those two seem at odds. How do you navigate that?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that's really easy. First of all, there's there's a difference between honesty and brutal honesty, and there's also a difference between saying something that's not necessary. You may know something that you believe is the truth uh from your point of view, but that doesn't necessarily mean you need to voice it. So there's a lot of times I think, well, to be honest with you, and they say something, you're like, well, I don't really know that that's gonna benefit that other person very well. Uh so I talk about this a lot from a level of accountability in businesses. That there are some businesses where people are nice but not kind. They're sweet. They don't, and this goes just to to personal as well, so you guys can draw the parallel as I'm saying this. Don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, don't want to create conflict, don't want to have a difficult conversation. So they look at a behavior or an outcome or something that's happening that isn't in a business thing to standard, they're not delivering what they promised they would, but they don't want to say anything. So they just let the person continue to fail. Well, eventually that person fails at such a high level in business that they lose their job. And as a manager, if you can't hand, you know, if you can't hold them accountable, you will likely lose your job too. You have to be kind enough to care about them enough and love them enough to hold them accountable to the standard. Uh, you know, uh accountability isn't punitive, it's not punishment, it's saying, I believe in you. I we we talked about these standards, we're there together, and you're not making the standard, and I I want to help you get there. Uh, but you've got to be able to have a direct, honest, straightforward, candid conversation about the situation. So let's go back to nice human versus kind is in relationships. We do that sometimes. Someone is irking you or driving you crazy or they're doing something, or you're harboring some sort of resentment or whatever. And you just don't want to say something awkward or uncomfortable or you know, make it a bad situation. So you just put it off, put it off, and we would call that stuff, stuff, stuff, explode. Uh, it's a lot kinder and more loving to bring something up when appropriate, uh, and deal with it in a in a calm, loving, you know, um adult way, even though it it might be uncomfortable. That's the kind, loving thing to do. Does that make sense? Or do it, does that seem on target? It does.

SPEAKER_01:

And I'm thinking through the different relationships that I have. It's one thing when you're dealing with a close friend that you've been through a lot, you've set some boundaries in the relationship, you've set some expectations in the relationship, and then people that you maybe you've known for years, but it's always been kind of a surface level relationship, and and how that would play out across the different levels of sharing and and relational uh expectation. There is a difference between, okay, well, these are neighbors, I've known them for 10 years, but we've never really talked anything about the weather. Maybe it's okay for me to let this go now because I don't have that kind of relationship with them, as opposed to my wife, who, you know, is still annoyed about the butter, and we gotta have that conversation. So I do think that these days we've lost that subtlety in recognizing the kind of relationship that we have um with someone and then allowing what we say to reflect whatever expectation we've set in that relationship.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm I forget what I was doing the other day, and it might have been on AI or something that bopped up to me and said, You use scales a lot, because I use scales for relationship about how vulnerable it to be, you know, one to one hundred. 100 is on, or for my wife, 120. I'm this is an insanely important relationship to me. I will do anything I can to support that relationship. Versus uh, I just went to Sonny's, our local barbecue place for lunch. And if the young lady that was helping me there had been rude or you know. You know, abrasive, whatever. I'm probably never gonna see her again. There's no reason for that to impact me at all. That relationship is a bring me my sliced pork and my water, and I'll pay my check and leave, and everybody will be happy. There's no reason for me, and you know, I can be kind, but I don't need to be super involved.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, well, let's wind up with this question. Something a little bit more personal. Oh, great. What is the last difficult or one of the last recent difficult personal endeavors that you've undertaken and what did you learn from it?

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, that's a tough one.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, this is what we save the the best for last.

SPEAKER_00:

The personal endeavor that I undertook, I'm gonna guess that was challenging is I have a friend that just got diagnosed with cancer. Uh, and he he's got a good attitude, but we had a really difficult conversation about what happens if this goes south, what are we gonna do if you get sicker? How can I help with your wife? Uh, and also a conversation about what can we do to to do everything we can within our control? How can we make things happen? That was a challeng conversation because this is a really, really, really, really close friend, like family. And it was very emotional um to try to move through that together in a positive but uh what's the word, realistic uh conversation of talking about the really hard stuff like death and what do I do if you die? How do I take care of your wife? What do you need me to do? Um not an easy conversation to have.

SPEAKER_01:

What did you take from it?

SPEAKER_00:

Um in a relationship like this, it was easy for me to say, I will do anything you ask me to do, and know that I that was true. Uh no matter what I need, uh I've got a few folks like that that are they're people of a thousand percent integrity that I literally trust with my life. And on the other side of that, if I make a promise that I I will do whatever they ask me to do to help them, to help their family, the answer is yes, and I will actually I will do it. There is no question in my mind. So my takeaway from that is it's nice in my life to have people that I can depend that much on. And it's an honor uh and a responsibility to be able to return that favor and know that if anything happened, I'd be there for them and their family.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, John. Well, thank you for these answers and a look into your life. It's a privilege uh to be able to have these conversations with you.

SPEAKER_00:

You're sweet. I feel the same way. It's fun, and I'm glad we're I hope I feel comfortable helping some people. So uh that's a good way for us to spend our afternoon.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Folks, if you want to ask John any more questions, notes. Um, I'm sorry, it's awesome. That's my second mistake um ever.

SPEAKER_00:

Failure again.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome life notes at gmail.com is how you get a hold of us. Awesome life notes at gmail.com. Folks, if you want to know more about John, JohnSpence.com is where you go. It's your one-stop shopping place for all things, John Spence. If you want to find out more about Familiar Wilson's media, of which this is a production, go to familiarwilsonsmedia.com. Thank you to Amanda and to John and his team. It's 2026. It's a new year. Make twenty twenty-six the most awesome year ever.