143 - The Life Is Too Short Guy: Strategies To Make Every Day The Best Day Ever!

In this episode Scott White shares his strategies to make every day the best day ever.

Scott is author of The Life Is Too Short Guy book, and he is on a mission to make the world happier one smile at a time.

After spending fifteen years on Wall Street, he took a chance and became an entrepreneur and business builder. 

Today he is Chairman and CEO of a public real estate company. 

Always looking for his next challenge, Scott has completed fifteen marathons and one Ironman triathlon. 

With his endless energy, he motivates and inspires everyone he meets to focus on happiness, gratefulness, and positivity.

Scott is married to his high school sweetheart, Jenn. Together, they are two of the most passionate Rutgers sports fans in the world.

To learn more visit  https://www.lifeistooshortguy.com/

In this episode we cover:

4:15      Making Happiness A Priority

7:00      Challenge

10:05   Perspective

15:37   Opinion Poll

16:44   Negativity Bias

19:57   Looking For The Positive

23:22   How Are You Spending Your Minutes?

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Special thanks to Scott White for being on the show.

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Transcript

Did You Know  0:02  
Did you know that according to the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, Americans are more unhappy than they've been in nearly 50 years. 

Intro  0:12  
Hello, action taker! Welcome to Live Blissed Out. A podcast where I have inspiration on informational conversations with business owners and subject matter experts to help you get the scoop on a variety of topics. Tired of hesitating or making decisions without having the big picture? Wanna be in the know? Then this is the place to go. I'm your host Marisa Huston, helping you achieve bliss through awareness and action. So let's get to it. In this episode, Scott White shares his strategies to make every day the best day ever. Scott is author of The Life Is Too Short Guy, and he is on a mission to make the world happier one smile at a time. After spending 15 years on Wall Street, he took a chance and became an entrepreneur and business builder. Today he is chairman and CEO of a public real estate company. Always looking for his next challenge, Scott has completed fifteen marathons and one Ironman Triathlon. With his endless energy, he motivates and inspires everyone he meets to focus on happiness, gratefulness and positivity. Scott is married to his high school sweetheart Jenn. Together they are two of the most passionate Rutgers sports fans in the world. To learn more visit www.lifeistooshortguy.com 

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Disclaimer  2:02  
The information opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this podcast is done at your own risk. This podcast should not be considered professional advice. 

Marisa Huston  2:14  
Scott, it's great to have you on the show.

Scott White  2:17  
Well, thank you so much for the invite.

Marisa Huston  2:19  
I'm looking forward to our conversation because it really has to do with life, and how we value the moments that we have on this earth. I would love it if you could set the stage for our listeners and share with them what we're going to be talking about and how it might help them live a better life.

Scott White  2:39  
I would love to do that. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Marisa. I really appreciate it. You know what I'm here to talk a little bit about today is my philosophy on life. And I'm very fortunate, lucky and blessed that I took this year to put my thoughts to paper and I wrote a book. And the book is called The Life Is Too Short Guy: Strategies to make every day the best day ever. And it is a compilation of my life philosophy and my life experiences. And even more interesting than my life experiences, I weave in many stories of other people that have had major aha moments in their life. Major setbacks, major epiphanies where something has happened to them and they realize you know what, life is too short. I'm not going to keep doing this. Having listened to their stories and thinking about my own philosophy on life, I'm on a personal mission to spread happiness and sort of capsulate it by saying I'm making the world happier, one smile at a time.

Marisa Huston  3:34  
That's fantastic. And the thing is, I've never met anyone, and I'm sure you haven't either that said, I don't want to live a happy life. We want to have a fulfilled life. We all want to be happy doing it. But it's easier said than done. And I think what I see happening a lot is people are focusing on negativity. They're in their routines, and they don't know how to get out of it. And usually I find that people only really start to realize how blessed they are when something tragic happens in their life. I'd like it to be not that way. It would be great if we could have that gratitude and awareness of how lucky we are to be here at this moment in time.

Scott White  4:15  
That's so true. I mean, you really captured the essence of what I'm trying to accomplish. And we live in a world where there is so much negativity around us. We acknowledge the fact that we're coming out of COVID and everything that transpired around COVID. We have a war for the first time maybe in many people's lives where there's actually a war going on in Europe right now. You look at all the stats and I can list them off, but I'd rather not focus on the negative, other than to tell you that there was a recent study done by the University of Chicago public opinion poll that said that Americans are unhappier than they've been in the last 50 years. And that is just mind boggling to me. A half a century, we are the greatest country in the world and what I believe is the greatest time in history and we are collectively as an American people, unhappier than we've been the last 50 years. And I just find that to be unfortunate, I think, too many people, exactly as you said, I think you encapsulate it is, there's nothing controversial. In fact, it's almost a boring topic to say we're gonna talk about happiness. And the listeners probably listening here, of course, I want to be happy. Of course, everyone wants to be happy. But the problem is exactly what you said, Marisa, is people don't make it a priority. There are some people that make a priority, I want to be successful in my career. There's some people that make a priority of physical health, and that's really important, right? I'm going to exercise, I'm going to eat right. But I don't meet enough people that say, you know, what, my happiness is the top priority. Not just my happiness, but the happiness of the people that I meet on a daily basis and the people I surround myself with living a happy life. You know, one of the mantras of the book, and one of the things I try to say to people, is I strive to make every day, the best day ever. And I often get a little pushback on that. So, here's like, the little bit of controversy and the whole topic of, Come on Scott! The best day ever? I mean, what about the day you got married? What about the births of your daughters? What about so on and so forth? And I say, that's fine. But I'm not willing to look in the rearview mirror and say, I've had my best days behind me. Today is a new opportunity, a new day, a new chance to say today, literally, today is going to be the best day ever. And I want to work towards that. And I'm going to have that attitude and have that aspiration each day. And look, the reality is everyday can't possibly be the best day ever. But I think it has a chance.

Marisa Huston  4:35  
Oh, my goodness, that resonates with me, I can tell you that. Let's say we wake up in the morning, and we're like, all excited, right? Oh, this is gonna be a great day. And then things don't go our way. We get discouraged and we think is this it? And a lot of us too, are seeking something. Like we don't even know what happiness can be for us, because we think it might be this and then we work towards that and then we achieve it and then we're sitting there going, what was I thinking? This is not making me happy. It's actually this other thing. So there's also this journey that we have to take as we mature and figure out what is it that fulfills our lives? 

Scott White  7:00  
No doubt. Well, look, I think the first thing you said was really important. And I'm so glad you said, but I'm not sure enough people do that. You said we wake up and we're excited for the day. And I'm going to pause right there and challenge the listeners to stop right now. Hopefully, you're not driving. But if you are then just figuratively stop. Close your eyes for a minute. Again, if you're driving, it's not a good idea. But think about what was your first thought today? What was your first thought? And I challenge you, was it a positive thought? Was it a happy thought? Do you wake up exactly as Marisa said, wow! Today's a great day ahead of me. You open your eyes, you smile, you're like, there's a roof over my head, there's maybe the love of my life next to me, maybe not each person has their own circumstances. I have the ability for me today to speak with you Marisa and your listeners. I have the ability for me today to see my family. My older daughter's home from college really excited about that. I am breathing. I'm alive. I have heat in my home because it's cold out. And by the way, this is the first 15 seconds of my day. I don't think enough people do that to start the day, right. I think too many people open their eyes and say, Oh, it's Tuesday. It's cold, it's dark. Oh, God, what a calendar I have ahead of me today. That's the wrong approach. Wake up and set the tone right for the day. You accomplish what you set out to do and if you set out with a ugh I got a tough day, it's probably gonna be a tough day. If you set out with a wow, I have the best opportunity and best day ahead of me, it's good chance you're gonna end up there. Now to your point, there are pivots there are twists, there are turns. You refer to sort of chasing happiness and not being able to find it. I refer to that a little bit and others have as well, as the hedonic treadmill. We're on this constant sort of, I work really hard, I find success. I'm happy. That doesn't work by the way. We continue to move the goalpost, we continue to accomplish and say now what? This isn't happiness for me. I'm challenging listeners, and in my book readers to start with the premise of WOW. Today's the best day ever. I am happy, I'm now going to take this happiness to work really hard and find success.

Marisa Huston  9:09  
Yes, absolutely. And that is key. You're absolutely right. I think that people don't pause to really reflect on where they're at and where they want to go and what is going to fulfill them. If you're standing in line are you going to focus on the people in front of you or are you going to realize how lucky you are because you're way ahead of the people behind you. I don't know if you've ever experienced that. Like you're getting ready to stand in line, and there's barely anybody in front of you. And then all of a sudden you turn around and there's 20 people behind you and you're like, Oh my goodness. I'm glad I got here when I did. It makes you appreciate things. And I think that as humans we tend to focus on, I wish I were the first person there because I don't want to wait. And if you have that attitude, then yeah, you're never going to be satisfied. My question to you then Scott is how do we address that? How do we start looking in that direction, because at the moment many people aren't and they're focused on the negative.

Scott White  10:05  
It starts with perspective, right? It starts with being proactive and thoughtful. It starts with realizing how grateful you are and trying to have that positive attitude. A moment ago, we talked about starting the day off, right? So I fundamentally believe that the lens through which you start the day sets the tone for the rest of the day. So when you wake up, are you happy and grateful? Or are you miserable, disappointed, striving for something that might be unreachable. So I'd say that's point number one. Point number two, is understanding that so much of your happiness is within your control. So, of the whole pie of happiness, you kind of imagine you have a pie with 100 pieces that are 100%, of that I don't think most people realize that 50% of your happiness is predicated on your genetic makeup, that is just the reality. Just like your blood pressure, your cholesterol, your weight to a certain degree, whatever the case may be, you inherit a genetic code that predisposes certain people to be happier than others. A lot of people say, well, look, half it's out of my control, there's only so much I could do. Well, wrong, absolutely wrong. Because I don't think people realize that half of it is within your control. And in fact, this is the most interesting and compelling statistic I came across in my research that I think really blows people's mind. If you look at that other half of the pie, most people believe that a lot of that pie are based on our circumstances. So our financial success, our health, our relationship status, our new job. Of that entire pie 100%, only 10% of your happiness based on empirical data and research is based on your circumstances, the big house, the fancy car, the new job, or go the other way, unfortunately, but sometimes we have to deal with illness, death, divorce. 10% of your happiness is predicted based on your circumstances. So I told you, 50% percent is based on your genetic code, 10% is based on your circumstances. Wow, Scott! So what's the rest? 40% is based solely on your perspective, your own attitude, your ability to see the world and the lens through which you view the world predicts your happiness. 40%! I mean, that's pretty amazing. And I don't think most people realize that. And this is where we started the conversation of being thoughtful, being deliberate, being proactive and saying, I am going to control my happiness. The example you gave of, ugh, I can't believe they're three people ahead of me.  I've been standing here 10 minutes versus, wooh, they're about 18 people behind me, I'm glad I'm ahead of them. Now we'll take it another step. I'm grateful that I have the ability to stand in this line, I'm grateful that I have the ability to talk to the person in front or behind me. When was the last time you just randomly started talking to somebody building relationship? Wow, you know what that creates happiness, both for you and others. We all are social animals, to a certain degree. We all want human interaction. So, instead of standing on that line, saying, wow, I can't believe they're three people ahead of me, or your perspective. Wow! I'm glad I'm 18th there. I'm ahead of the people behind me. I'll take it a step further. Wow. I'm grateful that there's this lovely person ahead or behind me. I'd love to learn more about your story. I'm grateful I have the ability to stand in this line. I'm grateful that I have the fill in the blank and the sight to be able to see you this is the perspective that I want the world to see.

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Marisa Huston  14:02  
So rather than thinking I'm wasting my time, standing in line, make the most of it. And you never know. You come up with surprises, things that you didn't expect happen to you because you have that attitude of, I have control, I can do things with the circumstances that I'm faced with.

Scott White  14:20  
100% well summarized.

Marisa Huston  14:22  
And that is so important and the problem too that we face is that we forget very easily. If you just think in the last, let's just say 30 years, the advancements that we've made, in terms of our comfort have been astronomical. We've gone from no computers, no internet, no cell phones, all of these tools that were given to be able to connect with people easier. Even something as simple as Zoom. Being able to sit in your home and connect with people halfway around the world that you normally wouldn't be able to do. All of these things now, we've taken for granted. But, we have to reflect on the fact that, gosh, this wasn't even available in recent times. This is like probably the first generation really, that's going to grow up with all of these tools that we've never had. I think what happens is we forget, I even think about, for example, kings and queens that lived 500 years ago, what did they have? They didn't even have plumbing. And here we are, we have so many great things to be grateful for and yet, it's the new norm. Other people would probably be completely floored if they had access to a lot of the things that we have access to.

Scott White  15:37  
No doubt, it goes back to what I was saying before, that just blows my mind. The University of Chicago opinion poll, which is a recent poll, I want to say 2021, if I'm not mistaken. But you're talking about within the last year or two, Americans are unhappier than they've been in the last 50 years. So here we are, again, I'm repeating myself, I think it's important. Greatest society in the world, greatest country in the world, greatest time in human evolution. You talked about all the comforts, which I totally agree with. What about all the advances in medicine, how long people are living? Not only how long they're living, but how well they're living as you get to the later stages of life, and you have to deal with physical ailments, so on and so forth. People are living longer, people are living better, they have greater levels of comfort around them. Yet, shocking, mind blowing, we are unhappier than we've been the last 50 years. Amazing.

Marisa Huston  16:25  
What do you think is causing that? Is it the fact that we are more exposed to negativity? You have negative news, you have things that you hear all day long, that are making you focus on the things that you shouldn't be focusing on, let's say. And so then you think there's more of it than there really is?

Scott White  16:44  
I think that's true. So, we as humans have a negativity bias. So it's my belief, and it's others believe that, you know, through evolution, you rewind 1000's of years ago, maybe even longer, and you think about how did you survive severe weather? How did you survive wild animals? How did you survive potentially dangerous neighbors tribe, so on and so forth? Well, there's a certain negativity bias. You're always on guard, you're always looking around, you're always lacking trust of those around you. And quite frankly, those with the largest negativity bias are probably the genetic lottery winners as evolution happened. However, I think it's become more accelerated in the society we live in today, in part, because of the speed and flow of information. We now have the ability to share negative news and negative information much more widely and much more quickly than just a decade or two ago. As we all know, the negative news sells, and if it bleeds, it leads. These are all kind of newsroom concepts. Now you take traditional newsroom concepts, and you put them on steroids. You speed them up, you get them out faster. And we have segmented society so much more, right? So we create these extreme groups. If there's an affinity group, whatever it is that you're interested in, it. It doesn't have to be a bad thing. It could be a very positive thing. Maybe you're interested in violin, for example, you're interested in college sports, I don't know what it is. You find a affinity group that is closest to your interests. Now, what happens if all of a sudden that affinity group takes the negative angle, even within the examples I gave? Llet's just say college football. So instead of focusing on all the good things in college football, that group now starts to perpetuate all the bad things in college football. Becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, and creates a constant news feed, whether it's on social media or elsewhere, of negativity. So we're surrounded by constant negative thoughts and we aren't deliberate enough to say, Whoa! Hold on. Why am I focusing my time and attention on that? I only have so many minutes in my life. Why am I going to waste, lose minutes looking at negativity? And that's my whole goal with the book and the platform to tell people look, life's too short. Don't waste another minute on the negative.

Marisa Huston  19:08  
Yeah. So you're saying control the time that you spend doing those things and focus on living your life. Sometimes it's unavoidable. You turn on the radio, you hear something you didn't want to hear, or a big catastrophic event happens, and you're like, oh, here we go again. But, the other thing I think that we need to do a better job with, and I'd love your perspective on this, I think we really need to be asking a lot of questions. Don't take things at face value. Because you know, you're being fed information, but you don't really know how valid that information is. I can tell you how many times I've scrolled through social media, and somebody will post an article and say, Oh, I'm so sorry, this happened. And then you look at the date and it was like 10 years ago. And they didn't even check because they just were so quick to like, scan through things and just share things.

Scott White  19:57  
There's no doubt, Marisa. I think that's a great point. But, I'd go even further than the questioning element to say, in every piece of information, there's a positive lens, a positive perspective, a positive outcome or takeaway that you can find. So I agree with you that we have to question our data sources and we have to ask, is this factually accurate? But even in negative circumstances, like, let's just take COVID for a minute. It's an easy one, because we're all familiar with it, we all have opinions on it. And there was so much focus on death. There was so much focus on government control. There was so much focus on financial disarray, and failures of companies and people individually. And by the way, all of those are real concerns. All of those are real issues. I'm not belittling them at all. People died, right? So, Scott, find something positive in that. But, what I would tell you is look at COVID and say, well, from COVID, many changed our perspective on life and how we spend our time. Many people had a chance to spend more time with close family and loved ones. Many people change their perspective on how important work is and on work life balance. Many people learned how to use Zoom. And, to your point before in the pre COVID era, the thought of doing a bunch of Zoom calls with people around the world was unheard of. Many people took so many positive things away from COVID, and that's the lens that I'm sort of pushing people to. So I agree with you that the first question should be is the data on getting on COVID. factually accurate? Absolutely. The second thing is, we should acknowledge that real negatives came out of COVID, the most important one being people died. However, instead of ending the story in the sentence there, look for all the amazing positive, wonderful things that came out of the pandemic. And I think there are many of them.

Marisa Huston  21:56  
Thank you for pointing that out. And not only that, but it's always just reminding yourself that there's a different perspective on everything. And so, when you're reading an article, or where somebody is telling you a story, they're giving it to you from their perspective. And so it's up to you now to dig deeper. And I think that applies even in the way we deal with other people. We tend to judge immediately and assume things, when we really should be stepping back and saying, well, I was faced with that, would I have handled it any differently? Or how would I be feeling? If we can understand other people, then that also helps us address things in a more positive way. 

Scott White  22:36  
I agree. 

Marisa Huston  22:37  
This book sounds amazing. And really, it sounds to me like your purpose is to help give people the awareness and understanding of how they could potentially enrich their lives better by living their best day and looking forward. Those are messages that I mentioned in the show...words like awareness, action, and moving forward. Those are three words I use a lot. We have to live our lives. Like nobody's going to live it for us. So are you a spectator or are you a player? If you're spending most of your life living it, if you're taking that step and moving forward, and doing it in the most positive way that you can so that you can improve, for me, that's the road to getting to that happy place that you're trying to get to.

Scott White  23:22  
No doubt. Look, my goals for the book and my goal for speaking to you on my platform now is to truly make an effort to make the world happier, one smile at a time. And I think that one smile at a time is important because if just one person listening to this takes away one positive tidbit, smiles for an extra few seconds, I'm accomplishing my goals sort of one smile at a time and one person at a time. And in the book, I give a lot of practical tools. The book is not an academic work. The book is not a theoretical boring yawning, oh, how do you be happy. It's a smile right now, smile today kind of book, Think about ways to do random acts of kindness. Think about what you're passionate about and spend your minutes there. You only have so many minutes in your life. And I break this down in terms of math, it really blows people away. And I'll do it real quickly for you. When you're born, your life expectancy plus or minus just to make the math easy is about 80 years. And with 80 years of life ahead of you, you have about 42 million minutes. Well, I'm guessing most of the people listening to this show we're not just born and just to make the math easy for everybody, let's just say you're 40 years old, again plus or minus, you could adjust the math on your own. But if you're kind of at that halfway point, you have 21 million minutes left. You're going to sleep about a third of those just generally speaking. Now you don't have 14 million minutes. Of those 14 million minutes, a certain number of them particularly as you age, are unfortunately going to be spent  with illness or injury or in a situation where it's very hard for you to really embrace every minute. Now I challenge everyone to embrace every man no matter what. But, being realistic, you're going to have to shave off a couple of million minutes as you get older. So now That's 40 year old is looking at 12 million minutes left. What are you doing with those minutes? It's a simple concept. It's not a whole life altering, I need to change everything I do. But listening to this and saying, wow, he said, only have 10 to 12 million minutes left. Am I going somewhere that I really need to be going? Am I interacting with people that I really love? Am I spending my minutes in a way that makes me truly happy and makes others happy around me? What am I doing? That's what I want readers and listeners to take away and say, Hey, I only have so many minutes. What am I doing with them? I'm going to live them to the best possible ability. I'm not going to waste another couple of million minutes thinking about it. Make today the day that you want to be the best day ever. And then when you wake up tomorrow, do it again. 

Marisa Huston  25:43  
Oh, yeah. And the thing is that awareness is so key. Because, you can always get up in the morning and say, look, I'm going to find ways to make more money. But you don't know how much time you have. No matter how hard you try. You can eat all the right foods and do all the right things but there really is no finite answer to that. None of us know how much time we have and so you really have to cherish every moment. Scott, how can people get a hold of your book?

Scott White  26:11  
So, the book is available on Amazon. I'd encourage people to search Amazon for The Life Is Too Short Guy: Strategies to make every day the best day ever, or you can come visit me on my website, which is also www.lifeistooshortguy. Feel free to check out the website or to check out the Amazon post.

Marisa Huston  26:29  
This is such an important conversation, Scott, and I really appreciate you spending your valuable time here with me and with our listeners to talk about it. Thank you for being here.

Scott White  26:39  
My pleasure. Thank you so much. Smile and have a wonderful day.

Outro  26:43  
That's a wrap for this episode of Live Blissed Out. Thanks to Scott White for joining us and thanks for listening. If you have a question or comment for a future episode, all you have to do is go to www.speak pipe.com/LBOVM or click the link in the show notes to leave a brief audio message. If you find value in our show, please visit www.liveblissedout.com to reach out, subscribe and share on social media. This show is made possible through listeners like you. Thank you. So long for now, and remember to keep moving forward!