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Episode 1: Is this the Life You Want to Live?

It’s those moments and steps in between that are actually where richness lives, not just goal oriented actions.

Rob Dale, Eric Deschamps, Trefor Munn-Venn

Welcome to the Living Richly Podcast. My name is Rob Dale and I’m here with my great friends Eric Deschamps and Trefor Munn-Venn. We are gonna be talking about how to live your best life. The real question to maybe start out with is, what the heck are two ex-preachers and a farmer doing, talking about living richly and living your best life?

We’ve done a lot of stuff together over the years. We have uh, you know, enjoyed some success in business. Our friendship is great. Let’s check, let’s check, check again at the end. Yeah. What, what, what has taken us on this journey to where we are launching this podcast now? Well, I think there’ve been a number of things that have contributed to the story that’s unfolded and I think it culminated in a time we were away on a regular offsite for the business and we began to talk about what we were experiencing personally, what we were experiencing in business, our story to date.

And the question was raised, what does it mean to live our best life? What does it mean to live richly? And we, I think each of us began to wrestle with that question individually. I know for me, the question began to haunt me, but in the best kind of possible way. Just and in some ways the worst kind and in the worst kinda way, because it caused me to really reflect.

On something I’d really never really thought of. Right? I’d never really considered what does my best life look like from that perspective? And then we began to unpack it together. We began to talk about it regularly. We began to meet, I think monthly for dinner and talk about what does that mean for you and what does it look like?

Where are you at in that journey? And then we find ourselves here feeling like we’ve learned some things, still have a. Of learning to do along this front but feel that we’ve got some things to share. Yeah. Right. There was so much that was unspoken. Right, right. I think as we were chatting over time where whether it was around, you know, fire pits or, you know, old fashioneds lots of fashions, lot, lots of old fashioneds, lots and lots of old fashioneds.

I’m not sure I like that they started calling us the old fashioned guys. But you know, as we started to talk about that, to realize how. for myself. How many things I hadn’t said to myself, let alone hadn’t said out loud as well. And, as we’re starting to get to a point where maybe it was okay to try and say some of this stuff, there was both a very high level of discomfort, but also like.

Recognition from, from you guys and from others who go, yeah, me too. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you realize all of a sudden this isn’t quite so lonely an experience as maybe, certainly for me, that I thought it was, I thought like, I’m the only one in the world going through this. And people go, you’re not the only one.

And you go, yeah, yeah, I know, but like, This voice in you kind of going, you know the right answers to say I know, but it still feels so singular. Right, right. And, and to work its way through and, and it seems like when you think of living richly when you think of living your best life, when you, all of the kind of language that we use around that I know when we started that conversation it was.

It was so foggy almost. The reason a lot of people don’t start on a journey of trying to figure out what that is, is because it just seems so big. It seems so kind of out there and untouchable, and yet there are thousands of books. There are all kinds of different gurus. There are all, it’s bit of kind of a red ocean isn’t it? It Is a red ocean. So we thought, let’s do it too. Yeah, yeah. Let’s, let’s jump into this red ocean. And you know, and I think that individually and together we’ve tried a lot of the things that have been out there that kind of promise you. The solution or the answer to what it means to live your best life.

Maybe let’s talk about what, what, what is it? Not for us at least, because there’s a lot that goes into that list of what it’s not. Absolutely. I mean, it’s definitely not quick fixes. It’s not a button, no easy button, no easy formulas. There’s so much of that that’s promised online these days so much.

You know, 1, 2, 3 solutions, quick fixes, life hacks. That’s not what this is going to be about. Right? It’s not a 30 day challenge. It’s not a 45 day challenge. It’s nothing like that. It’s about really getting present in many ways to what matters most in your life, and then building a life that aligns with that.

Right. Yeah. And you know, it’s, it’s also not, it’s not about to live the best life. It’s to live my best life, right? Which is not yours or yours or anybody else’s, like in that case, like in that situation it is very singular, like it is about what do I need in mind and, and to set aside all of the notions about what should.

Your best life be and to actually kind of grab on to say, listen, I don’t, I don’t really care. Edit. I, I, I’ve tried to please everyone, tried to live a life that, that they’re all gonna love and it, that hasn’t worked. So to start to say, what, what does it look like for me? So we don’t have to, we get to set aside.

Perfectionism we get to set aside, you know, must that you must be the very best or it’s not enough. Cuz you find out, even if you do, it still isn’t. Yeah. Right. And so to, to really kind of ground into the fact that even with, you know, you talk about the bookshelves and, and all that stuff out there. I trust everybody’s intent.

I think they’re trying to, And, and I, but I think there’s, I think we’re starting to see there’s some pieces that don’t line up in that. And so it’s to say, how do I align those things? Right. Taking better control of your nutrition is not a bad thing. Being more active and physically fit is not a bad thing.

Like you take any one of those things and go, yes, like there’s pieces, but I think how we approach it and enter. We need to let go of some pieces and probably grab onto a few others, which we can talk about as well. I love, and I love what you said there about, you know, the notion of it’s my life.

Oftentimes what happens with a lot of the gurus and a lot of the teaching out there is you’re, you’re prescribed a formula for how to do this, and if you follow that formula, you’re living someone else. Best life. But it may but it may not be yours. And I think that’s, but the challenge there as people that, and, and we would, you know, certainly as ex preachers, one of the things that we often would try to do in that world is find, give people solutions, right?

But from, take up offerings other than take up offerings would be give answers. To people’s problems. Right. And I think one of the things that we’re trying to do with what we are un, you know, kind of learning and, and unpacking as a, as a, in this podcast is to, you know, to not give you answers. To not give people the solution to this is what it is to do to, to live this way.

But here’s a blueprint, here’s a model that might help you figure out those answers for yourself. Yeah, a framework, right? Questions that a person can wrestle with to figure out what living richly means to me because it’s gonna look different for everybody, yet I believe there’s some common elements, some common components, ingredients, so to speak.

That we will all share to some degree that makes up living your best life. Yeah, it’s certainly, it’s certainly not you. You mentioned, you know, living to please others right. It ain’t that , it ain’t that. I mean, living to please others. Living under obligation of I should be this way, I should be doing this, I should be doing that.

Living almost hostage to other people’s expectations without ever spelling out what that means for you. I think when we lack a vision for our own life, when we lack a blueprint of living our best life, we’re going to be living according to somebody else’s blueprint, somebody else’s vision, and that’s a miserable way to live.

Yeah. Let me go back to the question again. What. What the hell? And you know, I’m an ex preacher, so I have to use the word hell at some point. , what, what the hell are two x? It’s real growth there. That’s real growth. I’m so proud of you. Proud of you. Yeah. Our, our two, our two ex preachers and a farmer doing, having a conversation around this now, it, we are going to be an the, you.

For those of you that are listening, you can look at the show notes and we’ll have links to some of the podcasts. That’ll be our individual stories where we’re going to tell the journey, the full journey that each of us have been on. But maybe a quick snapshot of what brings each of us to the table in this conversation.

So if you were to kind of that high level view of what took you on the journey to get here, maybe what was one of the big lessons that. Kickstarted this for you. For you. I dunno which one of you guys wanna start, but what would that be? Oh yeah, you’ve opened up the start to tell your story. Let’s dive right in.

Yeah. Thanks sir. Appreciate that. Yeah, well in fairness, I’m barely a farmer. This is new. In fairness, for a lot of years, people told me I was barely. We’re on the same page. All right, good. We’re good. The, you know, so this is, this is a new experience for us as well. I think you know, ha have had a chance to do all kinds of things in life, like really, and I think it reflects a kind of searching.

And I think at the heart of it, for me, there was such a period of kind of stuckness and waiting as if something was supposed to happen externally to prompt things to happen internally and, and the truth is it did. But that’s not a really great way to go about it because I, I think for most people, you probably like go through your own story and go, oh, yeah.

Then there was this really painful experience that prompted me to go, well, I’m not, I’m not fucking doing that anymore. I, right. I gotta change what I’m doing. I need to make a shift. Right? Whatever. I think sometimes that can prompt us to go deeper into that stuckness and that lack of motion, but sometimes it propels us forward, but we don’t have to wait for that.

Hmm. Right. We can start to choose our way through it. So, you know, when I, when I look at kind of that overall arc of my life, go, there was a lot of years of trying to crack a solution that I thought would make me feel good inside. I didn’t have this language, that’s for sure. But it was definitely that behavior of looking for approval, looking to do well, looking to win, looking to succeed, looking to exceed all of those things.

And none of it delivered what I wanted. And so I, the only move I knew was to try harder. Right? And that, that didn’t get me anywhere either. Can’t relate to that , big newsflash here, right? Like it is like, and. It’s being, you know, for me it, it was to really experience that fully and go, okay, things have to change, but then encounter my own resistance.

My resistance to me where one part of me knows this has gotta shift. Yeah. And this other part of me is hanging on for dear life out of fear of the, the unfamiliar. And, and so I, if there’s one thing in the midst of that that I would, I would share about what I’ve learned and, and you guys have seen it as well, it’s getting uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. Yeah. It’s recognizing, right. We talk about how our conversations were okay to be uncomfortable, but we won’t be unsafe. Yeah. Because usually for me, the slightest signal of discomfort was like, red alert, not safe. Defcon five. Yeah. Put your shoes on. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. The, and it doesn’t need to be that and to create a little bit. Tolerance within myself for that. And then to ask a different set of questions. Right. What a powerful truth, right? Yeah. What about, what about you? Well, I mean, I think a lot of what Trefor said, like we echo many of those things, you know, chasing validation and external milestones and benchmarks and achievements, right?

Constantly running from a sense of deep self-loathing that, that I’m Unlike other people, I’m fatally flawed and I’m more than the average person. And giving myself to a lifetime of trying to help others. And in many ways I was trying to help myself and it wasn’t working. Like you.

No matter how much I invested in those activities, the ROI was meager, if not negative. And it wasn’t it, it wasn’t meeting the need that I had for, I need to feel like I’m okay. Someone tell me I’m okay. And most people are often surprised to hear me talk about that, saying that, you know, on the surface, you, you had a lot going for you.

You had a lot of success. You this, that and the other. And I might have been smiling on the outside, but in many ways I was dying on the inside. Yeah. Right. And, running from just running from so many issues I didn’t know how to deal with, I didn’t know how to address, I didn’t have the tools. I, I didn’t have the resources.

And at the, I think at a very core, for me, and, and I’ll pack this more when I tell my story, but I think at the very core, I didn’t believe fundamentally that I deserved to have a good life. That my pain and my suffering and the shit that I was dealing with was somehow penance that somehow this is what I deserved.

And so I couldn’t ever hope to expect for more. And yet here I was offering hope and forgiveness and grace and a future to others, but I didn’t believe that applied to me.

Yeah, right. Yeah, it’s so interesting. I know for me it was, you know, externally I was a rising star. I, you know, had launched at the time, had launched a pretty successful church plant.

A new church endeavor had really grown it and been very successful and was for the uninitiated church plan is not an actual plan. Yeah, no, it’s not a plan that you created. How deep deal farming perspective does it need? See, it is farming. What fertilizer do you need? Whoa. Just like farming. Yeah, no.

You know, the notion though that… and I often would be told how good I am at that craft, because then you use the language, the craft was so much about serving others, supporting others. It was taking the focus off of yourself and your own needs, your own voice and being able to just as long as you could come in, almost like, kind of like the hey, the lone Rangers.

Save the day, right? And you could go in and kind of save everybody else. You had this external success, and yet there was this sense of loss internally because I had no idea who I was in the midst of all of what I was achieving externally. And I remember it came to a crux. I’ll share, you know, and again, encourage you to listen…in the show notes will be the links to all of the individual stories.

A great opportunity to not only get to know us, but to get to know we’re on this journey. We encourage you to do that. And as I share in my story, my mom was my hero. And when my mom passed away from cancer, before she died, she had written letters to my sister, my brother and I, kind of these farewell letters.

And in mind she made the comment she wrote about how, why you’re the one I don’t ever have to worry about. You’re the one. You’re the peacemaker, you’re the bridge builder. And I remember at the time reading that after she had died and feeling so guilty because I was angry at her, that she wasn’t worried about me, that she was looking at me as…but I realized that was how I was identified, as the peacemaker, the bridge builder, the one who always comes in and keeps everybody else good and happy.

I had no voice in that. And living richly was learning for me how to find that voice and then to be able to communicate it in such a way… I love what you said earlier, communicated in such a way that is uncomfortable, but not unsafe. Right, right. And to find that environment that even when someone else comes back and says it doesn’t respond the way you want them to respond, you’re right in the midst of that. So that’s the journey we’re on. That’s what has taken us and brought us to this place. We’ve talked a little bit about what living richly, what living your best life is not for us. And again, and I appreciate one of you made the comment a bit ago about there’s lots of good, there’s, we’re not, we’re not dismissing or dissing the approach that others take.

It didn’t work for us. Right. So what. Well, that’s a big question. I think perhaps what we can I’m thinking about like, who’s this for, if some before we get into what did work. Okay, yeah. Yep. I’m I’m thinking like if some folks are listening right now and they’re saying, is this podcast for me? Who is this for?

No, they want solutions. They want . We’re gonna get to that. They’re like, I’m not a farmer. I’m not an ex preacher. Right? To me it’s, it’s for folks, if you’re listening and it’s a sense of you might have a sense of indifference about your life, even perhaps being indifferent about your indifference, there’s perhaps a sense of not feeling settled not feeling like your life.

Point, and that doesn’t mean that your whole life is off. I think all three of us could talk about areas of our lives where we did feel very confident and very competent. And yet we were overcompensating in those areas because there was other areas where we felt like we were incompetent and we lacked confidence and we were unhappy.

Be. And, and so I, I think there’s this notion then of almost chasing something. You’re constantly looking for something to fill that gap in your life. Something is missing and you’re not feeling that sense of contentment, that sense of, I’m really living my life on purpose. Perhaps it’s almost a sense of I’m passing the time, but I’m not making the time count.

And, and what would my best life look like? But like, let’s explore that a bit more. Who is this for? . Well, we like, we know everybody’s busy. Yeah. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you. Right. How are you busy? Right. And so even in that busyness, I think it’s when you find yourself stuck or waiting. Right. I, I think that is a piece because I, I think Life is meant to be lived.

It’s, it’s a verb, right? Like it, it’s about living it. And so it, it’s being active in the creation of our own lives and when we feel like I’m doing all this stuff right? It’s not a, not about busyness, not about activity, but it is about a, am I actually. Shaping it in a way that matters to me. Do I even know what matters to me?

Do I have the courage to say out loud, even just to myself, what matters to me? Right. And to own that. I, I think those clues around stuckness or waiting is like, you know, a little bit of Groundhog day right, where it just feels like over and over it’s the same kind of thing. There can be periods.

Actually, the busyness looks the same, but all kinds of other stuff is shifting and growing as well. But I think it’s that sense of there’s no motion. There’s no sense of, do I even know what I care about? I liked what you said about indifference around being, about being indifferent around your own indifference, right.

Boy, there’s like a sense of despair I in that. Yeah. And lostness almost. Yeah. Right. Drifting, coasting. And you know, on the, on the other side of Covid now, I mean, we think of the pandemic and how so many of us had far too much time alone as we were. Locked in, in these lockdowns and really part of the covid headache is now, I think folks emerging from it and saying, who the hell am I and what’s my life really all about?

We think of how folks have redefined their relationship with work and all the dynamics that that’s caused with remote work and being forced back to the office and, and people making all kinds of new choices. But I think a lot of folks still haven’t really gotten to the heart of what, what is, what is, what is it like for me to live again, that best version of my life for.

Upgrade level up. What does that mean? A great article, and we were talking about it earlier that came out during the pandemic, I think it was this year or or late last year in the New York Times. And they talked about this mental health model of, from depression at one end of the continuum to languishing on the other end.

And of course, depression is where your despondent, where you’re right there, there’s really no very little hope. Life is really. Be, it’s, it’s that far spectrum of you, you, you don’t have any mental health. You’re, you’re, you’re in a really bad spot. The, the other end of it, they describe as flourishing.

And this is where you’re feeling a sense of mastery. You’re feeling a sense of purpose. You’re feeling that sense of joy. I think that’s what we would say. Well, that’s what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about. Living, living a, a richer life. And yet in the middle, which is where the article stated that they believe where most people live the middle of that continuum.

Oppression and lang and, and, and flourishing is languishing. Think about that for a second. Languishing, I think there’s a lot of folks that are, that, that are languishing. They’re, they’re, they’re, they, they, their lives have grown to some degree almost dull. And by dull, I don’t just mean boring. I mean there’s just, they, they’re missing out on so much of what life has to offer and experience.

I think moments from time to time, and I would say, I, I think we’ve all experienced this, where you have moments of purpose, moments of great joy, moments of happiness and, and and yet those things get swallowed up, it seems by the, the, the, the, the, the black hole of not really knowing. What my life is all about and where I’m going.

Well, and what happens often, I think you, you mentioned about you know, rethinking work rethinking in many cases, relationships. I don’t know if this if this stat is accurate or one I’m just making up, but well, cause we know 77% of stats have made up on the spot. Right. But I did, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve heard that the number of relationships you know divorce lawyers and everything like that, that how much that went up, they got very, very busy.

As a result of, of covid w. We are, look, because of this languishing and because of this emptiness, often our first, our natural default reaction is to focus on external. And we, so we blame work, we blame the relationships and, and tho they may be valid issues and all of those things. The real solution and answers internally.

And I love what you said early on at the beginning of the podcast was this notion of haunting. You know, if the idea, when, when the question is asked to you are you living your best life? If that doesn’t haunt you, Probably good time to hit pause and move on to another podcast, right? , right. If, if it, if there’s something that that tweaks within you, then this is probably for you because that’s the conversation we’re going to have is what does that mean?

And then how do we move into a journey? Of finding what living richly and, and is for each of us. Right? So I think that’s really kind of in a nutshell, the kind of individual who will likely resonate with this is the person who, when he, they hear that question, it triggers some kind of reaction internally.

Where they go, Hmm, that’s something that matters to me, or that’s something I feel needs to matter to me. How do I go about doing this? Now I wanna recognize this. And, you know, again, we are going to really just start to look into all kinds of different conversations around what it means to live your best life at the risk of keeping.

Podcast from being 16 hours long, maybe some high level. What are some of the things we’re learning that maybe some of the things we’re gonna be talking about separately in, in other podcasts that will just give a sense of what is this journey we’re on all about? And let’s just take a few minutes to talk about that before we wrap things up today.

Yeah, I think there’s a great way to look at again, what we’re focusing in on in this podcast is this notion of moving from pain numbing strategies, pain relief strategies, pain prevention into living your best life. I, I know for a, a lot of folks, I feel like you need a fourth. Pain kind, fit that flow.

It worked really good with your alliteration. Right? Right. And then the last one, work on that. What stands out on its own? It stands out for purpose, but, but think of how much of our lives we spend trying to just numb pain. Right, right. Distract ourselves, keep ourselves busy, I mean, For many of the folks that we work with in the business world the, the pain numbing strategy of choice is throw yourself in work.

Work, right? Just work harder, work harder, do more, accomplish more. And yet again, there’s this nagging sense that something is off, something is wrong. Of course, other pain numbing strategies. I mean you know, alcohol abuse, drug abuse there’s so many things we could list even what are appear to be no.

Pursuits that can be nothing other than hiding or numbing from this nagging sense of what’s going on for he’s watching, right? Video gaming. Totally like anything that’s pulling our attention really away from what’s going on inside, right? Like the, the voices that are in there that are a little uncomfortable, it’s like, poof.

Will you make that go away? Right. I’m sure we’ll have an episode at some point about just the digital distractions that steals so much of our heart’s attention away from our best life. But it’s that whole sense of just numbing the pain. I think people will reach a point, I think we all did at different parts of our journey where.

the pain became too great to just numb. And so we reached out for help. Maybe, you know, we talked to a friend, maybe we started to talk to a counselor, or we, we, we took a step to try to get some relief from the actual pain that we were feeling or that the unhappiness that we were experiencing. Well, you and can I jump in on just on that?

Yeah. Because I, I think the, What also helped us move into that point of saying that the pain, it, it’s too much now. And, and we’re gonna get into this more as we talk about blueprints, and that was community, right? I’m not sure if I would’ve, because it’s such a big concept. I’m not sure if I, I don’t know when or how I would’ve started on that journey if it hadn’t been.

The community, the people, you guys in my life to begin to ask the questions together, right? And, and so I agree with you that in some cases it’s just the individual comes at morning saying Enough sometimes, and it’s around the who do you, who’s your circle of people around you, because they may ask, Hey, is it enough?

Right. So I just to jump you know, hundred percent, that’s important. I think what’s gonna be clear in our messaging around this and in our experience is you can’t do this alone. Yeah. Right. But in pain relief, it may be reaching out to someone, or it may be saying, I’m gonna join a gym. I’m gonna start take, people will jump into these activities hoping that if they start that new habit, if they stop smoking, if they if they take that step, if they, you know start an exercise program, start eating better, change their job, and change their job.

Right. Like, these are. Attempts to try to relieve the pain at this point. And, and hopefully you experience a measure of that. I think you then move into pain prevention. This is where you’re moving into now. Wellness or, or what we talk about wellness, where you’re, you’re integrating habits into your life on a more regular basis to stay healthier.

It’s like, think of in the, in the health sector, preventative care versus right reactive care. But living richly is a whole step beyond that. It moves away. Avoidance of pain or pain relief. Focus into a best life. Focus into joy, serenity love, kindness. A, a, a, a sense of living, again, an elevated life.

That pain will still be part of that process. I wish we could turn that, that button off, but pain comes to us, but I think it was the Dalai Lama that says, pain is inevit. But suffering is optional. When we’re moving into living richly, we’re not just avoiding or running from pain. We’re, we’re, we’re moving towards again, this vision, this blueprint of what our best life are.

It’s almost a shift from, from doing to being Exactly. That’s a great way to put it, right. It’s that idea that we stopped doing all these things and we start becoming that richer self, right? Whatever that is for each of us. There, there’s a piece, I think with this, there’s a gentle deliberateness that’s required, right?

People talk about, I don’t know my purpose. I’m like, okay, so let’s say you don’t know your purpose, and I, and I know that feeling for sure, but you can still be on purpose. You can still do things on purpose, you can still make some choices to say instead of being in an autopilot, instead of living other people’s lives, other people’s scripts, other people’s views of what you think you should do is, is still to be.

Deliberate to ch make some choices and then live those choices. And they can be grand, they can be small. I think the issue is the deliberateness, but also to do it without harsh judgment. Right. Because I think we’re hard enough on, on ourselves, like we’ve all talked about this. Eric, you, you know, you were candid about it earlier in the call.

I was a little bit as well around. The not that you weren’t being candid, Rob, the you know about the things we were saying to ourselves that we weren’t worthy, that we didn’t deserve it. We’ve got these really harsh voices, and I think to do this from a posture of gentleness, but also being very real about where we are and, and owning all of it, owning all of it, so that then we can start to actually deliberately choose some things.

If. I can look back for me, and I know for others as well, they’re kind of waiting and, and so it’s a passive exercise of, okay, I know it’s gonna come at some point, right? Maybe this birthday, maybe this anniversary, maybe this special day, whatever, and it doesn’t come. And so there’s, there’s that, that act of choosing.

Deliberately to say, what do I need to introduce here? And then to your, to your point like that kind of emerged around that being as opposed to just doing, being, being is an expression of purpose. Right. Right. And self and, and who you are, so that that action isn’t just a response to, I need to get away from that.

Right. There’s the, there’s the move away part, but what are you moving towards? Right. And, and choose that towards thing, even if it’s so good short term or narrow term or whatever. , but be like that deliberateness there. And, and I, I find that creates, it opens up so many other doors, right? And it, and you guys ha, you guys have helped me do that.

I’ve seen you guys do that. I’ve seen some, you know, we’ll talk about this later, but some huge leaps as well. Like, sometimes it’s incremental, incremental, incremental. And sometimes there are these massive shifts that happen. But I think it starts from those, those small pieces of being gently deliberate and not saying, well, I’m gonna.

Whatever exercise program, cuz I’m gonna be ripped and I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that. It’s like, okay. Like that’s that and maybe it’ll end there. But it’s, it’s those moments and steps in between that are actually where richness lives. Not, not goal oriented. Yeah. I, I think it’s, to your point, it’s like I love the word deliberately and for me, living richly, a big aspect of it is showing up fully and deliberately in your life.

Yeah. It’s about being awake as opposed to asleep at the wheel. Yeah. So many of us are living like digital zombies, right. Think of the hours spent just thumbing your phone right. Looking at somebody else’s life or the best version of their. Which is off, you know, a false front cuz who posts the negative shit on social media.

We only post the best moments and yet here we are right just not being present to our lives, distracted by so many things and we’re asleep at the wheel. So it’s about being alive, awake, available in the moment. And to your point about making those deliberate choices, right, it’s.

Choosing not coasting language that we’ve used before. Yeah. It’s about deciding, not drifting. One author called it he blended the words visioning and engineering together to call it visioneering. Right? It’s almost this sense of visioneering your life, creating and crafting a vision of what your best life looks like and then.

Deliberately beginning to make those choices slowly by slowly, little by little building a life that supports that vision. But that’s showing up fully and deliberately on purpose and not waiting. How, how many times have we next week, next month, right? Next year, are, are our decisions or our, our desires to, to live a better life and to show up more?

More deliberately, it’s time to start acting now. Right. They’re, they’re stop waiting, I think is something we’ve talked about. You people going, I’ll wait till Monday. Right. I’m like, what’s Monday? like the, you know, it’s like, as you say, like they’re looking for the milestone birthday, the. Yeah, the New Year’s, the, I think I’ll stay in this pain and discomfort for another date.

You know, I, why not define right now Yeah. This moment and fill it with meaning. Because that was the moment where you decided to start moving into your life as opposed to say new Year’s will be the day I do that, or on my 50th birthday, I’ll do that, or my 25th birthday, or what? You don’t need to wait.

Right. Like, I, I love what you say around that. Like, it’s so, so important. And it, and it resonates so deeply for me cuz I waited so long. Right? So long I’m like, oh, don’t do it. Please don’t do it. Right. This it. I’m excited. Yeah. I’m excited about the journey that we are taking together individually.

And I want to invite all of you to join us on this journey. We talk about this as a conversation and the conversation. We want you to be included in that conversation. We want you to participate in the conversation with us, and we want to just encourage you to do that. The first thing you can do in order to really engage with us and with this podcast is to subscribe and be able to do that so that you don’t miss any of the podcasts as they come out, encourage you to be.

To check out the ones that are already available. But we are going to be continuing to, to learn and discover on this journey openly and publicly, and we invite you to participate in that. What else, what else do we wanna encourage people to do? Well, I think, you know, a as we feel in ourselves that, that like this, as this stuff starts to re.

There we can also probably recognize it in some people around us. Right? And so with you two guys, like we start in some ways we landed on kind of the same set of questions at the same time. And I, I don’t know who started talking, but one of us started talking around it and, and, and there was a lot of, there was that recognition of Me too.

Yeah. And, and there’s that notion. Doing this alone is, I don’t know, it might be impossible, maybe not, but I think it’s real, real hard and it’s unnecessarily hard. So I, I would say the second thing you can do is find somebody to just share this with. So, yeah, if you wanna share the podcast, share the podcast, but share the experience.

Share the conversation. Share the, the thing that resonated for you, that is really valuable. Bring someone with you and someone to like, walk through this together. You walk through it. For sure we want to do that. But you probably know someone who also needs that. So I would say bring them too. Bring them too.

Yeah. And in the same spirit we’re gonna be creating all kinds of experiences, providing tools and resources, providing opportunities for folks who really want to level up. Their life and, and take this to the next level. Whether that be one-to-one coaching support, whether it be a group type environment or tools and resources available just to help you navigate this journey.

You can go to livingrichly.me/act and you’ll find everything you need there. Awesome. Listen, guys every one of these conversations that I’ve had with you is always so enriching and I appreciate so much. The insight that you bring to my life. And for all of you that are listening, thank you for participating by being a part of this podcast today.

And we certainly encourage you to listen in on more of them. Thank you so much.