Where does motivation come from? with Guest David R Edwards

David R. Edwards worked his way through school eventually achieving a BA in Business and MBA in Healthcare Administration.  He served mostly lower-income people on 3 continents over the last 35 years and is familiar with the challenges and unfairness of life.  In 2018 while working with doctors, dentists, counselors, and community health workers he had an epiphany.  The core challenge most people have is to generate the personal drive to direct their own life, enduring principles to guide, and the most current science-based tools to assist them through a bumpy and messy life.  His first book “New You! Who Knew?” is an attempt to put in writing an easy-to-digest and implement guide that builds confidence, esteem, and self-compassion in balance. 

www.davidredwards.com

David's website has links to buy the e-book or paperback.  The audiobook will be available later this year. The blog has lots of useful information and application of the principles for daily life.

Second Mix Links:
Facebook
SecondMix.net
matt@secondmix.net

Support the Show: Buy Me A Coffee!

Website: SecondMix.net

Email Me: matt@secondmix.net

REFLECT, REVISE, and REMIX your life and business with the MONTHLY Second Mix Newsletter covering GOAL MASTERY for Real Estate Professionals. Your business gets better as YOU get better! Sign Up Now

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matt: 

[00:00:00] Matt: Good morning, everybody. What are the principles that guide our performance? And our journey as human beings. And what is the intrinsic motivation that leads us to change? We answer those questions today with my guest, David R. Edwards author of the book knew you who knew. We talk about values, humanity, relationships, and much more. 

[00:00:22] Matt: In 5, 4, 3, 2. One

[00:00:00] Matt: David, tell me what you do. 

[00:00:04] David: so right now I'm trying to make a living as an 

[00:00:07] Matt: author..

[00:00:07] David: As I tell people, sometimes I worked in healthcare for 35 

[00:00:11] Matt: years.

[00:00:12] Matt: Okay. And 

[00:00:13] David: it wasn't until like year thirty three I had this epiphany, it was like this wow moment. And we had built this amazing health center. Right. I mean, we were a community health. So we tried to look at people like if you came in Matt, we would look at you as a whole person. That's really in contrast to the entire kind of Western medical system, which says I'm gonna look at the nose and somebody else looks at the head and somebody else looks at the heart.

[00:00:44] David: Somebody else looks at the feet et cetera, et cetera. Right. This kind of reduction model. Yes. But. We realized at the level of primary care that we were born. Now, this is kind of shocking together. right. Yes. And all the pieces are connected and they all influence each other. And even more shocking beyond that, we had good data that said.

[00:01:09] David: To our own chagrin that the healthcare doesn't really make us that healthy. 

[00:01:17] David: We realize that most of our journey is outside of the clinic, in other words. And so we had physicians and dentists and hygienists and nurse practitioners and therapists and coaches and all these people.

[00:01:30] David: And we had the four years I'd been there as the CEO, we'd been able to Do very well, I guess I would just say, and we'd outgrowing our original health center building and we were gonna replace it with one that was twice as big. And we thought we need to build the center around you as the patient, as a whole person.

[00:01:52] David: And it was in this process of dialogue with these multidisciplinary group that we realized that unless we can help the patient to become the captain of the care team and fulfill that role successfully, this thing was not gonna be that much better than in the old building. Okay. Where my office was in a closet and I moved out of my closet.

[00:02:17] David: So a dentist could move into my closet. anyways. And so I had this epiphany it's. I mean, I've worked in healthcare for this long. I have a master's degree in healthcare administration, and yet I don't really understand what this means. You know, what does that, what does that entail even? What are the skills that people need?

[00:02:38] David: What is the principles that, (I hate to use the word drive? Cuz it's such a mechanical metaphor and we're not machines,) but that guides our performance as human beings. And. It really started this kind of mental journey for me. And. I found myself getting fired about six months later. I had a disagreement with my board and I lost that particular argument perhaps to some of that I was justified, but anyway, so I, I thought I'm gonna dive into this and I spent two years. Researching and reading and saying, all right, we've got these change models. It's really about change and being the master of change in our lives, and frankly being the captain of the change that's going on in our lives.

[00:03:25] David: I was, I think I was diving deep into what the, what this meant, what this was all about to be the captain of the care team, the captain of your life. . 

[00:03:36] Matt: So when you had this epiphany, did.

[00:03:40] Matt: Like did the epiphany bring an answer or did it just bring more questions? Well, 

[00:03:45] David: you know, the best epiphany always bring an answer with more questions. Okay. Right. Cause what's the old saying the more I know, the more I realize, I don't know that much. Yes . And so what we realized was this idea of being the captain of the care team and by extension of your entire life has to do with change in change, manage.

[00:04:09] David: And especially in psychology, there are lots of theories. And so I started studying various theories around change and how do we change? And you would think right there would be one. And that's the theory and it's the right one, but. We're human beings and nothing is that simple with human beings. And so I had on a spreadsheet cuz I was a CFO for a long time.

[00:04:32] David: And so I liked spreadsheets and so I built a spreadsheet and I had six of the most well thought of models. And the second epiphany I had was that at the core of every one of these models of how human beings change is this idea of intrinsic motivation or personal motivation. And so basically. And anything we want to do in our life.

[00:04:58] David: There's two core elements. There's the, do I wanna do it? the motivation side. And then there's the, do I know how to do it? Right? The how to side? Okay. 90% of what we see out everywhere around us, on the internet, on YouTube, on books and on videos. And podcasts is how to, how do I do this? How do I rise up on this?

[00:05:24] David: How do I overcome this? How do I, right. That's where 90% of things are focused and, and it's okay. Right. It's good. It's necessary. But by itself, it is inadequate. And so I thought if this is at the core of all of these models, I gotta understand this better. And it can't be some trite, you know, sound bite understanding of it.

[00:05:50] David: It's really got to, I've got to really get into this. And so let me interrupt what 

[00:05:55] Matt: you said just to make, just to, I just wanna clarify this for, for me and for the audience. Yeah. What you didn't understand and what you found that's part of all the models that isn't spoken about a lot is actually the intrinsic.

[00:06:07] Matt: Motivation the, the, the internal drive. I know you didn't like that word, but the internal drive to do these things. Yeah. So, so we see videos all over the place that are showing us how to do it once you've decided once you have the drive, but. Where does the drive come from? What is the drive? Is that, that's the question that you were answering 

[00:06:28] David: that's exactly right.

[00:06:29] Matt: Beautiful. 

[00:06:29] David: Okay. And so as I studied that there are really three foundations. The first is our values. and all of us have values, right, Matt? I mean, you have values. I have values, right? Yes. So I would ask I'm just out of curiosity and there's no right or wrong answer to this. I'm just out of curiosity, have you taken the time to think about your values to maybe rank order your top five and describe what that value means to you, how you would define.

[00:07:07] David: I have not over all the exercises that I've done over the years, that I've never aligned my value. I maybe have written down the things that I value and what I think my values are, but never like even thinking through a complete list of my top ones. Yeah. I've never done it. So 

[00:07:25] David: this idea of values is critical and interesting.

[00:07:28] David: Right? It's always interesting, but the power. Of our values comes by making them explicit. And so. As I not, I don't know if I noted this earlier, but anyways, after all this work, I decided, geez I'm and I started a couple businesses right before the pandemic, which failed. And, and so, you know, I had a lot of things I've learned though.

[00:07:51] David: Right. So I had these failures That I built on in order to write a book. And so the very first chapter of the book is on values and the process of making them explicit. And it's not a hard thing. It only takes a couple of hours for most of us to do this, but what it does when we go through the process, it unleashes meaning and purpose in our lives.

[00:08:17] David: It unleashes focus. It creates a sense of wellbeing. Like our life is on track. Like it's okay. I'm moving in the direction that I really want to. It adds clarity as opposed to fuzziness, if you've ever been in a situation where you're thinking this makes me uncomfortable, but you're not really sure why it's very likely something is being said or done, or is happening.

[00:08:46] David: That's contrary to some of your values. What this does is it makes it crystal clear what exactly is going on and why it makes you uncomfortable. Right? And so this has all of these benefits. That is really the core, if you will, the foundation of our intrinsic motivation. And I like to think it, cuz I'm, as I get older, I'm trying to get away from the mechanical metaphor like driving.

[00:09:13] David: I mean, we've all seen this right. Job descriptions and stuff like we're gonna drive change and we're gonna drive results and we're gonna drive performance and we're gonna do all this stuff, but right. But I'm trying to get away from that and say, how do we nurture these things? Right? Because people need to be nurtured guided led perhaps, but not driven.

[00:09:37] David: If you go to your wife, you're married. How long now? 10 years, 10 years. So if you went up to your wife and said, sweetheart, drive me to the store in the next 10 minutes. And if you get me there on time, you're a good wife. How's that gonna go over? 

[00:09:51] Matt: That's not, that's not gonna go over too well. no, 

[00:09:54] David: because she's a human being and you're in a relationship and you can't treat her like your car.

[00:10:00] David: Right. You can treat your car that way. Because it's a machine, but your wife's not a machine and your relationship is not mechanical. Right. It's human and. We need to, I believe very strongly. We need to reinforce this idea, this sense, this perspective that we are in fact human beings, and we need to treat each other consistent with those kinds of principles that create human success and love and peace and cooperation and, and all those good things.

[00:10:33] David: Do you 

[00:10:34] Matt: think that that is something that we lose, that we have to, that we have to somehow remind ourselves of. Did we, we start acting like we're not human, just we're, we're running like a machine sort of, and we have to remind ourselves that we're human. 

[00:10:48] David: I think we do. I think we absolutely do because.

[00:10:51] David: Much of what we see, not everything obviously, but much of what we see. It's just the milleau that we're in. It's the metaphor. It's the industrial age, right. Starting 300 and some odd years ago, you know, we invented the cotton engine and the steam engine and, and we went from there. Now we're on zoom calls, right.

[00:11:10] David: And there's all kinds of wonderful advantages to this kind of me, mechanical reductionist, you know, model, but. What it does at some point though, is it starts to ignore the reality of what we are, which is a human being. And so we need to kind of, I think, take a step back and actually think about the environment that we're in the words that we're using, these kind of expectations that we have and say, am I treating myself.

[00:11:41] David: And others like a machine right now, or am I treating us like a human being? And we have to understand there are principles that drive a machine, right? So machines have to mesh, they have to fit, has to operate smoothly. You gotta grease those things. And, and a cog that is like this, trying to fit with a cog like this.

[00:12:05] David: Isn't gonna. and yet, and so that we think of as broken, right. We think it's flawed and that's kind of this mechanical metaphor. Well, that doesn't work. It's, it's, it's faulty. Right, right. And that's a bad thing. Right. But when we're talking about human beings, are you and I, the same are any of our audience members the same as us?

[00:12:27] David: Are we the same color, the same background, the same education, the same, you know, whatever. Well, no, we're all different. Aren't. Yes. So we look at human beings as naturally and normally different. And so since we aren't gonna be cogs fitting together smoothly like this, well, how do we work together? Right?

[00:12:50] David: How do we accomplish purposes that we share? Well, we have to understand principles of human success of human performance and is those principles that will allow us to. Perform as well as connect in balance. And I think that at a very fundamental level is the key to success in life. Is this idea of performance and connection on a foundation of our values and meaning.

[00:13:29] David: That we then work together as human beings, knowing that we're different and looking at us, not flawed and not broken as just normal, that's just the way we are right as human beings. And that allows us to then move together and do really the most amazing things that we could ever think of. 

[00:13:48] Matt: Well, I like that.

[00:13:49] Matt: I like the thought of that. How would you, like, do you have a method that you use. To remind yourself that you are human to remind yourself that other people are human, like to, to cuz we live in our own heads a lot of the time. Right. And you see other people and then you treat them as if they were something that's just in your head.

[00:14:09] Matt: Yeah. We don't treat, we don't treat them like we don't live out all the time. Is there anything that you do to remind yourself that these other people are real beings? . 

[00:14:22] David: So there's, and, and I will speak to this at some point. You're gonna ask me about the 43 seconds, right? 

[00:14:30] Matt: I, I am yes. 

[00:14:31] David: Towards the end of this.

[00:14:32] David: So this will relate to that, but something that I do, this is something that anybody can do. And in my book, I talk about this as a simple pattern that any of us can adopt. So in the morning I strive to be intent. So I try to think about my day, I think about what I'm gonna do. So for example, Hey, I have a podcast with Matt at, at my time in the Pacific time zone.

[00:15:01] David: It's eight 30 in the morning. And so I've got this interview coming up. Matt does a good job on his podcast. I want to be a good guest, right. And so. I want to be intentional about that. So what am I gonna do to prepare to be a good guest? Right. So I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking about my wife and what she's got going on.

[00:15:22] David: I'm thinking about my father-in-law, who I'm gonna take to the doctor when we're done here. And, you know, I've got these things. And so I'm intentional. You might think about planning your day. But I add this element of the human beings that I'm gonna be connecting with and what is my intent around each of those relationships?

[00:15:42] David: Cause as human beings, that's what we have is relationships. So that's what I do. And at the end of the day, So the second part of this pattern is that I'm accountable to that. So I go to myself and I say towards the end of day, usually in my evening, I'll spend some time pondering and then I pray. And and I ask, okay, this was my intent.

[00:16:04] David: I kind of review my calendar and what I, my wanted to do. And I have an aspirational value that I'm working on. And, and so I asked myself, how did I do right? I did pretty good here. Didn't I was good there. And, and I, and I start thinking, and there's another pattern and I won't go through the whole thing, but there's a very simple, like a five step process I go through.

[00:16:27] David: If I really messed up on something, you know, then I, I kind of. Recognize that I messed up. I think that's the first thing. And then I replay it in my mind and go, so what happened? I wanna make sure I understand it clearly. And then I go through it a second time and I go, okay. If I were perfect, which I'm not, but I'm trying to be a little bit better.

[00:16:50] David: So if I were doing better, how would I have done that differently? Right. How, and it's never, what would they have done differently? Cuz you know what, that's outta my control. And as soon as we start focusing on what other people are doing or saying, we're gonna get ourselves into trouble. And so I have to focus on what did I do?

[00:17:10] David: What was my part in this? Even if it was the smaller part, doesn't matter, cuz I can only control what I do. So then what could I have done better? And then I reinforce. And I run through it my mind. And then the next morning as I start out, I can be intentional about it, right? Yes. And then I'm accountable.

[00:17:31] David: It's this process I'm intentional in the morning. I'm accountable in the evening. It's really very powerful. It's really very simple, but very few of us just like our values. Only about 20% percent of the people listening to this podcast will have ever made their values explicit. And most of us don't have this kind of a pattern, but it's really quite doable.

[00:17:53] David: Does it sound doable to you? 

[00:17:55] Matt: It does sound doable. I like it. And I do want to. Say this for my listeners, because the tagline of this podcast is reflect revise and remix your life. And what you were talking about right. There sounds exactly like what, what we need and, and the, the tagline of this podcast.

[00:18:12] Matt: So I adore that and I've never heard it spoken quite that way to start the morning with intention and the end of the day with accountability. Two, your intentions that you started out in the morning? I think that's fascinating. And probably something that I am somehow going to add into the remix of my own life.

[00:18:28] Matt: I, I really, I really like that, that thought. And going back, would you say then that the values, your values list, that's what helps you set your intention in the morning? Like it does when you're talking about you're gonna do something with your wife, you're doing something with your father-in-law, like, you know, you're doing these things because the values that you've set up for yourself, 

[00:18:48] David: right.

[00:18:50] David: That's exactly right. 

[00:18:51] Matt: Dictate. Dictate your intention. So, do you ever find your values list changing? Like, not for the worst, but like you say, I need to add that to my values cuz I do like you learn a new value, learn something else. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:19:05] David: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I'll give you an example. I've been a, a chief financial officer, a chief executive officer for most of the last 30 years, almost 1986, probably 87.

[00:19:19] David: And You can, when you're in a leadership role, you have a lot of people who are telling you you're really good. good job. right. If things are going well anyways, and things aren't going well, you have a lot of people saying here, chopped liver, you know? Right. How did you mess that up and whatnot. But anyways and something I've been working on, you know, it's so funny when I was younger I used to listen to a lot of cassette tapes.

[00:19:45] David: some people might not know what a cassette tape is, but it's how we used to listen to things. And before we had MP four S and MP three S and you know, all this digital stuff, right? Yes. And so it was all analog. And and I had, you know Warren benic the psychology of women and Zig Ziegler. Brian Tracy and Jim, Ron and Jim, Ron, I like, there you go.

[00:20:09] Matt: So I had these cassettes, 

[00:20:10] David: you know, and it was a part of my development and you know, this and the, I remember the psychology of winning.

[00:20:17] David: So he was a psychologist he'd worked with Olympic athletes and, and he would say things. This is what winters do. And of course, then if you didn't do that, you know, you were a loser right, right. And, and as I've aged, I hopefully more like fine wine than, you know, rotten eggs, but I've realized, or I, I believe very strongly now that that kind of black and white, I'm a winner.

[00:20:44] David: I'm a loser, you're a winner. You are a loser is really quite dysfunctional. And I'm not saying there aren't good things. And, and I still have a lot of respect for these people cuz they were. Part of my development, frankly, but you know, I think starting with like Steven Covey and the seven habits. Yes he was, you know, and he identified this, you know, he studied all of the self-help stuff that had been written for the last 50 years.

[00:21:12] David: And he said, it's all around doing. And what we need to do is really more focus on becoming, and those are my words, but I mean, with that idea, right? Yes. And so. As I was studying and, you know, I've had some life experience under my belt. Been married 36 years, 37 in a few months here. Wow. Wow. And we had some, you know, serious challenges, you know, we've been broke and we've done well.

[00:21:41] David: But what I realized. And as I was studying this ideas or these principles, if you will, like awareness is one of those principles. Our values is one of those principles. Self kindness is one of those principles, right? Is that this journey of being a human being is messy and sloppy and we have to be a little more kind to ourselves.

[00:22:06] David: Yeah, we wanna do better. We wanna be better. Right. We wanna perform at a higher level. Fantastic. It's all great. But realize that in our lifetimes, we will never meet or know a perfect person ain't gonna happen. It just isn't gonna happen. Right. And what, what the research tells us is that as we look at ourselves and we try to guide and align our lives with the principles of the success for human beings, And build foundations.

[00:22:41] David: So think of it in nature, like a roots in a trunk, if you're a big cherry tree and you've got a strong trunk, that's flexible and roots that go deep and wide and are productive and effective, right. You in a good year will out produce. Any other what you would've done otherwise, and in a bad year, you'll avoid catastrophic failure because you've got those foundations built.

[00:23:10] David: So really what was reinforced to me is we need to build our foundations and make sure those are strong. As we try to produce more fruit.

[00:23:19] Matt: And do you talk about all this in your book? I do beautiful. I, I, I wanna make sure I get it. And and pick, I'm gonna pick up a copy of your book and I'm gonna check that out because I am totally looking forward to that. . Let me ask you about writing your book. And at what point did you actually decide I'm gonna write this down and, and make this very clear for people, 

[00:23:41] David: you know, it's my first iteration of this was based on what I'd read and what I'd been studying was to create a very small what they call a minimally viable business.

[00:23:53] David: And I created a list of affirmations, 52 of them, one, one for each week of the year. And it was based upon what I'd been reading and researching. And I thought if I can just host these out and I'll partner with community health centers, like places where I used to work. And they will give me a little bit of money as $20 a year and per person.

[00:24:18] David: So it's, you know, very, very inexpensive, literally pennies a day. And I would have an app. So we created an app and it hosted out an affirmation in the morning and in the evening, that's kind of how it started. Okay. And I, and I got it going just barely reached out to my friends and COVID hit. And all, and, and all of my friends said, Dave, this is interesting, you know, as a starting place, but we can't deal with this right now because you know, we're up to our eyeballs and all the normal stuff that COVID brought on.

[00:24:50] David: Right. And so. I continued to read and study and write and, and I thought, well, I'll go from business to business. I'll go business to consumer. And I tried to do it direct to consumers and, and that failed . And I continued to read though and study and write, and I, I, I did it for about two years and, and I realized.

[00:25:13] David: It was so much clearer to me than it had been, you know, two years before and

[00:25:23] David: sorry. You're fine. And, and I thought, you know what? I've got so much material here. And I developed a YouTube channel and I had like a hundred and some odd videos out in my YouTube channel scripts, you know, that I'd written. And I thought, I, I shouldn't write a book and that's really kind of how happened.

[00:25:41] David: I thought, you know, what can I do? That will cuz I feel like it's so important. And I didn't invent anything new. I mean, I wish I was that clever, but you know, I built on the shoulders of really smart people and pulled things together in a way that I'd not seen, you know, with all the personal development books and things I've read.

[00:26:03] David: And, you know, I read constantly and. I hadn't seen anything quite like this, and nobody was talking about it and I thought, and yet it's the roots, you know, it's the trunk, it's the foundation that in fact allows the normal evolution of life to create this outcomes that we all want. We all want the fruit, but we're not willing to pay the price.

[00:26:29] David: To build those foundations. And so I felt this is really important to talk about. And, and one of the great things about writing is it's a discipline and it forces you to take your thoughts and organize them in a way that somebody else might actually possibly be able to understand what the heck you're talking about.

[00:26:49] David: And absolutely, and I wrote it really for frontline workers, frontline people because frankly. If you have a lot of money, if I'm Beyonce and I develop a drug problem, I can hire the best rehab hospital. I've got agents, I've got, you know, managers, I've got all these people that are gonna keep the ship going forward.

[00:27:13] David: Right, right. But if I'm Dave. You know, making $67,000 a year and I develop a drug problem. I'm gonna have a big problem. right. I might end up in jail. I might end up homeless. I might end up, you know, divorced. I might end up whatever. Because I don't have those kinds of resources. I gotta take care of it on my own largely.

[00:27:40] David: And so when you don't have as many resources, you know, just by the nature of things, you are so much more accountable for your life and the decisions that you make and the principles that you align your life by. Which in fact, then determine our success as human beings and success. To me, isn't becoming a millionaire.

[00:28:03] David: It may be, but that's really not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about living a life of meaning of accomplishment, of purpose, of connection, and of balance. To me that is human success. 

[00:28:20] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I'm, you know, I'm starting to see that more and more in my life to try to re remember. That like, it's about the relationships that I have and the experiences that I have in this life.

[00:28:35] Matt: And it's not the amount of money I make. And it's not the amount of likes on a Facebook post that I get. It's. It is none of that is really even relevant. In the end. And I did the whole begin with the end in mind from seven habits of highly effective people. I mean, I did write out like my, my obituary and I, I said, okay, when I'm laying on my deathbed and I, I picture laying on my deathbed and dying peacefully because.

[00:29:06] Matt: I'm dying peacefully because I spent enough time with my family. I, you know, went to a lot of places that I wanted to see on this earth. I helped a lot of people that kind of thing. And I can say, I can, I can die in peace because of these things. And so. Yeah, it is, it is helpful to begin with the end in mind in that way, and then design your life toward that.

[00:29:30] Matt: And I think that is the genius of seven habits of highly effective people. And I, I also though believe like, you know, you said that you hadn't. You wrote the book because you're putting things together in a way that's never been done before. I, I believe that God or the universe or, or whatever people believe out there put that in.

[00:29:51] Matt: You. Because that it needed to be said that way too. Yeah. Because there's some people that are gonna be reached by the way that you said it. And exactly. If there's, if there's 10,000 people in, in the United States that need to hear it, that way a hundred thousand people in the world that need to hear it that way, whatever.

[00:30:08] Matt: Yeah. You're it's gonna get out there. And so the way that you said it is, is gonna touch some people and the way somebody else says it is gonna touch other people. The way Tony Robbs says something is gonna touch some people. So how can people find your book if they need to find your book? 

[00:30:25] David: So I always like people to go to my website, which is just my name. So www.davidredwards.com. Okay. Excellent. That's and you find out more about me. I got my blog there. You can get my book.

[00:30:39] David: It's on Amazon as an ebook, as a paperback and as a audio book. 

[00:30:45] Matt: Okay, that sounds awesome. And, and this book and all these principles that we are talking about right here you, you had said something interesting prior to, prior to us recording and I wanted to ask you about it. All of this stuff is, is.

[00:31:01] Matt: Is it only for tough times or is this something that we could do all the time? Is it, is it like you know, if things seem to be going smoothly, should we still be doing this? 

[00:31:13] David: I'll ask you, this is, I like using the natural metaphor. And so if I'm a tree, I'm a cherry tree and my purpose is to produce fruit at some point.

[00:31:24] David: Right? I mean, that's what I'm here to do. And so if I have a strong root system, right, which you look at at the tips of the roots, that's like our values. Okay. And then as we go up from the roots into the trunk, this is like our ability to get things done, right. Set of skills and principles. And as we go up the trunk into the branches, that's our ability to connect.

[00:31:51] David: With other people, right? So we have these three core areas, values, getting things done and connecting, and we have made those strong, robust, vibrant. So they're strong, but flexible, right? Yes. So in a good year, right? The rain is just right. The sun is just right. The seasons are right where they need to be.

[00:32:15] David: Is that tree gonna produce more fruit or less fruit? If 

[00:32:21] Matt: everything's the way it needs to be, it's gonna produce more exactly, right? 

[00:32:25] David: Yes. It's gonna be very productive, right? Yes. So now let's say that it's a bad year. So like in where I live in the Northwest, right. This year, we've had a cold, wet, weird spring.

[00:32:37] David: Okay. I mean, a month and a half ago we had snow on the ground. I mean, and it was, you know, it's very unusual. Right. And so I'm a tree. and I have a strong roots and trunk, these things, we, these foundations, right? Yeah. And it's a bad year. So we haven't had enough sunshine. We've had too much rain. You know, the ground is saturated.

[00:33:00] David: Is that tree gonna be better off having that strong roots and trunk or worse off, 

[00:33:07] Matt: It's gonna be better off for having strong roots in trunk. Yes. Ex 

[00:33:11] David: exactly. And so it's a very long answer to your question, but I wanna kinda get at this from this perspective.

[00:33:18] David: If we have strong roots in trunk, If it's a good year, we're gonna produce more than we ever. Imagine. If it's a bad year, we will avoid catastrophic failure and produce more than we would have if we didn't have the trunk and the roots strong and develop, like they are. 

[00:33:39] Matt: . That is a great metaphor.

[00:33:41] Matt: I, I like to, yes, when you're doing it, it's still, it's things are still gonna be better than they would've been had you not been doing it? Exactly. 

[00:33:50] David: So it serves us well, no matter what the circumstances of our life are. And so, yes, I believe very strongly excuse me, that we need to, at some point and hopefully earlier in our lives, I mean, what a benefit, right?

[00:34:07] David: We should spend some energy. We don't make it. It doesn't need to consume our life, but take small, simple steps to develop these foundations, that guide human success. As we've described before, knowing that in good times and bad, we're gonna be better off than we were. And perhaps most profoundly when we have the real test of life and we'll all have some time in our lives when we are gonna be seriously tested in those tests of life.

[00:34:40] David: Without these foundations built, we will tend to have a catastrophic failure, burnout, depression. Divorce, right? Lots of these things that sort are disastrous to us addiction. I mean, you know, you can go down, there's a long list of these. Every one of us is gonna be more or less susceptible to different types of these challenges.

[00:35:05] David: But with the strong roots and trunk, we can avoid a lot of that regret. A lot of that catastrophic failure and will weather the storms. With really relatively minor discomfort. And I think that's the beauty of it. It doesn't matter what the season is, what our circumstances are, what our background has been, what our education level is, what our race, our gender, our religion, our lack of right.

[00:35:35] David: Anything past doesn't really make that much difference. We can build these foundations at any point in our life at any stage of life and under, under any circumstances. And we'll be better off for it for the rest of our life. 

[00:35:51] Matt: All right. All right. Well that sounds good. That is a good answer. The tree metaphor is amazing and knowing that as we continually build and continually go through these disciplines that we've set up in our lives is gonna make us stronger for the good times and the bad times.

[00:36:07] Matt: That is beautiful. So, David, if you had 43 seconds to that, you had the entire world on the. What would you tell 

[00:36:16] David: them? So I had to write this down, so you'll forgive me. I will. Any, anything that you believe that makes you feel that you are worse than another person? Anything that you believe that makes you feel like you are better than another person you need to rid yourself of these beliefs?

[00:36:43] David: Balance without comparison. Is the key. There is no perfect balance because we are all imperfect human beings. We are simply imperfect in different ways.

[00:37:04] Matt: Those are good words. . And I've never heard anything like the first two phrases that you said. I've never heard anybody say that, anything that makes you think that you are better than another person and anything that makes you think you are worse than another person you need to rid yourself of all those thoughts, all those things that make you think either of those.

[00:37:25] Matt: And I think that is Absolutely beautiful. I can't wait to, I can't wait to, to be playing this live for everybody. All right. Well, we have come to the end of the interview. I really appreciate you David, for being, being here, being here with us and, and really for being out there, doing what you're doing putting good thinking.

[00:37:47] Matt: Good ideas out into the world and in a way that makes lives better, makes living better and makes the world better. So thank you. Thank you, Matt. It's been a pleasure. Thanks. And yeah, if you ever just email me, feel free to email me, we can keep up a conversation if you want to. And and maybe we'll have you back on the show.

[00:38:07] Matt: That'd be awesome. All right. That sounds great. Thanks. Thank you.