003 - Courage Over Comfort: Willpower, Discontentment, and How Change Actually Sticks

[0:00] And we're here again. What in the world is going on? We'll find out right after these messages.

[0:44] If you can't tell, we have some hats. Can you explain to us? We had some Bravely hats delivered over the weekend. And I think that's all there is to explain. Is there more there? I don't know. We had a thousand hats and they looked ridiculous. And I felt like we should share it with our listeners. We did have to air them out a little bit when they arrived. Yeah. They weren't the best smelling hats I've ever had. Yeah. When they arrive... You know, I don't think that there's a complete necessity for always having disclosures on hats or anything you buy if they have a particular scent. Because normally things just smell... Like nothing or something nothing adjacent, except for if they're... I don't know. Again, I don't know what the threshold is, but the hats were on the other side of that threshold, for sure. Well, I remember when we were airing them out, Averyn came out and said, "Ember stinks so bad." It was not Ember. Our poor dog got the blame for the stinky hat. All right. We should start the show. But, okay, let me go here. So I'm going to have an idea for starting the show.

[1:59] I actually had something for you. Oh, okay. Go ahead. Okay. So I have a "would you rather" question for you to kick us off. We should have started with the hat instead of the hats. This is so exciting. Okay. So would you rather have a pause button or a rewind button for your life? Does anybody pick pause? How would pause be better? Well, I don't know. If you're in a really great season and want to just hold on... Like Groundhog Day it? Yeah. You just keep reliving the same day? How about this? How about this? Would you rather relive the same day, like to have the ability to relive an entire day, or the ability to go back in time 15 seconds? Because, spoiler, my answer to what would your superpower be would be to go back in time 15 seconds. I know. Yeah, that would be... That's always been my answer to that. Mostly because then you could just do crazy stuff. Like, I don't know, you have like that that call of the void feeling and, you know, if you were like, "Man, you know what would be crazy is if I just ran into like 15 of these cars in this parking lot." Obviously, I would never do that. Oh, my gosh.

[3:14] Or if I lose my mind and you see someone on the news for hitting 15 cars in a parking lot, you'll know that someone thought they had the power to go back in time 15 seconds. Why would you want to hit 15 cars in a parking lot? I don't know, actually, it's just like a thing that pops into your head. I don't know. No? I think that's some impulse control issues, Jeff. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's an impulse control issue because I don't do it, so I feel like I'm a bastion of success and impulse control, if that's the case. What is your answer? Would you want to be able to pause and/or Groundhog Day it, or would you rather have just something shorter that you can go back 15 seconds? I don't know. I have moments. I mean, there's moments in life where I wish I could pause and soak it up a little bit more, but a lot of the times, I think you don't know what those moments are, of what moments you wish you could pause and just be in the moment, because I think a lot of the time, we're always going 90 to nothing and don't really get to soak in those moments. But I don't know. You brought us all sentimental on it. I know. Well, I— I was just talking about running into cars and stuff.

[4:30] But probably, I don't know, rewind, but then again, I like having the—I don't know. We've lived our life up until this point, and we wouldn't be who we are today had we not made those decisions prior. Katy, the podcast has so much opportunity. It's so much fun. It's so much fun. It's so much fun. I think it's a great opportunity for depth and deepness. We don't have to bring it to the intro. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, Katy, you have to come up with something like, "I'm going to run into 15 cars." Okay. So pause. What frivolous thing would you use it for? I think—I think—so it kind of depends if it was a pause and time stopped. Okay. That would be pretty cool. Oh, yeah? What kind of creepy things are you going to do, time stop girl? I don't know. I don't have impulse issues. I don't know what it would be. You're going to run a wig. All right. We should stop. We should stop. Get on to the show. Get on to the show. All right. So last time, we ended with Quote Corner, kind of. This time, I'm going to do it at the top. So the quote I have brought to us today is, "We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both." That is a Brene Brown quote, whom I actually have heard give a hour-long talk at—where was I? DC, I think. That's really cool.

[5:45] You got to hear some really cool people talk. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of inspiring folks over the years. But yeah, Brene actually talked about this in the talk that I listened to, and I think it is particularly applicable, mostly in the sense of what we've been talking about with change and what that requires. But I also think, just in general, in this time—and this actually kind of ties into one of the first things I wanted to talk about today. But this time in history is, I feel like, so unique. And I feel so fortunate to live in the time that I was born into. And I don't know, maybe everybody feels this exact same way, because you get to experience the things you get to experience, and perhaps that's just the lens that you look through it. But yeah, we got to experience early internet when there were no algorithms, and it was like a little treasure if you found some website that was cool. And then up until now, just in the same way, I also feel fortunate that I learned

[7:01] how to do coding things back when I was in school and doing it on a TI-84 calculator and literally typing every letter of code by hand, to now going through. And it slowly got better with auto-complete and things like that. But then now it's unrecognizable how coding works in practice with agentic stuff, and it's crazy. But I would say now more than ever, with the ability to have the aggregate of all human knowledge accessible to ask questions to. And the time to start whatever the thing, whatever the journey is that you want to go down, is now more than it ever has. So perhaps the barrier to choosing courage is lower than it used to be. But if you're going to be able to do it, you're going to be able to do it better.

[8:19] And if you're going to be able to do it better, you're going to be able to do it better. And if you're going to be able to do it better, you're going to be able to do it better. And if you're going to be able to do it better, you're going to be able to do it better. And if you're going to be able to do it better, you're going to be able to do it better. And if you're going to be able to do it better, you're going to be able to do it better. And if you're going to be able to do it better, you're going to be able to do it better. And if you're going to be able to do it better, you're going to be able to do it better. actually start down a path, since that barrier has basically been shattered as far as getting things started, I mean, it's now. Now more than any time in human history, the time to start the thing is now. And I think the stakes are less high because if you don't know how to do something, and I know that you've mentioned marketing, for example, you have a resource to really dive into and be able to start to understand a little bit of the mechanics on that and even get ideas from. Yeah. And I think one important part of this is that while it does shortcut the um, ability to get into like taking those first steps, there's still no, shortcuts through the process. Oh no. And, and what I mean by that, I mean, with the marketing thing, that's actually a fantastic example. So I, over the weekend I worked, I don't know, infinite amount of hours trying to get some, uh,

[9:35] advertising stuff ready to go. And I, I got all these things set up and I got the website to the point that I liked it. And I have like this whole thing that I've made for people to land on and, and make it like very clear of, you know, what they would potentially be purchasing. And I do all that work. And then I get to, uh, actually making the ad. And I had early on, I had started the process of making the ad in Google ads. And then I, I went through that whole process of making it, you know, like a 10 out of 10, instead of just a six out of 10. And then I needed to go back and change some of the copy on the ad itself so that it would more accurately represent the reality of the thing. Like I didn't want to mislead anybody. Well, in doing that, uh, if you are a, uh, early on use, uh, of Google ads, they will flag that because apparently that is a, um, a thing like a, a little bit of a, like, they call it like evasive something, something. I don't know. No, no, basically they gave you, yeah, you can't be doing that. Uh, you can't be changing things when you've already submitted it for approval. And so then I'm like, well, now I can't advertise anything. And then, and then there's like that moment. Um, you know, and I kind of described it cause it's just how it works in my brain. Of like, it just gets a little darker for

[10:51] a second and you're just like, oh my gosh, and now I have to wait for a human to look at this. And that's probably going to take somewhere between 24 hours and the heat death of the universe. And, and it's like, uh, and, and, and your mind can't help but be like, man, I wasted all this time in reality, in the grand scheme of things. It doesn't, it doesn't matter at all. But it, if you are trying to go through the thing, like you're, you're wanting to keep moving forward and, and the reality is that you're not going to be able to do it. The reality of any of these journeys is you are going to move it forward, but you're going to have things that like pull you back. And it's just a matter of like, okay, this is, this is the actual reality that I'm in. I was going to have to learn this lesson at some point. I'm just going to treat it as a blessing that I've learned it now.

[11:49] That now more than ever is an opportunity to choose courage rather than comfort. And, you know, I, I, and I, I do think that it courage, courage, always courage always takes, um, it, it does, it takes a special kind of person to, to decide to break out of that comfort. Um, but with some of the, like I said, like some of the tooling that we have available now, um, it's just so much more, uh, attainable than perhaps it may have been for some, depending on the specifics of the journey that you're going down. Right. Um, Katy, I'm, I'm curious from you and your perspective as a, like not traditionally techie person per se. I mean, you. No, for sure. Not a techie person. Some technology things that you do pretty good at. I'll just put that out there right now. But, um, I've really seen it. This is why I know that this is a big deal. Um, and, and like, we've changed. Uh, the course of human history with how we've done some AI things is because as a non-techie person, I've seen you do some very technology impressive things. Such as? Uh, just some of the uses of stuff that you've done with AI and like helping move,

[13:05] uh, your, like something that you would have never been able to do in a thousand years. Yeah. Um, but now you can, I want you to speak a little bit to that shift and how. So as a non-techie person, you've kind of found your way to taking advantage of some of these tools. Sure. Um, I think with, I've mentioned before, I'm a project manager for my day job. And one thing that helps with project management is Excel spreadsheets. If you can properly lay that out and as a non-techie person, those are really hard and figuring out the format. Figuring out how to lay it out and even being able to explain to an AI agent what it is I'm trying to accomplish through a Excel spreadsheet, I would not have been able to do something like that before. And now it's, I would have had to pull you in actually to Mr. I'm good at every Excel spreadsheet I ever touch, but, um, being able to do that without needing help. And having to Google for hours and hours

[14:21] and hours, what it is, what formula I'm trying to even get to, how I need to lay it out, how I need to lay out the rows is so helpful. It is just a quick explanation of what it is I'm trying to do and it generates it. But then I can take that and fill it in with the information that I'm needing to use for whatever project I'm doing. I use that constantly. I don't know if that answers your question. But that's kind of what, that's the first thing that came to mind is being able to build out Excel spreadsheets because it wasn't something I was really able to do before. From the first time taking a pass at it to now, I've seen you grow a lot in your ability to even just articulate what it is that you're wanting, which is, I think, uh, you know, if there's one skill that I think is going to set people apart in the next few years, I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that in the next five years. It is how well can you articulate what it is that you want and just practicing that, like being able to not just have a sort of idea, but to actually be able to say it out loud or write it down. Uh, because really the, the execution part of stuff has, has gone up 10,000 X.

[15:40] Uh, so it really is now just how, how well can you direct that ridiculous amount of horsepower? Yeah. Um, and Katy's getting emotional. No, my allergies in the morning is so bad. It's just going to be part of this podcast. I think is me just Katy crying, crying in the corner. So emotional about Excel spreadsheets. Yeah. I mean, they are really touches my heart. Yeah. Some people it's art. Some people it's spreadsheets. Um, some people say spreadsheets are art. I do want to put in a shameless plug here really fast. Um, kind of talking about how you essentially can build out that prompt. Um, in a way that can do like, you can get the deliverable where you need it from an agent. Um, I have found our app say copy paste to be such a great tool for that because I'm able to kind of just have a stream of consciousness of what it is I'm trying to do. Speak it out loud. And even sometimes. If I'm going at it and say something that I'm not sure is actually relevant to what I'm trying to build, I can just take it

[16:56] out so easily, but I don't know. I think it would be cool to talk about that too. Cause I think that that's such a great tool for people that may not know exactly what it is they're looking for or wanting to get from an agent and how they can use that tool. Well, I definitely, yeah, we'll go down into the, uh, indulgence of the self promo here for just a second, because I do, I do think that, uh, so say copy paste is just a voice transcript, voice transcription tool, uh, that is on every platform and it's built in such a way that if you record something on your phone, you can access it on your, you know, your PC or your Mac or whatever, uh, or if you, or vice versa. So if you want to say a bunch of stuff on your computer and then have access to what that was like a voice memo, you, you can easily get that on any device. But really for me, the thing that that has been helpful for is when you are needing to prompt an AI agent and typing it all out, that if you can articulate it well, and it is a skill and it does take a while to, to build that skill up, to feel comfortable talking to yourself into a computer or a phone and are like

[18:13] articulate this whole thing. But if you can do it, it is like three to four times quicker than typing it all out. Yeah. And, and which is a big deal. Yeah. And also I will say if you are typing and editing and like trying to get it all perfect, it will slow that down even further. If you get to a point where you can articulate it with your words, then it, to me anyways, I've found that that is a deeper understanding of what it is that you're actually doing. So like that ability to take like a more nebulous idea and translate that into a clear, coherent, actionable, here's exactly what I need. Like that, that loop is stronger if you are speaking it. I don't know if that's true of everybody, but to me it's like, it's harder to do, but when I do it and I get better at it, then I can, I can see this in myself. The more that I can do it. The more that I've used it, the, the, the more, uh, leverage I get out of being able to direct an agent just through talking. Um, but yeah, I mean, voice transcription,

[19:31] it's funny. I remember, man, I can't remember where we were exactly, maybe at my grandparents' house or something. And I had a windows Vista laptop and they had just gotten like voice to text. Like that was like a new thing. Yeah. The windows Vista. And I had the most fun of like, I was, I was like trying to write some book, but all through dictation and it back then the ability for it to like get the words right was like, I don't know, it was like maybe 90%, which actually that's actually pretty good. Yeah. Not writing good though. Yeah, that's true. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, it felt like magic at the time. And then, you know, the, the initial use of that, I would say was almost. Um, and other than like people talking into their phones to text message, which I didn't understand for the longest time. But then, uh, now with, uh, with AI agents, um, in the mix or, or even just using, you know, chat GPT, the app or, uh, or something like that, the, the use of voice transcription is now so much higher again. It's so much higher. Yeah. I don't know. It's just interesting, interesting way that sometimes, you know, you have that

[20:46] initial hype. But then it dies down. But then the real actual, uh, thing that makes it take off is, you know, a decade down the road or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's really cool.

[20:58] Okay. Um, any, any other things on any of that? Yeah. Say copy paste, go check it out. Bravely. Dev shameless plug. That's what the hats are. Yep. Gotta, gotta pay for those hats somehow. Um, so Jeff, I have a question for you. Okay. How do you know? How do you know you have something you should actually change? Sure. Uh, yeah, we, we had talked a little bit about, uh, some of this stuff and obviously change in general. We've talked a lot about on the show so far. Um, but yeah, I, I think that's a interesting question. And, uh, for me, and I'm curious, like what your answer to that question is too. But, uh, for me, I've found that for one. There's just a, a sense of unsatisfaction with a part of my life. Um, and, and sometimes, sometimes that just needs to be something that I, I, I realize and I accept like that is just not going to be a thing that's going to be true in my life and not have that discontentment, uh, because the discontentment with something that you're not actually going to try to change is

[22:14] just recipe for frustration. And sadness, depression, et cetera. Like that, you're setting an expectation of how you want something to be without actually trying to make steps toward it. Bad, bad recipe there for sure. Uh, but for me, you know, if I, I play that tape forward, I, I take the look at, okay, these are, these are the things about me in this particular area. And if I just continue down this path, then this is what my outcome is going to look like. If I go down this path and don't make a change, I'm going to not reach a destination that I find acceptable about myself, uh, or, or is not in alignment with where I want to be. Like when I look back at my life, this is not going to, to get me there. And, you know, I, I think for, for me, it's having enough of those. Stack up that I realized like, okay, this is, this is just a thing that I saw one day somebody else make this change. And I'm like, man, I really want to do that too. But then that fades. It's like, uh, this keeps coming up as

[23:32] something that I want in my life. And, and then it, then it just becomes more tactically like, okay, what do I do about this? So give me an example of that for you. What, what does that look like in like real life time? Uh, sure. Um, so let's go with business. Yeah. So I've wanted to do some flavor of something for about as long as I can remember. And I have like a, a, like a graveyard of domain names and artwork and brands and stuff that just never saw the light of day. And that is interesting. It's indicative of something that is like, I keep coming back to, I really enjoy the creative process and I feel like I have something to offer and I want to make that happen, but not quite being able to find my way through that, this adventure with, uh, bravely and starting the studio or the, um, starting the podcast, thank you, started the podcast studio and a podcast inside of it.

[24:47] You know, these are the things that probably have taken me the closest to that. I mean, it certainly, uh, is a heck of a lot more of a real thing out in the world than anything else has ever been, but that came from realizing, like, I'm not going to give up on this thing. And like, I just had that, um, you know, I mentioned discontentment, discontentment. If there's not something that you're going to do about it breeds, you know, a disappointment in yourself, depression, like I mentioned before, stuff like that, but it also discontentment can breed, um, a willingness to just take another swing. I'm going to go back up to the plate and I'm going to try this again. And, and so that ultimately is what kept driving me. Like I, I am a person who in my soul, there are certain things that I want to do and to accomplish and I'll never do it again. And I'll never do those if I don't keep trying this thing and if I don't learn and I don't figure this out. So do you feel like discontentment is, can be a good thing and a bad thing? Yeah. I mean, it depends on what, what the

[26:05] fruit is of that. You know, if, if discontentment with your situation is a honest look at, at your life and something that you. You want to make that change and that drives you to, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to start trying to eat healthier for the 945th time. And I'm going to try new in these ways. If it, if it drives you to take another attempt at it, and then hopefully through like listening to this podcast, you can come up with some more tactical things to surround yourself in that, to make that sort of change actually possible. But yeah, I would say it's a, it's an incredible power to keeping you down a path. If that's ultimately a path that you truly want for your life. If your goal is something like I'm discontent because I want all these fancy cars and stuff. I mean, certainly for some people that does drive you toward doing, you know, miraculous things and, and having, you know, that lavish life. But more often than not, you know, just statistically speaking, that's not going to be how it's going to work. It's not going to work out. It's not going to be how it plays out. Not there's not a lot of people that own

[27:22] yachts and the, if, if that is the aim, if that's the goal, then obviously that can be pretty destructive and then just suck joy out of your, out of your day to day. I think the joy suck is hell and it can maybe go both ways, but I know for me where I've had to really discipline my mind and discipline, even how I spend my time is it's so easy to get on. On a social media platform and see people's highlight reels of their life and feel so discontent. It's like so much discontentment and comparing it to your own life and you do have to take a step back and reflect on that and obviously decide for yourself, okay, am I spending too much time scrolling social media that I'm getting a sense of discontentment in my own life? Um, do I just need to take a pause from it altogether? What's that? What's that litmus test for you? Like, how do you know if, if this is something like I want to do better at verse, this is a thing that is a result of an unhealthy habit of the Instagramification of our

[28:38] world where we're just seeing the highlight reels and comparing our day to day, which inevitably is not made up of higher highlight reels. Right? Yeah. I don't, I don't. No, I think it, you kind of talked about, you have that feeling of something wanting to change and if you're scrolling social media and feeling unhappy about the situations in your life, I feel like that's a pretty good indication that you probably need to turn your phone off and walk away from it. Um, but yeah, I don't, I don't know for sure. I think it, it's so easy to just get into seeing other people's lives and comparing it to your own and I'm guilty of it. Like I think any buddy that's on social media is probably guilty of doing this, but I think there are definitely really good tools out there mentally and you know, even probably apps and things that can help with that. Yeah. I think. I think what's hard is when, so, I mean, I guess just to back up, I mean,

[29:56] obviously there's parts of discontentment that are bad and I don't think anybody would, would argue that I think where it can be really tough is if it's a good discontentment, like I want to get a handle on this part of my life or I, I need to make this positive change and I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not content with where I am and that feeling. Um, but then you have this, uh, this disappointment or frustration with yourself of, you know, why, why am I not actually taking these steps toward making this better? Why, why do I keep going back and, um, and you know, I, I say I want to lose weight and I obviously need to lose weight, but then I go in and I eat 4,000 cheeseburgers and then obviously that doesn't look great on my fitness pal or whatever. Right. And it's when those positive aspirations as positive discontentment are met with, I don't take those actions. I think that that's a really hard place. And if those things about yourself are affecting others, so like, let's say you

[31:13] want to, like, I want to be a less angry person. And I think it would be a very good discontentment to say, I am not happy with the level or the amount of times that I lose my cool with my family or at work or whatever it may be. But then you still in your day to day have that same thing happen where you lose your cool and then you look back at, you know, after the fact and when the emotions kind of erode a bit and you're like, this is the exact thing that I didn't want and my actions aren't matching up. And, you know, same thing with, you know, I, I want to work out and then the entire day went by and I did not do anything. I, I would, I would say in those moments is, and this is going to sound harsh, but we, I would, I would say in the vast majority of instances, you want to do the thing that you actually did more than you want to do. You wanted to do the positive thing, probably not consciously, but you're, you've set yourself up with the inputs that resulted in the

[32:29] outputs that you got. And, you know, I, I know for a fact, in fact, much of it is not conscious. You know, the, if you don't think that's true, then I mean, the United States is going to spend half a billion or half a trillion dollars on advertising in the next year. And that is, that comes out to what, like, uh, doing quick math on the fly. That's, that's a thousand dollars of advertising directed just at you that is trying to be, you know, trying to pry value. And I mean, obviously there's averages there. So, you know, your mileage might, may vary on the number of people targeting you with advertising, but on, on average, that's a thousand dollars trying to influence how you are going to behave specifically on making a purchase of something. Uh, which, which is a lot. And when you think about that on, you know, your, let's say you're wanting to eat healthy, um, fast food, for example, they are actively advertising about all their good, tasty, all those juicy hamburgers, all those juicy hamburgers. And if you aren't taking the time and being intentional about filling your mind

[33:47] with the merits of eating healthy and why you would want to do that to counteract that and build that and honestly, uh, build back from the debt that that advertising has caused, uh, then you are going to want to do the thing that is what your brain thinks is the best path. And the brain is kind of stupid sometimes and it's going to want to do that thing. And like, you know, in the moment, maybe your willpower can take you through, uh, not choosing the cheeseburger, uh, handful. And by the way, like nothing against cheeseburgers, big cheeseburger fan. Yeah. We love ourself a good cheeseburger. Just using this as an example. But the, uh, you know, if, if you have that, if you're leaning on willpower as the sole reason or sole thing that you're wanting to do, like I'm going to the gym and I'm going to do this every day or, or I'm going to do this five days a week. And, um, and then you go for like three times. And then that fourth time, you're just like, well, can't go today because I have something. And then, then before you know it. Uh, you know, a month has gone by and you haven't been to the gym. That's because you've relied on willpower for making your steps there and willpower won't last. There will be other things that you will focus on. You will lose, you will lose that.

[35:05] You can only use so much willpower during a day and you're going to use it on something else. You can't always just keep coming to the well for this one thing. And so what will win out is what you want to do the most. And you have to change what you do. You want so that it just becomes what you do. It just becomes who you are. You know, I'm, I'm a runner and runners run, uh, or I'm someone who goes to the gym. And so I go to the gym. Uh, those are the sort of shifts that you have to figure out how to make, uh, so that you're not in those situations where, uh, you know, I have this positive aspiration. I want to change this about myself, but I'm only using willpower as my way that I'm going to do it. Like that's, that's how you do it. That's how you fail again. And again, I can say that from experience as someone who has wanted to make changes in their life and failed a thousand times straight and, and, and told myself every single morning that I'm going to do something different about a thing and then not do it. So like I, if, if, if it's possible to get a doctorate in, uh, doing the same thing, expecting a different result, then boy, I'm a doctor of insanity. Uh, but the, the fact of it is, is like, and that's been the truth that I've found is if you can change what you

[36:21] really want, that's how you help that discontentment turn into, uh, something that is productive in your life. It can actually impact that change. And one thing I've noticed is that when we've made a big change, sometimes things go down unexpected paths. We make the change. We have the good idea or what we've kind of talked about. Is we have discontentment on something in our lives and make a change, but those do have unexpected paths. Yeah. I think, I think that's kind of the beauty of it though. And, and maybe this, uh, this is just how I'm particularly broken, but I think that the, the fun part of all this is you, you don't exactly know how it's going to play out or, or you don't realize how true something will be. And I'll, I'll use, uh, alcohol as an example, because it's very, uh, it's very salient in this, uh, this, what you just said, because I love that. I, uh, I thought that my whole life would have to be defined by the fact that, um,

[37:41] I can't drink anymore and I want to, and I'm, I'm gonna, I'm going to have all these things that I'm missing out on. And so much of my identity is, you know, being the guy who knows random bourbon things or whatever, or I've had, you know, a thousand old fashions at different places or stuff like that. And, and like, honestly, I had found so much of my way through my career in talking about stuff over drinks. And so like, I always, as I approached not drinking early on, I thought that like, this is going to be a massive deal. And I, I always felt like I was going to have to go to a conference and not drink or talk to somebody. Um, and, and, and we were going to, you know, what we would have done would have been to go out to drinks at the conference and then that wouldn't be a thing I could do. And so it would be this big, awkward deal. And, and what I didn't realize, and like the unexpected path on that is like, I just don't care at this point. Like it is not granted. Um, you know, the early days are challenging for sure. Uh, but that. That path looked enormously different. Uh, you know, I've found running as a thing that I enjoy and now it is often, you know,

[38:57] if I am somewhere, um, somewhere else and I'm with a group of other people, now I find opportunities to try to convince them to like, Hey, we're good. Let's go on a run. You know, we're in DC. Let's, let's go see the city and stuff like that. Yeah. And like, that's a lot of fun. I would have never imagined that in the beginning. Uh, but you know, you, you find, find your way down the path, a lot of this stuff that you see here, uh, even the development company, all of that has an origin story of writing a book, talking about these things. And then I'm like, you know, what would be cool is if I could figure out, I mean, you know, I, I'm a tech guy at heart. I've, I've done, you know, development stuff, you know, my entire career. What if I tried my hand at doing some mobile app development for a sobriety tracker? And then I'm like, Oh my, the, this has changed a lot. Um, and, and so we started, I started down the path of like, Hey, I want, I want to write this book. And that turned into, I want to start a app development company, which has then led us down a path of, Hey, I want to start this podcast with my wife. And I'm, uh, finally convinced her to hang out and, and, and show, show up and, and do this.

[40:13] But yeah, none of these things are apparent at the start of the journey. You don't know that this is the path that you're going to go down, but you find that the most fulfilling path is one that you've found when you were already out on the trail. Not when you were just sitting at home repeating the same day again and again and again. Yeah. And we had kind of talked about this as maybe something we would touch on, and this is a little bit different angle of what you were talking about. But. I know for me, I would have never thought in a million years that I would have been grateful for something that we went through. Um, but when we were, I don't know, like when we decided we wanted to become parents and when we decided that we wanted to start a family, that wasn't easy for us. It, it took a lot of time and that was very unexpected. For me, um, especially when, and this is even, you know, kind of pulls back into the discontentment in a way I was seeing all of my friends starting their families,

[41:30] having babies, and it was just not happening for us. But because of that, I have found so many connections and other women that have had a similar path. Um, but, um, I have found so many connections and other women that have had a similar path. Being able to talk about it and talk about my experience and those relationships that I've been able to have. And I'm so grateful for that. I wouldn't have wanted to change that. Yeah. Even though it was so hard. And another thing that we didn't really touch on with discontentment that's actually really helped me is, uh, which we've talked about a little bit, but gratitude journaling, uh, talking about things. Oh, yeah. Um, and I think that's a really good tool that you can use for when you are feeling down.

[42:46] Um, that discontentment or even going down a journey that you're not expecting, and then you can go back and reflect on that. Yeah. So you bring up a really good point and sometimes, and this was a pretty big misstep on, on my explanation earlier, because sometimes, sometimes the discontentment, uh, and the, the path that you're on is not one of your choosing. Sometimes there are truly things out of your control. And obviously that's a different situation. And that, that is a different flavor of hard. Um, and sometimes you find yourself on a path that is not what you want for your life. You desperately would do anything. You would climb to the top of Mount Everest if that was going to solve it. But you, there's no Mount Everest in sight and there's no, there's no thing that you can do to get yourself out of it other than just continue down the journey and figure it out. Uh, and in those instances. I mean, that, that is an incredibly tough situation. So I, I want to acknowledge that. I would say those are, those are rare. Uh, but that, that does absolutely happen. Um, so at what point, um, are you able to

[44:01] look back and say, this was something that I am grateful to have gone through? Oh man, is it, is it, is that only in hindsight or can you, can you get to that place? I mean. With the infertility journey, you know, that probably doesn't feel better until it's after the fact, but in other thing, and maybe that's not true, but in other things, are you able to find a, a contentment or a gratitude for a situation while it is still on that journey that wasn't of your choosing or of your doing you got plopped onto that trail? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. In the Valley, it's hard to see the light. Um, so I don't know. I think for my situation with infertility, it wasn't until I got that phone call from the clinic that we were pregnant that I was able to look back and see that I had gained a lot of wisdom in going through that journey. But I don't know.

[45:18] I think, I think it depends on the person and probably the situation, but it's hard to look for, to be grateful when you're in a deep Valley, I think for me anyways. And again, I think it depends on the person, but what about for you? Cause I know you've had your own set of valleys that. Yeah, I was trying to think through examples and I think I have a good one and I, I think it will maybe help set. My expectations for others going through something of how, at least in a case study of one, you know, so your mileage is going to vary significantly, but, um, maybe just a example of something, if you're going down this path of how long it may take to, to accept something. So when I started running, uh, and I mentioned, you know, I, I went out the gate and I'm going to run a half marathon and I did finish that half. What I did not talk about is my knee, uh, had some pretty significant issues, um, leading into that. So the, like the six weeks before I was in pretty bad pain, anytime I would run more than like half a mile, which if you

[46:34] Google how far a marathon or half marathon is, it's more than a half mile by a pretty significant margin. And I'm not talking just like, uh. Uh, like a little bit of pain, like it was definitely like stop and walk. I had so many runs where I had every hope and aspiration that it would be better. And it wasn't, I went to physical therapy for a long time and I just, I, I couldn't get it better. Um, I stubbornly ran the half marathon, uh, which you'll learn as we talk, like I'm a very stubborn person. And, uh, but yeah, I was in a dark place through all that. Cause I'm like, I finally figured out how. How to make myself run, but then I physically can't, I physically, I can't do this thing. And we, we went and did that run and I was, I was so messed up after that. Yeah. You were in a rough place when you crossed that finish line. I don't think, I don't think, well, and like the next day, like when I got out of it, like I've, I've never had a harder time getting out of bed, uh, with that, like even just turning over, like just rolling to my back. Like it hurts so bad. Any, any movement of my leg hurts so bad. So, um, some, some things you can follow the stuff that I do in this instance, I

[47:51] should not have ran. Um, I didn't know that in the time I thought that this was the only path for me. Um, in hindsight, I could have, uh, probably saved, uh, younger Jeff, a little bit of suffering there, but what I finally came to was, uh, like, cause I, in that moment, I wasn't sure I would ever be able to run. Like my, I thought. You know, something is wrong with my knee such that, you know, I have maybe some cartilage issues or some, some deal here. And we're just not quite able to exactly figure out what this is. And this is just what my reality is. And, and then we just said, okay, like, I guess I'm going to be a bike boy now. And so, uh, it was like Memorial weekend and we went and bought a bike and I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to see if I can do biking. And, and so I went on a couple like super long bike rides and I really enjoyed it. I'm like, finally, you know, I feel I'm bummed about the running stuff, but at least I have some kind of physical activity I can, I can do. And I can, I can figure out how to like biking. Um, and I'm going to, I'm going to, I guess I'm going to read a bunch of bike

[49:06] books or something. Like I'm going to figure out how to make this be my thing. And in doing that, it took about two days and that. That repetitive motion of cycling fixed my knee issue. And like, I was able to run pain-free like within like less than a week after doing that, I was good. And it, it is, it is interesting because, you know, I told myself if I ever can run again, I'm not going to take for granted running pain-free. And it, it is interesting that I had to go all the way. Through to the point of just giving up on that dream, giving up on that part that I had so intentionally based on what I'm talking about here, made it a part of my identity. And then had that, had that pulled away. Uh, it wasn't until I let go of that, that I happened to, uh, to, to solve that issue. Yeah. Which I don't know that that is necessarily encouraging perhaps. But I do think that sometimes the, the journeys you go down are the ones that

[50:22] turn you into the person that you are. And, you know, I, I don't, maybe, maybe if I could go back, I would tell Jeff to run that marathon again. Tell him like, dude, take some ibuprofen in the morning. You're not going to feel good. Uh, but you know, you sometimes going through those things do turn you into the person that you ultimately become. And you just want to be those people. That person without those experiences. So maybe you would hit the pause button then you wouldn't want to rewind. Maybe I would just plow right on through those 15 cars and learn from the consequences of my action. Yeah. And I think speaking of running, um, we've mentioned a few times that we're training for the Sydney marathon, which I don't even know how many weeks it is away, but it's coming up very quickly. Let's give a recap of how, how was training this week? Yeah. How did we do training? Oh, we did really great. And, uh, we actually referenced, uh, training a little bit last episode, which for you all will have been a week ago. And for us was like 48 hours ago because we're going to be traveling this weekend. So we're recording pretty close back to back. Uh, so the stuff we're referencing, we

[51:37] actually had our long run yesterday. Uh, it was really nice, beautiful day. Oh, you want to describe that for the listeners? You know, I think that we. On our run, which we actually have a picture of, we ran past, I don't know, like a little digital sign that said it was, I think 128 degrees outside. I didn't 26. Oh, is that what it said? Yeah. It definitely felt every bit of that degree. And I think my favorite quote from you on this run was we were running down the trail that we like to run down and saw some really cute Cardinals and you're like, hi Cardinals. I hate you because you're red and the sun is red or something like that. Yeah. I hate you stupid Cardinals cause you're red. And that reminds me of the sun. The sun's red and I hate the sun. I also was like, why the Frick do clouds even exist if not to block the sun? What are you doing? Clouds in the sky, but they would not go over the sun, but one of them did. And I said, I like you cloud. And then it like immediately after I said, I liked it, that it moved. And the big knowledge, the cloud fricking. If you ever want to. Have clouds not obey you. If you acknowledge they're doing something you like, they will do the opposite right away. Yep. So needless to say, it was brutally hot

[52:56] and we were in insanely sweaty to the point where we had to have a one hard reset. We went to a local gas station and I don't know if you would want to pop the picture and Jeff had, I had gone in to get us some waters and refill our ice bandanas and rice, crispy tree and rice, crispy treats for some good fueling and walked out and Jeff had basically stripped and had his socks laid out his shirt laid out and said, I made a new home, but yeah, it was, it was a hot one. It was brutal. Yeah. Uh, what I, man, it's one of those things, especially having gone through it enough times now, though, like I, and I certainly don't feel it in the moment of. That appreciation, but it is, it is fun to be able to hang your hat on that. Like, man, that was the most annoying 15 miles ever. We had to run it so freaking slow the entire way. Um, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's good memories. Yeah. The, so anything that you are looking forward to at this point in this training, are you just dreading this entire thing?

[54:14] I mean, we, we, I think we have six. Six weeks left. Uh, it's just so hot. I don't enjoy this. These months for deep in this training block is not my favorite, but we've mentioned, um, we're going, not going into Sydney with PR hopes. We're going into Sydney with, we're going to enjoy being in Sydney. We're going to run it together, which I'm really excited. About we, the last, actually, so the last two marathons, this'll be number four. We have ran separately for time for time, but we're going to run this one together and I'm excited to have a friend for the run running through Sydney. But no, I would have to say I'm not necessarily enjoying this training block because it's just, it's just too hot. I think that the. I think that's a good reflection and maybe we, we end on this thing, but I, I think that sometimes the stuff that you have as goals and aspirations, uh, are, are usually in service of something. So like in this instance, you know, I, I

[55:32] have a goal someday to qualify for Boston. Uh, and maybe if I wait long enough and I get older, it will be easier. Um, but yeah, I have, I have a goal to, to run a sub three hour marathon, qualify for Boston, et cetera. Um, but that is really just because I'm the sort of person who wants to have big dreams and that's what makes running, uh, compelling to me to do. Uh, but the reason why I want to run like at a, at a real core level, the reason why I decided it was a thing I wanted to try is because it, it makes me a better person. It makes me a healthier person, makes me be a more mindful person. It helps. It helps me to like calm down the ADHD mind chatter just a little bit and, and there's certain things like when I'm on a run, especially, you know, if it's hot or it's hard, I can't really think about anything else. And there's not a whole lot of instances in my life where I'm not like actively thinking about some thing, some problem that I'm trying to sort through or, you know, just, you know, just the day-to-day stuff, you know, but the ability to, you know, have some time to turn off and, and so to

[56:48] go to Sydney, which is a place that, you know, I've always, always wanted to visit Australia and, and see all their koalas and other stuff that they have there and upside down land. And I, uh, to me, it's a reminder of just the, the, the fun part of running, like just have, have a fun time, you know, walk the aid stations. You're not trying to do it for time run, run with your wife. Who's there. Who's going on the same journey and adventure with you and, and, you know, sometimes you can set some of the big aspirational goals that maybe do pull you along in the longterm, uh, to just enjoy a few months of a little bit less intense training block, just to remind yourself that the actual activity itself can be quite enjoyable, even, even for something that sucks in the moment to moment that is running. It made me remember. Another one of your favorite, I'm sorry. It made me think of another quote from the run that I also made me gave me a good laugh is we were, cause we were running so slow. We'll we'll finish on this, but we were running so slow and I was like thinking

[58:04] maybe we can think of some podcast ideas while we're running at this turtle speed of a pace. And I, I don't remember exactly. What I said, but I asked you what if we had any good podcast ideas and do you want to say what it was that you said to me? Uh, I don't remember exactly what I said because it was, yeah, fun times. I think I said something along the lines of, I also thought of that too. And I went up to that door and it was locked and the handle had fallen off like a bedroom door. Yeah, there's a story. I mean, at the end of the day, the story. It ends with, and our door handle to the outside, uh, has just been laying on the floor for months at this point. Well, and, and because we could have fixed it, but could we have, could, could we, could we have fixed it? Okay. Chat GBT could probably walk you through it. Yeah. Yeah. But we have found, cause it's the, it's the handle going into the bedroom. Yeah. It makes it a little harder for kids to just barge into our bedroom. Yeah. It's like, we're like, is it the. Yeah. Is it the worst thing to just keep the handle on the floor? Yeah. Some people would parent their children

[59:20] to not barge into their parents' bedroom whenever they feel like it. And other people will leave their handle off their door for months. For those people. Because sometimes, you know, outcomes are outcomes. Yeah. There we go. Um, all right. Uh, yep. To the housekeeping part of the show. So, uh, first and foremost, thank you so much for listening. This is a lot of fun. Thank you, Katy. Yeah. Thank you, Katy. For potting with me. This is all, this is a blast. Um, if you, uh, wouldn't mind and you want to help out the show, uh, definitely, uh, yeah, I just realized we did not do the intro at all. I didn't say who, what, who I am, who you are. Wow. We're. So with that, we'll say subscribe, uh, because that's the sort of high quality content you're getting here on the built horizons podcast. Uh, as I like hit the mic, as I say, that, man, we're just the professionals, but yeah, hit, hit, hit, hit, subscribe so that we can, uh, do some live stream stuff. I think it'd be a lot of fun. Uh, technically, uh, YouTube told us that we can unlock it now, uh, in 24 hours. And they said that about 38, six hours ago or something like that. Uh, and it still isn't, but so I feel a

[1:00:36] little bit lied to YouTube. The, uh, real fun though, is that a thousand subscribers. So help us get there. It'd be a lot of fun. Uh, to be able to get that and get that out to the world. Uh, if you have anything you would like to email us, questions, thoughts, comments, reminders to say the intro at the start of the podcast, you can email us at build horizons.com. I think that is everything. Katy, do you want to sign us off? Yeah, I see it. It's words, words, words, get back to building. And that's a wrap. We're cheering for you. Nailed it.