0:03 - Philosophical Audit Journey
0:54 - Career Choices and Family
3:53 - The Impact of Children
5:13 - Parenting Philosophy and Homeschooling
7:01 - Navigating Work and Life Balance
10:50 - The Ethics of Employment
16:33 - Reflecting on Childhood and Growth
25:52 - The State of Society and Parenting
34:13 - Parental Relationships and Redemption
37:58 - Family Dynamics and Communication
41:40 - In-Law Relationships
45:51 - Setting Boundaries with Family
49:37 - Balancing Life's Demands
55:13 - Understanding Anxiety and Rest
57:30 - Dread of Missing Out
59:04 - Workaholism and Its Costs
1:02:34 - The Importance of Rest
1:07:38 - The Need for Play
1:10:03 - Body and Mind as a Team
1:16:19 - The Work or Die Mentality
1:20:57 - Value Beyond Productivity
1:25:23 - Complications of Competence
1:30:55 - Preserving Joy in Work
1:33:03 - The Roadmap to Balance
1:46:57 - Seeking Truth in Health
1:49:40 - Reflections on Parenting and Philosophy
This episode features an in-depth conversation between Stefan and a long-time caller, revisiting their connection after a decade. The primary focus of their dialogue revolves around the caller's significant life changes, personal growth, and philosophical audits concerning parenting, career, and societal norms.
The caller updates Stefan on his life journey since their last conversation, discussing his decision to choose a career path that allows him to prioritize his family over high-stakes consulting work. He reflects on the joys of working from home, the challenges of balancing family and professional aspirations, and his newfound perspective on the importance of being present for his children. This shift has been amplified by his recent experiences of raising his two daughters, where the caller emphasizes that children can enhance one’s life, echoing a common sentiment but with personal anecdotes illustrating the profound joy and fulfillment that parenting brings him.
The discussion then transitions to the evolving relationship he shares with his parents, highlighting the significant efforts made over the years to reconcile issues stemming from an imperfect childhood. The caller details how he stepped into a leadership role within his family dynamics, often being the one to initiate crucial conversations and confront past grievances with a spirit of forgiveness and understanding. This transformation underscores the impact of philosophy and open dialog in facilitating genuine familial connections.
As their conversation deepens, they explore the nuances of parenting, specifically in relation to decision-making concerning vaccinations and health for their children. The caller articulates his commitment to making informed choices for his daughters, emphasizing the importance of discussing potential risks and benefits of vaccines with his pediatrician and seeking a balance between caution and trust in medical advice. This concern highlights a larger societal theme regarding parental autonomy in health decisions and the complexities of navigating medical information in today's landscape.
Stefan contributes to this topic with a philosophical lens, positing the idea that systemic issues in healthcare may stem from a lack of genuine concern for individual well-being and positing that societal motivations often revolve around profit rather than patient health. Their exchange reflects a shared skepticism about mainstream health narratives, paralleling discussions on broader societal issues of accountability and transparency.
The conversation culminates in reflections on the concept of personal value outside of productivity. Stefan emphasizes the need for individuals to embrace their worth beyond their ability to produce, navigating the pressures of modern societal expectations. The caller acknowledges this struggle, sharing personal insights about the anxiety that arises from balancing productivity with the need to relax and connect with loved ones. Their dialogue reiterates the significance of self-care as a necessary aspect of parenthood, work-life balance, and personal health.
Overall, this episode serves as a philosophical audit, intertwined with personal narratives that evoke the listener to introspect on their life choices, relationships, and societal pressures. The rich discussion highlights how philosophy can play a vital role in shaping better relationships and parenting, marking a significant evolution from scattered loose ends a decade ago to appropriate philosophical engagements today.
[0:00] You're looking at an audit, a philosophical audit that seems wise.
[0:04] Oh, yes, sir. Well, especially considering, and this is also kind of like a catch-up, because last time I spoke to you was about 10 years ago.
[0:11] Wow. Wow. Okay.
[0:14] And kind of that call was not the longest call, but I've kind of followed those steps.
[0:19] Was it like a dedicated call, or was it just like in a show as a whole?
[0:24] It was in a show. It was in a show. It was one of those where you had a call-in show where people would call in at different times. It was kind of cool back then.
[0:35] Yes, yes, I remember. I remember all of those.
[0:38] But we spoke about, and I guess we can get right into it if you want.
[0:43] Yeah.
[0:45] So last time we spoke, we spoke about, you know, I didn't know exactly what path to take on my career. And I wanted to be there for my children and, you know, my wife.
[0:54] I was with my wife back then and we weren't married yet but we were like, well, let's see what I should do I can go either high-end consulting always traveling, always working or I can go the less lucrative but be at home type of, let's say, internal, operations type of role and within 20 minutes it was just no-brainer let's just do the internal operations this whole flying around for money thing great for money but who cares about money, we're here for children aren't we so, since then I've actually been working from home and my wife has been too since about 2012 and really haven't stopped but I'm starting here I'm starting a new, job here pretty soon and it'll be a local job and I'm like well it's effectively what my dream job is and I think it was It's time to once again talk to Stefan and see if I'm missing something. See if there's anything I can do better and use philosophy to improve how things are going. So that's where I am.
[2:06] Okay, so tell me, I guess, fill me in on, you told me a little bit, fill me in a little bit more on the Western News.
[2:12] So yeah, so 10 years ago, I was with my wife already. So since then, we've bought multiple houses together, we've moved to different states together. And we got married, of course. And I don't know how much in the details you want to go, but we've just slowly kind of worked through our careers and have done pretty well working from home, you know, going into the office when needed, etc. You know it's not it's not a full remote thing doesn't really work for anybody but going in you know getting to know people and life has just been getting better and better and better and better, to the point well i guess i can go into details if you want but to the point where right now i'm like oh my goodness how did i how did life get this good i don't even understand it you know what i mean you.
[3:00] Follow good advice that's that's the whole point right.
[3:02] Yeah yeah yeah so uh we uh After we got married, the one negative I'll say is that we did wait a long time to have children. So we started having children three years ago. So we had our first, my first daughter was three years ago. And after having her, I'm like, oh my goodness, we should have done this earlier. But you can't go back in time.
[3:26] Right, right. And so you just have the one child?
[3:30] No, now we have a newborn.
[3:32] Newborn, ah, okay.
[3:33] Yeah, we're trying now. we figured out, I'm like, oh my goodness, children are awesome. Like, everybody was crazy to say that, you know, they're impossible or they're hard. They're really not. Children are, they amplify your life. If your life is going in the right direction, it just, for me at least, I'll speak from my own experience, it just amplifies everything.
[3:53] All the goodness in your life that's all it is so you have a second one it's even more amplified, and so that's been my my findings and so we're just trying to have more children as much as we can i'm getting i'm in my late 30s very late 30s now so it's getting uh it's it's we're getting to the end unfortunately of our window but right and how old's your wife uh she's uh mid 30s okay.
[4:17] Got Got it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. And is your wife staying home with your kids?
[4:24] Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so on top, so I guess to fill you in on some more details for the last 10 years, my childhood wasn't the best. And we can get into that, but we don't really necessarily need to. I did have many, many years of long discussions with my parents about, you know, the bad aspects of my childhood and what went wrong and why did things go wrong. and they've made amends.
[4:54] They've been completely, their whole lives have changed completely. Again, because of philosophy and the driving factors on talking things out and shining lights on things that need to be discussed, right? Things that nobody wants to talk about. The elephant in the room, let's say.
[5:14] And I've become to be known as the guy that always points at the elephant in the room because I go, especially with my parents, i'm like hey guys let's we have to talk about all the things we did all the things that you guys did wrong and and to their benefit to their credit they've they've made as many amends as they could, and now actually they just moved in uh well i built it i built on my house it's almost done next on my property so they they've moved here so they're basically they're gardening we're farming here i have a big farming operation as well and uh, And yeah, my mom, my own mom is really great with babies. So my mom's helping out. And of course, my wife is staying home. She works from home. But she's got maternity leave for like four or five months. And then she's thinking about maybe not going back or maybe going back part time. You know, she doesn't know yet. But I'll help her through that decision-making process. And then eventually, we are planning to definitely homeschool.
[6:12] Right, right.
[6:13] So that'll be interesting. And it's funny, not to go on a tangent here, but whenever I say, yeah, I'm definitely 100% homeschooling, you know, there's some people that are like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. But there are others that say, well, don't you want your children to be socialized? And I'm like, what do you mean? Children get socialized by their parents first. And then we have, you know, my neighbors are great. They're all going to homeschool. There's a homeschooling community down here, very big. and so we we go out to do events and there's a lot of socialization that happens there but generally it's like well we don't really want our children to be socialized in the crazy society that exists today that's not what we want and so that's kind of my that's kind of been my answer.
[6:55] Well i mean it's like you it's like saying well i i've got to learn how to get along with people so i better go to prison.
[7:01] Right right and i do describe i do describe today's society like a prison it's like wait why would i send my children to a prison that we call school that doesn't make sense to me.
[7:12] Yeah yeah i mean i'm pretty sure we evolved without locking people in propaganda dungeons locking kids in propaganda dungeons uh that's that's not how we evolved so i try to stay as close to natural as possible and the way the kids evolved and learned stuff was uh uh with their parents spending time with their parents and with their families so is it that your mother is taking care primarily of your daughter because your wife is, I know she works from home and all of that, but, you know, that's quite, that's eight hours a day, right?
[7:43] Uh, well, I don't know. Her job is very easy. So she does like two or three hours at most of that job.
[7:52] Wait, where are these easy jobs where you get paid full time for working two to three hours?
[7:57] Oh, man. No, it's not. It is HR, but it's not for government. It is kind of government adjacent because she's HR compliance. So yeah, it's HR compliance. So they have to have someone. So they basically, she started working at this place. and then after a couple years they went from a HR team of 10 to an HR team of 2 her being one of them because my wife is quite efficient I would say, and it's very easy it's a very easy job it doesn't pay, let's say it's very very low six figures so it's not like low pay but it's not very very high pay either I mean she did replace six figures I know hang.
[8:42] On hang on sorry low six figures for two to three hours a day.
[8:48] Yeah ah.
[8:51] Ladies the life on easy mode continues.
[8:54] Yeah yeah and and i've always i always tell her i was like look all good deals come to an end at some point so you know we're not we don't financially plan we we financially plan as if she doesn't have that job but she enjoys it she likes doing it you know a couple hours three hours a day and uh she loves it.
[9:15] Well yeah i mean it's easy work i mean i worked in hr like i actually worked in hr for years.
[9:22] As a.
[9:23] Temp when i was in in college and uh i mean it's it's it's club med, It's ridiculous. Oh, yeah. It's all, you know, hey, let's go to Paris for a conference and talk about white males. Like, it's just completely goofy and an absolute non-work environment as a whole. There's no deadlines. There's no stress. There's no deliverables. And you're just there because the government demands that you be there. So it's just this weird thing that gets grafted onto productive businesses where people don't really understand the business and they're just there to send some emails and ensure some compliance and hopefully ward off some lawsuits. That's really all it's about.
[10:10] That's really her job. And again, I have to thank you for helping me help her go that direction because I'm like, look, I want you to be a full-time mom. And she's like, okay, I do too, but I kind of want to have some kind of job. I want to do something. And I'm like, well, the goal is to work from home on a very easy job. I don't care if it pays you 60 grand. But it ended up being low 100 grand. And that was really the primary goal was like, easy as possible, spending almost no time at all, and just do the bare minimum. And I'm like, I think HR is the way. This is back in 2014, 2015. And it's just worked out. She's not looking to be promoted.
[10:51] She doesn't care about this. She just, she wants her little side gig and back to the kids. And she loves the kids. Like, she just loves the kids.
[10:58] But, I mean, it's not, I don't want to be overly critical, it's not the most honorable income.
[11:05] True.
[11:06] Right? Because it is just, you know, government mandates and all of that kind of stuff. True. And she's lying to her employer, right? I assume she's not saying, oh, yeah, no, I spend most of my time raising my kids, and I only work two or three hours a day.
[11:23] Yeah, that's, you know, that's true. We're not 100%. I mean, we're not saying, like, hey, we only work two hours a day. We don't say that to anybody. But no, you're 100% right.
[11:35] Right yeah i mean it's it's the kind of thing and look it's not black and white and there's there's lots of gray areas lots of overlap so this isn't some big you know thunderbolt thunderbolt hurling condemnation or anything like that but will you be happy if your kids do stuff like this lie to their employer and not really work and and take money for things the employer wouldn't pay for like if the employer knew like i said and this is not obviously your wife but you know and all of these government workers are like well hang on a second if i've got to come into the office, who's gonna who's gonna deal with my child care and it's like right you you shouldn't be doing child care when you've got a job yeah right so um if your kids are like hey i found a way to game the system and make a hundred grand by lying to an employer and pretending to work, how would you feel?
[12:37] Yeah, no, that's not great. That's not great. That's not a great example we're setting.
[12:40] Well, I mean, it's, again, there's, you know, they tax you and I get that there's lots of gray areas, right? So I'm not saying this is like, you know, well, I'm a hit man. What's wrong with that? Obviously, I'm not seeing anything like that, but it is something to mull over. That, uh, your wife is being paid exorbitantly, right? Relative to the hours that she's working, right? Let's say she's making a hundred grand, but only working a quarter of the amount of time that she's supposed to. So she's, she's actually making 400 grand.
[13:13] Oh yeah.
[13:14] In terms of time and, and, and results. And then the question is, why is she not, uh, being asked to do, the work right does nobody notice does nobody care like what the heck is is going on right.
[13:32] Well so that's i mean that's part of the gray area i think you like you were saying she when she started there it was like a somewhere around eight to ten people in that in that group in that in her hr group and her company has actually grown since then but the hr department has went from eight to ten to you know now because she's she's been there and she's extremely efficient at all the compliance nonsense she's ahead of schedules just for as an example when she started there 10 years ago they were always behind on compliance they were every they missed deadlines left and right you know these are government deadlines so i guess nobody was taking like taking a look at those making sure that they were done so she started there and she's just she's very intelligent and she's very uh conscientious when it comes to you know getting things done so she just, completely, she effectively replaced six people, minimum.
[14:25] Well, no, but that just means that the HR department as a whole has no idea what efficiency is.
[14:30] Right, right, right. So the company sees her as a huge benefit so that when she actually we were talking about, hey, we were going to make a move. She was going to the office for the first five years, four years of it. And then eventually we were like, well, we're going to move and you're you're going to be a mother now, so let's just have you quit. And so she went to try to quit and they're like, no, how about you work from home instead? And that was that kind of, that's how that deal went through. And I'm like, well, okay, if that's what we want, let's go ahead and have you work from home because we were going to find her some other work from home job, but didn't even have to. And so that's kind of justification in my mind, but I see your point of it's still only about two or three hours of work.
[15:18] Well, no, I mean, it's just, it's, it's, your kids are going to find out about it at some point, right? And if your kids, and this is just a thing, and there's different levels of comfort with this. So again, I'm not, this is not some big blanket negative, but, you know, if your kid is like, hey, man, I figured out how to make a lot of money while lying to my employer about how much I work. Would you say, yeah, that's, you know, good for you.
[15:49] You know, it's funny about, if you asked me this question 15 years ago, I would have been the proudest dad ever.
[15:55] You mean like, oh, you figured out how to game the system. And look, the system games you, right? The system games you. So, so, you know, I, this, to some degree, there is a certain amount of, um, state of nature with some systems. Right. And, you know, I say just for example i watched this video the other day where this woman was complaining that her 16 year old daughter they gave her 200 for a four-day trip with friends for her 16th birthday and she ended up using they also gave her a credit card for emergencies and she kept using the credit card.
[16:33] To buy food and the parents were like outraged it's like well no no we gave you 200 bucks and she's like no the 200 bucks that's for like fun but you gotta pay for my food so i gotta and i don't think that you know these days 50 bucks a day sadly doesn't go as far as it used to right and so they were outraged and you know my sort of part of my thinking was okay but you all voted to have your daughter born in a million dollars of debt right let alone unfunded liabilities like the national debt unfunded liabilities they looked like kind of leftists just based upon the the look and even if they were on the quote right then your medicare and social security can't be touch right so so they're like ah how how how dare our 16 year old be irresponsible with money and and take more than we it's this well it's because you modeled all of that with your stupid voting right who are you to say well you as a 16 year old have to be responsible with your spending but us as like in our, late 40s have consistently voted to have you drown in debt because we can't manage our country spending and and all of that right so it there is a certain amount of there is a sort of state of nature in some aspects of the system so.
[17:48] Gosh you're reminding me you're reminding me of so like again before i found philosophy before so i started listening to you back in 2011 2012 trayvon martin like right before taylor martin thing and so before then i was sorry is that dana martin uh trayvon martin trayvon.
[18:05] Martin sorry sorry yeah.
[18:06] It's a different.
[18:07] Slightly different martin uh yes yes i certainly remember.
[18:09] Back in the day uh anyway so before then it was it was i was it was i was always so angry at the system you know i lived i lived in a very terrible let's say blue state um and i you know kind of you know had most of my childhood in that blue state and i'm just like i'm looking around i'm like this is this is garbage like i need to i I need to take a sledgehammer to it, but I'm one little guy. Again, this is before I found philosophy, so forgive the thoughts here, but I'm just going to game the system and take advantage of as much crap as possible because these assholes are just destroying society. That was my thought, again, before I found philosophy. And I guess that still leads to...
[18:57] Well, I mean, that was kind of my instinct as well before I found philosophy, so I'll be far from debbing you for something I was the same way with.
[19:04] Yeah, yeah. But no, yeah, you're right. I still feel like, hmm, it's just gaming the system. The system games us, so gaming the system is kind of like almost built in to some extent.
[19:21] Well, and this is a philosophy review, right? So I'm not going to sit there and say, well, for you to have any integrity, your wife has to quit and become a dairy farmer. I mean, I'm not saying anything like that, but what I'm saying is in terms of the philosophy of review... To say, am I comfortable? Like, I mean, I do this stuff, you know, like I'm still off social media, even though, you know, my ex-platform got restored months ago. No, no, it's almost a year ago, I think. And I'm like, okay, is that still the right decision? Is that still a good decision? And so you just, you have to review these things. And so this, you know, are you comfortable with it? That's an important, that's an important question, because either you have to lie to your kids, right? When they get older and they'll, you know, this topic will come up, you know, and so on. And are you going to say to your kids, no, no, no, mom worked really hard for her money. Or are you going to be like, yeah, you know, she pulled six figures, she barely worked, and that was great. And so you have to explain your life to your kids as they get older, and that's really what the review is for.
[20:28] This is exactly why i wanted this philosophy this philosophy audit so as an auditor so i i guess i work at my work i i work with a lot of auditors and tax accountants etc and so uh you're doing a great job as an auditor let's just say good.
[20:45] Good the non-scientology guys right okay.
[20:49] Yeah yeah that's great right so yeah.
[20:51] So uh if you're comfortable with it and if you say look man i I mean, it's a bunch of boomers at the company. They shafted me with bad education and debt and like, I don't really care. Okay. So then you're going to have to have that ragged edge of where the state of nature is with regards to the social contract. And I don't have, there are no big clear objective answers to these things. So I don't know.
[21:16] I think the answer really is having an open mind and actively thinking about what we're doing, right? Not just kind of saying, oh, yeah, she has a job and she's just doing. No, no, no. What is it that she's doing? What is it that we're doing? Are we gaming the system? Yes, we are to a certain extent. And what does that mean? And in a way that we're able to explain to our children, hey, we thought about this. This is our decision-making process. And we don't know. We still don't know. We may not know, but in 20 years or whatever, 15 years or 10 years, whenever we're explaining it, we may not know the answer then, but it's something to discuss as like, hey, what would you do in such a situation, oldest daughter of mine?
[21:59] Yeah, so children are a great proxy for the conscience. Like if you could explain it to your children and feel comfortable with it, then you can, quote, explain it to your conscience and feel comfortable with it. And so that's, I often imagine, okay, can I explain this to my daughter when she was five or 10 or whatever? And if I can, then, okay. So that's good.
[22:24] You just, a light bulb came on. So, because I always, when I talk to my wife, as we're making decisions, I always say like, hey, we need to make decisions that we're able to explain to our 25-year-old daughter. For example, these vaccines.
[22:38] Oh, no, you got to explain it way younger than that. Way younger than that. Yeah.
[22:41] No, no, I see. We will. But I mean, like when our daughter, let's say our daughter is 25 years old and she asks us, hey, why did you do this? We have to be able to tell our 25-year-old daughter, you know, hey, this is exactly why we did this. This is, you know, this is our decision-making process. You know, what do you think? And we have to be able to live with our decisions so much that our daughter will be able to, like, understand. And of course, you know, I agree, we're going to be explaining things. We will, I mean, I explained, she's, my daughter's not even three yet, but she's, we explain. And then she asked today about static electricity.
[23:16] Oh, wow.
[23:16] She got zapped and she's like, what's that and i'm like oh let me explain to you yeah that's what nature does.
[23:22] If you ever disobey your father.
[23:23] That's hilarious it's important to.
[23:26] Teach her those physics.
[23:27] Yeah right right right but no it was like no i explained to her like when it gets it's a little colder and so the air is drier and so when you and i had her try it i'm like hey rub your feet against the floor and you could zap me and she did that and she zapped me and she's like oh wow and then she just repeats back okay so static electricity uh builds up in me and i touch you and it goes to you i'm like perfect anyway so i'm all about explaining as much as much as possible but you know going back to when, our decision making process i didn't know why i was so adamant about always making sure i'm able to explain to my 25 year old daughter hey ask any questions you want this is the decision making process that we made it may not have been the best decision now that you know 25 years later but this is how we thought about it. And now you explained it in a way that makes the most sense to me. It's like, well, what I'm really doing there is, uh, it basically my conscience, like my conscience is, is, is who I'm explaining it to, right? That's the connection you just made with me. So that's amazing. I just wanted to point that out.
[24:33] Yeah. And of course, a lot of people will just kind of fudge along and then they get kind of defensive when they, because your kids are going to be skeptical of you, particularly when they hit their teens and they should be. Right. I mean, I've, I've mentioned this story before, so I'll just keep it brief, but you know, when I was, uh, I sort of explained to my daughter why I wasn't going back on Twitter and she's like, I get it. And then, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, I was like, hey, Zuckerberg seems to be kind of interested in free speech.
[25:00] Right?
[25:01] I should think about going back on Instagram. And she immediately was like, but wait, how is that different from Twitter?
[25:09] She's so right.
[25:10] What? She's completely right. And I'm like, well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for saving me from myself. So, you know, you want that 360 review. And, you know, I was just talking about this this morning in a Bible verse podcast that you actually can't be moral without people around you who care about you because we all got to watch, we got to have people watch our backs, right? Because we're all tempted by stuff, or at least I am. So, yeah, if you could explain it to your kid and say, yeah, you know, the system is a bit skeevy and, you know, they locked us up in terrible schools for 12 years and ladened us down with debt. So I'm just like, yeah, you know, if the bad king drops a loaf of bread, I'm going to grab it and run.
[25:52] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[25:54] Okay, and that's a whole question around this sort of ragged edge of who you owe high morals to. Right? I mean, obviously, if some guy steals your bike, you can take the bike back. Are you taking the bike back? These are all big, challenging questions. I think in general, my general thought is if you are... Well, you know, it's funny because in a sense, When your wife's employer said, you know, you're so needed by us that, you know, just work at home and we're fine with what you do as long as you get your work done. If your wife's work is kind of like piecework, right? Like I have to do X, Y, and Z. I have to make five widgets. And that's supposed to take me eight hours. I've made five widgets in two hours. Does the employer care? As long as they have their five widgets, right? And these are all, I think, very interesting questions. Is she lying to her employer if they say, well, it's going to take you eight hours to make the five widgets? She makes the five widgets in two hours and they don't have any problem with it. Is that lying? These are all big and important questions.
[27:10] These are great questions. I cannot wait to discuss this with my daughters.
[27:15] Well, yeah, I have a chat about it with your wife and so on because, you know, I mean, one of the things, I mean, you're in your late thirties, right? Your wife's in your mid thirties. So you may start to get a creepy realization of this, but I just did a show on this this morning, so I won't try and shoehorn the whole thing in here. But basically, as you get older, money becomes less and less important. And the quality of your relationships is all important. Because you can't buy youth and vitality and vigor, and you certainly can't buy happiness, but quality relationships are the great comfort of aging. So uh that that if if your wife feels like she's in a situation of deception well they think i'm working eight hours but i'm only working two and i'm going to pretend to listen to the other then that probably is not great for the conscience but if she's just like hey you know they want me to do this stuff i can do it super fast they've never said it's inefficient they've never said you need to work more they've they give me tasks i complete them they pay me for it they don't care And they've certainly never asked, how long did this take to do? They only care that I get things done efficiently. So that's a whole other thing. Um mindset if that makes sense and i think.
[28:29] It's important to.
[28:30] Sort of grab that one by the horns.
[28:31] Well it's funny we've actually discussed this very topic because i was you know years and years ago uh not years i guess when she started doing this this arrangement i'm like well you know it became only her and and the the c-suite executive effectively of the of that company uh the only to people doing HR, and I'm like, well, do they expect you to be online all the time? What's the deal? And it's like, no, there's things that need to be done, and I kind of figure out what needs to be done, and I do them. It takes me not much time at all. And it's funny, every time that this executive calls me, he's apologetic. He's like, oh, I'm sorry to bother you. I just have a couple questions or something. I'm like, that's so interesting. And every single year, it's like, you know, great reviews, she's doing amazing, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, well, as long as they're happy, then we're happy too. Right? So that's, it's always, it's been a discussion point for us, but I think, I think we'll, we'll, we'll continue to discuss this as she thinks about going back again.
[29:40] Right, right. Okay. Yeah, I just, that's obviously a pretty important qualification.
[29:45] And tell.
[29:45] Me a little bit more about how your parents well what a little bit of the stuff that happened when you were a kid and how your parents were able to turn it around this seems like a very inspiring story.
[29:53] So uh when i was a kid i, i always say i did not enjoy my my childhood as much as i should have, and you know there was my my mom was always very loving but she didn't you know she married a guy that was unfortunately violent when he gets angry. And so my childhood was filled with memories of getting hit, of threats. But it's also filled, I mean, there's also a lot of very, very good memories. My dad would take me everywhere with him. Everywhere, you know, whenever he traveled, you know, drove around. We were in a different country. We were not in the current country we were in. We were in a Caribbean country. We would travel. You know, I would always be with him and it would be almost always a great time. But it was just like that two percent of the time if uh if he let's say blew up uh it was extremely it was terrible it was it was very it was bad and you know i would say like how.
[30:58] Bad like what are we talking.
[30:59] Well he would uh i would say he hit me with a belt i think seven or eight times in my life. And, you know, even once is too much.
[31:15] And what other things would he do when he was angry?
[31:22] He becomes completely irrational. He screams and yells. A theme with him and me has always been, and we've talked about this, so I'm trying not to interject the learned process that I've had with him. Right so I'm just trying to give it to you raw and then tell you what we did with it did about it so he would you know he would call me you know you know you're you're worse than trash you're terrible you're not you're not doing enough you're you know you're so like really.
[31:56] Verbally harsh and negative right.
[31:58] Yeah very very and it while it happened very rarely those instances that it happened and I'm both blessed and cursed with a very decent memory I don't forget, and so you know even when he whenever he did that he always came back and apologized and said sorry you know i'm sorry i blew up at you even when i was a kid but you know i wasn't enough it's like you know just don't do that again and he did it again so um and.
[32:30] Sorry how often you said that there was only six or seven times you got hit with a bell but how often would you.
[32:38] Would he lose his temper.
[32:39] And get get angry in that way.
[32:41] Like once every six months, It's like twice or three times a year, I would say.
[32:48] Okay. And do your mother have a certain temper?
[32:54] Very. She's never. I think she only yelled at me once. And I was 13 or 14. And so I just laughed at her. I remember this very vividly. But, you know, she was never a yeller. She was never a hitter. She actually tried to protect me from my father. Whenever he got hurt. Uh heated let's say she was trying to stand in front of him and so uh she still married married him right so she's not at uh she's not at uh she's not innocent in any of this but uh as far as she she did she uh her biggest negative was is she can be a little she she could be a little bit manipulative um and what that looks like is like she'll tell you a story right and you're like why are you telling me the story oh it's because you want me to donate a hundred dollars to this person okay that you don't have to tell me the story just tell me you want a hundred bucks you know what i mean that's that's what i that's what i mean by that that's her biggest negative but you know it's manageable and.
[34:00] Did your parents stay together.
[34:01] Oh yeah for sure.
[34:03] And tell me about the redemption arc.
[34:05] Started when i was about 15 and i just i'm very questioned i questioned everything.
[34:14] I questioned everything. I mean, that's always been me. And I started asking questions. I'm like, so why did you treat me this way? And it started out with like, oh, well, my childhood was terrible. And it was. His childhood was horrendous. And his mom was just.
[34:33] Evil right and i didn't know any of this until i was like you know 14 15 and i started asking questions and i told my i told my parents i'm like well i'm never seeing her again because they she treated you guys in that way what do you guys think about that and they agreed, and then my dad even took me up on that and said well i'm not going to see her either then, and so we kind of had a we talked about that and how his treatment was we walked we worked I helped him work through that and I was like alright it's my turn to work through my things with you because you, I would say I didn't have I didn't have the right, childhood I didn't have the childhood I wish I had, and so he I remember he did apologize back then and then when I started talking about me again after we spoke about his mom he saw himself in me, And it was very, you know, lots of emotions, lots of, you know, what can I do to make this right? How can I help you make this right? And, you know, at the time I was starting to work and he's like, I'm like, well, help me go to work. Help me figure out a way to better my life when I was 15. And to his credit, he did. He's just like, all right, well, I can drive you to work. I can teach you how to drive. Here, you know, we'll get you a crappy cheap car to drive around.
[36:01] And the fact that he was always open to talk about it was the biggest thing for me. He was always open to, like, whenever something came to my mind about my childhood, I'm like, hey, let's talk about this. Or let's go for a long drive and talk about, you know, to explain to me why this happened. Why did you hit me with belts? Tell me about that. And we're able to get deeply into his mind about now when i blow up i don't even know what i'm doing half the time and it's like it's something in me and so from him telling me that's like well you need anger management and you know i i personally helped him through anger management to the point where at when i was like 16 or 17 he uh he really doesn't he really hasn't, he doesn't yell, he doesn't scream, and when I'm around him I can tell when he's starting to spiral a little bit and now all I do is remind him hey, you're not doing so well right now take a moment, take a breath and think about it and so he takes a moment takes a breath, he's like oh, I apologize I was starting to, spiral a little bit, I'm sorry, completely completely changed his methodology of thinking, his methodology of dealing with, his own anger and his ability to use his brain in a rational way versus letting anger get the best of him.
[37:31] And he's a changed person. He's a different man than he was when I was a child. Completely.
[37:39] That is great.
[37:40] That started when I was 16, really.
[37:44] You took the lead in that in many ways, right?
[37:47] 100%. And still, I'm effectively the leader of my whole family. Just taking the lead and I just said, this is what we're going to do. This is why we're going to do it. Let's discuss.
[37:58] I always discuss the top topics. I always point at the elephant in the room, and let's talk about it and things have worked out since I was a teenager because of that. And I'm one of five, by the way.
[38:13] Right, right. Right. Very good. Very good, very good. And your mom, how has she shifted and changed?
[38:22] She, you know, she always tried to, push religion really deep down my throat, which made me completely reject it just outright catholicism right so i mean i read the book when i was like 13 i read the bible cover to cover then i read it twice and then so i had notebooks full of notes and i would go to like the church and ask questions and i was told i asked too many questions and just being being told i asked too many questions one time is enough for me to say well you're you're you're you're out of my life then because if i can't ask questions you're done, and maybe that's good maybe that's bad but that's how I've always been um, uh so that's that's you know that's the most negative thing i can think of her she's you know, i've also had these discussions with her i asked her i'm like hey so how did you guys how did you you and dad get married why did you guys get married etc and you know it wasn't it wasn't the best let's say it wasn't the most rational thinking it was like oh we met in in a big city and, and you know my dad is a good-looking guy and you know my mom's a good-looking gal and things accelerated and they got married quickly so it wasn't really you know what I mean it wasn't really a rational choice so she understands she wishes that she made better choices for her kids how are your.
[39:48] Siblings doing as a whole.
[39:52] I mean every one of us is doing very well there's nobody nobody doing poorly, everyone's married everyone has kids except for my youngest brother. He'll be having kids soon, I think. He's married, happily married. I think the turnaround when I was a teenager really helped a lot of the family kind of figure out how to communicate with each other. Because before then, communication was like zero. And the ability to communicate openly and freely and talk about things without the fear of retribution and manipulation, that pays dividends. And so, you know, everyone's extremely successful. Some work in the medical field, some are engineers. Some, you know, they're just, I guess we're also blessed with intelligence. So everyone has great jobs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have like, I think, nine grandkids. My parents have nine grandkids. Wow.
[40:54] And how are your relationships with your in-laws? Yeah.
[40:58] Oh, yeah, not the best. Oh, boy, that's a good question. So my wife's parents were awful to her. And so my wife's from China. And it's relevant because of the one-child policy, and she was the firstborn.
[41:24] You mentioned Caribbean. Are you black and she's Asian?
[41:27] No, I'm, let's say, white Hispanic.
[41:31] White Hispanic. Okay, got it, got it.
[41:33] Yeah, and she's Chinese. We're both Catholic, so there's that.
[41:37] Okay.
[41:41] But anyway, so yeah, so one child policy, being born, firstborn daughter, effectively means you're kicked to the side. And then they tried for a second one luckily for them, for her parents it was, her brother, I guess a son and so my relationship with her parents, we really don't spend time with them I see them maybe once a year, maybe once every couple of years and that's about as much as we both can handle.
[42:23] Oh um why is that.
[42:24] It's so the uh the treatment that my wife got when she was growing up she was, thrown to the curb ignored i mean there's a story and i i guess i'm okay sharing with it the sharing the not the gory details but there's a story my wife tells me that happened a bunch of times to her where she would try to uh cuddle up with her parents you know and her younger brother, and her mom would literally kick her out of the bed. No, get out. You're not sleeping here. And I'm like, wow, that's... And that's basically the personification of her childhood. I'm just like, that is awful. And they've never made amends. They don't apologize. They, uh... They're not, they're not people that I want around that both my wife and I agree. They're not people that we want around our, our, our children.
[43:16] But do you go visit them or do they come visit you or how does that work?
[43:21] They come, they've, they've come to visit us, Bob, once, once every couple of years.
[43:26] Oh, okay. Not, not a huge factor. Is she in much, in much communication with them?
[43:30] No.
[43:31] Okay. All right. Well, thank God for half a world, right? Between, between.
[43:37] They live in America. as well, but they, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They, but still, I mean.
[43:43] Do they just not visit because they don't care or they're not connected or it's.
[43:48] Been very clear. So I'll give you an example. So we, uh, when my wife gave birth, it's customary for the first 30 days, some very special Chinese cuisine has to be made. And I said, well, I'm, I have no problem bringing your mother over as an employee. And she can cook for you, clean for us, and she'll...
[44:10] Sorry, as an employee?
[44:12] Yeah, I told her, I'm happy to treat her as an employee.
[44:15] I don't know what that means.
[44:19] Effectively, she's here to do a job. She's here to cook the food that is required to cook. Yeah, exactly. And if she wants to do that, I'll consider it good.
[44:32] Then she's here to help you. like actively help you and so while she's here you know she's she does a great job she's hard working person the mother um hard working person cooks well cleans does everything she she she wants to she she wants to do and she wants to work and clean and you know etc and then uh when it comes time to like well you know it's chinese new year so maybe maybe it's time for me to go back, I'm just like are you nuts like you've been here for like two weeks you want to leave already did you want to spend time with your grandkids don't you want to get to know them you don't spend any time with them, right so where are you in this this is me thinking to myself so I talked to my wife about it my wife is obviously not happy about her wanting to leave already and I'm like well we knew this is how she treats you she doesn't, she doesn't value you as much as she needs to. So it's time for her to go. So I'm like, all right, just get her a ticket. And then the funny thing is when we bought her a ticket to leave, to go, to go back, to go back north, she's like, actually, maybe we should change that. Maybe I do want to spend some more time. And I'm like, no, you already made your feelings clear. You're leaving. I'm taking you to the airport.
[45:51] And maybe that's right. Maybe, I don't know. You tell me. Maybe that reaction is a little harsh, but.
[45:59] Well, why did she, what was your instinct about why she wanted to leave?
[46:03] She wanted to leave because maybe her son was coming back from China. Possibly. And maybe her husband was coming back from China. Possibly. I'm like, but they're not, that's not even 100% sure. They don't have the flights yet. So what are you doing? And my instinct is that and you know i'm pretty sure this is what's going on that she cares a lot more about her son and her husband than she cares about her daughter, and i'm like well if that's true then that's fine you don't you don't know there's no one's forcing you to care about you know your daughter but you we don't have to have you in our lives either right yeah it's a.
[46:50] It's a funny thing how little people understand, the fierceness that fathers have in particular towards their children and in particular daughters i suppose maybe a tiny bit more and i.
[47:05] Was i.
[47:05] Was very much this way too like if if you're if you don't particularly care about my daughter you're completely expendable in my life.
[47:11] Like if she's.
[47:12] Like if she's not, I'm not obviously saying they got to have the same feelings, but, you know, I was enamored, fascinated, you know, and loved the whole process. And if my friends were like, oh, yeah, cute kid, and then they wanted to go on to something else, it's like, no, we're not in the same place, man. Like, we're just not in the same place.
[47:32] I 100% agree. Yeah.
[47:34] So, yeah, I had a whole scrub fest of people, particularly, you know, the sort of narcissistic, selfish bachelor people who were just like, yeah, yeah, that's cool, man. Hey, you know, and then they just go on to some topic or whatever, right? Or they hold your kid like she's some sort of bomb or something, you know, like I just like, no, come on, man, lean in, right? I got a great kid and she's really fascinating to me and she's a lot of fun and she's wonderful and, you know, spend some time playing with her. Get to know her like it's sort of like if you get a wonderful woman in your life and your friends are like yeah i just want to see you man i don't want it's like no no no she's gonna be my wife and you gotta you gotta lock in or or you're gonna be toast that's.
[48:18] Funny because i mean i i love to bring my oldest everywhere i like i always ask her hey do you want to go here do you want to go there and she almost always says yes.
[48:25] Yeah all.
[48:26] Right let's go right so we just it takes things take longer, but who cares? Right. Just, you know, we go to the hardware store, we're going to go pick up this. And I tell her, hey, we're going to do X, Y, Z. And she always says, can we do one more thing? Like, okay, what would you like to do? I don't know, just drive around.
[48:42] Oh, when your kids want to spend time with you, like... I mean, last night, my daughter, she had a pretty big day yesterday for various reasons. And last night, she was like, hey, let's go for a walk. And I'm like, yeah. You know, when your kids, especially, she's 16 now, right? So when your kids really want to spend time with you, man, that's just a great thing.
[49:04] 100%. And that's kind of, yeah, I've really noticed that. That's kind of, I've been mulling this over, this kind of issue over too. But we can, I guess we can jump to that topic next. So, you know how there's only 24 hours in a day?
[49:20] I do know that, yeah, sadly.
[49:22] I find that to be a big problem in my life for some reason. And it's not a problem that I can fix, obviously.
[49:28] No, no, I'll fix it for you. What do you need? How many hours do you need? I'm on it.
[49:32] Oh, God, yeah. I need another 10 at least.
[49:35] Yeah, yeah.
[49:37] And it always feels like I'm playing catch-up. When I mean objectively I really have two great daughters maybe we're definitely going to try for a third, and if we're blessed with a third great if we're not it's okay but I have my career, gone great I was the guy by the way that I went from I was working at a place I started my own consulting business which was going great and then landed me this great position at this accounting firm. I don't know if you remember the chats going back and forth, but I'm that guy. And so my career is going great. I have a big, let's say, less than 100 acres, but more than 50 acre farm, that I manage. My dad now is managing for me. So I got a lot of things done. I do car racing. I have a small YouTube channel. I do on the side, very, very hobby, very, very hobby-like. So I have lots of great relationships, friends that I talk to basically every day and extremely intelligent people. And my wife is just the absolute best. But I always have this nagging feeling in the back of my head. It's just like, you're not doing enough, do more.
[50:59] Now, so, but more of what? Is there a particular topic?
[51:03] No. An example is I need to spend more time with my daughters so I go and my oldest daughter especially she's just like hey I'm doing my own thing leave me alone kind of thing, she's playing with a toy or something because I'm always whenever she's around I'm like oh what do you want to play with let's play with this let's go hang out, let's watch excavator videos or whatever she wants to watch explain to me excavators And, you know, we bought an excavator recently. Oh let's go on the excavator and i'll teach you how to how to you know maneuver it say you know obviously it's off for safety but you know that kind of stuff and eventually she's like okay i'm gonna go do my own thing now right so i'm like oh i need to do more i need to hang out with her more and she's like no no i'm good like let me be here for a minute kind of thing um and then other times it's like well okay so then i have to go work on i have to work on the farm and i, A couple of days ago, I completely renovated my... I have a big skid steer. I don't know if you know what that is.
[52:11] I really don't, but I feel the explanation is going to put some hair on my chest, so go for it.
[52:17] So it's technically a track loader. So it's a big construction machine with a big... Usually a big... What are they? It's not a shovel. It's a giant bucket. It's a big bucket that's effectively a big shovel in front of it. It weighs 12,000 pounds, a big diesel machine. You get into it, there's two joysticks, and you move dirt around with it. And you could also have a big mower on it and stuff. And so it requires some maintenance. So three days ago, I took the whole thing apart and cleaned every bit out of it and power washed it and does all crazy stuff. And I'm like, okay, I'm moving on to the next thing. And so, so just nonstop working and doing something and being productive. And, you know, part of the reason why I'm actually calling you is because I'm challenging myself this year to have every week, have one phone call with somebody that, that affected my life in the last 15 years that I haven't spoken to in a while.
[53:16] Right.
[53:16] And you were on that list. And so I'm just doing all these things. And, you know, having a skid steer, I did my parents' foundation with skid steer. And I run power lines and I run, you know, water lines with my excavator. And I have these crazy projects that I've executed on and done great on. And again, I do car racing stuff. I race at Sebring. I race at Daytona. I race at, you know, all the great racetracks around the United States. I have done less of that in the last two years because of my daughters being born, but I do plan to get back to it.
[53:58] Well, and your daughter's also needing a husband who's not a smear on a track. A father who's not a smear on a track, right?
[54:05] Yeah, yeah. That's why I don't do like the door-to-door racing. We do time trials. So you're not racing against other people.
[54:11] Yeah, but there's still gravity and momentum, right? You don't want to end.
[54:14] Up like.
[54:15] That guy from 902 one out right.
[54:16] Yeah yeah no and i actually did have a i did have a crash i'll never think about it dude this is back in 2019 i had a crash but anyway um so i'm doing a lot less of that, so uh but still in the back of my head i'm always like i'm always every day i almost have to ask myself for permission to rest and i'm like why am i doing that like this is it's crazy to me that i'm doing that um because i think objectively i don't know if you'd agree but i think objectively i think i'm doing okay yes.
[54:50] You are yeah it sounds good i mean you know family's working well uh your relationship is working well and your career is working well and your health is good it sounds like so.
[55:01] Uh you.
[55:02] Know i i think to ask for more is just starting to get greedy.
[55:05] Right right so shake it out of me i don't know i don't know how well no shake.
[55:10] It out and that is not going to answer much for you right.
[55:12] The question.
[55:13] Is so when when you feel like you have to do something the question is not why do you have to do things the question is what do you feel if you don't do things.
[55:27] Hmm right that's anxiety well.
[55:30] Okay so what do you feel when you don't do things.
[55:34] So when i sit down on the couch and i call them wife my wife mandated relax time yeah she says she takes me to the side it's like hey you slow down right i'd like you to be.
[55:45] Around for the long haul so yeah yeah for sure.
[55:47] Yeah hey you sit there relax because i'm always asking her hey how can i help you what can i do to help you and she's like you can help me by sitting down and relaxing yeah My.
[55:56] Wife has the same approach. Stop doing stuff. Stop trying to help. Just, you know, you work hard, relax, right?
[56:03] Yeah, yeah. And so when I'm sitting there, not every time, but often, I feel like dread, like I'm missing out. Like, damn it. It was especially bad when I lived up north. Let me explain. This might help. So when I was up north, I basically up north, I felt like there was effectively maybe three weekends a year that were good weather, not rained out from the week before raining so it's not muddy, free and available, right? There's no plan like birthday or something. That three weekends a year that I can get something done outside, right? Work on a car.
[56:49] I grew up in England. I know what you're talking about.
[56:52] Right? And I'm just like, and so it's less of it. There's a lot less of it now where I'm currently living. But it's still that like, man, if I don't get this done today, am I ever going to get it done? There's like dread. It's like, oh my God, if I don't stand up and like go and fix that one thing, I'll never fix it. It's like, oh, that light bulb went out. I got to go like change the light or something. It's like, if I don't do it right now.
[57:16] Or it'll never happen.
[57:17] Right.
[57:17] Right.
[57:17] Right. It's just like, but it's like when it's one or two things, it's like, okay, that's fine. But it's like everything. All at once. Tsunami of like, you have to do everything now.
[57:31] When I go sit down and get the wife mandated relax time.
[57:34] Yeah. So then the question is, where does it come from that you have to do things now, right? So the typical example, and this is something, you know, because you're still a relatively young man, you're not at the age where you see the price of people's workaholism and stress. Like i now am of the age where i see the price of people's workaholism and stress, right i mean it's not pretty at all, so do tell well i obviously i don't want to sort of get into details of of people that i know but there are there are there are health issues that come out of workaholism and stress that are.
[58:21] Brutal shut those up.
[58:23] Like they're constantly like so it's the old thing it's like well you can get things yeah you can get things done absolutely you can you can make yourself do things and you can be busy all the time right absolutely and then you'll get sick from stress and and not relaxation, like have you ever have you ever trained yeah i mean you obviously trained for your um.
[58:46] Car racing stuff.
[58:47] Car stuff but you have you have trained for uh like heavy duty athletic stuff.
[58:53] Yeah yeah and i was uh i did varsity uh crew.
[58:56] Right okay so what happens if you train for uh eight hours a day every day oh.
[59:04] God your muscles.
[59:05] Effectively i mean you don't die but i mean you're you're um ineffective well yeah it just you just pull muscles right so you need your rest days otherwise you can't be a good athlete, so you can make yourself do stuff and you can be like i've got to get something done all the time, uh but that's it it it really does kill your productivity now it may not do it in the short time it may not even do it for years but at some point there's going to be a price to be paid.
[59:39] It's funny you say that. So you just woke up some memories that I don't think about. But I remember times where I've done this nonstop work, work, work, do something, do something, do something. And it comes to time where I wake up and I'm like, I cannot physically do anything anymore today.
[1:00:01] Yep. And sometimes that happens in a benevolent way, like you just get tired. Other times you just get sick. Like your body your body will make you rest one way or another like you know it's the old thing you know like the old mafia thing like we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way right, and that's right that's what rest is like as a whole we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way right a.
[1:00:28] Really really bad hard way.
[1:00:29] Right right right I.
[1:00:30] Think that if I start thinking through that if I start thinking long term about it that way when I go rest it's like well If I don't rest now, then I won't be able to be productive later.
[1:00:42] Right, right. And so the first level is it's not that efficient.
[1:00:47] Right.
[1:00:47] Right. Like, you know, this is obviously better than I do because you're very handy. But, you know, measure three times, cut once, right? And if you're like, hey, man, I don't have time to measure. I got to be productive. Well, what happens? Well, you end up cutting something too short and it's a big waste of time, right?
[1:01:04] That's a really good way to put it. That's a really, really good way to put it.
[1:01:11] We used to talk about this in the software field a lot, which is, if you don't have time to fix it now, or if you don't have time to plan now, how are you going to have time to fix it later?
[1:01:27] That's a really good way to put it.
[1:01:28] So, I mean, in general, at least in software, this is probably true in many things, but in general, what you do is if you fix something in the design phase of software, it's at least 10 times less time and money than trying to fix it after the code base is started. And, of course, it's the same thing that's true in the building trades, right? If you're trying to build something or a house or whatever, is it easier to fix it in the design phase or get it right in the design phase or is it easier to try to fix it when, like, later on?
[1:02:07] Right.
[1:02:08] Right? Or the old thing, is it easier to put a sunroof in the car when you're ordering it or after it gets delivered, right?
[1:02:20] Right at the beginning.
[1:02:21] Oh, yeah, yeah. The earlier you do it, The better off it is.
[1:02:24] All right. It's better to, yeah. Thinking back to the rest days, those rest days, that's your body and mind fixing itself to continue to do it.
[1:02:34] And if you try to fix it, you try to fix it when it's time to go live, to take your software example, it never works out very well.
[1:02:44] Yeah, I remember having to fix software while we were training people on it. Oh, God. That was pretty exciting.
[1:02:52] So you were teaching them how to use the software and they're like, oh, that's a bug. And you'd be like, hold on a second.
[1:02:58] Yeah, just do this. Well, we can't do this. I get an error message. Oh, okay. Let me just whip over the code base, fix it up, recompile. And we're good to go. Right. I mean, that's not a huge amount of fun, but you know, it certainly happens when you're kind of new at things.
[1:03:11] That's hilarious.
[1:03:12] So the first stage is it's not efficient. You know, it's like all the people who say, well, I just don't have time to exercise. It's like, do you have time for osteoporosis? Do you have time for like getting sick? Because that's what's going to happen if you don't exercise, because, you know, exercise helps your immune system and all of this kind of stuff, right? So all the people who are like, well, I don't have time to exercise, it's like, then you're just going to get sick. You know, or, you know, you run for the bus, you pull the muscle or, you know, something, right? Do you have time for like a heart attack? Because, you know, if you don't exercise, it's really bad for your heart as a whole, right? So everyone's like, I don't have time. And it's like, well, then your body will make time. If you don't make time for your body, your body will make time for you. And trust me, you don't want to be on the reactive side of that stuff.
[1:03:59] You want to be on the proactive side. Yeah, you want to be on the proactive side.
[1:04:02] You want to be on the prevention, not the cure stuff. Because if the body has to enforce its own relaxation, it can get pretty harsh. It's not just like, oh, I feel tired and I just look. It could be like, oh, God, I have angina. I have a stroke. You don't want to have the body enforce its relaxation because the body just rolls the dice and says, man, any way we can get this done, I'm getting this done.
[1:04:29] Shit, when you put it that way, of course.
[1:04:31] Yeah, that's not a plus. You know, it's like I don't have time to maintain my car, It's like, okay, do you have time for your car to break down in the middle of nowhere or for your brakes to fail and you run into a wall? Like, it's the same thing with driving, right? So with driving, and I've said my daughter's getting ready for all this stuff, right? So I'm working with this with her. It's like, I'm in a hurry. It's like, well, nothing's going to cost you more time than an accident.
[1:05:01] Or getting pulled over by a cop.
[1:05:02] I'm sorry?
[1:05:03] Or getting pulled over by a cop.
[1:05:04] Yeah, or getting pulled over by a cop, right? I'm late. okay, well, it's not the world's fault that you're late and don't make the pedestrians suffer.
[1:05:11] Yeah, please.
[1:05:13] Right. There was a, I mean, it's a very sort of famous thing from a business standpoint, but I had a project manager early on in my career who had a sign over his desk that he would point to regularly, which was a failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
[1:05:29] I love that.
[1:05:30] So, so you say, oh, I'm in a hurry. I got to drive fast. It's like, okay, well, uh, do you have time to be in hospital for three months if you crash?
[1:05:40] Well, and the funny thing about trying to speed to make it somewhere because you're late, even if you don't crash or don't get caught, you're still only saving a couple of minutes.
[1:05:49] Oh, it's terrible. Yeah. I mean, they've done these studies where people like, yeah, they're given immunity from traffic laws and they, they try to, uh, you know, get from one end of the city to the other real quick. And yeah, it's like maybe a couple of minutes. It really, and the stress and the danger and like, it just doesn't pay off.
[1:06:03] Oh God, the stress. Yes. Yeah.
[1:06:05] It doesn't pay off.
[1:06:05] Well i take all i take all my uh uh fast driving out at the track.
[1:06:10] Yeah yeah that's good for you good for you so so yeah so um do not have your body enforce your relaxation uh that that and the long and the longer it takes in other words the more you get done usually the worse the worse it is for you uh so inefficient yeah like if you don't if you don't take care of your car if you don't get the maintenance done you can't predict what what it's what's going to happen like you can't you can't predict how it's going to break and that lack of prediction is really bad, because if you if you're proactive you're in control if you're reactive you're not in control because you're just waiting for something bad to happen if that makes sense.
[1:06:53] So relaxation really is me it is maintenance.
[1:06:56] Absolutely maintenance yeah no question i.
[1:06:58] Don't into that maintenance. And so if you don't take care of that maintenance, it will take care of itself.
[1:07:02] Well, imagine you're driving, right? Or you're trying to think about, you know, I got to go and do a race. And you're like, well, look, man, I don't have time to check my car. I don't have time to maintain my brakes. I don't have time to do any of that. I'm busy, man. I got to start this race.
[1:07:18] Yeah. Well, I've had those times where I haven't had time to do that to the car. And what I do is I cancel the race.
[1:07:25] Yeah, of course you do. Of course you do. Right. Because, you know, that's just really dangerous, right? And so, yeah, your body is there to help you, and your body is there to rest, and it needs its rest, and it also needs its play.
[1:07:38] Right.
[1:07:39] Like I've talked about this in terms of racket sports that I'll try and do all of this cool stuff in racket sports. And I know my body is like, come on, man, we do, we do your head stuff all the time. Oh, all about philosophy. Let me hit a ball around. Don't, don't, don't try and don't try and nerd, nerd concept it up. Like just let me, let me hit a ball around. Let me have fun and stop trying to do all of this cool intellectual stuff when we're literally hitting balls. And, and that's, that's absolutely right. I mean, that's totally right. Let my body play because if it's all about the head, my body's going to be like, okay, I'm mad. I'm mad. Like, I'm mad now.
[1:08:14] Yeah, that's what I struggle with the most. It's my brain. My mind just doesn't stop. It's like a storm. It's just always something. And it's just nonstop. Right. And it's like, that's why it's part of it too. It's like, there's a billion things in there that my brain wants to do. And then the other half of my brain, the animal side of my brain, it's like, nah, dude, I'm done.
[1:08:34] Right, right.
[1:08:36] Yeah, exactly.
[1:08:36] So, recognize that you are, of course, your body is not a car to drive your brain around that has no needs or preferences of its own. Your body and your brain are a team. And, you know, like, if you've ever had, have you ever been on a team where someone hogs the ball?
[1:08:57] Oh, yeah.
[1:08:58] I mean, it's really annoying, right? It's like, bro, stop hogging the ball. Stop bogarting the physicality, right? And so it's the same thing with the mind of the body like the the body shouldn't hog everything in other words oh i like cheesecake let's eat cheesecake because the body likes it you know that kind of thing right so the body shouldn't be totally in control it's it's like a team it's like being playing doubles and squash or or or some sort of racket sport and you know every now and then like on social media you'll see some video i saw someone recently of some pickleball player and like she's supposed to be a team and she's just taking every shot right and people are like oh man i hate that kind of stuff and it's like yeah yeah okay so but that's your brain and your body right stop taking or stop hogging the ball right your body is not just something, that you're you is there to just you know convey your brain around so your brain does all the cool stuff, your body has its own needs and its preferences. And it's, you know, it's happy to support the brain. There's nothing wrong with that.
[1:10:03] But, you know, it just, it can't, the brain can't hog it because then it's just kind of selfish and narcissistic and you'll pay anyway.
[1:10:11] Yeah, for sure. Oh man, this is very helpful. And I can't believe we've already been talking for an hour. Um, sorry.
[1:10:19] And I'll just keep this next part brief. So the first level, The first level is saying, well, it's inefficient. So the first level is, well, I shouldn't speed because I'll get a ticket, I'll get into an accident, and so on. That's sort of the first level. And the second level is, who's in charge that I feel this level of tension when I am not being productive? And so for you, I imagine that that would be someone like your dad or something like, who's in charge, right?
[1:10:53] Yeah, 100%. No, it comes from my childhood and my dad and stuff.
[1:10:56] Right, right.
[1:10:57] I've worked through, I actually, as soon as I feel that, I automatically, I'm like, I know where that's coming from. And it's, you know, it's irrational. So.
[1:11:04] No, it's not, it's not irrational. You had to please your father when you were growing up. That's not irrational at all.
[1:11:09] That's true.
[1:11:10] Right. I mean, that's, pleasing your parents is not like some optional thing in our evolution. It was, it was, it was an absolute have to, like, I have to please my parents because, you know, I mean, I'm not, of course, I'm not saying this about your parents, but for most of our evolution.
[1:11:27] Kids, half the, at least half the kids didn't make it. And it wasn't the popular kids. It wasn't the kids that the parents really liked and loved. Like you got five siblings, right? If there's not enough food, you better be a favorite. They better really like you, if that makes sense. So that's not irrational. It's not. And it's not optional. It is an absolute necessity of requirement of survival that you please your parents as a kid.
[1:11:57] So that and your body was like, OK, well, if dad, you know, there's a sort of terrifying, you know, a friend of mine once described Tom Cruise as like the manifestation of rage against the breast. And i could never unhear that or unsee that but there's a film called magnolia where he plays this pretty terrifying i don't know half cult leader or something like that right and in the um uh he's like you know you just you need to do your job he's screaming and you know he had this whole thing under covid where um you know people were were violating some covid requirements on his film sets and he just you know completely freaked out now of course i i i get it right i mean he's He's got a lot going on as a movie maker. So I kind of get why he would have some tension around this kind of stuff. But, you know, he is a kind of terrifying guy of like, you have to do your job, like your job. And, you know, it's one of the reasons why he makes, you know, very competent films, right? Is that he gets people who do their job. And so, you know, I get it. It's important. Of course, you know, he has no particular love life and he's just like this movie making and app making machine. And so it's not my particular kind of life. But this, you know.
[1:13:04] Kind of sad if you ask me.
[1:13:05] Sorry?
[1:13:06] Kind of sad if you ask me.
[1:13:08] It is kind of sad. Yeah, for sure. It's not the kind of life that I would want because, you know, it doesn't really matter how many awards you have or how much money you have. You still end up going home alone. That's a pretty sad thing.
[1:13:21] Mm-hmm.
[1:13:22] So, uh, so my point is like the do your job stuff is really important. And there are times when it's life and death, right? I mean, like you have to get enough in a cold climate, you have to get enough food for the winter. Like, it's not like an optional thing, right? Otherwise you die. In war, you know, like you have to do your job, right? Like if, if you're there to deliver the, um, uh, if you're there to deliver the ammo, you have to do your job. Otherwise, like you die, everyone dies, you get invaded, you know, your wife gets raped in front of you, like whatever horrible stuff would go on throughout most of history like so i i get that stuff for sure but it's also important to remember like i mean you know white hispanic right so we talk spain the the origin story in spain 100 spain yeah so in spain uh for most of the middle ages, you a third of your year was religious holidays, wow uh this this whole like work 50 hours a week this this totally new this is like this is not our evolution in any way, shape, or form. Medieval peasants, they'd spend all winter basically not doing anything because there was really nothing to do. I mean, you had your food or you didn't. And so you'd sit under the blankets, you'd tell stories and all of that. So this whole 40-hour work week, I have no particular issue with it as a whole, but that's new stuff for us. And it is sort of a slave mentality. Like if you look at lions, right? It's the old joke, right? Like why do they call them lions? Because they're just lying around the whole time.
[1:14:51] Right?
[1:14:52] So they're powerful and because they're strong and powerful, uh, they don't, they spend most of their time conserving energy as most predators do. So this sort of constant work thing is, is a low status. It's a low status thing. Like you think of the squirrel constantly having to gather nuts versus the wolf, which spends most of its time because it gets all the calories at once, right? So the wolf spends most of its time just, you know, lying around, having sex, training its pups and all that. It's not a very hardworking creature because the hardworking stuff is for the prey species. And so if you're raised by a parent to be a prey species, right, to have to please or die, then you're going to end up with this sense that if you're not producing, you're in danger. If the slave is considered to be lazy, the slave is killed, I mean, they don't, they don't keep the slave around. Like, it's just like, ah, if you're lazy, if you, if it's too much work to get you to do any work, uh, we'll sell you or we'll kill you, which would be sort of two sides of the same coin. Right. So, uh, work or die is, is a slave, is a slave mentality and.
[1:16:08] And it's free mentality.
[1:16:09] Yeah. Because then, because you grew up with a very harsh and occasionally violent father, this work or die. Yeah. That's, that's a, that's a big thing in, in life. That is a very big thing.
[1:16:19] It's a very big mindset. It's employee. it's the employee mindset. And of course, you know, the powers that be love it if you're in the work or die mentality, because then you just, you can't say no, you can't, you can't think it's good for me. You can't relax. And, you know, I, it's great that you, you know, they say this is sort of joke, right? That there's nothing that's more stressful to a wife than a husband on the couch. Right now, again, I don't, I mean, it's kind of a joke. It's not really real, but at least, I mean, certainly it's real for some people, for sure. It's certainly real for some people. But, you know, if you have a wife who respects you, then she wants you to relax. And that's in part, you know, like men die, what is on an average, six or seven years before women do. And that's one of the reasons is because women are usually better at relaxing, right? There's no spa day for men, right? And that's, you know, not particularly fair or reasonable since men do, like we do a lot of work, right? So it's also part of love, right? Part of love for your wife is you want to, you don't want to have her outlive you by 10 years or more, right? That's not, that's not right. And she won't be happy at that any more than you'd like. If your wife was a smoker, you'd be like, man, you got to quit smoking because you're going to die young and I love you.
[1:17:30] Right. Like you said, you give up a son of your racing because if you're kids, right, which, you know, makes sense. So if you're just like stress guy working hard and you got to get things done, you know, stress is as bad as smoking. So if your wife was a smoker, you would not be particularly happy with that. And so uh you know the sense of like a shark you got to constantly be in motion or or negative things are going to happen in other words it's not the wanting to be busy it's just a form of stress or anxiety management and uh that's you know you got to ask your wife do you want me to get a bunch of stuff done that you don't particularly care about or do you want me to live uh 10 years longer.
[1:18:09] Oh gosh she'll choose the 10 years longer any day of the week.
[1:18:13] Of course you, and say for your kids too, right?
[1:18:16] Yeah.
[1:18:16] Do you want me to be around to enjoy my grandkids or do you want me to get a bunch of stuff done that you don't particularly care about?
[1:18:25] Gosh, it doesn't even make sense to do those things. You know what I mean? Right, right, right.
[1:18:30] And again, I say this with, you know, I mean, I've been known to work a little bit too hard myself from time to time, you know? I don't have five interviews a week kind of thing, right? But it is just not a productive thing to do in the long run. And it's not what our loved ones want us to do, which I think is what your wife is saying when she says, like, chill and relax, right? I want you to relax. You know, my wife said now, she's like, why don't you just relax today i'm like uh you're right that is that is a good idea uh that is a good idea and you know for me getting off politics and all of that was had a lot to do with like okay that's that's that's an extreme sport and i can't spend my entire life doing my my childhood was an extreme sport uh there was a lot of extremism in my business career and uh you know I just can't keep living on the edge my whole life.
[1:19:22] The ragged edge. Yeah, I've been living on the ragged edge for too long.
[1:19:27] Yes. Yes. And it's also, it does distract you from that sort of basic connection or love has a lot to do with relaxation. It's really tough to connect with people who are stressed. Or distracted or, you know, there's an uneasiness to this kind of stuff. Which is like oh i can't talk honey because i i gotta go do something productive and you're you're kind of all over the map emotionally and not just sort of sit and relax and you know like you think about the the sort of nice great conversations you have with your wife and it's like it's when you're just sitting there you got nothing to do and nowhere to go and and that's just what you do and that's just a lovely thing and that's actually in fact you remember that's.
[1:20:10] That effectively when when i'm when i feel burnt out and my wife's like no you're not doing anything That time is when we connect and enjoy each other and just talk about anything and everything for hours.
[1:20:23] Yes.
[1:20:23] So that's a big recharge for me when I talk to my wife.
[1:20:27] And it's the whole thing. It's like, well, what are you working for, right? What is it then? You know, again, I get there's some stuff that has to be done, right? So we know all of that. So we're not going to do this false dichotomy of like, you're either a German or Caribbean, right? There's nothing in between, right? I get all of that, right? But... What are you working for without relaxation it's the old thing it's like is there any point making money if you never spend it is there any point working if you never relax.
[1:20:56] No, I think you're right.
[1:20:58] And the idea that you have to justify your existence with endless labor, that is straight up slave morality.
[1:21:05] Yeah, it's pre-mentality. I don't like being pre-mentality.
[1:21:08] Yeah, no, that's no good. And of course, it teaches your kids that you don't have value in and of yourself. You only have value in as far as you work, in as far as you get things done and please people. And that is not good. You got to have value in and of yourself because you can't spend your whole life working. And the other thing too, like, what are you going to do when you retire? Right. I mean, I know you're young, so, but you know, it, it comes and you know, it may be, maybe even sooner than you think. Right.
[1:21:37] Yeah.
[1:21:38] And of course you're, and you're disagreeing with your wife. Your wife finds value in who you are as a human being. Whereas you're saying, no, no, no, honey, you're wrong. I'm only a value if I'm providing resources and, and things to people. And she's like what are you saying that you you're supposed to pay me to enjoy your company no i enjoy you for who you are you don't need to do all of these tricks and and be all this kind of productive stuff uh.
[1:22:05] Because you.
[1:22:05] And so you're saying well honey you might think that you like me for who i am but you're kind of wrong because uh i'm only i'm only a value if i'm producing uh producing things.
[1:22:15] Well to to add to that point real quick we uh wife and i a couple years ago sat down and like just did the math and like we made within within 10 years we're gonna run out of stuff to buy like we're basically already there we don't really have that much to buy anymore right like i have seven cars just fyi oh.
[1:22:37] Because if you're uh you're racing stuff right.
[1:22:39] Racing and just i'm stupid or something i don't know i'm just whatever i just have seven car for no reason and racing and you know what at farm and it's like you know i have somebody called me that hey you want to buy this cool car i'm like no i'm done buying cars like i need to sell some stuff like i'm i'm done i don't want to right but you're gonna run out of stuff to buy so what the hell am i working for you right it's time to it's time to relax and.
[1:23:05] Of course uh um what matters in the long run is your relationships and your relationships are facilitated by work right I mean, you can't have a relationship if you're living under a bridge and starving to death, right? So you've got to produce some stuff, but your relationships are not facilitated by workaholism. And workaholism is the existential belief that you have value only if you're producing value. You don't have value in and of yourself. You have value only insofar as you are producing value for others.
[1:23:36] The B plus arguments.
[1:23:38] Yeah, that definitely is like you're then an employee and a slave forever and ever, amen. And you can't be happy with yourself because if you're not producing value, then you have no value and you just can't be happy with yourself. Like, who am I when I'm not doing a show or producing value in the world or whatever it is, right? Or, and so on, right? You got to be something. Otherwise, you don't have existence. You only have utility. Or you don't have value. You only have utility, right? Now, I mean, and of course, you're saying it's primarily an economic relationship, right? Like, I mean, my waiter will say how I'm doing. Like, hey, how you doing today? You know, they don't care. I mean, other than in a sort of abstract, generic human way, but they don't care how I'm doing. It's an economic relationship. And I don't particularly care how they're doing. I'm just hungry.
[1:24:36] Like, not in any specific way. I mean, I care about abstract things as a whole, right? You know, if the waiter is pregnant, I'll say congratulations. And I mean that in a sort of generic way, but not in the same way, you know, as, as, you know, a friend of mine gets pregnant or something like that. So yeah, saying, saying that things are an economic relationship and you don't have value in and of yourself, you only have value in, in of the, the, the, uh, productive value you, you supply to others, uh, is a way to just sacrifice your relationships, which is, uh, the primary goal of life for the sake of life. Of productivity, which is of a diminishing return, right? As you say, like one car makes you happier, right?
[1:25:23] Because one car versus no cars is a big deal. But of course, an eighth car doesn't make you as happy as the first car.
[1:25:29] Right.
[1:25:31] I mean, I'll never be as happy buying anything technological based as I was buying my very first computer. So yeah so so the question is if i don't who am i and this is true more so for men right because it's human being right here women are human being men are human doing so okay so if i'm not providing value, If I'm not providing specific value, what am I doing? What is my value if I'm not providing value, if I'm not making something or doing something or building something or anything like that? And that's a tough question for men in particular to answer. But we got to answer it. Otherwise, an early grave and a difficult, stressful life and no relaxation and the attendant resentment. Right because no nobody resents like slaves and if you have the slave mindset, resentment will be your constant problem and i'm not saying that's with you it could happen over time but because you won't feel free and you won't feel like you're making decisions in and of yourself you will feel like well i have to i'm compelled i have to you know like you got a bad boss who's going to fire you and it's the only job in town it's like well you gotta you're going to resent your boss because he's making you do stuff.
[1:26:57] And it's that creeping feeling of like, oh yeah, so I'm only here because of the value that I provide, not because of the value within myself. That always creeps up.
[1:27:07] And it may not be people and certainly wouldn't be your wife because she's telling you to relax, but it will be your work as a whole that you'll resent. And maintaining joy in your work. Like if I said, listen, I got to do a three hour live stream every day, right? Regardless of inspiration, regardless of energy levels, I can't have any other, like that kind of stuff, right? How long would it take for me to resent that entirely made up obligation? Well, it wouldn't take very long at all. And so I'm very fierce in protecting my joy of work, my joy of doing shows and philosophy and so on, right? I'm very fierce on that. Because if I lose that joy, then it just becomes drudgery and resentment, and I don't want to, and, you know, I can probably put on a happy face for a little while, but not too long. So, I'm very fierce at protecting my joy in what it is that I'm doing. And I know for sure that the only way I can protect my joy in what I'm doing is to view it as obligation-free. I don't have to. I don't have to do it. I don't have to. I don't have to. And so once I'm in a state where I'm actually choosing things from that standpoint.
[1:28:31] Then I don't resent it because I'm choosing to do it. But if I feel like I have to, I got to, and I'm sort of whipping myself forward, then I mean, you can get a bunch of stuff done. You absolutely can. But you are undermining your joy at doing things and getting things done.
[1:28:51] And long term.
[1:28:52] That's going to cost you in the long run, man.
[1:28:55] That's more costly than it is beneficial. Cost benefit and else. This is very great.
[1:29:01] And then, sorry, the last thing I'll say is what happens is, the other thing too, and this is, you know, you work for yourself, so it's not such a big deal. But in general, what happens is, if you are a compulsive worker, what happens is you end up getting a bunch of work because you're very good at what you do. And because you get a bunch of work, because you're very good at what you do, you end up with way too many responsibilities you know there's an old saying in business right like if you want to get something done give it to the busy guy.
[1:29:37] That's funny you say that so i started consulting and then a tsunami of work just came my way i'm like oh my gosh i can't do all of this are you guys crazy right and so now i'm actually going to go uh i'm going to be a high level executive at a regional accounting firm and um so i'll have less believe it i'll have less work there than my consulting my six months of consulting work that i did right.
[1:30:11] Right yeah because if you're very competent then you get huge amounts of work uh and then you feel overwhelmed and then you start to get resentful and.
[1:30:20] You start to get.
[1:30:20] Annoyed and and yet you can't give it up because you've got all these obligations. Like the person who takes the obligations very seriously ends up getting a lot of work and ends up with too many obligations and no longer feels free and then resents everything. So yeah, it's really, preserving your joy and your work is the most important thing when it comes to productivity. And it's not the easiest thing in the world to do because competence brings obligations, brings a feeling of enslavement enslavement and entrapment.
[1:30:56] Yeah, I've never heard anyone talk about preserving the joy in your work. That's profound to me, at least.
[1:31:01] Oh, yeah. No, I will. And I feel even more of a responsibility because it's like, I mean, the work that I do is pretty serious, right? I mean, it's like designed to like, you know, save people's lives and, and make the world a significantly better place and all that kind of stuff. So I, I mean, I, I take it very, like having to preserve the joy is a very serious business. If that may, it's a kind of a weird paradox. I cannot afford to not enjoy my job. Sounds like a really complicated, confusing kind of contradiction. Right. But I really can't. I mean, if it's not like there's a lot, a bunch of other people who could do what I do. Uh, and so I really do have to, I really, really, really have to preserve that kind of happiness. That's essential.
[1:31:46] So yeah, I hope that, and you know, your job is important for you. And I'm not sort of trying to say, well, my job's important. You're not, right? But it is very important to you. And it is how you provide for your family and your kids and all that. So you have to, yeah, you have to preserve that pleasure. And that means it has, stuff has to be chosen. You're doing it because you want to because you find meaning and it's a value and and so on because yeah you lose that man oof then then life just becomes a slog and and so yeah so so people end up with a lot of obligations because they're really good and they're really good because often because they take stuff super seriously and again there's nothing wrong with taking stuff seriously but if you end up in a situation where you just feel overwhelmed because of your own competence then resentment i mean again you can you can muscle it for a while but it will uh it will undermine, uh your joy and once once your joy and your work is undermined it's really hard to get back and i've certainly come to the edge of that sometimes uh but i i really have to just just i guard it like like uh like a pit bull guards a baby uh maybe that's not the best analogy um but you know yeah.
[1:32:53] Oh man you just gave me a roadmap for how i'm going to uh execute on my plan for uh for this firm.
[1:33:03] If you're not free to say no you'll always resent saying yes.
[1:33:07] Well, I'm going to be guarding my joy of what I do because I do love what I do for work. I would do it for free, right? But obviously not. I'm so good at it that people want to pay me a lot of money for it. But there's certain aspects I'm just, you know, what I'm going to do is I'm going to hire someone. And, you know, I have free range to do so. Whenever I feel like, okay, this needs to be done, I hate doing it, I'm hiring somebody for it.
[1:33:33] Yes.
[1:33:33] That's the roadmap i love it this is very impactful good.
[1:33:38] Good well it sounds like we had a productive old chat and i guess i'll catch you in a decade um.
[1:33:44] Yeah i did i mean i did have after that such deep conversation there the question that the last question i had written down for you yeah so so like i said i have a two-year-old and almost three and i have a newborn and uh after covid the whole vaccines and trusting the the medicine etc i just gone completely out the window and so uh i interviewed alone in that brother i know i interviewed i don't know seven probably eight different uh medical doctors before we chose our pediatrician um and our pediatrician is actually amazing he's really good he's into crypto he's you know he's really good. And he leaves, he helps in choosing, okay, how do we do the vaccines, etc. And he admits that, well, I don't know enough to tell you when you should take it, which vaccines exactly you should take. I'm just giving the recommendations. What he does say is, you guys make the choice, and I'll help you through it. And she tells me exactly what's in it, why is it important. But I still struggle to figure out which vaccine to do and what and you tell me if I'm thinking about this the right way because the way I'm thinking about it is well um.
[1:35:02] If I were to explain to my daughters when they're 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 20, that, hey, this is what we do with your vaccine schedule. We reduced them significantly. We pushed, you know, instead of having you take four or five of them every two months, which is ridiculous to me, we chose the most important ones, right? You know, for the first six months. And then until you became six months old, we didn't allow anybody to be around you for the risk. You know, we're not very, we're very risk averse. when it comes to that. But then we pushed a lot of things back and, you know, we didn't give you all of them and this is exactly why.
[1:35:41] It's just, and I'm sitting here, I'm reading scientific abstracts on different studies on vaccines and I'm like, gosh, can I just, what, like, there's no other resource that I could find to tell me, like, which to take, which not to take. And I almost feel like, well, you know, am I making the right decision? Like, okay, we're not doing this one, but what if she ends up getting whatever this is, diphther, not diphther, but, you know, one of these diseases, like, oh my God, we would have made a mistake. But that's kind of how you have to deal with life. Mistakes happen. And so I don't know if you had any thoughts on...
[1:36:18] Yeah, I mean, the good news is not just that Kash Patel's in at the FBI, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in. So I'm sure you know the history of this, that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Demanded to know if there had been sort of double-blind experiments or, you know, combination safety tests on this, like, what is it, 70-plus vaccines that they're trying to jam in kids? And, I mean, you can't test. You can't test that in any reasonable way.
[1:36:51] So he ended up suing, and I think that they finally admitted, yeah, we don't have, you know, a whole bunch of double-blind experiments we don't have. Any of that kind of stuff with regards to these things. So I don't know the answer. I mean, obviously, vaccines is one of these topics that is, so upsetting as a whole, just for me. Because like, if it turns out that vaccines have a relationship with autism, and something sure as hell does, because there were no autistic kids around when I was a kid. And, you know, as I've mentioned before, you can't find descriptions of autism throughout human history. It is something that is in the last couple of decades has just gone through the roof. One of the most corrupt, vicious, and evil aspects of society as it stands is that people aren't moving heaven and earth to figure out what the living hell is going on. Like, that is one of the most absolutely, like, talk about, you know, breaking the social contract.
[1:38:05] This catastrophic, or can be catastrophic, neurological disorder. Like, I remember reading about some woman whose kid has severe autism and she's like the first hour every day was just trying to get him to brush his teeth like it's just hell in in many ways right so so the fact that we've had this you know massive rise and oh no it's always been around it just wasn't diagnosed it's like that's just too glib an answer so i don't i don't know you know i mean hopefully uh they'll they'll do studies and of course if it turns out and i don't know of course what what the answer it's going to be, but if it turns out that... Vaccines have something to do like the the escalated vaccine schedule has something to do with autism i i can't even tell you i can't i can't tell you in any public forum the kind of punishments that i would like to see meted out at people who might have suppressed this if if it turns out to be the case but it would be it would be like old testament japanese pow stuff, i'm right there with you so so i i don't know i hopefully uh when when rfk jr is in he is uh he is going to find ways to get this information out.
[1:39:20] That's what it is man because there's no one from it it's like you can't trust obviously you can't trust it and then so, i'm just following i'm basically i looked up the 1984 uh vaccine schedule and it's like they do tuberculosis the first month nothing until the six months and the six months is like one shot of like three different.
[1:39:41] Mmr right measles mumps rubella or something yeah yeah yeah yeah.
[1:39:45] And then and then again in a year right but now it's like the first day it's like they want to inject them with like eight things i'm like okay no.
[1:39:52] Well and i mean some stuff that you can what get, from sexual contact and drug needles it's like i'm pretty sure newborns are a low risk category for that stuff right so yeah it is i don't yeah i don't know the answer um i am incredibly suspicious, at the lack of like if you look at the amount of resources that were mobilized, for covid like society lost its shit over covid yes it did and you know and i with this you know alpha was a nasty bug, and I get all of that, right? But if you look at the amount of resources that were mobilized over COVID, and then you compare that with the kind of resources that are being mobilized to find the cause of autism.
[1:40:41] Oh gosh.
[1:40:42] I mean, it's complete opposite. Now, of course, the cynic would say that, well, they lost their shit over COVID because they made hundreds of billions of dollars. And because they're making hundreds of billions of dollars off vaccines, they're not particularly interested in finding the cause. Like my belief is that the cause is known but suppressed and it's known but suppressed for money. I don't know what the cause is, but I believe it's known. So when people aren't looking for stuff, it's because they already have it.
[1:41:19] So I think that the cause of autism is probably known somewhere. I'm not saying I know what it is. Obviously, I, like everyone, have their suspicions. But I think the cause of COVID is known. Sorry, the cause of autism is known.
[1:41:33] It is just suppressed for money. And of course when people look objectively at covet they say some intensely evil stuff was done for the sake of money power and control which should not be any it should not be too shocking for any student of human history and so with regards to vaccines the fact that there's not this massive societal effort to find the cause tells me that the cause is probably known, you know like if i've got a a grandfather who buried a bunch of bodies in his backyard and i say hey i want to go plant some stuff he'll be like no no don't it's you know don't do it right and then he might he'll get pretty aggressive because he knows where the bodies are buried and he doesn't want me digging around and i think the same thing is true of something like autism or you know just the general ill health like this oh this measles outbreak is like it's a couple of cases and people are saying and rightly so like to the media like well why aren't you talking about diabetes and obesity among children because like that's like compared to measles that's the big risk and so yeah so the fact that that you've got a system that makes money off chronic illness and is paid for by the government rather than out of people's pockets a private enterprise uh is as corrupt a thing as is around and of course i've been talking about this for decades, but you might find out more information.
[1:42:58] If the studies exist, then I think if he's allowed to live.
[1:43:06] RFK will get a man.
[1:43:08] I think. Because I think he really does care about this stuff. And I think he's, you know, he's been saying like he's been praying for decades for the opportunity to try and make America healthy again. I think he is a man with the mission. And of course, given his ace physique, he has a fair amount of credibility. So I think that, you know, if there is some relationship between vaccines and ill health, like, you know, I'm sure you've read the same stuff, like, there was no such thing as SIDS before vaccines. And again, I don't know that this, it's like COVID, it's this whirlwind of both inadvertent and advertent misinformation.
[1:43:46] And so maybe the health effects of vaccines will come out over the course of RFK's tenure. Or the lack of information is also going to be important. And then, of course, given that autism is just a massive, massive problem within society, the fact that people haven't been moving heaven and earth to find its cause makes me believe they already have it. If it's vaccines or something else, I don't know. I don't know. But obviously, I can't give you any health or medical advice. But what I can say is that I think that the information is going to come out sooner rather than later. And it wouldn't have happened, you know, if Trump wasn't in and and RFK wasn't in his post. But you might get information to make a better and more informed decision sooner rather than later because of what's going on politically.
[1:44:42] Well, on the note of autism, right, the reason they don't, also another reason to add to that, why they don't want to find a cure or find a reason, is because it heavily profits the state and state-run education centers. Yeah. It's this huge program.
[1:44:59] Yeah.
[1:44:59] I know this because I have family, extended family members that I don't really talk to, but they're these special ed teachers. They have like three students for the entire year. That's all they do and there's three special ed students or four or five and that's it you can have no more than five and so there's a huge department of just special ed for autistic kids I'm like that's a huge money maker for these people it's insane, and then the last thing I'll say is that the lack of nuance, because you know both of my kids are genetically I would say very very healthy right they're extremely my wife is extremely healthy excuse me, and and they're breastfed and they always eat very well, they sleep well. So there's no nuances to like the risk factor, right? We're not like swimming in sewage, right? So we're not going to get the polio that runs around, especially in the Hasidic neighborhoods. We're not going to be, you know, we don't have any.
[1:45:59] Let's just say we don't have any different people that would be in sexual contact with weird things let's say at all anywhere near us ever, so we don't really necessarily need all these there's no nuance to it there's no like oh okay if you're at risk of XYZ if you're like in a highly populated area if you're gonna go to if you're gonna go to an Ibiza you know rave with your baby then maybe you should take these vaccines but if you're not then maybe not there's no, No separation or nuance, no thought about the individual patient. It's like, okay, two-month-old baby is the same for race, creed, color, geography. It doesn't matter. Bam, this is the schedule. It's like, that doesn't make any sense to me either. So it's like, I really hope some truth comes out, like you said, with RFK and Trump. But the last month has been amazing. I'll say that. So I'm hopeful.
[1:46:58] Yeah. Yeah. And it would be one of the greatest evils in history if there's an answer to the ill health, particularly something like autism, the ill health of children. If there's an answer that was suppressed, I would almost look in any other direction if the parents wanted to enact vengeance. Honestly, this is what happens when you put the government in charge of stuff, is it's going to become corrupt and populated by insanely cruel and greedy people. So, yeah, so, I mean, I hope the information is going to come out and, you know, we're still waiting for, and I, you know, I think we'll, I don't, I don't think it will happen, but we're still waiting for any kind of accountability for the lies and rights stripping under the COVID era. So I don't know. The system has gone beyond, at least in the West as a whole, but maybe this is an exception in America and the current administration, but the system seems to have gone beyond any kind of self-correction.
[1:48:15] And then it's just like, hang on until it crashes. So, yeah, I don't know. But I would certainly, I'm sure you will keep your eye on what might be coming out from HHS or CDC or anything like that. And that really could rock the world. Or, you know, the other thing, too, is this is all this weird thing. Like, I think if I remember rightly, the SSRI theory of like, well, you've got a chemical balance in your brain. And I think that was disproven fairly robustly a year or two ago. But you'd be amazed at how things don't change even when the facts come out. But it will change for your family when the facts come out.
[1:48:55] Oh, of course. Yeah, it's funny. The last four years, I really have not been paying attention at all to politics after the election was stolen. And then now that Trump's in, it's like, let me take a glimpse. And then I'm like, oh, my goodness. Every single day, it's like nonstop. It's like what amazing stuff happening wow okay yeah that's cool so yeah we're i'm definitely glued to like what's going on to i just want to hear some truth i want to hear what's what's going on because we've been in the dark for too long yeah.
[1:49:25] Yeah all right brother well i hope you'll keep me posted and i really did appreciate i do appreciate your conversation today it's congratulations especially given your origin story on what a beautiful family you've made and congratulations on your parenting and your wife's parenting.
[1:49:40] It's just beautiful to see and to hear and it really does put a spring in my step to know that philosophy, along with, of course, a bunch of other factors has helped make your life so much better and the life of your children so much better. So I really do appreciate that update.
[1:49:53] Yeah, significantly. And, you know, thank you so much for this philosophy audit. Very helpful to me. I hope the listeners also get something out of it. But for sure, it was super powerful. And hopefully, let's not make it a decade this time.
[1:50:06] Let's make it five years at most. It's up to you, man. Just let me know and keep me posted, right?
[1:50:10] All right. Thanks, Stefan. Have a good day.
[1:50:11] Bye-bye.
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