EXPLORING THE TOOLS THAT UNLEASH HUMAN POTENTIAL
Did you know that you can reach out through our contact us form? We kickstart today’s conversation on an exciting note as we answer our very first community submitted discussion topic, we unpack the trials and tribulations of preparing for fatherhood. We discuss the trials, joys, and deep learning experiences that arise while striving to be a commendable father.
Moving forward, we shift gears towards understanding the role of healthy boundaries across different facets of our lives – be it work, relationships, or personal well-being. We unfold how establishing these boundaries can guide us towards a life that aligns with our goals and values.
If you found value in the show please SHARE IT with someone you care about as well as SUBSCRIBE and RATE IT with a 5-Star Review!
Do you have a question for us, want to be on the show, or have a recommendation for a guest or topic? CONTACT US HERE.
We are grateful you joined us!
Do you want to learn more? Check out:
Jon Mayo: 0:08
Well, howdy-dowdy everyone, welcome back to another Thought Expedition. Today marks a first for both Be Relentless and Thought Expeditions in that one of our community members reached out with a request for a topic for exploration. So that is pretty darn cool. And on that, I do want to inform everyone that we now have a Contact Us form. Whether you’re on the show notes, any of the bios for the show and the bio for myself, anywhere you can really find us. You’re going to find a link to our Contact Us form. Please, please, reach out and communicate with us. We want to press in to the community that we’re building and we want to press in to this waymaker movement, idea and concept that we’re playing with as part of Thought Expeditions, be Relentless and the ULA universe. You’ll see that we’re requesting topics to explore, questions, guest recommendations if you want to be a guest yourself or issues you’ve identified with recommendations for improvement. So quick plug on that. But now that you know, knowing to have the battle, please utilize that resource so that we can press in and engage together. But today’s conversation with Brandon, as part of our Thought Expedition, starts by responding to our community member and the topic they brought up, which is around fatherhood, preparing to become a father and then enhancing oneself, once a father and husband, and that I do think works for parenthood, holistically though I speak and we explore from the perspective of fatherhood, because that’s what I am. So that’s where the experience is. And then the second topic is around setting boundaries and thanks to Brandon for bringing that forward. But we discussed boundary setting, time, expenditure and ensuring appropriate rest to avoid burnout and crashing and burning. So we have two fully packed topics to explore in today’s thought. And one more shameless plug before we jump in If you’ve not gone to the ULA universecom to subscribe, please do that, because we are launching in full force soon and that will bring to you CCU stamina, performance evolved, as well as a means to learn more about the show and the book. Be relentless, if the obstacles the way, we must be waymakers. So subscribe to stay tuned. Please use the form so that we can communicate together and, without further ado, let’s jump right in. All right, so pretty excited about a first for the beer relentless podcast and a first for thought expedition specifically. So, as mentioned earlier, we have created a form so that our community can reach out and share ideas, topics they’d like to explore, questions, recommendations for guests or to sign up to be guests themselves, and we had our first person actually do that, from our community and prior to getting into the topic that you’d curated, given that we were going to start by addressing the topic, that was requested from our listeners. So what are we looking at, brandon?
Brandon Seifert: 3:24
Yeah so so I’m going to just read the message word for word. And it says becoming a father, the trials and tribulations of navigating the months leading up to and becoming a father, pursuing your best self to better your life for your family and leading by example for your children. So we can kind of dissect that. But is there anywhere you wanted to go initially, just from hearing that?
Jon Mayo: 3:52
So the request is to explore that. Those thought process, right, correct, yeah, preparation for becoming a dad and seeking the highest level of being possible and walking through that, yes, sir, okay, okay, the two things come to mind. And I would preface all of this with I’m under qualified and not a subject matter expert on this, but from my experience with the four kiddos I have and starting becoming a parent as a child myself I was 20. I have been able to put a fair amount of thought into this, especially over the last seven years. And when it comes to preparation, what I like, what I love about being a father, one of the many things, is that few things give you more of a wake up call to begin taking life a little bit more seriously or less flippantly than becoming a parent in you, in the growing realization that, at least for me, truly catalyzed into a holy moly when I first held my first son. And preparing for that can look like a lot of things and, depending on where I think we are on mavelos hierarchy of needs, right, how we prepare will be different. So for myself, when I was, my preparation for becoming a father was I was 20 years old, I was in college I was a cadet in the reserve officer training program, core, working to secure the ability to commission and to active duty service, and I was doing some 20, 20, 19 to 21 credit hours of school a quarter or semester rather, to ensure that I was hitting the timelines I needed to, given the parameters of my situation. So when I learned that Lindsay was pregnant, it lit the provision, fueling me because, I mean, frankly, their income was not in existence. It was very, very low, very, very low. We were living in a loft, very much so, still children being assisted by our families in many ways, and now we were having a child come in. So for me, preparation was slough off the distractions and what do I need to do so that I can provide for my family period. I spent 20 to 22 hours a day throughout that entire chapter of life working to ensure that we would have a roof and food and the appropriate necessities to be secure. So preparation for me was okay. No more these leisure things are gone. These distractions need to die. It’s all focus. That’s because where I was on Mavelos hierarchy of needs right are your basic provisions met those types of things. I was lower on that scale and I had a focus on the necessities of living right. So I think it’s important to look at where are you on the scale, because getting to do the fun like pursuing ideal forms, you have to adjust what that equation looks like if you’re concerned about where is the next meal going to come from right. So, starting with that perception, the other element of it I think would be, as we discuss a lot, how might we lead a maximized life right and developing intentional intentionality and discipline, csu, radical responsibility all those things play in. I think that they can be done simultaneously, but first we have to acknowledge where we are in the journey and then the second piece, very simply put, would be to reflect often on the choices we’re making with the heightened sensitivity and awareness that comes with knowing that either we’re about to become a father or knowing that now we are parents and in being parents are we satisfied with how we are interacting with our children? And I was able to formulate that thought in a conversation I had with a buddy the other day who’s about to become a dad and he’s like well, how do you like? What is your approach? Not messing it all up, and becoming a better parent and becoming a better husband and doing these things and for the first time I had a glimpse of clarity that I think that the best approach is to lean even more heavily into what we do, or what we or what I advocate we do, when we’re not just holistically. If we’re reflecting often on our actions so that we may be more intentional and present in the current, then we have a shorter, more powerful feedback loop in our behaviors and that allows us to shift course and press in more intentionally to the current moment. And that’s really what I would recommend. If you have the moment like in having a child or learning you’re going to become a parent or having a kid and realizing you’re not happy with how you’re treating or parenting that child, those in my mind are triggers for moments of awareness. And from that moment of awareness we have the opportunity to choose to begin to initiate the intentional cycle at greater length and with greater potency, or we can try to push it away and go back into the unintentional cycle and continue on the path we’re on. And I would advocate that we lean full force into the intentional cycle, exercise that radical responsibility and shorten the feedback loop. On are the decisions, the interactions and how I’m spending my time pointing and leading me to the type of man or human being that I want to be, for the circumstances I’m walking into and that are giving the best of myself to those I love.
Brandon Seifert: 9:58
Okay, and a quick question in that is so you, at this very young age, you decided I got to change my life. I got to. You know needs have changed because I’m going to have a child. When you’ve already had those children, how did you decide if you remain on that same kind of course, or when did you start to pivot, so then you can pursue as your? Your needs have changed your best self. And how did you or was there really a moment of thought saying, hey, this is how I’m going to leave my family, to best better myself as well as to also give that example to my children?
Jon Mayo: 10:49
It was kind of a weird thought there. No, I don’t think it’s weird, I think it’s fair. And from me as an individual, I did not have the opportunity of the thoughts that were explored today at the onset. So there was throughout my life. There’s been specific points where I’ve had to like I’ve come up to a fork in the road, and the decision I made has been a dramatic trajectory shift for my entire life. One was going from two homes to one when I was around 16, the other one was choosing the military over a different type of lifestyle that would have been dramatically different To start off. The other was marrying Lindsay, appropriately when we learned about Jeremiah, right, or at least was appropriate for our situation and then those moments continued right. But at those fork in the roads there were decisions, and the one that set my trajectory off on this, as I go into hopefully appropriate depth in the book, be relentless is when I was I would say successfully having crested the first mountain. So David Brooks wrote a book called the Second Mountain after his first book called the Road to Character, if I remember correctly. Both, I think, are phenomenal reads and very powerful tools of introspection. The Second Mountain, though, essentially discusses how, once we’ve hit material success, right the simple like check the block. Oh, I’m in a significant relationship, I have a good paying job, I have the house, I like, I have a good house, you know, and all these things are done. It’s kind of like when someone wins we many people may have heard when someone wins the Super Bowl, they’re depressed after and it’s like, whoa, what just happened? Right, they saw this milestone as the arrival point and then they’re left with this depression of now what? And in the same way that can occur, I think, holistically in life when we’re pursuing, like I said initially, a vision right, and being excellent at my job and these other things. Once I had accomplished those things, I began floating through it. It was like, okay, I am now providing for my family, I’m now getting the highest ratings possible in my line of work, these things are happening, and I was able to begin relaxing and taking things a little bit less intentionally and still achieving excellence in these fields, but at degradation to who I am and who I needed to become. And that led to a moment, which I won’t go into now for the short of brevity, but that led to a moment of awareness where I realized that I was not living up to who I needed to be to be able to provide the best source of a husband for my bride and the best father for my children, the best man I could be for myself and live in the convictions and callings that I believe are on my life, based on my faith. And given those things and that moment, awareness, and how far I traveled outside of those beliefs and how fragmented I was, that, spurred on the intentional effort of a lot, needs to change, because I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. I’m not going to do this anymore. And you jump to today. And that’s. The journey from then to today is why my life looks how it is now, which is radically different from how it did seven years ago, six years ago and, as mentioned, be relentless outlines that more. But the decision was the same. There was a moment of awareness where I woke up to the fact that, holy crud, how am I walking through life and am I satisfied with it? And, as we mentioned earlier, that could be holy crud. Am I about to become a father? How do I prepare for that? Or I am a father or a parent how do I better do that? Or I’m married how do I be a better spouse? Or, holy crud, I’m already 30, 40, 50. How am I living my life? You know, there’s these different forms of like snap and we realize that we’re like, we’re conscious of what we’re doing, and I’d say that those triggers, no matter how different and unique they are for the individual, are the same and that once that trigger is spurred, you get to choose how you’re going to press into and respond with it. And in this instance, I had two triggers right. The first was to up my game as a provider and then the second was to my game as a holistic human being. Now, what’s nice is, for those who we’re walking community with, we can do both at the onset and then continue to ramp into it and press into it over time, and I think that’s the gift of walking in community with one another.
Brandon Seifert: 15:35
Trying to remember. I had a question that kind of popped up to two quick things. One is what are lessons that you’ve learned from your kids? Because I want to make sure that it’s. I’ve heard you in a past podcast discuss that you’ve learned many different lessons Just going through this journey that you’re going through. But what are a couple that a new father could learn or expect to learn from his kids? Just a little hindsight, you know hindsight.
Jon Mayo: 16:16
Yeah sure, let’s see, initially they were just a catalyst. Just initially they were a significant catalyst for growth, because selfishness begins to come in like one. Selfishness begins to come into direct conflict with the needs of those around you. So, and inconveniently and sometimes exhaustingly. So I’d say, for the first few years it was just the expectation that I’m going to get to grow a lot and I’m going to get to begin thinking outside of myself in a way that I was incapable of doing prior to this stimulus, because there’s something truly unique about the experience of walking into parenthood that I don’t think meditation and other forms of reflection can create. And then the second point, as they got older, is what you want to raise, or what you hope your children become, I think is more influenced by action than by words, which is not a new concept, but my observation has supported that premise, and over the years I’ve not been happy, and now I’m much more happy, but still not as happy as I could be with the reflections I’m seeing of what they’re learning from observing their mother and I. And you know, a couple years ago I’d wake up the outside sitting, make a fire on a summer day on the weekend so we could all hang out in the morning and have some fun together. It’d be eight in the morning and the big dad I made us pretend margaritas so we could drink together as I go, or I made us pretend beer so we could drink it and let’s cheers and I’m like, oh dear, they’re reflecting what they’re seeing and now they’re pretending they’re working out like crazy. They are pretending or they are writing books, they are hosting podcasts you know these different things and they’re built. They’re talking about the business they want to build them when they move to Alaska as brothers, when they grow up, and how they’re going to have a bakery and a restaurant and all these different things. And the reflection has changed because the stimulus that they observe has changed and it’s not from our conversations. I’d say that our conversations have enhanced over time, but they probably not changed nearly as much as the behaviors they’re observing. So, kind of even reflecting on what we were discussing earlier, I would be hyper intentional on what you’re doing because I think it carries 90% of the weight over that which we would say and I think that’s true holistically as well as we walk through life.
Brandon Seifert: 18:51
Fantastic One, one just little thought that I I just wanted to point out. So I listened to this other podcast called to be better, and it’s all about relationships and I definitely need that wisdom because I’m a single dude and I’ve been single for a long time, so why not learn from those that have had successful relationships? But one thing that I just recently heard I want to say like two, three days ago, since I’m just trying to catch up in their podcast is the idea that they don’t holistically like the idea of a bachelor bachelor at party, but they think that you know just the the partying side which is normally associated with it. But they brought up the idea that what if that time was spent from someone learning from those around them who have already walked through this journey? So, say, we bring all of the men that have 10 plus years, whatever experience in this subject of you know, being married, what have you learned? What are the different things that you never thought? That would challenge you and it’s a night to go out and learn from that. And I love the the idea of applying this as well to this topic, because it’s it’s asking for general wisdom of what you could potentially be going through, and I think that it’s one just a quick point of a lot of self reflection to be able to ask that, and I think it’s a great idea to continue to ask that and get multiple different responses. So I just wanted to shout that out as well as make that correlation, because I always thought it was a fantastic idea to just seek the wisdom from those who are living through it, have lived through it, and that could be applied to fatherhood as well.
Jon Mayo: 20:43
I I fully agree and I do want to explore that just for a moment longer, because my bachelor party I had two incredible men who had my back and they they kept it very PG. They ambushed me in a paintball match. They had stood up and we hung around their apartment and had conversations and drank far too much and it was pretty safe, right. And given that we were all children, I’m very pleased in retrospect with what occurred, because it could have been so much worse, with how these types of parties typically go before getting married and at this point in the game, I can’t think of a more retarded way to spend the night before your marriage then getting wasted and doing what is popular also in like, engaging in like in questionable acts with other human beings or having a stripper over or something like. It just seems to me like that’s the foundation we want to set for this lifelong relationship built on loyalty, trust and vulnerability, like huh, you know, I think it’s worth a pause in consideration and I and I don’t agree with it. And if, if someone was to ask me to establish a bachelor party for them at this point, it would, I would say, hey, if we want to do a celebration of life up to this point, let’s do that like a week before and let’s be very intentional on how we’re celebrating who’s there. But if we’re going to do something the night before, it would be very close to what you’re describing. I’m immediately picturing a fire, good food, the Bodhi to sit around like I can’t fire something and have conversation, where the it’s a immense moment of communal reflection and sharing with individuals that you want to be around. So the list would be curated intentionally in advance of if you could have a dream list of people you’re sitting with to reflect on your life, reflect on walking into marriage and reflect and gain you know the most valuable lesson learned from each person around the fire what that look like, and that’s the type of evening that I would want for myself and I’d curate for others and I will curate for my sons when they get to that point. And the same I think could be done for when you’re about to become a parent, right, and I think that there would be value for both mothers and fathers to do this separately and together, right, why not? It’s a pretty big milestone and do the same thing, but on the parenting front, that would be a pretty cool experience. So thank you, for I’m really glad you brought that idea because that is powerful, and all the more when you can walk in community with those who you believe are doing it well and you like the fruit of their work and you get to sit down and have those fun conversations and kind of just drink it in right, and that’s great.
Brandon Seifert: 23:27
Yeah, and, like you said, it should never be as a, at least in my mind. I can’t speak to everyone but say for, like marriage, it should never be a last hurrah of singlehood. That’s not. Why would you want to celebrate that? You’re celebrating this new mile marker in your life and what better way to do that? By by setting yourself up for the most success you can have in that mile marker, by having those conversations earlier. I know a lot of people go and blind to to these different milestones, but imagine if you had the communal wisdom of 30 plus years to speak to it, how much further in your relationship or in your parenthood or your teaching or whatever it is, could you have jumped a gap a little bit faster to be a better person for your family or whatever that mile marker is.
Jon Mayo: 24:29
Mm-hmm, I’m strongly of that opinion. I fully agree.
Brandon Seifert: 24:35
Was there any before I jumped to my other one, which is a fairly quick topic, but was there anything else you wanted to hit on that?
Jon Mayo: 24:44
No, I I don’t believe. So I think that that was a fun exploration of one dude’s opinion. Yeah, and I’m just grateful that someone in our community wanted to reach out and engage with us. And I would ask that, if you’re listening to this and the show notes in our profile bios just about anywhere you can find the show you’ll find the link to our contact us form and we would love to press in and engage more heavily with our community. So please take advantage of that and we look forward to continue communicating with you through that.
Brandon Seifert: 25:23
Definitely, and if there was anything that we had not hit in this discussion, feel free to submit another, and if we believe that we can provide more value based off of the second request, we’ll definitely bring it up again. You know there’s there’s always worth having that dialogue. But my second topic is something that I have yeah, actually, you called me out two, three days ago again, I don’t do that. It was about deciding boundaries in life, and that is something that I’ve struggled with for a very long time. I always thought and it was actually funny, I was on some sort of social media today and it was discussing, it was a picture basically saying I thought that life was all about waking up, going to work and then doing the same thing again tomorrow. So that’s, that’s the cycle, and for a very long time I believe that, and I thought that’s the way that you gain success, you improve your life, is because when you’re young, you just need to work and that’s all you really need to care about, and so for the longest time I had not taken days off, with a more intentional season, even beyond that, especially focused with you in this podcast. My, my day to day has changed from working the normal 10 hour shift to now. I’m working a 10 to 12 hour shift on my normal day job, then working on the podcast on the side, as well as trying to also meet other obligations that I’ve provided in my life. So my, my thought is is there any notes or things that I can have you speak to on setting fair boundaries in life, on work, on play, on, you know, projects? Because I’ve definitely found myself wiped out to the point where I’ve had my, or I just took my first vacation and I can already tell that my energy is coming back. But how do I keep that prolonged energy so I can feed the things I want to feed but not get sucked back into the day to day life that I’ve experienced for the past 27 years?
Jon Mayo: 27:52
Sure. First, though, I’m very curious Do you like how you’re living now, more than when you woke up, worked repeat?
Brandon Seifert: 28:04
I did for a time, but then I started getting tired and I could definitely tell that my work overall by my happiness level has also decreased lately. A lot of things have just slowly started to diminish and I have not been able to to get that back to the point where I was having more fun doing and going through life the way I was. You know, it’s like I’m starting to see things on like grayscale when before, when I first started doing these things, it was like full IMAX 3D, all the fun things you know.
Jon Mayo: 28:44
Yeah, absolutely. This is probably a critical topic, especially with a show and book and culture around being relentless and being a waymaker and creating these things and pursuing a better version of ourselves consistently and kind of putting in the work right. A critical element of that, a couple of critical elements of it it’s a whole human project, right. So there’s the emotional side and how and navigating emotions. There’s the relational side, navigating relationships. There’s all these nuances that we have to have the courage to be vulnerable enough to express and explore together, and those are fun topics for another time. But coming to the matter of how do we maintain energy levels so that we can do all the things we want and have boundaries so that we’re able to intentionally determine how much time effort A versus B or activity A versus B gets in our lives right, so that we’re in some form of healthy expenditure of our time. Right. It’s a critical element because I do not agree with the grind culture of you just put in 20 hours a day, right. And it’s probably overdue that we have this conversation because I’m not sure we’ve been able to give it fair justice, even in our personal relationship, as far as how at least I navigate working on the cycle, and it’s interesting because I had a cycle that worked for over 18 months. That was pretty dialed in, right. I would wake up at 3.30. I would reflect and meditate and prepare till 4.00, from 4.00 to 5.30. I would do a row session building my projects. I’d train, take the kiddos to school, go to work for a full day, come back, engage in jujitsu or family time and repeat, right, and I was able to really sustain that rhythm. Well, now that I’m not in that rhythm, that rhythm’s broken right With the current chapter I’m in and what I’m working through. So, given that I’ve realized that the system I created was burning me the hell out and killing me and I was beginning to battle with depression more, I was beginning to feel like there are at least symptoms of anxiety and I wasn’t able to engage without a foggy mind in the work to the level that I’d like. So the very same question leads to the point of when life changes. I think it benefits us greatly for us to evaluate what it is that we’re doing and go back into heavy experimentation mode of what produces the outcomes that I want. So now I am waking up between 3.30 and 5.00 instead of at 3.30 every day it depends on the day I have an intentional meditation routine and then I have a very deliberate 90-ish minute cycle that I follow throughout the day. That is consistently putting me through different types of work, training, and then very intentional 15-minute break cycles where I exercise the principle of change as a master key. And change as the master key is the concept of if I’m working at the computer, then I’m going for a walk for the 15 minutes, right, I do something that’s a completely different expenditure of self for that time and that’s extremely recharging. And there’s a whole bunch of fun conversations we can do on maintaining productivity. But in the greater overarching question of how do I not get worn out, beat up to the point that the very things that we’re bringing in life now are stressing or now are like taxing me negatively, right, rest is a critical component, and not just sleep, but intentional rest and recharge I think have to be planned, for I take every for myself, saturdays and Sundays, or for family and improving our living situation. So after Saturday mornings, our fair game, we have the Iron Ranch Murder Club where we do jiu-jitsu, or I host jiu-jitsu and then after that I switch gears. And unless we have a podcast recording or an intentional thing scheduled. It’s time for community. We fellowship with friends, we spend time as a family, we work on improving our home. That is the emphasis of the rest of Saturday and Sunday. If I was single, I’d probably only do one day, but being and that’s just my preference but being married with children, I do the two, and those two days are heavily focused on those I’m in community with, like my bride, my children, my friends. And then I have intentional moments meals, typically throughout the week, that I do that as well, and throughout the week those are more like rest stops. And then I see the weekends as more of like the heavy recharge. Right, and that’s how I’m navigating it. But the point of it is, if we don’t, if we aren’t intentional in utilizing our PTO, I don’t think like for pay, time off or time off when you’re with an employer, you should ever have more than like a week in the bucket, unless you’re planning for a longer trip. I’m a huge fan of like three, four day weekends every month, scheduling them out, doing the time doing that and allowing for that recharge and being intentional in that, because otherwise you’re absolutely right, you can get into just this rhythm and I don’t think that there’s any avoiding the rhythm that draws you out and makes you stressed. But I think that over time we can length, like we can get better at the practice of becoming aware of the signs of fatigue proactively, and aware of these different signs, and, once we have awareness, take action towards what is healthier, more sustainable. And then the last thought on that real quick, is I don’t really believe in balance. Balance in the terms like it’s a 50-50 split, right, that’s not how I’m wired, at least. I don’t want to work half the time and play half the time, but I could be, because I want to spend my time pursuing what I think is meaningful. And I think it’s more important if I can align my work with my play, with my community, in pursuit of what I believe to be meaningful. Then they all recharge different elements of who I am. And now I’m cycling through, allowing element A to rest while B is being worked right, and then, as I’m focused on each element of self, it’s along the other two to rest, in a similar way that farmers will rest fields seasonally to allow the soil to replenish nutrients. So that was kind of like a heavy explosion of thoughts on that. But what are you thinking based on what you brought to us today?
Brandon Seifert: 35:35
I’m thinking I got one odd at my time, odd at where I’m actually feeling like I’m struggling because, like I said earlier in this, I’m a single dude. I have very few friends who I can see throughout the week. We have Different times that we do things during the the weekend. You know, I’m under it I play D&D, all that kind of fun stuff could be. We just go out and have lunch or something, but throughout the Monday through Friday, like main days of the week, I have nothing. So I have to figure out what is actually going to recharge me throughout the Monday through Friday, like those little like rest stops, like you, you know said, and I think that’s going to be part of the hard part is trying to figure out because, you know, going back to like the PTO side of things, once my current employer decided that we can start cashing out PTO, that small like hustler kind of mindset kicked in. So I’ve just been catching out my PTO. So the five years I’ve been with them I’ve had only a few days off and even then I still normally came into the weekend and worked a couple hours just to get even further ahead. So I have a lot of time auditing to do as well as I need to figure out what can I do to replenish my fuel tank, even if it means I just don’t dip below 20 percent.
Jon Mayo: 37:20
You know yeah, because your question originated with setting boundaries, and if we’re talking about boundaries in relation to energy and time expenditure, I believe that, unless you’re fortunate enough that how you make your living directly correlates with what gives you purpose, like what you feel gives you purpose and drive in meaning right Unless you have that, then you are renting your time for money, so that, when you’re not renting your time out, you have the things you need or want in the time that you retain. And in the same way of like many things you may want to set boundaries on, like any of us may want to set boundaries on, whether it be drinking or overworked, like overspending time with an employer or with an individual or an activity In any of those things, I believe we need to replace it with something better, and because it’s easier to move to something than from something right, and I do believe that there’s value for us let’s say okay, I’m going to be done at 6 pm and I have nothing to do after 6 pm, so I’m going to go sit and meditate. That’s going to be hell At some point, though, when we learn to work through the pain, the anger, the pain, the pain. When we learn to work through the pain, the anger, the emotions and then the boredom, we’ll find peace if we have the strength to meditate and then in that season and in the space that we create through that intentional act of meditating, over time we’ll also be able to identify the things that we want to fill that time with right. I would say that’s like the ideal, perfect path, probably, or like dang near towards it. I’m not sure I’d have the strength to do that, but it’s possible. And I was just listening to a conversation between Lex Friedman and oh man, forgive me, but you’ve all know a Ferrari I hope I didn’t terribly butcher that and it was a really powerful conversation and he was talking. You know, at the end he was advocating exactly that right. You can’t find peace until you learn to deal with boredom, because boredom is the prerequisite to peace. And that was a very interesting concept worth further exploration. But another thing at the end Lex asked him what’s the meaning of it all? You know, what’s the meaning of life, which is one of his go-to questions with these really interesting conversations he’s having and you’ve all put out this idea that there is none Essentially, identify where your suffering is coming from and figure out how to walk through it better, because there is no grand story, we are not playing a part in the play. And I was and that was his premise, right. Like if there is no story, it’s more logical to assume there’s not. There’s no grand story, or what have you? That’s his premise Then. Then what, right, how do you live now? And I just, I don’t know if it even matters whether I agree or not with his premise, but I was chewing on it. I was like, okay, if there is no grand story, right, then what? What am I pursuing? What am I building? What am I doing? And I realized, after reflecting on it for a bit, if there is no grand story outside of myself, then I’m going to write my own story, because that gives me greater meaning to respond to the suffering and pleasures of today, and that’s more fun. And I don’t care if it’s a fiction, because it creates the perception of a better reality. And that’s about as far as I’ve been chewing on that. But I think it’s directly related. If the goal is to shift our behaviors so that we are better charged in going through it, being charged and going through life more vibrantly, then we need to write the story for ourselves or engage in a story that we believe or want to believe in, that allows us to engage in the activities and means of being that produce that peace and value right. And in that context, I think that we can begin to fill our time such that, oh, I need to be done at five or at six or what have you, because I have this that I’m looking forward to doing, I’m committed to doing and I’m going to do. And that is now the counterbalance to why I can just stay an hour. I’ve nothing holding to here, like pulling me from here, and I think we can cultivate that, and it doesn’t even need to be communal, I think it can be with yourself. But there’s a whole bunch of fun work and play to be done in developing that.
Brandon Seifert: 41:48
Oh yeah, I definitely have a lot to think about on that, so that’ll be a fun journey to walk into the next week, going back into work to explore.
Jon Mayo: 42:02
Yeah, and keep taking time off, man, especially like you know as presumptuous as I could be to say that, but there’s something really cool about taking a day with nothing planned and then getting to wrestle with that and rest in that and figure things out. So congratulations. Is there anything else you want to explain that one? Oh, that’ll do it Awesome. Well, thank you guys, take care, thank you. Thank you for listening to another episode of Thought Expeditions on the Be Relentless podcast. If you enjoyed today’s show and found value in it, please pay it forward. You can do that by sharing it with someone who you think may find value in it as well, or leaving us a five star review wherever you’re listening to this. If you want to learn more about the work on the Be Relentless podcast, the book or CC stamina and all of the other cool things that we are doing in the ULA universe, go ahead and head on over to ulauniversecom and subscribe. Otherwise, thank you from the Be Relentless team and have a great day.
