Smile: Your Gateway to a Life of Happiness and Fulfillment with Scott White

So I don't get as much into purpose. I spin it to passion. And I do that very deliberately. So one of the things that I've done over the course of my career and I've interviewed hundreds of people at every level, junior level, right up to the C suite, right up to board members, I always ask the same question. It's amazing to me. I say, what is your passion? And there's silence. Just like that. I'd say most of the time people are silent, they're stumped. They look at me, they're like, you mean like work or home? Or I'm like, it doesn't matter. What is your passion?

Hey there friends. Welcome to Happiness Squad. This is the podcast dedicated to helping you unlock your full potential by mastering the art and science of happiness. We bring on the best leading experts on these topics to help you unlock your true potential and live with more joy, health, love and meaning in your life. Your host is no other than the star combo of Ashish Katari and Anil Ramjiani who are both on a mission to provide you with an unfair advantage to be the masters of your experience and leaders in your industry. Get ready to be moved, challenged and enlightened on this podcast. It may change your life. Thanks for being here and joining the squad.

Hey Happiness Squad. It's great to have you back with Ashish and I as we continue to discuss with our guests who are industry leaders helping industry individuals and organizations unlock their inner happiness and flourishing. You know, I think about the power of a smile. Go ahead, give it a try. Smile. How do you feel as you look at your life? Do you ever wonder to yourself, you know, life is just too short. Live it or lose it. Well then you're going to love our next guest. He's Scott White. He's the life is too short guy. Scott is the Chairman and CEO of Invesk, a public real estate investment company that specializes in healthcare and senior living property investments throughout North America. His company was the fastest growing public real estate firm in the United States for the first three years after it IPO'd in 2016. He's also the co founder and partner and strategic advisor of Spectra Student Living. Spectra is a fast growing student housing developer, owner and operator. Prior to focusing his career on real estate, he spent over 13 years on Wall street and only began his career in public accounting as an auditor for PwC. He's a fellow Ironman triathlete and you know what I love about him? He loves to smile from minute to minute from when he wakes up in the morning till when he goes to sleep. As we discussed his principles in his book, I just found the common ground and parallels between his approach and that of Ashish's in the nine practices of the Hard way for happiness to be quite compelling. They each have taken their own approach. And when you hear how each of these principles can seriously so simply come into your own life, you'll be ready to smile and share that with people that you both know and don't know. So you ready to give it a try? I hope so. And stay tuned till the end as Scott shares his tips on how you can unlock those precious minutes in your life from today. So join me and Ashish as we welcome Scott to the Happiness Squad and rewire for Happiness together.

Welcome, Scott. Welcome, Anil. It is so nice to be with you both.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Absolutely. Scott, it's great to meet you. And Ashish, as always, my friend, great to see you too. Yeah.

You know, to our listeners, you know, Scott and I share the same mission to make the world a happier place. And we actually connected. When I launched, I was in the midst of launching my book Hardwired for Happiness, and Scott was working on finalizing his manuscript. We got a chance to connect with each other and I just absolutely, you know, loved his mission. It was very similar to mine, but also very different place from which Scott had gotten to it and how he was. How he was living it. So I'm really excited to share this, this with you. And we always start, Scott, with the first question, which is, you know, what does happiness mean to you? And how has that changed from your younger years till now?

Oh, well, I mean it. I wake up with a smile, I go to sleep with a smile, and I make the most of the minutes in between is probably the easiest way to explain it. That's what makes me happy. Waking up with a smile, going to bed with a smile, making the most of every minute in between. The evolution, I'd say probably is in how I use those minutes in between. Right. So I think that as I was at different stages of my life, I think back to sort of high school, college days. How I spent those minutes to generate happiness were different than in the early days of having children. And now that I'm on the verge of becoming an empty nester and at a different point in my life and in my career, how I spend those minutes are different. But if I had to encapsulate it, wake up with a smile, go to bed with a smile. Make the most of every minute.

That's awesome. I think I can imagine laughter pursues that as well. You love to laugh, you love to make jokes, love to keep people on their toes, make people. It's a great energy to have. And you know, as I got to know you, Scott, I know that you've always been a high achiever and I say that with absolute respect from getting top grades, climbing the corporate ladder, being successful at real estate investment. You've done corporate finance, you're founder of invesc, you're all about fast growing public real estate. You know, that's just an amazing background and I'm sure some of our listeners may mirror your background and may may not, you know, just maybe help us understand, you know, what inspired your mission to make the world a happier one with a smile at a time and write your book Life is too short guy.

So I think there are two different questions in there and I'm going to break them down separately in terms of what inspired my mission to live this happy life, to make the world happier. It's been evolutionary. There wasn't a specific salient moment. One day I woke up like, this is it. This is my mission and I'm going to make the world happier. It's one of those. I have been a very happy pilot, positive, high energy person over the course of my life. I heard a lot of people say to me, you should do motivational speaking. You should. I wish I could take your energy, capture it in a bottle and share your positivity with the world. And that sort of parlayed into the book in that the book was so. I always wanted to write a book. It was something on my to do list. And you know, Anil, as we spoke about earlier, you and I have both done Ironman triathlons. We each have this list of goals, right? We have this, this dream list. And on that list was write a book. But it sat on the list for a decade, maybe longer, and I had never had an idea of who or what or when or how or, or any of that stuff. And then during COVID I started working with a new executive coach. And in our, the first session we did a number of assessments. The second session, he leads it off. I remember exactly how he said it. He's like, dude, you are like Mr. Life is too short guy. Everything is rah, rah, get it done, do it today. And kind of a light bulb went off, but not exactly. I can't take full credit for this. I was like, yeah, Kevin, that, that's probably right, but I never thought about it that way. Anyway, that night I mentioned it to my wife and I'm very grateful, fortunate and blessed. I've been with my wife now for 30 some odd years. We're high school sweethearts. And I mentioned it to her that night. And she connects the dots so she has to get full credit here. It's like, maybe that's the book you always wanted to write. And, you know, as I often do, I looked at her like, are you crazy? Like, what, what, what am I gonna do with that? The life is too short, guy. How did, how does that happen? Anyway, I percolated on it. I thought about it. This was two years ago. And I started to jot some notes and, and write a little outline. I, as we talked about them, I, I love to run. I come back from running every day. I write a few more sentences. We're not talking pages, we're talking sentences, concepts. And then it died. It died in March of 21, kind of two months in. Really didn't go anywhere. I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how I'm gonna do this. And I'm not sure anybody cares about this. Then I was lucky. And life takes twists and turns, and sometimes you just meet the right people. Early last year, I watched a webinar by Eric Kuster. And Eric is the founder of a. He's a professor at Georgetown and he teaches in the MBA program. He teaches entrepreneurship, and he created a course that teaches MBA students how to write a book. And he realized that there was an opportunity here to broaden outside of Georgetown. He created a program, which is a fabulous program to help aspiring authors figure out how to write a book. It's a class, you have editors, so on and so forth. And that was sort of the journey. And I hopped on last year and took about six months to write the manuscript. And at the end of that, Eric has a publishing company, New Degree Press, which is, I believe, one of the largest top 10 publishers in the country right now. And he read my, my manuscript, they accepted it, they, they printed it. And here we are now in the middle of 2023, I have a published book and I'm having the time of my life.

So that's an amazing, amazing story, Scott. So you say, you know, I was always happy. I always lived moment to moment, right? Oftentimes that is one of the key practices that we often talk about, mindfulness and living moment to moment, because it is in those moments. We can find joy in those moments. Life is just the way it is, right? It's emerging. Letting life emerge just the way it is. Rather than worrying about the past or worrying about the future, we can just take the life just where it is right now. Now, I want to ask you, you've been on an amazing tour, you know, media tour as part of your book launch. You've talked to a lot of podcasts. I'm sure you get asked this question a lot, and you meet a lot of people. Your life and the way you've lived is very different than most other people think about, right? Being happy. They do so much time pursuing happiness. There's a lot of these myths out there about happiness. What are, from your point of view, the top three myths that you would like to bust, that you usually bust for listeners or who are trying to become the life is too short guy.

All right, so the easiest, most important one is that's you. So you live a special life, a privileged life. Fill in the blank. You know, you're educated, affluent, whatever the. And by the way, this isn't just me. This is, you know, someone looking to. That's you. That's not me. And the most important myth I want to bust is this is everybody. One of my key, key, key messages that I try to drive home is, everyone can live a happier life. Everyone can be this life is too short guy. And I emphasize that regardless of where you're coming from, it's a relative assessment, not necessarily an absolute assessment. You know, if today is the worst day, you're dealing with everything that is horrible, what small things can you do to live a happier life? So I would say broadly defined, the biggest myth is this works for you, or this works for privileged people, or this works for educated people. Whatever the case may be, this works for everybody. I would say the second one, which is somewhat tied, is that you know, so much of the happiness is outside your control. So a lot of people believe that the circumstances around them to find their happiness, that that new car, that new house, new job, that big pay raise, or maybe go the other end of the spectrum, that the divorce, the death, the illness, that, you know, that's what drive my happiness. That is not true. That is absolutely not true. It's been empirically proven that only about 10% of your happiness is driven by your circumstances. Now, to a certain degree, about half your happiness is in part based on your genetic makeup, but 40%, think about how powerful that is. 40% of your happiness is entirely within your control. So it's not, it's not someone else's problem. It's not the world's problem. It's your opportunity. So I'd say that's probably the second one. The third myth I would bust is probably. I don't know if I define it as a myth, more as an opportunity. In terms of where you are in your life cycle, I think people believe that, that, you know, I, I'm kind of set in my ways. I'm midlife, I'm later life. You know, this is how I've always been doing it. This is, I, I've always been a half empty sort of person. And the reality is, and, and this sort of. And I'm somewhat reluctant, Ashish, in that it's kind of like the three of them blend together, but at each stage of life, each day, each day. So forget about tens, twenties, thirties, forties, April versus May versus June are opportunities to reassess, to transform, to live a better life. Today is the day.

Yeah, I love those. You know, on the breakup of the happiness, you know, the percentages, you refer to Sonia lyubomirsky's work, right? 40, you know, 50% genetic, 10% circumstantial, and about 40% is really based on the choices that we actually make. And, you know, that's what we try and cover in the hardwired for happiness course. And the practices, right, the nine practices, we have quite a bit of overlap there, but I love that. Right. And I also love this notion of, you know, it's interesting, you know, there's this research that was done where, you know, people were actually asked, you know, think about where you were in your 20s and where you are now. And it actually didn't matter whether they were 30 or 40 or 50. The answer was always the same. They said, how much have you changed? And most people said, oh my God, a lot. Right. And then they said, okay, how much do you expect to change over the next 10, 20, or 30 years? Oh, not much. Not much. We're not changing. Right. So there's also this notion of there's so many people who still keep chasing. There's this one answer. Rather than the fact that we continuously keep learning, listening and evolving into what life is presenting to us, the opportunities that are out there, right. That we could live into and that we should listen to, that will allow us to be happy, right? That will allow, literally allow ourselves and I use that word, I repeat that for our listeners. Allow yourself to be happy. One of the top regrets, Scott, you talk about five regrets. Of the Dying. You know, that book that really, I loved it. And one of the top regrets was I wish I had let myself be happier.

Do you know, just to build on that. And Scott, this is going to lead me to my next question for you. I've had conversations with people as you might know or get to know. I'm a pretty positive guy as well. I love laughter, I love bringing energy into a room. I sometimes feel like I have more than just 40% of my disposal. And I've had some friends say, well, hey, your background, you've got a great setup, you're an educated guy, you've studied, you're in good shape, you're in good health. You don't have the problems I have. You don't know what I'm going through. So for you to be happy. And so I kind of want to, let's say, hey, we're three guys, we both are educated. We're all three doing well. Maybe it's easier for us to be happier than others or to smile every day than others. Which leads me to my next question is you have to bust those myths. As you just answered for Ashish. What would you say are the principles that you therefore have established for your approach to really reach those people? To say, hey, actually, your background, your situation doesn't really make a difference whether you smile or not. Like, I love one of them. One of your principles in your book is attitude is everything. I'd like to dig into that one first. Maybe can you share a little bit more about your key principles and maybe tell us a bit more about what, why attitude is everything and why it is in their control and they are able to find the right way and the right opportunity to smile.

So the book does talk about 10 principles. And one of the important elements of the principles and the book and the tools is it's meant to be very practical, very approachable, very simple. I deliberately went out of my way. You know, I know the work Ashish has done, and he's brilliant. I mean, I'd say that with or without you. Yours is considerably more intellectually grounded, yours is considerably more academic. And I say that out of respect, not out of disrespect. Mine wasn't done that way. Mine was very much, you man on the street, you, woman in Africa, you, child in Asia, can do these simple things. And don't worry about all the science and the academics. Again, if you want to learn about that, then talk to Sheesh because he's brilliant. I'm not that smart. For me this is kind of day to day blocking tackling. So Here are your 10 principles. Or, or at least I'll go through a few of them. One of them, as you said, is attitude is everything. The power of positivity. We could circle back. I'll just list a couple of them. A second one is little things make a big difference. Little things make a big difference. And here I talk about the power of smiling, right? How often do we forget to proactively smile? Get in your car and smile. Get in your shower and smile. Wake up in the morning and smile. Get to the office and smile. When you're making dinner, smile. Like, it's so easy. When I say that to people, they look at me and then they usually smile, by the way. And, and I'm like, doesn't it feel better? How often are you sitting there, you're typing at your computer, you're listening to music and you're just like, right? So that's an easy concept. Also within, little things make a big difference, right? So I'm in the same principle. I tell people, sometimes we need reminders. What about that, that corny, hokey kind of mug or shirt or, or poster or picture or whatever it is we go through life and we hop on the treadmill and we forget. We forget positivity matters. We forget to smile. We forget, today's the best day of my life. Throw those reminders around you. Simple ideas, right? So, so that person who's in the worst possible day of their life, they're dealing with the worst things can take one second and smile one second and smile one second and look at that reminder and boom. Little things make a big difference. Is. Is one of the principles, Another principle is minutes matter. So I create this whole sort of equation, or I wouldn't even say equation. I go through some quick math and the math is, is basically this. I say, when you're born, you have about 80 years to live. And plus or minus. Again, this varies. But keeping the math simple, 80 years gives you 42 million minutes. I'm guessing that most of your listeners right now are not newborns and, and probably will just draw a line to say, and say plus or minus. They're halfway. They're midlife. Midlife. You got 21 million minutes left. With 21 million minutes left, you're going to sleep about a third of them. Now you're down to 14 million minutes. Invariably there are going to be setbacks, there's going to be health issues, especially later on in life, 14 becomes 12. Well, did. Now, when you wake up tomorrow, realize you have 12 million minutes left. I'm not. Not giving you a prescription to how you use your minutes. What I'm encouraging you to do is realize that minutes are finite, that minutes are disappearing. I give people the mental image of a barrel. I say, think of a barrel. For me, it's a wine barrel. You could choose any barrel you want, and in it or your remaining minutes. The beauty is you don't know how many minutes are in there. And what I caution you about is the leaking barrel, right? Because we all sort of get into the flow, get into whatever we're doing. We look back at the end of the day, the week, the month, the year, and they're like, I don't know what I did. My God, I'm chasing this. I'm crossing this off my list. I'm running around, I'm not sure where I'm going. So I tell people, stop, pause, breathe. Think about how you use your minutes. I don't have the prescription for. Here's how an ill is going to use his minutes wisely. You have to figure that out. What I'm telling people to do is think about it in a different way, of minutes are finite. How am I using them? Am I like. I actually visualize reaching in the barrel, grabbing out a gold coin. Every time I do something, that gold coin is a minute, and I can't put the coin back in. I don't know how many coins are left. Use them wisely. There are a couple of the principles. I'm happy to keep going through more of them, but I'll pause there and see if you want to drill in any of those or go on to some others.

Are you enjoying the show so far? Let me ask you a few questions before going back. Have you ever wondered why so many of us struggle with stress, anxiety, and burnout and feel stuck in life? Heck, maybe you're going through this right now. Well, the reason for this lies in the evolutionary biology of our brains, which are hardwired for fear. It's part of the reason why our team named this podcast Happiness Squad. It serves as a reminder that happiness is what really matters and that we are in this together. And that is why we are so excited to share with you a resource to help you on your journey. One of our hosts, Ashish Guattari, launched a book, Hardwired for Happiness, and it is a 1Amazon Best Seller. When you get access to this book, you will discover nine secular practices that can change your life and are backed by scientific evidence from Psychology and neuroscience. Learn how you can integrate hardwired for happiness practices in every part of your life to unlock your best self regardless of how busy you are. Shift from knowing to doing to being with a range of journaling, meditation and group coaching exercises and so much more. Go to www.happinesssquad.combook to get access Right now we also have bonuses on the page that you don't want to miss. Once again, www.happinessquad.com book and now back to the show.

I have loved every one of your principles, Scott, and how easy and accessible. And you know, your language you use is beautiful. Right. I mean it's anybody can read it to your point. And we took two very different approaches towards our book. Right. Mine is very much science and research based, you know, as well as draws a lot on spirituality. But a big part of it was like here's the reason why these work. So actually let's include it and it's not that hard. But here's the reason there's a lot of people who go like yeah, but I don't believe it. Why will that make a difference? And I love it because yours is super easy, accessible. You can read it quickly and make it happen. Talk to me a little bit about the one principle. We'll dig into a couple of them here together. But one of your principles was around funny things are everywhere and the power of humor and smiling so illat, you know, highlight that including a story to bring this to life.

Yep. So I'm happy to do that. As you said, funny things are everywhere and I encourage people to take themselves, take the world less seriously. We all have different senses of humor. However, there's a common language of attempting to laugh to be less serious. And and here I brought in some examples and principles from the work world. This is not a business book, but there are lots of situations I've been in through over the course of my career that have been tense situations, boardroom discussions, negotiations where when, when people are getting all agitated and worked up, I will try to drop a joke in. I will try to to even in the what I tell people is you can find humor absolutely anywhere. And the story I tell to illustrate this is the probably the hardest moment of my life was one of the hardest moments of my life was the death of my father. My father passed away about 17 years ago and it was, it was a turning point in my life. It was an instrumental moment in my life. And you know, I was at the funeral and my father is in the casket and I can't begin to illustrate what that looks like and what it's like as a human to see your father in a casket. It's the caskets open. It's just me and my brother are meeting immediate family, and everyone else is out in the hall. Everyone else is, you know, waiting to come in. And as I'm standing there looking down at my dad, a horrible worst moment of my life, my phone rings, right? So my phone rings, and most people would scramble like, I can't believe my phone just rang. I, I'm embarrassed. I, I Or people will think, I can't believe he didn't think to shut it off at such a, an awful time. Instead, I reached in my pocket, I grabbed out the phone, I put it to my ear. I answered it. Actually. Actually, you know what? I'm sorry, I didn't answer it. I held it to my ear, I looked down, and I'm like, dad, how are you? What are you up to these days? And the room looked at me for a second. There was that gasp of, he just did what? And then everyone started laughing. My point is, no matter where you are in your life, the worst moment, there's a way to spin a positive. There's a way to laugh. There's a way to take the situation and yourself less serious. And that's how you find that greater level of happiness. Like we talked about before, I think it was Anil's question in terms of, you know, maybe someone's not in the same place you are. Well, I was at a very low place at my father's funeral, let me tell you. And I found a way to smile, to laugh, and to make it a better day. Yeah.

When we lose a loved one. I mean, such a beautiful story, Scott, right? When we lose a loved one, I think it really shakes us to the core. But even in those moments, what we choose to give attention to, because life is not just about one event, right? Life has so many other things happening. And when we can choose, and it's not about numbing or putting down the loss, but it is just bringing to our front all of the other positive things that are happening. So we can put it, we can hold it with more ease, right? And I loved it. Oh, my God. Like, I can just imagine half the people in the room were going, like, what? His dad is calling. Wait, like what? Like complete disorientation, right? So talk about, you know, wow.

Wow.

I love it. Thank you for sharing that.

I mean, if I were in your shoes there, Scott, I'd just look up to Everyone and go, what? Life's short, man. You know, and then, you know, obviously, the book.

Hey, there we go.

You knew it was going to happen. I mean, that expression, I just want you to now is, I'm now going to associate with you. You know, another principle that stood out to me is, learn, learn, learn. Talk to us about that one, my friend.

Yeah, so, yeah, the. The overarching principle of the book is how to make every day the best day ever. How to live a happier life. And one of the principles that. That I drove home is every day is an opportunity to learn something new. Get out of your comfort zone, do something different. Do something to motivate, inspire, to stimulate yourself. And it doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be formal. I'm not suggesting everyone goes back and earns a PhD. I'm not suggesting everyone goes back and does a formal class. It could be something goofy. It could be learning a new instrument. It could be learning a hobby, a sport. It could very well just be reading the newspaper. How often do people not read the newspaper? Now, look, some people would say that that may make you less happy. I just think intellectual stimulation is an important element of continuing to find happiness and gratefulness. And I tell a story in the book about. Which is true a couple years ago, probably a recent story two or three years ago. I. So I know, Anil, we have a little bit of a common interest in what you call football and I call soccer. I love soccer.

I love the F word versus the S word.

So I was very fortunate. One of the most fun things I've done in my life was coach both of my daughters when they played soccer. They're now in their late teens, early 20s, have no interest. So that was the end of that career. I played for a while, but I also watched my contemporaries getting really hurt. So I decided a couple years ago, you know, what, the gig's up. So about two years ago, I think it was during COVID or later stage of COVID I decided that I would go become a youth soccer referee. Talk about a goofy, ridiculous. I had no ties to youth soccer. I. I'm working full time. I. I'm, you know, run a public company. I do a couple other things, like, I'm gonna go learn to become a soccer referee. And I remember, and you could just imagine this image of I drove an hour out to a. I call it a hotel, but it was a borderline roach motel in the middle of absolutely nowhere, in a conference room with no windows, in a room full of pretty much teenagers, by the way. And I walk in and the guy teaching tells everyone, shut off your phones. You'll get two breaks. And if you're late from the break, you can call your parents to come pick you up. I'm looking around like, you know, I'm not that important, but I'm the CEO of a public company. I'm calling my parents if I come back in a minute late. Something is strange here. Anyway, the point that I'm trying to make is that I find ways to constantly learn, to educate, to try new things. I became a soccer referee and I can't say I do it very often, but occasionally I will ref a youth soccer match.

Yeah, you know, this notion of learning is, is one of the principles I talk about on the well being side in my model, you know, Scott, because it's really unfortunate that, you know, all of our initial years, right, all the time, from the moment we are born till we go to college, we do think about them as learning and we invest heavily in learning. And then very soon after that, you know, people stop learning. Maybe if you go get a master's or a PhD, you learn again, but again, we get into operating more out of expertise, right? We stop learning. And, you know, if you look at the highest achievers, one of the biggest things that drives them, not just highest achievers, but also those who actually continue to have, you know, higher cognitive abilities later in their life, who suffer less from Alzheimer's and dementia and many of the kind of ailments, right. That affect us in old age. One of the big differences research is really clear on this is those who continue to invest in learning little things. It doesn't matter what it is, you can learn a language, you can learn how to dance, you can learn a musical instrument. I mean, heck, you can learn how to become a soccer referee or you can learn to become, you know, anything you want to do. As long as you are learning something, you are engaging your brain to constantly be generating brain cells. Otherwise that part, you know, we start to kind of just atrophy. So I think, I love, that's the reason I really, really love, love that principle. Another one of my favorite ones of yours is can't make it alone.

I just on that I want to take a step back though, on learn, learn, learn. Because I had a conversation today with a colleague who unfortunately was not successful, you know, applying for a role and told her, hey, look, you've got to take a step back, reflect, you know, it was, it was hard. She was, she was actually in a tough spot. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is I currently I'm trying to learn new things and I sometimes feel a bit uneasy. I feel like I lack confidence. I feel like, oh, you know, if I'm not able to do it well, I'm able to do good. You know, I'm going to let myself down. Inner critic steps in I just want to just ask a brief question to you scholar and you asish like this is a beautiful concept of hey, just be open to learning and just enjoy it. How do you remind people just to take a step back and enjoy it and not take it too seriously?

So I'd say a few things. One, it comes and here is one of the Again, my book is not very academically oriented, but here is one of the places where I do refer to some other academic work and I refer to the work of Carol Dweck. And I encourage people to think about their mindset, to think about. I want to learn to first of all, I could better myself by learning. Second, failure is part of the process. Right. Not being good at this is how you learn. Third, everything is an opportunity to learn from as opposed to that fixed mindset of I already know it. I there's no way I can learn more. Investing time and resources isn't going to make me better. So it's sort of that dichotomy of mindsets. And by the way, we have both at various times in our life and the point that I try to make in the book is to push people closer to making every day and every chance a an opportunity for a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset.

Yeah. And anil, I'll just add right to that, like you asked this question. I think it's by the way true at the individual level, it's true at the organizational level. Right. It's learning organizations, it's organizations that allow people to continuously learn are the ones that succeed. I mean, look, the world around us is changing so rapidly. Unless we really engage in continuous learning, I think we are extinct before the next day comes around. Really? I mean that extreme? You know, I think about all the brand agencies, the social marketing agencies, ChatGPT got made public and the ability of that thing, you know, been playing around with it to create content at scale like put will put 80% of people out of business unless they learn how to integrate and kind of transform. Right. Integrate and then we can be better. It's like the Iron man suit. So learning is such a, such an important element. And I Think the other thing that a lot of people don't want to learn is because there's a fundamental mindset shift that they don't do before they engage in learning, which is leaving the expert mindset out and becoming a beginner again. Because, you know, when we begin, we give ourselves permission to fail. We commit to. It is going to be hard to do something differently. We are going to fail. Right. It is going to feel uncomfortable because you're learning something new, but if we stick with, will become easier. So I think that mindset shift is a really important one at the individual level. Right. And at the organizational level, the mindset shift of psychological safety and truly allowing people the ability to fail. It's okay, right? If we tell people, I want you to learn, but I don't want you to fail, nobody's going to be learning because failure is part of learning. Right?

Agreed. Agreed.

So, Scott, talk to us a little bit about the other principle that I really, really love, which is can't make it alone.

I love this one. Look, I love them all. I spend a lot of time on this one and I would say this one has transformed my own thinking because it's something that I practiced but didn't necessarily appreciate and absorb. So I have throughout my life been a connector, a relationship builder, and not like a networker for the sake of. How does this help me? Like, I'm the guy that organizes the annual golf trip every year. I've been doing it 22 years. I'm the guy that I organized my high school reunion now four or five times. I'm the guy that organizes the couples vacation that we do every year. Like, that's my bread and butter. That's what I love, love to do. I'm passionate about it and what I learned throughout the writing journey. And again, I, I said my book is not very academic. I did refer to some academic work here too, that I just absolutely love. Is, is the infamous Harvard study that I think everyone is talking about now. When, when I wrote the book, and I suspect when you wrote your book, it wasn't actually as, as popular, but since they released the, the most recent book, everyone's talking about now, but, but the Harvard study, which again, I'll just go over quickly because it seems to be in popular press all the time right now, is A, an 80 year longitudinal study that's been ongoing for, you know, where the original cohort, I think of 256 Harvard sophomores in the late 1930s. And then later in the 1940s, they added a group of 450 some odd inner city Boston youth with very different backgrounds studied them, studied their children, studied their grandchildren, studied them physically, emotionally, everything, right? Data beyond belief, rooms full of data, conclusions, books. Everyone's got sort of a data set from it in one sentence. Relationships matter more than anything. Period. Full stop. When you look at the correlation of happiness, of health related to cholesterol, related to weight, related to alcoholism, related to whatever, you go through the litany of things. Relationships matter more than anything. That my favorite takeaway from the whole study that I talk about constantly, especially for a guy that is months away from hitting the half century mark. Those at age 50 that self identified as having the strongest social networks at age 80 were the happiest, physically healthiest and psychologically and mentally healthiest. That's pretty powerful stuff. I love to talk about that now and I encourage people, have a proactive social relationship plan. Build your relationships, invest in your relationships. Reach out to people you haven't talked to in 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Look, I think that's sort of how we came together.

Sheesh.

I don't remember exactly, but you reached to me, I reached out to you. We've kept in touch. I've gotten to know each other over the last few months. I've tried to support you on your book. You've been very supportive of me on my book. I'm now on your podcast. I hope I can do something for you. We'll keep in touch. Today I met a Nil. I love that he's a triathlete. I love that he's in the football world. I guarantee I'll keep in touch with him. This is the power of that whole sort of can't make it alone. Build a network, invest in a network. We think a lot about physical health. We think a lot about exercising, about nutrition. I don't think we think enough about social health, about building and maintaining relationships.

Do you know what you say, Scott, just totally resonates, right? I've heard the expression, I swear by it. Your net work is your net worth. And something that Ashish and I and Lizzie and this team and Happiness Squad we're building is a Happiness Squad community. And, you know, it's a place for people to come. It's a safe space. We want to open it up to folks who are looking for support, looking to unlock their own inner happiness, their own flourishing. And what you're saying is exactly that. Like, if you've got a common ground that you want to share with people and you don't know where to find it. That's where it can be. And that you, you, you know something that Ashish told me about when I first met him? He's like, anil, did you know that in the US six out of ten people have claimed that they're lonely? And I took a step back and I was like, come on, that's not possible. You're telling me if I'm in a room with 10 people, six of them are lonely? He's like, that's exactly right. And so he's like, that's the journey we're on, man. We're building a community to bring these people together so you don't have to feel lonely. And now imagine you go into that same room a month later and you go, how many of you feel lonely? I ideally hope that zero raised their hand. So that's the goal. That's the journey we're on. And Scott, so I totally love what you're saying, and I'm fired up with you. I, I want to take it back to your background. And what I love about it is you've worked on Wall Street. You know how intense it can be. I work in corporate. Ashish has worked in consulting. People are on that professional treadmill, right? And until they go out and read your book, which I hope they do, I just want to ask you, how do you help those individuals that are on that treadmill, that hamster wheel, that. To realize that life, hey, is too short, guy. You know, and that they are able to design the life they love rather than wait and just think, hey, what I have, what's designed for me is fine. How do you help them? How do you wake them up?

So I think a lot of the principles apply here, and I'll just go over them very briefly, but we, we talk very briefly at the beginning. Attitude is everything. The power of positivity. So to a certain degree, being on that professional treadmill isn't so bad, right? If you told me I work 90 hours a week, I'm not going to draw a conclusion. Wow, rough life. Because maybe those 90 hours are the best thing in your life. You love what you're doing. If you're not, then you need to reflect or you need to. You, you either change what you're doing or change your attitude about how you're approaching that job. I tell people to think about, so, so that's attitudes, everything. The power, positivity we already talked about. Funny things are everywhere. Do you go into that job sort of miserable down. I'm doing this for whole a Paycheck, well, you know, that's your choice, but I think it's, it's not necessarily the best choice. Or am I having fun? Am I learning? Am I laughing? Am I, am I embracing my peers? Boom. I just moved on to the third one. You can't make it alone. Do you love the people you work with? Do you surround yourself with people that you trust? Do you, you know, there have been numerous studies that I know Ashish is familiar with more than I am. About the most successful people and the most successful organizations have best friends at work, have strong peer networks, works at work. So there's another one we talked before about. Minutes matter. So what I. The first way I answered your question, Anil, was if you choose to work 90 hours and that's making you happy, that's fine. What I ask people to say is, how are you using your minutes? Are you, you know, I got to work 90 hours this week and it kind of sucks and I miss my family and I'm, I'm out of shape and I'm not enjoying life. Well, then it's time to self reflect. But you know, maybe if I really love it, but I want to invest some time. My family, my exercise. I cut my 90 back to 80 or 70 or 60 or whatever the case may be. So I don't think drawing a judgment that you work a lot is a bad thing. I think using some of these principles, and I can go through the others too and apply them to figure out, is this my best life? Am I making the most of my minutes? Am I enjoying it? If not, let's change.

I think, Scott, and you didn't mention this one, but you and I are quite synced up on this, which is, I think the biggest one for me is know your why and know where you're going. Right? The 90 hours ain't so bad if it is in service of your bigger why and it's connected to it. If it is just because you are doing it because that's the only way and you don't want to fall off. And what will life be? Are you leading from purpose? Are you leading from fear? That is the difference between those who truly love their life and are successful or are successful and hate their life, or are neither successful and hate their life. Right? I mean you can go through all of those, all of those elements, but there is only one that actually we can be successful all the time. People say, yeah, but like work life balance, I'm like, if you're looking for work life balance, your work probably doesn't have as much meaning for you. And somebody said, wait a second, what do you mean? I said, it's just. I talk about work, life, integration. They're like, yeah, but there should be a balance. There should not be. Work is everywhere. I said, let me ask you. Your life has time you spend with your spouse, time you spend with your kids, things you do for fun, time you do with friends. There's so many things. Do you also divide up every one of them and think about how you're balancing every day, every moment? No. Why? Because you love all of them. So why are you trying to balance work in life? Maybe because you don't do what you love or you haven't looked at I love your thing. Attitude is everything, right? How can you find what you love and integrate more of what you love into what you do?

Which is actually another principle. I love that you led me there because one of the other principles I talk about is passion. So I don't get as much into purpose. I spin it to passion. And I do that very deliberately. So one of the things that I've done over the course of my career, and I've interviewed hundreds of people at every level, junior leveled, right up to the C suite, right up to board members, I always ask the same question. It's amazing to me. I say, what is your passion? And there's silence. Just like that. I'd say most of the time, people are silent. They're stumped. They look at me, they're like, you mean like work or homework? I'm like, it doesn't matter. What is your passion? When you hear that, you should be able to hit it hard, hit it fast. There's no second question. There's no second thought. By the way, your passions will change. You don't have a passion for life. You may have a passion for a week, a month, a year, whatever it is. Find what gets you motivated, excited, gets the juices flowing. Maybe it's work, maybe it's home, maybe it's family, maybe it's religion, maybe it's exercise. You figure that out. But have a passion. Make. Use those minutes again, weaving the themes together. Use those minutes that matter. Focus on that passion, whatever it is. We all need passions.

Thank you, Scott. Love it. Passion is really absolutely right. It's a key ingredient behind the purpose work, behind Icky guy.

Yeah.

I mean, we walk through life as zombies, so many of us, right? Just doing, but not doing what we love. So connecting with what we love, getting curious about what we love, and also not taking it as a fixed thing, that. That is going to not change. Right. That does change over time. So I love it. I'm just keeping a clock on the time. Anil, I'll pass it back to you for kind of bringing us home.

Sure, no.

No worries.

And I just want to add to that briefly. You know, Ashish, when I first met him, Scott, this guy would work nonstop, right. Monday through Friday. And I'm like, oh, it's the weekend. He messaged me and I'm like, dude, it's the weekend. I'm like, don't you want to take a break from work? He's like, no, I'm doing my life's work. You know, this is not my job. This is not my career. This is my calling. And I think, you know, that's the next level for me. Right. So you're hitting that. He's hitting that. I'm looking to hit that. I think that's just. That's beautiful. So I. I love how you came back to us on that. So, you know, as Ashish mentioned, just to kind of bring us to a close, one thing we love to do is share with our listeners. From your perspective, are there one, two, maybe three tips that you can leave us with that they can start practicing now so that they can unlock their own flourishing, their own smiles from today?

Sure. Let's make them really simple. So, so easy things that people could take away. The first one is smile more. Right. We talked about that. Find ways to smile. The second one, I love to share with people, and it's amazing to me, when they hear it, they sort of like, yeah, I guess that makes sense. And then the number of people that come back to me, I have heard from at least 50 people that have come back to me over the last couple of months and said, I do this and I love it. Here we go. So, Anil, what was your first thought when you woke up this morning?

I love that sunrise.

Okay, so that's great. I'm very proud and excited that you knew that. I will tell you, If I asked 10 people, at most three or four can answer that. I'd say 50 to 60% of people put on. And I use this image. I say they reach over to their nightstand and they put on what I call the blurry glasses. They say, it's Thursday. And, you know, I don't remember what I. What my first thought was. Okay, so you're the blurry glasses group then. Unfortunately, there's probably a few, two or three that are. It's dark, it's cold. I'm miserable. I don't feel like getting up. I got a long day. It's Monday. Oh, my God, it's Monday. I hate Mondays. Okay, so there are your muddy glasses. What I ask people to do is think about those shiny glasses. Do exactly what Anil just did, because I will tell you God's honest truth. When I woke up this morning, I was like, wow, the sun is shining. It is spring. I could hear the birds chirping. I have a wonderful day ahead of me. I have an opportunity to be on this show, which I'm very grateful for. I'm truly grateful for. I'm so happy that our paths have crossed and we have a similar mission. I'm grateful that my daughter is in the room next to me because she's going to college soon. So I'm taking advantage of my final kind of weeks with her. And the love of my life is in the bed next to me. Swear to you, that's the first 10 seconds. My glasses are really shiny and bright. So for your listeners, when you wake up tomorrow, think about proactively. As you open your eyes, you're going to hear this. Wait a sec. I heard this crazy guy talking yesterday about some kind of glasses. Oh, I know what it is. Think about a couple of positive thoughts to start your day. Now, look, the day takes twists and turns. There's no guarantees, but as Henry Ford said, if you think you can or you think you can't, you're probably right. Why not set your path and course for the day immediately when you wake up?

That was beautiful. You know, one of the core practices we talk about, Scott, is set your intention. How you want to be today. Right? How you want to be today. And that is at the heart of it. I love it. Right. Wake up. And in fact, it ties also to this amazing work done by BJ Fogg for Tiny Habits is one of the most powerful habits he talks about is the Maui Habit. And I would say, you know, even if you don't wake up, you might go, like, I don't know what thing. There's Scott, Nell and Ashish are on. I don't wake up with those shiny glasses. I can't even find it. I'm like, just pretend. Get out of your bed, put your hands up and say, today will be a great day. And just practice that and see what shifts.

It's perfect. I love it.

Thank you for joining us, Scott, and sharing all these insights with our listeners and with each other. It's been such a joy to connect with you have you on the show, but really just have you be a part of my life over over the last year and for many more years to come.

It's been wonderful. I really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun.

Absolutely. Scott, thank you so much. It's a pleasure and I look forward to training with you, mate. We're going full distance next time, mate. Full Ironman.

There you go.

Have a great one.

Cheers. Bye.

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