The Economy of the Intangible World: Paul Skidmore

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today is Paul Skidmore of Parabolos. Is it just Parabolos or Parabolos Studios?

Parabolos.

Okay, very good. Welcome to the show, Paul.

Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

So, if you wouldn't mind giving the audience a rundown on who you are and what you do.

Well, I'm an author and filmmaker in Tennessee, and I went to film school in North Carolina, graduated 2002. And while a lot of my friends were planning on moving out to Los Angeles, I knew really before I even went to film school that what I wanted to do was to sort of create my own thing. I knew that the stories that I wanted to tell, I wanted to be able to tell in a certain way and not feel a lot of pressure from from the people that had the money, you know, that were, that were paying for it. So it belongs to them when they have the money, you know. And so I thought, okay, especially after my experience in film school, I realized it's going to be hard no matter what. So I can go to Los Angeles and work my way up and do that hard way. And then eventually, by the time I'm, you know, middle-aged, probably get a chance to finally, you know, direct or produce and direct something that I've written or a story that I want to tell. And at that point, I'll be beholden to, you know, all the people that have helped me get there and the people that are putting up the money and that sort of thing. And that might be good and it might be fine, or they just— there's a lot of chance for a lot of other voices to be more powerful than mine, even on my— what I would consider to be my own project. So I thought, well, the other way is to go sort of the independent route and to sort of stay close to home and build something myself. And that will be hard too, in a lot of different ways.

Yes.

But I figured by the time I get to that same age, what I will have built and, you know, will be friends and relationships and sort of built up a credit with people by doing smaller things, being responsible with smaller things so that I could then be responsible with something something larger. And then at this point in my life, when I would venture out to produce and direct something of my own, it would be something that ultimately would, would kind of belong to me. Right. And so that's where I'm finding myself now. I'm editing my first feature film, which is from a short story that I wrote and self-published. And I've got 3 short stories and a novel. They're all, they're all self-published. And the film. I adapted it myself. I directed it, I produced it, I shot it, I edited it, I did the sound design and certainly didn't do it in a vacuum. You know, my cast was incredible. My friend Noah stood by me every step of the way. Could not have done it without him. He's been a tremendous help. And the way in which he helped me was just really humble and loyal. And I'm just sort of forever in his debt for anything that he needs. My composer has done work that I can't do, you know, and has brought a quality to the film that just enriches it beyond belief. It's, it's so good. And there were other people that served on the, on the crew and that sort of thing. It was a really small production, but it wasn't just me, you know. But at the same time, at the end, I've done pretty much all the major roles. I've done the major storytelling. I've done the major sort of business end producing of this piece. And now we're coming into that final level now where I'm looking at distribution and exhibition and marketing and, and really having to rethink that as well, because I don't, I don't have the reach that, you know, Sony has or Warner Brothers or Disney, you know. And so just like I've done everything else differently my whole life by sort of doing things on my own, distribution is, is going to be something that looks a little different also. Still figuring out exactly what that looks like. But I've recently had some good ideas that make me feel really hopeful about, about this when it's done. And so I have the joy of after goodness, like, you know, 20 years of wondering, did I make the right decision, you know, to finally be close to putting this out there for other people to see. But it comes with, as you note on your show, it comes with, you know, sometimes a solitude and kind of feeling like you're out on an island, an island of your own creation, maybe.

Right.

Right. And, and so I sometimes live in the, live in the tension between those two things of, hey, I want to do this myself. But I don't want to do this myself, you know, and trying to sort of figure out when to trust myself and when to bet on myself and when to forge ahead with ideas that seem crazy and when to listen to other people and when to let other people step in and help and when to outsource things and when to just let somebody else do it. You know, that's something that you know, I deal with all the time. But, you know, like I said, the, the plan that I had even when I graduated film school in 2002, okay, this was at a time when they were just starting to use digital cameras for movies like the Star Wars sequels at the time, you know, or the prequels. And the cameras were not very good. And but certainly by today's standards, and they were made by Panavision. You couldn't even buy them. You had to rent them. If you bought the Sony equivalent, you're talking 100 grand plus. Just for the camera, forgetting you have all the lenses are $25,000 apiece or whatever, you know. So for, you know, a 21-year-old kid in 2002 to say, I'm going to venture out and do this all on my own, but I'm going to still make something that is the quality of what you see in a cinema actually was really kind of a stupid idea, you know, in the context. But somehow I just knew that this is something that I could do. And now you look at it today and it's everything is moving towards kind of a decentralized business model. And now because of technology, not only can I have cinema quality stuff for just a few thousand dollars in my hand without having to rent anything, but I can connect directly with my, with my audience, either through podcasts like this or with the actual product by just selling directly, directly to, to my customers with very little very little friction in between and almost no gatekeepers.

Right. So you said the word island and you used the word lonely. I think that's kind of a universal entrepreneurial feeling at some point or multiple points in the journey. But I like what you said about like it's of your own making. Like, we're choosing to be there. We're choosing to be out in front, seeing what is possible, seeing what other people can't see or don't see. And, you know, at the same time, handling reality, you know, I— there's a a fine line between being a visionary and being delusional. I know I've crossed that line multiple times.

It's an interesting dance.

It is. So how do you deal with that? Do you have some trigger or red flag or litmus test of like, I'm doing the right thing, going in the right direction, you know, to keep you from being delusional, I guess would be the best way to phrase that.

Yeah, that's a great question. And I don't know that I'm going to have a super strong answer for it, but I'll tell you what I've got. There's two things. One is to make sure my feet are on the ground in the other areas of my life. Mm-hmm. And so I feel like I can't get too off in, you know, Dululu land if most of the rest of my life kind of has feet on the ground. And so while I may feel unmentored or alone or out front or whatever with some of the specific things that I'm doing related to my, my films and the goals that I want to achieve there, it's a lot of the rest of my life that I can easily share with, with a lot of people, even just general social life. And I do have friends that are at least creative and understand what I'm doing. You know, this is one reason I really love working with Noah on a much smaller scale. We'll do freelance stuff together and I will take him along even when I don't really need him, because I will get so focused on sort of the big picture of things that he will see the real small stuff that I overlooked and go, can't you just do this? Yes, of course I can just do that. Thank you. You just saved me $2,000.

Yeah.

With this $35 solution. And so just, just having someone like that around to question things helps a lot. Something a friend told me a long time ago, and he was, he was somebody who was running a school that I was teaching at. It was a very experimental style school and is still successful today, as far as I'm aware. And so he would often be sort of out front with some of the things that he was attempting with the school and the music projects and things that they were doing. And one thing that he told me was, whenever someone gives me criticism, the first thing that I do is listen. It doesn't mean that they're right. And it doesn't mean that I have to appreciate the tone in which it is offered. You know, but something in there is probably true, or else this conflict wouldn't be arising. It may not be true in the way that they word it. It may not be true in the attitude or the heart in which it's given, but there's some true conflict happening there. And if I can listen to it and understand what that is, then I can really decide if I should make a change or not. And he said, so the first thing I try to do whenever someone has, you know, something for me that I don't want to hear is I try to listen to it. And I've tried to take that to heart. And so when I have, you know, I mean, this distribution plan that I'm putting together for the film is not a classic independent film distribution plan. And, you know, I shared it with one of our team members just recently and she was like, you do what you want to do. Just sounds like a lot of work. Sounds like, you know, I could just tell sort of in, in her tone that she wasn't as enthused about it, you know, as I was. And I want to listen to that because I've always been somebody that is going to sort of, you know, shoot for the moon. And if, if I only get so far, then at least I've made it much farther than I would have if I'd been practical on the front end, you know, and So that, that tension sort of helps, helps ground me. And it's related to advice that I got when I was working on my books. Another friend of mine in the book world said, when someone tells you there's something wrong with your book, they're almost always right. And when they tell you how to fix it, they're almost always wrong. And so a lot of feedback that we would get on, on books from some of our alpha readers or whatever, they would say, oh, why don't you have them do this? And sometimes you have to deconstruct that and say, what is the problem that they're having here? Because I'm not going to do that. But what is the problem they're having? Oh, this isn't clear, or this isn't strong enough, or this isn't being accomplished. Then I can find my own solution for it. But our knee-jerk reaction when someone says, well, why don't you just do this, is to go, well, I'm not doing that. And then you just reject it outright. When actually, again, if I would listen, there's some little bit of truth in there that I probably need to mine and at least think about. At least sort of put a pin in, because I feel like a lot of the ideas that we have as leaders, and particularly those of us in any kind of creative field, and I don't just mean like the arts, but I mean, if you are doing something new or innovative in your business, right, it is this tendency to keep pushing and to keep going out there. And I think it's helpful to be pinned to the right things to kind of keep us anchored in some kind of way. So I guess that's the big thing that I'm getting at is, and I think that's the heart of your question, is what is your anchor? What are you anchored to? Right. And so I am pinning myself to these important relationships. I'm pinning myself to sort of these axioms of being able to listen and being able to try and find the problem underneath and not necessarily have to take the solution that is being offered along with it. And so that's probably the big first thing is, is that it's just really, really listening when there's conflict and having some trusted voices around me, even if they're not mentors, even if they don't know as much about this particular area as I do. I still want to hear what they have to say because, you know, my friend that may not have the full confidence that I do in this distribution plan, I might be right. About going down this road, but I might also be overlooking how difficult some of those steps are going to be. And so it's helpful for me then, you know, to listen to that. The second thing that anchors me, and this is, this is, you can do with this what you, what you will, but, you know, I'm someone who believes in someone and something bigger than myself. I'm someone who's got a faith background. And that's very important to me. And, and I pray through things. And I believe that we can make requests, but I believe that my time in prayer is ultimately going to shape me and shape my response to things and shape who I am. And this distribution plan is a great example because as soon as it came into my mind, I felt this peace about a whole bunch of things. I mean, so many things just seemed to just fall right in the slot as soon as this idea presented itself. And that that peace has given me a certainty about it that I feel like this is the direction to go. I don't have all the details yet. I don't have all the money figured out. I don't have it budgeted right. There's some things about the initial idea that I'm probably going to have to change. But there are so many things about this that have given me immense peace and relief. It's, it's, it's like when you talked about in your episode 0 about hiring the marketing person, the relief that you felt as soon as you were able to hand that to somebody. That to me is also a big anchor, sort of going, you know, in faith, asking about these things and then feeling that peace when a new idea comes along.

Well, there's a lot to unpack there. But first, thank you. That was a great response. I think what resonates with me about what you said, starting out, going back to the, what I would call the secular, as opposed to the spiritual, the secular resonance is, I agree with everything you said. However, I have come to the point where some people do not have permission to speak into my life. And that's either because they have proven themselves to not really care about me, or they don't have either an understanding or a willingness to understand. So I'm As entrepreneurs, we do see things that other people don't. And I think one of the biggest challenges I've ever had is translating my vision to the people that are helping me execute it. And there's never a complete translation. I mean, it doesn't matter how many times I explain it or try to describe it. It never gets a full translation. But I also think that in the explaining, in answering the questions that people raise, like, I used to think when people started asking questions like, "Well, that's great, Paul. What about this? And what about that?" I took that as a negative, like, they don't like the idea. But what I came to understand is that they were a lot of times raising valid questions that I hadn't thought about, that I didn't see. And in answering those questions and in trying to translate your vision to others, it helps you clarify it. It becomes more tangible to you And I think that's also the reality is that the vision by definition is always kind of ethereal. It's never concrete, even in our own minds. It's just this idea. And sometimes you have more clarity about it than others, but you're never sure exactly what you're building or creating or what this is going to look like. And then what resonated with me about the spiritual of what you said is that I think, you know, I'm 55. And I have come to the point— so we decided that we were going to have our first in-person gathering for CORE in October of this year. We've never done it. We're creating this 2-day workshop, hired speakers, secured a venue. And now we're sitting here and all those pieces are in place. And we got to figure out how to tell people about it, how to market it, how to get— how to sell tickets. And there's a lot of questioning because it's new territory. And it's like, well, uh, you know, how exactly are we going to make this happen? But because I felt very clear that God's hand was on this because of the way, um, things worked out— it's not like he told me to do this, I'm not saying that But as I was contemplating it, the pieces came into place, right? Like you mentioned, and there's just that reassurance, like, okay, this is definitely the right path. But I don't think, and I think it's for our own protection, In my experience, I've never had God just give me the whole path, like, you know, saying, 'This is where we're going, and these are all the stops, and these are the troubles that we're going to encounter along the way.' It doesn't work that way. And being comfortable with trusting the entirety of it without understanding the entirety of it.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, this, this film that I'm finishing began as a short story and not even a short story in the beginning that was important to me. I had published my first short story, which is called Kindling, and I have it on paperback now, but it's only 36 pages. And so I released it and people really liked it, but everybody was like, oh, I want a paperback. I want to touch the pages and smell the ink and whatever. I was like, okay, well, At the time, it just didn't seem economically feasible to do that. So I thought, okay, well, I'll just write a bunch of other short stories real quick, you know, as one does. And I'll put together an anthology of short stories. I've got some other stories that I think I could probably fill out a little thing, kind of make this worth it. And so, in fact, my other stories that I have— Ciao Bella is 16 pages. That was one that I wrote to kind of fill out that time. It's a story about when I went to Italy that I've told a bunch of times, but I finally just wrote it down. One of the short stories ended up being a long story and became my novel, which was God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. It broke into 44,000 words, so officially became a novel. Not many people accidentally write their first novel, but maybe if I'd had a better editor.

I was reading the synopsis on that one. So is that historical fiction, or is it—

It's historical fiction. So it definitely draws from real events that supposedly took place. It's the beginning of, if you know how the NORAD tracks Santa, thing that happens every year that began in 1955 when Sears put an ad for a Santa hotline in the newspaper but misprinted the phone number. And the phone number was actually for Colonel Harry Shoup's desk inside Continental Air Defense, which is what would become NORAD. And so I've just always thought it would be really fun if while all the phones were messed up at that time, that seems like it'd be a great time for the Soviets to attack. And so that's the story that I wrote, you know.

Okay, I'm going to have to buy this one.

Yeah, well, I would love to make this as my next film, actually. This is— that's— I got to finish this one first. But anyway, so The Darkness Rolled Over Her was one of just one of these stories. And my dad's a fly fisherman. The story deals with fly fishing. And, and one of the things that I remembered from going fly fishing with my dad up in the East Tennessee mountains is when I was a little kid and we would go up there camping and go fishing. He would be fly fishing, but he would give me a rod and a can of corn or a can of worms or whatever, sit me on a big rock and just let me sort of see if I would catch anything over there. Now, as an adult, I look back and think maybe he was just keeping me out of his way for about 3 hours.

And that's probably— scare the trout.

Yeah. So, but what Dad would do is he would get in the water and he would be at a fishing hole for 30 seconds or a minute. If nothing hits, then he moves on and he would keep moving up, upriver. And You know, that's— it's hard territory up there. I mean, it's not incredibly deep, but there's like lots of rocks and they're very slippery and you're constantly going uphill because you're in the mountains and the water's coming down at you and it's ice cold. And he would do this for hours. He would be on the water, you know. And so the times that he would sort of teach me fly fishing and I would go with him, I would see how incredibly, you know, difficult it is. And this idea that we would always keep moving, that we weren't stopping and hanging out for a long time or anything like that, that we'd keep moving upstream no matter what was going on.

I've described trout fishing as hunting for fish, and I'm not a hunter or a fisherman, but it's more like hunting than it is fishing.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so anyway, I had this idea of keep moving, and that brought to mind something you hear people say when someone elderly has a serious illness or suffers a fall, this idea that, oh, once you stop moving, It's over, you know? And so I thought, okay, there's this keep moving, there's this don't stop moving. And I just thought, okay, I need a main character who essentially has decided to stop moving. And I thought a lot about my own life up until that point, really wanting to accomplish something creative, having these movies that I wanted to make, but they were all these huge, big-budget, multimillion-dollar, you know, kind of things. And so it's not something that I could do at my independent level that I was working at. And that brought a lot of frustration. It brought a lot of that loneliness and solitude that we've been talking about. And so I kind of took some of those things and turned the volume up on them and wrote them into this character. And when I realized the character was somebody who had decided to stop moving, it occurred to me, you know, what that, what that meant for her. Gwen is the main character of the book. And if she decides to lay down and stop moving in the middle of this river, the water is going to roll over her and, and she's never going to get up, you know. And so then the story became about someone who was going to take their own life. Mm-hmm. Once that happened, there were some things that happened to some friends of friends that really made it a stark reality for me.

Mm-hmm.

And I sent early drafts. I reached out to a few friends of mine that were very gracious to read early drafts, people that had experience with this issue firsthand. I have two friends that have attempted and lived. Thank God. And they were very gracious in reading early drafts and giving me feedback and helping me better understand the mindset of this character and what she would be going through and some thoughts that she would be thinking and some intentions that she would have. I have a friend that lost her father, and she was very gracious in sharing what it was like from the perspective of those who are left behind and the mixed feelings that come along with with all that. And then I had another friend that was a counselor and had counseled many people through these times and had even lost some of her clients through these times. And she gave me a lot of great feedback, especially for some of the other characters being able to model healthy and appropriate behaviors to Gwen as she shares about what's going on with her. So she gets paired up with this old fly fisherman named Roy, and they kind of spend the day together and it starts to challenge this decision that she's made a little bit on this fly fishing retreat. And the way you see Roy interact with her and share with her, I tried to just have him always do the best, rightest thing that I could think of, you know, based on, on my wisdom, what I knew. And so the story really took on a life of its own in the writing, that it was just going to be this cute little fishing story and suddenly it became something very important. And by the time it was done, it's gotten a much better response than any of my other books. I think because so many people deal with dark thoughts or harmful thoughts or just loneliness and depression, you don't have to go all the way to wanting to take your life to understand the themes of the book. And I had a conversation with a friend who she had read the book. She's somebody I've known my whole life, but we're not like friends, like our moms are friends, you know, and we ran into each other in the hallway. She said, oh, I read the book and as she started talking about the book, she began telling me things about her, about herself. Nothing deeply intimate, but things that you don't tell an acquaintance in the hallway, you know? Right. And I realized she felt comfortable doing that because she knew I understood it because I had written this book. Right. And for her, that meant I'm not alone in this. I'm not dealing with this alone. Someone else understands this. I think that's one of the, the most difficult parts about these harmful thoughts and these dark thoughts is that we feel like either I'm the only person dealing with this, or simply no one understands how I'm dealing with it. No one— nobody understands what I'm going through. My people around me don't understand. And by reading the book, she realized there was somebody who understood a little bit of it, at least, right? And because she shared with me, then I felt comfortable sharing with her because I knew She knew what that felt like, you know. And so it was a brief conversation, but it was really powerful for me. And after we walked away, I just thought, oh man, how do I get everyone who reads the book to have that conversation with somebody? Because I would, I would rather them do that than read the book. I want people to talk, to be able to open up to each other like this. This is a thing that's really going to help people and quite potentially could save someone's life, you know. Yeah. And so that's when we developed Five Coffees and a Book, which is sort of a mini book club around the short story and gives people an easy way to read the book and talk about it with a friend. And then I'm looking at the story and I'm going, you know, there's like 4 characters. It's all outside during the day. There's no robots or exploding helicopters or, you know, it's not a period piece, you know. I have a camera, I have microphones, I've got battery-powered lights for a couple of the night scenes. I think we can make a movie from this. And so Noah came over to the house. This was the summer of 2020, so half the world was shut down and we had just had a pretty good job at a medical training place that was unable to do any training because nobody was allowed to travel. So they were revamping all of their training materials. And so Noah and I filmed filmed that, produced that. And one of the ladies that was, that was one of the nurses in the training videos is Carrie, who plays Gwen in the film. And so I told Noah, I was like, you know, seeing Carrie, she's like the right age. She's like the right temperament. You know, she just is like, she, I think, would really fit the character. She's got a real naturalistic performance. You know, I told him about, I feel like we have everything that we need to do to make this film. But like, I don't have money to pay people. So we'd have to find volunteer cast, volunteer crew. And I was just sort of unsure. And Noah was the one who said, I know we can do it. I know we can do it. And so that was August 17th, 2020. September 16th, 2020 was our first day of production. I don't know how it happened, but in 29 days we went from I think we can make a movie to our first day of production on a feature film. Just crazy. It's insane. We'd raised a little bit of money. We bought all the props. Got all the cast together, got most of our locations, and we were making the film. And we shot 18 days in a month and a half, and principal photography was done. From, from, from I think we can make a movie all the way to finishing up principal photography and really even to the first cut of the film went very quickly. And again, it was that peace. It was that thing that said, yep, you're going, you're going the right way. And I really had no idea at that point that it would be 5 years in post-production, doing the sound design and the color and the visual effects and everything else. And, you know, like you said, we don't get the whole path laid out in front of us when we start something. And I'm honestly grateful for that in a lot of ways, because if I'd sat down to write this short story in 2018 and if it had been laid out in front of me, this is going to consume the next 7, 10 years of your life, I don't know how excited I would have been to sit down and work on it every day.

Yeah, there's a proverb that— I'm going to butcher it, but it says something to the effect of, it is the glory of God to reveal things. No, it is the glory of God to hide things. It is the glory of kings to reveal them or seek them, something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

And to me, what that says is, is that that process of what you described, and when we go on these journeys that are not clear as to the path or even maybe the outcome, that that is a way to draw us closer to God, if we allow it. In my hubris over my career, there's been a lot of me taking it back from God and saying, "Now let me fix this. Let me—" right? Just like the petulant toddler. And And it's kind of humorous looking back on it. It really wasn't humorous during the experience. And I'm not suggesting that if you put your life in God's hands and let him lead you, that things are necessarily easier. I'm not saying that. It may be just as difficult, it might be more difficult, but it takes you to where you need to be. Because you're dealing with a loving Father. And a lot of times, just as a parent and, you know, raising children, they don't always understand why you do what you do. And they don't even have the capacity to understand why you do what you do as a father. But there's loving intent behind it. And if you understand that with God, that this really sucks, I don't want to be here, I don't want to be doing this, I don't want to be feeling this, I don't want to be experiencing this. But you can rest in the knowledge that it is, you're there out of love. It changes the whole dynamic. But for me, oftentimes, it wasn't until after I'd gone through it that I fully realized what was going on, like the lesson that I was actually learning or why I was going through what I was going through.

Yeah, when I've mentored younger people, especially when they're going through something difficult, an old story, sort of a fable that I've heard keeps coming back up. And that is that, you know, God tells this man to come out into the woods. He comes out into the woods. And there in the woods is a cabin with a large rock. In front of the door. And God asked the man to push the rock away from the cabin, away from the door. And the man pushes and pushes and pushes, but the rock is just so deeply embedded in the ground, it just doesn't even budge. And just for, you know, days and weeks, he pushes and pushes and pushes until finally he says, "I can't, I can't do this. I can't get in the cabin. I don't know why you've asked me to do this." And God responds, well, I never asked you to get in the cabin. I asked you to push the rock. And now I want you to look and see how strong your arms are and how strong your legs are and how deep your endurance is. And now you're ready for the next thing that I want from you. And it's— you're right. It's so difficult to go through at the time because you think there is some end that you have in mind to, to what is going on when something bigger than you may have, you know, some other end entirely planned out. And so I think it goes back to not seeing the vision always clearly. The vision is like a star that we're following. It's like Polaris or the Christmas star or whatever that we're following. But though we move toward it, and though we keep working toward it, and though we keep trying to keep it in focus, we really can only travel on the ground that's beneath our feet. You know, that's really all that we have control of today is right here. And I just saw a quote yesterday, I think it was Tolstoy, who says, you know, a man on a 100,000-mile journey can only get up every day and say, today I will go 25 miles, and tonight I will rest, and tomorrow I will do it again. And that's all, that's all really that you have in your hands today, you know. And so it's just sort of being faithful with that day to day, which again, you know, this is one of the themes of the story is this idea of keep moving. Particularly as it comes to some of these negative thoughts and these thoughts of solitude and this depression and things that we have. One of the things that makes it worse is we, we, we focus on it. Why am I feeling this way? What is happening? What has caused this? Who do I blame? You know, What did I do? These mistakes that I made, or these ways that I hurt other people, or whatever it is that is causing us to feel these things. And by ruminating on these negative things, we just sort of reinforce that negativity in our mind in a very, you know, chemical, biological, physical way. We're reinforcing this negativity in our mind. Whereas the idea of keep moving says, look up and think about where it is that you're trying to go to, and let's reinforce that pathway. Let's reinforce the pathway towards something encouraging and something loving. We're not going to ignore the negative things that are happening. No, pretend like they don't exist. But we are going to latch on to something that is higher and keep moving toward that.

It's surprisingly easy to change your mood. Your brain is actually— especially your emotions are very fluid. I work with a business coach, and when we started, we actually spent the first 6 months talking about my marriage. And I remember one point in time, I was so frustrated and discouraged and probably even depressed about the situation. And he said, can you think of a time when you and your wife were at peace and happy? A specific instance. And I'm like, yeah, I could think of something. Something came to mind. It was, we were sitting at the park, watching our kids play. I remember, I don't know why I remember it, but I just remembered it. And he said, okay, I want you to bring that to mind. And I did. And, you know, it was a 30-second exercise. He said, how do you feel now? And it is. I mean, it sounds like, well, it can't be that easy, but it really is that easy. The second thing I would say is I have come to the conclusion recently, like in the last 6, 7 months, I'd always been about like, what am I supposed to be doing? Right? And whether that was secular or whether it was in the spiritual realm, it was like, what do I need to be doing? And I have come to hear God telling me through other people mostly, you know, it's not about what I want you to do, it's who I want you to be. And as I was thinking about that just now, and, and, uh, we have a home church, and Sunday we were in John chapter 6, and it was after Jesus fed the 5,000. He walked on water, he's on the other side at Capernaum, and the crowd that he fed came looking for him. And they, they said, you know, something to the effect of, we, we want to know what it is that God wants us to do, like, what, what are the works that we're supposed to be doing? And Jesus answered that the Father's will is that you believe in the one that sent him. And I was like, you know, in some ways that is even more profound than Jesus is saying, you know, the two greatest commandments. Because it boils it down just to that. I, you know, I want you to follow me. I want you to focus on me. And there's nothing more than that. That's not— I mean, and, and that to me was very profound. And as, as we're talking about it, it's, it's, it's, it's even more profound than Sunday. Um, and it's not about what you're doing. I mean, what you're doing is fine. It's not that you're not supposed to be doing things. Um, But more importantly is, who are you? And I think, you know, tie all that back in, I think that's the story, your story, right? Because you chose to be something, uh, markedly different than others and the path that most people take in your profession, um, and you're, you're, you're living that out of who you are. You're not, you're not that. You're this.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. I hope so. And I keep trying to, to sort of center myself on, on that, on that idea, you know, the idea of of life, or of even more specifically, you know, the faith aspect of our life is often presented in the metaphor of a journey, maybe to the point that it becomes trite for some people. But it really is like that, because I can, I can sort of wander around a little off the path, within the path, way off the path, you know, And I'm never falling off the cliff. I can always find my way back or find my way, sort of recenter myself into that idea, the following mindset. And one thing I love about The Following is I think, I don't know why, because it's very clear from the language, but I think a lot of times when we hear someone say, you know, follow me in the spiritual context, we think, well, I'm here, I need to go there. But the idea of following is that that thing is moving, that thing is going somewhere. And so it's not just about, oh, I need to get to where that is, but it's I need to be going where that thing is going. I need to be going where God is going and where, where is he moving? What is he moving into? And sometimes it's a very difficult thing to discern the specifics of. But if you are following him and close to him, you'll end up where he's going.

Because you're right there in his heels. And I think what some of us older saints figure out along the way is, it's really not about the journey. I mean, again, there are things that will happen, there are things that you will do or not do. But like, it's, it's less about— it's, it's more about the journey than it is the destination. And the destination, there's multiple stops, right? Like, you know, you get married, you have kids, you start a business, whatever. Those, those are, are factors, but those are just there to potentially change who you are. The journey is about becoming who God wants you to be, not you achieving something, even if it's for him. Like, you know, I think a lot of us feel like we've got to have accomplished something, right? Like, I've got to— but that's not how that God approaches us through Jesus. God approaches us as saying, "I've done it. I just need you to accept it." And there isn't anything that you can do that's going to change that.

And even when there are specific things that are given to us, I mean, Paul in Ephesians says, there's these good works that have been created in advance for you to do. I think a lot of times we get the, we get the order reversed, and we focused on getting the work done, rather than focusing on the relationship and the fact that we're, we're a beloved son, beloved daughter, that we, you know, we're not an employee of the King's service, but we're a child, and that we, we're a member of the household, as it were. And we have chores, Sure, you accomplish those things, but what comes first is the relationship.

Yeah. Yeah. And I— we were at a service a few weeks ago, and there was this couple in front of us that had an infant and like a 3-year-old daughter. And while we were singing, the 3-year-old raised her hands. And she was just looking at her mom because her mom had raised her hands. And so she was raising her hands.

She didn't know what she was doing.

She was just imitating her mother, right? And I had this just beautiful image of God's love that the mother had demonstrated to the daughter. But then also, like, that's faith of a child, is that you don't have to do anything, just 'Look at me. Look at me. That's all you need to do. And just imitate me.' I don't like the word imitate, because I think it's more deep than that. But it was a profound enlightenment.

Yeah, one of the other themes of The Darkness Rolled Over Her, which is the short story I've been talking about, is that you only keep what you give away. And I think parents in particular understand that more readily. Because, you know, you live life and you have friends and you think you kind of know what love is, and then you fall in love with the person you're going to marry. And you're like, oh, now I really know what love is. I've got the one love, you know. But then you have children and this— I don't have children myself, but my brother has 3 kids. His oldest now has 2 kids. And seeing these children come into the family, you know, they, they just unlock a whole new level of love that we didn't know was possible. I tell some of my younger friends, I was like, it's kind of like when you're playing Mario Brothers and you win level 8, and then the map zooms out and you realize, oh, there's 32 levels, not 8 levels, and you realize there's a whole much more game left to play. And even those of us without biological children, I've experienced that just in mentoring others and, you know, walking along with them on their journey. And so that idea is really in the short story as well, this idea that you only keep what you give away, that, you know, in my— in the times in my life, you know, shortly before writing this book, when I felt like I never— I never wanted to take my own life, but if God wanted to, I would have been fine with that at the time. You know, I was like, I'd wake up and go, You know, if today is like the last 100 days, I don't think I want to do that again. Right. And so I was feeling what I think all of us feel at some point in our lives. I think a lot of us feel a lot in our lives, which is, why can't somebody come along and encourage me? Why can't somebody come along and love me? Why can't someone come along and be my friend? And you know, what I tell people now is You know, I got bad news, good news, and great news. The bad news is if you're waiting for someone to come along and mentor you, if you're waiting for someone to come along and encourage you, if you're waiting for someone to come along and show you some love, the hurtful news is I'm sorry, I can't guarantee that someone's going to do that for you. I've experienced that where I've reached out to people and said, will you be my mentor? And like, oh yeah, for sure. Never heard from them again. You know, I, because I have been kind of out front and because I'm from a small town and these other things, there's just never been anyone around me that could mentor me through my, even my business stuff, just that I want to do. Nobody knew how to do it, you know? And so that's sort of the bad news is like, if you're waiting on that to come around, like you can't control other people, you can't make somebody, you know, show you love or encourage you even. But the good news is that wouldn't really be all that satisfying or fulfilling anyway, the way that you think that it would. But, but what you're actually looking for is to have encouragement and love and friendship in your life. And the best way to find that is by doing those things for someone else. There's this, what I call the economy of the tangible and the economy of the intangible. So the economy of the tangible is if I have cake and I give you some cake, I have less cake. You know, if I have money and I give you money, well, now I have less money. That's the economy of the tangible world. But the economy of the intangible is, if you need encouragement and I encourage you, now we both are encouraged. And so now there's more encouragement.

You didn't lose anything in the trade.

Didn't lose anything. In fact, I probably have more than when I started. Correct. If you need love and I show you some love, now there's more love than there was when we started. Again, parents deeply understand this because you think you're loving your spouse 100%, and you are. And then you have children, you love each of them 100%. It's not like you're dividing your love up. Is like love comes from nowhere, you know, it's a sort of creation out of nothing. And that's the economy of the intangible world. But it's something that we don't understand when we're in a dark place and we're siloed and we're in solitude and we're isolated. And so to understand that if I really want these things in my life, I have to give them away. That's the good news, is that when you show encouragement to somebody else, you'll get far more satisfying encouragement in your life than you would have by waiting on someone to come and give it to you.

100%.

100%. And the great news is, uh, there's 8 billion people out there that need it. Yeah. So just like you can't control other people to make them encourage you, um, you know, they can't stop you from encouraging them, you know. I mean, you got to have healthy boundaries and all that, but if, if, if you want to encourage and show love to somebody and they don't want it, you just move right on to the next person. You got 8 billion opportunities out there to, to, to make it happen.. And so that's another thing that we tried to incorporate in the Five Coffees and a Book sort of mini book club discussion is this idea of who is around you that you can encourage. And again, focusing on those positive things and focusing on putting positive things out there rather than ruminating on, you know, the negative things that are constantly pulling us down.

Paul, how can listeners find out more about when movie will be released or about the book club or anything else that you're doing?

Yeah, the quickest way is to go to FiveCoffeesInABook.com and you can actually get the ebook of The Darkness Rolled Over Her for free. It's available there for free. And you also see the Five Coffees in a Book discussion guide that's there as well. Again, the idea is that you would over, say, 5 weeks have coffee with a friend and talk about, talk about the book. And I've made it free. It will be free forever. As long as the technology allows me to do so, because I just want everybody to have access to this material. I really think it'll help save somebody's life. And so I just, I just want it to be there. When you put in your email address to get the download link for the book, you'll be added to our mailing list. I don't— you'll get a couple of automated emails right at the top, you know, just to get the book and everything. But I have not sent out— I've not manually pushed out an email on this mailing list in like 2 or 3 years. You're not going to get bombarded with stuff. It's really just there to deliver information about the book. And then when the film is ready, I will send out mailings about the film and advertising about that, but you're not going to get bombarded with emails or anything. So if you want to unsubscribe from the mailing list, go ahead. It'll only hurt my feelings a little bit. But if you stay on it, you'll learn all about the film. Also at FiveCoffeesAndABook.com, you can see the trailer for the film. And so it's about 2 minutes. And that'll give you a sense of what the story is like and what film is going to be like. And so, Lord willing, the film will be out later this year. And we'll have more information on that coming on that mailing list. Anything else of mine that you want to see is at parabolos.com, P-A-R-A-B-O-L-O-S dot com. You can find my other books, audiobooks, podcasts, everything else is over there.

Love it. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. Thank you again, Paul, for your time. Listeners, if you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.