“Thriving in Life: Unlocking Health, Happiness, and Prosperity with Rand Selig”

Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show podcast, the podcast show where we unlock potential one dream at a time. Today we have another guest whose journey is truly worth hearing. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the Moneyway experience.

What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show. Today we have on the show entrepreneur, coach, scoutmaster, and author. Welcome to the show, Rand. How you doing today, Rand?

Hey, hey, CJ, it's just great to be with you. Beautiful day.

I appreciate it. Appreciate it. So, Rand, tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your background.

Well, I grew up in a middle-class family. Uh, dad's first career was in the military, served 25 years in the Army. Mom was a bacteriologist, a scientist, and then became a social worker. It was great growing up. You know, in high school, I became an excellent student and began realizing there was a lot of stuff I needed to do to have a good life, including always being conscious of having purpose and being excellent. I became an excellent student, and then I've carried that concept of excellence with me the whole journey, whether it's in relationships or work I'm doing. And also, I think I got this from my parents, all about service. So lots of activities, as you mentioned, some of the things I've done are all about trying to help our planet and help other folks.

That's good, man. That's good that you have a heart to serve and, you know, care for the people. That says a lot about your character and your integrity. So tell us, Rand, about your book Thriving: How to Create a Healthier, Happier, and More Prosperous Life.

Well, here it is. It came out last fall. And, you know, it's getting fantastic reception. It's a book that's hitting a nerve, a sweet spot for lots of folks. I actually started collecting papers when I was in high school. When I'd read a really interesting book, I'd take some notes. I'd copy an article that I thought was interesting, collected quotes of all sorts. My book has lots of quotes in it. And 4 years ago, I had this 4-foot-high stack of papers.. And I kept looking at this stack and I said, there's at least one book inside that stack and there's at least one book inside me. So I sat down, I chunked this pile into files, which ultimately became the chapters. I wisely went to 3 friends who knew me well and a couple of them had written their own books. And I said, what do you think? Please give me comments and let me know the truth. Don't, don't just be nice. And they came back and said, This is a fantastic book. Do not just keep it private with your family and friends. You got to get it out there, get it published. So that began this enormous journey of finishing writing it, revising it many times, editing, getting it published, you know, the COVID the formatting, you know, getting it loaded up on Amazon and IngramSpark, which is for all the independent bookstores. And now talking to other folks about it.

Yeah, that's cool. I know about the process, like you say, of going through and having to do all these things to get it printed and edited and, you know, keeping— being organized and coming back years later, you know, with things. You're like, wow, I still got this, and, you know, making something of it, man. So yeah, so go get the book, How to Create a Healthier, Happier, and More Prosperous Life. Go get the book, it's on Amazon. And so, Fran, just a personal question.

Please.

What must a man do to sustain a marriage for over 40 years?

Yeah, I am very fortunate. I'm very disciplined, and I'm a list maker. I chronicle activity that I do every year and over a period of time, and I pay attention to that. And one of the 3 best decisions I ever made in my life was marrying my wife. I got married at age 28, so I was not a kid anymore. And we joke that had we met each other like 5 years before, we would not have liked each other. It would not— there would not have been any glue there. But there are absolutely a number of things that are key to having a— you know, we've been married 43 years now. There's things like, you know, as you change, as your partner changes, You got to continue to be looking for things that you enjoy doing together. You can't just say, well, we're different and we're growing apart and goodbye. You got to stay committed. You got to trust each other. I mean, I keep on reading articles about people who have like secrets and money, uh, things they're doing, and then maybe their spouse finds out about it, and boy, that's a mess at that point. When you bump into problems, and who doesn't, you got to clear the air. You got to clear the air. And sometimes that needs some help. It's not easy necessarily to have that conversation directly with your spouse. So you got to find the right time. You got to make sure that you're rested, that it's a good time for them. They're not just about to go out the door or go do something. It's— they've got the time to do it. And you got to ask them, hey, there's a couple things that we need to talk about. Uh, is this a good time? And they may say, "No, let's do it tomorrow or never." You know, so I think the other thing a lot of people have come across, come across a lot of folks and talk to them about things, they think their spouse is like, they're going to spend like 90% of their time with their spouse. Like when they're not working or whatever they're doing, they're going to be spending all their time with the spouse. And you know, some people, they say the spouse's best friend. And enjoy doing all these things with them, and that's terrific. But I think it's really wise to have other friends. I have lots of other friends, and my wife has her own separate friends. We have lots of friends in common. And so there are lots of times when I say to her, hey, I'm going to go grab a lunch or a dinner with so-and-so next Tuesday. Is that okay with you? And she says, yeah, that's fine. I said, would you like to come? She says, no, no, that's your friend. You go ahead. You enjoy it. Let me know. What's going on after you come back? So I think just creating, 'cause there's some things that other friends and I like to do together, certain movies, certain kinds of activities, a bigger hike, for example, that's good to do with them.

Yeah, two things that you said, and I just did an interview yesterday about bringing back intimacy. And one of them was trust. I think to me that's the biggest thing that you can have in any type of relationship, whether it's with your spouse or with your friends or anything, is trust. And the making time to compromise. I think as far as men go, I think we have to compromise more so than the women because we have to tend to start liking things that they want to do. Like you say, learn how to spend time together and learn how to you know, do things together instead of saying that we're falling apart and we're not on the same level anymore. So I've learned that over my years too. And it's funny that you said it, if you and your wife had met 5 years before you got married. I remember when me and my wife, we first got married, I think we were celebrating like our first or second anniversary and we were out to dinner and she said, "Wonder if we had got married when we first met now." We had been knowing each other for over 20 years. I said, "We would've been divorced by now." because I wasn't in that space, you know, that my mindset, I wasn't ready. But as I got older and matured and just like you said, getting married to my wife, that's the best thing that ever happened to me.

I'm glad to hear that, CJ. I think— let me add one more thing that I think is really good, and it's hard for lots of folks. I'll admit it's not been easy for me, is to listen.

Mm-hmm.

And when you're listening, you're really paying attention to what the other person is saying. You're not coming up with your response. You're not coming up with your 3 ideas, or you're not saying, "Yes, but..." You're asking more questions. You're truly trying to understand what the other person is saying, even if they do it in a kind of clumsy, awkward way. You gotta listen. And then I talk about this in the book. Then you sort of say, if it's complicated and emotional, you say, "What I'm hearing is this." this, this, and this. Do I have that right? Did I miss anything? And just stay with that. You don't have to show up doing your story yet. Just get their story. Find out what's going on for them.

I agree. That was part of the other thing too. You have to be an active listener. You have to be present, not just there, but present, and pay attention and give compliments when due. To sustain a happy and intimate relationship. A lot of times we just feel like intimacy is physical, but it's not. It's way more deeper than that. Way more deeper than that. So, Ryan.

Yeah.

What are some of the challenges that you have had to overcome in life?

Well, there are two very significant ones for me, CJ. One is I have a very powerful father. I like to think of him as the big bull and I'm the little bull. And, uh, you know, we butted heads for a very, very long period of time. And I was really confused about our relationship. I didn't really quite know how to create a better relationship. I didn't know quite how to bring in things that I needed. And it got worse and worse actually until Oh, about 15 years ago. And finally, I went to a friend of mine who is a counselor, and I said, hey, I need to talk to you. And he says, oh, you need to talk about your dad again. And I said, yeah, that's it. He said, what's the latest? And so I told him what the latest was, and he says, okay, here's what I recommend you do. Write a letter. Write a letter to the father you wish you had, the father you think you deserve. You know, write a letter about this great weekend that you had together. You make it up in your mind. We did all these fun things. We had so many great conversations. Can't wait to, you know, have another visit like that. Now, that's not a letter you necessarily mail. In fact, probably not a good idea to mail. But what it created for me was a whole new father. So I now have two fathers. I have the real father who's given me many gifts, a lot of what I am, and and what I stand for is because of my real father. And then I have this other father who, who can tell me he's proud of me or who can laugh at my silly jokes or other things that are really important for me. And so, so I've created that, you know, and it's, it's alive for me. He sits on the shoulder and the other one sits maybe on my head.

I don't know.

But so, so, but I got through that. I realized that he was not going to change. Yeah, that I was the one who had to change. And I, and I said, okay, stop getting on his case about what he's not doing. Start looking at what he is, what he's doing for other people. Maybe he's not doing it for you, but he's a, he's a great person. He's given you amazing things and just respect him, appreciate that. Let him do his talking, even if he doesn't ask me any questions about me or anything. That's okay. And I, I was able to do that. I had to work at it. It was not easy. It took a long time before I was able to write that letter. I had to revise it many times before it got to be not an angry letter, but a positive letter. And so that's one thing. Another thing is I've been, uh, very fortunate to have be very healthy. My mother's 98, my dad's 102. They're, they're both cruising along. But I have had an autoimmune eye disease. Since I was in my late 20s. And it comes on with stress. And I've had a very stressful career doing transactions, really complicated transactions. And so, you know, it's hard to see out of the eye, and sometimes I'd have it in both eyes and just a real mess. And so I got good medicine, good doctors, things that, you know, made those inflammations go away as quickly as possible. And now treating it so it doesn't come back, sort of prophylactic eye drops. And I became very grateful. It was probably one of the biggest moments in time when I said, look around and be grateful. Be grateful for that I'm alive now rather than 50 years ago without the medicines that are available. And I have a great wife who's very supportive. And taking care of me when I needed to be taken care of. So it was a great place to get to, to mature into when I faced that very significant challenge.

Man, going back to your mother and your father, man, and even yourself with what you've been through, but your mother and father being longevity like that, man, God is good, you know, to still be— have your mother and father presence where you can call them and say hello Man, that's a blessing in itself, and I'm glad that everything's all right with you as far as what you've been going through. And it's always good to have a wife that cares. I mean, that's just bottom line. I think a lot of people overlook that too. I've been through some health issues too, and my wife would get on the phone and she'll start calling people. Or if I overlook some stuff or throw some things to the side like, "Ah, it ain't no big deal," they get on you because It's nice to know that somebody cares about you enough that they want you to be here for the long term. So that's wonderful.

It's wonderful, and it gives additional perspective. Sometimes when you're going through stuff, you can't have the full range of your thoughts or what's really going on. And so having somebody else who's watching closely, who says, well, when you go to the doctor or when I go to the doctor with you, Here's another couple of questions we should ask.

Yeah.

Don't miss out on CJ Moneyway's book, Both Eyes Open and Both Eyes Shut, and get ready to preorder his upcoming release, The Issues of Life, coming soon. Moneyway, aiming to inspire.

You know, that's funny because last week I had to go to the doctor and it was the first time that my wife went to the doctor with me. I was curious because I got off of work and she met me there. As we going in, I said, "Now, why are you coming again?" She said, "I knew you wanted to know why I was coming." But like you said, she had answers, questions to certain things that I probably wouldn't have brought up. She's talking to the doctor, asking her this and that, because my wife work in the medical field as well. So it's certain things she talked to doctors, nurses, and things of that nature. So certain things that she knew that I didn't know, and She brought it to the doctor and they sitting around there talking. I'm like, hello, I'm the one with the issue. But yeah, that was cool. So, Rand, how can a person age well, manage transitions, endings, and new beginnings?

Let me break that into two parts. Okay. Let me talk about aging well. Recently, I've given a couple of talks on the 9 keys to aging well. Hmm. And when I talk about this, I tell people, hey, none of these are going to be particularly surprising. I don't think there's going to be anything on this list that's surprising. It's not about, you know, how profound the list is. It's more about getting on with it. So in no particular order, it's being positive. Being positive actually, studies show, adds 8 to 9 years to your life. And we live in a world very cynical. A lot of people are very afraid. And being positive, you got— it's a choice. It's a choice, and you get to make it every day. A second thing is having purpose all the way to the end. All the way to the end. I tell these folks at retirement homes, hey, look, even if what your purpose is is to be kind and nice and asking good questions and being interested in your other residents there, maybe helping out when they need some help. That's, that's fantastic purpose. That's just, just rock-solid stuff. Being curious, hugely important. It makes life fun. And life changes, you change as you, as you age, go through things. Being curious, really helpful. Being grateful. You know, I have a quote that I love saying is the struggle ends when gratitude begins. So that's another one. Having humor is key. Having an ability to forgive. A lot of folks as they age, they accumulate more and more stuff, not just in their house, but in their backpack. They're carrying these heavy rocks because they have not forgiven. Somebody for something that happened maybe recently or a long time ago. And sort of, it's a little bit of a joke, but when you don't forgive somebody, it's like drinking poison yourself and expecting them to die. No, no, you got to forgive. You got to forgive yourself. You got to stop self-sabotaging. A lot of folks, you know, as they age, they say, I can't, I can't do that. I'm not good at that. I'm not gonna, you know, follow through with somebody because I don't really think they're interested in getting to know me. Well, even if there's only a 1 in 100 chance of something good happening, don't deny yourself that chance. Gotta learn to let go. You know, we don't control all that much. You know what we do control? It's really important what we do control. We control our attitude and we control the amount of effort we put into something. We control our behavior and we control our actions. Those are us. But then there's the world around us, and the best we can hope for is that we influence. So you got to learn to let go. And I like to say it really helps to age well if you live life as with love as a way of being, which is being respectful and being kind and listening and asking questions and being generous. And doing acts of loving kindness to Mother Earth and animals and other people. Carry that. It's much bigger than the romantic love. Yeah, that's aging. Yeah, that's a group of, uh, things that are in aging well. Transitions is a whole nother big topic. I mean, we could, we could have a whole podcast on, you know, what the transition— Yeah, yeah. I think, CJ, the the whole thing about transitions starts with an attitude. I was just talking about attitudes, one of the things we can control. And it's recognize there's nothing noble about being superior to your former— to, to your fellow man. What creates nobility is being superior to former self, continuing to evolve and recognizing sometimes, hey, I messed that up. Yeah, I didn't. So going forward, I'm not going to mess up again. I'm going to pay attention. I'm going to learn from my mistakes, and I'm going to turn them into valuable lessons so you can go forward. And that takes honesty, and it takes courage to do that. So life is full of endings and beginnings, and, and in between are transitions. So you have to take a look if you're in the middle of a transition You got to say, hey, what I'm leaving, what I'm leaving behind, what was good about that? And what wasn't so good about it? What kind of feelings I have that didn't make me feel good? Why did I not want to jump out of bed and go do that? You have to be willing to say the person I was there is not the person I need to be in the next thing I do and identify that. So I'm big on journaling because there's a connection. It's sort of like a physical property connect from my brain down my hand to the pencil. And I write it down. I go, I still don't get it. I still don't know what I'm talking about. Stay with it. And I can scratch it out and revise it. And finally I say, ah, now I know what's going on. And then I can come up with a plan of action. So, and including your feelings. Feelings are, you know, the guts of life. So it's not just the facts, it's not just who did what to whom, but it's how you felt during the thing. And you got to be absolutely committed to yourself. You know, the most important relationship we ever have in our lives is the one with ourselves.

Yeah.

So we gather wisdom by walking around the block again and again and again. And, you know, savor that and take that forward into the next adventure.

Yeah, I mean, everything that you have said is on point, especially about the forgiving part. You know, a lot of times we do carry things and don't let it go, and it's hurting you more than it's hurting the person that you won't forgive because they ain't got over it, or they probably forgot the situation. Well, and then a lot of times too We're unforgiving about small things, things that don't even really matter. You know, like, you could have been let that go. That, okay, it was a mistake, it happened, I apologize. But sometimes you still can't let that go and you harbor that for years and years and years and years and years. And, you know, to the point where you become bitter, eating away at you. Yeah, you know. And then the other thing too that you were saying too, and something we talked about yesterday, and I think that's what you was alluding to, when you have to be honest with yourself, you know, you have to take accountability. And that's one of the things that I was saying as far as me and, you know, you can trace that all the way back to the Book of Genesis, as far as me and taking accountability for their actions. I think once you begin taking accountability for the things that you have done and the wrongs that you have committed, then you can start to move on. Like you said, yourself— yourself is the most important relationship you gonna have. Because I could sit here and tell Ren anything I want to, but I can't lie to myself, and I can't lie to God. So yeah, he knows, and I know, but Ren may not know. And so I'm lying to you, but by me lying to you, I'm also lying to myself.

Yeah, you can't lie to yourself. No. You know, there's another thing about forgiveness I think is important to bring up. Some people have not forgiven somebody who's no longer in their life. Yeah, they maybe have moved away and you're just not in contact with them, or maybe they've passed away. And that does not mean you can't still work at the forgiveness. It might mean you write a letter. I was talking about writing a letter to my father. Never, obviously never mailed those letters, but you can say, here's what happened and it hurt me this way, it offended me. It made me feel terrible, and I think you owed me an apology, which you never gave me. But now I'm forgiving you. I'm forgiving you. And when you do that, all of a sudden that rock turns into little grains of sand. It's no longer a big heavy thing in your backpack. And you know, that's a thing to do. It's a really good thing to do.

It is. That's key. That's key, because you want to be whole. You let it go. If you forgive then, and that person don't accept it, that's on them. But I got it off of me, you know. And like you say, I think that is very key just to life, period.

Well, I'm just going to say, you know, sometimes it really is important to be honest about what really happened, what led to this thing where, you know, somebody did something they— that you haven't forgiven them about. And you have to be honest to say, did I play any role in that at all? I mean, the chance of it being zero is pretty dang low.

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe it wasn't a big factor that you played, but you may have done something that— especially so you got to take a look at that and you got to say, hey, I was there. Yeah, yeah. And you also have to give a little room, extra room, for if it was an unintentional thing. Some people just cruise along and you're coming at life in a different way And they do something and you go, wow, that was terrible. I can't believe they did that to me. But if you can sort of figure out that they didn't do it intentionally, then there's a little bit more possibility of you saying, hey, they're just not very— they're not paying attention. And I'm going to forgive them for doing that really dumb thing. Gives a little more openness.

Yeah, I totally agree with you, man. So, Ryan, how can one become the author of their own story and design their life?

Yeah, it's a huge ingredient. I feel great because I think I have designed my own life, and I think other people can too. And in a related way, it's, uh, different words, but it really taps into some of that same stuff. Being the author of your own story means that you— and now that I'm a published author, I can say this with a certain amount of truth to it. I can edit, I can delete. There are certain parts of my story that nobody else is interested in, and I'm actually not very interested in them either. So you can create your story and then you can figure out different paths going forward. So what does that take? It takes a bunch of stuff. It means that you're really figuring out who you are. What you stand for and what you won't stand for. And it means sometimes swimming against the tide. You know, we've got a culture that has lots of messages in it that say, here's the way you should be. And you got to say, nah, not me, not me. You know, you're defining success one way and I'm defining it more broadly. I'm not— success is not just about money, it's many more things. So I'm going to swim against the tide with that. You got to have the willingness to take some risks. Life is a series of experiments. We don't see it that way often, but I think in the end of the day, that's really what it is. Some experiments work. We know that from, you know, our high school education. You know, experiments, sometimes they work out, and if they work out the first time, you think, well, you just 'You're so smart.' But sometimes just a matter of you got it right the first time. Sometimes things don't work out. You gotta keep experimenting, give yourself a chance to say, 'Okay, that didn't work. So let me try something else. Let me look at why it didn't work so the next thing I try might be a better, more chance of it working out.' So designing your own life is hugely powerful. Another one of the great decisions I made, it's definitely top 3, is starting my own company. Now, I spent 12 years getting ready to do that. And the last boss I had was the worst boss I had. He was saying, "If you need to go to the bathroom, you got to raise your hand." Wow, that was a big incentive for me to get on with who I was and what I was going to do next. So, These are adventures. If you take it on, again, back to attitude, you take this on as an adventure. Some things work, some things don't. It takes courage, it takes risk. It's helpful to have good support.

Always helpful to have good support. So, so how long have you been running your business, Brad, and what is it?

Yeah, yeah. So I've been running my own firm for 37 years now. It's an investment banking firm where we do transactions for who are primarily private companies. More often than not, it's selling the company. An owner, frequently the founder, reaches out to us sometimes through their law firm or their accounting firm and says, "I want to sell." And so it's the Saleig Capital Group, just been named the best investment banking firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. So I'm very delighted with that. Yeah. We start, which is very unusual, we don't start with, "Oh, cha-ching, we're going to go make a bunch of money doing this." We start by clarifying what the objectives are of our client. And in some cases, it turns out they start off first within 2 minutes, they're telling me they want to sell their company. And I say, "Well, let's talk about that. What's going on that leads you to feel that way, to want to sell your company?" And it comes out that they don't like their partner, or it comes out that they're not doing the stuff they used to love, designing a product or something. They're doing all the administrative stuff. And then I say, well, if we could solve those problems, you know, move the partner into a different role, or maybe buy out the partner, or you hire somebody else to do the administrative stuff so you can get back to really running the show and building products, would you still want to sell your company? He says, oh no, I wouldn't. I says, well, I can help you with that. They said, would you? Really? You wouldn't make nearly as much money. I said, that's okay. It's not about me making money. It's about meeting your objectives. So that kind of integrity, especially in my industry, you know, goes a long way. We've always had clients, and I've been very fortunate to be able to select clients because there's some companies that are not doing things I really want to see on the planet, or some people I know I cannot communicate well with from right away. I know that. And so I, I said, let me find you somebody else who can work with you.

Oh man, that's cool. I must overlook that aspect of your biography. I didn't see that, but that's cool, man. And congratulations on being number one, voted number one in the San Francisco area, man. So I only have one more question for you, Ran, and I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your wisdom and your understanding about life, man. But so, do I have the power to make choices in all aspects of my life?

Yeah, it is the central theme in my book that we have this enormous power, enormous power. It's often, you know, held tight. It's, it's on a leash. You got to unleash that. This is the power that allows us to get on the road to thriving. It's the power to make choices about how we spend our time and who we spend our time with, what habits we have, and even our feelings. These are all choices. It may not always feel like they're choices, but they are choices. And yes, we do have enormous power at all those— every aspect of our lives. We can even have choice about our ending. Are we going to die gracefully? Are we going to die bitter and angry and alone? These are all things that are part of the world we can create for ourselves and then live happily and in a healthy, emotionally healthy way and be prosperous.

Hey, so, Rand, I really appreciate you coming on the show today, man. Like I say, sharing your wisdom and understanding Where can we follow you at? Your social media? Are you on social media?

Yeah, thank you, CJ. Yes, my primary social media is LinkedIn, and I'm posting periodically. I'm not, you know, as often as some folks. I'm trying to get better at that. But I do post content-oriented things associated with thriving. So LinkedIn's good. And of course, you can find my book at Amazon or the independent bookstores. You can also go to my website. The book website is randseelig.com, R-A-N-D-S-E-L-I-G.com. And there's lots of good stuff on that website, including other podcasts. You can listen to a whole bunch of other or watch some other podcasts. And I'd love to add yours, CJ, when it's available.

Oh man, I appreciate you having it on there. And I appreciate you coming on the show today. Hey, go get the book, Striving: How to Create a Healthier, Happier Me. And prosper, happier and more prosperous life. Let me get it right. Hey, great wisdom in the book, man. Intelligent, smart man. Longevity. Listen, man of wisdom, man. Wise counseling. Check out the CJ Moneyway Show. Thank you for tuning in. We outta here. Peace.

Thank you for listening to the CJ Moneyway Show. Don't forget to share this episode with your friends, leave a comment, and drop a review. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday and Friday for more inspiring journeys. Who knows, your story might be next.

Mm-hmm.