Breaking Barriers Through Language: The WHY Of Make Sense With Gregory V. Diehl

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest.

Welcome to beyond you'd why podcast. We go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. So if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And so this week we're going to be talking about the why of Make Sense. So if this is your why, then you are driven to solve problems and resolve challenging or complex situations. You have an uncanny ability to take in lots of data and information. You tend to observe situations and circumstances around you and then sort through them quickly to create solutions that are sensible and easy to implement. Often you are viewed as an expert because of your unique ability to solve problems quickly. You also have the gift for articulating solutions and summarizing them clearly and in understandable language. You believe that many people are stuck and if they could just make sense out of their situation, they could develop simple solutions and move forward. In essence, you help people get unstuck and move progress forward. So today I've got a great guest for you. His name is Gregory Dial and he is a personal development mentor whose ideals include self inquiry, challenge and analysis for the purpose of helping people to discover who they are. He writes to assist others in undoing faulty narratives about who they are and how life works so that they may begin to make more meaningful choices and resolve their deepest burdens. Dial spent many years studying cultures around the world. He now lives a quiet life in a rural village in Armenia with his cats, book and music. Gregory, welcome to the podcast.

Hi. So first, thanks for having me. Second, that long Description you gave of the kind of person who has making sense as their why describes me probably better than anyone has ever described me before in my life. And in fact, that's major part of the reason why I write books. Because from a very young age I realized I had this uncanny ability to figure out how things work and then more importantly than that, articulate those things for other people. So that manifested in many ways in my life. Getting involved in various education related professions eventually got me into sales too, because I realized a lot of selling was explaining to people how something worked and why they needed it. And now it mostly takes the form of me writing. And that's most of the stuff I write can just be described as that. Me trying to explain some very complex, very important topic for people making sense out of it, so to speak.

Well, let's go back then. So take us through Gregory. Where were you born? I know you're in Armenia now, which we'll get to at some point, I'm sure, but where were you born? What were you like in high school? Kind of. Tell us a little bit about you.

Sure. I was born in San Diego, California. Spent the first 18 years of my life there. And then I became obsessed with trying to make sense out of the world. And I did that primarily by traveling for the next ten years or so. I wanted to see as many different parts of the world as I could because I was curious about how this place worked and I didn't really accept the explanations and the stories given to me by common sources of knowledge about how the world worked. And well, I did that for a while and I felt like I was starting to make sense out of the world. And then I decided I needed to spend more time focusing on myself. So about three years ago I came to Armenia, which, where my grandmother was from, Armenia, so I'm partially descended from here. I was able to get citizenship by descent. And then I bought an old house in disrepair in a village. And I've been fixing it up since then and kind of building a life for myself here in that time, which was right before coronavirus happened, which made travel much more difficult anyway, so it was a really good time for me to stop traveling.

Wow. Okay, so let's go back. So high school, what happened to you after high school? You traveled. What are the different places you traveled and how did you pick them?

I've been to about 56 countries now. The first place I went to was Costa Rica, and that was mostly just a convenience thing. It was an easy place for a young Californian to go hang out for a while with no responsibilities, no worries, little money. But after that, I wanted to see much more difficult, much more challenging places. I had to learn how to support myself financially, sometimes by taking English, teaching jobs locally, or learning how to work online and start my own entrepreneurial endeavors, which is a big part of my life now. But it was mostly just about seeing, you know, where. What place will challenge me the most and make me the most uncomfortable because of how its culture works, its politics, its laws. Just the way they do things is totally different than what I'm expecting to date. I would say the worst place I've ever been is China because they have a lot of very strange, totalitarian, authoritarian policies that really hurt the soul of someone like me who values freedom and passion and individuality. Iraq was another difficult one, you know, and there've been a lot of great places too. You know, all the places that people love to go on vacations like Costa Rica or Bali or something. And a place like Armenia is interesting not just because they have the family connection here, but it's the kind of place that really seems like it's full of talented and skilled people who just don't have a sense of direction for their country or themselves. It's very strange. I've actually coined a term for Armenian self defeatism syndrome where, and it's, it's one thing if, if you just don't have the resources or you don't have the education, which a lot of developing countries don't. In Armenia, I feel like they mostly have those things, they just really lack this self esteem or self confidence, which is very strange because it's like the opposite of the American way of life, which is almost that we're too confident, we believe too much in ourselves, we're quite pompous to a degree about those things. So I don't know, it's an interesting experiment for me to try to be here and see if I can positively influence the country in a certain direction.

So take us back. Here's what's going through my, my mind right now. And I'm sure a lot of the people that are listening to this are thinking the same thing. Take us back to that moment in time where you said to yourself, I am not going to do traditional. I am not going to follow the path everybody else from San Diego or my class is following. I am going to go off and just travel for the rest of my life. Or what was that conversation? What was going on and how did you come to that conclusion?

Well, I Think it is when you are young, really at any age, but especially when you are young. Almost impossible to know that what the choice you're making is the right choice if you're trying to pick like a life direction. Which is why it never made sense to me to commit myself to something like a, like a four year bachelor degree at college. Even though I was quite smart and I enjoyed learning and all those things. I did well in school when I tried it, when I cared enough to try. But that idea just never inherently made sense to me. And no adult proposing that idea to me ever explained it in a way that was very convincing. You know, it was always just a magitude. Well, this is what people do, right? What are you going to do if you don't do this?

I don't know, but I bet there's some other option out there. I bet I could figure one out. And you know I did. But yeah, it was mostly just seemed like everybody made that kind of. Well, not everybody, but most of the people my age it seemed like made that choice out of just a fear of not knowing what else to do. There are some exceptions actually. I knew a few people who went to school because they were just genuinely passionate about studying things like theoretical physics and good on them that they figured out that's what they wanted to do. But I would say at least 90% of the people when they were 18 years old and you just finished high school, you have no idea what you want to do. And I knew I didn't want to do that. So pretty much anything else would be a superior option to something I knew I didn't want to do because at least something else would be learning something new about myself.

How did you know you didn't want to do that?

I saw nothing of myself in that path. There was no part of me that felt like my values and my personality would be serviced or fulfilled in any way. My just going to university for the purposes of getting a degree or a general education. Perhaps it would have been different if I'd been one of those guys who knew for sure. This is the subject I want to study. This is the. I want to be a spinal surgeon and this is the path I have to take to do that. That wasn't me. I don't think that's most people. So it didn't make sense to me that that's what I should be doing with my life at that time.

So tell us, take. What were you like your senior year in high school? What were you like? Who, how would you describe Yourself.

I was living in a.

What you were like. So that I can see how you could have come up to this conclusion.

My senior year of high school, I turned 18 very early into the year, and I moved into a van on my 18th birthday. An old Ford Econo line.

Yeah, it sounds like I'm making this up.

This.

This happened. I spent a year living in a van before I started traveling. And I became known around school as that guy who lived in a van and didn't wear shoes to school. And.

Ah, okay, now we're getting a clearer picture of who you. What you were like.

Yeah.

You were not in some prep school, prepped out and everybody's going to college and you decided, I'm not going to. You were the guy living in the van. Yeah.

And like I said, I still did well in school when I cared enough to, because I was a smart guy and I knew how to take tests well. Right.

It was just about freedom for me. It was totally about freedom for me that I just. I didn't see any other way at that time to get in. Freedom from my parents, from the rules of how young men were supposed to live and function. Except, you know, if I had been less reckless, perhaps I would have, like, saved up money to rent an apartment or something, move out on my own. But I had a van. I liked the van. I liked the freedom of being able to sleep anywhere and have all my possessions with me at any time. So that's what I did. It just made sense to me. It was the Occam's Razor solution, the easiest possible way to gain independence and freedom.

So why was independence and freedom so important to you?

Well, because I don't like other people telling me what to do. And I don't like other people telling other people what to do either. Which I mentioned, China before was like the antithesis of me. Because China is the kind of place where everybody is told what to do all the time, to the point that they don't even realize they're being told what to do because it's just normal for them. I think the greatest insights and benefits of human intelligence and consciousness come when people are free to pursue what they are interested in, what they are passionate about, in whatever way that happens to show up for them, free to form their own lifestyles beyond whatever arbitrary norms the culture they live in tells them they should be doing. Like, hey, why not live in a van? Why? Just because most people don't do it. Just because you don't have running water and a toilet with you at all times you'll find solutions to those things. That's a silly example. Obviously, I don't live in a van anymore. I wouldn't want to do that anymore, at least not long term. But it's an example of how, you know, an independently minded person can find alternative solutions to lifestyle problems. Right. If you don't want to live with your parents, you don't have a place of your own, why not sleep in a car? What's stopping you? Only you. Right. Or maybe it's illegal where you're from, I don't know.

But yeah, you became very committed to this idea of freedom, right?

Yes. And obviously that was just heightened more by. By my obsession with independent travel after the van. You know, it was just, what else can I do now to live life the way I want to? I'll go move to a Latin American country where I don't speak the language and nobody knows me and I don't need very much money to survive.

So what was that influence on you that helped you to think this way? I mean, you just don't wake up and say, hey, I think I'm going to be free for anything I want to do, whenever I want to do it, how I want to do it. What influenced you to think like that?

It's going to sound crazy, but there never was a.

Person or a movie I watched or a book I read that put this idea in my head. Like, obviously I read books and watched movies and met people who influenced me in various ways. But it's always just been me assessing what is possible and how is that different than what people typically do. There's always been a very clear distinction between those two concepts for me. Okay, my parents say do this. School says do this. Society says do this. Why is everyone saying do they? Are those. Is that actually how reality works? Like, there are rules to reality? Certainly we tend to call them things like the laws of physics. There are limitations to what we can do. But then there are all these other rules that people make up and insist this is also true. But is it really true in the same way that, like gravity and thermodynamics are true? Those are true in an absolute way that none of us can change. All these other things are just stuff people started doing and insisted was the right way to do things and traveling just right? Well, some of them do make sense. Some of them are good ideas generally, but a lot of them don't, and they're quite arbitrary. And that's the kind of thing that really gets reinforced by travel. Because you see? Oh, well, in this country, they do things this way and everybody is sure that this is the correct way to do do them. You step over the border in another country, now they're doing things this way and they're all sure that this is the correct way to do them.

Love that you. You know, what's great about talking with you is you had the courage to follow up what you thought where most of us didn't. We may have thought what you thought, but weren't willing to live our life that way.

Right.

Weren't willing to make that a choice for us full time like you were.

Well, it helps that I started so young because perhaps if I'd waited a few years longer and gotten entrenched in some job or school or something, it would have been harder. You know, as people get older, they invest their lives into a certain mode of being, which often includes financially and professionally, but not just that. And it becomes harder and harder to. To accept the risk of dismantling that, losing that if they make major systemic changes to their lives. Which is part of why I had to learn how to do things like make money online in an independent sort of way, because that allowed me to still live wherever I wanted. Even now, even though I've been here three years, I could get on a plane to the other side of the world and mostly keep working and making money and continue my professional life roughly the same way I'm doing it here, because all it takes is an Internet connection.

Okay, so you started in Costa Rica and then you went from country to country to country. How did you determine what you were going to do and how you were going to do it and all the rest? Well, how did you figure that out? Or was it just whatever I feel like is what I'm going to go do?

Well, it's mostly curiosity. That's what compels us to do most new things, isn't it? We want to see what will happen anytime. We're not trying to do something new, we're just trying to repeat something we already know, which isn't bad. You want a certain amount of familiarity in your life, things, things that you know and that you enj. But I was just curious both about myself and about the world, like I said. Okay, now I know how things work in Latin America. How do they work in Asia? I don't know. Let's find out. What other things will I learn about myself by doing this? What new parts of my personality will I see? Oh, I didn't realize it was possible for me to hate a place as much as I hate this place. Let's go find a place that I love more than I knew was possible for me to do so.

So your favorite place was what? And your least favorite place was what?

Well, China. I already listed as my least favorite.

Which one? Oh, China.

China is absolutely my least favorite. That. That's no contest there. Favorite is hard to decide because any place can be really interesting for a few weeks or even a few months, but they're not necessarily the kind of places you would want to live and invest yourself long term and build a social network and be part of the community. Obviously, I've. I'm here in Armenia, and I've been here longer than any other place that I've been in a very long time. So there must be something I like about this place. But is it perfect? Do I still miss the tropics sometimes? And coconuts and papayas and. And other little lifestyle benefits that come from other parts of the world or. Or friendlier places where people treat me a certain way? Maybe. Yeah, to a degree. It forces you to confront what is actually most important to me and my recurring experience of reality as opposed to, yeah, I love hanging out on the beach for a weekend, or I love the way people treat me in this culture, or I love the mountains in this country. Do you need to see those things every day, or are you just glad that you had the experience once or twice, or maybe once a year even? Who knows? Yeah.

So it sounds like a lot of alone time in your travels.

Well, yes and no. For. For a lot of it. I was certainly traveling alone and certainly felt alienated from many of the cultures I went to. But being an English speaker is really useful because there's English in just about every country in this world so far that I found. Um, and also, you know, several years into my travels, I eventually realized there was something called a digital nomad, which was other people doing the same thing I was doing, just kind of in a different way, working from a laptop and hanging out in Bali or Thailand or whatever. And so at a certain point, it became easier to join communities of perpetual travelers and tourists. And that actually really changed my perspective a lot because for the first five years at least, I was like, this is. This is me versus the world. You know, I'm not doing my own thing that nobody understands. Well, there are other people doing this. Well, similar thing. Not quite the same thing I'm doing, but, you know, so it's just. It's just another way your mind opens where you Think you're doing one thing, you think these are your options, then you realize there's this whole other world you haven't explored yet. And I'm always looking for more of that because I'm 33 now and I'm always discovering new options for myself, even here in Armenia, getting involved in new projects, meeting new people, and. And my perspective is constantly changing.

So is this a fair question? What's the most valuable thing you've learned or lesson you've gained from your time as a digital nomad?

Yeah, much of what I've learned from travel, just due to the variety of experiences that come from living this kind of life, could be more broadly said to apply to all of life. Right. I think what we call wisdom is, is typically just being able to derive the principle from a set of experiences and generalize it to all things. Right. So you experience one thing one way and you realize, oh, this is actually true for other kinds of experiences too. We call. We call that wisdom. Typically.

I would say that the most important thing I've learned from having a wide variety of experiences is that you need to find out what is most important to. Out of all possible types of experiences you could have. Because like I was saying before, anything can be stimulating, entertaining, exciting when it's new, or even the first few times you do it, but eventually you realize this is not sustainably fulfilling to me. There's something else I want to be doing, and this isn't it. So what is that thing? What is the kind of thing I should be doing every day of my life that I will continue to find meaningful, that I will continue to get better at? You know, when you get really good at any given skill or domain of knowledge, the first 99%, you, you learn it and you think you understand it. And then there's that remaining 1% that just gets increasingly more and more refined the more you learn about it. I'm a musician. I like playing the piano. There's one behind me, and a few other instruments like the guitar, and I'm pretty good at them. I'm probably better than 9 out of 10 people who play them. But I watch people who really, really dedicate their lives to these things, and they're doing things I can't even understand, like how are they playing those. That many notes so fast? And memorizing all these complex pieces because that's not my. My passion. That's not the thing I need to be doing every day of my life for those people, it is. But there are other things that I do every single day of my life that other people would say, how? How do you do this every day? How are you so obsessed with this? How. How do you reach levels of refinement on that? All because it's genuinely fulfilling to me. I would feel like there's something wrong with me if I weren't doing it. So if you could find out what that thing is, preferably as soon as possible, so you can start incorporating that into your life as much as possible, I think that's a pretty good way to guarantee some level of happiness, fulfillment, and if you're entrepreneurial, professional success in life, too.

So what was that thing that you figured out was most important to you?

Well, it's kind of what I started talking about. I like explaining how things work because I am the kind of guy who needs to make sense out of things. And more than that, I'm the kind of guy who sees problems in everything around me. It's really quite infuriating. And in fact, one of the only ways I manage the frustration and the pain that comes from seeing inefficiencies and misconceptions and mistakes in the way people do things all around me is that I try to help fix those things. I try to explain to people, hey, here's a better way to do that. Most recently, that's manifested as me first, I started teaching English here for free at a community center in town because I saw the level of English education here was just atrocious. And I'm not particularly passionate about teaching English. I'm passionate about the language English. I'm passionate about communication. That's why I'm a writer. But I saw a problem that I was in a unique position to fix, that these people have horrible options for learning English, a skill that will help them throughout life, especially if they want to work internationally and travel. It's going to be much better to speak English than Armenian because no other countries speak Armenian. And like I said before, every country speaks English to some degree. And so I just. I felt like I needed to do something to help them because I can't. Because I see the problem and I see the solution. And frankly, no one else is going to do this if I don't do it. And now that's turned into, I'm teaching other people how to teach English. I've just scaled up to the next level because there was enough of a want for this, enough of a need for this solution that, well, I can't teach everyone in the country how to speak English. So I'm going To teach other people how to. How to be better English teachers. And what will happen after that, I don't know. But it's an example of what I need to do for my life to be tolerable, to meaningful. I have to solve the problems that I see.

Yeah, exactly. And that's. It's interesting that you say it that way, because that's what we believe as well, is when you are able to live your why, you will have passion for what you do. Right. People say I got to find my passion. Well, if what you do is in line with why you do what you do, you will have passion for what you do. And passion is that fuel, and that gives you the energy to keep going, to pursue your dreams. And so in your case, if your why is to make sense out of complex and challenging things, and then you get to do that every day, like you said, man, how much better does it get than that?

I don't know what other kind of life there is for someone like me, frankly, I can't picture. There isn't anything else. I don't know what that would be.

So if you're able to help the people that you're helping discover their why and live their why, then they will have that same passion. And that's what's fueled me, exactly what you're talking about right there. Because if you speak to them in your language of making sense out of things, they may or may not get it. But if you're able to speak to them in the language that they speak, same thing, you speak English, they speak Armenian, you don't speak it.

How.

How good are your communications? How good is your communication with them? But if you can speak to them in Armenian, hey, well, now we're having a real conversation. Even though you're really good at English, does that make sense? So if you can figure out what their why is and speak to them in their language the way they want to hear it, so much more effective. You'll be so much more effective than speaking in the way you want to say it.

Well, and. And on that note, I've always felt like it's been very hard for me to find people I could really look up to as mentors or advice givers. That's part of the reason why I was so obsessed with, you know, like, learning things myself, experimenting, seeing the world myself, because I didn't really trust what other people had to say about almost anything. And. And part of that is because they don't speak my language. They don't. They can't Explain things in a way that will make sense to me or I don't believe what they're saying. For whatever reason, I don't trust their authority. With rare exceptions, there have been some. Some truly great figures in my life, but it's always been really hard for me to just accept what other people tell me is true or is a good idea. And I've realized it's because not very many people speak the same language I do. And so I try to embody as much of that language as I can in my writing or in my teaching. Not to try to tell everyone, you should speak the language I do because it's the best language, but rather just to provide an option for other people who do speak that language and think that no one else does, like I once did. Right. Because there will be some people who read one of my books or hear what I have to say and say, finally, this guy is saying the thing I've been waiting my whole life for someone to say. I didn't know there were people saying these things.

So, interestingly, when we. We had our annual event where we had all of our. We have a lot of coaches that we've trained in how to utilize the Y and the Yoshi. And this one exercise I did, I didn't know how it was going to turn out, but what I did is I separated all of the coaches into rooms with people that had their same why. So that would be putting you in a room with people that all have the why of makes sense, and then you get to talk.

Sounds like heaven. Yes.

So that's exactly what happened. When we brought everybody back together, we said, what was that like for you? And they're like, oh, my gosh. I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to speak to somebody who actually understood me, somebody who I could connect with right away. And that's kind of what you're talking about. So, you know, in your marketing, what made me think about this is in your marketing for your book. Because. Let's talk about your book here in a minute. In the marketing of your book, if you say something along the lines of, this book is meant for people that are trying to make sense of these complex things, if that's what you're trying to do. Man, are you going to like this?

Yeah, it's interesting because I've written a few of my own books now, I think. Actually, I'm working on my fifth now. And I've helped a lot of other people produce and publish their books, too. And there's always several stages it goes through like any product you develop, I guess. But you know, there's a beta reading process where people read the rough draft and say, well, I don't understand this part, or what are you talking about here? Or I really like this part. And then you figure out, okay, we have to write a book description. How are we going to. To people what this book is about? We have to pick a title and a subtitle that really speaks to that point. And at least with all of my books, there have always been some people who love them and some people who say things like, well, you need to tone this down. Right? Their language used here is way too esoteric. You need to make it more friendly to general audiences. And those people don't understand that that's the opposite of what I'm trying to do. I, I am trying not, not trying to force it to be a specific way, just to be contrarian. I'm trying to embody a particular voice and a particular way of thinking about things that is not very well presented already in everything from the title to the book description to the actual content of the book. I want people to look at the book, look at the COVID read the title, read the description, and say, I'm going to learn things in this book that no other book is going to teach me. This book is made for someone like me. And I think I've gotten better at that because that is a lot of the responses I get when I have interactions with readers. They say, I read your whole book and I learned so many things that nobody else talks about. Like, well, I'm glad that the title intrigued you enough that you realized, yes, this is the kind of book you should be reading. And maybe for other readers, they read it and say, why would I read a book called that? What's that got to do with me? Probably nothing. Don't read it. It's fine. Go read another book. It's fine.

So tell us, what's your latest book?

Latest book is. See, here's, here's the title test already. I think you're going to hear this and it's either going to intrigue you or you're going to have no idea what it's about. The Heroic and Exceptional Minority Subtitle. A Guide to Mythological Self Awareness and Growth. What does that mean?

Yeah, how did you come up with that title? The Heroic. What is it?

The Heroic and Exceptional Minority.

So of course, I would think in terms of.

My mind would go right to the person from Mexico that's come over to the US That's a hero to his people and turns out to be an amazing minority. That's where I would have gone.

Well, okay, yes, that's one connotation of the word minority. Cultural minority, racial minority.

Minority. The word exceptional really speaks to literally an exception to the rule. Someone who is an outlier, someone who is different in some important way, such that you cannot categorize them the same as whatever the norm happens to be. And her heroism obviously has a lot of different connotations and interpretations too. What does it mean to be heroic? Does it mean saving a cat from a tree? Does it mean self sacrifice? Does it mean what? Well, and I'm very clear and specific in how I define and use these terms in the book. But a hero is somebody who goes to extreme lengths to embody their values, which often means at the cost of great personal expense, which might even mean dying for what you believe in. But it usually means somebody who has to struggle to accomplish what is important to them, that is heroic to them. And exceptional, meaning that they are different somehow than the norm. Might mean that they are smarter. Might mean that they have some ability or some perspective that not very many people have. Might just be that they see things differently and it's hard for them to communicate their perspective on things to other people. And so this book is for those kinds of people, people who are outliers, who are different, but feel impelled by what I define as heroic values, to do something meaningful with what makes them exceptional. And those will be different for each person, but these principles will be the same for all of them. And the purpose of the book, it's broken up into 36 short chapters, is to discuss different aspects of life as this kind of person. And particularly things you're probably going to struggle with if you're this kind of person and what to do about that.

Interesting. And what prompted you to write that book?

My whole life.

Sleep well, like. Like I said, I didn't. I didn't have many people to say, Gregory, here's the deal. You're this kind of person. And so your life is going to have these kinds of challenges and trials. And these are the kinds of things you're going to spend your whole life chasing after because it's the only thing you're going to find meaningful. Nobody ever said anything remotely like that to me. I had to slowly figure that out. My. Or actually I give several examples in the book of watching mythological themed movies or reading books that have certain kind of moral mythological lessons to them, whether that's something very popular and well known like Star wars has obvious, very heroic mythological stories of, you know, resisting the dark side and staying true to yourself and rescuing your father from his darkness. The Lion King Simba becoming the king that he was supposed to be and rejecting hedonism to take on responsibility. Responsibility. You know, I, I kind of posit that it is those kinds of timeless mythological stories that often give us guidance that we might not have in our personal lives if we don't have an Obi Wan Kenobi or, or, or, or a Gandalf in our lives to tell us, Frodo, this is the journey you're on, Luke. You have to learn to use the Force, which I think, frankly, very few of us actually do. But we still have this archetypal idea of what these people are supposed to be and the kind of guidance they're supposed to give us.

Piece together these universal, timeless truths on our own if we're willing to explore and experiment and deal with the costs of doing all those things. So this, this book is meant to just summarize all that and say to them, hey, you're not crazy. This is the. If you respond to what is in this book, I'm almost certain that you're this kind of person. So maybe take these things into consideration.

Well, you know, in my language, in the why. So you discovered your why, but there's also your why. Os, it's called your why operating system, which is your why, why you do what you do, how you bring that to life, and then ultimately what people can count on from you. I would say, based on our conversation, and I bet a lot of the listeners would pick this up, I would say that your why, which we already know, is to make sense out of the complex and challenging. You're a great problem solver. You see things that are keeping people stuck and helping them solve it. Now, how you go about doing that is by challenging the status quo, thinking differently, thinking outside the box, imagining stuff the rest of us have never even seen. And then ultimately what you bring is a better way to move forward, to get results, to live the life that you want. And so your why would be make sense. Your how would be challenging the status quo. And your what would be finding a better way. Does that make sense to you?

And you've just described entrepreneurship in a nutshell, which I've also mentioned a few times here. That's this book isn't specifically about entrepreneurship, but everything described here could be called entrepreneurial principles, which is actually the subject of my next book, which is working title is Everyone is an entrepreneur, which is about realizing that we are all in a position to improve the way things are done. To create something that didn't exist before, to change the world for the better and perhaps make money at the same time. Why not? Because, you know, that's. That's what the purpose of an entrepreneurship is. To receive profit for improving the way things are done or creating something that didn't exist before, which is a very heroic approach to life. At least according to the way I'm using the term heroic.

I love that. Well, okay, last question for you. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

I haven't received a lot of good advice in my life, unfortunately.

But worst, which was the best.

And were you open to it?

I think that the best piece of advice I should have received if there had just been someone to say this in my language at least. Maybe there were people who tried to say it in ways that I wasn't ready to hear. That's quite possible. But there was somebody who could have said it in the way that I would have responded to. It would have been okay, Gregory, you're not crazy. You're pretty bright, you're pretty good at figuring things out. But you're going to make a lot of mistakes in the process of figuring things out. And some of those mistakes are going to have long term consequences that you might even think at the time you could never recover from.

But you should at least proceed with the self confidence that there is a meaning to your madness, that you're not just chaotically searching and exploring for no purpose. You are discovering something about yourself that is meaningful, that is important, and no one can tell you exactly what that's going to end up being. But just know that you're not crazy. There is something to this. You just have to figure out what that something is yourself. That conversation probably would have changed my life and saved me several years of mistakes.

Maybe, right? Who knows?

Or maybe I would have ignored it completely and just did everything the same. Anyway, who knows? That's also possible.

Yep. So if there are people that are listening, that want to connect with you, they want to buy your book, they want to learn more about what you're doing, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

The book is available on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or any major online retailer. Again, the title is the Heroic and Exceptional Minority. If you want to contact me, I'm on Facebook or go to my website, gregorydeal.net last name is spelled D. I E H L.

So I've been saying it wrong.

Yeah, Dial deal. I like it for the puns. Let's make a deal or deal with it.

Okay. Well, Gregory, thank you so much for being here with us today. I've enjoyed our conversation. You've gotten me to see things differently. And I love the now that I know what the title of your book is about, it makes a lot more sense to me. So I'm excited to check it out. So thank you so much for being here and being on the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Okay, so it's time for our new segment, which is Guess the why. And I've got somebody that I want to ask you. Hopefully you have seen the hit TV series called Yellowstone. Because I want to know, what do you think John Dutton's why is? John Dutton is the patriarch of the Yellowstone ranch, and there's so many things that happen in that series. My wife and I have been watching that. So if you've been watching it, what do you think? John Dutton's why is he's the guy that protects the family, takes care of people that he has great relationships with, and he's got lots of different relationships. I believe that John Dutton's why is trust creating relationships based upon trust? Because if you're on his side, if you have that brand, because he brands those people, some of the people that work with him, if you have that brand, there's nothing he won't do for you. He will trust you implicitly unless you break it. And then if you break his trust, you're gone. You're out. So I believe that John Dutton's why is to create relationships based upon trust. What do you think? What's your take on John Dutton's why? I want to thank you so much for listening today. If you have not yet discovered your why, go to whyinstitute.com and use the code PODCAST50. You can discover your why for free. If you love the beyond, you'd why podcast, please don't forget to subscribe below and leave us a review on whatever platform you are listening on, and I look forward to seeing you and having you listen next week. Have a great week. Thank you.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and I'll see you on the next episode.