The default, the baggage, the destination, and importance of the beyond.

The amount of people who have backpacks and suitcases of historical baggage that they have chosen to continue to walk around this planet with and not embrace. A real simple word, but a real hard concept of forgiveness is mind blowing to me.

Welcome back to beyond the Default. I am Liz Morehead, and as always, joined by George B. Thomas. How are you this morning?

I'm doing wonderful, Liz. I'm sitting here. I just got done with a three day weekend. We went camping as a family. I had s', mores, I roasted hot dogs. I mean, how can life get any better?

I can't think of a better weekend, actually. Mine involved more cleaning and fewer s', mores, unfortunately. But we are not here to talk about s'. Mores. In fact, this week I almost wanna call this a Back to the future topic. We've dug in over the past few weeks into some pretty meaty topics, but this week I actually want us to take a beat here and go back to the beginning. And what I mean by that is today I want to define what we mean when we say beyond the default. What is the default and why is it important to go beyond that? You game for that topic?

Yeah, I'm down for that topic. It's interesting because I quickly realized that this is probably an episode that we would need to do, and I'm glad that we're getting it out of the way sooner than later because confusion can be the enemy, by the way. That can be in life. That can be professionally. Like, anytime you can get rid of confusion, it is going to be for the betterment of your sanity and those around you. But when we launched this podcast, one of the things that I asked the family to do, say, I need you to listen to this and just give me your feedback. And my wife came back to me and she referenced a part where in the teaser episode I talked about, so if you wake up and you go to work and you come home and you watch TV and you eat dinner and you wake up and you go to work. I referenced that as like, you know, you might be looking to take your life to the next level, but my. My w. Literally, we had a conversation. She's like, we do that. Like, you wake up and you go to work and you come home from work and we eat dinner and we do watch some TV and then you go to bed. And so I said, yeah, but it's different. There's a different layer of what I'm talking about here. And so I immediately knew there was some confusion. And so again, Liz, I'm Glad that we're digging into this. We can talk about really, what is the default? Because I don't want you to be listening this and go, well, I watch tv. Crap, am I in trouble? Well, I eat dinner. Crap, am I in trouble? Like, I go to work. Crap. That's not what I'm saying. It's. It's when it becomes a rut, when it becomes a detriment, when your mind starts to go in certain places or dance with certain things. And so, yeah, I'm glad we're, we're digging into this.

So we're not necessarily saying that if you want to live beyond the default, we're anti dinner.

Yeah, we're not anti dinner. And I'm not telling everybody to cancel their Netflix or their Hulu account. Right. Because there's a difference between being stuck in a rut, being able to go beyond that default rut that you may have been in for years, by the way, and the idea of just taking some valuable downtime. I don't want to get those confused.

Let's dig right in then. So when we say default in beyond the default, what do you mean explicitly by it?

Yeah. So in my life, I've seen so many people that I would use the word stuck. I would use the word rut. I would even use words like are perfectly fine with where they're at. The unfortunate thing is, and I know, I don't mean to sound judgmental when I say this, but many times they shouldn't be, like, they shouldn't be satisfied because of a belief structure that was either given to them or they've grabbed a hold of and just thought, well, it is what it is. I mean, this is what I've been given. So this is what I have to take. And to the point where if it's that and you're happy, I'll even say okay on that. But again, unfortunately, I have seen a lot of people that go to work and they hate it. I have seen a lot of people be in relationships and they hate them. I've seen a lot of people just live day in and day out and hate it and feel like they're suffering through this 365 day, however many years they're gonna be alive existence. And I'm like, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, there is more. How do you get out of that? Which, by the way, how, how you get out of the rut, how do you get unstuck? Is probably a whole either piece of this episode or a whole different episode in itself. But coming to the realization that it doesn't have to be the way that it is, that you have the ability to change fundamentally some things that might be going on and why you're accepting of the place, by the way, let me just say place or things that have you stuck or have you in a rut. Because many times it's where we're putting our mind or where we're putting our time and what that's creating as far as a dam and allowing us to blast through where we actually can head. Which again is beyond the default or beyond your default state at this point.

Can you take us to a time in your life where you were in a default state? Just as an example?

Yeah. Who that might get in, that might get intense. You know, there was a time in my life where I just fundamentally believed that I didn't deserve the best out of life. I had surrendered myself to an existence of working at a very low rate job. I was in Cleveland, Ohio. I was working at a furniture store as a warehouse guy. So I would pick things up and put them down all day long, right? And I would load trucks and cars. I lived in a house, but I lived in a room of somebody else's house. I knew I didn't belong there. I knew like fundamentally that, man, there's got to be more to life than this, than just being like a warehouse guy. Nothing wrong with being a warehouse guy. But for me, and this is the thing that's what I want, I Hopefully people can hear the undertones of if your mind is telling you that there's more, if your body is telling you there's more, if you just come home or leave to go to the place that you're working and you're just like, like you're not excited, you're not joyous, you don't wake up and you aren't immediately lit up by the fact of the potential that you have for the day. Like you might be in a default state versus where you could be living past that and be exhilarated. There's things that happen back in those days where I let things like take my time. You know, I didn't really sit down and watch Netflix or Hulu or whatever the, you know, the VCR tape that I would rent from Blockbuster back in the day, I really didn't do that because I was taking downtime. I did that because I was escaping. And if you're escaping life, you're probably in a default again. Big difference between escaping your life if you're always daydreaming about a different life instead of just entertaining yourself because you want to relax for a little bit. Huge differences. And so thinking about the time that I spent at the bar and the amount of bar tabs and the blockbuster tabs, all the ways that I could escape life, tabs that happened when I had that job, when I was allowing myself to be that person, when I was hanging around those people, that made it real comfortable to be there. And by the way, there's a lot of little tidbits that I'm dropping right there of, like, well, how do you get out of it? I fully realized it was coming off the back of something that I thought I was supposed to be doing, right? So I had worked at a Christian camp for three years teaching people, kids how to ride horses and about Jesus. And because of my own, this is what I want to do. I moved to Cleveland, and it was almost like I moved a little bit from, like, my heaven on earth to my hell on earth, to be honest with you.

Why did you make that choice?

Why do all men make the great choices they make? Because of a girl. That's. So there was a girl that I met, and there I'm. Hey, listen, one of the things I want to do on this podcast is when I get asked the question, I got to give the honest answer. Because if I'm going to help people get into their own honesty and dig deep and say, why did I make that decision? They got to be able to have as dumb answers as I have. And so it really was. I met a girl and I was like, I want to hang out with this girl more. And, God, I'm just going to have to put you on hold for a little bit because I'm going to go to Cleveland, Ohio, and I'm going to figure this thing out.

So I have a quick question for you, though. How do you tell the difference between being in a default state and living beyond the default? But you're just getting in your head about things because you can choose to live the exhilarating life, you can choose to live beyond your default and still have days, sometimes even weeks, depending on what's happening in terms of circumstances at a given time where you are feeling the whelm, you are feeling the disconnect, you are living the dream. But let's face it, George, you know, even you and I, we both absolutely love what we do day in and day out. And there are some moments where it's like, oh, yeah, this is why it's called work and not happy fun time. There are always Going to be moments where life is lifing pretty hard. So how do you tell the difference between being on the hamster wheel of a default and hey, just buckle in, you're still in the right spot at the right time.

Well, first of all, I wouldn't correlate a life beyond the default as a life of ease. Gotta be careful with this because if you are living a life that feels just really easy, by the way, you might be in the default. I honestly believe that living a life beyond the default may be a little bit more difficult because you're revving your engine, your brain up more, you are putting more output as far as life is lifing and you're working. But what I will also say is what's funny when I think about this, the beyond your default is life is lifing, but you're helping other people when their life is lifing. That's the thing. I will tell you that as aggressive as my life gets now with where I'm at and everything that I'm doing, I never feel like I don't have the ability to throttle down or throttle up the amount that I need to give myself love or the amount that I need to give others love. And the reason I'm bringing up the word love is because we all have to think about, you know, let's take a car, for instance. And Liz, the kind of metaphor or analogy that came to my brain as you're asking me this is like, well, yeah, occasionally the car might run out of gas or we've all had those moments where it's about to run out of gas, but it starts to do that sputtering thing. But we actually have been able to coast right into the gas station and fill up at the last moment. Oh, maybe that's just me. Okay, maybe that's just me. But it's like, because we've pushed it to the edge, right? We know we should have stopped for gas a while ago. We should have loved ourselves a while ago. We should have given ourselves a three day weekend. We should have given ourself a vacation. We should have given ourself downtime. That I'm not saying is bad, but when I think about everything that's going on in my life now, I would say, is it a little bit more difficult than it was when I was a warehouse guy in default state? Absolutely. Do I run out of gas easier now than I did back then? No way. It's easier for me to keep the car filled up. It's easier for me to Take harder journeys. It's easier. Because part of the answer is almost in your question. The brain is braining, right? And what I mean by that is we're thinking about things. We're getting in our own head. We're tearing pieces apart. Part of this I would like to tie into is that we're taking the time to work on ourselves so that we can help others work on themselves as well. Because we can only love others once. We love ourself. And none of these things, none of this podcast wouldn't exist if I hadn't gone through the journey of this default dude who could have just stayed there. As, you know, the warehouse guy. In my case, for you, it might be the lawyer. By the way, your default state might be something like. And by the way, I'm not making this up. A lawyer who decided to just go do stuff around like Disney, because that was beyond their default. And I could bring up. And maybe that's another episode in the future, like, what are 5, 6, 8 real life use cases where you look at somebody and they had a career and then they went and did something totally different? Or listeners, I want you to think about your own life, your own family, grandmas, grandpas, cousins, uncles, mothers, whoever, where they were this thing, and then all sudden, they became this other thing, and you're like, well, how did that happen, ladies and gentlemen? You witnessed somebody in your life transform beyond their default. They were able to pivot. They were able to transition. They had a new passion, a new look, a new road that they wanted to follow instead of just trudging down the same road day in, day out in this rut, feeling stuck, not feeling fueled up, not helping others, not adding value, but just kind of like rinse and repeat mode.

How do you think we end up in the default, Aside from, you know, us women luring you to Cleveland?

No, no, no, no, no. First of all, I don't want to get canceled. So I'm not saying that it was a woman's fault. It's just that was the precipice, the turning point for me of like, hey, she's kind of cute and I like her. Let me say, you were a catalyst back then.

She was a catalyst for Cleveland. Yes.

Yeah.

So the reason I asked this question is I think a lot of people when they're growing up, and maybe this is not true for everybody, but I think, you know, when we're younger, we do have some idealism about us. I'm going to go out there and make my ding in the universe. I'M going to go out there and I'm going to do all these different things. And then we end up in a default. It's not that we were seeking it out. Some of us may have felt like this is just what we're supposed to do, or we just wake up one morning and go, oh, oh, no. But how do people who may be naturally programmed to live beyond the default? How do you end up in a default state? How does that happen?

Yeah, it's actually really easy. I think one of the easiest ways. Because if you are that kind of driven purpose or driven person, that's interesting that the word purpose came out. But if you're that type of driven person, what's the saying? It's not if, but when you'll burn yourself out. You'll. You'll do it. Trust me. Been there many times. Burn myself out. And having a action plan for when you burn yourself out, how to get yourself, like, refreshed and back in the game. It's a lot like boxing. I'm not a boxer, but, you know, if you watch boxing matches, you can get hit. But if you have a plan of, like, at least getting back on your feet, if you have a plan of at least guarding your face, you can get back in the fight. Some people, I think they just get knocked out in life and that's just what they lay there. They just stay there, right? Either you burnt yourself out, your boss burnt you out, your situation in life burnt you out, but there was no strategy, no plan to, like, how do I get out of this? But here's the thing, and I'm gonna go back to the purpose word because I really do feel like that came out for a reason. It's real easy to just sit down, chill, stay there, eek out in existence. If you don't see that there's any purpose to anything that you're doing, ah, I'm not making a big difference. I don't know if anybody would even know that I was here. And sometimes people who are truly driven, there's a disconnect in what they're trying to do and the purpose that they were put on this planet. And so one of the things I would say, if you feel like you're trying to live a life beyond the default, it seems like it's just not connecting. It's not that you should be stuck, it's not that you shouldn't keep going, but it's literally like the artwork of this podcast. You may just need to choose the better road, the different road that is more aligned with your purpose, that is more aligned with where your beyond is located. Here's the thing. Your beyond is not located the same place that your co workers beyond is. Your beyond is not located the same place that your siblings or your parents is. Your beyond is in a special place hidden down a very unique path that you need to find. And I think it comes down to what you're passionate about. I think it comes down to your purpose. I think it comes down to the tribe or audience that will actually end up surrounding you with whatever this thing that is your beyond. And so sometimes I think what we lack or what we maybe even subconsciously choose not to do when we're in this rut, when we're stuck, when we're living a life of the default, subconsciously we maybe stop asking our self, am I headed in the right direction? Do I understand truly what I'm passionate about? Do I know what my purpose on this planet is? Do I know who my people are? And if you're sitting here listening to this and you've never asked yourself those types of questions, who are my people? What am I passionate about? What's my purpose? And then follow that up with and how can I best serve them? Because by the way, the way that I fill my tank, I think the way that many people who are living a life beyond their default, the way they fill their tank is by understanding, it's by filling others tanks. It's a really weird thing, but I get more joy out of understanding that I have been a catalyst to get somebody from their default state or a really bad state even worse than default to the next layer up or the next layer better or, or even a maybe better way to look at this is to be able to unlock something that has been stopping them from their journey to their beyond. And that's, that's what fuels me up. I think that's why I'll always spend hours and hours and hours giving, because I understand what I'm giving of myself, I'm actually getting. It's like coming right back to me.

You know, it reminds me of piece of scripture that you and I have actually talked about personally a couple of times. One of my favorites. Because I'm sitting here thinking about, you know, that moment when you realize A you are in a default state and B, you need to move beyond it. Sometimes your past in a default state is the exact prologue you need to move beyond it, if that makes sense. Like sometimes you are exactly where you're supposed to be in the moment that you're supposed to be in it. And it reminds me of that piece of scripture from Deuteronomy. You've been circling this hillside country long enough. Turn north where you have that moment of, I keep doing the same thing. I'm in the default Saints. Right, right. Okay. So now it's time for you to move along. So my question to you would be this. How do you tell the difference between the moments of you are exactly where you're supposed to be and it's time to turn north?

It's interesting because my brain goes in multiple directions, by the way, when you bring this up, Liz, first of all, I don't want anybody to misconstrue what I'm saying or what we're talking about here. As I'm going to wake up one day and say I'm going to live a life beyond my default and I'm going to be able to skip seven steps of my life. That is not going to happen. But here's the thing. What I will say is there's a difference between feeling stuck and understanding stepping stones. I can fundamentally tell you there was a difference from how I felt when I was stuck. Stuck to when I had the mindset of, this is the next stepping stone. This is the next piece. Let's journey back for a second to kind of move forward. When I felt like I was to become a pastor, did I realize that it was only going to be for a short time of my life? No. But was it the lessons and the things that I needed to have in my brain and in my body to move forward around this idea of serving? Absolutely. Was it the first time that really I was put on and I use huge air quotes when I say this stage or behind the pulpit. Was it the first time that I was actually creating messages, dare I say, presentations? Was it the first time that I was creating graphics or building a website? Now, if you know me, you know, now that I speak on stages and I design websites and help people with their marketing, God, in his infinite wisdom, when I had this, I need to go to school to be a pastor, knew where we are headed. So here's the thing. I want everybody to realize that life will give you stepping stones, understanding that stepping stones are different from being stuck in a default state. I also want you to realize that you're always, hopefully, somehow heading north. Yes, you're circling the hills, as the scripture says. But as you're circling the hills, you're picking up tools, you're picking up mindsets, you're picking up best Practices so that when it is time to take that journey, you're equipped. You got your backpack, right? And you're equipped with the things that you need in your backpack to make it from where you are to where you have to get. And what's fun, Liz, is you asked me the question of, like, how do you know it's time? Or how do you start to understand? I think we are all given this interesting brain that works in really fantastic ways. And I'll never forget the time when I was at a conference, at an event, and I realized, this is why you did this. This is why you did this. This is why this happened in your life. This is why this happened in your life. This is why you did this. I literally was standing on stage, and I felt inside my spirit, inside my mind, seven dominoes, large dominoes of my life. And, like, got massive goosebumps because I was like, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. All of those things were exactly what were supposed to happen. But I couldn't have that moment until I reached a destination where my passion, my purpose, and my people were all in the same room. And then it just was given to me, like, look, you are in the right place now. Keep heading in this direction.

One of the things that's really interesting about those moments where you realize you have to push into the beyond. And this is where we're gonna have to go. There, George. We're gonna have to go there. I'm just. Warning, Warning. We're going there.

Warning. Danger, Will Robinson.

Danger. A long time ago, in another life, I was a beer writer for the Capitol Gazette and the Baltimore Sun. And I interviewed a brewery owner who was considered the godfather of the Baltimore beer scene. He had ushered in brew pubs via legislation. He owned one of the oldest breweries in the county, and just overall had such an incredible wealth of knowledge. Interestingly enough, he lived a life beyond the default. He had gone to UVA for theater and ended up as a brewery founding father in Maryland. And I asked him if he could go back and tell himself something. When he first started this journey. It was around the 21st anniversary of. Of his brewery. And I decided to wait till the 21st year. So that way, his brewery was of legal drinking age. I thought that was funny. I asked him that question, and he said, I wish I could go back and tell myself that the people you start with are not always the people you grow with, and you need to be really careful about that. What I'm leading up to here is often when we Push through these barriers, beyond our default, into a new area of our life that may cause friction with friends, family. You may have to make decisions about who's coming with you and who's staying. How do you navigate those types of challenges? And. And are those things you've had to navigate yourself?

Oh, God, yes. Without a doubt. So it's interesting because, oh, there's so much we could unpack here. Many of us keep the friends that we have around us because we're afraid to be alone. Many of us will deal with family. Ish. Because we feel like we were born into a situation and we have to stick with it. Many of us find ourselves on a path filled with other business folks that, because they were great at a set of tasks, got thrown into this fishbowl petri dish of a startup or a business and were like, it's almost like one of those which one of these don't belong Game. Because you're like, man, I don't. I don't belong here at all. And people, I totally agree. People that were your friends at one point will not be your friends at another. And one of the things that I've heard and I have had seen happen in my own life, Liz, is when you're on the mountaintop, there's a lot thinner. Not everybody is built to breathe the air at the mountaintop. And so when you think about the friends you keep, the family you have, the co workers that you hang out with, are they ready for the air at the top of the mountain? The answer fundamentally, most times is probably going to be probably not or no, just a flat out no. But there will be a select few. There'll be a select few that are supposed to traverse to the top with you. But I don't think that anybody but yourself can go to the tippy top. I think every mountain, your mountain, was designed specifically for you and who you become. And I have had to make, and I hope everybody listening this knows that you'll have to make hard decisions. This person is not right for me because when I'm with them, I always do this. These people are not right for me because when I'm with them, I always think this. To get to my ultimate destination, I need to be this and I need to think this. Anything that erodes from these things need to be removed from my life. Which means we have to start to unpack this idea of why are we if we are? Because not all of you are. Why are we people pleasers? We need to start to unpack. How can I Feel secure and safe. If I am alone on my journey. We need to start to unpack some like real deep, hefty. How has my perception of this world and the way that I've been willing to live it thus far, how does that have to change? And who do we have to let go to actually get there? Imagine, right? So let's say you are on that track to the top of your mountain. How much easier would it be if you weren't carrying three of your friends who decided they just didn't want to walk any further? It'd be easier, but what's funny, and let's just take it off of friends. The amount of people who have backpacks and suitcases of historical baggage that they have chosen to continue to walk around this planet with and not embrace. A real simple word, but a real hard concept of forgiveness is mind blowing to me. And so if you think about a.

Little deeper, what does that mean?

I have had to forgive myself so that I could get further in life. I have had to forgive others so that I could get beyond what was my default. And so many times in my life and I've seen others that we just have this either lack of a relationship with how powerful forgiveness can be and how when we forgive each other, like the freedom that it equals. It's funny because I've literally heard people say these words, well, I'm not going to forgive them because they're whatever it is, right? Yo, forgiveness isn't for them. When you forgive them or you forgive yourself, you're literally freeing yourself. You're freeing your own mind, you're freeing your own spirit. And so again, if we're talking about the multiple ways that you're not being able to climb up the mountain, you're carrying humans that don't belong in the atmosphere that you're in right now, time to shed them. You can always come back down and visit them, by the way. Or you're carrying luggage and baggage that you have forgot that you were supposed to like check it out before you got on the plane. Or it's okay to just leave it sit somewhere because it's like clothes that don't fit you anymore. You still have 12 year old clothes that you're trying to put on a 30, 40 or 50 year old body. Just leave it go. Quit carrying around like it's nonsense.

How do you prepare those that you want to come with you on this journey? So for example, George, right now you're with your family and you've made big pivots, big changes You've pushed beyond your default to get to this point where we're even sitting here recording today. There are going to be times where, you know, it's what we were talking about before. And I'm not saying the examples we were giving before binary or super straightforward. It is challenging and sometimes very excruciating to realize, oh, gosh, this person isn't coming with me. But when you have family, you not only want them as part of your journey, you need them as part of your journey because they're part of your heart. But change, even when it's positive, by its very nature, is change. It is disruptive. How do you bring other people along in that journey? What are the things that need to be happening there?

Yeah. So the first thing that, like, rushes into my brain is like, patience. Be patient. The second thing that rushed into my brain is I don't necessarily know if I am trying to prepare them to be on my journey. Do I want them to be along for the ride? In some sense or fashion of the word? Yes. But I also realized that for me, it's become a point of how do I actually get them on their own journey? How do I dictate, like, hey, here's this mountain. There's 17 different ways that we can climb this mountain. We're all going to meet at destination one, destination two, destination three, and then the top of the mountain. Now, here is the way that I'm going to climb the mountain. However, I have said there are 17 different ways to climb this mountain. So how can I best equip each and every one of you with the way that you want to climb the mountain? How do you want to go? Oh, you want to do that? Here are two pieces of advice. By the way, I'm going to veer off of my path in about seven days so that I can help you over this. One piece of your path that I know from historical knowledge will probably be difficult for you, but I'll be there. I'll meet you there, then I'll get back on my path to climb. Right. What am I doing here? What am I waxing poetic on? Is the fact of understanding that my journey, your journey, is not everybody's journey. And even if they are going to come with you, you need to understand they're going to have to take their own path. And even more importantly than their own path is, you have to be okay with them taking their own amount of time. Listen, there are probably people in my life that are like, poof, finally, sheesh. He could have done that years ago I needed my path and I needed my time. And when I think about the people that I would love to be at the top of the mountain with me where we could hang out, we could celebrate and we could take great photos of our hands up in the air and a beautiful sunrise. Sunset or sunrise. I have to realize I might be at that mountain for a long time before anybody gets there. But I'm definitely giving them SMS messages or emails or I'm yelling through a megaphone, ways to help them navigate their path. Here's the other thing that's fun as I'm a okay with somebody beating me to the top of the mountain. Hey, I'm an old guy. I might need to grab a stick, I might hobble along, but I'm going to make it there. See, what I think I'm banging on here is that it's about focus too, right? Like you're telling the people that are around you, here's where we should go. Does everybody agree that we should go here? Okay, we all agree that we should go there. Let's focus on that. Let's understand we all have our own paths. Let's understand it's going to take us all our own time. But at least as a cohesive unit of family, a set of friends, co workers, a business, we have the focus, we have the paths and we have the timing that we can pay attention to. And then as a group, we can help each other get to that destination that we're trying to go to. Versus, by the way, the default is like, yo, I'm just going to come home and I'm going to not talk to anybody, really. And my wife is going to complain that I never listen to her and I ignore. Or the husband is going to be like, why is the house this way? Or whatever. Right? I would much rather take the pains and aggressive paths of beyond the default than the pains and punching bag and boxing matches of like the opposite side of it.

All right, final question. You ready, George?

I don't know. Last time you did this, I got emotional. I'm going to try to make it through whatever you say, the best I can. So. So we'll see.

Fantastic. I want you to pick a moment in your life where you are in a default state. I want you to take us there and I want to hear what you wish you could go back and tell yourself. Whether that's a piece of advice or you're in the right spot. Just keep going. But take us to not the easy default state because I think sometimes we can go through stages. The one that counted the most.

As you asked me that question, my brain transported me back to a moment in time. I immediately fought it and said, I don't want to talk about that.

Which means we're talking about it, which.

Means we're talking about it. I'll never forget it was an evening, and it was the beginning of an end, which then became the beginning that most people know of me or would tie back to most of the family that I have and stuff like that. Not my side, but, like, my wife's side. And it's the beginning of my kids and stuff. But I had worked for that furniture store as a warehouse guy, ended up being a sales guy, ended up being a manager, ended up moving from Cleveland, Ohio, to Youngstown. And I'll never forget one day in Youngstown, Ohio, I was sitting in an apartment with some people that I kind of knew. We had been drinking beers. I had been smoking some weed and popped a couple pills. And I was sitting there watching TV with this other guy, and I heard these words come out of my mouth. Man, dude, this house could burn down right now. And I just sit and watch the flames. The next morning, I started making changes in my life. I was married to somebody that I shouldn't have been married to. I was working somewhere that I shouldn't have been working. I was hanging out with people that I shouldn't have been hanging out with. And so I aggressively got the knife of life out, if you will, and just started carving parts of my life away.

Let me ask you a quick question here, though. I think thematically and maybe linearly, you say that, then the next day you start hacking away. But was it the next morning that you realized you needed to make changes? Was it the moment those words came out of your mouth, what hit different, so to speak?

No, it was the fact that my spirit, a guy who had worked at a Christian camp, a guy who knew that there was purpose for his life, a guy that had almost died in the military, a guy that had almost died a motorcycle accident, had gotten so deep into a default that he cared that little about himself that he wouldn't even try to move out of the building. Literally, when I heard those words, the words that were coming out of my mouth due to my brain and the spirit that was inside me, there was an immediate clash. And so, quite literally, Liz, within the next day, I was changing things. Within the next couple weeks, I was actually going through a divorce. I had moved from Youngstown. I had moved back home to Ohio. I was living with my brother. And just when I say dramatically cutting out and carving out and changing life, it was absolutely a. I have to get out of here and be done with this because this is not what I'm supposed to be doing. This, by the way, is the ending of that life, but the beginning of the one that has been a constant. How do I continue from this point on? Because then I ended up meeting my wife, right? Ended up having my kids. How do I continue on to be 1% better each and every day? How do I get a little bit of a better job? How do I become a little bit better of a person? How do I become who I am and who I will be in the future? That's the beginning of that story because it was this just aggressively chaotic, dark crescendo of like, whoa, I will not be here much longer if I continue on this dumb path.

It's interesting how you tell that story because the original question I asked you is, what would you go back and tell yourself at that point in time? But it sounds like you woke up on your own. Would you just lovingly observe from a distance?

Well, I woke up, but, like, I wouldn't observe from a distance. I would actually probably have tried to catch myself earlier and tried to give myself a little bit of advice because, see, what got me there was this wanting to be liked, this wanting to not be alone, this wanting to just fit in. And so I was putting myself where I didn't belong. And so if I could go back and give myself some advice, it might sound a little bit like, and again, this is before the great debacle of George V. Thomas and the that little apartment. But it would be something around the fact of it's not that important. I had the same problem in high school, by the way. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be liked. We all want to fit in. We all want to be liked. But I'd give myself either the advice along the lines of it's not that important to be liked and to fit in, because if you stand out, you will be liked. And I wasn't trying to stand out. I was just trying to fit in. There's a big difference. That's probably, by the way, that's probably an episode, why you should stand out instead of fitting in. But the other part of this is I would maybe even go back and give myself a little advice of like, wrong crowd, wrong circumstance. Because if I would been hanging out with the right crowd of people, it would have been a completely different circumstance that I would have found myself on that evening.

Okay, I know I said that was our last question, but I do have one more because we've covered a lot of ground today during this conversation. I would love to hear from you. What is a question you'd like to leave the audience with, to ask themselves, whether that's self diagnosing, where they are in their journey, or anything around the application of anything that we discussed here today? Because like we said at the start of this conversation, this is the core, this is the beating heart of every other conversation that we have in this podcast. This critical understanding of what the default state is and what it takes to break beyond it. So as people are going about their day, maybe stepping back into their homes, maybe heading into the office, maybe they're about to hop off the treadmill at the gym, or they're just hanging out at home, what is the question you want to leave them with?

Who? That's. That's difficult because I think it's multiple. But if I have to break it down in some type of logical sense, I would be wanting them to ask themselves, do I know where I'm headed? I think that's a very important piece. What is their mountaintop? What is their focus? Or is it just a flat plane ahead of like miles and miles of nothing but tumbleweed and flatness? Or what is their mountaintop? What is. What does success look like for them once they have that and they've dreamt about that? Because it will be a little bit of a dream and a little bit of like molding what you think it'll look like. It'll change, by the way, as you head towards it. Where's my mountaintop? Where am I headed? And then I'll go right back to. Because I think it's important when you understand or you've asked the question, where is my mountaintop? What is my focus? Where am I trying to go? Then I think it comes down to a couple things here. Who do I need to forgive so that I can get there? What do I need to let go of so I'm not weighted down After I go through that framework, then I think it's all about the people and the processes and the education and the ability to then understand that for every step that you're going to be climbing, it's making yourself a better human. It's adding value into the world, that tribe. And so just kind of go back. Maybe it's a rewind point at this point. Right. But I know where I'm headed. I know who I need to forgive and what I need to let go of. And now it's purpose, passion, and people. And what's the framework of that? That I can start to serve, to get myself to the place that I just dreamt of, or my focus or my mountaintop. That's what I'll give them. It's a little bit of a matrix of rubrics, a framework, if you will. But it all starts with that. Where are you headed? Question, Sam.