How Can I Use My Talents and Experience to Best Live the Second Half of My Life?

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Where it says it takes a half life, a half a lifetime for the creatively talented individual to come to terms with one's own talent, to accept it fully and unleash oneself, that is to be post ambivalent about one's talent. I was like, wow. I mean, I've been doing all the things to secure and I have multiple talents to do what I've done, but the true talents kind of toned them down, kind of muted. I don't talk about myself. I just do my business. I'm just consistent. I go to work and I do the right things, but I don't think I really looked at what is, what am I really good at and do I enjoy it and what do I do with that? Where I go with that now?

Perfect. Perfect. This is exciting. And so this is my stack of journal notes. And as I've shared in many different conversations like this, I have two notes that are perpetually read, which is leadership and future vision. So these I refer back to multiple times a week and I'll just flip through it. And as I say, I think I said it in the note. I got the book because I discovered it somewhere else. And then literally I picked it up from my mailbox, drove home, kids got out of the car, and then I opened to that page, the very page that I bought the book for. And it was one of those moments of the feeling that you just described is what I had when I first read it. Oh my God, that's it right there. That Jonah complex. For those who may not know yet, check out Future Visions, Maslow's unpublished writings, which I've read a fair amount of Maslow, and that's by far my favorite. It's just his private journal, some talks he gave and amazing. But the basic idea is that Jonah was called by God to do his work. And Jonah said, no, thank you. I'm not ready. I'm not that guy. You got the wrong guy. And he tried to avoid that. And as I playfully said, I think in the note we definitely talked about in a plus one, you know, you can't really run away from God. So he finally had to accept his fate and the destiny that in the Bible and the scriptures that God had destined him for. And so it was called a Jonah complex. Denying what God has decided you're here to do. So whatever frame we want to put that through, we have in Maslow's word, to become what we are destined to become. You know, and you get to a point where you've achieved what you've achieved in your life or what Ethan has achieved in his life. Life. And most of us have achieved in different ways in our lives. And that need to express the best version of ourselves too, as I playfully say, high five. Our inner daimon to be you, daimons to experience eudaimonia becomes as real as the need to breathe and the need to pay your end. All those other things, which is why we call it soul oxygen, you have to pay attention to that. And to the extent you don't, that's when things don't feel quite right. And unless healthy among us and us in our less healthy moments go numb ourselves with whatever it is we numb ourselves with, whether that is whatever it is. Right? We all have our chosen means. Now, what is exciting to bring it back to you and Stacy off camera is perfect. What do you want? So you have the power now the question is, what do you want? So this is again what I am constantly asking myself in the current context of heroic and what I've asked myself for decades. And what I encourage you to ask is, what do you want? Same thing we talked to Ethan about. Okay, step out of. And Joseph Campbell talks about this. You have to have time in your day when you're not thinking about the bills you need to pay or the business you need to run or who owes you what or what's in the news. It's just you. And we would say you're diamond asking yourself questions like this. If you could do whatever you wanted to do, what would you do? Now that's. That requires virtue of courage. To even ask the question requires wisdom to know that you need to ask the question. Self mastery to create the context in your deep work blocks. To actually ask it. Then courage to explore the unknown and be willing to even entertain the idea that what you're doing isn't quite it and that you may need to change that significantly in order to do what you want. And it's all powered by love. Our four cardinal virtues, right? You're doing it for something bigger than yourself. Ultimately, that is the source of our heroic power. So again, I would offer that's the question. What do you really want with all the skills that you have, with the post ambivalent, unleashed version of you, where you're no longer questioning your creative abilities, you can check the box. You're the kind of guy, you're the kind of couple that can create what you want to create. Not going to be easy to create whatever it is you decide you want to create next, but you can. And then really the only relevant question is, well, what do you want? And you're also gray whiskered enough to know in the first swing, you're going to have to work on it just as hard as you've worked on your. Your business. But make discovering what your next heroic purpose is your business and give it your best time and again. This is where I'm ruthless. If there's one thing that separates me perhaps certainly from my old self and from just what differentiates me creatively is I'm willing to say this is what's most important and that's not. And I take first things first, second things, not at all literally inspired by Drucker and others. And I'm frankly don't care what people are thinking about me, which is the Joseph Campbell thing. What they have to say about you must be put aside for your bliss in the deeper heroic sense, not the narcissistic, egoic sense. But what are you here to do? Perfect. Figure it out and give us all you got. It's the only way we're going to again create the change we want to see in the world. Going back to Jim and what he's doing with his charter schools and what we need you to be doing, what we need Ethan to be doing. And Jim brought up the branding conversation. Goosebumps. Right now, the icon for heroic, we're going to use the compass. We're going to have a really cool moral compass embedded in the app. At one swipe, you'll be able to access the compass. Wisdom, self mastery, courage, love, hope, gratitude, curiosity, depth. What virtue do you need to engage in? We'll have tools for you right there and lessons for you right there. Inspiring quotes for you right there. But the icon for heroic is going to be a torch. It's going to be a torch held by. And gets me emotional just talking about this. We haven't talked about it publicly yet, but it will have a hand. And the hand will be kind of gender neutral, but we know it's held by Arete, which is a goddess. The goddess of Arete, the goddess of virtue. And we each need to be the literal and metaphorical lights in the world. And the only way we become that is through the exact process we're talking about right now, congratulations, you're 53 years old. You checked this box, that box, this box. Time to go post ambivalent. It's time to actualize. And then again, Maslow's whole hierarchy of needs didn't end at actualization. It then went to self transcendence. So we say optimize equals optimist equals best equals you daimon equals what you don't become a self actualized best version of yourself for the sake of it. And for a six pack selfie shot of Instagram, it's to serve something bigger than yourself to be heroic. And again, this is what's within each of us and what you are feeling palpably right now and what I get so excited about. And again, if I ate popcorn, I am pulling up the seat. The movie that is Todd and Stacy. What do we got? And then we know it's going to be challenging, but we do the hard work, etcetera, etc, etcetera. So I would come back to that question, what do you want? And the angels advocate exercise. Okay, cool. You got an angel on your shoulder. What do you really want? What do you really, really, really deeply, soul aching yearn for? We need to prioritize that and then realize, you know, memento mori. Is this an address rehearsal? We have a finite amount of time left and ford just turned 47. I'm right there with you. I know exactly what it feels like to feel the other side of not address rehearsal. The stuff we worry about, the stuff that we've let slow us down in the past. Done. I care too much to care about the things that don't matter anymore. You know, I'm going off as I tend to do now, but tell us your thoughts.

No, that's. I mean, that's perfect. And yeah, it's. Before you get to this point of okay, now, it was easy. They were. They were easy wise. They were easy to hit. This isn't an easy one. Like you said, it's if there was no fear. And it's like I feel fearless. But no, there's fear. There's always that. Yeah. What is it okay to ask for that? Is it okay to really dive in and to, you know. And again, it's. It's not hedonic. It's. Yeah. Is it okay to go for that? And what is it? What truly is it? And yeah, it's scary, it's exciting and, you know, it's not simple. It's not just, well, here it is, you know, which in the past, it was easy. I need. I need my New why is I need enough money to buy a house? You know, that's. That's simple. That's a simple. Why this is not a simple one. This is. Yeah, how does. How does it help others? How does it fulfill me and fulfill others? And. Yeah, this is the perfect time to be in level six, level one, or inaugural one. It wasn't the right time. Now's the right time because I'm able to really dig in and to really, you know, immerse myself in these teachings. And it's helping me. Helping me grow, which, you know, I thought it was pretty, you know, knowledgeable, wise. And I'm like, no, I got a long ways to go here.

You and I both. I mean, when you play the infinite game and you play the true eudaimonic game, you realize. And this is George Leonard's wisdom on mastery. For every mile we take toward our destination, we hope the destination gets two miles further away. Phil and I talked about this the other day and just, you know, the connection we have now and the level that I'm now kind of showing up from. Right? And we were. He was celebrating me in that regard. And I said, but the thing that's most exciting for me is this is literally day one. It's just begun. Then we get curious, oh, my God, if I can do this. And I want you to eat your hero bars and bring your agency to this process, because it's easy to discount. Well, I set the goal. I wanted to buy a house, and I bought a house. Don't. That's. That's a. That's an appropriate challenge at that stage of development, as you're saying it, but also you want to internalize that. That's like you to be the type of person that says, that's important, and I'm going to go achieve. And then I said that was important, and I went and achieved it. Then I said that was important. I went and achieved it because that's the source of our agency. As we go to the next level of challenge, we want to know that our skills are there to match it from a flow perspective. Right. You're going to a higher level challenge. You're bored right now. You are checking the box on things that bore you. The challenge is less than your skill. Perfect. Now you're increasing the challenge, which means that you're. You're meeting yourself at a point. We want to get in that slow directional. But one way that you're able to hold the tension in the ambiguity is to remind yourself that you are the type of person that can get things done. This is the agency and hope. So we just want to have that. I got it underneath my. My stack of things, I've got a one page thing of I have done this, this, this, this and this. And I write it in ways that I wouldn't say publicly. The same way that you know what you're capable of and you don't, you don't say those things out loud, that's fine. But I know what I've done and I know how hard it was to do those things. Therefore, when I show up for this, I can remember that and feast on that, etc. But it's exhilarating. And I saw someone say, I'm excited for you, Todd. It's exhilarating to witness where you are because this is it. And this is literally how we change the world. More and more of us having the courage and all the other virtues to show up and ask these hard questions. And it's exhilarating for me to kind of be part of the process with you and imagine where you're going to go. And then the playful as always at the end of it. Good luck with that. This is going to be a fantastic challenge. Keep yourself plugged in and can't wait to stay up to date as you navigate it, you know, and we go out and again, give the world all we've got and enjoy the process, which is another really important aspect of the whole thing that I can feel your joy. You know, you're entering that forest, you're contemplating entering the forest with the level of joy. And you have the ability to answer the call Jonah style while enjoying the process, including the unpleasant thing that's the real secret sauce is. Can you beckon Abraham Maslow back again? I don't know if I mentioned in that note or if it was a plus one, but do you know the whole something good must be cook and Abe, are you familiar with that line?

I don't remember that, no.

Okay, well, let's find that for you. So Abraham Maslow talks about in Future Visions, the actual book itself talks about how anytime he found himself, he would get nauseous and anxious at times. You know, he would literally have a difficult time sleeping. He couldn't eat. He just. It would be really tough for him and his wife when he would experience those things because he had experienced it so many times, would say to him, something good must be cooking, Abe. Right. So when I wake up in the middle of the night, which I inevitably do with a decent regularity, appropriately, I Literally say to myself, I imagine, and Alexander will say this to me, something good must be cooking. Abe and I are in the kitchen cooking something good. That's how you make hero bars. You're willing to go out of your comfort zone. You bring on the discomfort, knowing your infinite potential exists on the other side of it. And then you're like the individual that goes and climbs Mount Everest. They don't complain about the cold, dark, snow, blizzard nights. They signed up for the Everest summit. They knew it was going to be hard. They don't complain. They trained for it. And they look at that and they smile. I'm getting hammered right now. Yeah, maybe this is what I signed up for. I'm not naive enough to think it was going to be easy. Let's go in that moment when we can redefine those challenges as signs that we are showing up, striving to be in the arena. That blood, when it drips down, we wipe it off. And we said, that's like me. Not something's wrong with me that I just got the wind knocked out of me, but something's right with me because I had the courage to go show up. And again, all the proper asterisks. Each of us has constraints and the proper amount of risk tolerance and all these different things, but I love it. Appreciate you both and excited to hear the updates and see you in person when we go. Have fun doing a Spartan race when the time is right.

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