Positive Mindset and Asking Questions

Welcome to my podcast. The Red Door, where humans share their stories. Our stories are what bring us together, connect us, and how we feel a little less lonely, giving you the reminder that you are not on this journey by yourself. As a collective, we share emotions and feelings, not the same way, but we each know what anger feels like, frustration, abandonment, insecurity, and what shit is fake or not in alignment with us. It is my mission to provide a platform for you to get vulnerable and share your experiences with the world. There is always at least one person listening who will be transformed by your message. Remember that the next time imposter syndrome pops up and tells you you aren't ready. Or you aren't good enough, or that no one cares. Tell that voice to fuck off and then DM me. I'm here for you now and always, not just to hype you up, but to guide you down a path of mindset shifts so you can do the holy shit, this is hard inner work and create the life you love. If you're ready, enter here. Coming in hot with today's episode. Was so stoked to talk to this guest. He was my high school history teacher, and I loved him. Like, maybe a 17-year-old girl crush, but also just because he was somebody who came into my life at a time that I really needed. Yeah, probably a male figure because my parents had separated and my dad has just kind of always been a piece of shit human. I've had multiple different male figures, father figures that have been there for me throughout my life. But this guy showed up at a good time because I was 17. I was getting ready for college. I think I was a junior. I had been raised in the Mormon Church and hadn't really been surrounded by a ton of different adults that had an outlook on life like he did. And so to hear his viewpoints, his philosophies on a lot of things, just the way he thought, the way he led his life was very eye-opening to me. Because I remember growing up, maybe not as a, as a young child, but in junior high and high school, and starting to have questions about everything, right? Religion, life, just questions about it all. And I felt— and if you were raised Mormon, I want to hear from you because I want to know if this was your experience as well— but I almost felt like I shouldn't question anything. Like, you just listen to your parents, you listen to what you're taught at church, and you just don't question. And if you do have questioning thoughts, it's because the devil is putting those thoughts into your head. Don't question this because it's anti what you've been taught.

It's bad.

You shouldn't think those things. So I think that it was really great to have somebody who wasn't Mormon come into the high school as a teacher and teach students to think for themselves. And he obviously wasn't there to like, you know, start this radical, "Oh my gosh, like you shouldn't be a Mormon," type thoughts, but just thoughts on a worldview, on a philosophical level. And I would say that he was someone who fostered that in me and validated that having questions was a good thing.

Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, I actually, as we were talking, I remembered what I wanted to kind of chat about. I wanted to chat about, like, how did you find your, your own personal, like, spirituality as you were going like through school and learning and just like through life? Like, how did you even come to know that like meditation for you was important or self-care was important? Like, what event led you to be like, oh shit, I should start doing this because it actually helps with my like mental health?

So, uh, that's, that's a great way to start all this conversation. So Many people know and many people don't know. So my brother passed away when I was young. So I was 13, he was almost 10. Um, we were raised Catholic. My dad's family was Catholic, my mom, uh, Christian, and supported our Catholic, uh, going to church and upbringing. You know, I did all the basic stuff up to age 13. I remember at that point when my brother passed away, there was like almost like this cut where my mom had all these like, if there's a God, why would she— why would that God let this happen to my son type thing, you know? Now, it was never like verbally really said that to me, but that's what I— that was the feeling, you know? So all of a sudden, uh, we were not going to church as much. We were a little more distant. My dad was a very spiritual person. And the other part of him that was so great was that he was— he majored in political science. He was just a thinker. And so when there were these questions about these big questions, he just encouraged a lot of, like, doubt. He didn't want you to take things on blind faith. So even as a Catholic, he was like, there's all kinds of weird stories and fables that don't really make sense, or why would they teach something that way? And he's like— he encouraged questioning. So as I kept going, you know, for a while maybe, um, I definitely would say that I was philosophical even at an early age. People used to joke that I was born at 30. Um, but I didn't have a necessary spirituality that I clung to. And then I got into college, and I was still, again, I was always aware of philosophy and religion and spirituality. And then I was majoring in psychology and I had some open courses for some extra credits. And so I took some philosophy courses. Some of the philosophy ones were actually religion-based. And all of a sudden, I was really hooked on trying to understand what started to speak to me. And that was more of like Eastern philosophy. So whether those courses that I was taking had to do with Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, I just started to have like a whole new awareness that I think was speaking to me a whole lot more. And I knew, or people had already told me and they believed that I was very spiritual because I was so internal as a young person. But this started to like really speak to me. On another level that really connected with my internal— the way my brain was really trying to digest the world. So, at that point, that's when my spirituality really started to blossom. You're catching me at a time too where I've just started to really dive back into rereading and studying a lot of the key teachings from Buddhism especially. But I just read "The Soul of the Samurai." I've been trying to get really back to the idea of Bushido, the code that they used to live by, the samurai. For a while back, I was really studying Confucianism and Confucius and their structure and how he tried to really organize society. Now, I'm reading a book and it's called The Tao of Zen. I just finished a book on Zen Buddhism just previously too about a month ago. And it's just interesting to me to see and hear so many teachings that I can gain from. So, I do think I'm eclectic. I'm a person who does not like when people are very like black and white about right and wrong. I like to really try to see what I can pull from different sources that can benefit me. And that's why these books are so interesting is because they talk about how, especially Eastern philosophy, how much they actually influenced each other. People didn't realize that many of the people who were taking them from India to China to Japan Um, it was like intermingling. They were actually like oftentimes, um, almost unknowingly teaching things from different beliefs, and they were actually being ingrained into the other beliefs that they were encountering. So, um, it was just— for me, it just is— it's very powerful to know that I need to be centered, and these are some different things that help guide me each day.

Yeah, no, I really love that. And I think that I sound like a broken record sometimes because I always talk about the religion that I grew up in, but for me, I had such a different upbringing where you didn't question, like, you didn't, um, you didn't question authority. You just believed, like, you— there was just like blind faith. And so I think that I always had this inner feeling like, "Oh gosh, I don't know, this doesn't seem quite right to me," or, "I do have questions." But I was always taught that if I had questions, that that was usually because Satan was trying to tempt you or to sway you. And so I didn't get to really fully examine what what all of that was going on in my brain until I was an adult. And then it was just so different because I think that so many things had been ingrained in my brain all growing up. Like, I think the whole Satan thing, like, oh gosh, Kris, don't question or else it's Satan, it's Satan. And so all of these thoughts, even still as like a 30-year-old, will be like, it'll just quick pop in there, like, you know, is this really real? What if Mormons really are like, what if that really is the real religion? 'Cause I was told it for so long that it's almost hard to get it out of my brain.

So there's a couple parts there. So number one, you can picture me coming into a small town and I could say that I was embraced, but if you gotta think about it, like I was the 1% versus the 99%. Like I really was like the outcast. And think about me trying to encourage you and other students to, to think for yourselves when that kind of wasn't how it was being promoted to you. You were supposed to kind of like believe blindly. And, and don't get me wrong, faith is— I mean, honestly, blind faith is actually like redundant. Like, faith is blind. Like, it's not based on science. So you have to understand, I was trying to encourage my students, as I still do, I want my students to be thinkers. I don't want you to just accept something without your own experience and asking the questions. And what that came back to is, I remember, and this is so crazy, before I taught you, but within 2 years before that, um, I was teaching a world history class, and a lot of times we did debates. And I knew we were doing the Crusades, and I remember essentially kind of assigning certain people one side or the other in this debate, knowing that they would be like almost uncomfortable. So what I mean by that is some people who I thought were kind of like anti-Christian or they had some sort of animosity, I kind of put them on the Christian side.

Yeah.

And I knew a couple of students who were just pro, pro, pro Christian, and I put them on the Muslim side. Well, I had one girl basically vehemently tell me, I will not debate for that side. The whole point was she didn't want to question or doubt what she had been told. She didn't want to see anything bad. Here is one of my biggest things that I've tried to tell people over the years. Asking the toughest questions is the best thing for your belief system, for your faith, and here's why. It either leads you to reinforce that what you've been told and believed is really true, it like not just true as in you can prove it factually, but true in your heart, or it leads you down a path of more and more questions, which is either going to strengthen your faith or it's going to open new doors. And either way, it's win-win. But if you don't ask those tough questions, you're still sitting kind of in that gray middle area. And I would even say, is your faith fully developed if you haven't asked the toughest questions? So I've always encouraged people, it's better to ask them and be scared of what you find out because it's either going to A, really strengthen your belief system, or it's going to push you to a new area and make you just question or lead you to think more for yourself.

Yeah, either way you're learning. So it's great. Yeah. So in my, even just in my learning and kind of growing, I think also Because, you know, our religion is based a lot on like the Restoration, Joseph Smith coming in and basically like restoring the gospel. And so I wanted to know like more about him just as a human being. Like, I'm like, who is this dude? And like, why did God just decide that he was the right one? Like a 14-year-old boy? Because the 14-year-old boys I know, like, serious, are new, right? I'm like, eh, I don't know. So even just like reading about him and the history, like, it just almost like blew my mind that a religion could base their beliefs off of just like such surface-level information. Like, okay, God, you know, chose Joseph. Joseph decided, you know, he read the Book of Mormon— or not read the Book of Mormon, he was told what to write for the Book of Mormon. And like, that was it. It was very like simple. And that's like what you believed. But at least in my findings, it was way more complex than that. And almost kind of what you said about the other readings that you had studied, they all kind of like intermingle or intertwine. And a lot of the Book of Mormon is like intertwined with other writings that happened at the same time. And so It's like, the Book of Mormon is not different information. It's just the same information that's like worded maybe a little differently, couple new characters coming in. And like, even this journalist that had written about him at the time basically said his family farm was struggling, like they had no money. He wrote this book as a way to like make money for his family and sell it. And so it was sold and then came the idea like, "Oh, I could turn this into a religion." So I think that even just looking at it as like factual material and also, okay, humans are humans and things evolve. And so what was interpreted back in whenever it was, 1862, compared to now and like, how the leaders of the church have, number one, interpreted it, and number two, decided to change it, are like totally two separate things. And so it just, it blows my mind that religion is still so focused on like, well, this was the teaching then, that's what we're doing now. And I'm like, okay, we're also in 2021 and the world is at a completely different place. And like, really? Like, we're still believing that? Are we still believing that this 14-year-old boy was was speaking to God, and maybe at the time, but I don't know. I just feel like there were so many questions that I didn't have answered where my young brain could like form actual, um, like an actual connection, or even like it's almost like bits and pieces. I can't even, I can't even describe it.

So again, I'm gonna jump around. It's like with, with Ella. Ella's almost 3. And I'm going to do the same thing that I think probably my dad did with me. I just keep telling her, "Great question." She asks really insightful questions for being not even 3 years old. I want her to keep having that inquisitive mentality to keep asking those tough questions. And I'm going to assume, and so maybe I'm right or wrong, but a lot of the adults don't want to either say question because it might actually doubt or put doubt into their belief system. It might put down to a 6-year-old, 8-year-old, 10-year-old who they're trying to persuade to believe something. So instead of encouraging, "Hey, that's a great question," they want to say, "Nope, here's the answer." And again, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, like parenting or right or wrong in a belief system, but I want my kids to really ask tough questions. And if I don't know the answer, I'm not going to fake it. And number 2, if it puts some doubt into what we've been discussing, then I think it's actually a benefit because I have higher chance to smile to myself and be like, it's a very insightful, you know, young girl. But I think sometimes adults— and I, and I say this too when I teach this— monotheism oftentimes has a much more black and white system, as in either it's right or it's wrong, it's either you're in or you're out. So again, Judaism leaves certain things, Christianity certain things, Islam certain things. They don't want to share quite as much where I refer back to 5th century China. It was actually like a national religion where they combined Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism because they all offered great things and they didn't see it as a competition or a counter. It was more of like the way I picture it as a DNA strand where they all wove together And now you have like this like beautifully powerful belief system versus it being like either you're in or you're out, inclusive or exclusive. One of my favorite books that I have is Jesus and Siddhartha Buddha as Brothers. And it just documents like how much similarity there is because most people just focus on all the differences in different belief systems. And so I think people miss out on the fact that there's so many similar teachings. So many of the stories are similarly based. Um, and like, I refer to Islam a lot in my class. We talk about it to make sure that— like, I would tell you, probably my 7th graders are more educated about Islam than many Americans in general. And the reason I say that is many people don't take the time to study other beliefs. Yeah, all it is is rumors or short glimpses that aren't always factual. And so, you know, my students find out that, you know what, they thought Jesus was a prophet. They didn't think he was the Son of God, but they thought he was a prophet. They respected him. Like, they talk about him in the Quran. So it's like, I try to make sure that they're very aware of the connectedness versus like the opposition, which I think oftentimes gets more focused on by some of the teachers of these different belief systems.

Well, yeah, I mean, just like there's that analogy, right, where there's multiple people touching an elephant blindfolded and they're all describing it differently, but it's all the exact same. So yeah, exactly. But I also think that there's like something missing in the system where, okay, say that our kids are learning this at school, but I'm not even educated about it. So when they come home and want to like talk talk about it and I don't know about it, I think that it's almost like a recurring thing because we're not— I'm not describing this correctly. So how are they supposed to like get a fire lit underneath them to continue to study, continue to learn, continue to ask questions if parents at home aren't fostering that themselves because they get asked a question and boom, they're like, "I don't know and I don't really care to learn about it." And so then it almost stunts the kids because it's not being taught at home or even like more discussed, more discussion at home.

That's a very tough one because that jumps into more of like we'll call parenting style. And, you know, there's a thing in education and it crosses over, it's called growth mindset. And the old way basically was if you were smart, you were labeled smart early on in school, right? And it was the kid who got all the A's and could answer the fastest in class basically. And so it was always about, "You're so smart." Well, actually that's not the best thing to say to a kid. It should be, "You worked really hard to get that answer." It should be the growth part of it is that, "Oh, you found good resources. That's very creative. Nice job figuring out how to connect the dots." That's how it goes for athletes and students. And unfortunately, the old way was more concrete, like, "This is the way it is," right? When it should be more malleable. And so, you would hope that parents are comfortable and confident enough to encourage their kids to ask those tough questions. And it's always one of those, like, the old cliché of, "Think outside the box." Well, actually, just get rid of the box. Like just ask questions and try new things. And I'm not the best because like I was a very Type A, like my mindset was be great at certain things. And my wife is great for me because she tries like literally everything, like everything's on the board. So it's like, I think it's encouraging for people to kind of be more open-minded, I'll just say. But yeah, I mean, for me personally, I want to encourage my daughters to ask tough questions. And then honestly, I want to jump on the computer and research. If I don't know it, let's look it up together. Like Ella and I actually, this is the funny part. We have a zoo book. It's a flip book and we read it. We've read it 1,000 times, right? But there's animals in there that I really don't know much about. So the other day we looked up what sound does a zebra make? Like, I've never really thought about that. Ella asked a great question, so we looked it up. Uh, we've looked up like all kinds of like different animals, how— what their strengths are, how fast they are, how big they are. Like, that might be a small like metaphor analogy for everything, but I just think it's encouraging if she asks a good question. I'm like, you know what, let's pause from the book, let's jump on our computer and look it up and watch YouTube and see what they do. And of course you got to find good websites, but That's what I teach my class, honestly. I tell them, you know, I'm doing Washington State history for the most part up to this year, and I tell them, you may or may not love Washington State history. I'm not going to tell you it's the most exciting class you're ever going to take, but when you walk out of here, I want you to have the skills to be able to have success in whatever you really are passionate about. I want you to have time management. I want you to know how to do good research. To know what great websites are, to know how to write a thesis and how to go ahead and write efficiently and eloquently in an essay, explain your thoughts without rambling. I want you to be able to be concise. I also want you to be able to work with teammates. All the skills that to me are going to pay off in high school, college, and honestly, whatever profession you end up going to. I'm not teaching Washington State. I'm teaching you how to be a student and how to be a thinker. I want you to really be thinking while you're doing this. I will not give multiple choice quizzes. I don't give ABCD guessing quizzes. You're going to write me a short essay explaining to me what you learned in this section. For me, that's what I want kids to be able to do. I want you to be able to be asked a tough question and be able to take your time, not be in a rush. The first kid who answers is not the smartest kid. I want you to be able to explain yourself with depth, not just a superficial memorization of a name and date. That's what I really would go back to is I think that parents should encourage just depth versus that shallow understanding of something. Yeah.

Well, I think you touched on that too earlier is that the definition of what it used to, at least when I was in high school, what it meant to be a smart student. It meant that you aced all your tests or Yeah, you had the, the quote-unquote right answer immediately. You were able to, um, basically memorize your textbook. And I remember feeling that at certain points, being like, gosh, am I smart? Like, I didn't remember that. Or, you know, and almost questioning myself. Um, but I think that I was almost developing skills that now enable me to run my own business or work remotely because I developed time management skills and I do have a ton of motivation to like get shit done. And so I don't let things like slip through my fingers. I don't let projects just like go amiss. And so I think that, you know, the way that I thought it was defined then compared to now is just is totally different. And I think that sometimes that can, that can hurt your self-esteem as a young kiddo, is just like not understanding or feeling like you're lost because maybe you don't do good on tests, you know?

I've continued to, we'll say, grow and hopefully improve and adapt as a teacher. But what I've also always said is, honestly, I don't like the term teacher for myself. Like, I think I'm a facilitator. Like, if you learned in my class, it wasn't because I quote unquote taught you. Like, I didn't just take this information and input it in your brain. What I hopefully did was guide you and facilitate opportunities for you to make the connections that then you learned something. So I always say it like, my job is to connect with my students and make the information connectable so that they can go ahead and find their own way to relate to it so that it does go ahead and resonate and not just for 2 weeks till the quiz, but it actually makes sense to them and they can go and explain to somebody else. One of the best things that I learned in college was a professor said, "You don't really own the information until you can explain it to somebody else and they understand it." It doesn't matter if it's just in your brain, but when somebody else can understand the way you have interpreted it and the way that you're able to verbally or in other ways communicate it, then you can say you own that information. And so I want my students to always be working to like dig deeper for their depth of understanding. And so my job, I say, is to find that motivation and find that hook and try to connect with students. I mean, if you remember, I've done quotes in my class for 15 years, right? Almost my entire career. There's no wrong answers in quotes, but I want you thinking. Like, I really want you to try to explain what you get out of that quote. And that probably goes back to some of your ideas about fables and your idea of 30 people having a hand on the elephant. If 30 people read the exact same proverb out of a holy text, you can get 30 different answers. And I would tell you there might be 30 different right answers, like not wrong. So I just think it's a matter of making sure that we're open to trying to comprehend and understand other people and having that growth mindset to say, I can gain something from what they understood, even though it wasn't my first reaction to how I understood it.

That's completely true, and it kind of just all circles back to our talk, our quick talk on like religion too, is I'm just like, oh my gosh, think about how long any Christian belief or Bible or scripture has been around and how many hundreds of thousands and millions of people have read and then interpreted and then written a new book about it and then talked about it and then started a religion about it, and I'm like, oh my God. We're all saying the same thing and I've talked to Kurt about this too. I'm like, "As an adult now, as a parent, how am I going to, how are we going to raise our kids with a religion?" And of course I'm like, "No, no religion." But I'm not saying religion is bad either, but I think my experience with religion was just totally not what I want my kids to have. But I mean, with that said, Lily goes to a private Catholic school and she's learning, you know, about God and Jesus and different things. But then I also am like, okay, with all of the good teachings and the, you know, the scripture that comes with it also comes like shame or guilt that I just don't feel like should be instilled in a child. I'm like, great, once you're an adult, like you can figure that stuff out by yourself, or like repentance, or whatever it is you want to figure out. But I just, I feel like there's so much more that comes with it as a child that's, that's hard to understand until you're older. And then you almost have to like re— rewire everything that's been taught. So it's, it's very interesting now as an adult who was raised in a religion to wonder, how am I going to instill certain beliefs or mindset into my kid without that religion, but I don't know. It's very interesting.

Yeah. Again, I don't have an answer for that one. I know that around our house, we have some Buddha statues and some pictures, and Elo can say she knows that's Buddha. She did that early on. Now, what, what that means or who that is will take its own shape as we keep going. And she sees that, you know, Claire and I have a lot of books, and she's going to realize that a lot of them have to do with different forms of spirituality. And, uh, I am going to try to, like, we'll say, make her very aware of many different belief systems so that She may not comprehend all of them at a higher level, but at least she has, we'll say, dipped her toe and understood a little bit about each one. And then I think it's about the values a lot of times. So you use certain ones to teach the values you want to teach in your family. And then hoping to encourage her the same way probably that my dad encouraged me. It's like, instead of having something be forced upon you, and that again, We keep talking about religion, but it could be like a sport. Like, think about a parent who's like overbearing and is like, you're going to be great at this sport, right? Or like, you have to play this instrument. I like the idea of a young person finding their passion or kind of their passion finding them, if that makes sense. And so I can't say— actually, you know what, I'm going to go back again. I remember in college, I did what I called my church search. And every Sunday, I went to a different church in the area. And so, it was a different form of Christianity most times. And some were held in a high school cafeteria and some were held in these old cathedrals. And I'm just saying, I went to these different ones for the environment, the feeling, the teachings. And what I realized, unfortunately, at that time was that it was putting a square peg in a round hole, right? I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be part of the bigger population, except that the teachings weren't connecting with me. So it took me more time before, we'll say, the teachings of certain spiritualities really spoke to me and like connected with me. And so I want to make things very open and aware for my daughters so that when one of those does speak to them, that then they're ready and prepared for it, like they're open to it, to receive it basically. Um, but I'm not gonna like— just like before Ella was born, they were like, all my buddies would be like, ah, she's gonna be the best basketball player ever. And I was like, maybe, like, I don't know. Like, we're gonna go try every sport in the book and every instrument and gymnastics and martial arts and whatever she's all about, and we're gonna go have some fun with it. And when she finds that trigger, then we're gonna— then we're gonna go about it.

But Oh, I would definitely say that that's super hard as a parent, that like Lil, oh my gosh, doing anything physical, like physical activity for her is just like pulling. Oh my gosh, she hates it. She hates it. Like riding her bike, like she's like, oh my gosh, this is exhausting. I'm so tired. And I'm like, who are you? Because I'm like, I'm always ready, always ready to try the next thing and always wanting to try something different. And she is not like that. And so I think that I've had to kind of come to the realization too, and like, you know what? Well, we're just going to go ahead and try all the things. I'm not going to push her to necessarily be like an athlete or push her that she has to do this just because I did it. But I really would. Like her to find something that makes her happy. But I also think that it's like a different, um, a different world now, whereas like growing up for me there wasn't, uh, media to like compete with. Like I didn't— there wasn't an option of would you rather play your iPad or go outside. There was just like you're spending all day outside, bye.

One of, one of my examples, and hopefully it's a good metaphor for We talk about spirituality down the road. I have keys to a high school weight room. So at first, we were just going into our basement, which I built up a nice little— I would joke, my prison dungeon workout where I had a bunch of dumbbells and I would just go down there. And a lot of times, Ella would go down with me and I'd be on the roller stretching out. She would just like to honestly crawl on my chest or crawl on my back. And so it was great because she's giving me hugs as far as I'm concerned and actually Her weight was good for my stretching, but having fun down there and we're together, and then I would give her certain things. But what it actually transformed into is— didn't do it at first— I started taking her out to the high school gym, and all of a sudden she started to really enjoy going. And so like, at first somebody's like, ah, there's Gussy forcing his daughter to go to the weight room with him. But actually It got her out of the house and got her active in the morning, which is perfect. Then we started to just make up these— like, we do like plyometrics together. Like, I do more cardio with her than I ever did in the last 25 years. We jump around, we bounce around. Some of the ab things are like slides to her. Uh, she found the ladder and she likes doing fast feet. She likes— so like, she enjoys just doing it. So all I'm saying in my comparison is Hopefully by me opening the door to things that I enjoy or that we enjoy as a family, then she'll find her connection to it. And whether she takes it as far as we did, so again, use Buddhism or different things, or she goes in a different direction, that's okay. I just want to open the doors so that she tries it. And then if it connects and has a little trigger for her, great. And if not, that's great. We move on to the next thing. One thing I've always said is I really don't care what my children are passionate about. They just have to be passionate about something. And then we're gonna go work hard at whatever that is. And so, you know, again, whether it's playing the piano or whether it's like being like a rocket scientist or the greatest gymnast, like whatever it is, like I want us to find that passion and then like we're really gonna dive into it. And so like, Um, again, it's great when your kids are just like lighting up and, you know, to see a 3-year-old having fun, actually sweating and working out and chasing our dog around the weight room. Like, it's, I mean, it can't help but make you smile, you know. And we joke, I filmed her one day where she all of a sudden she laid down on a like an incline bench press and started to like, with no weight, just like moving her arms like she was benching it, you know. It was just funny I didn't say anything to her, but she was aware of what you're supposed to do on a certain thing. And just to see her be aware and have fun with it. And so we make up our kind of our own kind of like games. And it's the same thing actually. We have a Rody. I don't know if you know what that is, but it's like a little like rubber, like horse you can bounce on basically. And for little kids, all you're doing is just bouncing, right? Well, I've turned bouncing into like, I mean, it keeps her active and it wears her out. And we turned it into a counting game too, where we would keep track and it's helped us like with her numbers. Like she practices her counting by doing rody. So it's like, if I can keep making these different things, like we'll say multifaceted where I'm like introducing something that's fun and you're gaining something from it, both literally, but also just like an emotional way. Then hopefully at some point you become like super engaged and excited about it. So like when we go to the gym, like she took Rody to the weight room the other day because she wanted to add it into her workout with the other stuff. So it's just like seeing young, like my daughters, like they open my eyes to things I hadn't really thought about. She just has like, and I want to keep encouraging those types of like, again, getting, throwing away that box and just like Being creative, having new ideas, having big questions. I probably, again, I've always said it, I learn more from my students every day in the class than they learn from me. And I learn more from my 3-year-old and my 6-month-old than I do, you know, than they learn from me. So I think part of your thing going back to the parenting is like, hopefully these parents are not so like insecure in themselves. And that actually is something that I've seen with a lot of people is they're defensive about things because they're insecure about things.

Yeah.

Like when you're, when you're really secure about yourself or your belief or something, you don't feel obligated to like put up walls or barriers. Like if you really are secure in it, you're very comfortable that other people may not see it the same way and that they may question it. And so that's kind of the thing is like, I think more parents should probably be more secure in what they believe. But I think I'm going to twist it back to what you're saying. Unfortunately, a lot of times parents want to force things on their kids and then they feel like they're out of control because they can't force their kids to do and believe what they want them to.

Oh yeah, 100%. It's— I mean, now that I have 3 kids, Lily's— they're all so different. And I'm sure you can even tell that even though you still have— like, they're still little. Like, their personalities are formed like out of the womb, they're totally who they are. And Stone is, oh my gosh, like he challenges me in ways that I like didn't even think possible. And like, I thought I was a pretty chilled out mom, but it's also nice to learn from them and like be able to look at yourself too and be like, whoa, like there's this whole aspect of me and my personality that's almost coming out because of this child. And it, it like, it makes you reassess and look at yourself and who you are. And yeah, man, being a parent is, is a trip.

So I can, I can make a whole lot of jokes about myself because there's the perception of Gussie that so many people have seen and Probably like over-magnified over the years, but if they saw me with my daughters, they'd probably be like, "Who is this guy?" Like they probably don't even know. But what I will say is all these years, my intensity was like on an uber level in a certain, we'll call it a competitive arena. And so like when it came to like basketball, like I doubt many, maybe just sports in general, I doubt many people would say there's more competitive, more intense. But when I walked away from that competitive setting, I think I was also one of the more calm because of the meditation. So it goes back to your first question, right? How did I know I needed it? It became— people didn't understand that my weightlifting, I used to tell them, was a form of meditation. Because most people, when they go to the gym, they're thinking external, right? They're thinking, how do I look in the mirror? This or that. How much weight am I doing? My workouts were all about my breathing. So it was very like zazen, sitting in my meditation position or doing yoga. Like, that's the best comparison I could make. Like, if there was 100 people in the gym next to me, I didn't know it. Like, I wasn't there to chat and I didn't— like, I wasn't trying to be antisocial, but I was really there for my own like internal like cultivation is like— I've used the term cleansing for a lot, a lot, for a lot of years. Like meditation for me is cleansing. It's cleansing of the mind, getting rid of a lot of the distractions and the chaos and the stresses. But like, you know, meditation as well as workouts, you're cleansing your system and you're getting rid of those negative toxins and you're like, you're letting things out that need to get released. And so what I've said for a long time is people would see me as the most intense guy because in that competitive world, that's where my brain went. But when I walked away from it, there became like my breathing was my calming source. And so you can just— I joke, I was out pushing my daughter on the swing for like an hour and it's like completely meditative for me. Like I'm just there embracing the moment, fully engaged. There's nothing else going on in the world to me besides me just really enjoying the setting and the scenery that I'm in. And my daughter, and the daughter who I'm pushing on the swing. So what I hope to do is be that calming influence, um, at home. So, you know, there goes that. And I, and I learned from my daughters because sometimes I'll just smile at them and other people are like— like, I, I see my wife sometimes and I see some other people get really like frazzled by certain things, and they're looking at me and they're like, why are you kind of like smirking? And I'm like, Why not? Like, these are the most beautiful daughters in the world and they're doing something funny. Like, yeah, they're a little frustrating. Like, I mean, frustrating because you expected them to do something. You expected a 4-year-old to do what you wanted them to do. Like—

Yeah, it's like bringing you back down to— it's totally true. I have to do that with Stone too. I'm like, gosh, why does he have to question like absolutely everything? I'm like, that's his job. That's like what he's learning everything right now.

And so he—

of course, Of course he's going to question and push and want to like figure out 28 different ways how to not do what I said, just in case one of those works better, because it might. But yeah, I loved your perspective on a bunch of these things. And I feel like we're like just breaking the iceberg on so many different topics that we could discuss. But I'll let you go for today. I want you to let me know your biggest takeaway from today's episode, whether that's you sharing it on social or emailing me, DMing me, whatever that looks like to you. Please let me know. I want this to be a place where you come to learn and grow, feel connection, build relationships. So please reach out.

I can't wait to connect with you soon.