903. Our Biggest Lessons From Italy

You never feel ready to take the time out. You always feel like it's necessary to keep sprinting. Keep sprinting, keep sprinting. But the truth of the matter is you need your sprints interrupted with time to catch your breath and think about what your next sprint needs to look like. And without that valuable space, then you just might end up running in the wrong direction.

And we're back with another episode of He Said, she Said.

And we're literally back. I feel like I say that a lot, but. Which means we travel a lot, but we're literally back from Italy, which was the best vacation I think I've ever taken. And that's a pretty big statement.

What do you think made it the best? Because I feel that way, too.

Okay. So we both feel that this is the best freaking vacation we've ever. And, like, we've loved our vacations to Greece every year. We've loved our vacations to other parts of the world. And what made this one the best is I. I feel different coming back. First of all, for the first time ever, I created space to come back in an elegant way. And I don't think this can be understated. I used to come back, right, get off the plane at whatever, 7, 8, 9, 10 o' clock at night and think that I'm going to somehow do some work appointments the next day. And this was the first time in history that I didn't clear one day, but two days of reentry when I got back. And even just the mental win of having that space and not knowing I'm being thrown into a rush has made coming back so much more elegant and giving me space to, like, soak in and lock in all the takeaways I've gotten from vacation.

Yeah. I'm trying to figure out if it is partially where I'm at in life, if I just really made a decision before I went and set an intention to be very present and to soak up what the area was offering and really looking at how I can utilize it in my life. I think part of it is that, you know, Rob, who had arranged the trip for his Work hard, play hard, mastermind. That's kind of what this trip was called.

Yeah. Huge shout out to Rob, by the way. Sorry to interrupt you, but Rob Birgatroy curates the best trips, hands down, that I've ever experienced in my life every time.

And there's so much value in going on a trip like that because we didn't have to worry about not knowing where to go or what to book or how we were going to get there, not understanding the language. So it really was curated so beautifully. But I think that part of the trip, the intention really was about how we can take what this incredible Italian European culture offers and how we can integrate it into our lives and businesses. And there were so many lessons along the way.

Well, I can give you one right away. So here's what I'm going to integrate and that is the sheer care that they have for quality, for craftsmanship. Gosh, I forgot how Rob put it. But it's both function and form. They're not function only, forget the form. They're not form only, forget the function. They obsess over function and form. And you see it in everything from the 2000 year old. Form being beauty, form being beauty, function being. Does it work its best?

Yes.

And like a Ferrari also made in Italy, it's pure function and form. It's not just, you know, the best handling vehicle out there, but it's also the most beautiful. It's not just the most beautiful, it's also the best handling.

But then the other interesting thing was they have a saying and I don't remember what it was, maybe you'll remember, Chris, but beauty for beauty's sake only. And I thought that that was incredible too because sometimes we would walk into a church and we'd be like, oh, what was the meaning of this? And they were like, it was strictly because it was beautiful. And they value beauty. It is one of their top values is beauty, not only aesthetically in people and trying to be beautiful. And I'll explain a little bit on that. It's not shallow whatsoever, but in looking at beauty like putting gold on buildings, putting so much precious detail into the art and the intricacy on a building or on a frame of a picture or in something that was used every single day in a water pitcher that they make absolutely stunningly, beautifully aesthetic.

And in the way they dress, I mean, look at, I've become so lazy in the way that I dress. How many matching black T shirts and black shorts do I have? And yeah, it's efficient. But you just realize when you put some extra beauty into the way you dress, then you show up and you're even takenly a little bit different. So there's one of my takeaways is I'm going to put both way more form and way more function into everything I do. I'm going to be as conscious about both as what the Italians are.

Yeah. Kim Murgatroyd, Rub's wife, was Telling me about how the women there don't want to be complimented as cute. They literally want to be beautiful, meaning just attention to detail that they actually put in work or try to look beautiful, whether that is in their hair or makeup or mostly the clothing. I think they just really talking about how they want to show up and add to the beauty that is already there. And, you know, that can make you feel like, oh, God, I'm so glad I don't live there. Or it can make you stop and say, hey, you know, where in my life could I actually do this for me and enjoy and add to the scenery? Like, it really is like just sitting at tables in Italy and watching people. It's like the appreciation that I had for the incredible beautiful women, old, young, everything in between, who took the time to put a scarf on, put red lipstick on, tie it in such a way, and wear these amazing sunglasses that I couldn't tell if I was in a, like a beautiful retro photograph or if I was just sitting there right now at a cafe watching people go by.

Yeah, totally. I think another thing I came back with was so much clarity on how important it is for me to work this space into our busy days, and it's not into our busy life. You know, I went there and I told Rob this. I'm like, There were probably 10 different times I was like, if this trip somehow got canceled, I'd be okay with it because I've got these 100 other things to be doing. So you never feel ready to take the time out. You always feel like it's necessary to keep sprinting. Keep sprinting, keep sprinting. But the truth of the matter is, you need your sprints interrupted with time to catch your breath and think about what your next sprint needs to look like. And without that valuable space, then you just might end up running in the wrong direction. Right? And so I got so much clarity on the directions I want to go. What's for me? Who's for me? How do I want to show up? All because of the break I took among the sprinting.

Do some rapid fire takeaways here. There's a saying that they told us about. The first half of our trip was actually pretty busy. Like, we went and saw so many different things. And the second half was more about a saying that they have there called dolce far niente. I believe I'm saying that, right? Dolce far niente. Does that sound right, Chris? And it is the sweetness of doing nothing. And I think it was the first time that for two days on the end of our trip that we had booked an extra day and also had a free day and we just sat by the oceanside and under the umbrellas and did nothing. And it was so incredible. I've never been able to do that. I'm not sure why I was able to do that. If it's because we were so busy or because we were marinating on this saying the entire trip, Dolce Far Niente, where they literally just sit to watch beauty and enjoy and try to drop into that feeling of wow. Like observing how many times I thought that this wasn't okay. Observing how many times I thought I should be going and exploring and learning so I can come back and apply. How many times I was like, oh my gosh, should I be journaling this whole time? Should I be listening to a book? What should I be doing? And observing how your brain wants to fill space with other things, but having the realization that without totally emptying, you don't leave room for these incredible creative ideas that can happen. And also not having the expectation that, okay, if I empty, where's the creative idea? Okay, where is it? Is it coming? Like, just letting it be okay to let your brain actually get to this place of sheer calm, of just observation. And what I did observe for me is that being by the water was so incredibly important for me to get this sense of calm in my nervous system.

Yes, me too.

And really reset. Because I can say that I was feeling pretty burnt out before I went on this trip. And now I feel this renewed sense of excitement about why I'm doing this company, about the remembrance that we get to do these businesses. And I wasn't feeling that before. I was feeling pretty tired.

It's interesting. Another takeaway I took back was how much more of the arts and how much more experience I want in my life without sacrificing any of the sprints. And I really came back with this feeling of, you can have it all. It doesn't have to be all Sprint and it doesn't have to be all, you know, frolicking through a museum, looking at things. You can have a perfect split of both. And we've talked about this so much. It always comes back to do you build your life with these things built in as importance? In other words, you and I came back, we immediately put this thing called Summer Fridays on our calendar where we're going to cut off at one o' clock on Fridays just for summer so we can go spend time taking golf lessons together or tennis lessons together, or like you Said maybe dance lessons again together so we can go do some tours of local museums or just literally go down to the beach, go spend more time on the boat. Summer Fridays is something we implemented when we realized that we want a perfect balance between experience and seeing the beautiful art of life and not neglecting the sprints and the size of our goals.

Listen, putting those Summer Fridays in, at first I was like, oh, I feel guilty and I don't know if I'll be able to do them all, but the intention is that hopefully I will. And that's how it starts. So if you guys are feeling that too, you have to just put it in and learn to attempt to work around it. And here's the thing, is that if I did not have them, if I didn't schedule them, all I would do is take the same amount of things and spread them out. So what it's doing is it's helping me get really intentional about my life and say, okay, well, here's the life that I want. This is why I work so hard. And I'm going to take all of the things that would have been here and just make sure they fit in this other container. Like put them in a more condensed area so that you can live more. Because one thing that I know is that life has gone by so fast and every single goal was like, when this happens, this is how I'll feel. When this happens, this is how I'll be living. Bullshit. Not true. It doesn't happen. And one thing I'm really seeing is that if we don't get intentional with enjoying your life and adding the things that you want to do, whether it's a tennis lesson or pottery or whatever it is, you're never going to do it. You're going to grind, you're going to be resentful. You might have moments where you're like, you feel good about your life, but you should feel good about your life more often than you don't.

Yeah, absolutely. It's funny, I came back from this trip and I was tragically sad to be leaving. I wasn't ready to leave yet. I wasn't ready to leave Amalfi coast. I wasn't ready to leave the beach, I wasn't ready to leave the history. For some reason I was just upset. Well, I've always been obsessed with like being around 2000 year old buildings and at the same time simultaneously. So over the top, excited to get home, get home to Newport beach area here, get home to be with bananas, to get home to see our friends get home to. To get back, like, to sprint on some of the ideas that we have. And I thought it was a really weird feeling to be 100% feeling, wait, I don't want to go home yet. And 100% at the same time feeling like, holy crap, I can't wait to get home to our life. And it was interesting because I feel like we're taught you're not supposed to be able to feel both of those things 100%, but it was this feeling of perfect balance. There was this feeling of, wow, I've got clarity on the joy side and I've got clarity on the production side that made me feel like no matter where I am, right, Whether I'm there a little bit longer or whether I'm here, something clicked in me that made me realize I can have both.

For me, travel is about perspective, and it's about going away to figure out what needs to change or what you need more of or what you need less of, because in your current situation, you're not going to be able to tell what that is. So, honestly, before this trip, I was like, yeah, I feel fine. This is. I knew I needed more creative time or more time for experience is really what I'm chasing. But I didn't know what that was or what that looked like. And while I was there, I started reading a book that was recommended, actually, by a captain of one of our boats called Blue Mind. And it's talking about the value and the science behind why being by, on near or underneath water enriches your life. And in there it says that it tells a little story about these three fish. And two of them are really young. These young fish swimming together by this older fish in passing. And the older fish says to the young fish, he says, the water's great, isn't it? And the young fish are like, yeah. And they keep swimming. And the young fish say to each other, what the hell is water? And it's the perspective of, you don't know what you're in or what world you're actually in or even what makes you happy. You don't understand your environment fully until you get out of it, until you can go see how other people are working, living, breathing. That's why it's so important to go immerse yourself in different cultures as well, because it's like, wow, this culture seems really happy. What is working for them and taking. The beauty of friendships, right? The beauty of meeting new people, the beauty of new networks is going and learning the secrets and the lessons that they have all learned and figuring out what works for you and what doesn't. And this is the life journey, the continued life journey of, Hmm, I wonder if I could tweak this here or tweak this here to. Or tweak that there to make my life a little bit more fulfilling. Oh, and also, I want to talk about the meaning.

Go for it.

There's so many takeaways, but I would say my ultimate biggest takeaway is about the meaning that we are applying to things or that we need to be applying more of to things. And there was a beautiful painting in this church that we were in, and it was a painting about something called the Illumination, which means that one of the men in the paintings was exposed to experiencing, like, almost like a spiritual awakening that he was getting from God. And the person describing it to us was saying, how, you know, oh, he just got the illumination, like the spiritual awakening, but he looks a little distraught, and his hand is on his heart and one hand is on his head. And he said, you know, this could be translated as he got the illumination, but he doesn't get it until he decides to make meaning and drop it into his heart. So go from his head of understanding, he got this illumination and this awakening, but then making sure that he applies meaning to it and sits there and ponders on it and marinates over it and pushes it down to his heart. And he talked so much about. The person who was guiding us through was talking so much about how you have to sit and listen, look at something, and if it's important to you, we get to apply this meaning and create this meaning around it and marinate on meaning. And how many times have we sat across from our partners or our loved ones or our children or our families and been like, oh, we're having a meal together. Or can you sit and soak up the moment and say, this is so special. How can we make this even more special? How can I look at my child or how can I look at my husband and say, oh, my God, I dreamt of a partner like you. I can't believe I get to sit here and experience this life with you. Wow. Let's talk about something that means something to us, or let's create some meaning, or where could we create more meaning? So for me, it was looking at my life and saying, I have such a beautiful life, but how can I make it even deeper? How can I take each moment and try to be even more present in every single moment? Stopping today like we did on our walk, we took Our normal walk, but saying, oh, I want to go down to the water and let bananas play around. And we sat there and we just looked at the water and let that moment be really, really special to us and watch our dog run and go crazy, which he doesn't normally get to do, and make meaning out of our environment instead of just going and worrying about what we have to do today. So how can we make more meaning in our life? Because that's all it ever is. Let's make the things that mean something to us or that we want to mean more and the realization of our stresses, let's make them mean less. They can motivate us, but let's make them mean less.

It's funny because they have plenty of stresses over there. But you know what I didn't see? I didn't see anyone walking around worried about the recession and we met so many locals and we spent so much time there that like we were really immersed in it. I didn't see anyone running around worrying about where they're going to get their meal next, any of those things. It doesn't mean those challenges don't exist. What it means is I almost feel like they do a great job of saying, here's what I'm going to worry about and here's when I'm not. And you see them, you see them shut down at 3 or 4 o' clock and then it's just time to be with their friends and their family no matter what else is going on. And they've got that schedule. I hate to keep going back to this perfect balance, but they really do it better than Americans do over there. They really have the right idea in terms of I'm going to create what I need for my life in a smaller container. Right? Call it your production container. And then I'm going to make sure that I am filling up my joy container and I'm going to do the things that mean more to me.

I can't even remember what conversation I was in because we met so many people, went to so many incredible dinners, but there was one where we were talking about just like social media or just different stresses that are out in the world and was at dinner and they're like, oh yeah, no, we don't talk about that here. Like, or at dinner.

Like business.

Yeah, it was business and just stresses around, you know, social media or just even comparison or things like that. It's not that you can't do social media or take video or things like that. It was a conversation around like, oh, yeah. That doesn't infiltrate our dinners.

Yeah. A couple of them made it very clear that you don't meet someone and say, oh, what do you do? Yeah, you don't meet somebody and talk about business. We asked them, we said, well, then, what do you talk about? And they said, life or the sea or the market or art or the history of this building or family. Yep. But they said, you don't say, what do you do? And then make that the subject of dinner.

Yeah, it's not that it never came up. It tends to come up later in the dinner because it's typically a part of who you are. But it was never the main topic of conversation, which to us at first, when we first got there, we're like, well, what the hell do we talk about then? Because this is bull. Literally who we are. It's in our DNA. But truly, it was incredible that when you start enriching your life with other things and looking for other meaning around you is when you realize there are infinite details about life that you can talk about to the freaking stitching on your shirt. And it's talking about how Rob is now getting his shirts handmade in Italy, because they are. That's what you do over there. That's what people get done. So truly, being able to talk about so many things that you do in.

Your life, I can't let you pass by it, because it's another example of form and function in America. We do it fast and get it done. And there it is, almost cumbersome. They care so much about both form and function, but you end up with these perfect items. Right. And so I got a whole bunch of shirts made there. And what happened? Day one, I had to go get measured and pick out all the materials. Day two, I actually had to go back and they had a shirt like a rough. You know, it wasn't. All the details weren't done yet, but they had the rough shirt done so I could put it on. And they wanted to make a whole bunch of changes to it before they made other shirts.

And you couldn't really tell the changes. But they all could.

No, but they could totally tell, like, oh, I want to change this one change. I want to change that. But then here's step three. They're sending it to the house here. I have to wear it once, get it dry cleaned once, and send it back and take a certain number of pictures in it for them that they want, then send that shirt back to them. They're going to make even more changes. This is all part of the price of doing the shirt, send it back to Europe, have them make those changes based on the pictures and after one wash and then and only then will they make the other six, seven shirts that I ordered. So they do all of this with one shirt to get it right. And then when they think they've got it right, then and only then they'll give you your other shirts that you've ordered because they care so much about putting meaning and form and function and everything into every little thing that they do.

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Yeah, totally. It's because they're applying more beauty to every moment in life. Right. And beauty has so many different definitions, but they just care about having a beautiful life. And over here, I feel like we get caught up in caring, in how to get through life. We wish away the week until the weekend comes, and then we wish that we didn't feel on Sunday night or Monday morning the way that we felt from having the weekend that we had. And then we. We wish for next year, and we wish for a certain dollar amount. We wish for all these things. And there it's more like, let's see what we have. It's when I talk about gratitude, let's see what we already have instead of wishing for what we don't. And there's a balance that you got to strike there. There really is. All right, guys, well, listen, I know this is the most rambling episode maybe of them all, but I think there's a lot of great points that you can take out of all of that. And I had a moment on the beach the last day we didn't want to go. I actually shared in my Instagram stories, and that moment was, wow. There wasn't long ago that Lori and I didn't have the ability to be there participating at that level in a vacation like that. And the time and the money and the resources to do so came from helping other people by teaching them things that we're good at. And you, the listener, right now, you've got things that you could be teaching somebody else that you're good at, things that you take naturally for granted because you're good at them. You think they're not important or that other people wouldn't want them, but the truth is, there's people out there literally praying on their knees at night that somebody would teach them to do what comes naturally to you. Let me repeat that. There's somebody on their knees praying every night that somebody would teach them to do what comes naturally to you. And, you know, Lori and I were not gonna release this literally roadmap that we put into a course on how to do that, how to identify that, how to build that, how to do that, how to build the audience for it. I mean, every single thing. We weren't going to release it this year because we had other things going on, but we see the challenging economy coming, and it's already built. And we realize the importance of getting this into everyone's hands before this challenging economy arrives in full force. And so if you want to find out how to help other people, help fulfill their prayers, to be able to do what comes naturally to you, no matter what that might be, then go ahead and text us the word bulletproof because we're going to make you bulletproof for any challenging economy. Coming up, text us the word bulletproof to 310-421-0416. If you do, I'm going to put you on a special VIP early access list that's going to get you this roadmap in the form of this course. It's going to get it to you sooner, and it's going to get it to you cheaper than anybody else will have access to it. So text me the word bulletproof to 310-421-0416. In the meantime, we sure appreciate this platform being able to share with you guys our little life experiences and our great big takeaways.

So grateful for you guys. Always so much fun to see who's listening. Let us know your biggest takeaway, and we will see you next week.

Sa.