Life-Changing Books Podcast Episode 29. Jairek Robbins: Author of Live It!

Oh, we have another special one for you guys today. Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 29 of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. So during each episode, I interview one of the world's top authors. And as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview the author, Jarrett Robbins. Jarrick is a bestselling author, a decorated performance coach and lifestyle entrepreneur, a sought-after speaker, and the founder of Performance Coach University. And so for those of you wondering, he is the son of Tony Robbins, but I think that you'll find that he offers his own unique perspective on living with purpose. Our conversation today is all about Jarrick's book, Live It: Achieving Success by Living with Purpose. And throughout the interview, you'll see that Jarrick has his own philosophy called Learn it, live it, give it. And so you need to learn what it takes to be successful. Then you need to live it fully in your own life. After that, you can give it to others and help them do the same. This was a great conversation. Jerrick left me feeling very positive about the world. I love his approach to life. And without further ado, please enjoy this amazing conversation with Jerrick Robbins. Mr. Jerrick Robbins, thank you so much for joining the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. For those in the audience that don't know who you are, can you introduce yourself?

Sure. I think the simplest thing is to start with why, as Simon might say. And the why here is just to reach the people that need it most at the moment they need it with the message they need. Now, I always say, I don't know who you are, where you are, what you're going through, but hopefully something we talk about today will land just at the right moment when you need it most.

And Live It is a great book for people in transition. We were talking about that before we jumped on. Why do you think it's a good book for people in transition and maybe What types of transition is it good for?

Yeah, so this is a blueprint. This is something where I looked back at a 10-year chunk of my life through my 20s, and I analyzed it and I said, what worked? Like, what was actually useful during this chunk of my life? What was helpful? What didn't work? What wasn't very useful? And I just cherry-picked the, the most useful tactical tools, things I actually applied and then saw a physical result from. And as I put those into place, I looked back and said, wow, this is the stuff that really works. Some of it is hard science, so it's scientific-backed, there's research behind it. Some of it is a little pseudoscience, but it worked. And you can call that placebo or not, but for some reason I used it in a moment when my life was on the line and I got told I had so many days left to live, and I used this visualization technique and I felt better. And I was like, well, I can't prove that scientifically, but I'm going to write about it because it was something that worked in that moment. So it's an experience of a 10-year chunk of life wrapped into, you know, a couple hundred or 100-something pages here. And it's put together as a user guide for anyone who wants to grab it and use it in defining their life.

Well, on this show, we love blending the hard science with the pseudoscience. There's a lot in the pseudoscience world that I've benefited from. I mean, countless things on a daily basis even. And so a lot of the bigger transformations in my life have come from adopting practices that other people, maybe even in our community, kind of look down upon. Now, you, you kick off the book as kind of on the first page actually, as well as your TED Talk with this service trip that you took to Uganda. And there are a couple of very definitive lessons that you learned while you were there. Could you describe those to everybody?

Yeah, of course. So there's a few lessons. The reason I ended up going there was I really wanted to help. I, I started off with, you know, my heart leading the way, and I could care less about business when I started. I just wanted to help people. And, and that was my whole, my whole motto in life, my whole mission, my whole thing of what I wanted to do was hands-on help. It made me feel good. I loved it. It was fun. It was exciting. So, um, one thing that inspired that trip specifically was prior to that, I took a trip around the world And I grew up in Southern California, in San Diego, near the beach. Looking back, a very affluent town. Things were really well off. It didn't always feel that way as a kid because we compared it to the house next door, the house down the street kind of thing. But looking back, I was like, wow, it was really nice, especially as I took that trip around the world and was introduced to how the majority of humans were living at that moment in time. So 2000—

2000?

4, let's say. And, and, you know, I got to go to South Africa and they gave us a tour of one of the districts where you walk into a, you know, imagine a college dorm-sized room and there's 2 single beds in the room and you're like, oh, a couple people must live here, just like a dorm. And they're like, no, this is a 2-family room. What do you mean a 2-family room? They're like, well, a family of 5 people sleeps on that single bed and a family of 5 people sleeps on this single bed. Like, where do they all fit? And it's like, well, they make it work. I was like, wow, that's interesting. Going through, you know, Asia and India and Vietnam and Thailand and all parts of, you know, East Africa as well, and Venezuela, and just seeing like, wow, this is how most people do it. Not that compact, but a lot different than Southern California. And it started to open up pieces of my mind, as simple as this sounds, where I started realizing like, wow, the way I grew up wasn't normal at all. And there's a lot of people that I, I'm going to make a statement and then I'll adjust the statement in a few seconds. But my first thought was there's a lot of people who need help. And so there's a part of me that's like, I want to help. So I just, I look for a volunteer organization where I thought I could go help and make a difference and positively make a difference in some way. I took a trip over to Uganda to teach organic farming out in the rural farming villages where people had no electricity, no running water, no toilets, none of this stuff. And it was just, you know, rural hut living where you live in a little mud hut with a thatch roof on the dirt and, and you live and you live life. And so I went out there to help. Um, now to adjust my own thought process, what I learned was we use phrases about other parts of the world. We call them developing nations, third world countries, underprivileged, struggling places. And the longer I lived there, the more I looked around and started to scratch my head and say, I don't understand why people use these phrases. Like, I get the concept. They're saying the resources are limited. But when you look at how people live, I just started asking the question, what are they missing? They have their health. They have people who care about them. They have a life that they enjoy every day. They find meaning in what they do and purpose in how they live. What are they missing? And it started to kind of re-filter the process because I had watched people who are a CEO in a major corporation and have no purpose, just show up to make money every day and then go home and be exhausted and tired and frustrated because he hates his life. But he has to do it because it pays for the house. And then I watched a little man sweep leaves every day, and this dude was 80-something years old-ish. He looked old. He'd come out of this little clinic every morning and he'd sweep this long, you know, path of just leaves. He'd have this long thatched broom. He just kind of sweeped the path, clear the leaves. We went and interviewed him and we asked him like, why do you sweep the leaves? And he says, Well, the first time he said, because I'm supposed to, we were like, uh, I don't know if you've ever traveled with an American overseas. We tend to have a, have one challenge when people don't understand us. We think we have to speak louder, which doesn't help at all.

Yeah, I've definitely experienced that one. I'm a victim of doing it.

I was, I was definitely about to learn my own screw-up here, but I, I just was like, no, why? Now my friend who was translating looked at me. She's like, "I speak English, stupid. You don't have to say it louder. Give me a second." I was like, "My bad." And and she turned to him and said something else, and then he came back, and all of a sudden he got the biggest smile on his face. And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, that, that, that. What what is he saying?" And she said, "Oh my God, that's beautiful." I said, "What?" And he said, "The reason I sweep the leaves every morning is because I believe every human being about to enter this world through a birth, or every person about to leave this world." a death, they deserve a clear path to do so. I remember being like, wow, this guy's got a lot of purpose. Like, he finds that much meaning clearing a path for people to enter and exit this world through sweeping a path every day. And I meet these people in huge organizations that have a void of meaning, no meaning. It's just another day at the job to make some money to pay the damn bills. I was like, oh wow, this is fascinating. And it started to click that the people I thought I was there to help actually held so many lessons that could radically change my life for the better. And some of those lessons I've tried to capture in some of these chapters just to bring those little messages forward and be like, wow. I thought I was there to help and this dude was about to change my whole freaking outlook on life. He's about to teach me that going to work just to make a paycheck isn't as important as finding deep meaning in everything you do. And second lesson that happened there was I got malaria and, and at one point was told through my own stubbornness, but at one point I was told I had 6 days left to live. And I was like, wow. And then the questions kind of spun together and it's like, if I only had 6 days left to live, Which path would I have chosen? Would I have chosen the dude who just keeps going to an office that he hates, working a job he doesn't love, working for a paycheck just to pay the damn bills? Or would I want to be like that little old man who was sweeping leaves and clearing a path for people to enter and exit this world through? One of them clearly had more purpose in their life. And then I remember looking— I forget her name. It's the lady who did the 5 Regrets of the Dying.

Bronnie Ware.

Yeah. Yeah, she did. She did all this research of people in hospice, specifically men who were on their deathbeds, and she asked them, you know, what were the things that mattered most to you? And none of them said board meetings. None of them said tripling my profitability in Q3 of 2020. None of them said, you know, really excelling in Harvard Business School. Now, they did all these things, but those were not the highlights of their life. The highlights of their life were spending time with people who really mattered to them, wishing they could live a life more true to what was more— most important to them in their heart and soul, wishing they had a little bit more fun, wishing they kept in contact with people who were important. Like, some of these things were most important, not medals and awards and accomplishments and achievements. And so this whole concept of living with purpose started to breed or started to spawn in those moments of discovery where it was like, wow, no matter what I choose to do, I need to find this level of purpose in it. No matter where I go, I need to keep my eyes and ears open because there's messages from the universe. There's messages from other beautiful humans that can teach me so much. Even when I think I'm there to try to help, really, maybe I was the one getting helped in that moment.

Hmm. It's an amazing lesson. There's a story that I tell my friends all the time. I think it came out of The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Tim talks about how this rich businessman is on vacation with his family, maybe in a small fishing village in Mexico or something, and sees the, you know, a fisherman bringing in a large fish. And he says, oh, that's amazing. I don't see stuff like this in the US. You should know, I could give you some money. You can hire a couple more boats. Eventually you can grow the business, grow it for years and years and years. And eventually you could sell the business and retire. on the beach with your family? And he says, that's what I already do. That's the short version of it. But it's very similar to the lesson that you just talked about.

It's a huge lesson. And it's those lessons that open our mind to remind us, especially in moments of transition, are we designing our life around a job? Or are we designing the life we want to live and finding a job that will support it? And it doesn't sound very different. It's like, yeah, both have a job, both have a life. What's the big deal? Well, one, you find whatever work's available and try to just cram what you want to do in life around it and make it work early in the morning, late at night, or wherever it might fit on the weekends. The other one, you say, well, wait a second. If I could live my perfect life, my ideal day with my family, making a difference, doing something that matters, here's how I would use my time, my thought, my energy, my, my effort every day. Here's what I would want to pour my life into that really matters most. Based on that, what kind of job might I want to create? What kind of job might I go find that allows me to live this kind of life every day, to be this kind of human every day? And this job will support the life I want to live instead of vice versa.

That's been a big theme in my life. And so on my socials, I've been communicating a lot about purpose and I've been looking for books on purpose so that I can get as many perspectives as possible. And so I I really appreciate you talking about that. One of the exercises, and you just mentioned it, is the ideal day exercise. And so I'd love to have you explain that to everybody in a little bit more detail. I know that writing out the answers to some of the questions you're going to propose to us in a second might take 30 minutes, it might take an hour, but for people listening to this podcast that can at least pause it and reflect for a couple moments and then go home and write, what is the ideal day exercise?

Well, I put it this way. If someone's going to invest 30 minutes of their life to craft out a plan for the next 50 years of their life, you might want to give it more than 30 minutes.

Yeah.

Because if I set a timer and says you only get 30 minutes to figure out the next 50 years and you don't get a second more of planning, you'd be like, oh my God. And, and so a lot of us take exercises like this so lightly as just a fun, you know, creative writing thing. Think about it as if you were planning the next 50 years of your life and you can't vary from the plan. You can't deviate. Like, this is the plan. And all of a sudden the pressure's on. You're like, oh shoot. But the truth is you can adjust it. But let's just start this way. Instead of trying to figure out the whole plan all at once, why don't we just figure out one day? Why don't we just figure out one single day? Meaning, I was told I had 6 days left to live at one point because of malaria. And I said, okay, if I only had 6 days, what would I want to do on one of those days? Who would I want to be? What would I want to experience? What would I want to create or develop or design that day? What might I want to build? Um, you know, what might I want to contribute to the universe and society around me? What might I want to learn from, from, you know, what's something I've always wanted to learn that I could learn that day? And, and I just started going through all these questions, abstract questions, but who I wanted to be, how I wanted to feel, what I wanted to do, what I wanted to create, what I wanted to be a part of, what type of people I'd want to surround myself with, what kind of energy I'd want to have throughout the day. Um, what kind of laughter or joy or humor might fill my mind or body throughout the day? And I, I just kept taking piece after piece after piece after piece and just throwing it all into a huge brain dump. And then I looked at this pile of, of options and I said, hmm, what are these? Whether this is actually most important for that day. What are the things that if I took it away, the day would no longer be my ideal day? It'd just be a good day. Wouldn't be my perfect day. Wouldn't be the best day ever. Be a really nice day. I said, what pieces are the musts? Which ones are the maybes? You know, that'd be nice. It'd be cool if I could fit it in. And as I started to refine it, all of a sudden it became really clear. I wanted to wake up in a certain way, be surrounded by a certain environment, have a certain amount of energy in the morning. I wanted to be able to get up and, you know, really strengthen my mind, my body, my emotions, my spirit. I wanted to have physical activity that brought me to life. I wanted to be able to engage with people I really loved and had a deep relationship with. I wanted to be able to work on projects that mattered. Legacy projects that when I'm physically not here anymore, that ripple would continue to reach people in a positive way. Somehow I wanted to be able to explore myself, explore my lover, explore the world together, explore what was out there and limitless possibilities of experience that might be present in the world that we could go discover together. I wanted to be able to do all these things. And then I started to put it into one day and said, okay, if there was a cap, if there was only those hours, What would I put when and where? And I mapped it out and I created this one day and I was like, wow, this would be amazing. And then the challenge became, how do you actually turn that one day into your actual day-to-day life?

I remember doing this experience, this exercise about maybe 6 months ago because my partner at Book Thinkers, he has a life coach and his life coach brought him through this exercise and I didn't realize how many gaps there were. I mean, I'm constantly working my way towards that ideal day. I'm constantly defining my purpose and understanding and reflecting on what fulfills me. But there are still a lot of gaps for people. And so one of the things that you follow up with in the book after you talk about your ideal day is majors versus minors.

Yeah.

In your life, you might be basically majoring in minor things, which is a A funny way to look at it, but for, for listeners, what is a major and what is a minor?

So the majors are the parts of your life that if you were to take these away, life won't work the same. Give you an example. Your health is a major. If I take your health away and you get deathly ill, it doesn't matter how smart you are, it doesn't matter how rich you are, it doesn't matter how liked you are, it doesn't matter how famous you are on Instagram or how many People follow your YouTube channel, like you're done, game over. So you have to have your health as of now. You know, maybe Elon Musk comes up with a cool chip that who cares if you're healthy, your brain keeps going forever on the chip. Like not yet, but maybe pulls it off. But for now, health matters. You have to take care of your health. Otherwise, you're not there. Second piece, your emotions, how you feel. Because if you have all the money in the world, everyone loves you, You're super, super amazing at everything you do, and internally you feel depressed, lonely, and anxious all day long. Do all those other things really matter? Usually they don't. That's why really famous comedians, really famous people kill themselves. It's horrible. Everyone loves them. They have tons of money. They're the best in the world at what they do. And then they commit suicide and you're like, what happened? It's like everyone loved them except for themselves.

Mm-hmm.

Everyone saw meaning in their life except for themselves. Everyone felt so happy when they were around except for themselves. And that emotional juice creates our life. And so the ability to have an emotional filter, emotional resilience, emotional strength, or emotional flexibility throughout the day so that no matter what's going on around you, you can find the joy in it. You can find the excitement in it. You can find the passion, determination, challenge. There was a research study that showed— they did a youth juvenile hall research study and they found out that young men who kept landing up in juvenile hall for fighting had a much smaller vocabulary of words to express how they felt. Than young men who didn't land up in juvenile hall. And so what they found out was when they would run out of words to describe how they felt, they would turn to physical aggression. And so they started teaching them more words to describe how they felt, and the percentage or odds of them landing back up in juvenile hall went down. I went, wow.

Fascinating.

How many of us have a limited vocabulary to describe how we actually feel. Most of us use about 5 or 10 words every day, consistently the same 5 or 10 words every day. Why not challenge yourself to find at least 3 new emotional feelings every day to describe how you feel? And if you start to expand your vocabulary, you start to experience emotions you've never felt before. And you realize there's over 100 and something emotions you could feel every day, but most of us stick with the same 4. Choose another 4 today and see what happens. And that's a major. Again, if you take someone, no matter how much they've earned, how famous they are, how powerful they are, how smart they are, how loved they are, how liked they are, and emotionally they don't have it, they don't last very long. And so health, emotions, uh, you know, we keep going through these other majors, and these majors, just like each one of these you've seen, are foundational elements that if you take them away life doesn't go as well. Minors— now in the book, it's interesting because minors are things that as time goes on, we've seen an evolution. I used to say video games were the minors because they were a distraction from getting real life done. And then some kid went and won $3 million playing a video game, and I was like, well, New times, new major. So if you're using video games as a career path and you're so good that you can make $3 million a year playing the video game, it could be a major category business. Um, if you're using it as a distraction though, you, you're, you really want to have that conversation with the person, but you're nervous. So you're gonna go play the game for 20 more minutes to distract yourself. You had a really rough day, and instead of talking to your spouse about it or talking to your, your friend about it, you're gonna go bury your head in a video game to, to, you know, I don't know what you do, fly a helicopter and distract yourself. Like, if you're using it as a distraction, it becomes a minor. It's something that you're distracting yourself from what really needs to happen in life. If you're using it as a vehicle for wealth building can become a business, and then it might be a major. So there's some things I wrote about that have evolved because of current times and how things have changed. Um, but, but really it depends on how you use it, and that can be anything, you know. You can use— and, and I, I remember there's a quote that says, you, you wake up in the morning, you sit down in a rocking chair, you have a cup of tea It's silent. This is either your heaven or your hell.

Mm-hmm.

I remember thinking, whoa, what's the difference? And it's like, well, this is either the most blissful experience that you found comfort in who you are and what you do, you, you've mastered the majors, you have a life you're proud of, or this is hell. This is you judging yourself. This is you anxious. This is you uncomfortable in your own skin. This is you You know, just feeling squirmish trying to just be who you are because you don't like who you are. And so the majors are designing a life that you can fall in love with, designing a life that you're proud of, designing a life that when you look at, you go, wow, I love my life and I love who I am and how I've designed this and made it into what it is.

So this podcast is Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. And my subject of expertise now is personal development. It's ways to improve your life. In the book, you give a very eye-opening example of a minor, a potential minor, and that's reading personal development books, because you can either use these to change your life, real genuine behavior change, or you can read these and simply by reading them, you think you're making progress. It's the same type of distraction as a video game if you're not using it in a constructive business way. I thought that was brilliant, and that's going to help me articulate that moving forward. So thank you very much.

Yeah, it's a way— it's the difference. If you watch a cartoon, it's the difference between when their legs are spinning but they're not moving, or when it finally catches traction and they go.

Mm-hmm.

And what I've learned is sometimes it takes a little priming. Um, if you watch a jet takeoff where the pilot steps on the brakes and turns up the, the, the throttle, they turn up the intensity of the engines while holding the brakes, and then they release the brakes and The plane goes. So sometimes we need to do that. Sometimes we need to purposely hold still and keep gathering information, which is priming the engines, and then release the pedal and go. But that's for each person to decide and say, hey, am I, am I holding myself still on purpose while priming the engines to go? Or am I honestly distracting myself or making myself feel better because at least I'm reading a book about it, and you're not actually applying. And unapplied knowledge, oof. I think it was Les Brown, one of these guys, he said, you know, the most valuable place in the world is the graveyard. All the ideas still left inside all the bodies that never were put into reality. All the brilliant ideas, the things that could change the world, the things that could save life, the things that can make someone laugh, the things that can bring someone to life and make them feel really alive again that were never put into motion. Unused knowledge, untapped potential buried in the grounds of the cemetery because these people never took the opportunity to apply all the things they knew how to do, but they never used. And it's like, don't be that person. Don't be buried with your potential still in you. Squeeze it out of you, put it to life, put it to work, make it use. useful to yourself and others in the world around you.

Hey, Book Thinkers family, a quick word from today's podcast sponsor. Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks ranging from bestsellers to celebrity memoirs, business, and my favorite, personal development. And as a part of Audible's partnership with Book Thinkers, we're actually offering listeners a free 30-day trial of their service. This trial includes 1 credit good for any Premium Selection title you'd like, which is pretty much any book in the world, and it's yours to keep even after the trial. And so this trial also includes access to Audible's Plus catalog of podcasts, audiobooks, guided wellness, and Audible Originals. Listen all you want, no credits needed. Now all of you guys know that I love physical paper books. I love having the books in my hand, being able to circle things and make notes, but I've also been completing an additional 20 to 30 books per year using Audible. I simply listen when I'm in the car, doing chores around the house, or while I'm on my morning walks or runs. So today's episode that we're talking about right now is all about Live It by Jerick Robbins. That book is also available on Audible. And so if you think that this is a good fit for you, you can access this free 30-day trial by clicking the link in the show notes or by going to www.bookthinkers.com You will not regret it. Now back to today's episode. Let's transition over to your semester at sea's voyage of discovery. When you came back from that, you had some culture shock and you had some conversations with friends that were a little devoid of meaning. What was the semester at sea like? And can you— you highlighted it a little bit before, but what were some of those experiences?

Sure. So I'm a huge fan of the Organization Semester at Sea. I tend to talk about it anytime I can, and anyone who's in range to be able to go on the trips, I highly, highly recommend it. They have both student trips if you're still an active college student where you can apply and go on board. And then they also have— what do they call it— Lifelong Voyagers, where if you're over 35 or 40 years old, You're allowed to come back on board and they have like 15 or 20 residents each trip that you can go around the world with the ship. And what's neat is it's the ability to take you to places you've never been and deeply immerse you into the culture. And it was one of my favorite things in the world because they teach you, and one of their phrases is how to become a world or global citizen. So instead of being so tied to your city or your country or your college or your campus or your way of life, They're going to open you up and invite you to taste the flavor of how the world is. I remember we went to Thailand and I went and volunteered to teach English for a week, and they did homestays where we got to go stay with a rural farming village family and live in their home with them for a few days while volunteering at the school and teaching English. And I was like, that is so cool. Like, I'm gonna live like a Thai farmer. This is great. And then You know, they had stuff where they would take you to the coolest places, the temples and monuments and statues and stuff. So you see how cool some places are. And then they take you to some of the most challenged places, some of the orphanages and hospitals where people are really struggling. And throughout that journey around the world, I think my heart was open. My mind was opened. Um, things evolved and I'll wrap this story up. I'll give you a bonus that isn't in the book, and we'll, we'll throw this in here. And before I left on that trip, if I think back to some of my most favorite things in the world when I was in high school, uh, there was a music video I used to watch every single day before school, and it was Hypnotized by Biggie Smalls and Puff Daddy. I thought it was the coolest video in the world. And as a young, you know, 15-year-old me, I was like, man, if I could grow up and have have what they have and do what they do and live like they live. Like, boom, I would have way more than enough. Like, that would be the ultimate vision in life. Like, how cool would that be? And it was about cars and helicopters and planes and jets and yachts and girls and guys and everything else. I was like, this would be so cool. And then taking that trip around the world, I was like, man, after getting malaria, I was like, screw stuff. If I have my health I have everything I need in life. If I could just be healthy and not die in 6 days, like, that is everything. And then about a year ago, I was on Instagram and I crossed paths with this young woman. Um, her, her handle on Instagram is Fight to Breathe. Her name's Kayla Haber. And I remember seeing this picture of her, and if you go to her handle Fight to Breathe and you scroll down Um, about a year or two ago, you'll see this picture of her where she just came out of an open heart surgery. She's got stitches straight down the middle of her chest. She's got a tube poking out from the middle that's draining blood out of her heart because she had fluid in her heart building up. So it was draining the fluid out of her heart. And then she's got her glasses on and she's got 2 thumbs up and the biggest smile I've ever seen. Now, it's one of those moments where like one of these things doesn't match the others. Normally you don't see a giant smile on a person immediately after surgery. So I'm like, the smile doesn't match the state of being. What's going on? And so I looked her up and interviewed her and interviewed her husband for our podcast. And as I was talking to her, I asked her what had happened. She goes, I was born with cystic fibrosis. Fast forward a whole chunk of life, a lot of things went really well. One day I had, you know, kind of a seizure, rushed to the hospital. They said my lungs stopped working and I'm gonna need a new pair of lungs. They cut me open, or they waited, waited, waited, finally got a donor, cut her open, cracked her open, pulled out the old lungs, put in the new lungs, sewed her up, and waited to see what would happen. She came to, lungs worked, she was okay. Fast forward and everything was good. Fast forward— I'm fast forwarding through large chunks of her life and it's not fair to do that, but please look her up and hear the whole story. But fast forward, uh, she met a man, fell in love, got married. She told him her situation and said, someday, you know, my lungs might stop, but I'm gonna keep going as long as I can with the ones I have. Fast forward, one day she had a seizure again, rushed her back to the hospital. And this time at the hospital, the doctor said, listen, we've already given you a double lung transplant. If they didn't work, there's not a good chance another one's going to work. So we might as well just put you on hospice and let you live out your last few days. And she went home in tears and told her husband, I didn't fight this hard for this long to give up now. No way. She's— and she wrote 100 letters to 100 hospitals with her and her husband. 4 of them wrote back. One of them took her in, which was UCLA in California, and said, we can help. They brought her in, they put her on machines, kept her alive. One night, 2 in the morning, she gets a call. You've got a match. They rush her into the operating room, cut her open, open her up, pull out the old lungs, put in the new lungs, sew her up. And while interviewing her husband, he said the next day when she was starting to wake up on a lot of medication, she had a tube down her throat. To just keep her breathing. She was scribbling something, and he said he saw the biggest smile on her face he's ever seen. And he said, I wish I could say our wedding day had a bigger smile, but I'd be lying. He was scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, and she turned around the board with the biggest smile on her face, and it said, I can breathe.

Wow.

And she told me, she said, the greatest feeling I've ever had in my entire life is the ability to breathe on my own free will. To fill your lungs with air by choice. And I went, wow. The meaning of what it means to have enough changed dramatically in that moment for me. Because it went from Biggie Smalls and P. Diddy on yachts with helicopters to just being healthy myself, to realizing not only being healthy, to just have a heartbeat. And a breath of air in my lungs is more than enough to have a great life. And there's people fighting for that every day. I was like, wow, that's amazing. And that's what it meant to have enough. And then I was like, well, what does it mean to be enough? And I sat down and I was like, man, to have enough is just a breath of air and a heartbeat. To be enough, I had to define that. I had to write down and say, what does it mean to be enough every day in life? So I wrote out all my qualifications of, for me to be enough, here's all the things that I think have to happen or what I need to do or be each day. And then there was one more question. It was, what does it mean to actually be loved enough? To have enough, to be enough, and to be loved enough. And to be loved enough, that I wrote about this in the book. It's that version of who we thought we needed to be as a child. Versus who we naturally most authentically are when we peel back the layers. And it's learning to peel back the layers and to be able to deeply look into your own eyes. And people misinterpret this. They're like, what, vanity? To look in your eyes and say how much you love yourself each day? Please. And I said, no, your eyes are the windows to your soul. Look through the physical form of who you are deep into the soul of who you are. And pour love in every day. You know, come up with 5 things you appreciate about yourself, 3 things you acknowledge about yourself, and 1 thing you're really excited about in the future. Something you're proud of you've accomplished, something you're grateful for in the moment, something you're looking forward to. But pour into your own heart and soul each day through the window of your eyes. And I was like, man, to have enough, to be enough, and to be loved enough. All of a sudden the foundation is set. When those buckets are full in a human being, you get beautiful flourishing people who want to pour into others and help in some way. When those buckets are empty or they have holes in their buckets that are constantly draining them, you get people fighting to try to feel like they're enough. You get people being mean to finally feel like they can get a little love. You get people who are angry and hurtful just because they don't feel like they have enough or they're not enough in life without it. And so that's one of the— there's a little bonus lesson here, and there's a bit in the book, but a bit you have to research outside of the book where it's saying, what does it mean to have enough, be enough, and be loved enough? And when you define that with clarity in your life, all of a sudden, take time to fill those buckets each day and you'll find yourself flourishing and wanting to just pour into everyone around you instead of constantly trying to grab from everyone around you.

Talk about a paradigm shift. That's big. For— and I know we've got to wrap up. So for people who want to learn a little bit more about you, who thought, wow, you know, some of these lessons really resonate with me, I'd love to learn more about Jarek, maybe communicate with him, maybe take a course or something like that. Where can they go? What can they do?

Um, come hang out with us on Instagram. So it's just @jarekrobbins, my name. Uh, we push out content every day. And again, the purpose of the content is to reach the people who need it most at the moment they need it with the message they need. I don't know who you are, what you're going through, or what you needed, but hopefully you found it today in this conversation.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode of Book Thinkers, Life-Changing Books. To discover more books, more mentors, and more resources that you can use to achieve more and live better, make sure you check out our website at www.bookthinkers.com. There you'll find links to our mobile application, more podcast episodes, our shop so you can get some Book Thinkers swag, and our socials. With that, I'm signing off and I'll see you for next week's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books.