How To Find LOVE And Transform Your Life | Bob Goff

I'm not saying this idea of love is just this, you know, Hallmark unicorns and confetti thing. There's no love without justice and there's no justice without love. And they go together. Love and justice are linked.

Well, look, I wanted to jump straight in. You know, I've huge fan of your work. You do a lot of great things in the earth and a lot of great things in the world. I am curious. You know, you're one of the people that I see is kind of like the leader. Leader in the, in the love theology.

Right.

Getting us to love one another as Christ loved us and all that good stuff. What do you. What is. What does it mean to you to really follow love's lead?

Yeah, that's such a good question. I think the idea of following love's lead would be for me, at a couple different vantage points. One thing is there's some people that love God a lot, but they don't. Don't seem to like the people he made. And what he made is difficult people. And he can't say that you love God if you don't like the people. They say, bear his image. And granted, we screw it up and we're difficult and cranky and the Star wars and. But we also do beautiful things as well. And so following love's lead when it comes to expression of your faith is to realize that God is doing different things in other people's lives than he's doing in my life right now. So I just assume that God is up to the same things in your life as he is in mine. And the fact is, I don't know. You having a grandkid this week?

I haven't had one this week, but I did have one about two months ago.

Yeah. So some of the things that we have in common, we say like, oh, wow, grandparents. Yeah. And then you could just say, I don't know. Do you have any fainting goats?

I don't have any fainting goats, but I do have a sleeping dog.

There you go. It's like the dog fainted without clapping your hands. But can you see how this is. Acts 2 and 4, it said they broke bread together, they pounded the carbs, and then they had things in common. At Philippians 2:20, it's. You don't need a Bible verse or everything, but I'm actually kind of a Bible verse guy. And Paul is talking about Timothy. He says, I don't have anybody like him. He's a guy that takes a genuine interest in the people around him. Yeah, I Just like that idea, whether faith is a big deal for you or none of the above. Did you say, what if we took a genuine interest in one another? Like, I just delighted in knowing you're a grandpa a couple months. Freshly minted.

Yeah, it's and beautiful thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And so we can just say, what do we have in common? And this isn't going light on doctrine. It's going big on Jesus. Yeah. That's how you follow love's lead.

Yeah. No, it's so good. You know, I'm. You know, one of the things that I love you say, and I've heard you said a thousand times, is, you know, this, this concept of focusing across the street versus across the ocean.

Yeah. Bingo.

Yeah, I love that.

I started maybe four years ago, we started doing some stuff in Afghanistan with these young girls that the Taliban let learn how to read and write. And within a couple weeks of the takeover, we had that girls school back open again. Is that crazy? That is amazing. We just asked them, we just said, can we open our school? And they said yes. And so we did. I don't want to make a headline. I want to make a difference. That's why you haven't seen it in any of the headlines.

Yeah.

So I think of the things that we can do across an ocean, which are wonderful and terrific, and if God gives an opportunity, do it. But then 10,000 Afghan refugees fleeing the country all landed in San Diego. And so we bought a truck that's refrigerated and we just get a ton of food. And we really take this thing in Matthew 25 seriously about loving your neighbor. I don't think it's a metaphor for something else. I think, because if it ain't happening at the end of the street, don't talk about going to the ends of the earth. And you can do both. It doesn't need to be binary. Both of them are terrific in each in their own way. And so I'm not trying to point a bony finger in anybody's direction. I'm just saying, like, do something really kind. You might have a male carrier that comes to your house every day. Give them a glass of water. It's right out of Matthew 13. Even if they deliver like mine does the mail to the wrong place. Yeah, I get my neighbor's bills. You want to do something awesome? Pay your neighbor's bills. Just blow them away. I guess it's a federal offense to open the the mail, but just guess how much they owe.

But if they pay their bill, they may not turn you in?

Right. So there's that. Yeah.

But that's getting really practical because I met people with great doctrine and lousy theology again, and I want to have great theology and loving people. Following love's lead is great theology. Yeah.

You know, it's funny, I'm. As an entrepreneur and a business owner and someone who's been through a tremendous amount of adversity growing up, one of the things that I've learned about myself is actually following love's lead is nothing more than what Christ told us to be in with, which is treat people how you want to be treated. Love your neighbor as yourself. Right.

So bingo.

It's a good one. Dignity, go after it.

Yeah. It's a good starting point to just say, hey, how would I feel about that? And so what will happen? It's easy when you have easy neighbors. I mean, some of my neighbors are just delightful and others. There's a guy that parked his car in the grass strip I just planted on the lawn, and he planted like, you missed the curve, buddy. We went right up on the turf. And so what are you going to do when somebody gets in your grill or gets in your lawn? And that's the practical stuff. Yeah. And we lead these incredibly conflicted lives. I was, I teach at Pepperdine Law School, which still cracks me up. They wouldn't let me go there, but they let me teach there. And.

And the. On my way there, I was behind this car, this red convertible, whatever it was, and the license plate said Amish.

He lives just as conflicted of a life as I do. I think he was just a guy in a hurry. He wanted a convertible. And he's like, I'm still in on the Amish thing, but I got to get there in style.

So I, what I did is I just took note of that. I took a little picture. I'm like, oh, I totally want to remember this. And not to make fun of him, but to inform me to just remember this Roman 7 thing that Paul's like, I keep doing what I don't want to do, and I don't do what I do want to do. And that's just Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday for me.

And it's really happening for us all on a continual basis. You know, I think all of us are, you know, at some level, we're, we're struggling with this, that or the other thing. You know, I had a good friend of mine that was on an airplane, it was a pretty well known speaker and traveling the country and, you know, he'd had a long day, and then a lady came in to basically get in the, you know, kind of sit. She wanted him to move out of the seat that he actually had, you know, a ticket for. And, you know, after a lot of back and forth, he finally just moved as a kind of like an act of grace. And he found out the lady had just lost her husband, her house, and all this kind of stuff all at the same time. And he said it was a great reminder to him about. Oftentimes people are living, you know, kind of from that emotional inside, and not every time does it come out appropriately on the outside.

Yeah, like the idea that there's more to the story. Yeah. The. If people see me wearing a Red Sox hat, which is always. And they don't know that this is the Red Sox hat that my neighbor who went to heaven.

Left and I told her I'll wear, represent the socks here on earth for the rest of my life. And you got to mention my name to Jesus.

That's right.

Every time you see him. But to just know that there's more to the story. And I really like. It says Psalm 107, it's, let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story. Some people say. It says say so, and it's all of that, but it actually says, tell their story. So tell your story, let people know what it is, and then take a genuine interest in other people's stories.

Yeah, no, I think that's. I think that's a beautiful thing. I've always, always had this saying, and it's something that I dealt with when I was kind of growing up and stuff like that. I would notice that when people would talk at me, I would shut down. But when people were naturally curious. Curious or inquisitive, I would open up. So I always said that, you know, questions open hearts and statements close them.

Oh, wow, that's really well said. I like that. If you're listening to the podcast, I want you to take notes on, like, the things are going to be said that you're going to want to loop back to, you're going to want to remember. And so people that have changed the world the most were people that took notes. Yeah, they just took note of what was going on. And so. Yeah, good words.

Yeah, no, it's great. Well, you know that in this, the other thing that I like that you shed light on in this, in this attitude of service, this attitude of community is, number one, we can all do it. But specifically after Matthew 25, you kind of Break it down in simpler terms about who we can serve if we would just let ourselves serve them. Would you mind breaking those different people groups down? Because I feel like it might resonate with folks and they might actually start to activate essentially serving those folks.

Yeah, the folks that come to mind are the people that pick your lettuce, the people that bag your lettuce, the people that, you know, work as clerks and that check you out and that. And even though you got in the wrong line and they're really difficult, just so slow. Your clothes are going out of style. Yeah, but I just want to interact with the people that are in front of us. That idea of love your neighbor, just think of love the people that are adjacent to you. Yeah, and some people are adjacent to us. For our friends in Ukraine, and they're going through a really difficult time. But there's probably some people in Russia that are going through really difficult time too. Instead of trying to figure out who's the villain, who's the victim. And I'm crystal clear on who's the victim in this. Yeah, it's Ukraine, period. But that said, there's a lot of friends on both sides of a border that are really going through a difficult time. One of them is just acting in an untoward way. And you can't say you love God if you don't love these people. I want to. I want to love the nice people. I want to love, you know, the lop eared rabbit. I want to love the people that are kind and humble. And I don't love jerks because you want to kind of bring them down. In Australia and the uk, they talk about a tall poppy. Like if somebody's been kind of like, thinks more highly of themselves than they should, they say, that guy's a tall poppy. Yeah. And the thing about tall poppies, they get cut down and put in bases. That was just the first thing that came to mind. Yeah, that's very true. The saying that there's types of people in the world, people who are humble and people who are about to be.

Yeah.

That is absolutely true. For sure.

Yeah. I'm in category number two. I want us to make it work in the middle of all this crazy going on. And that was really. I was trying to find a book that would help me get less distracted by everything going on, and I just. I couldn't. So I just wrote my own. I called it Undistracted. And the crazy thing is, even though I wrote a book called Undistracted, I'm still distracted I actually went out in the morning to watch this beautiful sunrise. And I don't have a fancy boat, but it's kind of unique. And, and so I got out to, We've got a little pier behind the house. And I went out and watched this epic sunrise. I was like, that was awesome. And I still went back in to start my day. And I'm sitting by the fire and, and I look out the window and I see another boat had pulled into the bay, just like mine, way on the other side. And I got the binoculars out because it's just I hadn't seen one like mine in a decade. And I looked. It's my boat.

That's funny.

Had driven back to the dock. I got out of the boat and I was so delighted by the sunrise, I walked away. I never tied it to the dock.

That's the best thing.

Oh, you gotta pull that book off the shelves. Um, so even though we have this big ambition, I'm going to be more loving. And then we miss the opportunity to. Because there's somebody who's a tall poppy that we run into and we just go like, ah, it's me again. But I just want us to know that we're just remind us that we're just in desperate need of a savior. We're just like in desperately in need of a God that would care and help us out. When we passed January 19th, I kind of giggled to myself because that's the year they did a. The date. Each year they do a survey of sports clubs and health clubs and fitness centers. And out of 32 million people that sign up for fitness centers, that is the average of the date they all quit. January 19th, they're like, nah, I'm good.

Give me the burger.

Yeah, I just do, I just do one or two push ups every year, whether I need it or not. But to just say, maybe we have the freedom to. Even though we have a long history of creating some strife in people's lives, the injustices, the biases that we carry in. But we could just quit. You could just say, you know what? That's old me. New new day, New Bob. And New Bob is here. New Bob is going to be a little bit less prickly. New Bob is going to be a little bit. Because easy to write a book called Love does or everybody always until you might meet somebody you don't like. Yeah, like, well, everybody always except that guy.

Well, and the crazy part was Jesus actually talked directly, specifically about that. He talked about loving, only loving the people. He's like, you know, talking about the father and the child, it was, I don't know, it's a great reminder, I know that one of the things I've tried to remind myself is, is I'm not the only son on the planet, right? I'm not the, you know, the only person that Christ cares about. But more importantly, the act of love that I might give might be the only act of love that that person has ever received or will ever receive for the forese future.

Yeah. Bingo. Yeah. Yeah. I think that idea of not being right, but being Jesus. And as a trial lawyer for 32 years, I'm like, I got paid to be right. Even when I was wrong, I thought I was right. And so this whole idea, Matthew 5, you've heard it said but now I say you've heard it said but now. And the big crescendo of that whole thing is you've heard it say, but now I say, love your enemies. And I think eternity is going to be full of us unlearning some stuff we thought we were positive about, the stuff that we thought we had just nailed in the scriptures. I think just Matthew 5 we can't add to the scriptures, but Jesus can. I think he's going to say, oh yeah, you know that big opinion you had about these people or these activities or these. Insert big social issue of the day, say, I know you were trying to help me out, but actually you got in the way. And so I'm not just. I'm just trying to be. Not a tall poppy on that. And Jesus doesn't need a lawyer and we're not good enough.

First Peter talks about making a defense for the hope that's within you. And some people think that's like lawyering up for baby Jesus. Read Revelation, he's out of the crib, but it continues on to do with kindness and respect. I'll tell you why we have our school for girls open in Afghanistan. It's because we went to the bad guys with kindness and respect. And we said, well, you let our girls continue to learn how to read and do math. And. And they said, yes. It was like we did this Jedi thing. And yeah, now these guys are still the bad guys. I mean, they're so crooked, they're going to screw them into the ground when they die. But these. To realize that these powers that are in charge of these places, really dark places, that there's also a lot of hope there. I mean, just these Afghan refugees that have arrived, 10,000 of them right here in San Diego, I just Go like, wow, I'm learning so much from them about kindness and humility. There's a guy I was talking to yesterday that.

Believed that he was going to be assassinated along with his friends in Afghanistan. He fled.

Asked for asylum in the uk they said no. And he went back to them with, you know, more of the dire circumstances he was in, and they reversed it, and they said, yes, you can come here with all of your families. We're issuing visas. You know what he decided yesterday? He said, I'm not going. I'm staying right here with my people. And I just think that's so beautiful and selfless of him. There's 10,000 Afghans that need a leader, and he's one of the leaders, and so he's staying with them. I just thought, man, I want to be that guy when I grow up. Yeah.

Greater love than no man.

Right? So, yeah.

Yeah. No, I love it. I do want to really kind of understand the undistracted piece. Right. The new book that's coming out, I'm excited to pick it up soon as I can get my hands on it. The. One of the things that I had dawned on me just with the title, my limitation of the impact that I made or the service that I have seems to be directly correlated to my attention span.

Yes. And most of us has the. The span of a gnat. We're just, like, off to the next thing. Yeah. That's why I write with short sentences.

I'd include pictures if there's a bunch of guys reading it. Yeah.

I'm just stating the obvious, that we just have a short attention span. Somebody, you know, you have a really brief period of time, and most people don't need more information. They need more examples.

Yeah.

Right. I don't care how many boats are floating in the sea, Galilee. I really don't care about a bunch of words in Greek. That's not a lack of belief. I just, like, I'm. I'm trying to learn them in English. And there's something beautiful about more than just learning it. What about applying it? Yeah. To just say, like, what if I do a better job applying the few things I know about? Then this endless cycle of just learning and just say, like, I'm learning. I'm learning. I'm learning. Because, man, information doesn't move people. Acceptance does, you know, have to say, you're welcome here, wherever, even if you have a different worldview or a different view of love and who and how and where, all that to just say, like, man, you're. I Accept you and, and you are just welcome here. I'm not a. An umpire calling balls and strikes. I'm a bass coach saying, run your race. Hebrews 12:1. Since we're surrounded by this great crowd of witnesses, like think World Series Stadium, right? Let us keep running with endurance this run. Not getting distracted by the stuff that entangles, but instead keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. I just go, like, find a couple things that ground you. If memorizing Bible verses isn't your jam, that's awesome. Figure out something else. Memorize grace. Just say, I'm got my head on a swivel and what will happen is you get less distracted by all the crazy. Maybe you have a nutty mother in law.

I don't want to speak ill of anyone, but I did. And so what I want to do is every time the circus pulls into town, I don't need to go into the big top.

Yeah.

And so not in a bad way. But you say like, nope. Yeah. Just because crazy pulled into town, I'm not showing up.

Doesn't mean you have to participate.

Exactly. Just say, hey, go pitch your tent, enjoy yourself. I ain't coming. Yeah.

Goodness. Well, let me ask you this. What is it? As you're writing the book and as you were kind of like laying out the message and the core attributes of it, what did you discover that it truly means to be undistracted?

Yeah. I think it's being singular in focus, but not singular in attention. And this is what I mean, like to just say, what am I doing? Now? Let's do this experiment, me and you. I'm going to say the first three letters of the Alphabet. I want you to say those, and then I'm going to ask you for a couple numbers. So give me the first three letters.

Abc.

Now the next three numbers.

Six, four, two.

Oh, no, no, in a row. One, two, three.

Oh, one, two, three. Sorry.

Okay, now the next two letters. D. Now the next five numbers.

Oh, Lord have mercy.

Now the next two letters.

Okay, I'm done.

Next. See, we're going like. It isn't that it's difficult to get you all that, but what happens is this in the changing of gears, you say, where did I leave off? It's simple stuff, but then you got to remember that and then begin there with a real simple task. So this myth of multitasking like that we can be doing everything at once. And actually it feels like you're doing everything at once. But what you're missing is that there's a lot of grinding of the gears. This isn't a book about a new business principle. It's just like how we're wired. And so you can't say that I'm like, I'm this task of before me, whatever it is, you know, Paul to Timothy, like to fan the flame of this unique gift that you've been given. And if you keep getting off task and I'm like worried about my neighbor parking his car on my grass, then I'm back to feeding the poor. And then I'm off to whoever's invading whoever. And then I'm not saying don't care about those things. I'm saying the opposite. Care a lot, but care about one thing at a time. Really go a mile deep. Otherwise you're doing. You're just like a little E hopping from flower to flower and you're not getting anything done. And so. And again, this isn't a productivity tool. I don't want you to just stop in with Jesus and like high five abc. One, two, three. And then off to the next thing. I'd say, what if we. We that idea of dwelling in Christ. Like, that idea to really like pitch your tent there and to just stick around for a while. And my. I haven't had a quiet time in 25 years. Mine are really loud. Like, I'll start in the morning right before I leave my boat untied to the dock. Like I'll start my day and really loud. And I'll say, I know these things from the day before. I took notes on. I know they sounded right, but are they actually true? And that idea to Paul talked about check it against Scripture. So if that's your jam. I wouldn't read the Bible just to read the Bible. Like I'd read Peter Pan just to read Peter Pan. But I would say like what I do is I'd read it because I had a question I was looking for an answer for. That's where I found it. Others people read it like, you know, they read it because they enjoy reading it. That's awesome. So find your groove. I don't feel like. Because it can be distracting doing it for other people's either validation or because you're trying to be compliant or we have so many crazy reasons why we do what we do. And I would just pull on that thread a little bit and say, I wonder why I'm doing what I'm doing. The thing about compliance is that it works for a while. And then the thing is you stop.

Complying well, someday, in many cases, you become resentful for the time.

Oh, my gosh. Think of, like, every college freshman that goes away, you know, from kind of a this. A very button down, starched education and life experience, and they go to college and they lose their mind. And it's because they would just have been compliant. They never really knew what they thought about everything but their reaction to someone controlling them. Yeah, and what I'm trying not to do is control people. What we do is we try to control stuff we don't understand. So somebody's behaviors are, like, crazy. Like every adolescent boy, just like, yeah, if you try to control them, what will happen is they might comply for a while, but eventually they'll react. What I'm trying to do is influence people. So I'm just saying, how can I exert some influence on people? I'm not. I tried to control them. I spoke at a thing and there's a large gathering, and somebody came up afterwards and wanted to talk about something important to them. And I could tell the guy organizing the gathering wanted me to be somewhere else. And he was polite for a moment or two. And then he grabbed me by the shoulders and started, like, taking me physically, like, moving me, like, away from this guy who's talking to. And I'm thinking in my thought bubble, like, what hospital do you want to go to?

You're going to look great in a cast. But Hetty said rather, hey, Bob, I think I know why you came here. And if you could do 10 times more of that, if you would have moved 30 yards to your left, I would have been all over that. But instead, because he tried to control it, I did what you would do. I resisted. Like, I don't want to be controlled. Just tell me why it would be better, more consistent with who I am and why I came to do that. And I'm in, like, let's go. And so we just don't know what to do, how to on ramp that. So we grab people by the shoulders with our words or with our conduct or disapproval, and people comply. But in their thought bubble, they're going, oh, heck no.

Is it meaningful then, to ask this question of yourself on a regular basis? What is my intention behind this choice, this relationship, this friendship? Like, is it. Is it something I'm being forced into or being controlled into? Is this something that I want to do? Because I find that a lot of times. Yeah, I was gonna say I find it like 70% of the population would say, based on Time magazine a few years ago, that they're living somebody else's life just for that very same thing.

Yeah. I think just a little introspection. I don't think getting wrapped around the axle with introspection, you don't have to beat Henry Nouwen and, like, just go, like, a mile deep with everything but to say, why am I being weird right now?

Yeah.

What is it that if you have a disproportionate reaction to something that just happened, it's more likely that you're not reacting to the thing that just happened, you're reacting to your entire life? Yeah. Like, this is just one more thing. People talk about straws breaking camel's backs, and I don't know, they seem pretty sturdy to me, but it's the thing that pushes you over the top.

I'm a little slow. I got that one late.

We've got actually a camel farm next to our. Our ranch.

You're kidding.

And isn't that great? They make camel milk. Like, I don't know if you squeeze the udders or it's a pump or.

No idea.

And I'm not going to find out.

But I want to live just super curious about why other people are doing what they're doing and why am I doing what I'm doing? So it's easier, it's safer for me to figure out why you're odd or you're whatever shelf I've built or imagined for you. But sometimes it's a little scarier to do a little introspection, to say, I just wonder what that's connected to. Is this just me being insecure right now, or is this me being faithful? Is this me just saying? Yeah. No, that didn't happen. Not my wife. I tried death penalty cases against witch doctors, the sacrifice kids. I mean, that's pretty heavy stuff. Put that on a business card. I got gears, but I just. I. I understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. Because you're not going to do a bad Yelp review on witch doctors and have them stop sacrificing children, but go try a case or two. Oh, they'll stop. Yeah, because they'll get the message. You will never be seen again. And so I get that idea, even with the difficult stuff. So I'm not saying this idea of love is just this, you know, Hallmark, unicorns and confetti thing. There's no love without justice, and there's no justice without love. And they go together. Love and justice are linked.

How have you been able to, for lack of a better word, Merge the two concepts when most of humanity sees it one way or the other.

Yeah, I think it's seeing things. Maybe if you've seen some of these YouTube videos where people put on those glasses and they can see in color for the first time.

Yeah, I actually, I've actually done that. My wife got me a set of those. Oh, awesome.

Were you colorblind?

I'm still colorblind.

Oh, that's awesome.

Not to the extreme of black and white, but I'm to the extreme of colors are difficult. And she did. She got me the glasses, I put them on and it was so vibrant. It was. I was like, this is what it really looks like.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, yeah. So that idea to say, even I know I'm dating myself, but when I was a kid, there was that movie, the wizard of Oz. Yeah. And there's the scene where they like enter into Oz and it goes from black and white to color. And it just blew everybody's mind because they'd never seen that in a movie before. But that big reveal, when you start seeing things through the way the lens of grace, when you start seeing things through this lens of abundance, of love, not like a limited commodity that we just dole it out, that we start seeing ourselves more like rivers and less like reservoirs. Like, if I'm going to be stingy with my love because I might run out to say, like, oh, no, no, let the river flow. Yeah, yeah.

Well, let me. You know, I think that's. I think it's a beautiful analogy and a beautiful description. I think, you know, when we're looking at this, this life of living undistracted, we're looking at leaning in, trying to with our intent. We're looking at loving, intentionally loving on purpose. How. How does that help us capture our purpose? Like, how does. How does that approach walk us into maybe something more than we could be doing for ourselves to make a greater impact.

Yeah. Clarifies in a really loud room, you don't need to shout anymore to be heard. Because you just know my greater purposes that I'm not here to be the guy that has all the answers. Right. Jesus. During the three years of public ministry had that's recorded. We have 307 questions that he asked and he only answered three. Isn't that awesome? In three years. Yeah. Somebody asked him, what's the greatest commandment? A lawyer like me did it. And he said, to love God, love your neighbor. Somebody else asked him, will you teach us how to pray? And he said, our Father. And then Pilate said, so I hear you're the King of the Jews, are you? And he said, yes, I am.

So when somebody asked me a question and they say, what's your position on insert here, big issue of the day. Just say, my position is humble. I'm not trying to dodge the question. I'm just being picky about what I answer. Jesus was, yeah, I want to be a little pickier. Instead of parroting the party line, I want to take a deep dive into the scriptures to say, do I? And get real on the stuff you don't get. Like, just say, like, There's a bunch Mark 9, a dad with a request for a son. And to say, you know, I believe just help my disbelief. Like, I just. There's stuff I just don't believe right now, and I'm just not there yet. And that would be just such an honest answer to give somebody to just say, like, yeah, I'm not there yet. Yeah. Some people feel like that's like less than faith. I think that's an actually demonstration of faith. Yeah. I think it's the people hearing people say stuff that they don't. They know they don't really believe. They're just trying to kind of talk themselves into it. Yeah. I had a guy kind of get my grill, and I'm a pretty hard guy not to get along with. It was almost like he was drunk texting.

I think he was really big friend of Jesus. But I'm like, oh, buddy, you got to just take that down a notch or two. Yeah. Get a puppy.

Yeah. Well, and the crazy part is, I feel like especially the. The current environment, given media and the access to data and all this kind of stuff. I think we underestimate the value of outside influences when we're not choosing those influences. Not realizing that the influences are being given to us are typically pushing something.

Right.

So I think it's wise to actually go and do the data, the data drive and look at things for your own 2 cents. And before you ever open your mouth to just regurgitate something else, somebody else.

Said, yeah, just say, slow it down, man. Three answers every three years. That's about. Let me do the math here. One a year.

That might actually hurt a lot of entrepreneurs.

But hey.

Could you imagine the person at the kiosk at the airport that's like the information desk? And they said, hey, I've got a question. Say, like, I only answer three every year. Three every three years.

It turns out I just answered that last question, and you're going to have to wait for three years?

Yes.

Who did you.

Who did you write this book for? I know for me, as an author myself, I'm. I feel like the book calls itself to me. I write it and then, you know, and I have somebody specific in mind. Sometimes I'm writing it to myself, but other times it's writing other people. Who did you actually write this book for? Who's this book from? Primarily for?

Yeah, you usually write the book that you need. They kind of. Everything in your life seems to be pointing in a particular direction. I don't know how Hemingway did it, but what I do is I just write down the stories that make sense to me, and then I say, what direction are all these pointing in? And I just found myself just very distracted by all the things happening around me. And I was losing touch with the things that God was doing within me. And so I want to get back to that, to say what's going on within me rather than thinking about all the crazy that's unleashed around the world. My nutty neighbor with his tires on my lawn and whatever to say. Like, we get distracted by all that. That's taking up airtime, and we get about 4,000 weeks, give or take. More if you eat broccoli and less if you eat Pop Tarts.

I was going to say. I was going to bring up the Pop Tart thing. I have a brown sugar Pop Tart fetish myself.

Oh, I love those things. Bury me in them. But that sounded like a big number until I had about 3,200 weeks in the rearview mirror, and I was like, oh, wow.

Like, I'm not going to spend the rest of my days arguing with people about things that Jesus said he doesn't want us to spend our time arguing about. Yeah. So I'm just trying to be kind of faithful to that. Be undistracted by the things happening around me and just say what's going on inside me. Why was that a big deal for me? You know, why. What is it about that that kind of set me off, that made me say, you know, I gotta make this a big deal. And most of the things aren't. Just try to deal. Go put a room edition on your house and deal with all the crazy subcontractors. It's like they've auditioned in the backlot. You got every crazy person. Here's a hammer.

And a song. Yeah. And just say. Well, what I want to do is just to say, have something bigger to compare that to. So if you think of the Wimbledon finals, this would be like the left column is everybody with a tennis racket. And then you get down to this versus this, this person, this versus this, this versus this. You get down to the quarterfinals, the semifinals, and then the big event. I just want to deal with the quarterfinals, the semifinals, and the big event, and I'm not going to deal with everybody who has an opinion. Yeah. I don't care. Yeah.

Well, the crazy part for me is, you know, as someone who's trying to serve and try to give love back into the planet, the same love that was given to me, I've intentionally stayed away from things that are incredibly divisive because if I engage in one, one or the other, I alienate the other. Yes. I'm spending a lot more time being cognizant of. I love both of you guys.

Right.

I love both. I love who both of you can become if you would let yourself become it. But you're distracted by this conversation that you guys didn't even start to begin with, rather than focusing on how to make yourself better.

Yeah. Or even thinking about. Distracted by people's behavior or performance. I mean, here's Peter and he says he doesn't even know Jesus. Never even heard of the guy in the Roosters going off. And Jesus said, you're the Rock. Be like, no, he's a wuss.

But Jesus saw who he was turning into. Yeah. Right. So if you just say, like, you know, you're the Rock. I don't mean that. I don't know the name of the actor, but the Rock. But, like.

Think more promise and less pecs.

Yeah.

Dwayne Johnson. Yeah.

I think you're right. You know, I think that's a. That's a beautiful. That's a beautiful statement because I, you know, I. I see people all the time, and rather than focus, I have actually seen that people will go after their potential. If you're speaking their potential over them.

Yeah. Yeah. Bingo. Like, they'll become whoever you tell them they are. And there's a very saccharine version of that, which is you saying, like, things. You're smart, you're swell. When you're actually dumb as a post. But to just say. To say that your joy when you walk in the room, it's like, actually changes the vibe in the room. Instead of blowing sunshine at people, just, like, speak some truth over them. To say, I've noticed. Did you notice, like, when you walked in the room, the whole tempo of the room, instead of just saying, you're the most brilliant person I've ever met in my whole Life. And. Yeah, I just. I'm so taken by that idea. Jesus only said he was amazed two times in the scripture. One at their disbelief.

Yeah.

And one at their belief.

Right.

The centurions belief. And so if we say, oh, I had a cheesecake and it was amazing. And I agree. I've never.

I'm a cheesecake fan myself.

Yeah. I'm like, I'm in.

I'm a strawberry cherry kind of topping guy. But I love both of them.

Yeah. But if everything is amazing, that what we do is we kind of like lower the bar of what actually is truly amazing. Like, what would actually blow your mind. Amazing. And I want to hold a couple words in reserve. And it isn't to try wordsmith everything, but to try to like, not kind of have, like, word inflation. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think this is important because I feel like most. Most of American population I'm aware of feels like they're starving in some way, shape or form. Starving for affirmation, starving for recognition. You know, I tell my team all the time that our goal is an organization, is to make sure above all that each team member feels seen, valued, and heard consistently. Because that's a great act of love to me.

Yeah, totally. I think that makes sense. So maybe write these things down, your highest values, put them over your door, put them on your screensaver, get little stick of notes and put them everywhere to just say these are the high values and that'll help you be less distracted by those low values. Like to say, like, I've never even given any thought to, like, tires on the grass. Yeah. And now this person could tune up a little bit and not do that. But I don't need to let it take me offline from the important things God's doing in my life. Nor am I going to park my F250 on his lawn, even though he did it first. But.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I got your tires right here. But to just say, I'm not trying to get even. I'm trying to become more holy. I'm trying to just be more present for my family and less present to the distractions around me. And I think if we get that thing right, we get everything right.

I believe it. I believe it. Well, look, I've enjoyed our time together. I can't thank you enough for stopping by Sector Unstoppable. Where can everybody pick up Undistract? You got a favorite bookstore that you'd like to send people to or anything? Because I. I don't know.

I like Amazon only because they'll deliver it before you order it. I guess they just knew you wanted it.

I order stuff, and it's like, there. It's crazy. And I'm in a hurry. I mean, having been the guy, I'm literally 3,337 weeks I've been alive, and I've done the math, and I'm like, I don't have time for slow delivery.

So cheesecake, books, all of it, right at your door. Right at the same time, right now, maybe afraid of Pop Tarts.

I only got a little bit of Runway, and I'm not spending a weight.

Oh, my gosh. Well, Bob, I can't thank you enough for stopping by, my friend.

Thanks.

We have to do this again. Thank you so much.

All right. See you later.

All right, take care. Peace. If you love that interview, go ahead and check out this next one right here.

The moment that you judge yourself for.

What you're feeling in mind, you, it might be something negative. The moment that you judge yourself, you have just stripped yourself from the ability and the power to change it.