Jim McCarthy: Live each Day

Welcome to the new retirement podcast. Today we're going to be talking with Jim McCarthy who is a TEDx speaker and best selling author. He has a Stanford MBA and most of his career has been in Silicon Valley. But he did a major life and work reset after getting a cancer diagnosis in 2003. Jim now teaches people how to create their happiness by blending mindfulness techniques and timeless wisdom with simple science based practices. Finally, he lives in San Francisco, but is about to start a long term global nomadic journey which we'll talk about in a little bit with that. Jim, welcome to our show. It's great to have you join us.

Thank you very much, Steve. I really appreciate being here. Quick correction, my cancer diagnosis is actually in 2013. Okay, I'm sorry, so a little more recent, but still just over six years ago.

Off by 10 years.

All right.

Well, yes, but I'm glad you're here and looking really healthy.

Thank you.

I was jealous of your. Sounded like you got a two hour workout in this morning.

I did. I did get a two. Well, the real working hours, a little over an hour. But I feel like I need to do everything I can to be in the best mood I can whenever I do something important like a podcast like this.

Totally. You'd fit right in here up in Mill Valley because. And we're surrounded by these super fit people that are always out there kind of optimizing themselves.

Well, you look pretty fit yourself, Steve.

I have work to do, so I've been thinking about that a lot. Okay. Well, you know, as we get started, I'd love to just learn more about kind of, you know, your history, kind of, you know, how you grew up and your journey. We'll talk a little about your career and, and then how you had this big inflection in your life. And then after that we'll get into the book and then some, some lessons and practices for our audience. But yeah, we just love to hear kind of like, you know, how you grew up and where you grew up and, you know.

Yeah, yeah. So I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska to an Irish Catholic family. Went to Catholic schools my whole life through high school. Got a dad, mom, two brothers and a sister. And then I went to University of Iowa for college, studied political science. I had the good fortune of studying in Vienna for a junior year abroad. And as a result of that I was able to get a Fulbright scholarship to study in Germany after I graduated from college. And then after that I did a sort of hippie backpacking trip by myself to India for six weeks during My Fulbright year in Germany and that was a life changing event. A really eye opener of how one can travel with very little money and have remarkable life experiences as a result of that. And afterwards I decided I didn't want to get a PhD in political science. And so I hung out in Frankfurt for a couple years and taught English. And then I moved to Spain and worked as a business journalist there for a couple years. Met a woman from the Bay Area and wanted to come back to the US and get a little bit more serious about my career, which led me to the bay area in 1991 and then just really briefly worked in sales for a few years and was lucky enough to get into Stanford for business school. Graduated from there in 1996, which was just a great time to kind of hop onto the Internet revolution as that was taking place. I was employee 258 at Yahoo. Starting there in 1997, which was just a incredible time to be there. And certainly, certainly I was very fortunate in a lot of ways financially, but also just kind of having that experience of doing incredible work, working very passionately with great people.

Right, wow. And what made you decide to kind of go off to India when you, I mean, you come in growing up in Iowa and thinking and making that. You know, because this is a, you know, 25 years ago, right?

That was a. Yeah, 30. 30. This is 1987.

Times were different. No, no iPhone to kind of give maps and everything.

Right? No, that was, that was. Travel was quite more adventuresome in a, in a different way. And I think, I think kind of nice in that you didn't have to have everything perfectly packaged and planned and researched. It was like, okay, I'm flying into Bombay. No, sorry, flying into Delhi, flying out of Bombay six weeks later and then kind of make it up as I go. So I had traveled through Europe before during my junior year abroad, and I had very little money. And the winters in March and April in Europe, even in southern Europe can be kind of cold. And I thought, well, where can I go that's really fascinating where I can travel very, very cheaply and really kind of be busy for six weeks doing amazing travel. And India was incredible. It was incredibly cheap and the people were remarkable. And I think one of the biggest insights from that was to realize that people could have materially really nothing. Really nothing. I remember this brother and sister who were tailors on the beach in Goa making shirts, and materially they had nothing. But they were so joyous and happy and loving and kind people. Family was very important. To them, friends and community. And that was just a huge insight for me about what makes people happy and what doesn't bring happiness to people. And so that was a big insight. In my book, I write about how if you have money to the extent you can buy happiness, it's generally through experiences, it's not through stuff. And that was a big insight that I had really, when I was 23. And just this sort of hippie backpacker in India.

Right. It's definitely become a much more kind of widely accepted concept. I think the millennials have embraced it. I saw that in your. One thing that jumped out at me, I was going to ask you about later, was that you have the stat that millennials, 80% of them want to be rich and 50% of them want to be famous, which was kind of surprising because when I think of millennials, I was think of them as, like, a lot less focused on stuff. I mean, maybe they want money, but they don't want stuff. They want experiences. And they seem to be acting that way, too. So, anyway, the lesson that you learned when you were 23 is now being widely adopted by a lot of these folks, I think.

Yeah. And I think the fascinating thing about the fire movement and sort of what you're talking about, Steve, is that, I mean, when I was in Madrid, I got tired of being poor. So after India, I was in Germany working for a couple of years, and I was in Madrid. And I love the work I was doing as a business journalist, but, you know, I couldn't afford to go to nice restaurants the way I wanted to. And I kind of looked at the life I had and I was like, you know, I'm not making much money and I'm not saving much. And I think I'm pretty smart. I think I'm pretty hard working. And I thought, well, maybe if I go back to the US and get a corporate job and get an MBA from the best school I can get into, then maybe I can come back to Europe and have some sort of a international business guy kind of job. And things pretty much followed that path. I decided to stay in the Bay Area, but I'm very grateful that I was lucky enough to get into Stanford for business school and really lucky enough to go to Yahoo. So it's not like I hate money or hate finances. I just try to be aware of what it can do for me and what it can't do for me. I certainly like the idea of financial independence and security that comes from being smart about spending and investing and saving. So that you can do what you want to do if you get a cancer diagnosis, and then you realize, well, I don't ever want to work for people again who are jerks.

Yeah. And, you know, just for our audience, for a little background here, Jim and I were talking about kind of the fire movement, and he listened to the Jonathan Mendoza choose a five podcast to prep for this and kind of learned all about fire. And, yeah, a lot of what's in his book resonates with me and I think with a lot of our audience, because a lot of the concepts go to are similar and aligned with things that are happening in the FI community.

Definitely.

Okay, awesome. Yeah. And one other quick comment before we move on. How much from the geo arbitrage perspective? Like, do you remember how much per day it was costing you to live in India?

I know, exactly. So let me think now. So when I went to India, it cost me $600. This is 1987. $600 to fly from Frankfurt to Rome and Rome to Delhi, and then later to go from Bombay back through Rome to Frankfurt. So that was 600 bucks. Then I was in India for six weeks, and in that six weeks, I spent $600. So $100 a week. And that was everything. That was hostels, that was. That was buses and trains and food and shopping and clothes, although it was all very hippie and funky and really, really cheap. So that was. You know, I encourage anyone really, at any age to travel as much as they can. And I think that the. And I remember for years afterwards, even when I. Even before Yahoo or anything, people would say, God, all this traveling you've done, Jim, you must have had a ton of money. It's like, no, no. I just learned that you can travel very, very cheaply. And I think the irony is that sometimes, and this is one of the approaches that Lonely Planet has had, is budget travel is not just better, it's actually better. Not only is it cheaper, but in many ways, it's better. Now, I have no problem with luxury. My wife certainly likes fine dining from time to time. But I learned that when you travel cheaply, you. You meet more people. If you're at a Ritz Carlton somewhere, you're not going to be striking up so many conversations with fellow travelers who are hanging out by the pool, reading their book or reading my book. But if you're in a little bit funkier, kind of cheaper environment where you're interacting more with people, you're going to meet other fellow travelers and probably have a lot more fun that way.

Yeah, no, I think it's a great lesson to get out there. And a lot of people that are considering retirement for our audience, they're definitely thinking about this kind of geographic arbitrage. And many people are realizing, oh, yeah, I can go to Mexico, I can go to Spain, I can go to parts of Europe or Asia and live really cheaply. And also when you're younger or relatively younger, so in your life, late 50s, 60s, you know, it's a lot less risky because you may probably need a lot less medical support, you know, and. Yeah, no, one quick side story. There was a guy that I worked with earlier in my career and he told me, okay, I'm gonna retire for. He was like 30. He's like, okay, I'm retiring for 10 years. I was like, okay, how much you saved? He's like, I've saved up 40,000 bucks. I was like, all right, sounds great. And then he was like, yeah, but I'm gonna go to Asia and I can live for $4,000 a year. And this was like, you know, in the early 2000s. Right. And he did it. I mean, he went off, he's just like, look, I'm taking a boat. He took a boat to China and then he traveled all over the place and he was sending all these pictures and, you know, doing his thing. And he eventually got a little bit bored of it after a few years, but he was able to do it. And I think for a lot of folks, they're like, oh yeah, you need millions of dollars. No, I mean, try, try it once. You know, go on a six week trip and see how cheap you can do it. And then it kind of opens your eyes to what's possible out there. Yeah. So. All right, cool. Well, so you kind of had this great background, won the Fulbright. I mean, that's pretty impressive. Going to Stanford. I mean, that's also.

I was lucky super hard.

I mean, that's not trivial, right? I mean, worked in the dot com, worked at yahoo, employee number 258, made a bunch of money, right? And so you've had kind of this great career to this point. And then, so, so then in 2013, you had this kind of life changing event. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. So in 2013, I had been fired from the, the previous job I had for the first time in my life at a, at a mobile advertising startup, which was, was quite humbling. And I just really didn't feel like working 70 or 80 hours a week. And, and it wasn't the fault of the CEO or the, or the company that they wanted someone like me to be working 70 or 80 hours a week. But I just wasn't on board with that. And so a little bit after a year, I was fired from that job for the first time and did a little bit of travel. And then through a series of tests and diagnoses, I ended up being diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer. And as you might know, it's pretty common in a lot of men, but about 25,000 men per year die in the US from prostate cancer. And when the doctor called me up, he was talking about radiation and survival rates and surgery. And that was really the first time in my life that I ever viscerally felt my own mortality. And I talk about this in my TEDx talk, which is entitled what Cancer Taught Me About Happiness. And so in that process, I really started thinking suddenly about how long am I going to live? Literally, you have a birthday and you will have a death day. And when you start thinking that's a day, maybe it's October 6, 2050 or July 4, 2025, but it's a real day. It'll happen. And I never grasped that before. And so I started thinking about my life, my legacy, my purpose, my regrets, the work I'm doing, my financial situation, how am I spending the time I have, whether I've got another year to live or another 50 years to live. And soon after that, I met a friend of mine named Diane, who I used to work with at Yahoo. And she was a very smart, successful woman. And she had lung cancer which had spread to the walls of her chest. And I got together with her for lunch in Los Gatos. And I said, diane, I don't even feel like I'm in the same league with you. I mean, I've got early stage prostate cancer. We're probably not even going to treat it yet. It's that early stage. And she had a very severe situation. Her lung cancer had metastasized. And she said, you know, Jim, it doesn't matter when you get a cancer diagnosis, Whether you have two weeks to live or 20 years to live, it changes your life. And then she said, but when I go to my son's lacrosse games and I see the blue in the sky and the green on the leaves, and I hear the laughter of the boys running on the lacrosse field, I just have tears running down my face from the pure, simple, intense beauty of that moment. And I wish we all could live like we had cancer. And certainly Diane doesn't mean she wishes that we had the fear of having cancer, the pain or the loss from having cancer, but that we'd all live so richly, deeply and intensely right here and right now. So she's practicing mindfulness and gratitude and just a lot of courage in the face of some very tough situations. Now, unfortunately, Diana is no longer with us. She did pass away a couple years after that, but having her tell me that just sort of gave me permission to not brush it off and not say, oh, whatever, you know, okay, I'm fine now. I'm healthy, but really kind of absorb it and internalize it and realize that. And I think the important thing here, Steve, is. How do I put it? At that moment, I realized that I had enough financial security, very likely to do what I really wanted to do. And nothing changed from one day to the next financially. What changed from one day to the next was mentally and emotionally and psychologically just realizing, holy cow, you know, maybe it's five years I have to live. Maybe it's 15, maybe it's 50. But, wow, am I really doing what I want to do? And what's keeping me from doing what I really want to do? And honestly, I've always loved public speaking. I love being an English teacher in Frankfurt. It was fun. As you can tell, I like talking. And I thought, you know, there's these motivational speakers who I admire, whether it's Wayne Dyer or Brian Tracy or a lot of the, you know, really people who've helped me enormously by sharing their insights about life and purpose and meaning and happiness. So I thought, okay, I've got a cancer diagnosis, maybe kind of lean startup style. You know, I was like, okay, let me just talk to a little group of people and see if I have anything to say and if they like it. And. And I did, and people liked it. And so that. So from there, I started realizing, okay, I can. I can start doing public speaking, professional speaking, talking about my diagnosis. And that evolved into my happiness workshop. So I've been doing that pretty much for the last six years. And. And then I got to the point where. And people liked a lot. I got great feedback. I continued to tweak and improve it, and then I thought, okay, now comes the time to properly do a TEDx talk and then also write a book which really encapsulates the workshop. So I wrote my book called Live each Day, a surprisingly Simple Guide to Happiness. And that came out just last month, actually.

Nice. And it's a bestseller on Amazon. That's good.

It is a bestseller on Amazon.

That's Cool. So really, the cancer diagnosis was a trigger for you to really reassess this, and it's great to hear your story, and I think it does resonate from when you're talking. I was thinking about this. I think everybody or most people will run into this at some point in their lives where they're suddenly the balance between how they're traditionally brought up to, like, hey, I'm going to work. I want to make money, and then we'll see what the future holds to. Like, I only have a limited amount of time left on this planet. What am I doing with it? Oh, that's my scarcest resource. Hey, let's really be thoughtful about this. Yeah. And so, you know, for you was cancer and saying, oh, okay, I might have a lot less time than I thought, you know, instead of having this kind of. In kind of amorphous, like, oh, 30, 40 years left to go. Right. Because you're 49 years old at the time.

Yeah.

Hey, you know, maybe it's, you know, single digits. Who knows? Right. You know, for the. For the fire folks out there, I think there are. They may get educated and realize, oh, I can get control. And it does. Part of the whole fire thing is people are really starting to, you know, for whatever reason, they start to think about it, and then they really start to say, oh, can I get control over this, over my time? But I think for most people, it's really. They go through a kind of a traditional life arc. It's driven by time or downsizing or something. You know, they get to their late 50s, they look around, they're like, other friends are retiring, and then they're. Then they. At that point, they start to, you know, really think about, you know, how they're going to use the rest of their time. So I think it is. It's an awesome lesson for people to kind of try to get this early to take a step back and imagine themselves in a different situation. Right. Yeah. So in some ways, that was a. As a gift to you.

Oh, yeah, I know. I'm. I'm very grateful that I got my cancer diagnosis, because it was really the catalyst for me to. It's fun. I was talking to a friend at the time. She. And I was thinking. I said, you know, should I do this? Should I do that? You know, what about motivational speaking? And she said, you know, Jim, you got cancer, you can do whatever the f. You want.

Right.

And I need to be aware. A lot of people can't. A lot of people. I mean, I had been fired from my previous job. And so I was like, okay, what do I do next? And I started doing leadership consulting. And then I realized that kind of the keynote speaking and the happiness workshops is really what I wanted to do. And part of the message I get for people is, do what only you can do. Right.

Right.

I mean, there are a lot of folks who can do Internet advertising. There's a lot of people who can do online marketing and what have you. But as much as possible, I encourage people to try to figure out what is the thing that you love, that you're passionate about that puts you in the 99th percentile, that you're just phenomenal at it, and you would. You would do it for free. Even if. Even if you. Even if. Even if you are financially dependent or when you get financially dependent, which I know is a big, big theme of the movement as well.

Right? Yeah. I think that's something that comes out loud and clear from people that are really successful. Many of them will tell you, I would be doing this even if I wasn't getting paid for it. Yeah. Or I was. I was doing this, and then people discovered it, and now I'm getting paid for it. I remember talking to Ben from a Wealth of common Sense. He was like, yeah, I'd be blogging and writing about finance and all this stuff, and. And then, you know, people just discovered it. All right, well, let's jump into your book. I mean, this is. I read it. The whole thing.

Thank you.

Or I would say 80. 80 to 90% of it.

No, I saw the notes that you wrote up beforehand. I mean, you clearly read it and absorbed a lot of it. So I appreciate that.

It was. It was great. It was a very well written book.

Thank you.

With a lot of good lessons and a lot of things that resonated. So I do want to dive into it. So the book is Live each Day, a surprisingly simple guide to happiness. So I just. Here's the most basic question, you know, for you. You know, what does it mean to be happy? Right.

What does it mean to be happy? So the short answer, I would say is to be happy is to have the right balance between pleasure and purpose in your life. And the example I like to give is if you think of the day where you're sitting on the beach sipping cocktails with your loved one, maybe you're going dancing, you have a great dinner, night of romance, you know, at a resort or whatever, a lot of people think of that as kind of like your great sort of vacation day. And for me, at Least that that is a great example of an ideal day. And that, I think, epitomizes a day of pleasure. It's fun. Maybe you're in party mode or you're kickback, relaxed, just chilling with someone you love. That's pleasure, okay? And that's important for being happy. On the other hand, the example I Give is Day 2 is where you wake up early, you work at a senior center or a skilled nursing facility for elderly people. You're working hard, you're seeing that you don't earn a lot of money, but you're seeing the direct impact you're having on people who you're helping out. And my wife's dad is actually in a nursing facility in LA right now. And so I, for the first time in my life recently, I've been seeing an octogenarian have his diapers changed. And you realize that that is awaiting many of us if we live long enough to get to that stage. But the staff there are people who are very committed and very caring. None of them make a lot of money, but their lives are filled with purpose and meaning. And so that's what I call purpose. And purpose is also very important for happiness. And if you had a life which was just kicking back on the beach, drinking mojitos, that would feel kind of empty. It might be great for a week or a month or even a year, but eventually life is a healthcare. Their lives are filled with purpose and meaning, but they can get very burned out because they don't have enough pleasure.

Right.

They need to take a vacation. They need to go to the spa. I say that happiness is this balance between pleasure and purpose.

That's a great definition. I really like it. It totally resonates. You know, our first podcast was with JD Roth, and his whole thing is about helping people find purpose. And have you ever read his blog?

Not yet.

Called Get Rich Slowly? It's actually.

I've heard of that.

Yeah. No, it's. He's. He's got an interesting story, but he really talks about this a lot. And I think that's exactly right. You know, there's this balance between pleasure and purpose. And, you know, I think about our business, you know, I think we're. We're trying to help people. Balance between money and time, Right? Because you spend initially a lot of your human capital trying to make money, and then you realize that, hey, I might want to get more control of my time. And, you know, can we help people negotiate a better balance point? Because it. I mean, if you can get to be financially Independent, great. You don't necessarily need to work as much or maybe at all for money, but you still want to use your time effectively. And that, I mean that I clearly see in the, the fire community, people might be like, I actually see two things. So one is people are like really intent on kind of reaching financial independence. And then they're really thoughtful about, okay. And ideally they thought in advance, how am I going to use my time? Because to stay occupied and do something purposeful. Right. There are people that also don't think about it and I think get depressed because they're suddenly like, okay, I don't have to do anything. I really, I was actually having dinner with a friend of mine who also, he's side note, he invests in her business, but he was sharing that. You know, he's gotten to be financially independent, his kids have moved out. You know, so suddenly he doesn't have to be a caregiver, he doesn't have to work for money, he doesn't have a schedule. And you know, so he was getting insomnia and like there were all these second order kind of negative things and he was like, okay, great, I can go hella skiing in Italy on a whim. Right. But on the downside, you know, I really need to be thoughtful about how I'm gonna use my time.

Yeah. And so in the book I give different examples of where people create more purpose in their lives. And for many people, purpose, whether they had purpose or not, the minute they have children, they suddenly have a lot of purpose because they want to be the best parent that they can for their kids. Or there's a lot of people where as their parents get older and they need more help, the parents need more help. Then there can be a lot of purpose from giving back to your parents and being grateful for all the things that they did to help you. But in addition to those things, however, the research indicates that people do some kind of volunteer work or a part of a community or doing volunteer work within a community, are much happier than people who don't do that. I mean, I think it's like 94% or 96% of people, after they do volunteer work, they feel better about themselves. So you're helping other people. But in doing that though, you feel better about yourself. And there's also studies from Stanford, there's like a long term Stanford experiment which showed that the people who live the longest were the ones who were often very committed to the work they're doing, had a great sense of purpose and meaning for the work they did, but also had very strong community ties.

Yeah. Yeah. You had a couple great quotes in here around the Helper's High. So one is from Albert Schweitzer. I hadn't heard this before, but I really like it. And he said, I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know, the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. Which I thought really summed up, you know. Yeah, that's a. That's a good one. Yeah. And also the Dalai Lama with selfish altruism.

Yeah, the idea. The idea that, you know, helping someone else, it does help them, at least most of the time. Hopefully, with whatever you're doing, you're helping someone else out, but you help yourself. So that's kind of the selfish component of the selfish altruism. And I think when one realizes that, then, I don't know, there's maybe less. There's less struggle. I mean, it's strange. We had a carpenter in our home last night, and he was talking about he had this day of volunteer work he does once a year. And he said, well, the dirty little secret about volunteering is that I feel great afterwards. Those people really know how to party. And my wife and I know that when we're going to be doing traveling, going forward, internationally, I mean, she said many times, you know, Jim, I really want to give back. And she came to this country from Vietnam as a refugee in 1975, grew up without her mother, who died on the boat, and really had some very, very tough times of struggle in her life. And yet she's just the sweetest, kindest, most loving, compassionate person, which is why I married her. And she's aware that as we go. Go into this new phase of our lives, you know, it's like, well, maybe we're going to volunteer in an orphanage in Vietnam or do some sort of Habitat for Humanity thing somewhere. And my hunch is that, yes, we'll go to Bali and we'll be hanging out on the beach, or we'll go to Thailand and we'll be staying at a resort and doing great stuff. And that's. I'm looking forward to that. But I've done enough volunteer work through my life to know that sometimes the deepest friendships, the most meaningful insights in life are not from sipping cocktails or drinking good wine, although I like doing that as well. But it's from. It's from helping people out. And I did some volunteer work at the San Francisco AIDS foundation in the early 90s. And the people I met and the kind of experiences I had there are absolutely priceless.

Yeah. I think a couple quick thoughts. So one is on your spouse. That's great. I did see in your book that the most important attribute in relationships or for your significant other is that they're kind and understanding. Yeah, I think that's. And that's what's universally true. Yeah. On the travel side, I would say. Yeah. You know, it. Doing work in other communities and other cultures, it gets you out of the bubble, that kind of the, you know, the tourist bubble, and puts you into their world.

Right.

Doing work in their environments, which is where you really get to know people in a different way.

Yeah. And you'd meet people you would never meet otherwise. I mean, it's very sad that many people who travel, they might go to Mexico or wherever from the US and the only people they interact with are employees at the resort. And they might. And some make an effort to at least chat with the employees at the resort, and some don't even bother, and they don't meet a single person who isn't serving them. And to be able to kind of get beyond that is. And ironically, as I think about volunteer work, you're actually flipping the equation. So instead of the local person is serving you your cocktails or your dinner, whatever, you're serving the local people in terms of your volunteer work, or you're helping them build a home or doing that sort of stuff. So it's good to develop some humility. But again, along the selfish altruism lines, I think you yourself will benefit enormously from doing this kind of volunteer work.

Do you know any data about what's the right frequency to be volunteering?

Yeah, so I touched on that in the book a little bit. So I think the idea is roughly about 100 hours a year. So just about two hours a week is kind of considered to be like the. The efficient sweet spot. Now, obviously, if a person wants to volunteer all the time or three days a week, that's great. But I think the research indicated that people don't feel a whole lot better doing three days a week versus doing two hours per week. And. And that's not a lot to ask, really. Now, I also say that you can have it all, but not at the same time. And I talk about that a little bit in the book. So there might be that you're in a role where you're working 60, 70 hours a week and you like what you're doing, but you need to really bust your Butt in order to have extra income or do the sort of savings you need to do to fire. Right. So this isn't always the case, and it might be that for 10 years you're just working really hard and then after that you get to the point where you say, oh, now I have the luxury of doing a lot of volunteer work and maybe doing for a month out of every year. So I think I always encourage people to kind of be forgiving with themselves and not feel like they have to constantly be checking off all the boxes in order to meet other people's approval of, of what they're supposed to do to live this, this perfectly balanced life.

Right. You got to avoid the comparing mind.

Yes.

Learned that in your book.

Right. You're right about that.

All right, so this is really interesting. Can we quickly touch on kind of this, the U bend in well being? Because we've talked, you know, we've write about that a little bit, but I'd love to kind of hear your take on it.

Sure. So kind of the U bend of life, and I blog about this as well, is the idea that around age 45, 46, 47, is the least happy that people are in their whole lives. Generally, as you're a baby and a child, you're quite joyous, just sort of naturally, very, very in the moment Zen. That's just the way humans are in the world. And then as we get older, we get a little bit more stressed out, a little bit more anxious, we got more baggage. It kind of goes this downward trajectory until kind of like mid to late 40s. And this is research from all over the world, by the way. Different cultures, different societies, and then kind of at that, at that. It kind of bottoms out in the late 40s and then from that moment onward, you start feeling better and better and better. And really you keep on getting happier until, until you die, basically.

I wonder if that's programmed into us so that we can be comfortable, like, okay, we're going to. I mean, it's crazy. We all know we're going to die.

Right.

But we're kind of kind of crank it through life, like not thinking about it too much. And then you're getting maybe a natural life high. Right. That you're okay. I'm in a good mood.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, there's different theories on it. One is, you know, if you think about raising children can be very demanding. Your parents getting older can be very demanding. And also kind of like the, you know, this is the proverbial midlife crisis. Whether it's your marriage isn't working right, or whether your career is not working right, or you just kind of realize, wow, I thought I was going to be a Fortune 500 CEO someday, and that's not ever going to happen. And I think for some people, they really struggle with that. But then when they kind of make peace with some of these things and they say, well, you know, okay, maybe I don't want to be a Fortune 500 CEO. There's research that shows that Fortune 500 CEOs, even though they're way wealthier than the people that work in their organizations, they're not much happier in average. I'm not saying a person shouldn't have that as a goal, but it's just very good to be aware of what are the drivers of happiness and making so many sacrifices in order to make so much more money. Is that really worth it? Are there ways to enjoy your life without having to do that? And I think when people get older, they start seeing their friends passing away. And, I mean, even I'm 55 years old, and I think this is the decade where you start seeing people die quite suddenly and tragically. And once you start seeing some of your friends go, then it's like, whoa, wow, gosh, I'm glad I'm alive and I'm glad I have a wife that I love, and I'm glad that we have our time together. And I look at my parents who are Both in their 80s back in Omaha, Nebraska, and they're very grateful just to still be alive. So I think that's part of the trajectory.

Yeah, the, the perspective that you get, I think as you, as you age is interesting. When you're younger, you kind of like, you know, feel like Superman and you're gonna live forever and time is endless. Right? And then, then, yeah, I, I agree that the 40s are a challenging time for, for lots of reasons. And I do want to ask you about that a little bit more. But then I could see as you get into your 50s, you're kind of like, okay, I'm hopefully still moderate, moderately healthy. I have a little bit more self awareness. I realize that time is not limitless. So maybe I can, should take advantage of the kind of the healthy years I have left. That, by the way, is a big thing that I think about a lot, is that, you know, you see these folks and they're like, they're anticipating, okay, if I make so much more money or if I do this or that, and then I'll be able to enjoy My life, you know, at some future point. Right. But if you work your whole life and you retire at 65 or 70 and then. And then you're not healthy and you've been stressed out your whole life, you can't enjoy it, you know, what's the point of having $10 million at 70?

Right.

It's like. Or, you know, or 80 or whatever. I mean, at a certain point, doesn't matter, right?

Yeah. And. And I mean, if you. One of the things I say, one of the main parts of the book is I talk about presence and living in the moment and enjoying the journey. And if you. If you can't learn how to be happy at age 20 or 25 or 30 or 35 or 40, or if you can't learn how to savor and appreciate where you are in your life, then it doesn't matter what's going to come your way, because that's one more thing you won't be able to appreciate. Now, the good news is that in the book, I talk about different practices you can do in order to enjoy your life and savor it right here and right now. And mindfulness practices, whether it's meditation or all the different variations of how to do that, is one thing that I go into quite a bit of detail on. Also a gratitude practice every day. There's a lot of different ways you can do that as well that I write about, and those are just very simple ways. So whether you're a college student, whether you're 25 and you're, you know, early in your career, whether you're 70 years old and dealing with a whole different set of challenges than you might have had when you were 25 or 55. But you can still learn how to appreciate every. Every different season of life.

Right? Yeah, I think that's super important for people to remember. You know, one thing that resonated. And we were talking about how kind of like, people are bottoming out and having more challenges in their late 40s. And I saw the stats on, you know, drug overdose overdoses, which I imagine bias a little younger, but also suicides, especially among. And depression, especially among midlife males who are divorced. Right. That. I mean, I say this in my life. I have, you know, I'm late 40s, approaching 50, and it's like, okay, I see friends getting divorced, and I'm watching the impact on them, and, you know, I'm hearing the stats about suicide and stuff like that. So it's good for people to remember that it will get better. Yeah, yeah. For Many people, it does get better, but it. But you do have to kind of be thoughtful about it. Like, can you pull yourself out of the. You know, that the funk that may result from going through these life changes.

Yeah. And I mean, I'm on my second marriage, so I divorced about 10 years ago, and it was very, very hard for many reasons that I won't go into detail here, but it was tough, but I learned to bounce back. And Dan Gilbert, who's a psychology professor at Harvard, has some tremendous work, and he talks about the impact bias, and I quote him quite a bit in the book because he's just so insightful. But basically, the good news is that if something bad happens to you or over time, you're going to kind of bounce back to the way you felt before. And if something good happens to you over time, you'll also kind of bounce back to where you were before. So there's kind of this set point that a lot of us return to, whether really good stuff or really bad stuff happens. And there's a couple different ways to think about that, and one is. One is that it can give you a little bit more like, peace and equanimity to think that, well, wow, something happened. I got fired from my job and I think my career is ruined, my life is ruined. And like, no, usually people bounce back and they figure out another way to kind of proceed the other way is to not think that one particular event is just going to solve all your challenges. I mean, even winning the lottery, you know, it's well documented that when that happens, that tends to ruin the lives of the people that happens to. But on the other hand, it is useful to know. And I think one of the main messages in my book is that happiness is a skill you can develop. There is a genetic component of happiness that each of us inherit, but there is a part, about 40%, according to the research, is what we do control. And we control it to the extent that it's what we do and how we think about it. So having a positive attitude, being grateful in your life, doing work that you. You find very meaningful, investing in family, friends, and community, these are all things that anyone can control independent of money, really. It's. It's how you think and how you go through life. And by the way, the research also indicates that people who are happier tend to be more successful in their lives as well. For. For a whole variety of reasons.

Yeah. When I was reading a book, it definitely made me think about, you know, we're pretty intentional about exercise and the impact of exercise and good diet on our physical well being. There's a much more awareness today, I think, about mental health and mental well being, but I think a lot less time, you know, is being put into it so far from people. And that's the opportunity. Yeah. That people get active, that you can develop this, but you have to put in, you know, your 1%. And just as a side note, this week I was like, all right, I'm going to start meditating, which I've talked about and learned about in the past, but I'm like, all right, every day. Because it's easier to make commitments and just do them every single day.

Yeah.

I'm going to first thing in the morning, try to meditate, and I'll try to stretch at the same time, you know, for 10 minutes and just be, you know, think about. People are important. Be grateful, you know, get centered.

Great.

And I think it does make a difference. I mean.

Yeah, that's one. You let me know how it's going, Steve, because I think it's tremendous. And, yeah, one of the last chapters of my book, I call it the magical 1%. And I did the math because I was curious, like, how much of a day is 10 minutes? You know, if I spend 10 minutes meditating or doing affirmations or gratitude practice, how much of that? And it's about 1%. It's about 1% of your waking hours per day is 10 minutes. And I figure, okay, I think the ROI is going to be very high on that 1% of my time that I spend doing meditation just to be at peace with the way things are. Affirmations, which I talk about an entire chapter on how you can train your brain for success by thinking positively. And there's all the neuroscience behind that as well. It might have seemed Funky or weird 30 years ago, but there's now a lot of. A lot of neuroscience that proves that this stuff works in terms of neurons that fire together, wire together. And so you can develop this sense of optimism and then finally, a practice of gratitude. Just thinking of three things that you're grateful for. Like, I'm standing here. We're standing because we're projecting our voices better. Right. And we're here in Steve's. What do you call it? Your home studio, Your garage studio.

Garage studio, whatever you want to call it. Yeah.

I'm looking out. I mean, there's beautiful trees here in Marin county, which is just a glorious place. You can see Mount Tam in the distance. It's a sunny day. And, you know, that Alone is just glorious.

Yep. It's true. You do have to take. Take a moment and appreciate it and also recognize that we are very lucky to live here and we have a lot of privileges that enabled us to be here. Yeah. And hopefully pay it forward with things like the podcast and the work that we're doing.

Yes.

But I'm going to reread or focus on the affirmations part of it, because I get that it's like exercising a muscle. Right. You have to exercise your brain to think in a positive way, and hopefully that helps you stay in that frame of mind.

Yes. I write about the fact that we have this negativity bias in which, according to the neuroscience, roughly 70 or 80% of our thoughts tend to be negative. That's just kind of what we default to. And there's all sorts of good evolutionary reasons for that. But basically, you go through the day basically thinking, bad, bad, bad, bad, good, bad, bad, bad, bad. You know, okay, out in the wild, you know, a million years ago, that might have been okay for Homo sapiens or our ancestors to be super paranoid and scared all the time. But today, in 2019, having that kind of negativity bias, it's not good for our health because we're living much longer than we used to. But we get all these stress induced diseases from this sort of negativity. So many people are suffering from anxiety and depression. So if you can, you can combat that with affirmations. And I did my normal affirmations today when I was working out, and then when I was driving up here over the Golden Gate Bridge, it's like, I'm having a great talk with Steve today. I'm having a great talk with Steve today. I'm having a great talk with Steve today. And it can sound, you know, dumb or silly, but I don't care because I know it works.

Right?

And I learned this when I was doing sales 25, 28 years ago in the Bay Area, before the science was even there. But the Buddha talks about positive thinking as being more powerful than anything. Henry Ford has quotes on this. So successful people throughout time have understood the power of thinking for making your dreams come true. And it's sort of a way of reminding yourself of what you want to be true. And so if my wife texts me and says, hey, honey, can you. Can you pick up something at the grocery store today before I get home from. From work? And I'm thinking, I don't want to do that. I'm busy. And then it's like, oh, wait, today is the today I'm the best husband I can be for my wife. Today I'm the best husband I can be for my wife. Well, okay, yeah, honey, I can do that. I mean, it's just that simple.

Yeah, I. That the idea that you can govern yourself or filter yourself a little bit better I think would make a lot of people happier. I notice for myself that if I am more reactive to other folks and I kind of let the lizard brain go off, like someone says something, I'm annoyed, and I immediately respond, bad, bad things happen. Right?

Yeah.

And if you can pause, be thoughtful for a second, which I think is what meditation affirmations give you, you can. And try to say, okay, what do you want to have happen here? And what's the best way to get there? It's usually not by having a knee jerk reaction that, like, well, that's annoying or whatever, and having a tone in your voice. Right. It's like, okay, what does this person want? What do I want? How can we best do this? So if you can take that moment, you know, that extra 30 milliseconds to get it right.

Yeah.

It'll change your life, right?

Absolutely. The meditation definitely helps with that. I mean, literally stopping and breathing for three, you know, three breaths, you know, Okay. You know, I mean that the blood pressure goes down when you do that. Right. The chemical composition, your brain changes just a little bit when you do that. And some people have a practice of just count to 10, which is kind of the same thing. Usually there's a few breaths that you throw in there. And when you do that, then it's like, okay. And also just sort of meditation can help with this as well. Just realizing, what are your reactions? You know, recently I was upset about something. It's like, what is this exactly? It's like, well, it's rage. And one meditation is just to name the emotion. So it can literally be rage, Rage, anger, anger, anger, disappointment, disappointment, sadness, hurt, betrayal, sadness, confusion, Curious, curious, curious, hopeful, disappointed. And if you do that literally for a minute or two minutes, as ridiculous as it sounds, you realize you're not your thoughts. You realize you can step back a little bit, like, oh, this is what I feel like when I'm really impatient. And then it's like, well, why is that?

Yeah.

And if you step back a little bit, then. Then you can be much more aware and mindful of what you're doing.

Right. And by the way, I would say this is not easy to do for people. And just full disclosure, like, I suck at this personally. Like, I You know, for me, I want to do much better. And that's part of the reason I think about this stuff, and I do believe it works, but I think it's. It's like getting in shape, right? Like, I, I write up Mount Tam pretty regularly now. I can do it without thinking about it, but when I started, you know, it was like just a bunch of pain. And it was a bunch of pain for a long time until it became simple. And now it's easy, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, I thought long and hard about the subtitle of my book, right? So Live each day a surprisingly Simple Guide to Happiness. Now, simple doesn't always mean easy, right? Now, literally, like, I could walk from here to where I live in San Francisco. I could do it. And the way I do it is one step after the other. That's pretty simple. Now it's kind of far, I don't know, 20 miles, maybe 15, you know, so there are things that are simple but not necessarily easy. Now, what I do in the different practice that I describe is I have a whole separate, tiny little chapter at the very end on how to create good habits. And this is from various, various thinkers who've done a lot of research on this. And basically the idea of creating tiny habits is, for example, if you want to start meditating and you've never meditated before, then maybe the best thing you do is you just say, okay, in the morning, after I drink my cup of coffee, which I do every morning, by the way, right? And then every morning when I take my drink, my cup of coffee, which I do every day, I will sit down for five minutes and meditate, right? So you build a new habit on top of an existing one. That is you just do all the time. And if you can just do that, then you can layer one new habit on top of another. And then it's quite, quite easy to do. And then once, once you have that reminder that trigger of what it is you want to do, then doing it isn't that hard. And then you can reward yourself afterwards by saying, yay, I'm awesome. And that actually rewards your brain by saying, wow, I had the discipline to do something. It actually wasn't that hard. Once I reminded myself I wanted to do it, I layered it on top of one of my existing habits, which I do all the time anyway. And then that's. That is a basis for getting into and even doing, like, baby steps. Like if, if, if 10 minutes of meditating is too hard for you, Steve, then start with 30 seconds right. You know, just like ridiculously low. I'll breathe for three breaths after my coffee and then I'll move on with my day.

Right.

And then afterwards it's like, well, this is dumb. I can do 10 breaths.

Yeah, I like, I like the layering.

Yeah, yeah.

The whole habit building thing. Habit formation. Yeah. Super important.

Yeah.

And just a quick aside, you know, So I, I had Bill Bernstein, who's this well known personal finance writer and author, and with this idea of simple but not easy came up with him too. It's same thing with, you know, the path to, you know, building wealth and achieving financial independence. It's pretty straightforward. Save a chunk of your money, start early, invest in the market broadly with low fees, you know, keep that, keep that super simple and then just keep doing it. Don't make sudden moves, don't bail out of the market. You know, and if you do that for a long enough time, depending, depends on the rate that you save, you will achieve financial independence. So it's like super straightforward.

Yes.

But you look at the outcomes. Nobody does it, you know, or some people do it, Some people do it, the top 20% of the population does it, but everyone else, they're somewhere on that journey. But you know, very similar ideas and it's, it's really like how do you teach people and take advantage of time and compounding to do it, you know, the same, you know, in money, but also with your mind. Right. So, okay, awesome. So we have covered a ton of stuff here, you know. Okay, I want to ask you a couple other things and then I want to kind of go on to kind of what's next for you. But one thing in your book that I liked that I hadn't heard about before was this idea of non negotiables and using them to help you make good decisions. So I'd love to kind of hear you describe that.

Sure. So the idea of non negotiables is what, what are the things in your life that you absolutely must have? And the impetus for this is, you know, some of us, not, not all of us, but some of us are lucky enough to have a good education. Maybe we even have financial independence, maybe we don't. I see people like coming out of places like Stanford where they, they could do anything, you know, I mean, they could be working in investment banking on Wall street, they could be doing, going to a startup in Silicon Valley, they could be doing, working for a nonprofit in Africa. And they sometimes get paralyzed by the choices that they have. There's been some, really, some really great books on the Paradox of Choice, I think is a tremendous book on this topic that you might be familiar with. So what I sometimes advise people to do is, well, one of the questions I ask is, if you had five years to live, what would you do? Or if you had to start a new job on Monday and you had to do it for the next 30 years, what would you do? So my book has a lot of these kind of different questions to. Not just. It's not just reading, but it's like, okay, I want you to stop and think and do some journaling and some writing to force you to think about things. So in terms of non negotiables, the idea is, what are the things you absolutely must have in your life? And for some people is, I have to live in Boston. I love Boston. My family's in Boston, gotta be in Boston. It's like, well, okay, good, that's good to know. Because you're not looking for jobs in Miami and you're not looking for jobs in Asia. You're gonna stay in Boston. And then you can get much more focused when you have that kind of non negotiable. Other people have non negotiables. Like, I have to earn $100,000 a year, or I have to work at a non profit, or I have to be able to not be traveling more than 10% of my job because I want to be home for my spouse and my kids. And so I find that thinking through as specifically as you can about non negotiables will help you get much more specific about what's right for you. And even talking with your partner about it can be very insightful. Like, well, gosh, I thought you really loved living in San Francisco. It's like, well, honey, I thought you loved living in San Francisco. I'd be happy to move somewhere else. Like, oh, does it have to be Western Europe? I was like, no, we could. Maybe Costa Rica is the place to go. So a lot of the writing exercises in the book, including the stuff on non negotiables, it's kind of a fun tool for you to sit down with your partner or whoever you share your life with and say, you know, we've never really talked about this before. And non Negotiables is one of those examples.

Nice. Yeah, I like the exercises in your book. And do you think these are better done alone with your partner or in a group? Which do you think is more effective?

Whatever works, you know, for the happiness workshops that I've been doing for the last six years, you know, I'll have people in the room, it might be 10 people, it might be, you know, 300 people. And usually what I'll do is I'll give them the writing exercise and just say, okay, you've got three minutes to write or five minutes to write. And then after that I have them pair up with another person and sort of share what they, what they wrote, which is very powerful. And often people are more comfortable sharing with a stranger something they wrote than with someone very close to them because there's not this whole history and baggage, especially when you're talking about your hopes and your dreams and then it'll open up to a larger discussion. So if you want to do your writing on your own, that's fantastic. If you want to do it on your own and then share with another person, that's great. I have a friend who's actually a very well known venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and she said, yeah, every week I take one of the questions from your book and email it to my friend in Colorado and then we just kind of go through what we wrote and discuss it. So she's making this fun kind of longer term activity with her friend and they're both having a lot of fun with it.

Have you ever thought about turning your book into software? Because I could totally see this being an app or, you know, I mean, this is the kind of thing that we could, these kinds of ideas, you know, build into the stuff we're doing too or extend, you know, to some of these concepts because so much of it is like being really thoughtful about your time and how to use it.

I, you know, there's, there's the audiobook which is on the list. Video training, 30 day monthly. All of these are on my mind. And then for me, I just have to decide how much, how hard and how fast do I want to work at this, which is the core of my book. And I mean, people will say, hey, I want to do a call, we need to talk about your book. Is like, okay, but you know, I'm going to be taking care of my father in law because he's ill, or I'm going to be swimming or yeah, let's do the call. So I think what's nice about the situation I'm in is I'm doing work that I really love, lots of purpose. But I'm kind of like in the zone because I love what I'm doing. I like the writing, I like sharing these ideas with people and I get emails from people all over the world. Are like, oh, I read this and I loved it and thank you for helping me. So that's not to pat me on the back, it's just trying to give an example of, you know, I did have the courage after I got my cancer diagnosis to do what I think I'm really good at and that what I would do anyway, whether I got paid anything for it or not. And that feels great because that's way different than the job I had before this where I got fired because I wasn't very good at it because I didn't really care that much. And I think many of us are in that situation.

Right. It's great to see you applying it to your own life and also to see you kind of getting the validation. So starting off with your groups and talks, doing the TEDx talk, now you've got this book and it's being well received. Thank you. You know, if that continues. Yeah, you could say, okay, but you're being thoughtful about how much time you put in and balancing it with the rest of your life.

Yeah, so. So my wife and I, we're going to be doing long term global nomadic travel. I don't say it's retirement because it's not retirement. I am, I'm still going to be working. I might be writing more about life on the road, but still doing workshops on happiness, talking to people all over the world about happiness and still doing the keynotes and the workshops. And I've done international workshops anyway, but I'll probably be doing more of them whether it's in Europe or Asia or wherever, including here in the US but kind of building a lifestyle of doing what I love and hopefully financially it works well. But even if it doesn't, well, I think it will because I love what I'm doing. And so it's not like you see, most of us, many of us, I think we live our lives to try to earn as much as we can as fast as we can, so we, we don't have to do that work anymore. And that might make sense for some people. There's the opposite approach, which is as long as you're doing work that you love, then you don't want to retire or you just keep doing it. And so you're still doing whatever it is you figured out that you love at age 30, you're still doing it at age 40 and 50 and 60 and 70 and 80 and. But it doesn't, it doesn't feel like work anymore.

Yeah, that's the, I think the future, hopefully for many people as they discover what that thing is and they get satisfaction and health and good mental health and everything else that goes along with it. So do you have any itinerary? You're selling everything here and you're permanently on the road, or are you going to have a home base?

So we're not going to have a home base. The epiphany was when my wife and I were having dinner in the best restaurant in Siena, Italy, several years ago, and we had, you know, we, like, wined and dined, and the food was spectacular, and all the locals said, oh, that's the best restaurant in Siena. And the whole bill came at the end. It was like, 120 bucks.

Nice.

And, you know, 120 bucks in San Francisco. Yeah, it's like a not, not, not much. Right, right. And so we really said, well, okay, I think we can, you know, anywhere we go is going to be cheaper than living here. And to the extent that I can do my work from anywhere in the world, and my wife, you know, she's going to take some time off and develop other sorts of interests and passions as well that she's never had the luxury of doing before. So the idea is that we just said, well, I think we can. We can kind of go anywhere. I'll continue doing my talks and workshops. So the short answers will be probably in Europe for three months. We've got it all mapped out. And then Asia for multiple months after that, and then kind of depends on where my workshops take me.

So you've got financial flexibility, but you still need to have some income going on. You're not like, I'm totally set for life.

Yeah, well, so here, here's. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a gajillionaire. I mean, if I know for a fact that I have less money than a friend of mine from business school who gave a number for what it took to be, like, financially independent. I know I'm less than that.

What was his number?

I'm not going to share, because then that indicates what I've got, which I don't want to. Which I don't want to share. But the point is, and I think this is an important point, is not all of us, but I think a majority of people who. A lot. Let me rephrase that. People who listen to this podcast, quite a few of them, probably have more money than they realize that they need in order to live the life they want to live, or I'll rephrase that. Most of my peer group, my cohorts in Silicon Valley, My friends from Stanford business school, many of them have way more money than I do, I'm sure of it. And some have less. Okay. But a lot of them have done very well financially and yet I see them continuing to work in jobs that I don't think they like that much, but they feel like they have to or they're supposed to, or they got a lifestyle which is so expensive that they have to support. And I think I've been lucky that when I was doing my hippie backpacking in India, I realized that there's so much fun in life that comes from an unconventional path and from not needing to have a lot of money to have a great life. And so in some ways when my wife and I start doing our traveling, it's kind of returning to that sense of adventure. It doesn't take a ton of money to do it. And so we've gotten rid of a ton of stuff from our condo in San Francisco. We're going to rent it out, I'm about to sell my car. We've given a ton of stuff to charity and there will be no base per se. Now maybe after three or four or five years of travel we'll say, oh, we really want to settle down in a probably a low cost place. I don't know, maybe it's Thailand, maybe it's Portugal, maybe it's Costa Rica, maybe it's back in the US Although I kind of doubt it. So we'll see. We don't know. But that's part of the fun of the adventure, right?

You kind of have this wide open, you know, future, which is great. I mean it's great to hear that you're doing this. And I think it's it for hopefully for a lot of folks, they, they hear it and they say, oh, maybe I could do the same thing, you know, or be more thought, at least think about their own situation. Because I, I agree, like when we look at our, you know, on this whiteboard behind me, I've got like, hey, people, you know, our business is about, and I won't make this too salesy but like people are at this point in their lives, you know, usually around 50 plus that are using our site and they have acquired a certain number of assets and now they're thinking about how do they convert that into income or control in their lives. And, and if you take a step back and you look at, okay, I've got my human capital, my ability to work, but I could do that maybe in different places or do it in different terms, like you are? Yeah. You know, I've got home equity, and you're going to rent your place out. You know, you've got their savings and investments, and that's going to do X. And they have things that are coming like Social Security and Medicare or whatever. How are they going to use those intelligently? So there are lots of controls. And then the expense side, where am I going to live? How much is that going to cost? And so if you're open to stepping back and reimagining this thing, you know, you could, like, I could probably be financially independent today if I was like, okay, you know what? We're getting rid of the house and going somewhere else. And we'll be like, all right, I can do whatever I want, or at least for having a lot more visibility into my life. So, yeah, it's good to hear these stories.

And, you know, for some people, obviously, if they have kids who are still in high school or whatever, that's going to change the equation, or at least it can change the equation. I think another thing I'd add is one of the things I write about in the book is instead of thinking, can I do this? Yes or no? A different way to ask is, well, what would it take? What would it take to do it? Do I need to work more? Can I work less? Do we cut our costs here? Do we move to a country where rent is $500 a month rather than 5,000amonth? Right. And I think when one starts asking the question, well, what would it take? It's a good way to start thinking really creatively, and then you start mapping things out, and then. And then you can come through with some really great insights.

Yeah. As we wrap up here, I'm going to bring it back to how you open your book, which is, you know, you ask people to imagine their. Their death date. And I was mountain biking with a friend of mine and we were talking, we're like, all right, well, one benchmark is, oh, if you drop dead tomorrow, would you have. Would you be full of regret or you knew you're going to drop dead tomorrow, would you suddenly be, like, thinking about all the regrets? And if. If the answer is yes, then I think you have to take a hard look at how you're spending your life. Yeah. If the idea of the answer is no, and you feel like you've been making pretty good decisions along the way. But I like the exercise. I mean, I don't want it to be too morbid, but I like the exercise of, like, hey, you know, we all have limited time, be thoughtful about it. You know, think about it, and it will change your mindset.

Yeah. And you'll end up enjoying your life a lot more by having that sort of awareness and appreciation that every. Every day is precious. Every moment you have is really a gift and to really savor that as much as possible. And that's part of. That's part of a very direct way to create your happiness.

Yep. Yeah. So before I wrap up, I just want to give a shout out to one of our listeners who's a friend of mine, Sky John and his wife. They. They did what you have done to some degree. They went off to live in Australia, New Zealand, and kind of like left here, the Bay area. They spent 10 years traveling around, and they've gone all over the place, you know, to all over Asia and had great adventures. They're back and they're thinking about leaving again. So, you know, it just. And I think that, you know, the sense of control they have and their, you know, the adventures they're having are great. And, you know, that you don't. You're not necessarily tied to any one place. As soon as you start moving around, you're like, okay, they can live in many places, so good for them. Yeah. It's good to see people going those things. All right, so, you know, as we wrap up, any key influencers or communities that you want to give a shout out to.

Oh, wow. You know, there's so many great psychologists who I quote in the book. Sonia Lyubomirsky, who wrote the how of Happiness. Rick Hansen, who's here in Marin county, who wrote some great books on mindfulness. Jack Kornfield, who also is up here in Marin with the Spirit Rock Retreat. These are all heroes in my mind. Dan Gilbert at Harvard University has done some fantastic stuff. Fred Luskin, who's done incredible work through Stanford for the Stanford Forgiveness Project. And then Randy Taran, who created Project Happiness, has a new book coming out. These are. I could go on and on. There's so many people that I've learned from, and I've been very grateful to benefit from the research that they're doing and just the role model that they've set.

Yeah. Well, I know that you're in your book. I think you cited 250 plus sources or something like that.

A lot of research.

Yeah. No, it's clear you've done a great job kind of pulling it all together.

Thank you.

All right, well, so with that, you know, thanks, Jim, for being on our show.

Thanks, Steve.

It was great. Hopefully people found it really helpful. Thanks Dotto Robison for being our sound engineer. Anyone listening? Thanks for listening. Hopefully you found this useful. Our goal at New Retirement is to help anyone plan and manage their retirement so they can make the most of their money and time. And if you made it this far, I encourage you to do a couple things. One is check out Jim McCarthy with two C's com and his book and then visit our site. And also if you want to follow us on Twitter, you can find us at newretirement or you can join our private Facebook group. And the last item is we are trying to build our audience and good reviews help us. So if you see us on itunes or Stitch or anywhere, any reviews are super appreciated. And with that, thanks again and have a great day.

Thank you Steve. Take care. It.