The Conscious Investor
Chasing after Financial Freedom often bankrupts other parts of life.
That’s why the Conscious Investor Podcast goes beyond Financial Freedom and helps investors cultivate Personal Freedom by featuring experts in the core areas of health, mindset, and investing.
If you’re looking to grow financially, if you long to unleash your full potential, and build a life of meaning without bankrupting the most important parts of life then this show is for you!
The Conscious Investor
Ep509 Embracing Discomfort for Radical Transformation with Dane Sanders
Imagine waking up from a life of autopilot, fully embracing the present, and transforming every aspect of your existence. In our latest episode, we promise to guide you through the journey of conscious and intentional living. Join us and our guest, Dane, as we navigate the metaphor of freeze tag, illustrating how being 'frozen' can be the catalyst for profound personal growth and transformation.
Embark on a journey where discomfort is not the enemy, but the vehicle to achieving greatness. We share inspiring stories of athletes and personal experiences, including a grueling bike ride in Glacier National Park, to demonstrate the power of facing fears and pushing through adversity. Discover how a non-linear path, much like life's unpredictable journey, can lead you to unlock your full potential and achieve remarkable success.
Lastly, we delve into the power of community and the richness of shared experiences. Learn about the "Men and Women of Discomfort" community and the profoundly inspiring story of Taylor, who transformed his life by embracing challenging paths. Plus, find out about our 12-week radical transformation program designed for those ready for a rigorous reset. Our episode is packed with actionable insights and motivational stories to equip you with the tools and mindset to thrive in every aspect of life. Join us and take the first step toward unfreezing yourself and living a more vibrant, aware existence.
Hello Conscious Investor, and welcome back. I'm your host, julie Hawley. For over four years, I've paired my background in real estate, investing, education and coaching to create powerful content for you each week. This podcast is where we take a holistic approach to investing by focusing on three ingredients to a life of personal freedom health, mindset and wealth. We'll talk about everything from passive investing through syndication and how to use your retirement accounts to boost your investing, to mineral balancing and gut brain health, and into topics that cultivate your inner strength and resilience so you can thrive regardless of any of life's current events. And yes, those are all episodes currently available and linked in the show notes below. Join me each Monday for a mindset episode and later in the week for an interview with expert investors and health professionals, so that you can experience your greatest health, strongest mindset and build the wisest wealth. Oh my gosh, dane, I am so excited to have you here on the Conscious Investor Podcast. Welcome, thank you, julie. I'm so excited to have you here on the Conscious Investor Podcast.
Speaker 2:Welcome. Thank you, Julie. I'm really thrilled to be here too.
Speaker 1:It's exciting when we have mutual friends, people that connect us, and it's like, wow, I'm so excited about this conversation, just by way of how you were spoken about behind your back, and I just love that when people speak highly of us and say you know what you really need to. You should reach out to this person, you should? He's really amazing and you guys have a lot in common, and I was white on rice, I think. I connected up with you on a social platform as soon as I got off the phone with those mutual friends and I'm so grateful to have you here on the show.
Speaker 2:Well, it's fun to me on several levels too, julie. First of all, it's nice to be. Everyone talks about each other behind their back, right? This is just kind of normal. But you're right, it is so encouraging when, once in a while, people say generous things.
Speaker 2:When I heard about the opportunity to connect with you here in this conversation, the thing that jumped out at me right away was the word conscious, the idea of consciously deciding where you're going to put your best stuff in order to get better stuff in response, to do it in a very kind of wide awake way, and I think that, for me, is at least half of the battle.
Speaker 2:Most of us are walking around, we're sleepwalking, you know, anthony DeMello says, you know we get. We were born in our sleep, we grow up in our sleep, we got married and have babies in our sleep, and then we die in our sleep and we never wake up. And yet it went in those moments, and it's not permanent, right, we keep drifting, but when we can find a way to be awake and at the wheel, I'm with you. I just want to get after these conversations and responses to these conversations, which I hope for the folks that are listening, they're not just thinking about oh how can I burn some time while I'm out in a run or doing what I'm doing, but could I actually take what we're talking about and put it into action? If that's what happens as a result of this conversation, we'll have spent our time well, I think.
Speaker 1:Agreed, wow, okay, already I have the main question in Conscious Investor. I hear you, I know, but I'm not ready for the main question yet.
Speaker 2:Great Great.
Speaker 1:Something that you said really resonates so much with being asleep and I use this analogy often we're close enough. I think we're similar in age right and you probably played freeze tag.
Speaker 2:Of course. Are you kidding me Every night until dark, until mom called me in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Right, exactly, I feel like that's the state of the world and my belief is there's this world of people who are just simply like, frozen in time, and there are some of us who've had the opportunity to be unthawed, to be unfrozen and to be running around, and the goal, truly, of the conscious investor is how many people can we unfreeze, like how many? How many lives can we touch, how many people can we just give that tap? Because we remember how exhilarating that was when you were like. It was so frustrating when you got frozen. You're like and then some friend would come by and unfreeze you and you. It was like the vigor that the defrost was instant right. That's what I want to accomplish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that is such a great picture on some level because I think for folks the consciousness oftentimes doesn't show up for people until they're frozen, until they've lost the capacity to go do a thing.
Speaker 2:So a few years ago I tore my Achilles tendon and it was right around the time it sounds more painful than it is.
Speaker 2:Actually it isn't that painful because there's no nerves in your Achilles tendon, but what's uncomfortable is it takes a year to fully recover and that exercise of realizing, oh, all those days that I put off going on a run when I said I was going to go on a run and now I would like cut off my left arm to go for a run, but I don't get to go for a run right now, and then when you finally come around the corner and you begin to like get into PT and start putting the pieces back together, and it was such a catalyst to relating with the whole of life in a different kind of way.
Speaker 2:So I say that because I think there may be folks on this call who are watching who are like, yeah, I am kind of frozen and I'm really irritated and I want to affirm that irritation, that dissatisfaction, is an asset. It's highly valuable. If you're going to be frozen for a minute, squeeze all the life out of it by getting increasingly dissatisfied with what you're in the midst of, and that will become jet fuel for when you get released, when you get tagged out and you get to go to run like there's no tomorrow, because there might not be tomorrow, and this is the moment.
Speaker 1:So I love that concept. There are times in my life where I can recognize I'm like you know. I will say you know, am I interested or am I committed? And sometimes to get to that deepest level of commitment, I have to become so dissatisfied. And I've been trying to manufacture a level of dissatisfaction at times to to just accelerate that timeline, like, and it's not that we have to be dissatisfied in the negative sense of it, but I like how you're really flipping that switch well, I, I actually positive I I wonder, uh, if, if it's required or not there is some degree of you don't have to be angry necessarily, but dissatisfied can have a.
Speaker 2:It is a particular kind of motivator. At least you understand that there's just something at stake. And if there's no stakes, it's very difficult to take action. And I think that sometimes the hope, like the carrot can be a stake, like, oh, if I go do this, I'll get the carrot. But oftentimes the stick is so much more effective when there's something that's being taken from or whatever. And you see this in elite performers, right? If you've ever watched the Last Dance with Michael Jordan, he made stuff up about people, he made up stories about his competitors, just so he would be disproportionately dissatisfied. He got angry and so on, and there's things that are unattractive about that, but in terms of the results he got on the other side of it, it's pretty unarguable that he found a way forward at a level that is uncommon. And I think that there is something to be said for to see change happen, to see a transformation happen, where, if anyone's feeling lethargic or like I know, I should want more, I want to go for it more, but I'm just not. What's going on.
Speaker 2:For me, likely, it's one of four things. Number one they don't have a clear vision of what they want, and that's, if they don't have vision, they'll perish Like they. Just they need the vision, and this is this like biblical level stuff here. So you need vision, uh. Second, um, you actually need dissatisfaction. In my view, you need to be not okay with the status quo. Third, you need to have not an exhaustive plan, but you need one. Next, the right one, next step, or at least the next step, something take like moving. So, vision, dissatisfaction and a plan, those three things if they combine to be less than what it'll cost you change will happen. But if change, if you, if, if, if the cost is too much, you're not willing to pay that price to increase your vision, to increase your dissatisfaction and increase your clarity about the right one. Next thing it's probably better to say you're not interested in changing, then it is to pretend like you are and and just be living in the land of kind of fantasy.
Speaker 1:It's so exhausting also to live in that pretend zone where, right, I mean, like let's just think about I can think about different times where maybe I haven't used the most self-control and there's a bag of chips, that's there you know, it's like, dude, give me a bad, put a bag of potato chips by me and I'm sunk.
Speaker 1:Or chips and salsa. I'm'm like that's a tough day for me, and you just know. And it's like just sometimes realizing like I just don't even care, Like sometimes it's a matter of of just simply accepting, instead of putting out that fight of I'm going to resist this and I'm going to use my energy to resist this. I think I'm saying this wrong and you are so eloquent with your words. But there's this element where I think that people are interested and they want something else, but they're really so not committed that it just be creates. It's like being on the in-between of a fence and it's just energy is getting depleted on both sides.
Speaker 1:It's like just make a decision and if you want to eat the bag of chips or, if you want to, you know not have X, y, z type of of life and contribution in the world. Just admit it to yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, and even the admitting of it could create the dissatisfaction you're looking for to see some change. Um, it's interesting to me when I think about coaches. I'm a fan of not just sport but the whole system of sport and how do you get performance to happen? And it's striking to me when a coach goes in, you're down 2-0 in a soccer match or whatever the thing is and what does the coach say in that room? Most of what they're saying is how, if they're a good coach is if they're playing from behind and they need additional motivation, they're looking to create dissatisfaction. That's what's going on in the space and they can be clarifying about, like what do we need to do, vision, what do we need to focus on, plan. But if they don't get those three to get above that threshold of the energy it will require of you to go to where you want to go. You're not going to get there. So all of these things demand living in reality. So you and your bag of chips, or me and my fill in the blank, I can relate to all those dynamics. There's unmistakable potency that we sometimes we need to coach ourselves, sometimes we need an external force kind of coaching us in some way. Even just being in community of like-minded people doing the same thing in the same direction can have a profound impact on if they're going and I'm not. That's profoundly dissatisfying to me and I, if I really want this, it should show up that way. But it does take honesty, living in reality.
Speaker 2:I'm in the middle of writing a book project that I've been candidly working on for probably the better part of a decade. I did a nine-hour chunk on it and the amount of ground that I got that got covered in nine hours I couldn't believe. I was so relieved because it was like living for 10 years working on a thing, tinkering, probably having 150, 200,000 words done but needing to really hone and push and organize. And nine little hours, one single day, and I took ground that could have been taken two years ago and wasn't, and there's a steep sense of like. I am not going to waste another two years on this, but it's painful, dissatisfaction, is incredibly uncomfortable and that's, I think, the challenge of our age is people have no interest. We spend all of our energy avoiding discomfort precisely at the moment when what we need is to raise our hand for it to say I'd like to go first, please, and that's just what it is. I mean, that's why I have this buffalo over here.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:No, hey, I'm Canadian, so let's call it a bison, it's perfect. I think, uh, there's something about, uh you hear my canadian in my about uh, there's something. There's something about, uh, the idea of going into the storm, choosing the storm when no one else will. That is required if you're gonna, if you're gonna find the ground that you want to take, and and that's just the part that if you can find that dissatisfaction, you can find the vision, you can find the plan, you get. After it you pay the price. You'll find very quickly that most people in our world at best talk a big game. They don't live in reality, their life doesn't match what they hold up as their values, or they are being honest and their life just doesn't show up. There's very little competition for people who want to go into the hard place, very little competition, and yet when you go there, it's like you create disproportionate advantage in life.
Speaker 2:One last story on this there's an athlete that I'm pretty massive, I'm obsessed with. Actually. Her name is Courtney DeWalter, and Courtney is the current reigning. She won the triple last year, so in 100 mile foot races she won all three of the majors last year, including Great Western States, which ends in Auburn, california, as well as the one in France and another one in I think it was in Colorado, and on two of the three she only won all three in one season. No one had ever competed in all three competitively. She won all three and set records in two of them, and two years before that she actually ran in a 240 mile race I think it was 240. And she beat all competitors, including men, and the second place person, a man, a professional runner. She beat him by 11 hours.
Speaker 1:Whoa that's massive.
Speaker 2:Massive, to be fair, 11 hours over days of running. But to run 240 miles takes a long time. But if you see her, she's a fierce competitor with a smile on her face and she's very unorthodox and always doing different things. She does, does, but she's very overt to tell you what she does, different than everybody else, everybody else, they these are elite level athletes and everyone else spends their energy.
Speaker 2:Going like a good race is if the sun and wind are at my back and I don't roll my ankle and I hit my splits and the aid station. Everything just goes, goes right, nothing gets buckled or whatever. And and that's a good race and she's like, that's not a good race. A good race is I can get to my pain cave before anyone else can, because we're all going to go there at some point. But if I can get there first and I go and I and I expand the place, I remodel my pain cave, I will create disproportionate advantage. And she does so. She used to be like kind of a middle of the pack runner and now she's easily the world's greatest by miles, and that's the distinction. You want to be the world's greatest. You want to be the best conscious investor in the world. Just look for the most uncomfortable place that no one else is willing to go to, and go there. If you can find the courage to do that, you will create disproportionate advantage, even though it will be incredibly discomforting.
Speaker 1:There's so much that we learn in the throes of discomfort and it's essential. There isn't a time where I have grown and progressed in any capacity in life where it's been easy and like oh yeah, that was so much fun. Um, last weekend I was camping with my family at glacier national park and and on the canadian side or the american side?
Speaker 1:the american side right on, right on yeah, so going to the sun road was closed to traffic, to motor traffic, and, uh, I've tortured my family multiple times. I'm an avid biker and we've gone up, we've gotten severely like we've gotten hypothermic the last time two years ago.
Speaker 1:It was really bad and I promised the family. I said this I'm not going to, I'm not going to make anybody ever do this again. The opportunity presented for me to go ride solo up there and it it was an internal test because you said like I like to start early in the morning, not because it takes all day, but you see more critters, but then you also open them in your canadian. So you know I'm like I don't mind the bears.
Speaker 1:They're cool. I'm like, I'm totally comfortable with bears, mountain lions that I'm freaked out about I totally like give me the bears all day long.
Speaker 1:But but all that to say, like I remember and I'm in the process of writing a book as well, and I just came back from book camp, like days before, and I just was like this is going to be like writing my book this process is a physical representation of that middle ground.
Speaker 1:Like you know, I love it. Like the middle stretch, right the middle of anything, is where everything matters most. You get into the discomfort, you're getting into the monotony. It's starting like the discomfort is now kind of feeling comfortable and you're like fine, you know, my sit bones are sore or whatever, and you just kind of get into this routine and you can just lose so much ground and momentum at that point and keeping your eye on not, yes, on a fixed destination and not moving the goalposts, but understanding that there's so much more that will be. We will have potential and possibility open to us once we reach that. So it's like sure, it's almost a waypoint, check mark. Yes, I got to that goal, that milestone, that goalpost. I finished the ride. By the way, I did finish in record time for myself.
Speaker 2:Well done, well done.
Speaker 1:Nine o'clock and you're already back at camp. What the heck. But you know, getting there I did it intentionally because I'm like I have to unpack something inside of me. I can access this. If I get into that physical discomfort Similar to that bison, they go directly into the storm. They're like the fastest way to get through this storm is to go into that storm. I'm going into the storm.
Speaker 1:I'm going to face it head on and come what may it's going to be fine, I'm going to get to the other side Amazing. I could go on, but I'm not going to go on because I want to ask you and you know, at Conscious Investor I have to throw out the question. We're not going to have time for the normal question because this conversation is too rich and really one of the things I wanted to ask you is you don't have and this goes back, let's touch back to freeze tag and people having that decision-making process where maybe it's decision fatigue even there's so many elements they don't know what to do with their life. They just feel frozen too.
Speaker 1:We've already talked about it, but you and I were talking off air about how God has just woven our lives together on this very unpredictable path, and I think it takes I know for myself it's taken a lot of courage to walk a path that doesn't look correct on the outside necessarily, and I'm not going to totally lump you in there, I'm taking liberty, so you can edit as you wish, right, but I'm curious what that's like about how you did arrive where you are now. It's like it wasn't a straight line path. So I would love to hear about that journey of personal transformation.
Speaker 2:So I was a collegiate athlete in college. I played Division I volleyball in Canada actually, before I moved to the United States halfway through college and finished down here and I was a six-foot-tall volleyball player. The average height of my team was six-foot-eight or nine Elite athletes, a handful of Olympians, went on to play. I was like Rudy. I was so privileged to play at this elite level, to be on the team and to travel all over the place level, to be on the team and to travel all over the place. And after my I won rookie of the year my freshman year and then I took a year off because I was like I don't, this is coming to an end, like, and even my rookie of the year was really just interest and enthusiasm. I was Rudy, I was willing to go, you know, to make up for my lack of talent, and I ended up jumping on a plane. I didn't really, again, I didn't have a life, but I ended up getting on a plane by myself and I moved Australia from Nova Scotia, canada, and so the on the flight over I met some people on the plane. They worked, became my roommates and I I didn't know anyone. I mean, I thought I knew one. I had one connection in the entire country and that kind of fell apart in the first week or so and I was. It was an amazing adventure and I ended up playing on this little pro beach volleyball tour up and down the coast and that was really fun and and but it was very it's very kind of semi pro compared to US standards and it was.
Speaker 2:I was just kind of lonely, if I'm honest, and 17 time zones away, pre-cell phone, you know, quarters at the pay phone, to make phone calls home. I'd go weeks, if not months, at a time. My family had no idea where it was at any given time for weeks and I and I remember one night I was going a bit nuts, and when I say nuts I mean let me be more precise. I just went to a lot of parties and had a good time and I woke up the next morning because I had the habit growing up, my mom, single mom, three boys raised us and we went to this little Baptist church in our town and I woke up and I just kind of felt bad. I was like this doesn't feel very good. So I looked up in the phone book, church, church and I like I don't know what that is Went to the pay phone, put my quarters in. Hey, I want to go to church, and I had no idea where anything was or whatever.
Speaker 2:This American missionary pastor in Australia drives in his car 90 minutes to pick me up and 90 minutes back to go to church and, uh, they do, they do. I can't remember. Remember what's the first week or the second week that I went? I think it might have been the first week, but they did an altar call and the whole talk was on the cost of discipleship and, uh, the idea of, like the disconnect if you're one person in one moment and different person, another, which I was literally in a 12-hour window and it was like a classic. Like everyone else in the room was gone, it was me and God in the room. Oh, you know, I go forward. I accept Jesus in my life. Uh, I know I I might've been their first convert because they, um, they gave me a Bible in the first week and on the second week they asked me for for 20 bucks or 10 bucks to cause he didn't have much money, this is my best guess.
Speaker 2:But I became a zealot and I was like that guy at coffee shops debating with Muslims, but I had no idea what I was doing, I had no clue. And finally I went to this youth hostel and I promise that I'll be quicker on the back end of the story. But I went to this youth hostel and this guy comes up to me and he's like hey, you're Christian. I'm. Like, I am, I want to talk about it. And again, I can't overemphasize, like I was the guy you don't want to be, but I was that guy.
Speaker 2:And this friend, this new friend, comes up to me and says hey, I'm really excited you're Christian. It's really great, really excited you're christian. It's really great. Unsolicited input. Um, dial it back, dude. Like you're, you're, you don't know what you don't know, and I, but there's a lot to know. In fact, you might want to consider going to a thing called a christian college. I was like what's a christian college? Like I had no idea and I didn't know they existed. I was like do the degrees count? Like does this work? Like how does something?
Speaker 2:question work and and uh, our common friend Shannon. I actually met her at the cause. I ended up two years later, going back to my sophomore year, came back and then transferred to the U S? Uh to go to this little Christian college and and kind of my journey began. So I ended up getting a degree in marketing.
Speaker 2:After all of that kind of foundation and and again, I can't overstate like no dad. My dad died when I was three. My dad's dad died when my dad was three. I have four kids now. They're all adult but growing up you can imagine how does a guy who didn't have a dad, whose dad didn't have a dad, ever be a dad?
Speaker 2:Like there was these core, fundamental sense of like brokenness and missing parts, and I feel like my whole career has been missing parts. Like'm speaking, I hope, to any listener out there that might go like I am lost in some other part of the world and I don't have access to like the right way or the right path. Or you're in a you know your, your ladder's up against a wall and you're climbing the the little rungs but you're on the wrong ladder. Like professional volleyball was not my future and even if it was, uh, even that ends pretty quickly. It's the wrong sport. You should have picked a sport where they actually pay you if you're going to do that, and it's just a bad set of decisions.
Speaker 2:But that led to I go to this place called Biola University and I end up getting a degree in marketing. At the end of the marketing degree I was like, ah, that wasn't it either. I basically learned how to manipulate people to buy things they didn't want or need and I felt gross. So I was like I know I'm going to go. This will be a smart economic decision. I'm going to go study philosophy in grad school, which is like a recipe for unemployment, Like. So I get a grad degree in philosophy and I got.
Speaker 2:I got nowhere to go and nothing to do and I met this girl who became my wife, who I adore 28 years years. This fall we'd be together and we started doing this little life together and I was just perpetually dissatisfied, like well, I've got to go here, I've got to go here. And my life has been an eclectic series of bad financial decisions and going to weird directions, and the only through line through it has been my experience of God being remarkably present through each season, even seasons where I wandered and calling me back, calling me back and I was like how can you make anything good out of this? This resume Like I had moments, like I really went for things. I got a chance to get exposed to another guy over my shoulder. So Seth Godin here, or mini Seth, wait for it. This is fun.
Speaker 1:Where are you, Seth? That's awesome.
Speaker 2:So Seth came into my world and helped me. He kind of redeemed marketing for me. He helped me understand marketing could actually be an agent for change and uh really was so generous to me. I ended up publishing a handful of books. Uh to creatives and business, I had a season being a photographer and I was. I was just, I mean, all over the place. Um, economic downturn had to short sell a house had to. Uh, you know, I I raised money for a college, like I did for a nonprofit. Through all these things I've had exposures to starting businesses, running businesses, helping other businesses, helping nonprofits.
Speaker 2:And I woke up one day in existential haze, walking around this area called Back Bay in Newport Beach, california, with my friend, tim, and tim and I were, um, both lamenting a similar kind of create. He had a very weird collective background. He was a little younger than me, younger kids in mind, but we're just kind of wandering around, going, like what are we doing? Like we're on, we, we want to make a difference, we want to get after it. And um, we had recently decided like well, let's just experiment, because we're both dissatisfied, let's start experimenting. So we started experimenting with things like stupid dietary things, all carnivore diets. Or like we get like good, we got eight stacks of just the patties at home, at at uh home depot, at uh in and out burger. Or like you know, our workout was like three Olympic lifts and then go home. It was so dumb Like none of it made sense. We get in really cold water. We'd hyperventilate before we knew who Wim Hof was. Like we were just doing all these experiments and and we found like every time we picked the hard thing, our life got better and we didn't understand why or how it all made sense. But we're like we know the other way of finding, like the comfortable path was not delivering and we kept doing the same. Well, fast forward, friend. This is amazing.
Speaker 2:So now it's five years later and in that final year of his life he one of his lines I'll never forget.
Speaker 2:He says I'm so glad I became a man of discomfort before I got cancer and what set that like and clearly his own faith commitment was pretty central to his life.
Speaker 2:But the combination of god a god who was with him and a willingness to get uncomfortable set up I think the most remarkable year of his life where he was more present, more with his wife Jess more with his boys, holt and Henry, leading them, loving them, giving to others in the midst of his body, to portraying him. And I was witnessing this and I was like there's something that I've been thrown in front of that I need to pay attention to and I started codifying, like what have we learned and how do we play this and how do we invite more people into that conversation? We created this thing called First Men of Discomfort, then Men and Women of Discomfort, and then, when Tim passed, we just kept building off of what we learned together and now we have a little community and, ironically, the very first man of discomfort that joined Tim and I was going to name Taylor, and I promise I'll bring the story to a close here- now no apologies.
Speaker 2:So Taylor runs a ridiculously successful digital marketing company, ironically called Common Thread Collective, in Orange County, california, and he witnessed what Tim and I were creating at men and women of discomfort and at first hand his life really shifted. He actually was a professional athlete, he played for the new york yankees organization, uh, but then he's like kind of his mid-30s, early 30s at the time, young kids, and he was kind of giving up his body for the sake of, you know, being a young dad and and his business that was doing so well. And I confronted him. I was like how's that working for you, man? Why are you doing that? You're a cliche. That's what everybody does. And you used to be an athlete. He's like what do you mean? I used to be an athlete. I was like you're not an athlete now. And he said well, what do you think I should do about it? I was like I think you should hang out with Tim and I. And he'd come and hang out and it wasn't like um, hey, let's, let's give you the most optimized workout and fitness regime and food, and like it was not. That's not what it was. It was how can we make you as uncomfortable as possible and invite you to choose it, as opposed to waiting for it to choose you Like. It chose Tim, and he started doing that, and he started to get it. He got really pissed at first, like we'd go to the YMCA at 5.30 in the morning, all of the parking spots are open and we take the furthest parking spot out and you'd have to walk like a quarter mile to get to the front door, and he'd be so mad. He's like this is so inefficient, and we're like we don't care Probably not for you, man. You should probably quit, but we're going to do this thing. And he kept hanging there, hanging there, and finally he got it. He got in ridiculous shape again and it's awesome, and but, fast forward, he ends up hiring me. Now I'm the VP of employee development and performance at Common Thread Collective.
Speaker 2:I didn't apply for it. The job didn't exist before. He just said whatever you have been doing with these hundreds of graduates now of M1, I want you to do that with my employees. And I was like I've never worked corporate anywhere. Man, have you seen my resume? You want me to? This is by far the most fantastic job I've ever had. And I said, though, the only thing I can't do is I can't give up MWOD, because MWOD's the anchor in my world and it sets up my relationship with God, my relationship with my family. It gives me all the resources I need.
Speaker 2:And he was like, well, you don't hire it's such a flattering line. He says you don't hire Phil Jackson and tell him he can't run the triangle offense, like the point is you have to run that, you have to keep doing that, otherwise you wouldn't get the job. But I'm giving you this amazing job so that you would do that with our people and that's what we've done and it's it's been amazing to witness in a corporate context and amazing to witness on an individual context in my own life that I give myself to every single day and I could look back at whether it's, you know, having a job at a marketing firm right now, or learning how to go without or to to experience incredible dissatisfaction of something happening to you, like having to give up your home, or failure, success and then failure. Anytime you have a success, give it a minute. You'll fail. Anytime you have a failure, give it a minute, you might find some success. But all of those kind of circumstances that I didn't have any control over, they weren't serving me, but the one thing that has consistently served me is when I've been willing to do the hard thing.
Speaker 2:Jerry Ziegler-Gorek says hard choices, easy life, easy choices, hard life. And I started. I was making easy choices and I started making hard choices and my experience has been God has redeemed all of my poor choices and he keeps he's not done and he keeps pulling it back into this much more interesting narrative and I'm tuned in, finally, and I'm going, I'm going to keep, you know, going towards the storm and I have every reason to believe. This is the reason why I've been put on this earth and I am so grateful for the chance to do it, because someday I'm going to be in Tim's shoes and I want to be ready for it and I think people are. There's a lot of folks that are pretending like that day isn't coming and they're not preparing very well.
Speaker 2:And between now and then this is the kicker is like I have the best life I could imagine, like I am 54, I'm in the best shape of my life, and that is so the minor dot on the point. The major thing is like I know how to do hard things, I know how to show up for my wife and my kids. I'm less of a jerk than I used to be. I actually think of others. I'm interested in being just. I'm interested in being courageous. I'm interested in finding greater temperance. I'm interested in learning how to cut off my appetite when I'm full, but something in front of me is attractive and good and I want to have more of it. I'm I'm learning how to discipline myself in a way that I'm called to and I'm thriving because of it.
Speaker 1:It's such a beautiful story. It's not just a story, I mean like it's. What's extraordinary is it's life, and I don't want to I trust you will hear this correctly and Conscious Investor, I think this resonates with you because this is such a common story. I hear this when I coach. I hear this when I talk with people, because I seem to get into great conversations with anyone I meet. I seem to get into great conversations with anyone I meet.
Speaker 1:The loneliness, the missing parts, the what's going on in my life, and why do I feel like I'm the only one, why aren't things connecting up? And that's not necessarily self-sabotaging, but just a lack of belief in oneself, but just a lack of belief in oneself. And then to have it have that confluence where it's, it comes into perspective and you're able to see it. It's profound and and and that's this is why I was like no, why Don't, don't promise that this is going to be over anytime soon. Like, don't promise, like this is because this is a narrative and my husband he's, you know, like he's so rad I call him super rad, steve and um, it's just amazing when I think about his own internal development over the last several years. Right, like, I think there's narrative and he and I've separated it and this is why I absolutely love that you have MWOD. That includes women to it, you know, and it's it's not just. It's not just, you know, like men of discomfort, it's like men and women of discomfort and because these things transcend, it's the human experience.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And the human experience in like, if we go back to the Bible, we can go back, and I love reading my old Testament because it's like hey, look at these humans, they're all over the place and beauty comes in from their life and I really appreciate your willingness to take us down that path and see it. And I want to touch on loneliness, because there there are some themes in your life right that definitely stand out like that, that passion, you know, of being the Rudy on the volleyball team, or the passion of being like a new Christian, you know, and having and learning to navigate that passion and also the loneliness and I think there's so many people today that feel lonely Loneliness is one of the discomforts that put me on the path that I'm on in doing what I do, and I think that that has a through line in your life as well. It led you into community, as I understand it, even when you made a transition from Southern California up to true Northern California, not San Francisco, that's not Northern California people.
Speaker 2:It will, to be fair it is. But yes, I understand what you're saying.
Speaker 1:Yes, I grew up in Modesto and I'm like this is not Northern California, I'm not up in Humboldt or something, but all that to say is interesting. One more item there. This is a question I will circle back. It's interesting because God moved my family from Modesto and we were also in Colorado for a period up to a little small town in the middle of nowhere. To me, in my mind, it's equivalent of going from being in Southern California to being up in Auburn where it's like there's no autonomy. This is a small town. What's going on? People don't have space. Their social books are filled. It's a really interesting experience and so, wrestling with the loneliness, I'd love to hear your idea of how you've seen the through line of loneliness and what that's produced in your life.
Speaker 2:A critical distinction that I think could be really helpful for this moment in the conversation is around the word discomfort. So if you think about being uncomfortable, and I mean that at the whole, the entire kind of latitude of what that could mean like severely, like torture and just like irritated, like itchy, like there's a big scope there. But there's at least two kinds of discomfort and I've kind of nodded to them but I want to be overt to talk about them now because I think it'll be helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:One is involuntary discomfort. This is what it means to be a human being. These are the fact that energy dissipates from our lives, the fact that we die eventually, the fact that we got born into a family we didn't pick. We have a personality we didn't choose. We had experiences, drama, trauma. Um, we get in fender benders, we get bad news from the doctor, we hear that something's wrong with our kid, like there's.
Speaker 2:There's things that happen to us every single day that are involuntary discomforts and they're the result. It's important to understand, like what? What are those the result of? And one one of the reasons why the Christian narrative is so profound to me is that it gives an explanatory power through the narrative, the story that I think is the most true story that's ever been told, and that it explains that we live in a broken world. Those involuntary discomforts are not good. They're the result of brokenness and it's remarkable to understand that as plot point A in this little plot I want to share.
Speaker 2:The second one I want to talk about is the great irony that when you choose discomfort, you transform from victim into someone who has agency. This is the hero's journey, this is the willingness to do the hard thing and the reason so many of us don't pick discomfort is because we think there's only one kind Discomfort equals bad Discomfort equals something happening to me. I've often talked to like I'll talk to my wife. Even she had four of my children, bless her heart. She's like I'm a woman of discomfort, I don't need to join your silly little club. This is ridiculous. But what she's talking about is involuntary discomfort. It's hard to raise kids. It's hard to have babies, it's hard to care. Even now we have adult kids and we care about. It's like our world's getting very complex, caring about them and relationships and navigating adulthood. It's very hard world's getting very complex, caring about them and relationships and navigating adulthood. And it's very hard.
Speaker 2:I thought diapers were hard, like there's new heart that keeps coming and those are involuntary, but the remarkable magic that comes from choosing a willingness to do the hard thing, modeled in our worldview as Jesus followers, as when people chose the hard thing, like this Jesus character did historically. He chose the hardest, hardest of things, you know, uh, to give up his life for his friends, for us and, uh, for the sake of, and and there's a sense of which we might, you know, be called to give up our lives, but and we would say that about people that we care about, but in his case it was like for anybody, like everybody actually um, and so you know, when I have to get into a cold shower, or get to get into a cold shower or cold plunge, or hold my breath or do a thing like, what I have learned is I get stronger, not weaker. And it seems counterintuitive to what you would have expected, because of the distinction between raising your hand for discomfort and not. So all of that, as set up to your question, loneliness in contrast with, say, passion. How does that form the whole thing and where does community play a role? Well, I would say that I mentioned my situation with my dad. I had probably some unresolved trauma in my life and some of that has contributed to passion.
Speaker 2:And I want people, I want to win, I want to be special, I want people, I want to win, I want to be special, I want to get affirmed Like stuff I didn't get as a kid. I want to get those things I'm trying to like. It's kind of at a subconscious level. I'm pretty conscious that things I don't know are driving me in ways that I don't even know. I'm being driven by and it would be dishonest to acknowledge it otherwise. But even with this mixed motivation inside of me, what I have discovered is because of a worldview that really makes sense of the world and then being surrounded by other people who hold on to that worldview with me, who are trying to work it out, and even having some people in front of me who worked it out, who I can see concretely.
Speaker 2:There's an amazing author and dear friend from years ago, a guy named Steve Garber who wrote a book called Fabric of Faithfulness and he talks about these three elements of people who. He interviewed them. There was this longevity study where they interviewed him, I think when they were around 20. And then interviewed him again like 30 years later and figured out like what, what was the through line of really flourishing 30 years out of your twenties? And the through line was these three things a worldview that makes sense to the world in the way that you understand it. Other people around you that are trying to work that thing out in the real world, and people who've gone before you, who have worked it out and found a way, and that's how they found their faithfulness throughout a life. And I haven't thought about that book until just now, uh, but I think that, on some level, is what what you're asking about. It's been this combination of people surrounding us working out things together my buddy, tim and I, but not just tim ed taylor and coleman and mark and megan, and you know, and on and on and on, as we've been doing this thing together and what we've discovered is a sense of reality and us relating with reality in a way that is in tune with the way the world actually works.
Speaker 2:Earlier, you mentioned this idea of people who might not have belief in themselves. Where I get more concerned is that they might have belief in themselves but they don't have an accurate understanding of the way the world actually is. The world is broken, and when I say broken, what I mean by that is it is full of involuntary discomforts that you don't want, and they're coming for you, for you, and call them the whirlwind of being a human being, that is. And if you pretend they don't exist, you're living in a delusion and no matter what your strategy, no matter how much belief you have in yourself, it's very unlikely you're going to find your way forward to a sense of flourishing, but if indeed you're relating with the world as it is, you can do something about it.
Speaker 2:The Norwegians have this amazing proverb. They say there is no bad weather, there's only bad clothes. So the trick here is to prepare for reality. And reality is such that, with so much involuntary discomfort coming our way, the wisest thing we could do is learn how to choose the uncomfortable thing to become the kinds of people to become strong, to become awake, conscious. Become the kinds of people to become strong, to become awake, conscious, and to not make it about you.
Speaker 2:This is the other kicker. When I'm the center of the universe, I'm kind of bored with myself. It's kind of an exhausting story. But when I can actually transcend myself and actually care about things beyond me for love's sake, strong and awake for love's sake, well now I'm not just going into the storm for me. I'm not trying to be the best me I can be. The best me I'm going to be is an insignificance, a vapor. It's going to die. I'm actually interested in becoming the kind of person I was made to be for the sake of others, for the sake of love, and if that happens, that sounds like a good life. What do you think?
Speaker 1:I absolutely love that and I've been wrestling with. I just have to grab the morsel at the very end, because I have personally been wrestling with this concept of so often in the personal development space. The rhetoric is I want to become the next best version of myself. I want to become the next best version of myself.
Speaker 2:And I feel like.
Speaker 1:It comes from high performers, it comes from a well-intended place, and yet I am like honor the person that you are, serve from where you are, enjoy the process.
Speaker 1:But I haven't gone full cycle. This is one of my open boxes tangled messes that I've personally been wrestling with, trying to understand. It's not about always going to perform or always going to improve. It's more about how are we being now with what we have and how are we serving and showing up now and being faithful with the moment and the presence that in the opportunity now.
Speaker 2:That's right and that was the lesson I learned from Tim in his final year of life. He was not becoming the best Tim he could be. He was an iron man. He was an iron man and he was losing about three pounds a day Like he couldn't. He was a pretty hilarious dude and he would do all these really inappropriate things on places like Nextdoor or another place, like he'd just be a. He'd make fun of influencers on Instagram. He'd go on Nextdoor and say things like hey, we just got a new litter of coyotes. Anybody want one? He would just mess with people all the time. And there's this one picture of him doing bicep curls and he literally was doing as much as he could and they had to be under five pounds and this guy was like an athlete, like a serious athlete.
Speaker 1:Ironman. I mean, there's no joke there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no joke, no joke. And for him, in the middle of that, I remember going over and he and Jess, they got in the habit of everyone come over to pray for Tim and eventually Tim would pray for them. So he'd get communion, like these little communion things, he'd get communion with everybody. When he came over, and why did he show up like that? To me, something was in him that was the real deal. That was not about optimization and performance, but he was optimized and performing in a way that his body wasn't agreeing with. In fact, it's transcended him and I look back with great affection for that moment and how he led me in those moments to see things a little differently, because I have a propensity to be narcissistic, I have a propensity to put myself at the center of the universe, probably out of my drama and trauma.
Speaker 2:But these are these course correctives that help me remember the bigger game that we're invited into that, tragically, most people don't even know exists. They think the biggest game there is is to uh, I don't, I don't know like when, when, whatever the highest vision they have. Kirkagard says man's man finds a level of despair he can tolerate and he calls it happiness. To me that's a haunting phrase, because where am I despairing that I've settled and said that's enough? I don't mean settle like I can be triumphant, that's ego. On the other side of ego, richard Rohr talks clearly about this need to think about the much bigger game, the game that we understand will be going on for a long time and it's that becoming that, I think, is far more interesting, and if you can leverage a little bit of voluntary discomfort to become a little quicker, I think you'd be wise to do it.
Speaker 1:I absolutely love that and I love Kierkegaard. Like I haven't even dipped into his work in far too long and now I'm like I have to go dive back into it.
Speaker 2:All he does is bug everybody. If you want to get tortured, read Kierkegaard. It's just torture. It's the best kind of torture, so I love it.
Speaker 1:So much. So, Dane, I would love to carry this conversation on. I have a responsibility to honor time, but this has been just such a meaty, amazing conversation that's so deep and there's so much more there. I actually I actually wrote some questions down that I was curious about and I'm like we don't have time for that. And this is a beauty of it is that things transpire as they should, and I know, conscious, investor, that this conversation is one that was like if you were a plant that was thirsty and wilted. I have confidence that this conversation was a beautiful rain that is going to make you perk back up, and in that perking back up, it might be that there is a discomfort. I know when I was defrosting coming back from Glacier.
Speaker 1:Anytime you're going down a six degree grade, for you know 18 miles in the shade, you're going to lose some sense of feeling in your, your extremities and yeah, you know, and as the blood finally started coming back into my fingertips and into my toes, it was that painful feeling. I know it well, and it was like this is just part of the process, it's going to be okay. So I want to encourage you, conscious investor, that if this is part of an awakening for you, it might be uncomfortable and welcome that, knowing that on the that discomfort is an invitation to something so beautiful and rich and vibrant and the great contribution that you were hardwired and created for, so exciting. Dane, is there anything that? Again, I'm like I could just pour some coffee. Let's talk for hours, but I know that we can't do that. But is there anything else that you'd like to add or any ways that the conscious investor can connect up with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this men and women have discomfort thing. We have a tagline and the tagline is it's probably not for you, and we recognize that the way it works is people who want to join the community. The first round, which is a 12-week commitment. You basically decide I'm in, you make one decision in or out, and if you're in, we make all of your decisions for you for 12 weeks, and I mean that comprehensively.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Like all of them, like when to eat, what you eat in your feeding window, what to drink, what you don't get to drink? Big surprise no coffee creamer and no booze. Uh water tea and uh coffee black only. Um, how much water you drink in a day? How much sleep you get in a night? How many times a week you work out six on top of every monday you get new habits that include intermittent fasting, cold showers, holding your breath, and we ratchet up every Monday we add a new one Anonymous good deeds for others, othering conversations, talking with people very different than you, for the sake of understanding and not convincing them of anything, meditating, reading, writing. There's so much that happens and people have radical transformations. Most people lose 30, 40 pounds in the three-month window and that's the least of their transformation. It's radical, but we say it's probably not for you, because who would sign up for that kind of suffering? Like it's just awful, it's just I get it. Why would you ever do that? Well, you'd only do it if you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, if you're looking at what you've been doing hasn't gotten you what you're looking to get and you want a reset. Maybe we're an athlete and you're not anymore like my buddy Taylor, or maybe you've found you've seen discipline work really well in other contexts, like in your business or in different like with your in school maybe and you're like, why is it not working in this particular area in my life? And if you're in that seat and you're actually like, well, what if it was for me? What would I do next? Well, you'd go to itsprobablynotforyoucom or moadio same place, or menofdiscomfortcom or womenofdiscomfortcom they take it all in the same place and basically you'd apply, even if you don't do it, just apply, just fill it out, because even the questions, I think, will really help you move forward in the direction you want to go and then we can chat about it. The other option is I have a thing called askdanecom A-S-K-D-A-N-Ecom, where it's just a video walkie talkie. You leave a message and I leave a message. It's asynchronous and we go back and forth.
Speaker 2:And specifically made to help people get clear is this for you or not? If it is, I would love to talk about it. There'll be zero pressure. We're not in that business. Everyone I've ever convinced to do it they end up quitting. It's only the people that kind of want to barf at the idea and they're still bugging me about it. That's when I know they're going to have a great experience.
Speaker 2:That's what Tim used to say is we don't want anybody who isn't like breaking our door down, who, if they're not doing that, they don't want to develop, they don't want to change it up. Because you need that dissatisfaction, you need it. And if you're craving it, I promise you you hang out with us. We will make you dissatisfied. It's amazing how powerful it can be. And if that's you, we'd love to hear it from you. And the last thing I want to say, julie, is your leadership in your community is radically inspiring and I don't think you hear it enough. How many people, and to the degree like the willingness for you to create this context in this kind of space, ask the kinds of questions you're asking, inviting the full spectrum of conversation worldview, the reality, the failures, the whole of it into the conversation? I know your listeners are remarkably benefited because of it and grateful, so on behalf of all of them, I just want to say thanks for the way you lead.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate that and I know you know leading, leading takes a lot of strength at different times and I am going to end this by by letting you know that my daughter knows that it's a great workout. I convinced her. I just told her when we'd be out mountain biking or running or something, I'd just be like you know, if I puked, it was a good workout, like good job, because she'd be like are you okay? I'm like this is just a sign of a good workout. I'm just letting you know I'm happy, I'm totally happy right now. Good times indeed. Thank you so much, dane.
Speaker 1:Conscious investor, remember that this is a show that I don't pay for. You know spreading this around advertisements and things like that out on social platforms. This is organic and the show grows because you are growing and you're appreciating and valuing the content here and the conversations taking place. You can absolutely support the show for free. Free, no money, just taking it and sharing a moment of your time to send this episode to somebody that you believe is going to benefit from it, share it on your social platforms or with your community. It would absolutely mean the world to me. Until next time, cheers to your health mindset. Thank you ©. Transcript Emily Beynon.
