← ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
Building An Extraordinary Life Through FI
01:13:58
What does it really mean to design an extraordinary life?
Loading summary
Transcript117 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello and welcome to choose at 5. Today on the show, it's an extraordinary takeover. We're doing this episode live from the extraordinary event here in Richmond, Virginia on February 15th, and we have 115 FI members here spending an entire weekend trying to design an extraordinary life. And this should be a really fun episode where we just open it up to this incredible group. I think this is what's so beautiful about five events is you never know who you're going to meet. You never know what conversation you're going to have that's going to be life changing. You never know what person you're going to meet that you're going to be in touch with for the rest of your life. Serendipity happens and it happens so very frequently at these events. And this is why we talk about them constantly. This is why we talk about choose if I local groups. This is why we talk about all the incredible events that are going on throughout the world. And it really makes a difference. We've built a worldwide community and I think you're going to see the power of that today. So with that, welcome to choose fi. Before we get started, I keep this podcast entirely ad free for two reasons. First, this is a FI podcast and I don't want to promote products that I don't want you to buy in the first place. And second, I really like the clean listening experience of a show where you don't have to fast forward ads to keep it ad free. All I ask of you as a listener is the next time you open a travel rewards credit card, go to choosefi.com cards and with that, onto the show. All right, so our first question comes from Megan.
- [01:42]
B
Okay, yesterday y' all were talking about health and wellness and things like that. I know people in the audience weren't here, but health is obviously a big theme. So my question is, how do you all sift through the copious amount of wellness misinformation out there when deciding how to approach your personal health? And any tips for the audience to avoid grifty nonsense or like truth from fact and find science backed health trends?
- [02:12]
C
I read a book that was about health in around about 2014. I read the book. I really wanted to implement what it said. I looked for the Facebook group that was meant to be with the group. The Facebook audience weren't there. There were lots of inconsistencies in the book. I started to get frustrated. I didn't know how to implement it. And that led to the great cheese incident of 2015. And basically what happened was I Was like, well, if I can't implement the book, I should just give up and eat cheese. That was logical in my head, obviously. And I think that.
- [02:47]
A
What about Snickers? Come on.
- [02:50]
C
I think that cost me 20 or 30 pounds of weight putting on. But I had that overwhelm of, here's all this information, I don't know what I can do. And actually I was picking holes in it going, I can't implement this, I can't implement that. And it's so easy to get lost in this stuff, especially as there are books that will directly contradict other books. That's what makes it really, really difficult. How. How have we overcome that? There are certain podcasts and books you end up trusting, and if you read enough, you actually find the common themes that run through all of the books, which the common themes would be, don't shop for things in colourful packets, shop for whole foods at the edge of the shop. So if you buy broccoli and vegetables and cook whole foods, you. You'll be healthier and you start to notice those themes that go through all of it. I completely understand the question. I have fallen foul of this, got overwhelmed and given up. And it's easy to do.
- [03:54]
A
Yeah. And avoiding grifters, I mean, that's. That's the hard part. We've all seen in the last couple of weeks, the author of Outlive, who a lot of us would have considered one of the pinnacle people in the longevity movement, is essentially a total scumbag. Right. Like, so it's not easy, but I think, I think there are universal principles and what I try to do, for me, it's. I take in a variety of information. I think one of the hardest parts in life is precisely this, is knowing how to source. Source info. Right. You see this with misinformation constantly. And I mean, that's become a running theme, maybe even a strategy. But for me, I take in information far and wide. I think it's why I try to listen to so many podcasts. Generally, I try to read, I like to make connections. So I'm never going to wholesale change my life based on one data point. But can I synthesize information? I think that's. That's what I try to be good at, frankly. And it helps me spot trends that I otherwise wouldn't be able to, I think. So someone asked me earlier, how did I even find this guy, Dean Turner, that I'm constantly talking about? So episode 5 16, if you haven't heard that before, and it was because, well, I don't spend any time on Twitter or X. Cause it's a cesspool now. But a couple years ago, it wasn't quite as bad. And I just noticed this small group of fitness people who were just doing something a little bit different and it piqued my interest. And I also was able to make connections to things that I have researched before. So it corroborated, it checked out. And also, not for nothing, but you look for trust signals. I think trust signals are really important in any kind of information. And this guy Dean was talking about Warren Buffett and value investing. And if you see him, he is absolutely jacked. And a lot of us erroneously assume, oh, somebody like that can't be intelligent. Like, what a stupid thing, right? Like we all have these. These stories that we keep in our heads. And then he's there talking about value investing and Warren Buffett. I'm like, as John said, like, his programming is like the VTS X of fitness. It just makes sense. It's the thing that you can put in 1% of effort. And I looked at that. I'm like, this just makes sense. So that's how I like to make broad connections. And when I see things in two totally disparate areas of life. And you also look for incentives, right? Like, I think a lot of us know incentives rule the world. So like, if something goes against someone's incentive and they're actively talking about it, well, okay, that's a little more trust. So it's just, it's trust signals. It's looking for these things that can I make connections, et cetera. So to me, it's more of a mindset, just broadly, not just with fitness, but generally speaking with how do I take information in. But I think it really the onus starts with you. And I think at the end of the day, everything is, as we said yesterday during our health panel, It's n of 1. It's something might work for somebody else even. Like I could talk all day about my sleep routine. And that might be something different for you, Megan. Right? So you have to. It's sure, it's all well and good to take the information in, but A, you have to take action and B, you have to test what works for you. So that's very broadly how I think about things like this.
- [07:08]
D
I would add as well that more information is not necessarily better. And just getting the basics right of sleep, nutrition and movement, which within those, of course, they can be as complex as you want them to be. I think just getting those basics right and not dismissing them. So it's like, oh, yeah, I know that I need to figure out my sleep. Oh, yeah, I know that I need to move. Well, are you actually doing it? Knowing it and doing it? Well, you don't know it unless you are doing it.
- [07:34]
A
Okay, our next question is from Emily.
- [07:37]
B
So this weekend we've had the opportunity to dream about what an extraordinary life looks like for us. And that's such an incredible opportunity. And we were also talking earlier about how the choose of High podcast has now been around for nine years, which is absolutely incredible. And there's been so much change and evolution in the last nine years in the fire community. And my question to the three of you is, if you dreamed about what would be extraordinary in the fire movement moving forward, maybe not nine years from now, but what's next for fire? What does, like, the most wild, extraordinary vision that you guys could think of?
- [08:11]
A
That's great.
- [08:13]
C
That's an awesome question.
- [08:14]
A
Wow. Just a little deep. A little deep. And this is where we take a pause and collect ourselves.
- [08:27]
C
The quality of a question is defined by the length of time that someone has to think about it afterwards. So if you ask a better question, you get a long pause afterwards. You, you know, you've asked a good question. For me, I have this concept that the world would be a happier place if we all have enough. Because people don't steal and do bad things if they have enough. There's just no reason to. It's like, I have enough. Why would I go and do that? So I kind of have this idea that if we as the FI community can spread the message, help people to sort out their money, help help them to have enough, we will help the entire world be a happier place. And that is the long term vision for me, is to spread the message so far and wide. We end some of the unhappiness and problems the world has. So if I was to really dream, it would be dreaming about a happy world that is abundant and people have enough, look after each other, and we all go on having adventures and living wonderful lives.
- [09:32]
D
It would be very cool if lots of people knew about this stuff. And I feel there's. There's knowing about it and then there's implementing it. And one of the ways that we as the FI community get attention is because of, like, the fringe weirdo cases, right? Like, Alan and I want to promote what we're doing. Rebel Finance School. So we go in the media and we're those weird people that retired super young and look at these strange things that they did to get there. They didn't turn the heating on for for a month unless our mothers came round. And so it'd be really cool if it wasn't this weirdo fringe case. But I don't know how to resolve that because that's how we get the attention. Look at this extreme thing that you could do. And then what we always try and do is like okay, great, we did it super young. We but the steps to getting on top of your money are the same regardless of your age or where you're from. So I haven't quite reconciled that in my head of spreading that message without being weird. What do you think, Brad?
- [10:33]
A
Without being weird? Yeah, it's hard. I think I have a couple thoughts on this. So first, I think second generation FI I think it's not weird if we can get this type of education and information into schools. Right. I think every single person would not along to man, I wish that I learned about personal finance in high school or elementary school. Why couldn't I have learned about this before I did X before I made I bought an expensive car or got into this mortgage or whatever it may be. What if we were able to get get this information into people's heads at 14, 15, 16 and they could make decisions with eyes wide open instead of once they've taken on student loans or once they've made decisions that are really hard. We know no decision is impossible to dial back, but some decisions are more difficult than not. I think we all would admit to that. So I guess the most succinct answer, Emily, is that I would love to see fire principles which I think to Katie's point, it's the sensationalist nonsense the that gets in the media. So even somebody as well meaning as Morgan Housel who we talk about the psychology of money all the time. This is at its essence. He is a FI guy but when you hear him on podcasts he actually talks down about the fire movement. And it's just out of ignorance. It actually shocks me how ignorant he is on the fire movement. But it's just about this is what he's heard. And if someone as intelligent and as clued in as Morgan Housel is like that, then you have to assume everybody else is too. So how can we have better PR if you will? And I think frankly we've tried really really hard at choose a VI to take this from the brown bananas and the 30 something white male who has a tech job and that being the only archetype for what was FI and we look around the room here at 115 people here who spent an entire weekend of their lives coming to an event. And this room looks nothing like white guys in their 30s who are in tech jobs. And that frankly fills me with great joy because that is something that I wished for when we created this. I hated the fact that this was just for people who were extreme or were one particular little niche that it made no sense. This is fi is a superpower. This is a fundamental truth in life. It just is. And thankfully we've been able to spread this message, but we have a long way to go. Right? So. So there's that. That's the actual substance of pie. My kind of pie in the sky. I would love to see more communities pop up where five people live in close proximity. Now, it doesn't have to be a co housing community or something, something bizarre, but Longmont, Colorado is a perfect example. There have been people, that's where Pete, Mr. Money Mustache is from. And, and I think there's now a couple dozen people, we'll say families, houses, whatever you want to call it, who have descended on Longmont and they get together every now and again and they do things and they're part of each other's lives. I know Alan and Katie are trying to travel and figure out where they want to live in the future. I suspect very strongly they're going to live where some other five people are. Right. And like, yeah, you never know when that starts a trend because we get so much value from these events. And the reason why is you're having conversations that you're not in real life. You're actually diving deep. You're not talking about the mundanity and the, and the nonsense. Right. You're talking about real things and you instantly connect and that kind of thing, it really matters. It nourishes the soul and I'd love to see more of that. It doesn't necessarily need to be some contrived way, but like I suspect my pie in the sky 10, 20 years from now is the flight community looks like some communities where, you know, if you move there that there would be other people like you there. Now that doesn't mean you have to do that. Obviously none of this nonsense, but I think that would be pretty neat. So the next question we have is from Lila.
- [14:36]
B
How have you gone about overcoming fear in order to live your extraordinary lives?
- [14:42]
C
It's another question with a long pause and the whole audience going, fear. Have you overcome fear? Katie?
- [14:52]
D
Implying like there's an absence of fear in my Life.
- [14:56]
C
No, well, that.
- [14:57]
A
Right. That's the interesting thing. Like, yeah. Do we want to parse the word overcome or do we want to talk about.
- [15:02]
C
I think you never overcome it because you're doing new things and then you're like, well, I'm afraid of this thing or this happens or you get nervous again. And part of life and doing things is stepping outside your comfort zone. And we have this expression that we always repeat that is everything you want in life is outside your comfort zone, otherwise you'd already have it. If you were comfortable getting it, you would just do it and take it, but you're probably not. So the thing you actually want is outside your comfort zone. So you're going to have fear, discomfort and those things in your life. And I guess you could take the word overcome to like the absence of fear in your life or you could take it to mean I've acted in spite of it and I think most of my time has gone well, I'm just going to act in spite of it. And my biggest thing is don't let it become big. How do you make big fear? You ruminate over it. You allow it to run around in your head. You ask really bad questions like, what could go wrong? How could this go badly? What if I mess it up? What if this goes wrong? What if they don't like me? You can ask a bunch of bad questions and feel really bad about something and you make fear big. If you want to do that to feel better out of conquering it, then great. But I would avoid all of those questions and just take action. And I found the quicker you take action, the less you ruminate and the easier it is. So we're back to the sort of three second rule of I have this thing that I want to do. Don't bother overthinking it. 1, 2, 3, go. Then I don't have time to ask all those questions and I just make it happen. And I think I haven't eliminated fear, but I've reduced it by acting before it can get a grip of me.
- [16:51]
D
When I get that feeling in my belly of, oh, nervous, or you could call it fear. I guess it's usually because I'm imagining all the ways it could go wrong. So it's a training of myself to focus on how I want it to go. So take this weekend as an example. It's like it could be quite nervous to talk in front of 115 people for a few hours a day. And yeah, I did get nervous because I started imagining like, oh, what Are they going to think and have I got anything useful to say? And how is this going to go? And it's a practice in the training to then focus on what you want or how you want it to go. So then start imagining all the happy faces. And the big one as well was like, oh, it's not about me and what I say. I'm trying to help people. And the minute you can focus on others and stop making it about you, that really helps as well.
- [17:47]
C
Brad, talking about focusing on others.
- [17:49]
A
Oh, yeah, I should talk to me. I think action, as you said, it is the antidote. It's the antidote to fear, right? Like, you have to get up and take action and you, you experiment and you test. I was. I was talking with my daughters yesterday about a whole bunch of things like imposter syndrome and public speaking and also standing up. And maybe sometimes I think what's so interesting about imposter syndrome is a lot of us, a lot of us, me, I would say almost all of us feel it in many areas of life. And I don't look at that as a bad thing anymore. And I think everything is about reframing. So I could say, I think undoubtedly in this room, there are multiple people who know more about personal finance than I do and the nuts and bolts of money. I genuinely believe that. And I could choose to let that debilitate me in terms of who am I, who am I to get up here and be one of the leaders of this community? Or I could reframe it as I think I add value in a unique way. I think I'm able to synthesize and simplify things because I have a significant background in personal finance and in accounting. I'm also able to look at things from a beginner's mindset. And I think that is my unique value in terms of I can take this. And then I can also remember using empathy, right? I think empathy is a superpower as far as I'm concerned. Trying to remember what it was like when I didn't know this stuff. And I think that's really an interesting thing that I try to do. I hope I succeed at that. I'm able to slow down, I'm able to ask questions, I'm able to clarify. And I don't need to be the world's foremost expert in something I'm never going to be. I'm not going to be Big Earn. I'm not going to be Cody Garrett or Frank Vasquez or Aubrey Williams. I'm just not. So I can sit there. I went to Campfire recently and I was on a panel for a case study with Aubrey, who is absolutely brilliant and he knows his numbers inside and out. But I'm able to bring value in a different way. I'm able to talk about really diving into what's your motivation, what are your feelings? And also because I am pretty quick with mental math and things like that, I'm able to very quickly look at anomalous points and data and et cetera. Like I, I obviously I have an aptitude at that, but I don't need to be the best in the world. So that's me. And I'm using this as a microcosm for. When you look at yourself, it's easy to get bogged down in, in this imposter syndrome, it just is. But you undoubtedly add unique value in some way. So I think, like Alan and Katie have said this morning, it's the reticular activating system. It's like, what am I looking for? If I'm looking for the good, I'm undoubtedly going to find it. If I'm looking for the bad, I am undoubtedly going to find it, which is a better strategy. The good, clearly, why would. If you're going to find it either way, if you're going to find corroborating evidence either way, why not look for the good? It's just, it's a better bet. It's just a better bet for a successful life. So that's what you should hone in on. And I think again, like, you can also get better at things. It is crazy to me that I'm up here talking in front of 115 people effortlessly. This would have been impossible. This would have debilitated me 20 years ago. Absolutely debilitated. I know that probably seems hard to believe, but it just truly would have. And it's about practice. Whatever it is you're looking to overcome or whatever fear, whatever you're looking to get better at, you can practice in subtle little ways. And it doesn't have to be Machiavellian or some weird thing, but, but I, in conversations I feel like energy flow. So I'm looking for. Hey, when I said something, did that get a good response? If I take a pause in a conversation, does that sometimes that really helps. That actually draws people in. So I look at it as, I'm just testing things. I'm testing how to hone my craft. And I think it's fun. It just makes life fun. So I know it could sound a little contrived and it's probably, I probably don't do it as, as much as I'm exactly describing it, but it's interesting and it's, it's a fun thing. And I think again, I'm talking very specifically about me here, but I think it is broadly applicable.
- [22:11]
C
Summary for me is success is not the absence of fear. Success is taking action despite fear. I don't think that's all I need to say. Mic drop.
- [22:20]
A
Yeah, that is, that is, yeah. Literally, absolutely.
- [22:24]
C
I'm not actually going to drop Jonathan's microphones.
- [22:27]
A
Jonathan has left the building, so we can do whatever we want. All right, our next question is from CT.
- [22:34]
E
I'm a parent of a 5 year old and an 11 year old and so I'm thinking about lifestyle design and how to be a better parent with both financial and time freedom. And so my question is what examples have you seen in your life or within the community that people have taken to improve this area?
- [22:55]
A
Yeah, that, that's a real good one. I, I think for me, I have always tried to meet my daughters where they are, but also subtly influence them in ways that, that will help guide and teach them. And I think there are age appropriate things and I think there are ways to, well, as I said, lean into what, lean into what your kids are interested in. But also I try to weave five stories and lessons into everyday life. So as people are probably sick and tired of me saying my older daughter is really into roller coasters and amusement parks. So I actually taught her an entire personal finance lesson. Literally a two hour conversation built around one of the company. It was Cedar Fair at the time was a publicly traded company and we even dove into the quarterly reports and talked about what would it look like to build a business. So Alan and Katie have a significant background in entrepreneurship and this would, I think they would have been proud of me. It's like I was able to, to talk about, okay, is one roller coaster, does that make a park? Would someone come for that or would they just pay for that ride? And then we kept extrapolating to okay, what would it look like if. And then you kept going and then just talking about all the various aspects and thinking about business and I even had her buy some of the stock and we got in touch with the general manager of our local park and like it was just such a fun lesson that just kept going and going and it was literally a multi year email friendship that my at the time, 14 year old had with the, at the time the woman who was in charge of our Local park was one of the most powerful business women in the state of Virginia and my 14 year old daughter had her as an email contact. That was just really neat and it was fun. So I think there are ways to do that. I think there are age appropriate lessons just in terms of even like board games. We talk about board games all the time in our community. I think there's ways to teach strategy, I think there's ways to teach. How do you. One of my jokes in the household and Molly can probably corroborate this was like we have rules of like for instance, Barretts don't cheat. That was just like a game rule. And also Barrett's aren't sore losers. So like I hear from other people like oh my kids are, they get sad when they lose or whatever. It's like, well you kind of allowed that in some level like that and it wasn't, it wasn't like I heavy handed said you're not allowed to be sad when you lose. But we understood losing is part of a game. It's. It happens all the time. You pick yourself up and we play again and we shake each other's hands and we have high fives and we, and we have fun. And also another thing is you can, your kids are so much more capable than you even think they are. They're extraordinary. I talked about on a recent podcast that I went back to one of the early episodes. I was talking about Molly, who was 5 at the time. She couldn't read, but she was playing adult board games like Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, Monopoly, Deal and she couldn't read, but she just memorized what each card did and she could play with any adult at any table anywhere in the world. And she was 5 years old. And it's because we believed in her, we trusted her and we knew that she could do it and we of course we taught her and et cetera. But that was wonderful to see her grow into that. And I think kids can do so much more than we necessarily give them credit for sometimes. And I think also there are ways to talk about personal finance that I kind of joke that I haven't really been too heavy handed or maybe I haven't taught them enough about personal finance. But we learn age appropriate lessons so with allowance and spending and then you could start incentivize saving and doing these other things. Like there are always ways to play games and have fun with this while teaching your kids really interesting lessons. So yeah, I think there are really fun ways to include your kids and as they get older, they can become much more involved. We actually recently went and opened them their own checking accounts. We used to have their saving and et cetera, the spending and giving on a spreadsheet. And it just honestly that it didn't land as well as I hoped that it would. It just, it wasn't as visceral. But now Molly and Anna are in charge of, of their own spreadsheets. And now we leveled it up one more, which is they have their own checking account. So now I'm hands off, but I'm also teaching them, hey, you set up. I'm going to eventually get them a credit card. You set it up on autopay and the money comes out and it's. They really see it. Hey, when I go to Lululemon and I spend $49 on whatever Molly, Molly buys as she's mortified here, that's going to come out of my bank account. And it really, I see it. So again, I'm trying to paint the picture of there's just so many ways to do this and it's fun. Just lean into it.
- [28:01]
C
I have one addition which I think is, as you all know, people learn by copying. So I think the best thing a parent can do is work on their own happiness, work on their own state, and become the kind of person that you want your child to become. And that's one of the biggest gifts you can give them is being the person they can just model. That's it. I have nothing else to add.
- [28:25]
A
Alan's very good with these mic jobs and ct. More specifically to your question, I kind of went on a ramble about personal finance and specifics, but I think at the end of the day, FI affords us the ability to live the lives that we want. And when you have time freedom, or even that time freedom, you don't have to be at 5, but having additional, additional resources and eventually time, it allows you to give your kids the only thing that they really want, which is you. So I wish there were specifics that I could think of off the top of my head, but I think of it as high level of just, okay, I get to be there more. And as we've talked about so many times about that, the article the Tail End by a guy named Tim Urban. You know, you spend about 90% of the time you'll ever spend with your kids by the time they turn 18 years old. So that season of life is rapidly approaching the end for all of us. No matter how young your kids, if, even if your kids are Two, you have to be cognizant of that. So I look at that as like the North Star. And yeah, being Phi and having resources is going to help. It just is. But being aware of the finite nature of time in conjunction with that is even more important. And it's not to say like kids need expensive vacations or need expensive anything, but it does allow you opportunities to do things that maybe you otherwise would have said no to. And because you said no to it, you might have just wasted the time otherwise. That's the fear that I have is we're just going to waste days away. And I think just applying some intentionality just, just in every aspect of life is a benefit. All right, the next question is from Theresa. What's the most extraordinary place you've ever
- [30:13]
D
been and what made it so memorable for you?
- [30:16]
C
So I think my answer would be, there's Victoria Falls in Zambia, in Africa, and there's a hotel right next to the falls. It's one of the fanciest hotels I've ever sat at. But you could have breakfast outside with the falls in front of you, with zebras grazing the grass, monkeys playing above you, the most amazing coffee and a fabulous eggs Benedict. It was like everything I could have ever dreamed of. And I remember sitting there, we spent three days there. I just thought I could live here. I couldn't quite afford to live there, but it was incredible. And being in Africa, seeing the animals playing, it was just a magical experience. And I think sometimes you get moments like that where you're sat somewhere with a view. There are animals, there's nature, and there's good food. Those magic ingredients come together and obviously Katie was there, which just made it even better. But that kind of experience. So that was one of the highlight experiences traveling around the world.
- [31:23]
D
We're very lucky to have been to a lot of extraordinary places, having traveled for six years now. But the one that came to mind from Theresa's question, like the knee jerk reaction, was one from years and years ago when Alan and I first met and we were in Costa Rica in a place called Manuel Antonio. And there was this big, big hill to climb up to get to this restaurant that we wanted to go to. And there was a bus. But we were, we were young and we were too cheap to pay for the bus. So we decided to walk up this hill and got very hot and sweaty. But we arrived at this restaurant which was called El Avion, which is Spanish for plane, is a plane that is on the side of the cliff and it has decks built out of it. So it's a restaurant up there. And we came over a little bit early than anyone else. And the guy was like, I've got the perfect table for you. He put us in the corner table overlooking this beautiful panoramic scenery. And he was like, have you seen the monkeys around here? And we're like, well, a little bit. And he's like, well, let me. Let me introduce you to some more. So we got out a banana and was calling into the forest, and this monkey came over with a young monkey on its back. What's a young monkey? Baby. Thank you.
- [32:35]
A
Technical term.
- [32:36]
D
A baby monkey on her back. Its back, I guess. And I'm thinking about the. The hygiene standards here, but the monkeys are on our tables. And yeah, it was just this magical, beautiful experience. And I think when you say, what's been the most extraordinary place, it's those memories of the people and the moments, perhaps more so than the place itself. Like, I've had such wonderful experiences. It's got perhaps nothing to do with the place. I mean, that clearly did because of the description I've given you. And then the sunset is one of the most beautiful I've seen in my life with, you know, when it's cloudy and you can see all the different colors. Like, it was purple and orange and pink, and it seemed to last the whole evening. I think perhaps I was a little bit loved up as well. We'd only just met, so, you know, there was the, like, love drug thing going on as well.
- [33:23]
C
It was also one of the best burgers I've ever had in my life.
- [33:27]
D
You had two, I believe.
- [33:28]
C
I did. It was so good. I had burger for main, burger for dessert.
- [33:32]
D
But we just sat. They had these rocking chairs on the. Were they rocking chairs?
- [33:36]
C
They were rocking chairs.
- [33:37]
D
We were just like. We were so smug. We're like, this is amazing. We just had good food and, like, banana milkshakes and. Yeah, it was a wonderful evening. So that's what came to mind when Theresa asked.
- [33:49]
A
Yeah, that's cool. I'm curious for both of you, though, about building an extraordinary life, which is. Yeah, like you said, it is certainly about interesting places and amazing places. But I know you've both traveled for five plus years now, and it isn't. It's about who you're with. It's about establishing a life. And what's so interesting is you're actually looking to slow down on your travel from conversations we've had. I'd love to know the interplay of, like, how you consider the place Versus, hey, we're settling into a routine that we're thrilled with. We're settling into a life that we're happy with that. So I guess that's. My question is I know that it's a subtle distinction, but it's all well and good, and you guys aren't doing this. Of course, this is not the type of travel you do. But a lot of people travel and check boxes. And I've always just had this visceral recoil when that happens. It's like they're just taking pictures or checking a box, and that doesn't seem like a wonderful way to do it. So for me, it's never been about the police. I'll even go to cities now. And not even. I do love museums. I don't want to seem like a Luddite by any means, but I don't need to see the 75th temple that I've ever seen or the 700th temple or that I want to experience local life. I want to. I want to really be there. And I'd love for you guys to talk about that for a minute. Of. Of how you think about travel versus settling down versus being somewhere for some period of time.
- [35:24]
C
There's several concepts. One is fast travel versus slow travel. And your average person has one week of holiday. They try and go to a new country and see everything of the country in one week. And it's exhausting. And we've realized I don't really like the travel part of travel. I like the being part of travel. I want to be there and exist there. So we try and travel less. And you stay in a place for two months or three months, and you actually exist in the culture. You live the way the people do. You experience stuff. We sign up to a gym, we do all of those things. And then we do one or two touristy things.
- [36:08]
D
Sometimes.
- [36:09]
C
Sometimes. Sometimes we like. I really don't want to do touristy things. I just want to live, and I just want to have an incredible time. We were in Brazil for three months last year. We stayed near the beach. And there's a cafe. It's in a fort. And you sit overlooking Copacabana beach with your breakfast and your coffee. It's like one of my favorite places to be. But I didn't go up Sugarloaf Mountain. Shock, horror. I didn't do the touristy thing the place is famous for. I just existed. And it was a wonderful time and it was lovely. And the reason we have started to think we want to find somewhere to hang out. Slow down is because the travel is exhausting. The being there is great. There is a massive cognitive load to changing locations. Every time you move to a new place you have to refigure out. Washing, drying food, health gym, everything where to buy stuff. But that takes so much of your brain power. You've got nothing left to give for the first week you get there and talk about millionaires goals. I really want a washing machine, I really want a tumble dryer. Not owned one of those for six years now. And I would quite like to have my laundry done at home and not have it destroyed by laundromats and all the other places. But that's how we've started to think about like slowing down and doing it and why we have.
- [37:45]
D
The other cognitive load is not just when you arrive in a place but the constant planning of where am I sleeping? Not quite tonight, but depending how far ahead we've planned. Is the constant like, okay, where are we traveling and do we have flights, do I need a visa or what are the entry requirements? And that constant planning ahead. Of course, it's a really cool life and that's one of the costs to it of the planning that you have to do.
- [38:09]
C
In two weeks time, we have nowhere to live.
- [38:11]
D
Oh, sorry, I'd put that out of my mind.
- [38:16]
C
In two weeks time we literally have nowhere to stay and we need to book somewhere and I need to find the time to do that and it takes time to research like where do you want to stay, where do you want to live, what area of town?
- [38:28]
D
I think we're excited to invest more of our time and energy into the projects that we're doing. You know, with the work that we do to try and help people, we'll have more energy and capacity to do that if we're not spending our time figuring out where we are figuring out life.
- [38:42]
A
But also I think what's important is life is about experimentation. And it doesn't mean that because you, for this season of your life, this upcoming one, that you've decided to settle down that it renders everything else mood that it was a bad decision to travel for six years just because in this season of life I've had the most amazing. Of course you have.
- [39:03]
D
I did almost want to. A little bit of vom came up in my mouth when you said settle down as well. Something in me just reacts to that. It's like, I don't know, like that's like a bad thing maybe. I need to, I need to work on that. Brad?
- [39:16]
C
Yeah.
- [39:17]
A
I have a workshop for you.
- [39:20]
C
You're absolutely right. We've had an amazing six years. I've traveled to 50 plus countries. I've experimented and had a wonderful time. And then you do start to know, like, oh, my values match the values of these countries more than the other countries. And I definitely can't force a country to change its values.
- [39:40]
D
We have had long conversations where we've thought about trying, haven't we?
- [39:44]
C
Yes.
- [39:45]
D
We're not going to change the whole way that a country figures out their traffic system. Much as we have debated for countless hours.
- [39:52]
C
I feel like I could improve it, though. Put me as I could sort this out. I know I could improve it. I know we could make it. And also, that's not my mission. I'm helping people with finances. I don't need to fix the traffic in Bogota.
- [40:06]
A
All right, so our next question is from Jeremy.
- [40:10]
E
So the fire movement has proven through real life examples that there's more ways than one to achieve fire. To reach our fire number, what advice, whether general or specific, would you have for those of us who have full time jobs, but we want to build up a second stream of income? Maybe it's starting a business, maybe it's pursuing something completely unrelated to our primary job, but we're interested in it. What advice would you have? And again, specific or general? Thank you.
- [40:36]
C
I get excited about this question because sometimes people see it as binary. One of Katie's favorite sayings is it's not binary. Nothing is binary. It's not have a full time job or do entrepreneurship. You can run mini experiments and I love the term mini experiment. If you want to find out how to make money doing something, go volunteer for someone who's really successful and makes money doing it and see how they do it. Give them your time, learn, experiment. You want to volunteer doing that, That's a great way to do it. The second way is to test your ideas. Quite often people like, oh, I wonder if I could launch this business. Why don't we try? Let's build a free website, create an offer, put it in front of an audience, ask them to buy and see what happens. If they buy, you have a business, if they buy. If they don't, you have feedback. Because there's so many tests we could do. What it's talking about is boiling it down to what's the simplest next step so that I can experiment and make it happen. So if you have a full time job and you want to experiment, I really think you should as quickly as possible and do these mini experiments where you can learn fast. And entrepreneurship as it was traditionally designed, fail slow and fail expensively. If you're going to fail, you're going to have written a business plan, borrowed a lot of money, put two years of your life into it, and then it's gone wrong. That's a huge risk and that is failing slowly and expensively. Our expression is if you're going to fail, fail fast and fail cheap. Like, if it's going to go wrong, let's get it done quickly and without the pain. So let's run a mini experiment, do it within a month, ask a bunch of people to buy without investing our money, and then we'll know quickly whether those ideas work. And I would say if you've got a stable job, that is a wonderful thing to have because it frees you to be able to run these experiments as quickly as possible. So I would say let's fail fast, let's fail cheap. Let's test all of your ideas as quickly as possible because one of your ideas might be good. I know a lot of my ideas are terrible and I have to test them quickly.
- [42:52]
D
And the cool thing about the word experiment is it gives you permission to fail in inverted comments because, oh, it was an experiment, it didn't work out. And I think that protects your ego a little bit as well, doesn't it? Not like, oh, I'm launching this business and oh, what are people going to think if it goes wrong? Well, who cares? But also, it was an experiment. Oh, it didn't work out. Okay, I'll do something else.
- [43:11]
C
Yeah, don't tell anyone. Just do a test in your spare time, see what happens. If the test goes well, then you can tell people afterwards. Jeremy's smiling.
- [43:19]
A
That's a good sign.
- [43:20]
C
Yes.
- [43:21]
A
Yeah, I guess for me it's all about, about learning and testing, like they're saying. So I had a series of little side businesses that I started over a number of years and frankly most of them by any financial perspective, failed. But I don't look at that as wasted time. I look at it as I learned valuable lessons and skills, frankly, but lessons most importantly each and every time. And I was able to. It sounds cliche at this point, but fail forward, right? Like it's a corporate speak. But I failed forward on each of these and I learned a little bit more about myself every single time. And I think like Alan's alluding to having, having a full time job enables you to realize it's not a burn the boat situation. Right. Like, I think for me that was something at the time I Had two young daughters. I was not just going to up and quit my safe accounting job on a whim, on an idea. I wanted to, for my own, for my own brain and my own self. I wanted to prove this out. And I was able to get a small amount of success a la Alan and build it, test it. Can I work this? And I'm doing this on an hour a day. Okay, well, what would that look like if I now had eight hours a day? That's a totally different ballgame. And then I did have immense amount of belief in myself, but I really needed to test it first and I was able to do that. And then you do get to a point where you are going to have to make a decision. And I think following the path to FI gives us more freedom and flexibility to do that because you're not riding on the edge of personal finance at all times. For most people, if they lost their job or their income in whatever way went away, their lives would crumble within the next 90 days. But that clearly is not the people in this room. That's not the people listening to this podcast. We are all, no matter where we are. And that doesn't mean that we're all wildly wealthy. We're all taking steps to make our lives better. That's the most important thing. It doesn't matter if you are $300,000 in debt now or you have $300,000 sitting in a checking account. You are making steps to make your life better. And I think part of it is also having the fun and opportunity to build something on the side. It's not a prerequisite. I would say the vast majority of people in the FI community don't necessarily have a side hustle. But what do you think?
- [45:52]
C
If you have a great paying job that you enjoy, you don't need a side hustle. Like, it's actually will probably be a step backwards because then you're putting a bunch of time into something else. And you could just like enjoy your job, earn a lot of money and spend time with your kids. You don't need to. But if you don't have a great job that's well paid, then maybe you want to. And actually sometimes you can find something in the side hustle that brings you to life, gives you something that you're missing elsewhere. That can be incredible.
- [46:21]
A
But it's also paying the price was an exercise that you guys did this weekend. And I think of that both in terms of what are you willing to pay for whatever this is, but also it enables you to think about what do I have in reserve to pay for this. So in my instance, I had some time. It wasn't a ton of time, but I was willing to put in 10 or 20 hours a week on testing this I'm learning on growing. And if I looked just on a year by year basis while these things were failing, it looked like a failure. But again, I was willing to pay that price to learn and it enabled me, frankly. And of course there's some survivorship bias on this that like it did turn out okay. But I would like to believe that even if it wasn't choose if I or travel miles one on one, that I would have kept testing and iterating until I found something that was successful. And that was a fun process. I mean, of course there were times where, where it was frustrating, but that, that's part of life. Nothing good in life comes easy. It just doesn't. That's part of the fun is overcoming something that's really, really difficult and feeling damn good about yourself in the process.
- [47:33]
C
The exercise Brad was referring to is the one that starts with, you can have anything in life you want if you're willing to pay the price up front and in full. And when we're talking about price, most people's minds jump to money. But there are actually five main different currencies you can pay with. You can pay with time, you can pay with energy, you can pay with an emotional cost. You have to deal with failure, deal with awkward conversations, deal with all those things. You can pay with the opportunity cost. Doing this one thing means you can't do the other thing.
- [48:07]
D
And the fifth is money.
- [48:10]
C
The one I forgot is the one that everyone thinks of. The fifth is money. And those are the five ways you can pay for it. But you can have anything you want in life if you're willing to pay the cost. Cost of a side hustle normally time and energy and willing to fail.
- [48:24]
A
All right, Martin's up next. I'm surrounded by Brits on all sides here. So that's here, man.
- [48:31]
F
So extraordinary people come in all shapes and sizes. They come from all over the world and they come from a variety of backgrounds. But what traits, beliefs or mindset do all extraordinary people have in common?
- [48:47]
C
So for my list, I would say number one, they believe they can do it. So the commonality amongst people is they have at least enough belief to have a go and to experiment. There's so many people that are afraid of things. They don't do things. They just sit at home and there's this concept of not watching the game, but getting in the game, stop watching Netflix, stop watching other people play the sport and play the sport yourself. And extraordinary people do things. They make things happen and they do things. And we've actually come to believe, Katie and I, that it's a rare skill that someone can make things happen. That might seem strange, but how many people do you know that don't organize things? They just lament there's no community in their neighborhood. They don't make things happen. They don't start the podcast, build the movement, organize the community, make the breakfast and invite everyone over. There's actually very few people who just do it, create it and invite people. That sounds really strange. I don't think there's actually a very high bar to extraordinary. It's a little bit of self belief, the ability to do things, taking action and learning every time. I think there's actually a very low bar to extraordinary in the world.
- [50:10]
D
And the word extraordinary. It's kind of hard, isn't it? Because you're not going to like, declare yourself to be extraordinary. Well, perhaps that's a British thing. Do you American people declare yourselves to be extraordinary?
- [50:21]
A
All the time.
- [50:22]
D
Nice. Do that more, please. And I think I just want to take that pressure off. Like, what does extraordinary even mean? To me, it's living life on your terms, doing what you want to do. And Alan listed a bunch of things of making stuff happen. And that's great. But if you don't want to and you want to do a solo project and sit on your own and master something, I don't know, whatever it is, there's such a broad definition for extraordinary. Extraordinary. To me, what conjures or what did before I thought about this bit more was somehow impressive. You don't have to be impressive, you just have to do you. And that's had so many different flavors. So I guess tying back in with what Alan said is like the confidence to do that or the. The willingness to be different.
- [51:18]
A
Yeah, I think it's. Well, there's so many things, but open to new situations, I think to me is clearly a major aspect. But taking control, like Alan saying, it's a rare skill that people step up, but that doesn't mean that people can't do it. We're not saying that at all. I think it's just that people don't feel they have agency. My girls have talked, they play Minecraft and things like that. So they've illuminated me on the term NPC, which is non player character. So it's like the 90% of the characters that are just kind of like moving around and doing nothing and walking in circles. And I think people in the FI community are the antithesis of these NPCs. And I think that's what makes a lot of us extraordinary, is we grab life by the collar and we go out there and we do things and we try and we learn and we don't have. I think one of the biggest things, and this ties into the workshop that Alan and Katie gave today, which is it's easy to get bogged down in a fixed mindset of I am such and such. Even positive things. I am smart, I am whatever. Many of them are going to be negative, but even positive ones, it locks you into a little box. And I think what makes an extraordinary life is leaning into the opposite, which is the growth mindset of I can learn anything, I can do anything. I'm letting my interests lead me, and that might take you places that you couldn't have imagined. I don't know if any of us. I don't want to speak for YouTube, but I couldn't have imagined sitting here, literally 10 years ago when I was, no joke, three miles up the road in an office park, doing corporate state tax returns. This would have been utterly inconceivable. But I leaned into serendipity, I leaned into situations. I said yes, I learned, I tried, I failed at a lot of things, but it turned out okay. And again, even if it didn't turn into this, I suspect it would have turned into something really interesting. And I think that's just a better way to go through life. So I think another thing that makes people extraordinary and both being interested and interesting, I think that's one you unfortunately, often you have conversations with people, or what purports to be a conversation. It's just someone, like, spewing words at you. And I'm always struck by, like, just slow down. Like, maybe ask me a question, be interested, and their lives would be enriched. And I don't mean to. To castigate other people necessarily, but because I want this to be positive. But I try to take an interest in other people, even if it's somebody that I might, on the face of it, not know if I have anything in common with. And sometimes that's the best thing is having nothing in common and learning, just asking questions, diving deep. That's why we find value at FI community events. And this is not limited to the FI community. I don't want. Don't want anybody to think, like, I'm saying we, we are special, let's be clear. But, but not that we're the only special people, but I think these are the things that build an extraordinary life.
- [54:23]
C
The quickest way to be interesting is to be interested.
- [54:27]
D
Oh, the number of times that I've had conversations with people like, and they have spoken at me at night here this weekend. No, no, no, not here. Nice caveat. And then at the end they go, oh, wow, you're really interesting. And it's like you don't know anything about me. Yeah.
- [54:48]
A
All right, so our next question is
- [54:50]
F
from Matt for the teen audience and second generation Phi Brad. We both have teenagers, one already preparing to depart high school and planning to attend college. How did your own household and your oldest daughter sort out what is to follow after high school as far as career and education? Allen, Katie, Brad, what would you suggest as potential next steps for high school seniors and juniors who are increasingly concerned that they don't yet have a vision or plan for after high school, including the big question, college or not.
- [55:24]
A
Thank you. Okay, so I'll take the first half of that while we buy time for really the essential part at the end there. So, and that's, I'm not sure if we're going to be able to answer that today. Okay. So in our house, Matt, that's, it's an interesting one. And, and I think this is also an area where the practical realities of life sometimes intersect with the Phi utopia. And the perfect world scenario isn't always the path taken. So for years on the show I've talked about all the different five hacks that there can be for college, especially even in the state of Virginia. We have a, what's known as a guaranteed admissions program where you can go to a community college right out of high school, go to a two year community college, get an associate's degree. And this is the most amazing program if you, and this is a contractual thing with the state of Virginia. So if you get a 3.4 GPA and you take certain classes, dot some I's, cross some T's, you get guaranteed admissions to any of the state universities, including some of the best in the entire nation, like University of Virginia and the College of William and Mary. So this is an amazing way to get college at almost half price. So I know that. Right. But that doesn't mean that that is necessarily the optimal scenario for my life, my daughter's life, or what we think is best for her, which is really interesting. So hopefully this is going to give, give everybody out there some license to, to have some grace for yourself, not just with college, but with everything it's. You can know there's an optimal path and choose with eyes wide open to not take it. So another one that I just talked about recently and I actually got this really sweet email in response to it which was precisely that, like thank you for giving me a little bit of space to dot that in this, in this particular instance it was, I was talking about the car that we bought for with her help, she, she certainly helped buy it. But for my older daughter and even though we talk in the FI community about buying used cars, right, this is almost sacrosanct at this point, but when it's your 15 and a half year old, 16 year old, whatever it was, who is getting into a 2,000 pound machine of death, like you want something pretty safe and if you have the resources and the ability to do that and she buys into it and helps and we make lessons around it like that made a lot more sense for us than getting her. And of course this is limiting beliefs, right? Because that's implying that a used car is by definition not as safe, not implying that at all. There were certain safety features that we really liked in this particular new car. And I still found a way to save some money on this and it was fun and et cetera. But like that was a decision that Brad, circa eight years ago would have recoiled in horror at. But I think it was the right decision for us and our family and my daughter and her safety. So I think in the case of my daughter, she is going directly to a four year university out of high school and I think that's the right decision for her. Now I know we'll talk about this in a minute, the three of us, but whether the value of college and all these things and changing landscapes with AI and job loss, et cetera, we could probably spend five hours, the 115 of us navigating that and that's obviously outside the scope of what we have time for. But sometimes you make decisions based on certain values even if it's not the exactly optimal scenario in terms of nuts and bolts of money. So in this case, the social experience for my daughter I think is going to be really, really valuable. And that's why that was the family decision for her to go to a four year college. Now she also has buy into this. So I think every family is going to have something different when it comes to how is it paid for, are there student loans, et cetera, when frankly like we have resources and she doesn't have to have student loans, but she's going to be responsible for at least one of the four years. And I think there are ways that we can teach financial lessons around this. So, yeah, that's a very long way of saying, I don't know. I don't know what the right answer is. But I think you do the best you can and I think you make the decisions based on the information you have at the time. And that doesn't mean five years from now we won't look back and say, oh, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe we could have done something different. But I think that's part of life is updating our thinking, updating our reasoning, learning new things. And is she still going to apply for scholarships and other things? Yeah, you bet. And I think that's also something fun for her to do as well. So I think just like anything, and this is where my rambling before with CT's question was, there are ways to build lessons into anything. And I think at the end of the day, that's what I want for my daughters more than anything. I don't exactly remember what I learned in college, but I learned broadly how to think. And I think that's really, really important. And I've tried to do that all along of their childhood is to try to help them think through situations. And I hope that's what they continue on in their education.
- [60:55]
D
So the second part of the question was, what advice would we give to teens coming up to finishing high school and not really sure about what's next for them? It feels like such a big life and death decision at that age, isn't it? Like, what are you going to do after high school? How are you going to do? What are you choosing for the rest of your life? Jeez, no wonder they feel pressure. Is it for the rest of their lives or is it just the next decision? And is there a way we can phrase this as a mini experiment of let's try something?
- [61:28]
C
I will build on that and take the pressure off completely and say, to college or not to college. You can be successful. Either way doesn't really matter. Some jobs you do need a degree, some jobs you do not. But you can be successful either way. Shock, horror. I don't have a degree. I never went to university. I never did any of that. It hasn't stopped me doing anything. I have taught at universities. I have taught on MBA courses.
- [61:56]
D
Did they not ask to see your degree?
- [61:58]
C
No, they did not. Maybe they will in the future. Having heard this for me, I feel as Though I have been successful, I've won awards, I've done cool stuff, I have a beautiful wife, we're financially independent. That's a wonderful amount of success. Don't need any more. And I didn't need a college degree to do it. So for all of the young people out there, take the pressure off. Whether you go or you don't, it's cool. You can still be successful. Second thought, I have this idea that obviously a lot of my analogies are based around food. I'm now realizing, do you like ice cream? How do you know which flavor of ice cream is your favorite?
- [62:38]
D
I've tried all of them.
- [62:41]
C
If you're anything like me, you go to the supermarket, buy every flavour and sit there trying them all and you will find out. How do you know what job you want to do? How do you know what thing you want to do? How do you know what you want to go test? And at that age, I think there's so much pressure to make the right decision. We forget to do the testing phase. Let them test, let them try stuff, Organize some work experience, try some different things, volunteer places, test. There's no pressure at that young age. So I would suggest young people try some ice cream.
- [63:20]
A
I like that. Yeah, I totally agree and I think lower the pressure. Right? So, like, I had no idea what I wanted to do at 17. I still don't. Right. I mean, yeah, when I grow up, I'm not sure when that's going to happen, but I. I don't know that anybody really, except some select lucky few know exactly what they want to be when they're 17. So I would say just take a breath and experiment and try things and figure it out and know that we're all making this up as we go along and that's the fun of life.
- [63:51]
C
Even the adults?
- [63:52]
A
Even the adults.
- [63:53]
D
Especially the adult, yes.
- [63:54]
A
I tell my girls all the time, I basically say in terms of phi, and I truly do believe phi is a superpower. And I think if you can orient your life around, no matter what you earn, saving approximately 50% of your income from the beginning, you can't help but be wildly successful. You just can't help it. Now, is that plausible for every single person, every situation? No, of course not. But again, being directionally accurate, can you build a life that you can save a significant amount of money? I think that is going to set up a life of success and will allow you to test and iterate and figure out what you want. And we all have second acts, we all have third Acts. We, most of us have seventh and eighth acts, and we're just figuring it out as we go along. So, yeah, I mean, speaking directly to those kids, it's just we're all still doing this. We're all figuring it out. And that is the fun. That's the spice of life. It really, truly is.
- [64:49]
C
Should we go for ice cream?
- [64:50]
A
Let's do I only eat vanilla?
- [64:54]
D
You're so vanilla.
- [64:55]
A
I know, I know. French vanilla, though. It's got to count for something. Come on. All right, so our final question comes from Ron. Yeah. So I guess once you reach an extraordinary life, which is a feat in and of itself, but say once you reach it, do each of you feel you have to strive to constantly do better, or are you content until something in life changes?
- [65:18]
C
That's a good question. I love it. There's pressure. Katie's family used to say, you're only as good as your last match. Which means, like, the last result you had, that's how good you are. I really don't like that because it puts pressure on you to perform again and again and again. Then you end up on this treadmill of I have to keep performing, and I don't need to do that. And I don't tie any of this stuff to my identity. I just want to have fun and adventures, and I think of it as a positive moving forwards. What adventures can I have? And I've had the adventure, and we've reviewed it. I look at the photos, We've had a nice time. We memorize about stuff, we chat about it. Then I'm like, what's the next adventure? Where should we go? What should we do? What should we build? So I see it as more, how many pleasurable experiences can I have in my life than, okay, I've ticked extraordinary and I'm done. There are so many things to do in this world. I feel like I don't have time in my one life to do everything I want to do. Love to be a movie writer. I'd love to be a movie producer. I'd love to be a Lego master builder. I'm already building Rebel Finance School with Katie. We published a music album last year. We're working on our book. I'm like, how do I have time for all these things? Can someone please give me a couple of extra lifetimes? Anyone wants to donate a lifetime, I'm willing to accept it, but there's so much fun projects you can do. So I don't like. I'm very aware of the achievement treadmill that can occur. And I purposely don't want to get involved in that. If I want to relax, I'll relax. But I'm always coming back to the question, how much fun can we have? How many adventures can we have? What fun stuff can we do and create? And I think seeing it from a positive move towards the fun futures helps you to feel excited and alive. And then you're not doing it out of duty. You're only as good as your last win. You're doing it because it's fun to play the game.
- [67:29]
D
I think for me, there's a watch out of making it binary of either I have an extraordinary life or I don't and how once I get there, can I have a little rest and then go for the next thing or what kick me out of having an extraordinary life. And the whole point of what we've been doing this weekend, of setting the vision of where you're going is just to have a direction and moving towards that. That's where the happiness is. It's not like I will be happy once I get to that vision. Maybe that vision you get, you start on the path and you're like, oh, actually it's not that. It's this. And you will pivot and change direction. So for me, it's more moving towards that as well as acknowledging the ways in which my life is already amazing. So it's just that process and making it fun and gamifying it of. You could think of it as levels in a video game. Like, oh, okay, like I've mastered that level, I've figured out that skill. Do I choose to go and try the next level and beat the big baddie at the end is Brad.
- [68:32]
C
The big baddie.
- [68:33]
D
He's tough, he's bad, and he's got big muscles.
- [68:35]
A
Okay, I'll take it. Yeah, this is. It's an interesting one. So I don't think there's an end goal to any of this. I think, as Ron asked, like, once you've built an extraordinary life, and I don't think he was implying that there's an end goal by any means, but I think there is this constant tension between being satisfied and striving. And I think that's natural. I think that's part of all of our lives. And I think it's also important to take a step back and say, while I believe that fi is a superpower, it doesn't mean that every day is amazing. So lest anybody thinks like, oh, I have no right to be unhappy or in a bad mood or Whatever, because I'm so fortunate. I think that's misunderstanding just the human condition also, and I think it's very important to have some grace and understanding for yourself, is that we all have bad days, even if we're fi. Even if we built an extraordinary life, even if our life, by any measure, is objectively amazing. The people around me can tell you there are just days where I'm just grumpy or I'm just in a bad mood. It happens. That doesn't mean I failed in some way. It means I'm human. And so I think we all need to take a step back sometimes on this path and say we don't have to be perfect in anything. We're just. It's directionally accurate. We're just trying, trying to find a better life, however you term that, just on average, as we move forward. And we also know there are seasons of life and things change, and that's fine. There's nothing ever set in stone. And I find that to be a really exciting part of life. Alan and Katie, you talked about that yesterday in terms of the old phrase flip flopper and how, like, that is castigated in terms of political identity. Like, somebody changed their mind. Can you imagine the horrors? Whereas, like, what do intelligent people do when they get new information? They update their thinking. Right. Like, that is literally what you do. If you held hard and fast to some idea that you had or some belief that you had years ago or decades ago in the light of new information, I would think you're insane. Frankly, that's not something laudable. So to me, like I said, building extraordinary life, it's about being directionally accurate. But it's also, it's understanding. There is that tension of there are going to be times where I want to go, go, go and learn and do all new things. And there are going to be times like, frankly, the last five months of my life where I've been extraordinarily content with a really simple life. And it's been. This is something that was an experiment and it's been incredible. And I'm actually in this walkable community where this event is being held. And I'm getting to highlight this dream that I had to all of you, and I think that's. It's fun.
- [71:33]
C
That's your version of extraordinary.
- [71:34]
A
Yes.
- [71:35]
C
Today, your current version of extraordinary, and that's the bit I think people get hooked up on, is extraordinary should mean whatever it is. Astronaut. No, extraordinary could just be having dinner with your kids every night when no one's On a phone. That's pretty extraordinary. In current culture and technology, extraordinary doesn't have to be a massive thing. It can just be dinner with your kids, hanging out in the community, looking after your body, helping other people, playing an amazing board game. You can have an extraordinary evening with friends, laughing. So I think let's remove the giant thing and just have a bit more fun, have some adventures. And Brad's version of extraordinary is great. Everyone has a different version of extraordinary, which we're back to. My favorite thing, which is breakfast. If I asked everyone here what their perfect breakfast was, I would get 115 different answers because every single person has a different version of what it is. So what we always come back to is imagine what your version of extraordinary is and then create it, whatever that means to you.
- [72:44]
A
All right, well, Alan, I think that is the perfect way to end this extraordinary takeover and really this extraordinary event. And I just want to thank both of you for putting this on. I think we're going to do many of these in the future. So if you're listening to this, we'll have a link in the show notes for how to get on the email list for future events. If you're looking to make a change in your life, an event like this really can make a difference. You've heard it here throughout this hour and a half. And I think this kind of thing really matters. I think the introspection and looking at your life, looking at these preconceived notions.
- [73:20]
C
Can I say one?
- [73:21]
A
Yeah, go for it.
- [73:22]
C
You do not need an event to make a change in your life.
- [73:26]
A
That is very true.
- [73:26]
C
There is never a better time than right now to start working on the future that you want to live. So that's what we want you to take away from this episode is action to create your dream future.
- [73:39]
A
And as always, thank you for listening to Choose a VI and being part of our community.
- [73:48]
C
Sam.