A (3:26)

Well, that is certainly an intriguing. An intriguing start, Adam. I like it. And yeah, it's not just about the bank account. I think it's so easy to get myopically focused on the money aspect of fi. I try so hard on this podcast to. To really drill into people that it's so much more than that. Our lives are just so much more than money. Talk about necessary but not sufficient. Right. It's like, not only is FU money necessary, but not sufficient. I would even go so far as to say FI money, your phi number is necessary but not sufficient for a great financially independent life. I think the money without the plan of what does life look like without the experimentation, without, like you said, even the resilience to take the ups and downs of. Of how life throws things at you. I think if it's just the money, I think you're hopelessly lacking personally.

B (4:24)

Yeah. And, you know, we've all heard of people taking extra years at work, you know, continuing to be stuck in that one more year syndrome. And they say, oh, you know, I just want to make sure I have enough money. I want to make sure I don't run out. But if they really are honest with themselves, it's probably that they just are afraid of who they are without work. Right. Because there's so much tied up in it. There's what you do every day. There's the identity of who you are. Right. I. I left Google about 18 months ago, and a huge part of who I was, my identity, was a Googler, having spent my whole career there. Right. So there's a lot that needs to be untangled. And the sooner you start to explore that for yourself. And as you said, experiment, the better off you're going to be both on the path. And once you actually move into that

A (5:10)

new chapter, it's amazing how much of our identity is tied up in different stories because that's what these are. And it's not just your work. But since we are talking about work, like being a Googler is a story that signals certain things about you both internally in how successful you are and where you are and how, how well you've done for yourself. But externally too, when you tell someone, I imagine very strongly you tell someone that you work at Google, their eyes light up a little bit, their eyebrows raise. Right. Like there's a little je ne sais quoi about, hey, this is an impressive guy. He works at Google. He somehow got through the gauntlet of the, the famously difficult Google hiring process, if that's still, still a thing. Right. And I mean, that's not nothing.

B (6:00)

Yeah. And, and figuring out, you know, who you are without that and without that structure in that pace for me, one of the big things, and we can talk about this more later, it's like it took a lot of time for me to let go of the pace of everything, right. Because it was just like, go, go, go more, always more. And things were constantly changing. And to go into a new chapter where you get to choose how you spend your day, how you spend your time, what you work on, it really, it took some adjusting.

A (6:31)

Yeah. And it's funny because you actually said the exact thing that I wrote down to say next, which is who am I really? You not only get to choose what you do, but you really get to choose and you get to drill down into who am I really? And I, I, I suspect Adam, that, that is, that's not a, an overnight process, Right. Especially when you have stories built up of, okay, you could probably go down the list, right? Like I am, I am a husband, I am a father, I am a son. I'm, you know, I'm just making for all of us, I'm a daughter, whatever it is, right. I am a. And we have these stories that we carry through. I am down to the fixed mindset, growth mindset of I am intelligent, I work for Google, I went to X college, fill in whatever blanks. And I think using Alan and Katie Donegan, talk about zero based thinking, which is something I really love. Essentially it's, if I were to blow it all up today, every aspect of my life and started over, would I pick X? Would I pick this place to live Would I pick this career? Would I pick, frankly, this person I'm living with or in a relationship with? Would it? Would I pick these friends? Would I pick these things that I do? And Adam, I have to imagine for you, so it's 18 months now, like you get to choose all of these things now. You have 168 hours, probably 112 waking hours for approximately in a week. That's a whole lot of hours to get to choose what you spend time on it. I'm curious, what did it look like at the beginning?

B (8:06)

Yeah. And you know, before I get into that, I would say that I get to choose now that I am on the other side of this, you know, arbitrary goalpost of fi. But everyone listening gets to choose as well. They get to choose every day of who they want to be and how they want to show up in their life. And so, yeah, my day one, day one was interesting. Day one was interesting. Maybe I should kind of give a little bit more context to how I got to day one.

A (8:35)

Well, hold on, let's go in, because I could see that on your face. I think this, frankly, is, is the part that is a significant source of trepidation for a lot of people, whether it's on their own volition or not. That day one, like I wake up, I've had a story for 20, 30, 40 plus years, 50 years, 60 years, whatever it is. And now that story is not there anymore. I can see that it's visceral for you. Talk me through that.

B (9:03)

Yeah, this is on a lot of people's minds, right? You don't have to look far to see that layoffs are happening all over the economy. AI is disrupting entire industries, entire categories of jobs. And the reality of the job market today is you can love your job, you can be amazing at your job and go above and beyond every single day. And in an instant, you can be laid off, reorg to a new boss or a new job entirely, pushed out, or even fired. It's interesting, I was thinking back to the last time I was here. Four days after I was on the podcast and our episode went live. 12,000 of my Google colleagues were laid off in the middle of the night via email. Many of many friends of mine, right, woke up to an email or touched a badge reader at their office and just were no longer welcome. Now this is just accelerating. And I look saw last week, Meta is considering laying off 20% of their workforce on top of the thousands they've already laid off over the last several years. That's Just the reality we're dealing with. And my situation was I thought I was killing it. I was killing it. I literally went from the highest high of my career where I envisioned an opportunity to go and lead my ask what's possible workshop at Sundar Pichai's leadership conference. That's Google CEO's leadership conference. They invite all the VPs and SVP's. And I led a two hour workshop about mindfulness and envisioning for a group of executives literally peak career success in my, in my opinion. And one week later, a boss that I had been reorg to a few months earlier told me, you're not doing enough thought leadership. I'm like, what do you mean? I just spoke to a group of VPs, right? I'm a, I'm a level five, they're level 10. I think that's thought leadership. But so I, I went from this amazing trajectory to suddenly I'm being told this thing that doesn't really make sense. And I describe this as, as with a slide, right? Once a boss or an organization decides to pursue cost cutting measures or performance management and you're in their crosshairs, it's like they put you on the top of a slide and the bottom of the slide is out the door. And there's really no way to get off the slide in most cases in today's economy. And so I found myself on this slide and I brought a lot of, I brought receipts. I said, hey, look, this is my work. Here's what I'm doing. This is how things are going. I, you know, I have all these opportunities that I'm working on. And one thing led to another and a few months later, despite all this effort and hard work that I was doing, I got a surprise meeting on my calendar. I was standing right here where I'm standing right now, and they told me, you're getting a performance warning and you have three days to decide do you want to take a small amount of severance or do you want to go on a performance improvement plan? Even though they don't, didn't call it that. They said it's essentially an ultimatum. And it was pretty tough, pretty visceral, right? You said I had a visceral look on my face and I'm 18 months out. But in that moment, I had extreme physical discomfort because I had spent my whole career here, right? And it's not, it's, it's not that, you know, I don't understand that these things happen. And it's all part of the, the reality of working. But in that moment, I had a big. A big surprise, right? And I had a choice. Was I going to just run away and kind of sulk away in the night from this place that I had built, My reputation, my career, my experience, all these things? Was I going to just run away and take a small amount of severance, or was I going to actually put my money where my mouth is and actually live the life that I was envisioning for many years?

A (13:16)

Yeah. And that's a powerful moment of decision. And like you said, quote, I had a choice. I think that's just such a powerful aspect of life. And frankly, fi also, I suspect very strongly, not only did you have that choice for your career and something that you cared about a lot, but because you had a few money, because you were so far down the path to fi, maybe already at fi, you had different choices available to you that wouldn't be available to the normal person out there or even the normal Googler, who, like most people, spend most or all of their money, even if they're making 200,000, 400,000, whatever it is. You're not wealthy if you're spending all your money, as we all know. So anyway, that's a long way of saying you had choices. And yeah, I'm curious where you went from there.

B (14:08)

Exactly. And when I found myself in that situation, what became immediately clear? Like in that meeting where I was ambushed with this news, I immediately was like, I have F you money. I'm good, right? I'm good. I don't need the severance. I don't even need the salary. I'm okay. And I thought F you money was really all I needed in that moment. It was huge. And what I always say is that FU money gives you options and security, but vision gives you direction and momentum. And when I found myself in this situation, I had been building financial independence for years. And that's why I had the FU money. To be able to navigate that situation, both in that moment and in the. In the days and weeks and months after that, with a clarity of purpose, without needing to worry about paying my mortgage, putting food on the table, that's huge. But what really kept me going and moving towards the life that I wanted and kept me sane, to be honest, was having a clear vision for my life. As I said, I was building financial independence all that time. I was also building this vision for the FI life after I reached financial independence. All along the path, I was getting clearer and clearer on what I wanted that life to look like and. And I was starting to build it into my life right now. The podcast you mentioned at the beginning, the Mindful Fire podcast, that was really a laboratory for me to explore what do I want to do afterwards. And so when this very distressing moment came into my life and I had the ultimatum to say, hey, do you want to just take this money and run or do you want to stay here and be on this performance plan? Most people would just run. Most people would just take the money and be like, get me out of this horrible situation. And that's fine. I think that makes perfect sense for most people. But because I had this vision of where I, what I wanted my postfi life to look like, I saw that my work inside of Google was not done. And so what that vision looks like for me is building a business in my own time, in my own way, without needing to put worry about putting food on the table or paying my mortgage, without needing to force things and just take any opportunity because of the money. And so aligned with that, I also wanted to build this life where this business helped people connect with themselves, each other and their biggest vision for their life. So I see this as being a sought after speaker and facilitator. And as I said, I was building all these things along the way, both through the podcast and within Google. I was doing what they call the G2G Googler to Googler training program. You could essentially create your own course and put it up on a website and people come and take your course. And so I was doing this all along the way, but I always had this idea in the back of my head that I wanted to pitch this guy who's the president of the large customer sales. I wanted to pitch him on doing my workshop for these executive summits. So basically Google has this program where they bring the C level executives from like Fortune 50 companies into Google and they show them all the cool things they're working on, AI self driving cars, et cetera, to essentially deepen the partnership. And so I had this idea that I wanted to do my Ask what's possible workshop at the start of one of those things. And it had been in the back of my mind for years and, and when this ultimatum came right in front of my face, I said, now's the time, it's now or never. And so I turned down the money and I pursued that with vigor.

A (18:11)

I, I love that. It actually reminds me of, of how people use FU money the other way, which is to, to leave actually when presented with an ultimatum, because you have options in this Case it's a. Because the reason why it reminds me of that is it's a nothing to lose scenario because you've built so much power on your side of the ledger, there was literally nothing to lose at that point. You were either already FI or pretty darn close. So it's not like this, as you've. You've repeatedly said this small amount of severance, this was not a material amount that was going to change your life or get you to fat fi. So you weren't foregoing anything, anything meaningful at least. You essentially had nothing to lose because the vagaries of the business world at Google had already decided, by virtue of this one boss that you just got assigned to, that you were in the crosshairs, whether you did anything to deserve it or not.

B (19:07)

Right?

A (19:07)

You were in the crosshairs. Now you had nothing to lose. Of course your story is interesting, Adam, but it's. How can this be applicable to other people? There are tens, if not many hundreds of thousands of people listening to this podcast and wondering, like, how can I apply this to my own life? And I think that's a real takeaway. There is. FI gives you the ability to not only have choices, but nothing to lose in the sense that. Not that that means you throw caution to the wind and you do crazy things and you throw your reputation out, but it allows you to pursue something that might have been a dream, like this speaking to certain people or presenting at this exact conference that could have been a dream that seemed like a pipe dream, but now you have literally nothing to lose.

B (19:52)

Exactly. And that's what I always tell people is the benefit of actually starting this work. Right. Actually thinking big about your life and what you want and starting to clarify that. Right. Because a lot of people don't actually create the space in their life to ask themselves that question, what do I actually want? And if I thought even bigger about my life, what do. What would that look like? Even when people do this work, they think within the constraints of their current reality, where they live, you know, what their current career is, all of those things. But what happens if you use this power that you've built with FI to look at your life like, I have nothing to lose. I could just try this and see what happens. And you're absolutely right. That's the scenario that I was in where I had this difficult situation, but I saw, hey, I can try this. And worse comes to worse, I end up in the same position that I would be otherwise. And so I think everyone can. Can do this. And and don't get me wrong, fu, money enables that. But what keeps you going when things get tough and builds true resilience is knowing where you're going. Right. It's like the difference between just getting in the car and just starting to drive without looking where you're going or having gps. And so when there's a roadblock in your, in your path, you lose a job, you have to move or do something different. Now you can say, okay, I see that now. I can go around and I can continue on my path. And of course, you don't have to have it all figured out, right? You, as you're driving down the road, down the path, you're going to learn things, you're going to figure out what you like, what you don't like, and you're going to adapt as you make progress and your vision's going to evolve. But if you start from a place of no vision, then you're going to just take the money in this scenario, you're going to take the money and go and regroup and then try to figure it out.

A (21:51)

Right? Right. And you're going to be lost in essence. So.

B (21:54)

Right.

A (21:54)

I mean, you had this vision for Phi life after you reach Phi. And I guess ultimately, like, you're talking about knowing where you're going. And I'm thinking, like, also, life is not a straight line up into the right. It's not unicorns and rainbows all the time. We do have to prepare because even if you are the highest performer at your job or you're great or you think you're indispensable, nobody's indispensable. And like she said, AI is coming for a lot of jobs. Let's be entirely. Anybody who's used it knows it is coming for a whole lot of jobs. That's just the reality. So, okay, we have to be aware of that. I know you're a teacher at heart. Okay, again, it's wonderful and it's all well and good that you had your vision and it is, you know, teaching this course, you know, yada, yada, yada. But for the people out there, how do they get their visions and how do they get them? How do they get on that path? This is not something that just spontaneously occurs in your brain. This is an iterative process. I have to strongly assume. I'm curious how you would describe to a friend or a colleague, okay, look, you're thinking about fi in maybe 5 years, 10 years, 12 years, whatever it is. I need you to start thinking about your postfi Life. I need you to have a vision for the next 50 years of your life. Where do you counsel them to start?

B (23:08)

Yeah, that's a great question. And that's really what I wanted to get into. We've talked about how f you money creates options, vision creates direction. Right? That's the foundation on which we're building all of this. What I want you to think about is it's not just figuring out your vision for life and then waiting to actually get there and start living it. What I want you to think about is how can you get clear on what your vision is for that phi Life so that you can start living it right now. And so that's what we'll talk about. That's what the power of envisioning actually allows you to do. And so before I get into how you actually physically do that, and I have a guide that I put together for you called the Phi Life Jumpstart that will actually walk you through, step by step, how you can do this for yourself. And that's available@mindfulfire.org choosefi before I get into how you actually do this, I want you to understand what envisioning is and why it works. As I mentioned, I trained 4,000 Googlers on these type of topics. As you can imagine, training engineers, they're not really into the woo, woo, raise your vibe type of things. I focus on the neuroscience of how our mind works. And so what I want you to know about your brain is that your story creates your reality. Brad, you've mentioned stories a few times. The stories that we tell about ourselves and the way that our brain works is that those stories are actually creating the outcomes that we experience in our lives. And that's because of two aspects of our brain. The first is that everything you think, feel, and pay attention to changes the structure and function of your brain. This is the phenomenon known as neuroplasticity. It's essentially the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections in response to learning or experience. And so literally everything you think, feel, and pay attention to is changing the structure of your brain. If you think about any skill you've ever learned, right, take playing guitar. At first, everything about it is very foreign and unnatural. Holding the guitar is awkward, moving your fingers, the sounds are don't make any sense, and you certainly can't read music. But as you practice all of those things, all of those skills become easier and easier. And that's because the neural circuitry in your brain is becoming stronger. It's wiring together for those auditory, cognitive, and motor skills until those things are second nature. The second thing is that our brains are prediction machines. There's a researcher named Regina Polly at UC Riverside, and she published an article called the Predicting Brain. She says that even before events happen, our brain makes a prediction of what's most likely to happen and sets in motion the thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and even physiological responses for what's expected. She goes on to say, in a sense, we learn from the past what to predict for the future, and then live the future we expect. The way I think about that is we're telling ourselves stories about how our life is going to be, and then we're acting out those stories. And so if you put this all together, one metaphor that I find really useful is that our thoughts and stories are like seeds. And the ones we pay attention to most and the stories we tell ourselves most often are the ones that we're planting and watering. And not surprisingly, those are the ones that tend to grow until they become our reality. And last time I was on the show, we talked a lot about mindfulness. And mindfulness is simply just a kind, curious awareness. But where that comes in really handy is in identifying the stories that we're telling ourselves, because this works in both directions, right? This works in creating the vision that you want, but it also works with those unhelpful stories, those that inner critic that's saying, you're not good enough or you're never going to get it, or you have bad luck. Mindfulness helps us to see, am I planting and watering positive seeds or negative seeds? And whenever you notice that you're caught up in a negative story, planting those and watering those negative seeds, you can ask yourself one simple question. Is this useful? And if it's not useful, you can just let it go. It might pop up again five minutes from now, but. But at any point, you can just notice with that kind curious awareness of mindfulness, oh, there's that story again, and let it go. And so that's the foundation that makes all of this work, right? When you put these things together, the neuroplasticity of all the things that you've done before, feed that prediction machine, you start to create a situation where you can choose a new story to create a new reality. And that's really what envisioning is all about. It's about being intentional about the life that you want to live and the story you want to tell yourself so that you can start moving towards that vision right away.

A (28:22)

Yeah, I love how you said, is this useful. That's a great operating question. I use a similar question with a slightly different interpretation. So for me, it's, is this a good strategy? And they're essentially the same questions, even though they're a bit different at their essence. For me, it's like, okay, I can choose to have positive thoughts about myself, or I can choose to have negative thoughts about myself or others or a situation or whatever. Which is the better strategy for having a good life? Okay, well, I think it's pretty obvious, right? It's like, okay, and you can always. It's the, hey, if you're looking for good, good things, you can find them. If you're looking for bad things, you can find them. So which is a better strategy? I think it's just so patently obvious when you break it down like that. But, but frankly, many of us, and certainly myself included, go through life complaining about certain things or, or just focusing on the negative or whatever it may be like. I think that is kind of part of the human condition to some extent. But. Yeah, but I think there is a way to put, by focusing attention on this, to actually get a chance to rewrite those stories and rewrite that myopic focus on the negative. And I love how you're saying this story creates reality. So for people out there listening, I know you just gave some examples, but sometimes these stories are so ingrained that it's hard for them to see it. It's like the fish and water. Like, what's water? You know, how can people take a step back?

B (29:52)

Back?

A (29:52)

Because I think that's really the required first step for most people.

B (29:56)

Yeah. And I come back to mindfulness on this. It, you know, again, it's just a, a kind curious awareness of what's going on in your, in your mind, your body and your external environment. And so one thing that's really useful for this is just sitting down to meditate. Right. Meditation is just mental training where you're cultivating this capacity for mindfulness. And you can sit and just focus on your breath coming in, focus on your breath coming out, and these stories are going to pop up, right? They're going to come up again and again and again. And the more you start to notice them and relate to them, where, oh, there's a thought or there's that story. Okay, let me bring it back and start on my breath again with this in breath and then this out breath. Each time you do that, you're kind of training your, your mental muscles, so to speak, to be able to observe your experience. With that kind curious awareness without getting caught in the judgment, right? Because sometimes we do come aware, like, hey, I shouldn't be talking to myself like that, right? Would you say is this a good strategy or is this useful? It's essentially, is this moving me towards what I want or is it moving me towards what I don't want? And so this builds our ability to not add judgment to these thoughts that are already not making us feel good. We can just notice them and then choose to come back and start again. And so the more you do that on the cushion, so to speak, the meditation cushion, the more you'll be able to notice them out in your day to day life, right? Something happens and you're like, oh, I always do this. A good example of this is like somebody who thinks they have bad luck, right? They say, I just have bad luck. What do they get? They get opportunities to see bad luck. And this is just, you know, the reticular activating system filtering for what we're already focusing on. And that's why envisioning is so powerful, because we can start to, well, first we can stop watering the unhelpful stories, right? Because we notice they're going to come up. But a lot of times when people aren't fully aware of them, they're running that play again and again and again they're telling themselves and, and believe me, after my situation at Google, I was caught in this quite a bit. I would tell anyone who would listen, one time it took me 18 holes of golf, right, to tell this story because it was so fresh and that was fine. But the 20th time it's not useful anymore. And now I'm just rehearsing that story, planting and watering those seeds. So step one is notice that stop watering those seeds and at the same time choose a new story so that you can start planting and watering those seeds. And those stories will strengthen the neural connections in your brain. And then just like the person who thinks they have bad luck sees bad luck everywhere, suddenly you'll start to see opportunities to move towards this new story in your environment without you even having to try that hard, right? It's like another example is imagine you just got a new Subaru Forester. Suddenly Subaru foresters are everywhere. It's not that there are more Subaru Foresters, it's just more. You're more ready to see it. And so that's what we're taking advantage of in our brain. We're planting the seeds of what we want to see so that when we do come across it. We're ready to act on it.

A (33:27)

Yeah, I think that reticular activating system is, it's so powerful and it really is ever present. I was listening to the Modern Wisdom podcast, I think with a guest, Nir Eyal, and he was talking about a new book that he wrote. I think he said something to the effect of. And the numbers might be a little bit off here, whether he reported it or I misremembered, but we take in our brains, take in something like 11 million bits of information per second or whatever it is. It's just this unbelievable onslaught of information. But our actual conscious brains are only capable of focusing on something like 50 of those bits. So I mean it's, it's 0.00001% of all the information coming in. So you have to therefore assume there is a significant amount of information to look for. And like you're saying with the Subaru Forester, if you're. When you all of a sudden it's in your, in your awareness, things start showing up. It's not a coincidence. It means it was there all the time. You just simply weren't noticing. We're filtering out because otherwise we, we would be insane. Our brains would be on overload at all times if we tried to focus on those 11 million things that are coming in at every second. It's just not, not plausible. And it's funny, Adam, because you know, you mentioned the, the good luck, bad luck. The story that my daughters have for me actually is that I have incredibly good luck. They constantly talk about it. They're like, if you ask them like who has the best luck of anybody, you know, they're like, oh, dad, by far he just. Good things are always happening to him and it's kind of become a little joking thing in our family. And now there. And I am always looking for these action, these instances of good luck in my, in my life. And I see it all the time. And I think it's also frankly why people talk about like a gratitude practice. You hear this all the time in, in self help circles. And I think it's the reticular activating system again. It's like when I go through the day and I'm looking for three or five really good things that I can be grateful for. Man, you have an onslaught of them. To use that word again. Like there's a never ending things to be, never ending list of things to be grateful for. But if you're like the normal grumble, grumble person who's going through life it's also pretty darn easy to find negative things. It's just. It's whatever, like valence you choose to apply to a situation, Adam, you know, it makes a massive difference. Right?

B (35:44)

Yeah. And the thing is, is that what we're talking about here is like, you can choose. You can choose what seeds to water and plant, which then influence what you will see. In your experience, it's not going to happen instantly, but you are able to influence that and kind of tilt the scale, so to speak, in the direction of things that you want. And just, you'll be amazed at how much you start to notice. Just like with you with the good luck, you start to notice it all over the place. And the thing is, the more you appreciate it, getting back to gratitude, the more you appreciate it, the more you see it. It's like. It's like you're putting fertilizer on the seed and suddenly you start to see them even more.

A (36:27)

I love that. What are other ways that we can. Can envision? Are there, like, other holistic ways that people could approach this?

B (36:33)

Yeah. So that, as I mentioned before, like, I wanted to give you the background of, like, why this works. Right. I always start with that because people don't give themselves this opportunity to think big, and it's hard for them to break out. I always joke, like, my biggest skill in this whole thing is just incessantly insisting people think bigger. And so let's get into specifically how they can do that. Right. And again, if they want, they can go and grab that Phi Life Jumpstart, which has the exact envisioning exercise that I use in all of my programs in my Firestarter Mastermind group coaching, all of that. When you sit down to do this journaling exercise, I want you to think really, really big and setting aside all ideas of what's reasonable, rational, realistic, possible. Don't worry about that. Right. You don't need to worry about the how. You don't need to worry about how you're going to make this happen at all. And that's where people usually get caught up. So just set aside all of that. I say put it in the little box and set it aside. It's right there. Some people don't like to do this, so just set it aside and think really, really big about what you want. And the prompt essentially goes, if everything in your life starting today meets or exceeds your most optimistic expectations, everything goes wildly better than you can even imagine. What does your life look like five years from now? Right. You can do this on any time frame that you want, but I like five years. Because it's far enough in the future that you can really kind of let go of your current reality to think like, if I could do anything, what would it be? And that's setting aside like your current reality. Right. It's just if you could do anything, whatever you wanted, any time you're completely financially independent, what does that life look like? And you just journal about it in as much detail as you want. Some things to consider, where are you living? Who are you with? Right. What people are surrounding you? What are you doing? What's bringing you alive? And then one thing that people often overlook is how do you feel? How do you feel on a day to day basis? That is really, you know, these emotions are what drives our behavior. And so I want you to consider what emotions you have. For me, when I would do this exercise for years, it was always unrushed. I just want to feel unrushed. And that's why when I say I wanted to build this business in my own time, in my own way, unrushed is at the core of that. And so that's really the first step is thinking big about what you want. I know you had that, did that workshop with Alan and Katie, the extraordinary life. And someone asked like, what does extraordinary even mean? The same thing here is like thinking big. This is for you, thinking big about what you want, right. If, if you could do anything you want, what would that be? I've worked with people who, they just want to hang out in their garden and have a slow morning and just garden in the yard and grow food and have community. Like that's what thinking big is for them. I haven't worked with another person who want, wants to empower women economically and create entrepreneurship opportunities for women around the world. And she wants to speak at Davos, right. So she's thinking really big. It's really up to you what that looks like. But really step one is thinking big about what you actually want. If anything was possible.

A (40:00)

Yeah, it's so easy to limit yourself. And I think that's why an exercise like that is really important. It's put down the limiting beliefs, put down what you think is possible and think big. I think that again, is one of the beauties of FI is is we have time and we have resources that most people could never dream of. Why not think, think. Why would you limit yourself if you could possibly avoid it? Yeah.

B (40:25)

My first coaching client that I worked with was this guy Nick, and he came to me because he was a Flight doc in the Air Force. And he was getting ready to leave the Air Force and move into his residency. He was going to move across the country. He was going to be in this residency. But he had realized, he had the awareness that the track that I'm on is not the life that I want to live. He realized that he was a workaholic and that he really couldn't separate his work from his life at home. And in this caused him to miss his child's first steps and to miss his child's first birthday. Because he was, you know, working at the base, he had the awareness to realize, like, I need to do something different. What we worked on together is this idea of thinking big. It didn't come naturally to him. One example that came to mind is he, as I said, he was moving across the country and he was wanting to buy a house, right? And I was like, oh, like, let's talk about the house. What do you envision for this house that you're going to raise your family in? And he's like, oh, you know, two bedrooms, you know, maybe a little yard. I'm like, no, like, what do you really want?

A (41:32)

Yeah, really, right?

B (41:33)

Like your dream house is two bedrooms with a slight yard. And he said, okay, I want to have four bedrooms so enough room for people to visit for my all my kids. I want to have a fenced in backyard so I can have the dog and my kids play back there safely. And I want to be 20 minutes from the office or I want to be 20 minutes from the hospital so that I can get home quickly and be with my family. Interestingly, as he got clear on this, like, two weeks later, he sends me a text message and it's like, dude, you're never going to believe this. Okay, we have an offer accepted on a house that is exactly what I described to you. When I challenged him to think big about what he wants his post fi life to look like. He had this idea that kept coming up. He's like, I've always wanted to do medical mission trips. When I think about being a doctor and going through all this training, I want to be able to give back to underserved areas and I want to go on these international medical mission trips and share this expertise. At the start of his residency, he had already met and told the person who's in charge of the program for these medical mission trips at the university he was at, he's already planted the seed with that person, telling him that he's interested in that. And, and this guy is now telling him that he would keep him in mind. And I just caught up with him a couple weeks ago. It's been like two years since we worked together. He's about to finish his residency. And he told me that he was selected among, like, six people in the entire country to go on two international mission trips, one to Africa and one to Asia next year to teach anesthesiology. So, to the local Dr. Community, this all started with just thinking bigger about what he wanted. And of course, he also is now expecting his third kid. And he's got that balance where he leaves his work at work and he leaves and he. And he has his home life at home, and he's able to, for the most part, keep those two things separate and be incredibly successful in both. Is he at 5? No. He's about to enter the workforce. But when he thought about what he actually wanted that postfi life to look like, he was able to accelerate and start living into those. Some of those things in the present. And I think that's what makes this practice so powerful.

A (44:05)

Yeah, I love that. Did you ever talk to him after the fact and rehash the actual thought experiment and why it made such a difference for him? Because you could have that same conversation with 10 people and maybe one, two or three of them are going to have the results that he had. Do you have any sense of what was it about him or what was it about this specific instance that made. That made such a transformative difference?

B (44:31)

Yeah, that's a great question, Brad. And this is not about, you know, just doing this once and, like, hoping for the best. It is actively. It's. It's about actively planting the seeds. And when I say planting the seeds, it's using envisioning practices to essentially invite your brain to wire together and to predict these things more regularly. And so let's talk about some of those. I'd say, first and foremost is continue to journal and refine your vision. Right? You get that journaling exercise. You start by thinking big and getting clear on what you want your life to look like overall. You can zoom in and you can look at what does that look like for my health? What does that look like for my relationships, my family, my work, my community? Right. Whatever's important to you. Do that same journaling exercise on that topic. This is essentially planting and watering the seeds, getting clearer and clearer and clearer. And you don't have to figure. You don't have to have this all figured out. And frankly, you won't have this all figured out. My vision has grown and evolved over this time. And we can talk about how it's grown since I've left. But doing this work is going to help you immensely. So that's. First, continue to journal about your vision. Second, and probably the most powerful thing you can do is talk about your vision to other people. This does two things. Number one, it makes it more clear for you because when these ideas are swirling around your head, that's one thing. When you have to put them into words that another person can understand, that forces clarity. And number two, it also plants seeds in your mind by doing that, but it plants seeds in the other person's mind as well. And so when Nick went and met one of the leaders of the hospital and found out that this guy was in charge of the international mission trips, he spotted the opportunity because he was ready to see it. And then he told him about his vision. And so now that seed's planted in his mind. And so when the opportunity arises later on, in this case a couple years later, that person thought, oh, Nick is interested in this, I'm going to come to him. And so that's why talking about your vision so powerful.

A (46:52)

Yeah, I like that. There's so many lessons built in and not least of which also is accountability. There's some aspect of that is interpersonal relationships. When you talk about it, there is some, A, you want to live up to being the kind of person that does this because you, you talked about it, so it's real. And B, they might follow up with you. I think about when I met Jonathan, my co founder of Jews of I and and he had this idea for a website and he didn't really do anything. And then I followed up with him and it was like a lightning bolt for him. And that accountability is huge. And also you just never know when is that person going to think of you. When is luck surface area. Right. Like we're building, we're building luck in our own lives is hey, you talk to somebody and you never know when. Oh, just out of the blue, two years later, this opportunity comes up and who are they going to think of? They're going to think of the man or woman who they had this conversation with six months ago or two years ago or five years ago, whatever it may be. Yeah. There are just so many layers of potential lux surface area in that.

B (47:56)

Absolutely. Yeah. And you're doubling the lux surface area when you tell other people. Right. And I think, yeah, the accountability is, is huge there as well. A couple other things that you can do. Visualization just Walking through that life in your mind, a typical day of what that life looks like, that is planting seeds. One that's really powerful is what I call mindset affirmations. Essentially, once you have a clear vision for what you want, then you kind of back into, well, what are the beliefs and mindsets that would empower me to move towards that? What are the ones that I want to embody and carry with me on a day to day basis as I'm walking this path? Then you, you essentially say those to yourself. You know, the way I do it is I meditate, I allow my mind to kind of settle a little bit, and then I say the belief. So one of the ones that I'm trying to embody is I'm healthy, strong and full of life. This is my desire to be healthier and stronger and to be there, you know, play with my kids, you know, in my old age. So I better start working on that now. So I'm healthy, strong and full of life. I say it then. I visualize in my mind, how is this true in the past? Oh, well, you know, I was, I worked out yesterday. That's great, right? And I, I felt really good when I was playing with the kids yesterday. Then I say it again. How is that true in the present? Oh, well, I'm going to go to the gym today. I'm going for a walk, I'm eating healthy, whatever it is. Now you do it, say it again and project that into the future. Oh, I see myself playing with my kids. I see myself running around the yard chasing them, which they love. What you're doing with this is you're essentially giving your brain evidence of how this is already true. Because our brain doesn't know what's true or not. It just knows what we feed it. Right. And in this case, we are giving it real evidence in the past and the present and then we're projecting it into the future, planting these seeds in a really specific way. And, and amazingly, those things start to appear on your path and you start to become the person who is healthy, strong and full of life in my, in my case. So this, this practice has been an absolute game changer for me on all areas of life.

A (50:11)

Yeah, that's cool. I know on episode 420 that we did three years ago, we talked a little bit about James Clear and his incredible book, Atomic Habits. And this reminds me of, of something I like. Your, your words, the planting seeds. That's beautiful. There's just something visceral about that. But yeah, James talks and I'M going to paraphrase. It's in essence like you're putting a little check mark on the side of the ledger that, like I'm the type of person that dot, dot, dot, and then does these things, right? And every time you do something it's that little check mark that's saying like, hey, I really am that type of person. Look at all this history, look at this evidence. And then you combine it with this envisioning practice that you talk about so beautifully and you can see how this coalesces into something really magical where again, because there's so much information floating out there, like we can choose to focus. It sounds woo woo, but this is, this is real. I think we all know it when we actually apply some scrutiny to our lives. Like, yeah, is this scientific? Like can you and I scientifically prove this? Well, maybe you can, but can I right at this moment? Yeah, maybe, maybe not, but, but I don't care because I've seen it work in my own life. That's really the most important thing. Frankly, what you believe is as important as anything. We know this from the placebo effect in science. You want to talk about science, right? Like there's nothing more powerful in science than the placebo effect. So it's like, okay, we know for a fact that our brains can help us actually get positive medical outcomes. You're telling me they can't get positive outcomes in other aspects of our lives? Like, it just, it defies logic, right?

B (51:46)

And like you said it, if it works for you, that's all you need. And so I invite people to try it. Like, you don't need to believe me, just give it a try for yourself. And when I teach this, the difference between goals and expectations versus vision, right? And, and this is important, right? Because some people will do this work and they'll say, oh yeah, I have this big vision and, and two weeks later they're like, why hasn't it happened already, right? And the difference between goals and vision, Goals are very specific, they're very time bound and they look a certain way, right? And if those things don't happen exactly that way, it's considered a failure. Now a vision is more open and you don't worry about how it's going to look and when it's going to happen, right? You can't control the when or the how it's going to come about, but you can focus on the what and the why, right? What do I want and why do I want it? And just believe that it's going to Come at some point in the future. And the thing is, it might not look exactly like you thought. I mentioned I had the opportunity that I envisioned to speak at the CEO of Google's leadership conference. That started from that conversation with Nick about his house. Right. I was challenging him on aggressively to think bigger.

A (53:08)

That's great.

B (53:09)

I was like, well, maybe I should take my own medicine. Right. And so I thought, okay, I want to think big. What would it look like to make this big vision a reality of leading these workshops and doing these things sooner? And so that's where I came up with this idea of I want to do this for Sundar Pichai's team. I had envisioned doing it for his direct team. Now I spoke at the CEO's leadership conference. He was not in the room. If that was a goal, it would have been technically a failure. Right. But I am wise enough to look at that situation and say, this is pretty darn close. I went from having no path to making this happen to choosing that I wanted to do it, starting to plant those seeds through the practices we talked about. And next thing you know, I have an email from a woman at 11:30pm a woman named Mary sends me an email and it says, we're looking for someone to lead a workshop for a group of executives. Right. I just happen to be up finishing my work for. For the quarter at that time. I'm not usually. It was never on my email at 11:30pm but that night, I happened to be ready to see that opportunity. The next day we talk, I share my vision for the workshop. She says, oh, that's great. Would you. It's going to be at Sundar's leadership conference. Would you be okay with that? I was like, perfect.

A (54:27)

Yeah.

B (54:27)

You know, so like, that's getting back to the point. It's like, be open to how and when these things happen and just see it like, fi. Right. You're walking down the path. You know why you're trying to get there and just trust that you're going to make progress. And it might not look exactly like you envision at the outset, but as you walk the path, you're going to learn and you're going to grow and you're going to figure things out and you'll be surprised at how fast some of these things can come into your life.

A (54:58)

Adam, I definitely want to get back to your story, but before we do that, any other lessons before we move on from the actual. The meat of your teaching?

B (55:09)

Yeah. And so we mentioned that there were all these practices that you can use to plant seeds. Right. And this, again, this is all in the service of starting to live your postfi life right now. You don't want to get caught in that one more year syndrome where you get to financial independence. You got the money, you got the math figured out, and yet you're stuck. Right? Like so many people find themselves in this situation and they can't step into the next chapter. If you start living your postfire life right now using these practices, you are going to be getting clearer along the way, learning what you like, what you don't like, and then when you get to five, you're going to just make the decision. Hopefully you'll get to make the decision and you can just step into that next chapter. But the final practice that will help you do that is mini experiments. And I know this is something that the Donegans talk about a lot as well, and I love this concept, but this is essentially just what is a low risk, low cost way that you can try this life on. If a big part of your vision is to be in the best shape of your life, can you take an exercise class? Can you read a book about health? Can you listen to a health podcast? Can you talk to your friend who's in great shape about what they do in the gym? Right. What are these super low risk ways that you can try this life on without blowing up your whole life? Right. I think a lot of people get stuck thinking that they need to leave everything behind to move into this next chapter. I'm here to tell you that you don't. You can start little by little right now trying these things along the way, and each one of them is going to give you information about what you like, what you don't like, and how you can move forward. And so that's, that's kind of what I would wrap with, is like all of these practices, you don't need to do all of them, but each, you can kind of pick and choose what you like and just do that. And it all starts with getting that envisioning exercise, sitting down and thinking, if I could do anything, what does my life look like? That's really the foundation. And just doing that. If you only did that, you'll be amazed at how your brain goes to work and starts predicting and showing you opportunities to move towards that.

A (57:27)

Yeah, I love that. And we certainly will have the link to that. I know you, you said it multiple times, so people probably grabbed it, but we'll have the link to that in the show notes for sure. So thank you for making that resource available. Okay, let's double back to you. And, and, and I did challenge you with a question earlier that I think you might have sidestepped a little bit. So if you started tomorrow, I'm not going to let you off the hook, Adam, what would you do? And, and again, you did have that visceral reaction even 18 months later of oh, wow, phi life is starting a little earlier for me than I thought. What? Who am I? How do I now that I get to choose, how do I choose? And even though you had been thinking about this, you're probably in the top couple percent of people who had been planning, it's still, I suspect and based on that look on your face, that it wasn't easy. And, and I say that because this helps people, it helps them because if someone gets thrust into FI or even reaches FI on their own volition and takes those steps, they're going to wake up one day and it's going to feel weird and it's going to be hard even if they plan. And I just want to let everybody know that's okay and that's normal. Okay? It doesn't absolve you from planning. It doesn't absolve you from doing this envisioning exercise. It doesn't absolve you from having many experiments and trying to figure out what you want life to look like. But it does let you just know this is normal. Okay? This happens to all of us. And Adam, it very viscerally happened to you. So talk me through that day when you woke up and you're like, oh, wow, yesterday I was a Googler, today I'm not. What do I do now?

B (59:04)

Yeah, it was quite, quite a shock. You know, in that moment I knew it was coming. Right? Like I say, it's quite a shock. Like I didn't know exactly when it was going to happen. But when I saw a surprise meeting pop on my calendar on a Monday morning, it wasn't looking good. And interestingly, because I had turned down the money and because I had started moving towards my vision, I didn't actually close the loop. I mentioned I had wanted to pitch this guy on doing this workshop, right? That's the whole reason I didn't take the money. I'm glad I remembered this. What I did after that meeting where I had that very visceral, you know, betrayal feeling in my body, I actually did pursue that. And I did go to him and met him in the micro kitchen, the little break room of Google where they have all the free Food and whatnot. And I was talking with him, hey, how's it going? Whatnot? And he starts walking back to his office. I start walking with him, say, hey, you know, I'd really love to talk with you about bringing envisioning into exec summits. I think it would be really valuable. He's like, okay, yeah, talk to my assistant. We'll find some time. We got time on the calendar a couple weeks later, of course, because this guy is super busy and important. When the time came, I had a feeling maybe would get canceled. And it did get canceled. And so when it got canceled, I went into plan B. I went to his office. I knocked on the window. He's like, hey. I'm like, hey, if you have three minutes at any point today, please, like, I would love to share this idea with you. Just three minutes is all I need. He's like, can I ping you? I said, I'll be sitting right there. And I sat outside of his office, not, like, on the floor at a desk nearby. And a couple hours later, he comes out. He says, adam, I have three minutes. And I said, perfect. He's like, I have to pack my bag. While we're talking, I'm like, not a problem. I share the idea. I said, I'd love to do this. I think this makes a lot of sense. He says, I agree. I want you to talk to this vp. One thing led to another, and I got a pilot. I had a pilot on the books, right? So on the one hand, they're trying to push me out. On the other hand, I'm pursuing this thing that I've been hoping for for years. And unfortunately, on September 30, 2024, one day before this was to start, I was fired. And so I said, I had that meeting on my calendar. I go into this meeting, and I'm like, oh, this isn't good. But I'm ready. And so as they're firing me, I send out my goodbye email, because that was another reason I wanted to go out of my terms. The good thing, sending a goodbye email at Google in any job is a huge part of the transition. And so I sent my goodbye email subject line, my last day retiring at 36, which I love. I don't know why I love it so much, but I love it. And I sent that to 15,000 of my Google colleagues. All the people interested in mindfulness, all the people I had had trained over the years, I sent that email. So that's kind of. That's. That's ground zero for. For Leaving. So back to your question that it seems like I've been dodging the entire interview. What did day one look like? And as cliche as it sounds, I, I left that, that meeting and I went golfing. Okay. Like such a cliche early retirement. I had been getting into golf. I'm not good, but I do enjoy just like walking around outside in the nature and the kind of building the skill of hopefully one day getting better. Like the first month, I just gave myself grace to do nothing, to just recover from the very, very difficult couple of months. I mean, it was, all in all, it was almost a year this, this process and I, I just gave myself time. And as I gave myself that time, I started to kind of come back to, to that vision of, okay, cool, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Now I'm an entrepreneur, right? Now I'm a full time entrepreneur. Before it was a side hustle. Now it's, now it's game time. And so I started, little by little, kind of planting the seeds of that. I started telling people, hey, I'm offering these workshops. And I started reconnecting with colleagues at Google where, hey, I could do this workshop for your team. And so it started to evolve from there. But I think first and foremost, it was like, I played a lot of golf because that got me outside, it got me in nature, got me walking around, and it just allowed me to clear my head because I, as I said, it was a very difficult time and I needed to let go of that identity. And interestingly, it's taken a year plus to let go of that identity, of that Google and that pace. And as I got into the entrepreneurship stuff and started selling the workshops and doing the coaching and all these things, I really found myself falling into old habits. You know, getting into that, oh, you're not doing enough, got to go faster, got to do more. It was like, why am I doing this? It's like, oh, I guess I had 14 years of that. Not to mention the being a straight A student before that, you know, that, that whole thing that those habits die hard.

A (64:28)

They do indeed. And yeah, I mean, I think it's normal. Really. You didn't use this word. But it's how I look at it is it's okay to mourn that that chapter is over. Even if you're excited about the next chapter or in your case, the rest of your life, it is okay to mourn it. Especially when it didn't come on your timeline or even if it does come on your timeline, sometimes that's been Your identity, that's been part of your life, that's been a really integral thing and it is okay to mourn it and then pick yourself up and live into your phi life. And I think that really at its essence is what we all are going to have to do at some point. And by planning ahead, by having these exercises, by thinking about it, by iterating, by testing and experimenting, we can have a higher likelihood of a short term success when we get into FI, because we've seen countless examples of early fi, people who woke up one day and they hit a number and they stopped working. And then it was, oh man, what the heck do I do now? And that's just not sufficient anymore. In 2026, in this day and age of the financial independence movement, after nine years of Choose a Phi, it's just not sufficient to say, like, oh, everything's going to be unicorns and rainbows because I hit some number. You know that definitively. It's, it's not going to be the case. So if you're listening to my words, just, and Adam's words, please know that will never be the case. It's inconceivable. You have to put the work in. And thankfully we have people like Adam in our community who can help, help guide the way. So, Adam, thank you for coming back on. I really appreciate it.

B (66:08)

My pleasure. It's, it's, it's really, it's kind of like my unofficial mission to get that message to people. It's like, don't fall into that trap, right? Don't fall into that trap of hitting a number and everything's going to be great. And because you need to do that work now, you need to get clear on what you want now so you can try it. And so when you get there, you can make that transition and start living that life. Continue living that life, right? You're not starting, you're continuing to live that life. And the other thing I'd say is just give yourself the space you have the rest of your life. Right? That's the thing I have to remind myself. You have the rest of your life to do this. You don't have to rush. There's no timeline, right? You can give yourself space. And it's gonna take three, six, nine months even if you leave in the best of circumstances, to kind of let go of what you were doing before and kind of move into this new chapter. It just becomes a lot easier if you already have tried some of the things that you envision for your postfire life beforehand. So that's kind of my. My soapbox.

A (67:14)

I love it. I love it. Well, thank you. And again, we'll have a link in the show notes, but it's mindfulfire.org you can go to Slash, choose a Phi. You have a great podcast that has 220 odd episodes. Unsurprisingly, it's the Mindful Fire podcast. Adam, thank you again for being here.

B (67:31)

My pleasure. Thanks so much for bread.