December 7, 2023 • 67 mins
Ever wondered how breakfast creations could lead us to enlightened conversations on our mindsets, generosity, and the pure joy of giving? Picture this - a deliciously decadent sausage avocado toast sprinkled with charisma, a dash of humor, and a heaping spoonful of philosophy. As our breakfast sizzles and the aroma fills the room, we're spinning the conversation to the virtues of giving and thankfulness. As the holiday season approaches, we share our thoughts on "shrinkflation" and hoarding, and we unravel how generosity can shift our mindset to a happier, healthier space.
Our morning meal takes us on a journey through the intriguing territories of scarcity and abundance mindsets. Get ready to challenge your perceptions as we spotlight Carol Dweck's growth mindset and its alignment with an abundance mindset. We also lay bare the signs of a scarcity mindset and its impact on our giving. Our discussion underlines the significance of not being focused on outcomes, but giving freely and generously from a place of abundance and gratitude.
We round off our breakfast discourse by exploring the broader impact of generosity on the world. With a strong cup of Nespresso coffee in hand, we probe into the concept of unconditional giving, asking if it truly results in the positive outcomes we assume. We also tease you with a sneak peek into our upcoming episode, "The Spectrum of Generosity." So, pull up a chair, grab your toast and coffee, and tune in as we cook up some food for thought on generosity, abundance, and the art of giving without expecting anything in return.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to help yourself.
Food and philosophy with Brianand Nick.
I'm Nick and I'm Brian.
The government is very generousWith other people's money which
eaten Brian.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's true, it is true , there is no such thing as
government money.
It's just it's all otherpeople's money at that point.
Anyway, what am I eating?
So I wanted to talk about whatI made this break, so this
morning for breakfast, and it isI Don't know if I've said this
(00:37):
before on the on the pod or not,but my fantasy is, if I had all
the money in the world and ICould just do whatever I wanted,
I'd probably start a breakfastrestaurant, because I love
breakfast foods and I have, likeall these, I think, so many of
the creations that I makequote-unquote creations that I
(00:58):
make for my own breakfast.
I've never seen them on a menuanywhere.
I've never seen them likeanybody else talk about making
that type of a thing, orcombinations or anything like
that, which could be a reason.
You know, there could be areason for that.
Like, other people tried it andthey're like, yeah, that's,
that's not good, or it could bejust that it's just not feasible
(01:20):
.
I don't know, I've never beenin the restaurant industry, but
so this morning I made gosh.
What could I even call it?
I'll call it a Sausage.
It's my version of sausage,avocado toast, okay, and
although it doesn't have anytoast, yeah, Please, before I
(01:44):
throw up, all right so what Idid was I took two tortillas
right, and I had some turkeysausage patties that would be
good on like a sandwich, abreakfast sandwich or something
like that, mm-hmm.
And then I, so I I heated upthe tortillas and then I put a
(02:05):
little thin layer of creamcheese and and a little thin
like a couple of you know shredsof shredded cheddar cheese, and
I melted that down a little bitokay.
And then I took one wholeavocado and I like crushed it up
with just salt and pepper and Iheated up the you crushed, you
(02:26):
crushed the avocado.
Yeah, so not with, not with saltand pepper.
I mean like with a salt andpepper in it.
Okay, who's my salt shaker tocrush the?
So?
So I, so I crushed the avocado,put a little salt and pepper on
(02:49):
it and then Heated up thesausage patties, because they
were frozen sausage patties.
So I heated those up and then IPut like, took the two
tortillas you know they were oneach other, like I pulled them
apart, put the sausage in there,put the avocado in there and
then put the whole thingtogether, like it was like a top
(03:09):
and bottom tortilla, and thencut it into like pieces that I
could eat, right, so it was likea.
It was, like you know, avocado,cheddar cheese, cream cheese,
sausage patty between twotortillas, right, two flour
tortillas.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So the tortillas were placed such that they're kind
of like a sandwich.
But then yeah, cut them up intowhat wedges or something, yeah
like wedges.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I did it in like quarters and I just picked it up
and and so and it was reallyreally good.
A lot of flavors like very sortof decadent because of the
avocado in there.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It's like very sort of rich, you know and this is
pretty, pretty creamy with theavocado and sour cream and the
most cream cheese.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah, so yeah cream cheese.
Sorry.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, so it was very creamy.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
What do we call those things that, like they'll serve
them at parties, though,basically roll up a slice of ham
around some cream cheese?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, pinwheels is pinwheels.
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I've seen those likepinwheels.
They call some.
I think they call those likesome of those have like
pinwheels sandwiches wherethey'll take a you know bread
and everything and roll it upinto little Like rolls like that
and slice it, you know, but I'mpretty sure that it's something
like that.
But those are really good.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I want, I want to try that what you described.
Yeah and I want to name it.
Yeah, yeah, I want to name itmore than I want to try it right
.
I'll probably be noodling on itthrough our episode in the
background, like I'll just blurit out the right, the genius
name, I'm so proud of it, likeactually, no, that's, that's
(04:49):
disgusting.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I wouldn't eat that if you called it that like Well,
that has to do with how, that,what the theme of the rest?
Because there could be a themeto the restaurant and then that
game name would like play intothe theme.
You know I mean so.
Yeah so it could be like youknow like the ham-fisted miracle
or something.
Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yes, nothing to do with ham, has nothing to do with
fists.
It has another differentmiracle.
It's just right to name you.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I guess that could work.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
So you in the face and you love it so.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Well, and I think, like I said, I feel like there's
no way that any restaurantwould ever do that.
What I did this morning, whichis take an entire avocado,
because that would probably belike a $20 breakfast thing,
because it's, like you know,because avocados are so
expensive.
But but to have something likethat where it's like a little
bit of cheese, avocado, you knowall that stuff tastes really
(05:45):
good.
I will say that it probablydidn't need the Cheddar cheese
on there, like it didn't reallyadd anything per se, like maybe
maybe if it was like a thinslice of Really extremely sharp
cheddar cheese, but I didn'thave that, you know.
So like so that you know thatkind of cheddar cheese that has
a real strong bite to it, youknow.
Mm-hmm that might help, but thethe one that I had this morning
(06:06):
was just mild cheddar and itreally wasn't Didn't really add
much to it.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Anything, I might have added some texture a little
bit, yeah, a little bit yeah,but not like, not any kind of
significant flavor change.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I would think so.
But it was like I said, it wasreally, it was really good and,
and it will be a memory, will bean item on my menu.
You know, so cool, that's whatI ate this morning, before we
recorded.
And then I've got Brian'sbeverage corner.
(06:39):
I've got my handy-dandy Flask,iron flask, not really flask,
but it's called an iron flask.
It has water in it, and then Iam drinking just regular.
So here at my office where I'mrecording, they have an espresso
machine.
Have you ever had a nespressocoffee?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
huh yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
You had me a Nespresso.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
No Nespresso.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
You know the brand.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Oh, I thought you said espresso.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I did.
It, say espresso.
That's what you said.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I said Nespresso, nespresso.
Oh, there's a name brand intheir name brand Nespresso.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
So from like Nestle or something.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, whatever exact something glomerate, exactly.
This is actually good.
It will do like the one.
It's like a one cup coffeemaker, right, but it also whips
the coffee as it comes out.
So it has Basically it has likefoam.
You know, you get like a goodlayer of like coffee foam on top
of it.
And so I had one of theirs, Ithink it was called.
(07:42):
It was like double caramel orsomething was the flavor of the
coffee, and then I put in acoconut like coconut cream
creamer, a little bit of that inthere, and it's really, really
good.
It is afternoon right now, soI'm having an afternoon cup of
coffee, but but really goodNespresso.
(08:04):
You should, you guys should patyourselves on the back.
This episode brought to you byNespresso, no.
And then the other thing thatI'm drinking is I found another
kombucha at the market and I hadto get it, and you'll see why
in a second.
So I'm drinking this.
It is by a company called hum HU M M and it's pro, pro,
(08:24):
probiotic kombucha.
But if I'll hold this up, youcan see all isn't all kombucha
probiotic.
Yes, I believe so, but if youlook in your camera.
You can see yeah.
I'm drinking it.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
You see, yeah, it is the magical lemon cupcake.
Unicorn edition.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
It's the magical lemon cupcake unicorn edition,
so I had to get that and, uh,tastes really really good.
Does not taste a lot likekombucha, where you get like
that really really strong Sortof yeasty kind of flavor to it.
Only 40 calories for the can,but I'm drinking that today and
(09:03):
it has 1,500 of my b12 Vitaminb12 needs for the day.
So, so, hopefully that willclean out my gut and or clean
out my gut or whatever it'ssupposed to do, so I'll be
sipping on that for the rest ofthe record today.
(09:23):
What about you?
What are you eating anddrinking?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Well, you can, you can hear me, okay.
Yes awesome, nice.
See, I I'll do my breakfast too.
I had the bacon gouda sandwichfrom starbucks.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Oh, nice, I like that one was.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, it was tasty and satisfactory.
A little small I might havesaid that before.
On the podge shrink flation.
Yep shrink flation.
Uh, if you can't, if you can'traise the price, make it smaller
.
Yep, also another right, I'llgo another record profits for a
short time another one of yourfavorite things.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It's a portmanteau of shrinkage and inflation.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, I wish my only.
The only thing I don't likeabout portmanteau is that
portmanteau is itself not aportmanteau.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, that would be way better if it's an
onomatopoeia.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
What?
No, that's, that's different.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
I know, I know I'm on a pee like no.
I thought onomatopoeia it'ssound, oh it's.
It's.
Reads like it sounds.
No, reads like it.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, like boom bang, like those words, the name of
the word sound like the thingthat describes what it is.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah pop, but it would be cool if it was a
portmanteau and an onomatopoeia.
I mean the portmanteau, if theword for portmanteau was a
portmanteau and it was anonomatopoeia, that would be
awesome.
Like it would be like word,word come, word combined or
something like.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Anyway, sorry, yeah, smushy, it's a smushy or
something.
It sounds like a made-up wordand it is, and it right, and it
takes smush and Up togetherright.
Hey, back to my food.
So I had that and that was itfor breakfast.
(11:23):
Actually, I've been nursing ofCold brew coffee with just a
scotch of sweet cream added toit.
Nice, natural cold brew, justjust cold brew, yeah.
And yeah, the only reason thatsweet cream is in there is the
cashier.
She looked at me, she knows me.
She's like you just want ablack?
(11:45):
Okay, yeah, I mean, all she hadto do is like raise her eyebrow
and and I was like okay, fine,put the cream in.
You had me an eyebrow raise.
So yeah, there's that, and I'vealso been nursing my bottle of
(12:12):
water and a glass of lid.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
No lid today.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
You're just not drinking out of this bra.
You know I have trouble puttinga lid on it.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, I don't want thestraw.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Well, that's good.
Hey, this by this class bottle.
It's better for you.
There's no plastic.
Yeah, it comes with a straw.
Uh, what's the straw made of?
Yeah, plastic.
Yeah, so it had a yeah, butit's fine, I solved that problem
I I haven't quite thrown theplastic straw away.
Yeah you know, recovering order, I guess.
(12:50):
But it is right there, readyfor me to throw out, I guess.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
You know you couldn't .
You can eat it.
That's the mindset of a hoarderright there.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Hey, you never know what you're gonna need this you
all are hearing it here firstlive.
Oh, he's got a record episodehe's doing it.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
It's going in the way back and went underneath his
desk into Witnessing it rightnow.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
There we go.
Ting, was it in the trash can?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
forever, no more straw.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
All right, it's wasted.
Well, that's good.
This, that was my breakfasttomorrow.
Breakfast beverages.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
All right, well, thank you for giving us that.
That was very generous of youto give us that description of
your food and your drink.
Just you to ask what I waseating.
Hey, you know, I just have themindset of generosity today and
Really tell me.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah what is the mindset of generosity?
It?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
is, tell me more doing research for a podcast
about generosity.
Well, if you haven't alreadyfigured that out out, there we
are going to be talking aboutbecause it is we're recording
just before Thanksgiving and youguys are gonna be hearing this
(14:08):
in December.
But this time of year is, youknow, all of the giving,
thankfulness, generosity, all ofthese, I would say, virtues.
Come out and maybe we focus onthe virtues a little bit more
than we do, or Should the restof the year right?
At least hopefully, you know,maybe maybe take a little bit of
(14:30):
time at the end of the year toreflect on things like that and
and also just Get in a differentmindset of hey, it's maybe not
think about all the things thatI need to think about that.
Maybe, you know, put get out ofmyself a little bit and so.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
So that's a war format let's follow our format
fine define.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Do you have a good?
Do you have a?
Do you have a good definitionfor us of generosity um?
Speaker 1 (14:58):
yeah, I think, common daily parlance, it's more than
expected and it it has its roots, interestingly enough in
nobility like to be.
Yeah, the generous like ofstock, like good, it's just
saying good stock, that's theLatin roots of it.
It kind of reminds me of youknow, we have the word gracious.
(15:23):
Yeah and that's.
That's an adjective that'sapplied to people you know
broadly.
But you know there was a timewhere you're talking to royalty
and nobility and they werereferred to.
They were referred to as yourgrace, right, right.
So it's just like maybe there'ssome loose relation there, but
(15:43):
anyway it's more than expected.
So I think that has a lot thatwe can play with right.
Yeah where it's.
It's not only good things thatyou can get more than unexpected
Right or if, or depending onwho you're giving to and their
expectations, the same giftmight be considered generous or
not generous.
Yeah because the expectation isvery well.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Well, I know I've heard the, I've heard the
language in Christian circles ofextending grace to someone.
That's sort of the to me thesame thing, it's like that, the
whole graciousness kind of youknow, feeling that you're, that,
(16:27):
you're being I don't know it's.
It's weird because I feel likeI feel like I define both by
saying each.
I like saying the one, I'm like, well, if you're, if you're
really generous, you'reextending grace and if you're
Gracious, then you're extendinggenerosity.
Like I feel like it's like acircular thing for me.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
But they're definitely connected, I think
even Not just the grace, butalso another loose connection be
noble versus nobility, rightlike to be noble.
Yeah and in good right, likeyeah, the gracious to me Is
something that you are when,when someone makes a mistake and
(17:09):
you don't make a big deal outof it, right.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
It's right it's so.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
It's sort of somewhere sitting between being
generous and forgiveness.
Yeah, but I'm not a whole lotmore thought into it than that.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I think it's a nice way of so far being being able
to.
I Think both people in thatcircumstance like this it's a
potential talking about somebodymakes a mistake whether that
being like a relationship or ina work situation or anything
else and Both people haveacknowledged that there's a
mistake.
Like both people like, yeah,you made a mistake.
(17:43):
But it's almost like a way ofnot beating the person up about
it, saying, yeah, you made amistake, but okay, how, like
where do we go?
What are we gonna do?
Speaker 3 (17:50):
You know what?
Speaker 1 (17:50):
I mean it's like okay .
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, I could spend a lot of time berating you and
and dwelling on the mistake, oror you can't you're a
peacekeeper.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
No, I say.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I meant the, the general term I like meaning.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
I'm physically capable of it, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I'm sorry I interrupted your point, though.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
So I mean, I think that I think that's yeah, and I
think that's you know sort ofwhere where that lands is.
You know, in that extendinggrace is, yeah, it's, it's
almost, it's almost anacknowledgement of I feel like
Well, like not without dump,like going too deep into it.
(18:48):
I feel like People are alwayslooking to make a connection
with other people and I feellike one of the closest
connections you can make withanother human being is to to
have some common ground of hey,okay, so you made a mistake.
I make mistakes too, you know.
In fact, I might have made, Imight have made the mistake that
you made before, and In somecases, if it's like a
(19:09):
parent-child relationship, youmight have.
Yeah, I made that mistake too,and I almost knew that you were
gonna make that mistake, butBasically I might have let you.
You know, not let you make themistake, but I you got.
You have to learn from thelesson.
So so it's, it's thatconnection that you're making
(19:30):
and you know you can, you canbasically form a bond because of
that.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Well, that's kind of the common ground that we all
have is a world human.
Yeah and what's that quote?
To air is human, to forgive isdivine.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Oh, yeah, that applies somewhere in all this.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Who said that I?
Don't know, you can look it up.
I'm content to have notbutchered a quote for once.
That's.
That's though.
I know a Hallmark of progressfor me.
And then there's also the graceperiod.
I think that's another examplewhat you were talking about of
Acknowledging the mistake.
(20:07):
It's like, yep, you missed yourdeadline.
Yeah but we'll give you threedays grace right, yeah, so is.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
If there's a grace period, isn't the actual
deadline the end of the graceperiod?
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Well, yeah, I know it's, maybe, maybe that's like
Chris, the Christian roots ofusury Usury.
Oh yeah, you siri, because yeah, was it?
The deadline right is when youdied and then three days later
you're resurrected.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
It's like well, you can.
You can come back from the deadif you pay us within three days
.
You know like right.
That's so.
That's like where there's adhoc, bad, ad hoc hypotheses,
right spirit, spirit,speculative historians is what
we are.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Well, yeah, so I mean in terms of, you know, in terms
of the I guess, give, thegiving mentality or the.
You know basically what am Ithinking of?
Generosity, you know, I feellike, at least when I was doing
the reading, about a lot of thisstuff.
(21:19):
There's a lot of things that Ididn't realize about it that you
know.
There's basically a lot ofthings that happen
physiologically andpsychologically by being in the
mindset of Giving grace,extending grace, being gracious,
being giving, being generousand I guess, giving.
(21:42):
You know, it's interestingbecause giving I Guess we can
just use those termsinterchangeably, like giving and
generosity, and to some extentbecause at first I was thinking
of giving as like a physicalthing, like you know, giving
someone money or giving someonea gift or whatever.
But it doesn't have to be that,you know it can be.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, I think the generosity part is More like an,
an adverb or an adjective togiving you know right give
generously.
Yeah, you could give Notgenerously right.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Give stingily.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
You know, like, if you, if you give a 2% tip,
you're, you're giving.
Yeah but you're not necessarilygenerous, you know right.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
In fact, you're not generous because that's not more
than expected.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
You're based, you're generous with your stinginess
because you're more stingy thanexpected right, right, well, and
, like I said, a lot of thethings that I read actually had
studies, psycho, psychologicalstudies that we're talking about
, like this.
One has a.
This article that I'm lookingat right now says you know,
(22:49):
studies are showing thatgenerosity is actually in your
best interest.
I'm practicing generosity is amental health principle and it
could be very key to a happy andhealthy life.
And then it goes on to say acouple you know other things
about.
You know about that generositymindset and I Just like I said I
(23:11):
feel like, well, I feel likeit's.
No, I just can say I feel likeit's.
It's difficult to Sometimes,it's difficult to be generous if
you feel like you're, you know,You're, you're not in the place
where you want to be, or you'reyou know Like financially or
anything else, and I feel like,I feel like that's part of the
(23:33):
reason why.
Let me I keep on saying I feellike the.
In the church, at least theChristian church, many times
there's tithing, which is notnecessarily mandatory, but
obviously in some cases inchurches it is, but in a lot of
cases it's just heavily, heavily, heavily encouraged and many
(23:54):
times that's you know, 10% isthe number that most people
arrive at is, hey, you shouldgive 10% of everything to the
church.
And you know and I feel like ISaid it again the, the, the
lesson that you that is saidthere is you give that in times,
(24:17):
in good times and bad times andmedium times, and you just give
that no matter what, right,yeah, so you feel like you maybe
feel like gosh, I'm goingthrough a real tough time
Financially, I don't have a lotof money, but the church is
still.
Yeah, that's, you still need togive the 10%, even if you feel
like you don't have the moneyand it's a it's.
(24:38):
I feel like that type of aconsistency Outside of the
Christian belief of it is whatcreates a mindset.
You know a habit, and we'vetalked about habits before,
right, well, I think habitscreate your mindset.
You know you have a habit thatyou do repetitively, pretty
pretty much.
Eventually your brain's gonnacatch up.
(24:59):
For some people that's quickerthan others, but your brain is
basically saying, hey, okay, wedo this, no matter what.
This is just a thing that we do.
I'm a person that gives right.
It's part of who I am, yeah,yeah.
And Turns out the researchbacks that.
You know the research backsthat if you're, if you're
consistently Acting in a wayit's generous or giving things,
(25:20):
then your mindset is that andyou're, and that's a mindset of
somebody who is happier andsomebody who is healthier.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Mm-hmm, you know so, but Does that dilute the concept
of generosity if You're givingBecause of how it serves you the
health benefits and thepsychological benefits and you
know, like yeah yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
The interesting that you asked that?
Because in one of the one ofthe articles I'm looking for
right now, one of the articlesthat I read it was talking about
Giving, basically giving forthe sole purpose of oh, I'm
doing this because I Need, Iwant to get these health
benefits.
I want to give, you know, Iwant to give because it's gonna
(26:15):
make me better health, it'sgonna, you know, give me better
health or whatever.
And they, their assertion wasif you're doing it just for that
reason and I can't remember ifthis is backed by a study or not
then as soon as I find it, I'llI'll say but if you're giving
just for that reason, then Thenit's not gonna give you as a big
(26:36):
of a benefit as it would ifyou're just giving for the sense
of giving and You're gettingthose other things as a fringe
benefit.
Interesting so does that makesense?
I the funny thing is I bet it.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
I bet it's like self-reinforcing too, like the
more, the more you see yourselfas a generous person, regardless
of Quote, how you got there,right you they becomes more
subconscious and more abstractyes, and.
The benefits become lessconcrete, right, the reasons
(27:17):
become less concrete and you endup just Giving, because giving
is good right.
Like you know, you can'tnecessarily Itemize the list of
benefits to yourself and others,but you just you've developed
this since that this works rightthis right.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Well, and it's funny because in my head I, as I said
a second ago, in my head I'malways thinking of giving
something physical, likesomething tangible, but you know
, a lot of times it's givingyour time.
I mean, you and I both know wegive our time to toast masters.
I give my time to the bandboosters at my children's high
school, and that's that, that'sa volunteering mindset, which is
(28:02):
also you're giving something,you're giving a Commodity that
everyone has the same amount of.
So you're saying I will carveout this amount of time and I
will give that to thisorganization or this cause that
I believe in, right, and so youknow, that's it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
But, as you know, like those people you're serving
, have different.
I want to just chime in on thedifferent expectations bit.
Right, yeah, if some people inband, some parents and band
boosters, have been in it forten years, yeah, whereas you've
only been in a couple.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
They may not appreciate your quote.
Generosity of your time.
Yeah as much as somebody whoDoesn't have the time, like
maybe they have the desire, forsome reason they don't feel like
they have time to contribute,so they they see your exact same
contribution.
Right, it's?
Yeah, it's the same number ofhours per week or whatever that
you're giving, but depending onwho's witnessing it and what
(29:00):
their expectations are is sortof.
I guess I'm saying thegenerosity is in the mind of the
beholder.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
To some extent if the garden expectation well, and I
I have found that there is, whenyou get into not so much in
Toastmasters, I haven't Ihaven't encountered this in
Toastmasters, but in otherorganizations I feel like
sometimes there's a comparing byother people of how much they
give versus how much you give,and it's almost like it's this
(29:31):
trying to figure out who'sgiving more or who's, you know,
done more.
Yeah there's more generous likeit's almost like a generosity
competition, you know like no,no, I'm winning the general you
know, and yeah, it's like oh you, congratulations, you got your
your Distinguished Toastmastersaward.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, so nice.
That reminds me I needed dustoff my three distinguished
Toastmasters.
I was so young and naive.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Mean girl compliments in Toastmasters.
That's terrible.
What else there was, so muchyou were saying that.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Also anyway, like with that competition, it's
funny because to me I alwaysgive because I want to give and
I always volunteer because Iwant to volunteer.
Actually, I mean, that'sprobably not.
Sometimes I get volunthold, youknow, but but I do.
(30:37):
I do get the you know, thefringe benefits of being in
those positions and so Ibasically I feel like I I don't
know just like I get I get thebenefit of being in that
volunteering kind of mindset,but I don't have anything in my
(30:57):
head that's like, well, I'mvolunteering more than that
person is or that I really do.
Really I'm thankful for theother people who contribute,
even if it's different levels ofcontribution.
You know everyone needs tocontribute on some level to make
an organization work.
That is, of all volunteerorganization.
But you do recognize that somepeople are more effective and
(31:19):
some people Volunteer you knowmore hours or more effort or
more whatever for that thing.
But to me you everyone.
I guess the optimist in me islike everyone's doing what they
can do.
You know what I mean, and Ifthey you know me being a lazy
(31:39):
jerk.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
I know in my projection like you are generous
and so you project that on thethe world, right.
You, you sort of operate fromthat assumption.
I am a lazy and skeptical andso I I assume the world is more
like me.
Yeah, maybe not.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, and I think that's a normal thing.
That I think it's a normalthing that happens is, you know,
projecting onto the world, youknow, sure, trying to figure out
, you know.
Basically.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Some of what you're talking about, too, makes me
think of keeping score.
Yes like you're talking about.
You know, generosity in termsof effort or time.
Yeah, money, and those are, forthe most part, things you can
quantify.
Efforts probably most difficultto quantify, but money and time
is easy.
It's either dollars or hours inour country, of course, but
(32:39):
yeah, so At the same time,though, I think that little
thing on our brain that tells usgiving is good.
Mm-hmm is part of what we'vebeen optimized for.
Yeah like I've learned so muchabout myself and human
psychology with the more Ilearned about this.
(33:00):
What's the word?
because the advent of productiveAI or useful AI, right like GPT
and all that Mm-hmm in this, inthe reinforcement learning.
So you know that the AI getspoints.
You know the AI programmers andthey're more like trainers
(33:23):
right, right, um, give morepoints when, when things they
want to be done are done anddone, well, right, the more well
, the more points.
Well, I think, whether, whetherwe have Creators or not, we are
optimized for our own game andthat's the infinite game right
(33:48):
and so the things that we do inthe infinite game, just you know
, short, short preamble on gametheory, right?
Uh-huh, there's the finite game,where you, you play to win, and
Once you win, the game is overright the infinite game is you
play to win, but when you winyou just keep going like, yeah,
(34:09):
like the game doesn't end.
And the way you win is bykeeping the game going.
If you're, the more yourbehavior makes it more likely
for the game to keep going, themore you win.
Right, that's what I think lifeis right.
Yeah, the purpose of life isfor the purpose of the life to
continue.
Sure, that's what procreationis, that's what getting food is,
(34:32):
that's what mm-hmm.
And I think, being socialcreatures, being generous,
giving to others, right.
The more people there are alive, their strength in numbers, the
more People there are toprocreate, right, the more
likely of the species willsurvive.
So it's right um we.
(34:55):
We all win, when we all winright that's.
That's sort of the recursivenature of Giving and generosity
and grace and all of that is.
Tritting each other Well Means,we stay well.
Yeah and that's what well-beingis right.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah Well, and I think you hit on some
interesting on In terms of, likeyou know, procreation and
having having kids is, you know,a lot of a lot of your life.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Just to say a lot of yeah, no, a lot of a lot of what
, yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
So a lot of what being a parent is is give.
I mean you're giving a lot,you're you know, You're, I would
say that if you had to.
You know I Don't like notcompare types of parents or
anything, but I think probablyParents that are, the better
parents are, get.
They give a lot to theirchildren.
They, you know, not necessarilygive without any need for
(35:57):
something in in return, but thatthey provide, let me say,
provide a lot for their childrenand, you know, say, yeah, I'm
gonna, I'm gonna give you thebest chance at life here, best
chance to survive and strive.
I mean survive and flourish, Ishould say.
And you know that's that'sinteresting to me.
(36:19):
I did find, by the way, thissection in this article talking
about and it's just, it was justa mention that made me think a
little bit.
It's it's an article that hasJust entitled the health
benefits of giving and it haslike four or five different
things in here, but at the endof it it says you know what when
giving becomes too much?
And it says it might not be agood idea To volunteer just to
(36:44):
improve your own life.
Some studies have found thatthe reason you decide to
volunteer makes a difference.
Volunteering to help othersmight be more beneficial to the
volunteer than doing it tobenefit yourself.
So you know, basically, if yougo into this like with a selfish
mindset, it's almost like aself-correcting thing.
It's like, oh, you know whatyou can get health benefits from
(37:06):
being generous and this.
But you have to have a mindsetof I'm really doing this to help
others.
I'm not.
I'm not doing it because Ithink that I'm gonna get
something out of it, right.
Mm-hmm and which is sort of whatI've Going back to, that
comparison thing, the comparisonMindset of oh, I'm volunteering
more, I, I do better, I do morefor this organization than that
(37:28):
person does.
To me that's going back toexactly this is like who cares,
right?
Yeah, we're all here for we'renot trying to compare who's the
best volunteer here.
We're trying to make thisorganization the best that it
can be, and so who cares?
Who gives more or who morehours?
Or if you you perceive thatyour effort and everything else
is more, you know, beneficial tothis organization, then this
(37:53):
sort of goes in line with.
That is like you seem to havethe wrong mindset here, right?
So interesting, I will say thatwhat?
The other thing that this sortof led me back to a little bit
is We've we've mentioned theword mindset quite a quite a few
(38:13):
times, and we we've talkedabout a book that's actually
called mindset on this podcast.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
So we probably should .
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I should discuss that a little bit, but if you have
listened to the podcast for awhile or if you're just in the
know in terms of the self-helpkind of arena, carol Dweck wrote
a book called mindset and shetalks about Different mindset.
She talks about a scarcitymindset versus a growth mindset
(38:43):
in her book Close fixed, mindsetfixed.
I'm sorry growth.
That was, yeah, that's right,she, I, I'm, I'm thinking of
scarcity because I'm that's whatI was talking to you about
before, which is mm-hmm, youknow, fixed.
And growth mindset is what CarolDweck says, but then I Tend to
think that those are parallel toan abundance mindset versus a
(39:04):
scarcity mindset, which are, youknow, the same thing.
A growth mindset is the same asan abundance mindset is, hey,
that the the world ofpossibilities is out there for
me, and, and it's more of apositive turn on it.
The other side is a morepessimistic, negative, you know,
scarcity, like there's only somuch pie to go around, and if
(39:25):
that guy gets a bigger slice ofthe pie, I get a smaller slice
of the pie, you know, and and sothe interesting thing was that
the article one of the articlesI pulled up is the.
So this is, it is going into,like my own thing, this is
parallel to her, but it'sscarcity mindset and how to
(39:47):
overcome it.
Right, and a lot of it talksabout money, because Many of us
are in that mindset of like, youknow the thing, that how I know
if I'm winning or losing, orhow I evaluate my success in
society, is by how much I havein the bank, or how much money
(40:07):
I'm making, or what are my, howbig my house is or whatever that
else is, and different,different kinds of keep and
score.
Yeah, and yeah and so I've.
The first part of this articletalks about signs of a scarcity
mindset and this.
The scary thing is that I thereare a couple things here I was
(40:28):
like, oh no.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Feel a little bit, a little bit of conviction there
in the soul.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, I was like oh no, this article was written for
who?
It didn't say Brian.
I just scroll back to the top.
He didn't say Brian, thisarticle is for you, to the, to
the brands that may concern.
So a couple of them.
There's a couple bullet points,but one of them is over
scheduling yourself is ascarcity mindset.
(40:56):
Perfectionism is a scarcitymindset and fear of failure,
scarcity mindset and fear ofloss.
So you know, they talk about alot about with money.
Where you're, you're sayinglike you're gonna, you're gonna
hold on to your money.
You're not gonna give yourmoney away.
You're gonna hold on to as muchof it as you can because you
(41:18):
have this mindset of oh my gosh,I could lose it all.
Fear of loss I'm.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
I'm feared that, yeah , because, yeah, fear fear of
loss is like as soon as there isno more to write it right.
I think exactly same of fear offailure is the assumption that
There'll be no moreopportunities to succeed.
Yeah, this is your last chanceto do something with your life,
you know, like cheese that'syeah that's not well, and it's
not realistic.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
That's not rational, it's that's just like fear.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
You know, right, you're talking yeah exactly, and
and I think one of the.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
You know, one of the first things that is going
Towards the fighting, the, thescarcity mindset in this article
.
The number one thing on theirseven tips is that article.
The number one thing on theirseven tips is practicing
gratitude and I feel like thatthat goes hand-in-hand with
generosity.
I feel like you know the justgoing back to what I said is hey
(42:14):
, if you, if it matters whatyour mindset is when you're
giving, if you're giving it witha group, if you're giving it
with a grateful mind, if you'resaying, hey, I'm gonna give this
money away, it's almost likehave you heard people say like
I've heard these people thatwrite like little Notes on there
like they they'll pay theirbills and in the memo section
(42:35):
They'll be like, oh, thank youfor providing gas for my house
this month, you know to, whenthey pay their gas bill or
whatever.
And it's this mindset of oh, mygod, I'm not just sitting here
writing a bill and money's goingout of my account.
Man, you know what I got inreturn for this?
I got to stay warm for thiswhole month because they gave me
gas and they made sure that itwas coming into my house and I'm
gonna gratefully pay this gasbill.
(42:57):
And so Again leading back to a.
This isn't a scarcity mindset,this is a and and in that case
you're not giving your money.
You know you're not.
It's not like you're beinggenerous to the gas company, but
the practicing gratitude thingis saying my mindset's important
here and yeah, obviously CarolDweck completely agrees with
(43:17):
that.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
So, yeah, I think hers is her if to be.
It's almost like a specificform of that scarcity and
abundance mindset, because Ithink her stuff hinges largely
on, like that, perfectionism,fear of failure.
It's more like the scarcity ofchangeability yes or the
(43:42):
abundance of learning that youcan have.
You know the learning.
Basically believing that youcan change and grow, that you
can do and be better, is agrowth mindset.
Yes and then the belief that theaptitude test scores you got
when you were in elementaryschool Are the ones that you're
stuck with and that's all you'llever be good at and you'll.
(44:04):
You won't change your learnergrow right right your first
assessment is also your finalassessment, and you're carved in
stone.
Good luck, right.
So right, yeah Well it's that'sthere's again like I'm thanks
to you explaining it the way youhave I.
I am seeing a lot of those sameparallels you're describing
(44:25):
right between a fixed mindsetand scarcity mindset.
Mm-hmm a growth mindset andabundance mindset.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yes, yeah, I think I'm looking at, actually, a
summary that I have of CarolDweck's book and the interesting
thing is there's a bunch ofthings that we always talk about
in that I'm I Embrace fully inmy life.
One of them is not worryingabout outcome of things, us a
(44:55):
very and and obviously, in orderto give freely, in order to be
generous, you're You're not,like focused on the outcome of
that.
You know you're focused on, youshould be focused on the giving
of it, the.
This is what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Yeah, you're not.
I mean, if yeah, you're not, ifyou're giving, quote giving and
generous, then You're notthinking about what they're
gonna do with that money, right?
It's starting to look more likea loan, right, or?
Yes conditional love.
You know that most, most peoplewho actually give to someone
(45:32):
who's panhandling For better orfor worse, doesn't think about
what they're gonna do with thatmoney.
Right yeah, you know it's truecharity, yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
So here you go, there's strings attached and
also like when I choose to dothat which is sometimes I don't
always, but when I choose to dothat, my mindset is more of a no
matter what that person doeswith this money, it feels like
they need the money more than Ido, Like I feel like I have a
(46:02):
pretty good life.
I have the ability to work.
I have the ability to make moremoney if I need to.
I have my own business.
I can grow that if I want to.
And you know the person that'son the side of the road selling
the newspapers here in Nashville, everyone will know what I'm
talking about.
Or if it's just the personthat's just asking for some
spare change, you at least youknow.
(46:24):
And sometimes that doesn't panout, because sometimes those
people I know.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
I know I know there's been.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I didn't even realize sometimes it doesn't and handle
out Anyway, but sometimes thosepeople make a considerable
amount of money.
I know there was, there was alike I don't want to say it was
a study, but they were trying tofigure out how much people were
making, like in Los Angelesstanding on a freeway off ramp,
(46:52):
and some of those people weremaking, you know, $60,000,
$70,000 a year panhandling.
So you're thinking in your headbut again you sort of get into
the weeds because it doesn'tmatter what they're doing with
the money.
You know it makes.
It made me feel good to sayhere here's a couple of bucks,
you know this person, go do withit, do with it what you see fit
(47:14):
, you know yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
And I'm going to, I guess, argue with myself a
little bit here, all right,because I'm, like I mentioned
before, I'm a bit skeptical andno.
Yeah, and I assume the worst ofpanhandling not the worst, but
like I assume they're going touse it for alcohol or yeah or
(47:38):
whatnot.
And that is experience basedoff of, actually, when I was in
my more goody two shoesChristian days try to make a
mission out of it, and I would.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Interact with them and learn.
I learned with experience thecon right, I did follow ups and
such, and even that's allanecdotal.
So anyway, I'll argue withmyself a bit like even if I give
the guy a $5 bill and the oddsare 95% that he'll go and buy
alcohol and Right.
More than he needs.
(48:09):
You know, there's still that 5%and I'm still that five bucks
is giving him an opportunity foranother good choice.
Yeah Right, and maybe it takesa thousand bad choices before he
finally makes you know the goodchoice.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
And maybe I'm only 555, you know out of the
thousand bad decisions, but I'mgetting them closer to the time
when he'll finally choose.
Well, hopefully, before hisbody makes another choice, you
know right, yeah.
At the same time, like becauseI don't know the odds, because I
don't know the situation, andI'm a bit more frugal in that
(48:56):
regard and practice.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Yeah, I think it reminded me when you were
talking about that, going backto our episode on unconditional
love we did a little while agoand it.
You know, that's the kind ofthing that I feel like if you're
giving with conditions, thenit's not really giving Right.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
You're, you're.
If you're saying, hey, I'mgoing to give this to you, but I
want you to what?
Speaker 1 (49:20):
I just I made me think of oh no, the gift cards
are evil then, because it's likehere's money, but you have to
spend it here.
Yeah, it's got conditions.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yeah.
Well that's why I usually.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
That's why, as a, as a number nine, I usually get
like a target gift card orsomething, because I'm like, oh,
you can get anything at targetLike you.
Can you know, I'm not going torestrict you to buying growth.
You can go buy groceries withthis, you can go buy clothes,
you can go buy lamps, you can gobuy battery, whatever you want.
You know, Anyway, um, no, so Iguess the, the, yeah, that that
(49:53):
conditioned kind of thing is.
I think it's, and I know somepeople want to be a little bit.
I will, I will say evangelical,and I don't mean that in the
Christian sense, I just meanthat in the sense of you know,
trying to condition and say, hey, you know what, here's how you,
I'm going to help you, but I'malso going to request, or I'm
(50:15):
going to, you know, require thatin order for me to give my help
to you, here's what you need todo.
And, um, and so I feel like inmy mind um, hey, you know what,
if, if, that, regardless ofwhether it's good for the
person's health or not, if thatguy goes out and for that person
(50:35):
goes out and buys, uh, you know, a pint of alcohol and has that
, and that's the way they getthrough that night, because
their life is somewhat miserableat that point.
And you know who am I to say Idon't do everything healthy for
myself either.
You know what I mean.
So not that I want to, you know.
I want to be an enabler forsomebody to continue to live a
(51:01):
life that is not healthy.
But at the same time, you knowsomeone's asking for help.
I'm going to try to give it,and so yeah, and this is a
genuine comment slash question.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
There's a thing I listened to on YouTube recently
that, um, I was driving to thatToastmasters training this
weekend, yeah, and one of thequotes they kept coming back to
in their broad topic ofdiscussion was from Thomas
Sowell, and about 20 years agohe said much of the social
(51:40):
history of the Western worldover the past three decades has
involved replacing what workedwith what sounded good.
And I was like I'm kind ofnodding my head.
I, before that quote came tomind just a moment ago here
today, I've been sort of noddingmy head along with you that you
know, giving, giving withconditions, is not good, it
(52:05):
doesn't work or right.
And, and I'm wondering it, justsome part of my brain maybe the
devil's advocate or whateverjust hit me.
It was like well, is that whatworks or is that just what
sounds good?
Right, and I think that whatconditions is better than giving
with conditions like?
Um, and it again, it's just a.
(52:27):
I don't, I don't even think.
I know I don't have an answerfor it.
That's why I'm saying it's agenuine question.
Right is Does it make more thansense?
Does it actually?
Does the giving result in thegood we assume it does?
And how do we know?
Speaker 2 (52:45):
Well, I guess it.
To me it depends on T, dependson how micro or macro we're
talking.
So if you're giving, let's sayyou give to the person that's on
the corner and that person ismaking bad choices and that
person is not, you know, is notdoing what they're supposed to
be doing, healthwise or lifewise or whatever else you want
(53:08):
to choose.
That depends on whether or notyou believe in Sort of the
greater good the overall does.
Is there an energy there that,like sort of, is Increased in
the universe because you'rebeing generous, because you're
being virtuous, you're doingsomething that's good, or is it
just not right?
And In my belief at least andyou may, you may think
(53:30):
differently of this, but in mybelief that I think that that it
does that your, your energylevels increases, the, the group
or the, the overall energylevel of the earth.
You know, and if everyone wasin a positive growth mindset in
on this planet, we would be in amuch different place than we
are With people that have ascarcity mindset or a fixed
(53:51):
mindset.
I mean, I think that a lot ofpeople that we see, and
particularly, in my opinion, ingovernment, you know they have a
very fixed mindset or they'retrying to make you believe that
there is a limited amount ofthings, so that you, you know,
to force you into a choice, orto to say like, yeah, you, this
is what you need to do, becausewe only have so much.
(54:11):
And In my mind, I'm alwaysresistant to that saying no.
No, we don't, we have plentyfor everything that we need.
You know, we could figure thatall of that out, but we've got
people who are like, well, no,this is mine, this is yours and
this is this.
Goes back a long time, I think,in in our, even in our, history
(54:32):
as America.
You know, we came here when theNative Americans were here and,
in essence, controlled thewhole Area that is now the
United States, and, you know, inessence, came in, we usurped
that land, and you served as avery generous term in my but,
(54:55):
but I feel like it's likegetting back to your question,
though, is I Feel like, yes, itdoes help the overall greater
good to, you know, to be likethat in life, to be positive and
to be open-minded and to be why, I mean, I guess I guess all
(55:19):
these things I'm saying ourgrowth mindset, to be in a
growth mindset.
I Do believe that if everyonewas in a growth mindset, that we
would all be better off, right?
Speaker 3 (55:30):
So yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Have a just why you're.
I hear your keyboard going, butI have a little graphic up that
talks about it's a growthmindset versus fixed mindset and
it has.
It has a few quotes on it.
So the first one is growthmindset says failure is an
opportunity to grow.
Fixed mindset said failure isthe limit of my abilities.
Right?
Growth mindset says I can learnto do anything I want.
(55:58):
Fixed mindset says I'm eithergood at it or I'm not.
My abilities are unchanging.
Challenges helped me grow ourgrowth mindset, but I don't like
to be challenged fixed mindset,which to me that goes into
comfort zones.
So do what we do all the timeis sure Comfortable.
You know challenges.
A challenge is hey, if you'rebeing challenged, that means
(56:20):
you're getting outside of yourcomfort zone, that means you're
feeling a little nervous, you'refeeling like I'm in uncharted
waters for me, or unchartedterritory.
And you know, here's anotherone that's toast masters.
Growth mindset feedback isconstructive and the other one
is Feedback.
(56:41):
Feedback and criticism arepersonal in the fix mindset,
which that was a.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
That was a missed opportunity for symmetry.
That could, it should have been.
Feedback is destructivedestructive.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Well I, feel like.
Interesting because I one of thebattles that I've had to fight
in my own life is not takingcriticism personally, like I
have had to feel like and Istill I still sometimes have to
back up and go.
They didn't mean thatpersonally, they weren't talking
about me Also realized thatwhen somebody says something or
does something that's critical,many times it's more about that
(57:14):
person than it is about you.
It's about their mindset andabout what they're worried about
or whatever else.
Right, but you know, it'sinteresting to me.
I think that the yeah, I meanthat's a long way of answering
your question, but I don't knowwhat do you?
(57:35):
I mean, you don't know what areyour, what is your, what is your
potential answer to thatquestion, though, like do you
feel like?
Speaker 1 (57:47):
And I'm like, forgetting what, what just Tom
Thomas or was quote of?
Yeah, whether whether givingwith with out condition,
unconditional giving is, is whatsounds good, or right
unconditional giving what worksor, you know, could.
Maybe it's a false dichotomy,maybe it could be both right.
(58:08):
Well, I don't know that.
I still don't know that I havean answer.
Like you'll think I said, itwas a genuine question.
Speaker 3 (58:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
It's really hard to know, like because if you do
give, especially if you givewithout strings attached, you're
not gonna do any follow-ups.
Yeah, there's not like afollow-up study to find out if
the $15 you gave somehow had aninfluence on them turning their
life around, and Right is thateven mean and how do you, you
know, quantify that?
like it may just be unknowable.
(58:36):
While I was listening to you,the kind of sort of give your
answer about, like what I washearing, was sort of like you,
he's just sort of to have faithin the process.
Yeah, that the giving is good,because we've always believed
(58:58):
giving is good and it's workedout pretty well so far.
Like it's almost not.
You weren't doing like anappeal to your tradition or even
an appeal to faith.
I'm not.
I'm not trying to put a strawman here, but you seem to be
agreeing with my truncation ofwhat you said.
Yeah, and it and it reminded meonly vaguely of something I
(59:19):
remember reading in the gayscience by Frederick Nietzsche.
And it's not gay likehomosexuals, gay like the happy
science.
Yeah, got it.
And and so I'm just gonnabutcher in paraphrase, because
all that clicking you heard wasme trying to find it you know
(59:40):
different search terms whilealso listening to you and yeah,
it wasn't working.
So, but it's something along thelines of, basically, that no
one person can actually do evilto humanity because everything
everyone does Is for the good,right, yeah, we either.
(01:00:01):
Learn from their mistakes welearn to treat each other better
, like I don't.
I don't.
Yeah, I have no idea about thechronology when he said this and
when Hitler did his thing right, but Even even Hitler, like, we
learned a lot of lessons, or alot of.
We had a lot of opportunitiesto learn a lot of lessons of
(01:00:29):
About ourselves.
Yeah, from that you know, likeyeah, you know, I was genics was
something that sounded good,yeah, but didn't work.
you know right.
Um, I would make this.
America had that History ofalmost done had that history of
sterile forced sterilization ofits citizens.
Like you know, governmentgoverning bodies and, yeah,
(01:00:51):
well-meaning doctors.
And then Hitler took that ideaand ran with it even further and
said that you know, the Aryanrace, had the good genes, the
eugenics, yeah, and did what hedid, whether whether he believed
that sincerely or not.
He certainly used it as aneffective tool, sure, whatever
his real ends were.
So I'll back off the the hitlertopic?
(01:01:13):
and well, no, that's what I wasjust gonna say.
My assertion would be that,because you were saying can one
person change?
Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
You know like you know, in essence you're in that,
the gay science, you know, canone person, and my assertion
would be the Hitler, you know he, he had to gather, and aren't?
He had to gather A group ofpeople.
He had to influence a largesector of people In order to get
him to go, whether or not theyknew what they were doing or not
.
You know, he had to get a bunchof people.
He couldn't have done that byhimself, by sitting in his
(01:01:43):
living room painting paintingsand spouting the things that he
spouted.
He required an army and anelection and a whole bunch of
other things to happen before hecould have Enough power to do
something like that.
To, to, you know, to change Us,you know, change a section of
history.
I mean, in essence, what he did, he changed the mindset for a
section of history.
(01:02:06):
So you know, and and if you wantto go into like and this, I
know we're like, I'm not sure ifyou're gonna be able to do that
, you know, and and if you wantto go into like and this, I know
we're like, we're running up onour time here for this episode,
but like, I feel like racism isa fixed mindset.
You know racism many times is a, you know it's, it's fear-based
(01:02:29):
, it's um, it's a.
Again, it's a scarcity kind ofmindset of oh gosh, you know,
many times it's, it is Couchedon economics in some way.
Hey man, if there's these otherpeople around and and we can go
even back, and I don't want togo weighed into it, but we can
go back into like slavery times,and why we had the civil war in
(01:02:50):
America was for mainly economicreasons, even though they said
it was slavery.
It's just like, yeah, it wasslavery, but it was because
those people were getting freelabor Out of a certain and so
they were saying, if you do this, then you're gonna hurt us
economically, because now wehave to pay for people to work
the fields, which means we'renot going to be able to make as
much money, and so it's justagain a scarcity mindset of.
(01:03:11):
You know how, going back tolike the financial aspect of it
and money it just seems money isa is an easy way to deal with
or an easy way to measureWhether you believe in scarcity
or not, is because a lot oftimes giving, giving money away
or giving gifts away, isfinancial, and so you know.
(01:03:35):
One last thing before I guesswe'll close this and we'll go on
to our next episode and, and uh, for our next episode for
december, um, this quote bycarol deweck sort of I don't
know summed it up a little bitfor me, says um, the passion for
stretching yourself andsticking to it, even or
especially when it's not goingwell, is the hallmark of a
(01:03:58):
growth mindset.
This is the mindset that allowspeople to thrive during some of
the most challenging times intheir lives.
So, sort of going back to whatI was saying, is it the mindset
part, is the more important partof being gracious or giving or
anything else?
And I feel like, again, whatshe says is even in the worst of
(01:04:19):
times, you still have to havethat mindset, and that's the,
that's the time that it's thehardest to have that mindset.
The hardest the time you wantto go back into that scarcity
mindset or that fixed mindset iswhen things seem to not be
going your way, and um, and so Ijust thought that was that was
cool and I think, because I'm ahuge proponent of perseverance,
(01:04:39):
I feel like that's, uh, that wasa good quote to potentially end
on.
Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
So well when?
I guess my closing thoughtwould be even if you have a A
scarcity of something, whetherthat's Time or money, like that
means you have an abundance ofsomething else.
So, if chances are, if youdon't have a job right, then you
have an abundance of time, soyou could be generous with your
time.
Or if, um, I don't have a lotof Furniture, then you have a
(01:05:08):
lot of space and you could be,generous with your space or
talent.
You can be generous with yourskills, um.
So you know, be generous withwhat you have.
Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
Yes, yeah, and I think, yeah.
Going back to that, I feel likethere's I know a lot of people
who don't have much and are verygenerous and I know a lot of
people who have a lot more thanthey could ever need in their
entire life and aren't asgenerous.
Um, but again, you know, goback to the sort of try not to
(01:05:41):
compare.
You know, I don't think I'veever seen somebody who is has
zero Generosity, which isinteresting to me, like I don't
think I've ever seen somebodythat's like no, I give zero
money to anyone or anything ever.
You know, whether you'retipping your, your server or
whether you're doing anythinglike that, it's, um, you know,
at some point you're giving tosome extent.
Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
So so there's a spectrum of generosity Exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
Oh, that's, that's what we should call this episode
the spectrum of gendergenerosity.
But the thing we didn't talkabout, yeah, exactly the thing
that yeah you just, whatever thelast words of the episode are,
we're just going to title itthat.
Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
So so the people who stick around can have that, yeah
, that little dopamine.
Head of the titular the titularlet's check off gun.
Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
All right, all right, that's.
I think we're up on our time,but we will talk more about this
in our next episode.
All right, all right, we havemore to give.
We do we're generous with ourtalking clothes.
Welcome to help yourself.
Food and philosophy with Brianand Nick.
I'm Nick and I'm Brian.
The government is very generousWith other people's money which
eaten Brian.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's true, it is true , there is no such thing as
government money.
It's just it's all otherpeople's money at that point.
Anyway, what am I eating?
So I wanted to talk about whatI made this break, so this
morning for breakfast, and it isI Don't know if I've said this
(00:37):
before on the on the pod or not,but my fantasy is, if I had all
the money in the world and ICould just do whatever I wanted,
I'd probably start a breakfastrestaurant, because I love
breakfast foods and I have, likeall these, I think, so many of
the creations that I makequote-unquote creations that I
(00:58):
make for my own breakfast.
I've never seen them on a menuanywhere.
I've never seen them likeanybody else talk about making
that type of a thing, orcombinations or anything like
that, which could be a reason.
You know, there could be areason for that.
Like, other people tried it andthey're like, yeah, that's,
that's not good, or it could bejust that it's just not feasible
(01:20):
.
I don't know, I've never beenin the restaurant industry, but
so this morning I made gosh.
What could I even call it?
I'll call it a Sausage.
It's my version of sausage,avocado toast, okay, and
although it doesn't have anytoast, yeah, Please, before I
(01:44):
throw up, all right so what Idid was I took two tortillas
right, and I had some turkeysausage patties that would be
good on like a sandwich, abreakfast sandwich or something
like that, mm-hmm.
And then I, so I I heated upthe tortillas and then I put a
(02:05):
little thin layer of creamcheese and and a little thin
like a couple of you know shredsof shredded cheddar cheese, and
I melted that down a little bitokay.
And then I took one wholeavocado and I like crushed it up
with just salt and pepper and Iheated up the you crushed, you
(02:26):
crushed the avocado.
Yeah, so not with, not with saltand pepper.
I mean like with a salt andpepper in it.
Okay, who's my salt shaker tocrush the?
So?
So I, so I crushed the avocado,put a little salt and pepper on
(02:49):
it and then Heated up thesausage patties, because they
were frozen sausage patties.
So I heated those up and then IPut like, took the two
tortillas you know they were oneach other, like I pulled them
apart, put the sausage in there,put the avocado in there and
then put the whole thingtogether, like it was like a top
(03:09):
and bottom tortilla, and thencut it into like pieces that I
could eat, right, so it was likea.
It was, like you know, avocado,cheddar cheese, cream cheese,
sausage patty between twotortillas, right, two flour
tortillas.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So the tortillas were placed such that they're kind
of like a sandwich.
But then yeah, cut them up intowhat wedges or something, yeah
like wedges.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I did it in like quarters and I just picked it up
and and so and it was reallyreally good.
A lot of flavors like very sortof decadent because of the
avocado in there.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It's like very sort of rich, you know and this is
pretty, pretty creamy with theavocado and sour cream and the
most cream cheese.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah, so yeah cream cheese.
Sorry.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, so it was very creamy.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
What do we call those things that, like they'll serve
them at parties, though,basically roll up a slice of ham
around some cream cheese?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, pinwheels is pinwheels.
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I've seen those likepinwheels.
They call some.
I think they call those likesome of those have like
pinwheels sandwiches wherethey'll take a you know bread
and everything and roll it upinto little Like rolls like that
and slice it, you know, but I'mpretty sure that it's something
like that.
But those are really good.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I want, I want to try that what you described.
Yeah and I want to name it.
Yeah, yeah, I want to name itmore than I want to try it right
.
I'll probably be noodling on itthrough our episode in the
background, like I'll just blurit out the right, the genius
name, I'm so proud of it, likeactually, no, that's, that's
(04:49):
disgusting.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I wouldn't eat that if you called it that like Well,
that has to do with how, that,what the theme of the rest?
Because there could be a themeto the restaurant and then that
game name would like play intothe theme.
You know I mean so.
Yeah so it could be like youknow like the ham-fisted miracle
or something.
Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yes, nothing to do with ham, has nothing to do with
fists.
It has another differentmiracle.
It's just right to name you.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I guess that could work.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
So you in the face and you love it so.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Well, and I think, like I said, I feel like there's
no way that any restaurantwould ever do that.
What I did this morning, whichis take an entire avocado,
because that would probably belike a $20 breakfast thing,
because it's, like you know,because avocados are so
expensive.
But but to have something likethat where it's like a little
bit of cheese, avocado, you knowall that stuff tastes really
(05:45):
good.
I will say that it probablydidn't need the Cheddar cheese
on there, like it didn't reallyadd anything per se, like maybe
maybe if it was like a thinslice of Really extremely sharp
cheddar cheese, but I didn'thave that, you know.
So like so that you know thatkind of cheddar cheese that has
a real strong bite to it, youknow.
Mm-hmm that might help, but thethe one that I had this morning
(06:06):
was just mild cheddar and itreally wasn't Didn't really add
much to it.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Anything, I might have added some texture a little
bit, yeah, a little bit yeah,but not like, not any kind of
significant flavor change.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I would think so.
But it was like I said, it wasreally, it was really good and,
and it will be a memory, will bean item on my menu.
You know, so cool, that's whatI ate this morning, before we
recorded.
And then I've got Brian'sbeverage corner.
(06:39):
I've got my handy-dandy Flask,iron flask, not really flask,
but it's called an iron flask.
It has water in it, and then Iam drinking just regular.
So here at my office where I'mrecording, they have an espresso
machine.
Have you ever had a nespressocoffee?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
huh yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
You had me a Nespresso.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
No Nespresso.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
You know the brand.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Oh, I thought you said espresso.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I did.
It, say espresso.
That's what you said.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I said Nespresso, nespresso.
Oh, there's a name brand intheir name brand Nespresso.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
So from like Nestle or something.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, whatever exact something glomerate, exactly.
This is actually good.
It will do like the one.
It's like a one cup coffeemaker, right, but it also whips
the coffee as it comes out.
So it has Basically it has likefoam.
You know, you get like a goodlayer of like coffee foam on top
of it.
And so I had one of theirs, Ithink it was called.
(07:42):
It was like double caramel orsomething was the flavor of the
coffee, and then I put in acoconut like coconut cream
creamer, a little bit of that inthere, and it's really, really
good.
It is afternoon right now, soI'm having an afternoon cup of
coffee, but but really goodNespresso.
(08:04):
You should, you guys should patyourselves on the back.
This episode brought to you byNespresso, no.
And then the other thing thatI'm drinking is I found another
kombucha at the market and I hadto get it, and you'll see why
in a second.
So I'm drinking this.
It is by a company called hum HU M M and it's pro, pro,
(08:24):
probiotic kombucha.
But if I'll hold this up, youcan see all isn't all kombucha
probiotic.
Yes, I believe so, but if youlook in your camera.
You can see yeah.
I'm drinking it.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
You see, yeah, it is the magical lemon cupcake.
Unicorn edition.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
It's the magical lemon cupcake unicorn edition,
so I had to get that and, uh,tastes really really good.
Does not taste a lot likekombucha, where you get like
that really really strong Sortof yeasty kind of flavor to it.
Only 40 calories for the can,but I'm drinking that today and
(09:03):
it has 1,500 of my b12 Vitaminb12 needs for the day.
So, so, hopefully that willclean out my gut and or clean
out my gut or whatever it'ssupposed to do, so I'll be
sipping on that for the rest ofthe record today.
(09:23):
What about you?
What are you eating anddrinking?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Well, you can, you can hear me, okay.
Yes awesome, nice.
See, I I'll do my breakfast too.
I had the bacon gouda sandwichfrom starbucks.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Oh, nice, I like that one was.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, it was tasty and satisfactory.
A little small I might havesaid that before.
On the podge shrink flation.
Yep shrink flation.
Uh, if you can't, if you can'traise the price, make it smaller
.
Yep, also another right, I'llgo another record profits for a
short time another one of yourfavorite things.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It's a portmanteau of shrinkage and inflation.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, I wish my only.
The only thing I don't likeabout portmanteau is that
portmanteau is itself not aportmanteau.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, that would be way better if it's an
onomatopoeia.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
What?
No, that's, that's different.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
I know, I know I'm on a pee like no.
I thought onomatopoeia it'ssound, oh it's.
It's.
Reads like it sounds.
No, reads like it.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, like boom bang, like those words, the name of
the word sound like the thingthat describes what it is.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah pop, but it would be cool if it was a
portmanteau and an onomatopoeia.
I mean the portmanteau, if theword for portmanteau was a
portmanteau and it was anonomatopoeia, that would be
awesome.
Like it would be like word,word come, word combined or
something like.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Anyway, sorry, yeah, smushy, it's a smushy or
something.
It sounds like a made-up wordand it is, and it right, and it
takes smush and Up togetherright.
Hey, back to my food.
So I had that and that was itfor breakfast.
(11:23):
Actually, I've been nursing ofCold brew coffee with just a
scotch of sweet cream added toit.
Nice, natural cold brew, justjust cold brew, yeah.
And yeah, the only reason thatsweet cream is in there is the
cashier.
She looked at me, she knows me.
She's like you just want ablack?
(11:45):
Okay, yeah, I mean, all she hadto do is like raise her eyebrow
and and I was like okay, fine,put the cream in.
You had me an eyebrow raise.
So yeah, there's that, and I'vealso been nursing my bottle of
(12:12):
water and a glass of lid.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
No lid today.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
You're just not drinking out of this bra.
You know I have trouble puttinga lid on it.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, I don't want thestraw.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Well, that's good.
Hey, this by this class bottle.
It's better for you.
There's no plastic.
Yeah, it comes with a straw.
Uh, what's the straw made of?
Yeah, plastic.
Yeah, so it had a yeah, butit's fine, I solved that problem
I I haven't quite thrown theplastic straw away.
Yeah you know, recovering order, I guess.
(12:50):
But it is right there, readyfor me to throw out, I guess.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
You know you couldn't .
You can eat it.
That's the mindset of a hoarderright there.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Hey, you never know what you're gonna need this you
all are hearing it here firstlive.
Oh, he's got a record episodehe's doing it.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
It's going in the way back and went underneath his
desk into Witnessing it rightnow.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
There we go.
Ting, was it in the trash can?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
forever, no more straw.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
All right, it's wasted.
Well, that's good.
This, that was my breakfasttomorrow.
Breakfast beverages.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
All right, well, thank you for giving us that.
That was very generous of youto give us that description of
your food and your drink.
Just you to ask what I waseating.
Hey, you know, I just have themindset of generosity today and
Really tell me.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah what is the mindset of generosity?
It?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
is, tell me more doing research for a podcast
about generosity.
Well, if you haven't alreadyfigured that out out, there we
are going to be talking aboutbecause it is we're recording
just before Thanksgiving and youguys are gonna be hearing this
(14:08):
in December.
But this time of year is, youknow, all of the giving,
thankfulness, generosity, all ofthese, I would say, virtues.
Come out and maybe we focus onthe virtues a little bit more
than we do, or Should the restof the year right?
At least hopefully, you know,maybe maybe take a little bit of
(14:30):
time at the end of the year toreflect on things like that and
and also just Get in a differentmindset of hey, it's maybe not
think about all the things thatI need to think about that.
Maybe, you know, put get out ofmyself a little bit and so.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
So that's a war format let's follow our format
fine define.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Do you have a good?
Do you have a?
Do you have a good definitionfor us of generosity um?
Speaker 1 (14:58):
yeah, I think, common daily parlance, it's more than
expected and it it has its roots, interestingly enough in
nobility like to be.
Yeah, the generous like ofstock, like good, it's just
saying good stock, that's theLatin roots of it.
It kind of reminds me of youknow, we have the word gracious.
(15:23):
Yeah and that's.
That's an adjective that'sapplied to people you know
broadly.
But you know there was a timewhere you're talking to royalty
and nobility and they werereferred to.
They were referred to as yourgrace, right, right.
So it's just like maybe there'ssome loose relation there, but
(15:43):
anyway it's more than expected.
So I think that has a lot thatwe can play with right.
Yeah where it's.
It's not only good things thatyou can get more than unexpected
Right or if, or depending onwho you're giving to and their
expectations, the same giftmight be considered generous or
not generous.
Yeah because the expectation isvery well.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Well, I know I've heard the, I've heard the
language in Christian circles ofextending grace to someone.
That's sort of the to me thesame thing, it's like that, the
whole graciousness kind of youknow, feeling that you're, that,
(16:27):
you're being I don't know it's.
It's weird because I feel likeI feel like I define both by
saying each.
I like saying the one, I'm like, well, if you're, if you're
really generous, you'reextending grace and if you're
Gracious, then you're extendinggenerosity.
Like I feel like it's like acircular thing for me.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
But they're definitely connected, I think
even Not just the grace, butalso another loose connection be
noble versus nobility, rightlike to be noble.
Yeah and in good right, likeyeah, the gracious to me Is
something that you are when,when someone makes a mistake and
(17:09):
you don't make a big deal outof it, right.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
It's right it's so.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
It's sort of somewhere sitting between being
generous and forgiveness.
Yeah, but I'm not a whole lotmore thought into it than that.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I think it's a nice way of so far being being able
to.
I Think both people in thatcircumstance like this it's a
potential talking about somebodymakes a mistake whether that
being like a relationship or ina work situation or anything
else and Both people haveacknowledged that there's a
mistake.
Like both people like, yeah,you made a mistake.
(17:43):
But it's almost like a way ofnot beating the person up about
it, saying, yeah, you made amistake, but okay, how, like
where do we go?
What are we gonna do?
Speaker 3 (17:50):
You know what?
Speaker 1 (17:50):
I mean it's like okay .
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, I could spend a lot of time berating you and
and dwelling on the mistake, oror you can't you're a
peacekeeper.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
No, I say.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I meant the, the general term I like meaning.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
I'm physically capable of it, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I'm sorry I interrupted your point, though.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
So I mean, I think that I think that's yeah, and I
think that's you know sort ofwhere where that lands is.
You know, in that extendinggrace is, yeah, it's, it's
almost, it's almost anacknowledgement of I feel like
Well, like not without dump,like going too deep into it.
(18:48):
I feel like People are alwayslooking to make a connection
with other people and I feellike one of the closest
connections you can make withanother human being is to to
have some common ground of hey,okay, so you made a mistake.
I make mistakes too, you know.
In fact, I might have made, Imight have made the mistake that
you made before, and In somecases, if it's like a
(19:09):
parent-child relationship, youmight have.
Yeah, I made that mistake too,and I almost knew that you were
gonna make that mistake, butBasically I might have let you.
You know, not let you make themistake, but I you got.
You have to learn from thelesson.
So so it's, it's thatconnection that you're making
(19:30):
and you know you can, you canbasically form a bond because of
that.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Well, that's kind of the common ground that we all
have is a world human.
Yeah and what's that quote?
To air is human, to forgive isdivine.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Oh, yeah, that applies somewhere in all this.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Who said that I?
Don't know, you can look it up.
I'm content to have notbutchered a quote for once.
That's.
That's though.
I know a Hallmark of progressfor me.
And then there's also the graceperiod.
I think that's another examplewhat you were talking about of
Acknowledging the mistake.
(20:07):
It's like, yep, you missed yourdeadline.
Yeah but we'll give you threedays grace right, yeah, so is.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
If there's a grace period, isn't the actual
deadline the end of the graceperiod?
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Well, yeah, I know it's, maybe, maybe that's like
Chris, the Christian roots ofusury Usury.
Oh yeah, you siri, because yeah, was it?
The deadline right is when youdied and then three days later
you're resurrected.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
It's like well, you can.
You can come back from the deadif you pay us within three days
.
You know like right.
That's so.
That's like where there's adhoc, bad, ad hoc hypotheses,
right spirit, spirit,speculative historians is what
we are.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Well, yeah, so I mean in terms of, you know, in terms
of the I guess, give, thegiving mentality or the.
You know basically what am Ithinking of?
Generosity, you know, I feellike, at least when I was doing
the reading, about a lot of thisstuff.
(21:19):
There's a lot of things that Ididn't realize about it that you
know.
There's basically a lot ofthings that happen
physiologically andpsychologically by being in the
mindset of Giving grace,extending grace, being gracious,
being giving, being generousand I guess, giving.
(21:42):
You know, it's interestingbecause giving I Guess we can
just use those termsinterchangeably, like giving and
generosity, and to some extentbecause at first I was thinking
of giving as like a physicalthing, like you know, giving
someone money or giving someonea gift or whatever.
But it doesn't have to be that,you know it can be.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, I think the generosity part is More like an,
an adverb or an adjective togiving you know right give
generously.
Yeah, you could give Notgenerously right.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Give stingily.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
You know, like, if you, if you give a 2% tip,
you're, you're giving.
Yeah but you're not necessarilygenerous, you know right.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
In fact, you're not generous because that's not more
than expected.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
You're based, you're generous with your stinginess
because you're more stingy thanexpected right, right, well, and
, like I said, a lot of thethings that I read actually had
studies, psycho, psychologicalstudies that we're talking about
, like this.
One has a.
This article that I'm lookingat right now says you know,
(22:49):
studies are showing thatgenerosity is actually in your
best interest.
I'm practicing generosity is amental health principle and it
could be very key to a happy andhealthy life.
And then it goes on to say acouple you know other things
about.
You know about that generositymindset and I Just like I said I
(23:11):
feel like, well, I feel likeit's.
No, I just can say I feel likeit's.
It's difficult to Sometimes,it's difficult to be generous if
you feel like you're, you know,You're, you're not in the place
where you want to be, or you'reyou know Like financially or
anything else, and I feel like,I feel like that's part of the
(23:33):
reason why.
Let me I keep on saying I feellike the.
In the church, at least theChristian church, many times
there's tithing, which is notnecessarily mandatory, but
obviously in some cases inchurches it is, but in a lot of
cases it's just heavily, heavily, heavily encouraged and many
(23:54):
times that's you know, 10% isthe number that most people
arrive at is, hey, you shouldgive 10% of everything to the
church.
And you know and I feel like ISaid it again the, the, the
lesson that you that is saidthere is you give that in times,
(24:17):
in good times and bad times andmedium times, and you just give
that no matter what, right,yeah, so you feel like you maybe
feel like gosh, I'm goingthrough a real tough time
Financially, I don't have a lotof money, but the church is
still.
Yeah, that's, you still need togive the 10%, even if you feel
like you don't have the moneyand it's a it's.
(24:38):
I feel like that type of aconsistency Outside of the
Christian belief of it is whatcreates a mindset.
You know a habit, and we'vetalked about habits before,
right, well, I think habitscreate your mindset.
You know you have a habit thatyou do repetitively, pretty
pretty much.
Eventually your brain's gonnacatch up.
(24:59):
For some people that's quickerthan others, but your brain is
basically saying, hey, okay, wedo this, no matter what.
This is just a thing that we do.
I'm a person that gives right.
It's part of who I am, yeah,yeah.
And Turns out the researchbacks that.
You know the research backsthat if you're, if you're
consistently Acting in a wayit's generous or giving things,
(25:20):
then your mindset is that andyou're, and that's a mindset of
somebody who is happier andsomebody who is healthier.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Mm-hmm, you know so, but Does that dilute the concept
of generosity if You're givingBecause of how it serves you the
health benefits and thepsychological benefits and you
know, like yeah yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
The interesting that you asked that?
Because in one of the one ofthe articles I'm looking for
right now, one of the articlesthat I read it was talking about
Giving, basically giving forthe sole purpose of oh, I'm
doing this because I Need, Iwant to get these health
benefits.
I want to give, you know, Iwant to give because it's gonna
(26:15):
make me better health, it'sgonna, you know, give me better
health or whatever.
And they, their assertion wasif you're doing it just for that
reason and I can't remember ifthis is backed by a study or not
then as soon as I find it, I'llI'll say but if you're giving
just for that reason, then Thenit's not gonna give you as a big
(26:36):
of a benefit as it would ifyou're just giving for the sense
of giving and You're gettingthose other things as a fringe
benefit.
Interesting so does that makesense?
I the funny thing is I bet it.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
I bet it's like self-reinforcing too, like the
more, the more you see yourselfas a generous person, regardless
of Quote, how you got there,right you they becomes more
subconscious and more abstractyes, and.
The benefits become lessconcrete, right, the reasons
(27:17):
become less concrete and you endup just Giving, because giving
is good right.
Like you know, you can'tnecessarily Itemize the list of
benefits to yourself and others,but you just you've developed
this since that this works rightthis right.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Well, and it's funny because in my head I, as I said
a second ago, in my head I'malways thinking of giving
something physical, likesomething tangible, but you know
, a lot of times it's givingyour time.
I mean, you and I both know wegive our time to toast masters.
I give my time to the bandboosters at my children's high
school, and that's that, that'sa volunteering mindset, which is
(28:02):
also you're giving something,you're giving a Commodity that
everyone has the same amount of.
So you're saying I will carveout this amount of time and I
will give that to thisorganization or this cause that
I believe in, right, and so youknow, that's it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
But, as you know, like those people you're serving
, have different.
I want to just chime in on thedifferent expectations bit.
Right, yeah, if some people inband, some parents and band
boosters, have been in it forten years, yeah, whereas you've
only been in a couple.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
They may not appreciate your quote.
Generosity of your time.
Yeah as much as somebody whoDoesn't have the time, like
maybe they have the desire, forsome reason they don't feel like
they have time to contribute,so they they see your exact same
contribution.
Right, it's?
Yeah, it's the same number ofhours per week or whatever that
you're giving, but depending onwho's witnessing it and what
(29:00):
their expectations are is sortof.
I guess I'm saying thegenerosity is in the mind of the
beholder.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
To some extent if the garden expectation well, and I
I have found that there is, whenyou get into not so much in
Toastmasters, I haven't Ihaven't encountered this in
Toastmasters, but in otherorganizations I feel like
sometimes there's a comparing byother people of how much they
give versus how much you give,and it's almost like it's this
(29:31):
trying to figure out who'sgiving more or who's, you know,
done more.
Yeah there's more generous likeit's almost like a generosity
competition, you know like no,no, I'm winning the general you
know, and yeah, it's like oh you, congratulations, you got your
your Distinguished Toastmastersaward.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, so nice.
That reminds me I needed dustoff my three distinguished
Toastmasters.
I was so young and naive.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Mean girl compliments in Toastmasters.
That's terrible.
What else there was, so muchyou were saying that.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Also anyway, like with that competition, it's
funny because to me I alwaysgive because I want to give and
I always volunteer because Iwant to volunteer.
Actually, I mean, that'sprobably not.
Sometimes I get volunthold, youknow, but but I do.
(30:37):
I do get the you know, thefringe benefits of being in
those positions and so Ibasically I feel like I I don't
know just like I get I get thebenefit of being in that
volunteering kind of mindset,but I don't have anything in my
(30:57):
head that's like, well, I'mvolunteering more than that
person is or that I really do.
Really I'm thankful for theother people who contribute,
even if it's different levels ofcontribution.
You know everyone needs tocontribute on some level to make
an organization work.
That is, of all volunteerorganization.
But you do recognize that somepeople are more effective and
(31:19):
some people Volunteer you knowmore hours or more effort or
more whatever for that thing.
But to me you everyone.
I guess the optimist in me islike everyone's doing what they
can do.
You know what I mean, and Ifthey you know me being a lazy
(31:39):
jerk.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
I know in my projection like you are generous
and so you project that on thethe world, right.
You, you sort of operate fromthat assumption.
I am a lazy and skeptical andso I I assume the world is more
like me.
Yeah, maybe not.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, and I think that's a normal thing.
That I think it's a normalthing that happens is, you know,
projecting onto the world, youknow, sure, trying to figure out
, you know.
Basically.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Some of what you're talking about, too, makes me
think of keeping score.
Yes like you're talking about.
You know, generosity in termsof effort or time.
Yeah, money, and those are, forthe most part, things you can
quantify.
Efforts probably most difficultto quantify, but money and time
is easy.
It's either dollars or hours inour country, of course, but
(32:39):
yeah, so At the same time,though, I think that little
thing on our brain that tells usgiving is good.
Mm-hmm is part of what we'vebeen optimized for.
Yeah like I've learned so muchabout myself and human
psychology with the more Ilearned about this.
(33:00):
What's the word?
because the advent of productiveAI or useful AI, right like GPT
and all that Mm-hmm in this, inthe reinforcement learning.
So you know that the AI getspoints.
You know the AI programmers andthey're more like trainers
(33:23):
right, right, um, give morepoints when, when things they
want to be done are done anddone, well, right, the more well
, the more points.
Well, I think, whether, whetherwe have Creators or not, we are
optimized for our own game andthat's the infinite game right
(33:48):
and so the things that we do inthe infinite game, just you know
, short, short preamble on gametheory, right?
Uh-huh, there's the finite game,where you, you play to win, and
Once you win, the game is overright the infinite game is you
play to win, but when you winyou just keep going like, yeah,
(34:09):
like the game doesn't end.
And the way you win is bykeeping the game going.
If you're, the more yourbehavior makes it more likely
for the game to keep going, themore you win.
Right, that's what I think lifeis right.
Yeah, the purpose of life isfor the purpose of the life to
continue.
Sure, that's what procreationis, that's what getting food is,
(34:32):
that's what mm-hmm.
And I think, being socialcreatures, being generous,
giving to others, right.
The more people there are alive, their strength in numbers, the
more People there are toprocreate, right, the more
likely of the species willsurvive.
So it's right um we.
(34:55):
We all win, when we all winright that's.
That's sort of the recursivenature of Giving and generosity
and grace and all of that is.
Tritting each other Well Means,we stay well.
Yeah and that's what well-beingis right.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah Well, and I think you hit on some
interesting on In terms of, likeyou know, procreation and
having having kids is, you know,a lot of a lot of your life.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Just to say a lot of yeah, no, a lot of a lot of what
, yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
So a lot of what being a parent is is give.
I mean you're giving a lot,you're you know, You're, I would
say that if you had to.
You know I Don't like notcompare types of parents or
anything, but I think probablyParents that are, the better
parents are, get.
They give a lot to theirchildren.
They, you know, not necessarilygive without any need for
(35:57):
something in in return, but thatthey provide, let me say,
provide a lot for their childrenand, you know, say, yeah, I'm
gonna, I'm gonna give you thebest chance at life here, best
chance to survive and strive.
I mean survive and flourish, Ishould say.
And you know that's that'sinteresting to me.
(36:19):
I did find, by the way, thissection in this article talking
about and it's just, it was justa mention that made me think a
little bit.
It's it's an article that hasJust entitled the health
benefits of giving and it haslike four or five different
things in here, but at the endof it it says you know what when
giving becomes too much?
And it says it might not be agood idea To volunteer just to
(36:44):
improve your own life.
Some studies have found thatthe reason you decide to
volunteer makes a difference.
Volunteering to help othersmight be more beneficial to the
volunteer than doing it tobenefit yourself.
So you know, basically, if yougo into this like with a selfish
mindset, it's almost like aself-correcting thing.
It's like, oh, you know whatyou can get health benefits from
(37:06):
being generous and this.
But you have to have a mindsetof I'm really doing this to help
others.
I'm not.
I'm not doing it because Ithink that I'm gonna get
something out of it, right.
Mm-hmm and which is sort of whatI've Going back to, that
comparison thing, the comparisonMindset of oh, I'm volunteering
more, I, I do better, I do morefor this organization than that
(37:28):
person does.
To me that's going back toexactly this is like who cares,
right?
Yeah, we're all here for we'renot trying to compare who's the
best volunteer here.
We're trying to make thisorganization the best that it
can be, and so who cares?
Who gives more or who morehours?
Or if you you perceive thatyour effort and everything else
is more, you know, beneficial tothis organization, then this
(37:53):
sort of goes in line with.
That is like you seem to havethe wrong mindset here, right?
So interesting, I will say thatwhat?
The other thing that this sortof led me back to a little bit
is We've we've mentioned theword mindset quite a quite a few
(38:13):
times, and we we've talkedabout a book that's actually
called mindset on this podcast.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
So we probably should .
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I should discuss that a little bit, but if you have
listened to the podcast for awhile or if you're just in the
know in terms of the self-helpkind of arena, carol Dweck wrote
a book called mindset and shetalks about Different mindset.
She talks about a scarcitymindset versus a growth mindset
(38:43):
in her book Close fixed, mindsetfixed.
I'm sorry growth.
That was, yeah, that's right,she, I, I'm, I'm thinking of
scarcity because I'm that's whatI was talking to you about
before, which is mm-hmm, youknow, fixed.
And growth mindset is what CarolDweck says, but then I Tend to
think that those are parallel toan abundance mindset versus a
(39:04):
scarcity mindset, which are, youknow, the same thing.
A growth mindset is the same asan abundance mindset is, hey,
that the the world ofpossibilities is out there for
me, and, and it's more of apositive turn on it.
The other side is a morepessimistic, negative, you know,
scarcity, like there's only somuch pie to go around, and if
(39:25):
that guy gets a bigger slice ofthe pie, I get a smaller slice
of the pie, you know, and and sothe interesting thing was that
the article one of the articlesI pulled up is the.
So this is, it is going into,like my own thing, this is
parallel to her, but it'sscarcity mindset and how to
(39:47):
overcome it.
Right, and a lot of it talksabout money, because Many of us
are in that mindset of like, youknow the thing, that how I know
if I'm winning or losing, orhow I evaluate my success in
society, is by how much I havein the bank, or how much money
(40:07):
I'm making, or what are my, howbig my house is or whatever that
else is, and different,different kinds of keep and
score.
Yeah, and yeah and so I've.
The first part of this articletalks about signs of a scarcity
mindset and this.
The scary thing is that I thereare a couple things here I was
(40:28):
like, oh no.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Feel a little bit, a little bit of conviction there
in the soul.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, I was like oh no, this article was written for
who?
It didn't say Brian.
I just scroll back to the top.
He didn't say Brian, thisarticle is for you, to the, to
the brands that may concern.
So a couple of them.
There's a couple bullet points,but one of them is over
scheduling yourself is ascarcity mindset.
(40:56):
Perfectionism is a scarcitymindset and fear of failure,
scarcity mindset and fear ofloss.
So you know, they talk about alot about with money.
Where you're, you're sayinglike you're gonna, you're gonna
hold on to your money.
You're not gonna give yourmoney away.
You're gonna hold on to as muchof it as you can because you
(41:18):
have this mindset of oh my gosh,I could lose it all.
Fear of loss I'm.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
I'm feared that, yeah , because, yeah, fear fear of
loss is like as soon as there isno more to write it right.
I think exactly same of fear offailure is the assumption that
There'll be no moreopportunities to succeed.
Yeah, this is your last chanceto do something with your life,
you know, like cheese that'syeah that's not well, and it's
not realistic.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
That's not rational, it's that's just like fear.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
You know, right, you're talking yeah exactly, and
and I think one of the.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
You know, one of the first things that is going
Towards the fighting, the, thescarcity mindset in this article
.
The number one thing on theirseven tips is that article.
The number one thing on theirseven tips is practicing
gratitude and I feel like thatthat goes hand-in-hand with
generosity.
I feel like you know the justgoing back to what I said is hey
(42:14):
, if you, if it matters whatyour mindset is when you're
giving, if you're giving it witha group, if you're giving it
with a grateful mind, if you'resaying, hey, I'm gonna give this
money away, it's almost likehave you heard people say like
I've heard these people thatwrite like little Notes on there
like they they'll pay theirbills and in the memo section
(42:35):
They'll be like, oh, thank youfor providing gas for my house
this month, you know to, whenthey pay their gas bill or
whatever.
And it's this mindset of oh, mygod, I'm not just sitting here
writing a bill and money's goingout of my account.
Man, you know what I got inreturn for this?
I got to stay warm for thiswhole month because they gave me
gas and they made sure that itwas coming into my house and I'm
gonna gratefully pay this gasbill.
(42:57):
And so Again leading back to a.
This isn't a scarcity mindset,this is a and and in that case
you're not giving your money.
You know you're not.
It's not like you're beinggenerous to the gas company, but
the practicing gratitude thingis saying my mindset's important
here and yeah, obviously CarolDweck completely agrees with
(43:17):
that.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
So, yeah, I think hers is her if to be.
It's almost like a specificform of that scarcity and
abundance mindset, because Ithink her stuff hinges largely
on, like that, perfectionism,fear of failure.
It's more like the scarcity ofchangeability yes or the
(43:42):
abundance of learning that youcan have.
You know the learning.
Basically believing that youcan change and grow, that you
can do and be better, is agrowth mindset.
Yes and then the belief that theaptitude test scores you got
when you were in elementaryschool Are the ones that you're
stuck with and that's all you'llever be good at and you'll.
(44:04):
You won't change your learnergrow right right your first
assessment is also your finalassessment, and you're carved in
stone.
Good luck, right.
So right, yeah Well it's that'sthere's again like I'm thanks
to you explaining it the way youhave I.
I am seeing a lot of those sameparallels you're describing
(44:25):
right between a fixed mindsetand scarcity mindset.
Mm-hmm a growth mindset andabundance mindset.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yes, yeah, I think I'm looking at, actually, a
summary that I have of CarolDweck's book and the interesting
thing is there's a bunch ofthings that we always talk about
in that I'm I Embrace fully inmy life.
One of them is not worryingabout outcome of things, us a
(44:55):
very and and obviously, in orderto give freely, in order to be
generous, you're You're not,like focused on the outcome of
that.
You know you're focused on, youshould be focused on the giving
of it, the.
This is what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Yeah, you're not.
I mean, if yeah, you're not, ifyou're giving, quote giving and
generous, then You're notthinking about what they're
gonna do with that money, right?
It's starting to look more likea loan, right, or?
Yes conditional love.
You know that most, most peoplewho actually give to someone
(45:32):
who's panhandling For better orfor worse, doesn't think about
what they're gonna do with thatmoney.
Right yeah, you know it's truecharity, yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
So here you go, there's strings attached and
also like when I choose to dothat which is sometimes I don't
always, but when I choose to dothat, my mindset is more of a no
matter what that person doeswith this money, it feels like
they need the money more than Ido, Like I feel like I have a
(46:02):
pretty good life.
I have the ability to work.
I have the ability to make moremoney if I need to.
I have my own business.
I can grow that if I want to.
And you know the person that'son the side of the road selling
the newspapers here in Nashville, everyone will know what I'm
talking about.
Or if it's just the personthat's just asking for some
spare change, you at least youknow.
(46:24):
And sometimes that doesn't panout, because sometimes those
people I know.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
I know I know there's been.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I didn't even realize sometimes it doesn't and handle
out Anyway, but sometimes thosepeople make a considerable
amount of money.
I know there was, there was alike I don't want to say it was
a study, but they were trying tofigure out how much people were
making, like in Los Angelesstanding on a freeway off ramp,
(46:52):
and some of those people weremaking, you know, $60,000,
$70,000 a year panhandling.
So you're thinking in your headbut again you sort of get into
the weeds because it doesn'tmatter what they're doing with
the money.
You know it makes.
It made me feel good to sayhere here's a couple of bucks,
you know this person, go do withit, do with it what you see fit
(47:14):
, you know yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
And I'm going to, I guess, argue with myself a
little bit here, all right,because I'm, like I mentioned
before, I'm a bit skeptical andno.
Yeah, and I assume the worst ofpanhandling not the worst, but
like I assume they're going touse it for alcohol or yeah or
(47:38):
whatnot.
And that is experience basedoff of, actually, when I was in
my more goody two shoesChristian days try to make a
mission out of it, and I would.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Interact with them and learn.
I learned with experience thecon right, I did follow ups and
such, and even that's allanecdotal.
So anyway, I'll argue withmyself a bit like even if I give
the guy a $5 bill and the oddsare 95% that he'll go and buy
alcohol and Right.
More than he needs.
(48:09):
You know, there's still that 5%and I'm still that five bucks
is giving him an opportunity foranother good choice.
Yeah Right, and maybe it takesa thousand bad choices before he
finally makes you know the goodchoice.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
And maybe I'm only 555, you know out of the
thousand bad decisions, but I'mgetting them closer to the time
when he'll finally choose.
Well, hopefully, before hisbody makes another choice, you
know right, yeah.
At the same time, like becauseI don't know the odds, because I
don't know the situation, andI'm a bit more frugal in that
(48:56):
regard and practice.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Yeah, I think it reminded me when you were
talking about that, going backto our episode on unconditional
love we did a little while agoand it.
You know, that's the kind ofthing that I feel like if you're
giving with conditions, thenit's not really giving Right.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
You're, you're.
If you're saying, hey, I'mgoing to give this to you, but I
want you to what?
Speaker 1 (49:20):
I just I made me think of oh no, the gift cards
are evil then, because it's likehere's money, but you have to
spend it here.
Yeah, it's got conditions.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yeah.
Well that's why I usually.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
That's why, as a, as a number nine, I usually get
like a target gift card orsomething, because I'm like, oh,
you can get anything at targetLike you.
Can you know, I'm not going torestrict you to buying growth.
You can go buy groceries withthis, you can go buy clothes,
you can go buy lamps, you can gobuy battery, whatever you want.
You know, Anyway, um, no, so Iguess the, the, yeah, that that
(49:53):
conditioned kind of thing is.
I think it's, and I know somepeople want to be a little bit.
I will, I will say evangelical,and I don't mean that in the
Christian sense, I just meanthat in the sense of you know,
trying to condition and say, hey, you know what, here's how you,
I'm going to help you, but I'malso going to request, or I'm
(50:15):
going to, you know, require thatin order for me to give my help
to you, here's what you need todo.
And, um, and so I feel like inmy mind um, hey, you know what,
if, if, that, regardless ofwhether it's good for the
person's health or not, if thatguy goes out and for that person
(50:35):
goes out and buys, uh, you know, a pint of alcohol and has that
, and that's the way they getthrough that night, because
their life is somewhat miserableat that point.
And you know who am I to say Idon't do everything healthy for
myself either.
You know what I mean.
So not that I want to, you know.
I want to be an enabler forsomebody to continue to live a
(51:01):
life that is not healthy.
But at the same time, you knowsomeone's asking for help.
I'm going to try to give it,and so yeah, and this is a
genuine comment slash question.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
There's a thing I listened to on YouTube recently
that, um, I was driving to thatToastmasters training this
weekend, yeah, and one of thequotes they kept coming back to
in their broad topic ofdiscussion was from Thomas
Sowell, and about 20 years agohe said much of the social
(51:40):
history of the Western worldover the past three decades has
involved replacing what workedwith what sounded good.
And I was like I'm kind ofnodding my head.
I, before that quote came tomind just a moment ago here
today, I've been sort of noddingmy head along with you that you
know, giving, giving withconditions, is not good, it
(52:05):
doesn't work or right.
And, and I'm wondering it, justsome part of my brain maybe the
devil's advocate or whateverjust hit me.
It was like well, is that whatworks or is that just what
sounds good?
Right, and I think that whatconditions is better than giving
with conditions like?
Um, and it again, it's just a.
(52:27):
I don't, I don't even think.
I know I don't have an answerfor it.
That's why I'm saying it's agenuine question.
Right is Does it make more thansense?
Does it actually?
Does the giving result in thegood we assume it does?
And how do we know?
Speaker 2 (52:45):
Well, I guess it.
To me it depends on T, dependson how micro or macro we're
talking.
So if you're giving, let's sayyou give to the person that's on
the corner and that person ismaking bad choices and that
person is not, you know, is notdoing what they're supposed to
be doing, healthwise or lifewise or whatever else you want
(53:08):
to choose.
That depends on whether or notyou believe in Sort of the
greater good the overall does.
Is there an energy there that,like sort of, is Increased in
the universe because you'rebeing generous, because you're
being virtuous, you're doingsomething that's good, or is it
just not right?
And In my belief at least andyou may, you may think
(53:30):
differently of this, but in mybelief that I think that that it
does that your, your energylevels increases, the, the group
or the, the overall energylevel of the earth.
You know, and if everyone wasin a positive growth mindset in
on this planet, we would be in amuch different place than we
are With people that have ascarcity mindset or a fixed
(53:51):
mindset.
I mean, I think that a lot ofpeople that we see, and
particularly, in my opinion, ingovernment, you know they have a
very fixed mindset or they'retrying to make you believe that
there is a limited amount ofthings, so that you, you know,
to force you into a choice, orto to say like, yeah, you, this
is what you need to do, becausewe only have so much.
(54:11):
And In my mind, I'm alwaysresistant to that saying no.
No, we don't, we have plentyfor everything that we need.
You know, we could figure thatall of that out, but we've got
people who are like, well, no,this is mine, this is yours and
this is this.
Goes back a long time, I think,in in our, even in our, history
(54:32):
as America.
You know, we came here when theNative Americans were here and,
in essence, controlled thewhole Area that is now the
United States, and, you know, inessence, came in, we usurped
that land, and you served as avery generous term in my but,
(54:55):
but I feel like it's likegetting back to your question,
though, is I Feel like, yes, itdoes help the overall greater
good to, you know, to be likethat in life, to be positive and
to be open-minded and to be why, I mean, I guess I guess all
(55:19):
these things I'm saying ourgrowth mindset, to be in a
growth mindset.
I Do believe that if everyonewas in a growth mindset, that we
would all be better off, right?
Speaker 3 (55:30):
So yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Have a just why you're.
I hear your keyboard going, butI have a little graphic up that
talks about it's a growthmindset versus fixed mindset and
it has.
It has a few quotes on it.
So the first one is growthmindset says failure is an
opportunity to grow.
Fixed mindset said failure isthe limit of my abilities.
Right?
Growth mindset says I can learnto do anything I want.
(55:58):
Fixed mindset says I'm eithergood at it or I'm not.
My abilities are unchanging.
Challenges helped me grow ourgrowth mindset, but I don't like
to be challenged fixed mindset,which to me that goes into
comfort zones.
So do what we do all the timeis sure Comfortable.
You know challenges.
A challenge is hey, if you'rebeing challenged, that means
(56:20):
you're getting outside of yourcomfort zone, that means you're
feeling a little nervous, you'refeeling like I'm in uncharted
waters for me, or unchartedterritory.
And you know, here's anotherone that's toast masters.
Growth mindset feedback isconstructive and the other one
is Feedback.
(56:41):
Feedback and criticism arepersonal in the fix mindset,
which that was a.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
That was a missed opportunity for symmetry.
That could, it should have been.
Feedback is destructivedestructive.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Well I, feel like.
Interesting because I one of thebattles that I've had to fight
in my own life is not takingcriticism personally, like I
have had to feel like and Istill I still sometimes have to
back up and go.
They didn't mean thatpersonally, they weren't talking
about me Also realized thatwhen somebody says something or
does something that's critical,many times it's more about that
(57:14):
person than it is about you.
It's about their mindset andabout what they're worried about
or whatever else.
Right, but you know, it'sinteresting to me.
I think that the yeah, I meanthat's a long way of answering
your question, but I don't knowwhat do you?
(57:35):
I mean, you don't know what areyour, what is your, what is your
potential answer to thatquestion, though, like do you
feel like?
Speaker 1 (57:47):
And I'm like, forgetting what, what just Tom
Thomas or was quote of?
Yeah, whether whether givingwith with out condition,
unconditional giving is, is whatsounds good, or right
unconditional giving what worksor, you know, could.
Maybe it's a false dichotomy,maybe it could be both right.
(58:08):
Well, I don't know that.
I still don't know that I havean answer.
Like you'll think I said, itwas a genuine question.
Speaker 3 (58:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
It's really hard to know, like because if you do
give, especially if you givewithout strings attached, you're
not gonna do any follow-ups.
Yeah, there's not like afollow-up study to find out if
the $15 you gave somehow had aninfluence on them turning their
life around, and Right is thateven mean and how do you, you
know, quantify that?
like it may just be unknowable.
(58:36):
While I was listening to you,the kind of sort of give your
answer about, like what I washearing, was sort of like you,
he's just sort of to have faithin the process.
Yeah, that the giving is good,because we've always believed
(58:58):
giving is good and it's workedout pretty well so far.
Like it's almost not.
You weren't doing like anappeal to your tradition or even
an appeal to faith.
I'm not.
I'm not trying to put a strawman here, but you seem to be
agreeing with my truncation ofwhat you said.
Yeah, and it and it reminded meonly vaguely of something I
(59:19):
remember reading in the gayscience by Frederick Nietzsche.
And it's not gay likehomosexuals, gay like the happy
science.
Yeah, got it.
And and so I'm just gonnabutcher in paraphrase, because
all that clicking you heard wasme trying to find it you know
(59:40):
different search terms whilealso listening to you and yeah,
it wasn't working.
So, but it's something along thelines of, basically, that no
one person can actually do evilto humanity because everything
everyone does Is for the good,right, yeah, we either.
(01:00:01):
Learn from their mistakes welearn to treat each other better
, like I don't.
I don't.
Yeah, I have no idea about thechronology when he said this and
when Hitler did his thing right, but Even even Hitler, like, we
learned a lot of lessons, or alot of.
We had a lot of opportunitiesto learn a lot of lessons of
(01:00:29):
About ourselves.
Yeah, from that you know, likeyeah, you know, I was genics was
something that sounded good,yeah, but didn't work.
you know right.
Um, I would make this.
America had that History ofalmost done had that history of
sterile forced sterilization ofits citizens.
Like you know, governmentgoverning bodies and, yeah,
(01:00:51):
well-meaning doctors.
And then Hitler took that ideaand ran with it even further and
said that you know, the Aryanrace, had the good genes, the
eugenics, yeah, and did what hedid, whether whether he believed
that sincerely or not.
He certainly used it as aneffective tool, sure, whatever
his real ends were.
So I'll back off the the hitlertopic?
(01:01:13):
and well, no, that's what I wasjust gonna say.
My assertion would be that,because you were saying can one
person change?
Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
You know like you know, in essence you're in that,
the gay science, you know, canone person, and my assertion
would be the Hitler, you know he, he had to gather, and aren't?
He had to gather A group ofpeople.
He had to influence a largesector of people In order to get
him to go, whether or not theyknew what they were doing or not
.
You know, he had to get a bunchof people.
He couldn't have done that byhimself, by sitting in his
(01:01:43):
living room painting paintingsand spouting the things that he
spouted.
He required an army and anelection and a whole bunch of
other things to happen before hecould have Enough power to do
something like that.
To, to, you know, to change Us,you know, change a section of
history.
I mean, in essence, what he did, he changed the mindset for a
section of history.
(01:02:06):
So you know, and and if you wantto go into like and this, I
know we're like, I'm not sure ifyou're gonna be able to do that
, you know, and and if you wantto go into like and this, I know
we're like, we're running up onour time here for this episode,
but like, I feel like racism isa fixed mindset.
You know racism many times is a, you know it's, it's fear-based
(01:02:29):
, it's um, it's a.
Again, it's a scarcity kind ofmindset of oh gosh, you know,
many times it's, it is Couchedon economics in some way.
Hey man, if there's these otherpeople around and and we can go
even back, and I don't want togo weighed into it, but we can
go back into like slavery times,and why we had the civil war in
(01:02:50):
America was for mainly economicreasons, even though they said
it was slavery.
It's just like, yeah, it wasslavery, but it was because
those people were getting freelabor Out of a certain and so
they were saying, if you do this, then you're gonna hurt us
economically, because now wehave to pay for people to work
the fields, which means we'renot going to be able to make as
much money, and so it's justagain a scarcity mindset of.
(01:03:11):
You know how, going back tolike the financial aspect of it
and money it just seems money isa is an easy way to deal with
or an easy way to measureWhether you believe in scarcity
or not, is because a lot oftimes giving, giving money away
or giving gifts away, isfinancial, and so you know.
(01:03:35):
One last thing before I guesswe'll close this and we'll go on
to our next episode and, and uh, for our next episode for
december, um, this quote bycarol deweck sort of I don't
know summed it up a little bitfor me, says um, the passion for
stretching yourself andsticking to it, even or
especially when it's not goingwell, is the hallmark of a
(01:03:58):
growth mindset.
This is the mindset that allowspeople to thrive during some of
the most challenging times intheir lives.
So, sort of going back to whatI was saying, is it the mindset
part, is the more important partof being gracious or giving or
anything else?
And I feel like, again, whatshe says is even in the worst of
(01:04:19):
times, you still have to havethat mindset, and that's the,
that's the time that it's thehardest to have that mindset.
The hardest the time you wantto go back into that scarcity
mindset or that fixed mindset iswhen things seem to not be
going your way, and um, and so Ijust thought that was that was
cool and I think, because I'm ahuge proponent of perseverance,
(01:04:39):
I feel like that's, uh, that wasa good quote to potentially end
on.
Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
So well when?
I guess my closing thoughtwould be even if you have a A
scarcity of something, whetherthat's Time or money, like that
means you have an abundance ofsomething else.
So, if chances are, if youdon't have a job right, then you
have an abundance of time, soyou could be generous with your
time.
Or if, um, I don't have a lotof Furniture, then you have a
(01:05:08):
lot of space and you could be,generous with your space or
talent.
You can be generous with yourskills, um.
So you know, be generous withwhat you have.
Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
Yes, yeah, and I think, yeah.
Going back to that, I feel likethere's I know a lot of people
who don't have much and are verygenerous and I know a lot of
people who have a lot more thanthey could ever need in their
entire life and aren't asgenerous.
Um, but again, you know, goback to the sort of try not to
(01:05:41):
compare.
You know, I don't think I'veever seen somebody who is has
zero Generosity, which isinteresting to me, like I don't
think I've ever seen somebodythat's like no, I give zero
money to anyone or anything ever.
You know, whether you'retipping your, your server or
whether you're doing anythinglike that, it's, um, you know,
at some point you're giving tosome extent.
Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
So so there's a spectrum of generosity Exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
Oh, that's, that's what we should call this episode
the spectrum of gendergenerosity.
But the thing we didn't talkabout, yeah, exactly the thing
that yeah you just, whatever thelast words of the episode are,
we're just going to title itthat.
Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
So so the people who stick around can have that, yeah
, that little dopamine.
Head of the titular the titularlet's check off gun.
Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
All right, all right, that's.
I think we're up on our time,but we will talk more about this
in our next episode.
All right, all right, we havemore to give.
We do we're generous with ourtalking clothes.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.