Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I can't want to thank you for being a part
(00:01):
of the conversation. Let's do it. Let's play it forward,
real people, real stories. The Struggle to Play It Forward,
Episode number six thirty nine is with Carlos Whittaker, the
author of the book Reconnected.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm doing fantastic now that I'm talking to you. Thanks dude.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
When you use a word like fantastic, that means you
have lived it, you understand it.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I have. I definitely know the difference between fantastic and good.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah. Oh, go on, oh, that's like going at the
end of a sentence going eh, you know, with the
sentence is fantastic and good?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah, totally totally.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
How were you able to find it inside your soul
to be able to disconnect the way that you have,
because I mean, that's one of the things that my
wife and I would love to do. We have this
beautiful RV, but we can't go out longer than three days.
We have to get back, gotta get back.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I know, totally. Well, I mean, here's the thing, like,
I definitely was blessed with the opportunity doing what I
do as an author and a speaker. I found seven
weeks I had to cancel a couple speaking events. But
I did it, and I knew it was going to
be a risk because I'm like, I'm not going to
be making money, but how can I do this? I
knew it had to happen, like it was absolutely essential
that I did this, and so, you know, I found
(01:08):
the time. The reason why I did it was because
I did a little bit of math, right, Like I
got that screen time notification that we all get on Sundays,
whether you've got an Android phone or an iPhone, that
tells you how many hours a day you're averaging, and
mine was, you know, seven hours and twenty three minutes
a day I was averaging. Now, initially I was like,
you know what, this is my job, Like, of course
(01:31):
I averaged seven hours a day, like I'm on Instagram,
I make YouTube videos, I make tiktoks. But then the
kicker was I did the math, and the math is
what freaked me out. So the first equation I did was, well,
how many day or well, actually I said how many
hours a week was I spending a week, not just
a day, and it said forty nine hours a week
And I was like, well, wait a second, that's two days,
like two whole freaking cycles of the sun. I'm looking
(01:54):
at this screen. What so I said, let me do
another one. How about a year? Well, forty nine hours
hours a week is almost three months a year. Three
months a year. Can I tell you something. If my
iPhone notification came across on a Sunday and said you
are losing three months a year of your life, I
(02:15):
think it would make drastic changes in most of us.
But the kicker when was when I said, if I
live to be eighty five years old, and I'm putting
into my calculator, I'm really bad at math, so I'm
trying to figure this out. How long? How many you know?
How much time am I going to lose? Looking at
my screen? If I live to be eighty five, it's
said that I was going to lose over ten years
(02:35):
of my life looking at MyD Now that is seven
hours and twenty three minutes a day average. So here's
the deal, people that are judging me. Let me tell
you the average Americans spends six to seven hours a day.
If you're just spending five hours a day, you have
the possibility of losing two Okay, so just two and
a half months a year is what you're losing your life.
(02:56):
So that's what sent me down this journey of I
wonder what this is doing to my soul, what it's
doing to my psyche. I wonder what it would be
like if I didn't look at a screen that long.
And can I tell you it changed everything?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Oh my god. You know I'm with you on this
one hundred percent. Because my email reading, I cannot do
business until I'm done doing business inside this studio, I
will not go to my emails. And that has been
one of the greatest challenges.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yes, yes, well, I mean multitasking was like it was
the biggest like bait and switch to ever happen to society.
Right it's like, oh, like I'll just remember like in
the nineties, it's like, well we can multitask. Well, no,
that just means we're doing everything bad, you know. And
so yes, like singularity like find the one thing, do
the one thing, be present with the one thing that
(03:47):
you're doing, and you're going to do it so much better. Hello,
my name is Arrow.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
I used a digital device to prep for this talk today.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Hi Errow. My name is Carlos and I also we
can have our little meeting.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Oh my god, do you think it got worse during
the lockdown, because I mean during that lockdown, I had
to know everything that was going on because I had
the time.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, you know, here's the thing. I don't believe that
these devices are neither good nor bad. They're neither evil
nor good, right, They're just the thing. There's just class
like they are what we use them for. I could
pick up my headphone throw it at Skinny Mix's head
across the city right now, and it would be a
bad headphone, right. Or I could have a conversation with
you and it's a good headphone. Right. So what we
(04:32):
found during during you know, the lockdown, was that it
was great to be able to keep in touch with
our friends, like loneliness is an epidemic that is sweeping
the world right now, and we were able to use
it for some good with those things. But I do
think that we did get even more addicted to consuming content,
to this false sense of control that we felt like
(04:56):
this content and this knowledge was giving us. I just
don't think that we really understood what it was doing.
And so now on the backside of it, you know,
we're just used to zoom meetings, We're used to all
these things that have taken the humanity out of what
we do every day. And I got to live for
almost two months where every conversation I had with another
(05:16):
human was breath to breath based. Every meal that I
had lasted an hour or longer because I was just talking.
The average American meal in twenty twenty three is twelve
minutes long. The average American meal in nineteen twenty three
was ninety minutes long. So I got to like live
the way we were created to live again. And here's
(05:38):
the kicker. When I fell back in love with all
of these things that we've forgotten how to do during
these seven weeks, I just pick up my phone less,
you know, like I didn't have to make rules. I
don't make rules. It's not like, Okay, Carlos, limit your
screen time to five hours a day. No, my screen
time is now three hours a day. I like, as
of this recording, three hours a day, and it was
(05:59):
seven and a half hours a day. And I have
not implemented a single screen time rule. Why Because I've
just fallen back in love with what's on the other
side of the screen. Ye loving life, learning how to
love life.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And you know, I gotta be honest with you, Carlos,
I happen to respect loneliness. I think that it is
a tool that we're we've given it the wrong definition
because it is a way to slow down the hands
of time.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yes, no, listen, savoring boredom solitude. We're the first generation
ever to not have the opportunity to have solitude in
our day. Literally one hundred years ago, solitude was built
into every single human's day. Now it is gone. It's gone,
and I believe that it's a destructive factor to our
(06:44):
ability to have the capacity to have crucial conversations. I mean,
you wonder why people hate each other all the time
while they're just raging on X and this and that.
I believe it's because we don't have the solitude to
be able to be introspective and be like, is this
the kind of person and I actually want to be Yes.
So we have lost the ability to have solitude, and
I agree with you it's actually important.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, I can't imagine the solitude that you went through
by being on that homage farm, because I came from
the farms of up in Montana and Wyoming and I
used to walk those fields, and you were with the sheep,
And I have to tell you, I went in and
studied what the sheep means when it comes to the
animal kingdom, innocence and purity.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Did you feel that, Oh my gosh, yes, it was gosh. Listen,
I'm out there with Willis, the sheep farmer. He's got
his staff. He had a freaking staff, like I'm like,
I thought only Moses had a staff. Like no, you know,
he had like a staff and he'd like tap the sheep,
and the sheep are following him, and and I just
I learned so much from the sheep. I learned so
(07:43):
much from this shepherd, Willis that I was hanging out with.
And there was a beauty to the cadence, the stability
that the Amish had when I was with them. I
was exhausted. Listen. I'm a city boy from East LA.
So like the fact that I'm shearing sheep every day,
that I'm out there, like you know, working on making
(08:03):
the hay every single day. All of those things I
tell people now like I've got new life skills in
this season of life. If a sheep were to walk
in the studio door right now, I could stick its
head between my legs and shear it in five minutes flat,
like I've got like new life, like all of these things,
like maybe we were created to have the earth under
our nails, like my nail. My hands are so clean
(08:23):
now because we don't work the land like we used to.
When I was able to do all those things, and
there was not only I think that things heal like
in my body, but there was a sense of like
pride that I had every day, like I could see
the thing that I did, I could see the thing
that I created. And the Amish really brought that out
in me.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Don't you think that we need to have more face
to FaceTime like you were saying, because I live by
a mantra now that people are not happy to see me,
they're happy that I saw them first, and recognizing them
first is so important.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
I mean, you're literally preaching my message right now, like
this is so And I believe there's three things as
humans that I pulled out out of this be human
which is slowing down, which is what I had to do.
With the monastery and with the monks seeing humans, seeing
other people, that's what they're desperate for. Every human is
desperate to be seen. And then freeing humans finding a way,
(09:18):
in some way, shape or form, to free them from something.
And if we start doing these three things every single day,
especially that seeing piece like we have such a hard
time again, especially living in this rage ecosystem of X,
this rage ecosystem of Facebook, all of these places. We
have a hard time seeing people and understanding that people
are people. People aren't opinions, and we have a hard
(09:41):
time getting past that. And so I love that. One
of the ways that I do that is I've got
this phrase that I live by. When somebody tells it,
asks me, well, Carlos, your public facing figure, where do
you stand on this issue? This is my answer. I say, well,
I don't stand on issues. I walk with people. And
people either hate that or they love that because they're
(10:02):
like you know, they either love that because like, oh
my gosh, that's what we're supposed to do, or they
hate it because like, no, you're just trying to towe
the middle ground. You don't want to. And I'm like,
wait a second. It's not that I don't have opinions
on issues. I just know that every issue isn't an opinion,
it's a person. So I'm gonna go walk with that person,
whether I agree with them or not and see them
and in the second you see somebody, it's so hard
(10:23):
for them to hate you and you to hate them.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Are you a d fragger? What I mean by that
is do you break things down to ask questions and
then question the answers?
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yes, that is how'd you figure that out? I love
that because curiosity is just such a missing skill the day.
It's a missing part of who we are. And I
believe that curiosity literally breeds empathy. And so you know,
I'm not saying that if there's somebody that's super dehumanizing
to other people that I'm just going to be like
(10:52):
buddy buddy with them. Right, There's some people that I
just can't walk with. Okay, so this isn't gonna work
with everybody, But yes, I want to ask questions. I
want to find out why you believe this? Why do
you believe that? Oh that happened to you? Why did
that happen? The question why is so helpful for us
to understand where someone's coming from.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
You know, that's so interesting that you bring that up,
because one of the things, when when it comes to
people that make me feel uncomfortable is that I challenge myself.
Play the game, dude, play the game. Go kill them
with kindness, go be really super nice to them. And
then you get that question, why are you always so happy?
Because you would be happy with me, And it's just
just to kind of just put him on the spot totally.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
People don't know what to do with that, you know,
they you know, Can I tell you a quick story? Really? Sure?
There's so I live in Nashville, Tennessee, and there was
a really big media company that moved to Nashville a
few years ago, and they moved and I follow a
lot of the personalities on X and there's one of them,
you know, and I don't disagree with I mean, I
(11:49):
don't agree with this guy, right, Like, I really vehemently
disagree with a lot of his opinions. But I actually
enjoy following him on X because I think he's smart
and he teaches me things about what I don't believe.
But I happened to see him at a restaurant like
maybe two weeks in and like, so this guy's kind
of celebrity and my wife's like, why are you freaking out?
I was like, oh my gosh, that's Blank and he's
you know, and she's She goes, well, what about him?
(12:11):
I was like, well, I honestly like he's so mean.
He's just like really mean to people, but he's he's
kind of funny sometimes. And so I follow him. She goes, well,
you should go pay for his meal, and I go,
excuse me. I was like, not that guy, like like
not him, like literally, I don't believe anything that he says.
She's like, well, your mister, don't stand on issues, walk
with people. You should pay for his meal. So I
(12:33):
walk up to him and I was like, hey, my
name's Carlos, nice to meet you. And you know, him
and his wife are smiling at me, and I was
like listen, I like, I know who you are off
of X. It was Twitter at the time, and I said,
and I want to let you know I don't agree
with really anything that you say. And immediately like he
got defensive, and I said, but I just want to
say welcome to town, like like, here's a couple of
(12:54):
like mechanics that I really trust. Here's a couple of it,
and I just want to say, like, you know, welcome
to town. I'm just I'm so glad you're here. Literally,
this dude's jaws hanging on the floor. So then I
paid for his meal. I didn't tell him that I
did that, but I told the waitress. A couple hours later,
my phone starts blowing up, and it's all these friends
that follow this guy that do believe what he believes,
are like, hey, is this you? And they all had
(13:16):
a screenshot of a tweet where he said, you guys
are never gonna believe this. Some guy named Carlos here
at a restaurant came walking up to me and says
he doesn't agree with anything I say, and disagrees with
me politically and all these things. But he he helped
me find mechanics and then he paid for my meal.
He restored my view of humanity. I can't believe this.
And sure enough, everyone that knows me was like, this
(13:39):
was you, wasn't it? This was you, wasn't it? And
let me tell you, like, this is just the thing
that I think we all need to get back to.
I ended up having lunch with this guy. He reached
out to me, and we've had a couple of meals together.
We're not best friends, but there's a bridge of humanity
that's been built because of exactly what you said, filling
with kindness.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Don't you think though, to get back to that humanity,
we need to take more transition walks. I think that
we've got so much mentally going on, and we're doing
so many different things that we've got to be able to,
you know, to go on a transition walk and get
into a different area.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yes, yes, yes, walking walking we have. We have two
limbs attached to our torso by our hips that were
quit there that allow us to all move at approximately
three miles an hour. That's how fast human beings were designed.
We're designed to move unless we were being hunted or
(14:33):
chased by something. Three miles an hour that I call
it god speed. That's where we were designed to walk at.
And when I was with the monks, living with the
monks right like they're all moving, the cadence of their
robes bouncing back and forth, looked like bells on their bodies.
There was something beautiful about the speed at which they lived.
And I believe that every day, not only for just
(14:55):
our physical health, but you got to take a break
in the middle of your day, go on a walk.
If you got to walk around the hallway because you
work in an office building, all of those things are
going to create the capacity inside of you to be
able to handle difficult conversations, to be able to be
in meetings with people that maybe you can't stand, but
then you're going to begin to understand. Maybe I can't
(15:16):
stand them because they're medicating a wound, which is why
they're acting like this. They've got something in their life,
and I think that you're right. Walking slows us down
to be able to maybe understand things that we couldn't
understand before being with those monks.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Right away, that takes me back to my studies in taekwondo,
because taekwondo actually came from these people who believed in
building their body better. Walked in with these monks and
they were severely overweight, and so they combined the teachings
of the monks with those of building the body. And
it's like, so, did you recognize that or did you
experience that as well because you're an outsider coming into
(15:51):
their world. Yes, yes, right, like I'm an outsider. I'm
going a thousand miles an hour, Yeah, come into their world.
I come into the world and it is so slow,
even the.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Speed that I'm talking right now, it's driving you crazy, right,
It's like, come on, man, get to the point. But
I had. I was forcefully forced to slow down and
to walk and to wonder. Right, wondering is gone. And
with the monks, I was able to wonder so much
because I didn't have this wonder killer in my pocket
(16:23):
called Google. Right, Like, I just wondered. I wondered all
the time and it was so glorious. And now you
know what I love about the monks in the monastic
way of living is the reason why they do this
is is it's it literally is the most stable environment
I've ever been in. Like there is a stability to
their rituals. There is a stability and they just know
what's coming. So there, you know, there's a lot less
(16:45):
you're probably anxiety in those spaces. And so yeah, I was.
You know, it was forced upon me because I lived
there for fourteen days with them. Oh but I left
with so many things that I've continued to implement in
my life.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Wow, where can people go to find out more about you, Carlos?
I want them to really get into your heart and soul.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Come on, I'd love that, you know, for a guy
that wrote a phone about being on your screen list,
you can follow me on Instagram. That's that's the place
where I'm on every day. And again, phones aren't bad,
but what's beautiful is what's on the other side of
the phone. Come and I'll help you with that at
low swit l os w h I T. If you
want to find out more information about the book, you
can go to reconnectedbook dot com and find out information there.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Dude, you got to come back to this show anytime
in the future. And if you're over here in the Carolinas,
we've got to get together and have lunch without our phones.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Let's go. I'm all in, bro. It may last ninety minutes,
but I'm there. I'm there. Well, you'd be brilliant today. Okay,
thanks so much, thank you. Yeah man,