Victim Mentality, Self-Awareness, & Creating a Meaningful Life with Donald Miller

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Okay, little food for you. So life. Oh it's pretty,
but it's pretty beautiful than beautiful. Laugh a little moth.

(00:25):
Tighten up, kicking with four Happy Thursday. Welcome to four Things.
I'm Amy and Kat is joining me for today's four things.
She's normally with me on the fifth thing, but welcome
Cat to FATA. Thank you. And we're sitting across from
Donald Miller, who I'm sure a lot of you know,

(00:46):
and Kat and I are geeking down, were soup seeking out,
seeking down. I see I can't even talk Don. Can
I call you Don? Yeah? Definitely okay, because Don just
asked Cat Cat is before we start recording? Cat, is
it to call you Cat? Totally cool? Yeah, because you're
you are Katherine. But I'm gonna gain my composure and

(01:06):
I am bringing you in because I read here on
a mission this year, which how many books have you published?
Because I saw a ridiculous number on the I believe
it's ten, but then some of them have changed the
names and things like that, but I really do think
it's ten. Okay, Well, we're super pumped to have you
here and the reason why Cat is joining me, And
then I've got a question from my sister because she

(01:27):
lives in Colorado, she can't be here, but she's the
whole reason I read here on a mission. She's read
all your books. You know. We were talking one day
and she was just telling me, oh, this book is
so great, Like I have my highlighter and my pencil,
I have notes in the margin. Her and her husband
were both reading at the same time, but they only
had one copy and they would steal it from each
other and they had their notes. And then Kat said, oh,
one of I read one of his books and it

(01:48):
changed my life. And so Cat's going to share some
stuff with you, Blue Leg Jazz, but one of my
favorite books, thank you. So I'm just going to read
your Instagram bio people, because I feel like that's an
easy way to summarize in case someone's not familiar with
your work. But you've got CEO of Story Brand and
Business Made Simple, part time gardener at Goose Hill, husband

(02:12):
to Betsy, and father to em Line. That's right, that's
all right. Obviously I know about Goose Hill and that
whole thing that was a big part of your book
and creating that that was very important to you to
have Goose Hill, but being a part time gardener there.
That's what you call your property Goose Hill. That's rights
named after your dog Goose. It's named after Lucy Goose

(02:34):
Miller because I would take her out to this property
just south of Nashville, because I could take her off
leash and run around in the woods. And then the
fund of the properties for sale, and then slowly came
up with a sort of a ridiculous vision to buy
it and make a little mini retreats center. We've been
working that for five years and we are two months
from finishing. Everything will be done in sixty days. So

(02:56):
define ridiculous, though ridiculous, because it was it was a
bit of a crazy vision. When my wife and I
first got married, I got married late. I got married
at forty two, which is a whole other story that
I should go on Cats podcast because I probably need
a therapist, that's one thing. And then my wife actually
headed up with Ben and Breakfast in Washington, d C.

(03:17):
That's how we met. I would fly into d C
and do some work there, and I stated at this
bend breaksto I just fell for immediately. Three years later
she went out with me, and then our first year
of marriage, we had over two overnight guests, and I
realized we need to do something different because this isn't
logistically going to work in our little condo. And so
I had this vision and uh, you know as a house,
a sort of event space in the backyard, and then

(03:38):
the guest house. And you know, I just kept putting
a little something on the plot and two months will
be done. It's already full functioning, you know, people are
already coming and staying and things like that. But so
when you do the writing retreat, the storytelling workshop workshop
called Write Your Story in October, is that where we
will be because I'm coming there. I just informed on

(04:00):
all time of tending. I was gonna say, you're going
to Goose Hill. Yeah, it's like this place is famous
to us and my famous, except you could literally just
stop by Town Street. It's not it's not an elite
access for treats that er, it's just our house. Well,
Christie Doser, who's my sister and I, we will be there,
and my sister is a beautiful writer. Don So I'm

(04:20):
hoping that you and Ali just get it all out
of her. And it tends to be that way. We've
done it twice. People just tend to start flowing with
ideas and things she has work for her. The words
she has, the idea she just doesn't. She puts things off.
Which all I'm going to start off with her question
that she sent to me. I'm just reading verbatim what
she texted me. Would love some tips for overcoming procrastination.

(04:45):
So often I can stay in my head ideas and
or dreams swirling, but taking action is another thing. There
is a mental hurdle I have to jump that I
can't explain. Sometimes I jump it and I think I've
overcome my tendency to procrastinate, But nope. Does Donald Miller

(05:05):
ever procrastinate these days? Or does he just do? That's
a really great question. And I used to be a
massive procrastinator. And what's interesting is I got older. Times
started being taken away because you know, you have a company,
so you have to show up at this meeting, than
you have a marriage, and you know a lot of
times taken away there, and then you have a baby

(05:26):
and you have no more time. That's kind of it.
And so the more times take away, the more I
just realized you're not going to get anything done. It
was almost like the more time was taken away from me,
the more focused and intentional I got about using the
time that I had, And so that led me to discover,
I think the best trick in regards to procrastination, and
that is, for years before Betsy and I had a child,

(05:47):
from seven to ten thirty a m I sat in
the same place, drank the same cup of coffee, and
five days a week got work done on whatever I
was working on, because that that was the window that
I had to do it. Now that the baby's here,
it's eight am. Two. But a fixed time, a fixed
place in which you show up and punch in, and

(06:09):
if it's a good day's work, you get a lot done.
If it's a bad day's work, you don't get much done.
But the consistency is actually that you're there. If it
were still open ended, I mean, I remember being a
bachelor wandering around Portland, Oregon, knowing that I had to get,
you know, a couple hours of riding done today, and
walked around and went to a movie and hung out
with a friend and had coffee and rode my bike.
And it's eight o'clock at night and it's now time

(06:31):
for me to start. And as time was being taken away.
I was forced to, you know, make the best of it,
and I think it was one of the greatest things
that ever happened to me. So whatever that is, if
it's eight to ten in the morning, if it's eight
to ten at night, whatever that window is, but getting
a bodily habit of showing up sitting down, because what
happens is in the morning, now my mind is ready
to write. And if I don't write, it's it's actually

(06:53):
a really frustrating day because I didn't get something out
of me that I needed to get to get out.
And it's just been great. And all of the long
term career writers, all of them, that's how they work.
They figured it out. Stephen King, you don't hear him
on the speaking circuit. He could probably get half a
million dollars of talk. He doesn't go. What he does
is he sits down every morning in the same place

(07:15):
at the same time. He writes his book. When his
book is done, he prints it out on paper, He
opens a drawer in his desk and he puts it
in the desk, and he writes another book. And when
that book is done, he takes the other book out
of his desk and edit it and then he turns
it into the publisher and it's just an assembly line.
And I think that's the key to long term career.
Content creation is just habits and rituals and literally you

(07:38):
just have to train your subconscious as though it's a dog. Yeah.
I think that's so interesting what you said about as time.
I said I had less time. That was easier for
me because I feel like I all the time. I'm like,
I just need more time. I need more time. If
there are more hours in the day, I could do this.
And you're saying when time got smaller, I was able
to focus. As things begin to be taken away from
you think about even your health, like I have never

(08:01):
in my life. You look back my life, I've never
been an especially healthy person. But as I get closer
to the date that I'm going to die, I eat
more blueberries. Yeah. I mean, like things are being taken away,
like no, I want this, you know, I want to
king onto it. And so there's actually a benefit. Arthur
Brooks just released an article in The Atlantic I Believe
about the myth of midlife crisis, and he basically says,

(08:22):
after thirty all the studies show you just get happier
every year, and you get happier, and because as things
can take what you just get sharper. And he actually
said the main reason is pattern recognition. That you meet
somebody you're like, well, it's a really fascinating person, and
the next morning you wake up and go, you know what,
that's a narcissist and I need to stay away from
them because you've seen this before. And and so pattern
recognition actually helps you make better and better decisions the

(08:45):
older you get if you pay attention. Right the cube
there we got to pattern recognition, and Arthur books from it. Well,
I'm here for it much better at figuring out how
to manage life as you get older. That would be
my theory. Yes, as long as you're willing, you're willing
and can pay attention and being you don't have a victim.
The four characters which are in any good movie but

(09:05):
also live in us like any good story. I know
I'm saying movies, but it could be a book or whatever.
But there's the victim, the villain, the hero, and the guide.
And I love how in Here on a Mission you
broke down each of those characters and really challenged us
to think about how do we want to show up

(09:26):
in the world, and again that self awareness of like
I am victim mentality right now? And now my sister
and I we speak this language to each other. And
I even said to her the other day, and I
love how siblings or any close friendship you know, can
be honest with each other. It was like, I don't know.
I just feel like, do you think I tend to

(09:47):
be victimy ish at times? And she was able to
be like yes, and I'm like, Okay, I don't want
to show up that way. So I clearly need to
work through some of this stuff, you know, needed to
build new neural pathways. No, I can be different. I
don't have to. So why was it important for you

(10:08):
to put this book out there? And when did you
first come up with the idea of like, oh, there's
there's a whole book here based on these four characters
that I see in every story. Well, years and years ago,
I lived in Portland, Oregon. Today Betsy and I live
in Nashville, Tennessee, but other in Portland. For twenty years.
I was a writer and I wrote a book that

(10:28):
took off. Then some movie directors came to me and
said we would like to make a movie about this book,
Blue Like Jazz. So I was very very very very
very grateful and still am that that book took off.
We ended up I ended up working with these cinhotographer
and director I think for two years trying to turn
that book into a movie, and we realized pretty quickly,

(10:49):
in order to do that, we're going to have to
fictionalize much of this story. So the movie ended up
being not much like the book. The reason we had
to do that is because it needed to obey story
structure in order to get people's attention. Now, that was
my introduction to something called story structure. I just assume
when people sat down to write a movie script, they
just kind of gutted it out. Not true. What actually

(11:11):
happens is on page three, This happens, on page seven,
This happens on page nine, This happens, and it is
unbelievably formulaic. And there are only seven formulas that ever
get used when you write a movie. So if you're
going to see a movie, you're watching one of seven
movies and it pretty much doesn't change ever, and if
it does, that movie bombs at the box office. It's fascinating.

(11:32):
You can actually buy software and I have it on
my computer that will tell you what to do next
in the movie. But it's also like pop music, right,
So if you listen to Taylor So songs be chorus, verse,
chorus versus, it's extremely formula, but they it can be
so different based on what you do with the chorus
in the verse. It's very similar with formulas. The closer
you stay to a formula, if done well, the war entertaining.

(11:52):
The movie is Friends and I just want to see
Top Gun two. Right, it's just ridiculously formula. Every single
trick in the book is in that movie, and so
much so that my wife doesn't even like going to
movies with because I elbow her and say that guy
is gonna die for you. It doesn't because movies themselves,
those formulas are so incredibly powerful that they cause you

(12:12):
to suspend disbelief and there's nothing you can do about it.
So the average brain daydreams of the time as a
survival mechanism, because your brain is always looking to survive,
and if you can't, if there's nothing in your immediate
conversation or whatever you're doing that's gonna help you, survive,
your brain will just say, well, let's just check out.
And so what I did was I began to study

(12:34):
story in order to help write this screenplay. And we
wrote the screenplay and released it and it didn't do
all that well, but the story structures stay with me,
and so I leverage the understanding of story. After I
had written my seventh memoir, the publisher wanted an eighth
and I was just like, look, nothing, nothing else has happened,
like I went camping, and you can't make a book
out of that. So I wrote a book called Building

(12:55):
a Story Brand, which was about how to clarify your
marketing message. Now it's a book book about clarifying your
marketing message so your business can grow based on a
structure that was introduced by Plato years ago. This book
has zero potential to sell. You know, it's just a
geek book, and it's me sitting down writing a geekbook.
That book sold seven hundred thousand copies the hundreds of

(13:17):
thousands of business and it put me suddenly in this
light where I'm telling people how to clarify their message.
But the whole time I'm doing this, I'm realizing story
structure actually has much more to teach us about ourselves
and our life and who we are and how to
get meaning out of this experience, how to live an
interesting story, than it does for selling plungers. So I'm
very grateful that it sells plungers, because I built goose

(13:38):
Hill based on plunger sales. But you know, so that's
what hero That's how hero A Mission came about, because
I wanted to say, hey, let's talk about why some
of us on this planet are having a terrific experience
with life and others of us are not, And let's
actually stop blaming the government or our boss is or

(14:00):
whatever and accept personal agency to do something with our
own story, in other words, to write and direct and
live into your own story. And you know it's cemented
in me. When a friend in Portland said, hey, will
you get together with an acquaintance of mine. He wants
to write a book. He's just traveled around America. You
want to traveled around American wrote a book about it?
Could you get together with him? I said sure? And

(14:21):
as we talked, we were sitting at Paleo coffee shop,
and he said at least three times, well, you know
life is meaningless, which is something you hear a lot
in Portland might as well be the state motto life
is meaningless. So it wasn't a surprise to me. But
as I kept hearing it and studying story, I thought
to myself, wait a second, what if life is not meaningless?

(14:41):
And I said this to him, What if life is
not meaningless? What if just your life is meaningless? And
what I mean is what if you are What if
what you were doing with your life is giving you
an experience of meaninglessness and you are projecting that onto
the rest of us, And of course we're not friends anymore.
He was sort offended by that. But I learned something
really interesting that day. I began to live the way

(15:02):
I would want a character in a story I was
writing to actually live, to step away from my life
and those elements. The first element is there four major
characters in a story victim, villain, hero, and guide. And
those four characters we recognize on screen not just because
they exist in the real world, but actually more so

(15:23):
because they exist inside of each of us. And if
you play too much of the villain character that exists
in you and each of these is a choice that
we make as we respond to different moments. If you
played the villain character too much, what will happen to
you is what happens to villains and stories. You will
be isolated, you will not have intimate relationships. Villains do

(15:43):
not have friends, they have minions, and if you take
it too far, you'll be imprisoned or perhaps killed. Then
there is the victim, and the victim plays a bit
part in the movie. The job of the role of
the victim in a story is to make the hero
look good and the villain look bad, and that's it.
There's no other part. They don't change, they don't adapt,
they don't transform, they don't win the day, they don't
get any glory. They just more or less suck resources

(16:06):
into themselves and exists as a narrative plot device. The
hero in the story is weak, ill equipped, can't get
the job done, in desperate need of help, flawed and
yet willing to accept challenges, and throughout the process of
the movie transforms into a much better version of themselves,
very capable. And then the guide in the movie is

(16:29):
the person who was the hero in another movie but
is now fully equipped to help heroes win a day,
and so they turn around and leverage their expertise in
order to help people figure out what's going on in
their life. So Cat would be a good example of
a guide. I was about to say, guides me every Tuesday.
And the fifth thing that you thought on me, I
thought of Haymaker from The Hunger Games and that yes,

(16:55):
Cat win the day. Yes, and that helps looks eye walker.
Mr Miagi helps Daniel in The Karate Kid. There's always
these guides in these movies. Do you find that in Well,
I guess they're in the patterns of the stories that
the villain or the persecutor ends up having their own

(17:15):
like story of like um, I don't know how what
to call it, like coming to like awareness or like
change of heart And is that like a something that
naturally happens or something that's just like written in stories
to like tug at your heartstrings. If we were writing
a story and we wanted the story to work really well,

(17:36):
the villain pretty much is also a two bit character.
They can't have a realization and change. The only character
that's allowed to change in your story if you want
it to be a popcorn you know movie, is the hero.
The guide can't change, the victim can't change, and the
villain can't change. These are bit parts that serve the
hero's story of transformation. So if you ever wonder, okay

(17:58):
was that person the hero? Ask yourself. They transform where
they were they ill equipped at the beginning and competent
at the end. That's usually the transformation. If the villain
begins to transform, the audience starts to wonder who the
hero is? Wait is the heroes now? The main distinction
between who becomes the villain who becomes the hero? Every
character victim, villain, hero guide starts with what I call

(18:19):
a hero in a hole that is there in pain.
Something's wrong and they're trying to climb out of this hole.
The decision point between whether you're going to be the
hero and the villain. But happens in how you respond
to react to pain. So the hero is going to
accept it and attempt to let it make them grow,
and then it's going to try to stop that pain

(18:40):
from happening to anybody else. That would be the hero journey.
The victim is going to give into it and be
buried by it and not try. The villain is going
to say the world has hurt me, and so I'm
going to hurt the world in return, and so they
don't try to stop the world from inflicting pain. They
try to control the world so it doesn't hurt them anymore.

(19:01):
And in order to do that, they're going to have
to put the boot on the neck of other people,
which is also our narrative cat sometimes that I share
on the fifth thing about what am I even doing?
What does this even matters? Who's listening? Why do we care?
But that's also to protect myself because it doesn't matter,
it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah, but then that's like your
friend that you called out, that's no your friend. I mean,
you can tell me the truth. Done. If I'm speaking

(19:22):
to myself that way, I'll still be friends with you.
Just speak the truth to me and say like, yeah,
I do have those moments where nothing matters. Those those
are victim thoughts. Yeah, told you as a victim, and
I no, no, I still stand by you wouldn't have
gotten here if you're default mode, I mean both of you,

(19:45):
without knowing you, I'm telling you just wouldn't have gotten
here unless your default mode was heroic. But you're saying
that like it's like if you're sixty here and forty
percent victim, your life is going to go okay if
you're sixty percent victim and here it's not. Yeah, you
just have to spend more time in the gear of
hero then you do in the gear of victims. Yeah,
and self aware. Yeah, it's how we respond to the

(20:06):
pain or the whatever happens to us. Because that's one
of the things I wrote down from the book that
you said, is pain causes you to pay attention, and
it's not just there to hurt you. It's like what
we do with it that really really matters. And how
you just describe that was like very nice for me
to see if like in my life when I've had
things happen to me, look at how I've responded, then
look at the outcome that came from each of those situations.

(20:27):
It's I mean, I just want to sit here and
write it all down now, because I'm sure it would
be very eye opening. Victimhood is so unbelievably seductive. I
was gonna say, it's kind of nice. It's so nice,
it's so comforting, showy slice of LoVa kick ice cream,
it's amazing, it's so so tempting. But the more you know,
and I also don't I think here's what's fascinating if

(20:50):
you catch yourself playing the victim and you say you
are such a loser. You're not a victim. You're taking
advantage of your sucking resources in yourself. You've always been
like this, Listen really closely to who you've become the villain,
and so now you have a villain inside of you
condemning the victim inside of you, and that is a
worthless conversation. Interesting. So the key is according to Reesa
and Hudson's ever read the Wisdom of the Instagram cat

(21:12):
or any of that stuff. I've read a lot of indiogram. Yeah,
they have a little bit in the back of the
book and just says, look, it does no good to
judge yourself. Just be self aware. In other words, just say, hey,
you're doing that thing where you think of yourself like
a victim. How would a hero see this moment with
no judgment? And that tends to work a little bit
for me. You don't even know you're doing it, like
there was a there was a there's somebody that I

(21:34):
know who is a bit, in my opinion, is a
bit of a fraud. They're just running a bit of
a con game right now, and I'm just so mad
at them because they kind of screwed me over and
blah blah blah. My wife and I went to see
music Man on Broadway recently and watch them. We watch them.
We watched the movie, and here's this con man. He
goes into town. He's very charming, you know, Hugh Jackman,
if you get a chance. It's unbelievable on Broadway right now.

(21:55):
And I'm like, this is so entertaining, what I'm saying.
And this character comes into the movie, who is another
salesman who realizes that this con man is making life
hard for actual salespeople and threatens to reveal everything. And
I'm like, wait a second, that's the villain. And that's
exactly who I'm playing in life, and it's gonna go
exactly the way it's going in this film that people

(22:17):
are going to call me self righteous and and I
And it was just sort of a come to Jesus
moment for me to go, Oh, you think you're being
self righteous and helping the world, but actually you're being
vengeful and jealous and you're gonna cast yourself as a
villain in this story if you keep going. So what
do you have to do stop doing what I was
doing and just be self aware of rather than saying, well,

(22:37):
I'm gonna reveal how terrible this person is, which they're
actually not that terrible. I have to go No, you're
being self righteous and jealous, and those are villainous tendencies.
If you want to, you can go to them and say, hey,
here's what I see. Is there away I can help
you out, which I had no interest in doing that.
So that's how tricky all this stuff is. But it's
really important because those decisions that we make out of
these emotions actually determine whether life goes well for us

(22:59):
or not, whether we're good parents, whether we're a good spouse,
whether you know, they have a good career. If you
watch people who just rise, there are people who you
just can't get them to think of themselves as victims.
It's just very very hard to get them to think
of themselves as victims because they just don't want to
go there. You know, they just see, well, yeah, life
has screwed me over several times, but look what I

(23:20):
got out of it. I got stronger and I got
more determined, And if those things wouldn't have happened to me,
I wouldn't be where I'm at. That's the kind of
attitude that tends to succeed. So there's the hero, yeah,

(23:43):
that rises, but sometimes the villain rises within. You are
in the in the story. Well, no, I don't even
know about talking about the movie The Joker. It's the
It's the heroic backstory of a character that had a
choice to become a hero or a villain, and they
became a villain. Cruella, I think is one of the
best movies out right now. If you haven't, have you

(24:04):
seen Cruella, you see that it's so good, And imagine
how can you get an audience to sympathize and root
for a villain. And what they had to do was
give her heroic tendencies, and the way she vascillated between
hero and villain hinged on one plot device, and that
plot device was how she treated her friends. So when

(24:27):
she treated them like minions, she was Cruella, and when
she treated them like friends, she was a Stella. And
she went back and forth, and they as soon as
you started to hate her, she would have this sort
of repentant moment and go back and be nice to
her friends and her dogs, and then she would turn
back into evil and you. That's how they strung you
along to make you root for her. I'm thinking about

(24:47):
all of these shows where I've been like, oh, they
write it so well, where you want to love this person,
then you want to hate them and in the next
season or the next episode. I guess what I'm thinking
about now is how do I operate in my own
life when I see somebody like that as a therapist
who's going back and forth. Yes, when I see something
in my life where I'm like, they're a villain, villain,
they're a hero. They're a villain, they're a hero, and
then that's where I see myself being that self righteous person. Almost.

(25:09):
I don't know. I guess you just have to draw
a boundary answering man questions boundaries. If I were a therapist,
be the worst therapist because I would just say, look,
you're you're acting like a villain. I don't really care
if you listen to me or not. That's what you're
doing X good talk show, no, no, not goods? Yeah? Yeah,
I mean really in the book, like you help us
discover when we are being one of these characters. I hope.

(25:34):
So you know, here's my theory after releasing the book.
I don't think there's a whole lot of people who
actually want to think about it. No, I think you're right.
What's all you think about I think it's I think
it's a unique person. Yes, Amy, You've got to take
a compliment here, because you're one of the people that
I've gotten to know that wants to be You want
to learn, you want to grow, and when you do something,

(25:56):
you want to like really know how people feel about it.
You're one of the most honest people that I've experienced.
Most people, even like a lot of my clients, they
don't really want to know that. They want to feel good,
so they want to come to me. They want to
feel good and then want to go and live their
life and they don't want to do that hard stuff.
I think it's like you said, it's really I was
very surprised at how rare these qualities are. And again,

(26:21):
I don't think you would be where you are unless
you had them. Well, and I'm again being able to
talk to my sister about it was helpful because I
mean we we would talked about it on the phone
multiple times, which after you on where are you? What
do you think about this. Oh, and then we talk
about literal life experiences. She was going through something at
the time, and it actually helped her navigate a pretty
serious situation. And I think so for her and her husband.

(26:45):
They were reading this at like a little perfect time.
So basically you put it out for them, thank you
and in that cold though to here that you work like,
it literally impacted how they moved forward in a very
difficult situation. And I was able to be a part
of that conversation and speak this language with her. And then, yeah,

(27:05):
it's something I would just I would think about my
story all the time. I do cryotherapy. I've done that.
I've done it like four times. Yeah, I go almost
every day, mainly for the three minutes of silence, the
temperature negative to and I'm in the box three minutes.

(27:27):
Some people listen to music. I guess I've dabbled in music.
If someone else is already playing a song, I'm like,
I'll just keep it hooked up and I'll do some
Lizzo or whatever. But did you know I was reading
your book but also listening to the audio, and I
was having them play your book three minutes at a
time every day, and the cryotherapy people. When I would

(27:47):
show up my people I go to restore shout up
and they would put me in and they'd be like,
are you listening to that book today? And I'm like yep.
They're like, okay, three minutes at a time. That that
would be my three minutes. Then I'd read a little
bit more later or whatever. But that's how I didn't
want to put it down, so I was trying to
get it any which way that I could. And so

(28:08):
then I'd be in there for my three minutes and
like I would be thinking of my life and my
story and my year has been just I know a
lot of people have a really hard year, so everyone
might be like, yeah, my last year has been stupid,
but my last year for me personally, is probably the
most difficult, challenging year of my entire life. And I've
experienced loss and but in this year it was it

(28:30):
was some loss and then some other just really bonkers
type things that I've never had to deal with before.
And I was like, Okay, I'm coming out of the
other side of this, and who am I going to be?
And I think that's what going through this is what
caused has caused me to want to why you've experienced
this version of me cat of like wanting to figure

(28:51):
it out, wanting to be better? How do I want
to show up? What is my story? But I still
that's my question. I don't know. There's still some unknown
things in my life right now that are very unsettling,
and my therapist is like, you need to get in word.
So that's why I started going to acupuncture. I don't
know what else to do. I'm doing the neural feedback.
I'm in talk therapy, I mean couples therapy. I'm in

(29:13):
now acupuncture. I am making sure that I'm getting outside
and getting the sun and being with the trees. I
went forest bathing, Dona, have you ever done that? I
don't know what it is. Sounds itchy. You can do
this at Goose Hill. I was going to leave on
the tree. Yeah, when when we come out to Goose Hill,

(29:35):
we should take the crew and go for it. Or
you just walk under leaves, you go, you can your clothes.
It's bathing because you're just you know, soaking it all up.
But don it is your property. You're building trails right now,
however you want to do it, but we can all
and you lay down, maybe a blanket in the forest
and you just sit there and you sit with the

(29:56):
trees and leaves in the outside, and you soak it
all and this has helped you feel a little more
centered at So I'm trying it. Yeah, I'm trying anything.

(30:18):
You know what's interesting. I mean, I don't know if
this is true, but it's helpful when I when I
go through those hard things, I'll ask myself, what big
thing is this preparing me for? In other words, someday
I'll look back said, if you wouldn't have gone through that,
you would not be prepared to do this. And often
when it's really really difficult people, I think, wow, you
are being prepared to handle a situation where you have

(30:41):
a lot of difficult people, which is usually a powerful
place to be. And if you poke your head out
in this world, you're gonna get shot at. And so
you're learning to get shot at and to keep going.
And I'll tell myself that and that that helps me through. Well,
I'm going to repeat it for people because I wrote
it down, But it's what big thing is this preparing
me for? You know how this reminds me. I don't

(31:03):
know if I've shared this with you. But I was
listening to a podcast and I wish I remembered who
said this, but it has stuck with me. And he
was talking about how he deals with difficult stuff in
his life, and he says, I start with gratitude, because
when you look back on things in hindsight, you're usually
grateful for those things that you didn't get or you
didn't have, or you missed usually, And so if you're

(31:24):
in the midst of something and you turn your foresight
into hindsight, you can start with gratitude. And that kind
of speaks to that of like, this is preparing me
for something. I just don't know what it is. But
if I start with that mindset, which to me would
be more of a hero mindset than a victim or
a villain, If I start with that mindset, then like, yeah,
the stuff is still hard, but it puts a little

(31:45):
bit of purpose into it. And when we have purpose
in our lives, things just, I mean all around feel
a little bit better. But turning what is it turning
your foresight into hindsight and starting with gratitude lemons into lemonade.
I guess, So, I guess you could use that to
anything else. What you're going to say, Like in my brain,
you were like, you know, like that, and then you
didn't say. If you think about stories, if you think

(32:08):
about any movie or whatever your favorite movie is, there's
a transformation at the end that the hero has and
usually usually there it's just trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble,
and in the last nine minutes they finally become the
person they need to become in order to accomplish whatever
they need to accomplish. The only way they could become
that person was pain. Pain challenge challenge, pain, pain challenge, challenge.
So when pain and challenge happens this we can say

(32:29):
life is unfair. Life stocks I'm a victim everything bad
happens to me, or okay, I am being prepared, perhaps
against my will, but I am being prepared for something bigger.
If I accept this and metabolize it and help me change.
There's this old story that I read years and years
and years, and I probably read it a hundred times,
and it's this character in the Bible of all places

(32:50):
who is the second most powerful person in the world.
They are a Jew and they're an assistant to Pharaoh
in Egypt, and they run a food for land program
that necessitates a military to back them up, and also
a pretty good understanding of tax codes and these sorts
of things. If you reverse engineer how they got there.

(33:11):
They were disenfranchised from their families, thrown in a well.
They were rescued from the well, and turned into a
slave in a man's house, Potiphar's house, who ran the
military in Egypt. So while being a slave to the person,
they understood how the military worked. Then they were wrongly
accused of sexually assaulting that man's wife and thrown into
a prison that was a military prison. They were stuck
in prison for years. It was a government prison with

(33:33):
all the convicts out of Pharaoh's power. Structures were in
this prison. Every branch of government was in that prison.
So while he was under in prison, he understood, without
knowing it, how the government works. And then he ends
up in front of potterph Potiphar thinks he's so smart
he makes the second in command. If you wouldn't have
been thrown in well, dis enfranchise from family, putting Potter's
houses slave, or thrown in prison, he would not be

(33:55):
qualified to be the second most powerful person in the world.
And so if we have that kind of attitude, Okay,
what is this preparing me for? Is it preparing me
for a great marriage? Is preparing me to be a
better parent? Is it preparing me to write a book?
Some days? If you just have that attitude, which basically
is what can we make of this? You know one
thing that at my company have about thirty employees. When

(34:16):
something hard happens, it intends to happen. A couple of
times a year, we literally gathered in a room and
we ask one question, what does this make possible? So
the market just crashed, nobody can get on a plane
and fly to Nashville. Our income happens because business leaders
come and sit in a room and learn how to
grow their businesses. Our entire business model is gone. Therefore,

(34:37):
what does this make possible? And everybody kicks around ideas
and that year we saw a thirty percent increasing revenue,
had our best year ever. But if we said it's
over and play the victim, I'd be bankrupt right now.
So just asking that question, what does this make possible?
In every hard situation changes and pivots our minds that
we can look at life like a hero instead of

(34:58):
like a victim, which makes all the difference impostor syndrome.
We were talking about that this morning on the Bobby
Bone Show. So I feel like that's something I see
on Instagram a lot. And so when someone is dealing
with that, is that victim when you feel like you're
telling well, you're telling yourself a story that you're a fraud.
Right When I think of impostive thing, I would think

(35:19):
of feeling sort of guilty that you're you're out past
your capabilities and you're playing to be somebody that you're not.
Is that what you mean or is it something else? Well,
I don't know if just some people that are posting
about it are the ways it's been talked about in
my world, and then the people that I follow is
very much and Cat maybe you can speak to it,
but it's that I don't know how I got here,

(35:40):
but like I don't deserve to be here, and there's
so many other people that could do my job better
than me, And I mean, people were to figure out
that I don't know what I'm doing and I don't
deserve to be here, like I'm going to get busted.
Like that is at least how I see it presented
in my like, who am I to do this? Say this?

(36:01):
Feel like I can be this? But I think that
if that's how you really feel, I don't think you're
being an impostor if you say it okay. I'm not
a big fan of fake it till you make it okay.
I'm a big fan of go do it and fail publicly,
and then try again and fail publicly and don't fake
it at all, just say hey, I want another shot.
I really want to develop this competency. I think if

(36:24):
you've been in a position of influence for seven, eight, nine,
ten years and you're still saying woe is me? I
think you're acting. It's been eight years, you belong here now,
and we should probably shoot I'm doing this for sixteen
years and I are calling me out. I'm not. There's
something about your personality that people are drawn to and
the things that you say. Okay, you know it's a

(36:44):
it's an economic system. I mean if it didn't, if
you weren't good at this job, you'd be gone. Right,
they've got to sell ads or really, what's uncomfortable about
owning that you are good at what you do? Well?
Now we're making this that feel like you put a
target on your back. I was just saying, I said
we talked, when we talked about this other this when
I was like, oh yeah, I don't have it every day.

(37:05):
But maybe that's just the story I keep telling myself.
I'm not I'm definitely not acting or trying to say it.
But I could see where that becomes a thing. But
maybe in a way that I am because if I
were to look at the facts, then I do deserve
to be here. But but sometimes we don't. We're not
always able to see the facts, and we have other
people around us that maybe make us feel otherwise at times,

(37:26):
and so then it gets very confusing and you're like, oh, wait,
is I gonna do? I don't agree or I don't know,
And then I'm like, I don't even know how I
got here. And I'm only here because of this person
and that person and this person, and if they were,
then I'm gone. So they're only there for because that
person this person is And it also takes away that
takes away responsibility because that's as I'm processing this, because
I've felt that at times too, of like who am I?

(37:46):
Or I'm gonna get found out? But when I play
that tape through the imposter syndrome tape through. What comes
back to me is that like it takes responsibility away
from me. So if I mess up or I do
something or like something flops or like let's say I'm
on your podcast now and on Tuesdays your ratings go
way down, it's like, well, I told you so, I
wasn't supposed to be doing that, and it takes my
responsibility away, which is victim mindset to me of like

(38:10):
this isn't my fault. It's also self protectionism. Yeah, yeah,
because you know, if I'm here by accident, then if
I fail, it's not a big deal totally, yeah, you know.
Or if I give you bad advice, I wasn't supposed
to be in the first place. So what's interesting about guides,
at least in stories, is they can be largely incompetent
in a number of areas. Hay Mitch has a drinking problem.

(38:32):
You know, Daniel, the drama teacher in the King's speech
isn't actually a doctor. He's not exactly corrected the King
when he thought he was a doctor, and so he's
got a little ethical thing there. They can have flaws,
they can have big time flaws. They cannot have a
flaw in their area of expertise. It's not allowed in
story structure. In other words, Hama has to actually know
how to win the Hunger Games, and Daniel the drama

(38:56):
teacher in The King's Speech actually has to know how
to stop a guy from stuttering and help him do that.
In fact, there's a there's an amazing scene in the
movie The King Speech, which won an Academy Award, where
Daniel the drama teacher and the King are alone in
some sort of church and there's a big throne up
at the top of the church and at on the stage,

(39:16):
and the King has found out that Daniel it does
not in fact have a PhD. He's not a doctor,
and so he confronts him and he says, you have
lied to me. I have given you my confidence, I
have spent time with you. I'm the King of England
and you're screwing around. You are a fraud. And Daniel,
it's an incredibly important scene in the story structure of the

(39:39):
the movie. Daniel says, you're the one who thought I
was a doctor. Yes, I did not correct you. Perhaps
I should have done that, but don't ever tell me
that I can't help you overcome a stutter, and I'm
not qualified. There were young soldiers who came out of
the war filled with trauma, and I helped every one
of them. That's where I cut my teeth, and that's
where I learned. If you don't think I have the
authority to help you, you're wrong. You can be a

(40:00):
great king and you can stop stuttering. Can we get
back to work? If Daniel would have said, you're right,
I have no experience. I'm just throwing stuff at the
wall and seeing what sticks. Maybe I can help you,
Maybe I can't. Do you want to move forward? The
story is ruined and that movie does not win an
Academy Award. One thing the guide cannot do. The guide
has to be competent in the area in which they're

(40:23):
giving advice. Do they have to be competent in their marriage?
There if they're getting real estate advice, who cares about
the rest of your life? But you have to know
what you're doing or you're no longer the guy and
you're the hero and trying to become somebody. So that's
in story structure. How that relates to life, you know,
I don't know, because none of us are complete experts
at everything. I don't know if that helps or not. Yeah,

(40:45):
I mean the whole time you're talking, and like, can
I just put Donald in my pocket? But anytime need
There's something that I don't think you would ever apologize
for and probably offended if somebody confronted you about it
said well you actually don't know how to be entertaining
or interesting, you would actually say no, I'm sorry. I
may have some bad days, but I know exactly how
to be entertained. Would you say that? I mean, you

(41:07):
have people listening to you like confidenced. Don I don't
know if it's just okay, Like for example, things just
get to me big time. Like we got an email
on the Bobby Bone Show today. We it was read
and they ranked the members of the show in what
they thought. Because we do Employee of the Month here

(41:29):
and every month we have to have a speech prepared
and we read the speech and then you find out
if you win. So you read your speech and then
what is this? You read a speeches though you one
employee of the before you're given the words. So this time,
I mean, and I haven't been winning at all, and
which is okay, fine, I'm like, why I'm forty one
years old, why do I care about this? But I

(41:51):
this month, I was preparing my speech speech and I
literally was like, I probably still have it on my
in my show notes, But I was like, why I
started to make my speeches rhyme? Just pull up having
here on my notes because you have to do it
every month? Yeah, because out of speeches. So I just
created a flow. So curious about like I said, about
why that happens. So I'm not even sure what to

(42:14):
write about anymore. Last round of this my rhyme was
a bore. But since we have to have something to
share just in case, here's to Employee of the Month,
finally featuring my face. Well, I'm thankful to win. We
all know it takes a team. There's so much talent
on the show. We're bursting at the same So to
each and every one of you in this room, this
award is for you too, so don't look so gloom.

(42:37):
But then and then I didn't get it, so which
is fine, I don't but but but okay, back so
it'll be like that. So then a listener heard the
employ of the Month segment and decided to write in
and said, hey, you know, heard the segment and made
me want to just assess my opinion of the show
the last month and who I rank as like really
brought it a game, that's all they meant. Well, it

(42:59):
wasn't mean, it was not mean, But this is how
sensitive I am. The email is read and maybe I'm hormonal,
I don't know. But they ranked six people and I'm
on the show. I would say I'm categorized as number two,
like a co host, but like the main like the
and I've been here for sixteen years or whatever it
has been, and I was number six. She was kind

(43:23):
and putting me at six, but I still was. I
was at six, so like, no matter what she said,
all I registered was like out of everybody on the list,
I was last. I was like, don't why do you
don't even know this person? Why do you care? And
also she was really kind and what she said about me,
she didn't say anything bad about me, but I my
value was I'm already struggling with that. And then it

(43:44):
was like, oh, I just had to hear email where
I was number six, and I don't know why that's
bothering me because again I don't know her, but I
had to like hold back like a lump in my throat.
But I just I'm trying to figure that out, because
you're right, it's like, why do I not know my value?
I've been here? But then I'll let an email from

(44:05):
a stranger that's a listener, and I value their opinions.
I mean, they're the ones listening, Like that's how we
have a job. But like that really got to me,
Like some people probably left here and they're like they
haven't even thought about the number. They haven't even thought
about the email, and they're like, who cares, I'm going home,
And I'm like, well, what can I do better? Like
I don't know how to show up any differently, And
I just was trying to do everything I could to

(44:25):
not get emotional during that segment because I didn't want
to be. I didn't want to come off that I'm
did you guys talk about it on the air. Yes,
the whole email was read and it was broken down,
and then it was like at number five, and I
was like, please let me be five, And then I
wasn't it just like six? And it was six and
then I was just like, but I think it's because
I'm already in a vulnerable state and have to be

(44:46):
in a vulnerable state. That sounds horrible. I would never work.
I would never want that. Okay, guys, I'm not looking
for you to know I'm being dead serious. I'm I'm
the nature of our Like, that's what do like though.
It's one thing to have it to read an email
that nobody else is reading, but it's nothing to have

(45:06):
it right on the air. Yeah, that would be a
little tough. I will say this. Criticisms come in and
I'll get them on Amazon reviews. Willie Nelson always said,
why you're pressed, don't read it basically just to make
sure they're talking about you. I don't think if somebody
is putting you intentionally last they're probably paying more attention

(45:30):
to you on that show than anybody else. Signed she
was like, Amy, love you, but the last month, Like
it doesn't sound like a mean spirit. It wasn't. That's
my point. It like it wasn't mean, but like the
fact that I was six just was like, oh, it
just like punched me down even lower to where it

(45:50):
reinforced that narrative of what am I doing here? Like
I haven't added value to that one listener, but also
everybody on the else on the show has value too,
So I don't want anybody to be six. But I
don't know. Now do you think do you think that
particular email also made you more aware of how driven
you are to be excellent? Because if you didn't have

(46:13):
the value of being excellent and entertaining people and providing value,
that wouldn't bother you. So it could be just well,
that's so hard. Who knows what this one is thinking? Yeah,
you know right, it's so hard. She might be listening
to the Four Things podcast. I don't know her. I
want to say, like, it's not you, like you did

(46:33):
you sent the email? Has nothing to do with you.
I think it has to do with me in the
story that I have in my head. And then not
just like helped reiterate. And I think when this the
segment was even going on, I'm like, well, this is
not good for me to hear right now? Well did
you hear what he just asked you? Yeah? Like what
does it make possible? And I was thinking, what is
this preparing you for? There you go, yeah, okay, his
questions we shall see. Yeah, yeah you tbd. Well, here's

(46:57):
one thing that I'm trying to learn as somebody who's
more or less wires of people pleaser in many categories.
I'm trying to learn how to be okay with enemies
because I just don't think you can be very, very
influential unless you have them. I'm not saying go create them,
but I'm saying, be okay with them. Right. How do

(47:18):
you go out and say, look, most people think of
themselves as victims, and most of their problems, most not all,
most of the problems are actually their fault. You would
create a lot of enemies just say that publicly, right,
because there's so many people who go, no, it's not
my fault. This happened, this happened, this happen. I totally understand,
but you have to understand where I got that idea
from was Victor Frankel, who developed it inside of a

(47:40):
concentration camp where he lost his mother, his father, his wife,
and their unborn child. Three months after getting out of
the concentration camps Auschwitz, along with two other camps, he
goes on a speaking tour and defends the fact that
life is both meaningful and beautiful. And I'm just going
if he can do that, I can probably, you know,
muster up a positive attitude about the mild challenges that

(48:01):
I'm encountering right now, and so I'm trying to be
you know what is criticism? You know that you read
on reviews or whatever make possible, It makes possible tough
skin of forgiving heart and a determination to keep moving
forward with this message because I think it helps people.
And so who knows what what makes possible the fact
that this email came in right wait it don't read it, wait,
don't read it. Just make sure they're talking about you.

(48:24):
Shout out should we quote you? Quote? Okay likes to
quote me on episodes because I'm just I say like
two things and I'm like two words to quote me?

(48:48):
So four things are out too is something we do
with guests, and I love to hear what you're thankful for.
But specifically, I would like to know a TV show
or a movie that you think before it sounds like
it could be top gun to um a book, not
one of yours, something else not that you would say

(49:08):
that thankful for hero on a mission like I feel
like there's so it would be such a good book
club here on mission and just discussing it and so
much talk about a drinker food and then an Instagram
follow like someone that you follow that you are thankful for.

(49:28):
You got all four? Oh well you're ready to go? Okay,
hit me? So a movie? First movie or TV show? Okay,
that was That's probably the hardest one. My favorite movie
is a movie called Wonder Boys with Michael Douglas. He prays.
He plays Professor Grady Trip at Carnegie Mellon and he
teaches a literature class and he's a pot smoking writer

(49:51):
who want to book Booker Prize. I think it was
a Booker Prize for his novel The Arsonist Daughter. All
this is fiction and he's having to write a allow
up book and his life is absolutely out of control.
And it's the most wonderful, little dark comedy and it's
just about a writer who gets his life together and
finds meetings. So so I found a lot of hope

(50:13):
in that book. In fact, I used to when I
lived in Portland. I would put up a big screen
on the lawn at Read College and show that movie
and by the end of the movie, they're like forty
students out there watching it with me. It was really fun.
I used to love that movie. So what was the
next one? Instagram for a book. Oh, a book, Yes
to Life. Yes to Life was just published this past year,

(50:34):
very recently published. Uh. It is Victor Frankel's speeches that
he gave three months out of the concentration camps and
it's amazing. He's got other books, but that's the books.
It's a short read, super easy, and I love that book.
Drink our food, Drink our food. Enchiladas with the right
enchilada sauce, which is tanging from where anywhere specific here

(50:58):
in Nashville would be Sinco. Damn, yeah, they know me. Well, uh,
depending on when where else you go in Houston, it
would be I mean I know the city by city
where to go? Yeah? What about I'm from Austin, Austin, Texas. Okay, Well,
Chewies has changed their menu, but it used to be
pretty good. So at this point you want to go
to Papatos Paitos in Austin. Yeah, I know it's a chain,

(51:21):
but changed. Have you been the mate Rancho? Oh it's
on my List's MAT's l Rancho. It's on Lamar Okay
in Austin, Yeah, South Lamar ish so just down for downtown,
get on Lamar and boom, you're there. Okay, I'm there sooner. Well,
so I'm gonna go there. You're going to mats Enchiladas

(51:42):
will change your life. Mexican is my favorite genre genre food.
Do you like do you like text match or do
you like real? My wife and I were watching Somebody
feed fill In and I think it's pronounced o waka Mexico.
You know Somebody Feeds Fille? Oh, it's great. It's a
Netflix show called Somebody Feeds fill and he and it's
the guy who wrote Everybody Loves Raymond. It's a writer

(52:04):
and he now travels the world and goes from city
to city. Anyway, what I was telling my wife is
as much as I love Mexico, I couldn't live there
because they don't need text mix. They like real, healthy
Mexican food. I don't want healthy Mexican. But anyway, there
was an Instagram follow Instagram follow doctor Henry Cloud. Who's this?
Tell us more Dr Henry Cloud. When he was in

(52:25):
his twenties. I think he wrote a book called Boundaries
and yeah, and it it sold million copies or something
like that. He's just a fantastic follow everything that he instagrams.
I feel like it's just relevant for me right at
that moment, like I was just thinking about this, was
just dealing with this or whatever. He's also brilliant. He's

(52:46):
just Dr Henry Cloud, so he comes town. Also in
your Instagram, I saw you put up something maybe today
or yesterday about telling the story, especially if you're trying too.
I guess it was for businesses and like selling something,
and so some people might not be selling something, but
I think of you know, I mentioned my mom and

(53:07):
her passing away, and there was a campaign that was
born from her death called Pimp and Joy. And I
feel like in the last few years, like I haven't
really gotten to the roots of the story as much
as in the beginning. I think people are kind of like, wait,
I don't get this, what is it? And they think
it's cute, so they want to buy the sweatshirt or
the shirt because a percent of the proceeds go to
various causes, which right now is building a veteran home.

(53:31):
So we've partnered with building homes for heroes the last
five years through the Bobby Bones Show and our listeners,
and it's been awesome. But then I feel like, oh,
going back to the roots of the stories and times
it's just repetitive, but obviously I have new followers or
tapping into the real meaning behind it. And it's not
really about buying a T shirt or a sweatshirt, but

(53:53):
it's about spreading joy to others, and that is one
way to do it. Maybe you can't afford to buy
the sweatshirt. But the origin is that my mom was
diagnosed with cancer and she made a concerted effort to
spread joy to others, especially at the hospital, because she
knew they if they were there, they were going through
a hard time. Like she would compliment people that she

(54:14):
didn't know. She would talk to strangers in the elevator,
and to me, that was an example of her being like, Okay,
this is a sucky thing, but I'm just gonna put
on my game base. I mean, we had crappy days,
that's for sure. It wasn't like, oh, choose joy, everything's great,
because it wasn't. But it was like, ultimately, the joy
of the Lord is my strength was her motto and
her prayer at the chapel was Lord used this cancer

(54:36):
for good. It was not Lord, heal me. And so
then the legacy as a daughter and like for my sister,
what has been born from the apparel line that has
come from pimpin Joy is that like every time I
see someone in a sweatshirt or hat or beanie or whatever,
in a way, that's an answer to my mom's prayer.

(54:57):
All the money from that shirt or item was used
to support a cause that is good into the state
over I don't know, we're maybe close to three million
dollars has been donated, and I that's not something my
mom ever had the ability to do, Like she was
a single mom, full time job inspiring. It is anybody
who can go into a hard situation and say, hey,

(55:17):
let's there's got to be a pinpoint of light. We
can walk towards some there it is, let's walk toward that.
That's how much the world needs that person. And a
reminder too of what you were saying earlier of like
what is the purpose of this, Like as a daughter
walking through cancer with your mom, but her having that
beautiful attitude and modeling that for us and then me

(55:38):
I hated losing her, but also it's like there's still
something happening from it, and there is good that has
come from it and really cool things that you know,
I think back to the very like your storytelling thing.
The clip you put up on Instagram just made me
think of like it had a more impact in the
beginning because that story was fresh and it was there,

(55:58):
and it was like it was all born. Because their
Twitter handle was Judy B pimp and Joy, and she
didn't even want that. She didn't want that. She actually
was very uncomfortable at the word pimp in and but
that also means representing. And we've had certain organizations that
we've worked with that are sex trafficking that we've donated to,
but like they've accepted it, but they're like, we're not
gonna publicly be a part because and we're like, we

(56:21):
totally understand, but this is a family thing that we
want to do and my mom would love donating to
you all. So here you go. We we get it.
No association, totally fine, But Judy chooses Joy. That handle
was taken. That's also it's not going to spread as quick,
but it was taken. If that had been available, that's
what we would have gone with. But I was in
the waiting room at m d Anderson, like all my

(56:42):
mom's iPad, like two thousand fourteen, trying to figure out
my mom's Twitter handle or maybe two thousand thirteen at
that point. She passed away a year later and then
Judy b Pimp and Joy was available and I typed
that in jokingly. But then from that hashtags were starting
up a kind of thing, and so we started doing
hashtag pimp and joy with our listeners, and it was
a way for us to see, like, hey, if you

(57:04):
saw something cool or you've spread joy in a way,
it's not about like bragging, it's just maybe it'll encourage
and motivate. Just put the hashtag pimp and joy so
we'll see it. And we had this woman called into
the Bobby Bones show one morning and she said, I
don't listen to you all. I don't know who y'all are,
she said, but I'm a single mom and I was
in line at the tire shop and y'all are doing
something called Joy Week. I guess which we were. We

(57:26):
had Joy Week early in two thousand fourteen before she
passed away, and we had country artists coming in. There's
just a show full of like spread kindness, do cool things,
fun music, like just feel good type stuff. And she said,
I was told I needed four new tires and I
could not afford that so I was only going to
get one tire. I was telling the guy behind the counter,

(57:47):
I can only do one. She said, well, the guy
behind me in line stepped up and said, I want
to pay for all four of her tires, and she said,
you can't do that, and he said, no, my favorite
morning show that I listened to, it's Joy Week, and
I have to do It's like I can and I
want to and I'm paying for it. And so she
called in the next day and she's like, I never
had heard of y'all. I don't even know who the

(58:07):
guy was, but he bought all four of my tires
because of this joy thing y'all are doing. And I
just wanted to call and say thank you. And so
for me, I was like, Mom that my mom is
still alive at that point, but I was like this,
this is all, like, this is the chain reaction we're
having from your decision to choose joy and adversity. And

(58:27):
that was a cool moment. And then after we didn't
do merch until after she died, so she has no
idea that we've ever sold anything or made donations because
of it. But it just made me think about the
roots because we did a campaign this week for the
hero and stuff is still available, but I thought, you
know what, He's right, I probably need to share a
little bit more of that, the root of that in
the story and what it's really about when you're buying

(58:49):
a shirt. Yeah, sure it's all going to help build
a hero at home, but it's also this message where
you can look down at it and know you're part
of this bigger picture of this breading, the joy and
the kindness and where it all started, and that it's
not just something where we decided to make a T
shirt and sell some merch like, it's so much more
than that. And if people want to check out the

(59:11):
Pimp and Joy stuff that we do have, the shop
for dot com slash Pimp and Joy is an easy
way to see everything we have up there and it's
really high quality, nice stuff and just know that, yeah,
when you wear it, you're a part of a bigger story.
But we always teach in our business classes is that

(59:31):
if you want your product to sell, you just have
to answer one question, what problem does this product solve?
And so if you think about Pimp and Joy, it
solves the problem that everybody wrestles with this every day.
Am I going to have a positive or negative view
of life. Period. It's like we just have to. We
wake up every day and it's just a test. And
so your mom represented the positive view, and that sweatshirt

(59:53):
represents a pology. It's a solicially to a problem. Right,
every day negativity attacks me. I need some I need
just need one one more day where I don't give in,
And you're that's how your MoMA. So that's why that
that shirt means so much because of of that, Like
if you just deconstruct why working, Yeah, then I just
smile because Yeah, on a personal level, I get to

(01:00:13):
if I'm in an airport and I see one, I
scream and I'm like, I run into a tree before dawn.
Because but I was in Austin and I saw someone
in downtown Austin wearing this red, white and blue pimp
enjoy how we had made so it's eat easy to spot.
Like I'm crossing the street and I'm on the sidewalk
with my friend Mary was with me, and she's the

(01:00:35):
one she runs the shot forward and she's the one
that designed designs all the merchant ships it out, which
is like we wouldn't be able to do it without
the shot forward. But I am so trying to get
this guy's attention. I'm like, pip enjoy, that's what up.
Like in my mind, I'm like, answer to my mom's prayer. Hey,
and then boom, I run right into a tree. And
they were so nice they came over and checked on me.

(01:00:57):
Are you okay. We tried to get the downtown cam
footage of it. It was unsuccessful because Mary was like, oh,
that would be good if we could find that, because
it was but you know, just seeing people in that
like for for my family, for me and my sister,
it's like every time i'm shut we see a shirt,
it's like being answer to prayer, answer to my mom's
prayer because they weren't there, they didn't see her prayer.

(01:01:19):
And it's like, well, that's how it's been used for good.
So thank you for that reminder on your Instagram story.
So things you're putting out there, even on you know,
obviously the books you're writing are super impactful, but your
Instagram reels and stories and how along with pictures of
my daughter are very helpful, which we can appreciate. We

(01:01:40):
also appreciate that we're a big fans, So thank you
for spaking, and I'm very very grateful that you had
me on to have this conversation. I very much enjoyed it.
I think the next episode of the Fifth Thing should
be deconstructing my issues. After I'm gone, just go well
you got this at No, actually be very helpful. It's
free therapy for me. Know I'm like, Oh, like I said,

(01:02:02):
I wanted to. I want to put you in my pocket.
I got to sound pretty together to me, and I
needed to help keep me on track and keep me
honest and in my story and in my thoughts. And
now I'm going to be wrestling with the fact that
I'm not even mad at you for saying it. But
I'm like trying to think, like, at some point you
have to look at where you are and then decide
do you belong to the year or not. I don't see.

(01:02:24):
I can't even talk because I don't belong to be here.
I don't know but here. You know. I started because
I became a dad late and and I love Emmiline.
You guys today she almost walked for the first time.
I thought, I felt like that. I hope you're not
missing it right now. No, we're not. She's she's it's
going to be a few days, okay. But I remember
kind of having these self deprecating attitude right before she

(01:02:46):
was born, after she was born, like, who am I
to be a dad? And I don't know what I'm doing?
And then I literally just pictured my daughter at twenty
years old saying I didn't need you to not know
what you were doing. I didn't need you. I needed
you to protect me. I needed you to provide for me,
step up into your job and do a good job.
And I just never got self deprecating again, as it's like,
if I don't have a figured, I'm going to figure
it out. Well, I needs you to parent me right now,

(01:03:10):
tell me like, but I but I am. I'm gonna
be processing that thought of like at some point you're
kind of gonna evaluate as and assess the situation and
be like that person Sumson's up like they might be
acting there because I'm like, wait, I want to be
authentic and genuine, so at some point I have to
let go of this story. Yeah, well, and this is

(01:03:30):
a nice way to kind of round this out. This
is my favorite part of Blue Like Jazz. My I
read that book in college, which right now is a
long time ago, but I will never forget the part
of the book. It's kind of in the middle, I think,
where you're talking about the difference between like beliefs and
passion who said what you probably will butcherd a little bit.
But what you believe is more important than what you're

(01:03:50):
passionate about, because pouring what did you say, having passionate
about nothing? It was like pouring gasoline in the car
without wheels. It's not going to go anywhere. I got it, okay.
So that kind of is like like kind of what
you're talking about was what I can be really passionate
about thinking that I'm an impostor and like die on
that hill. Or I can choose to believe that I
do believe, I do deserve to be here and I
do know what I'm doing. And so it's not the

(01:04:12):
degree of like how passionate about, it's like what do
you believe? So you're sitting here wrestling with like, do
I believe that I deserve to be here? Do I
believe that I don't deserve to be here? And that's
what you got to figure out and his own it.
While my dad Donald over here says I deserve to
be here, huh or something like that. I don't listen
back to many episodes at all, but I feel like

(01:04:34):
this is one where I'm definitely gonna be listening back
for you, for you, Donald, for you. I want to
take I want to take it, take it in. So
thank you so much for being here, for sharing with
the world what you do share. And I am so
excited to come to your storytelling event write your story
story with Ali Fallon in October. I can't wait to

(01:04:57):
have you. I feel like I need to be there.
It's and I joined it would be very interesting. Oh yes,
you're more than yet am I invited? I know a guy,
I know a guy. Uh. Yeah, you'll love it. And
I'm very curious from a therapist perspective because we just
neither Alie in our therapist. But you can't talk about
telling your story without saying, well, I don't know what
to do about this. Well, it's like narrative therapy. That's

(01:05:18):
like a whole form of therapy. And so, I mean
Ali's book has helped a lot of my clients, so
her most recent book. Yeah, so I would love to come.
All right, we'll do it, Okay, let's go. Um Donald
on Instagram. People can find you, and I'm pretty sure
it's just at Donald Miller Donald Miller, right, Okay, and
then links to everything or you can access at all.
Your Donald has a link tree. I don't think I

(01:05:42):
knew that. Yeah, it's very helpful because it gives people
links through Instagram to all of your stuff. Yeah. Well,
it's going to meet you so so nice to meet
you too, And I'll see everyone on Saturday for an
episode of Outweigh. One of Cat's experts nutritionist friends is
going to be on Dylan. Yeah, long story about that.
We won't get into it now, but I'm super excited.

(01:06:04):
Dylan is going to be joining me for the next
three Saturdays, and then Kat and I will see you
all next Tuesday for the thing. Bye bye

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Victim Mentality, Self-Awareness, & Creating a Meaningful Life with Donald Miller