Out of Your Own Way: Finding and Fulfilling Your True Calling

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to to Ask Good Questions Podcasts, broadcasting live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at W fourcy dot com. This week and every week, we will reach for a higher purpose in money and life, as well as a focus on health and wellness. Now, let's join your host, Anita bell Anderson, as together we start with Asking Good Questions.

1:01 Hello, and welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast. I am so happy that you're here with us today. My name is Benita bell Anderson, and we are going to have a fantastic topic today in talking about getting out of your own way and finding and fulfilling your true calling. We're going to get into that. So I'd like to invite my guest to the proverbial podcast stage. His name is Scott Matterer. Did I say that right? It's actually mad. So I want to.

1:42 That's okay, You're not the first person that. So, uh, Scott. Scott is in Texas and I'm in Hawaii. As some of you may know, we're we're here for like another seven months. Our year in Hawaii is going fast. But let me tell you a little bit about Scott and then I'm going to have him expand just a tiny bit more on who he is. He is an expert in helping people transition from working to living their calling. So I'm going to be asking you that for Scott, so whatever that looks like for them. He speaks on helping people identify their calling, get out of their own way so they can really live it out, and how they can deal with their time. And these are three things He really gets into time, talent, and their treasures. So he talks on productivity and time management.

2:39 He talks a lot of leadership and communication, business and personal money and finances. He's actually certified in disc personality and communication tools, which I may have you explain just exactly what that is. And he has been a working coach since twenty eleven, doing coaching full time since twenty seventeen, so he specializes in mindset and behavior change more than the tools that he uses. So, Scott, do you have anything you want to add to that about who you are and what you're bringing to this. The only things I'll add I am. I'm married. I have a beautiful wife, Carrie. She supports the business behind the scenes. She doesn't like to be in front of the camera or on the mic, but she likes to be at the back of the room, so to speak.

3:27 That's her, that's her gifting and her thing. But she definitely supports me in the business as well. I have an adult son. He lives about three hours away from us. For some reason, he wanted to move up to Dallas and be closer to his girlfriend instead of closer to mom and dad. Oh come, yeah, I know, I don't get it, but yeah, exactly. So he's up there working and living and like I tell people, he he's actually managed to move out of the house and has it come back yet, So we'll come back. That's a win. So okay, so we're gonna to try to break this down because you know what's interesting when I found when uh, we're both members of this thing called pod match, and I look for people that can give like a little bit of a spin. You know, I've been a financial educator for a gazillion years and now with the podcast, I also do health and wellness.

4:22 Well I found that's there seems to be a. Lot of overlap with how healthy you are and the money and how well you handle money, and but the whole mindset thing comes up a lot. And so what I'd like to start with is what, you know, this whole finding your calling idea, what does that living your calling or trying to find your true calling? What does that really mean to you? And how is it different from just you know, having a career. Yeah, let's back up a step. So there's actually two words that we use a lot interchangeably, but they need completely different things, and we've sort of lost track of that, and that the word career and the word vocation. We treat them as if they mean the same thing. They don't.

5:10 So let's go back to the root word. Right, What does the word career come from? It actually comes from a word in Latin that means kart. So a career is a cart. It's something that gets you from point A to point B carrying something. It's a mode of transportation, right, okay. Vocation comes from the same root word in Greek as vocalius, which means to be spoken to, vocalization, vocal You know, we hear those words and vocation. There's a reason those words sound alike because they all really come from the same word. Well, by definition, if you're being spoken to, that means that there's a speaker, right that The only way to be spoken to is someone's talking. So vocation is really more about what you are called. We use the word calling to do it. It means that some higher power. Now for me, that's God, and I'm a Christian background, but I honestly don't care if you believe in that or not. The idea of vocation is that something outside of you, something bigger than you, is calling you to go in a certain direction or do a certain thing. So when you think about that, that means our vocation is actually bigger than just our career. Our career is one place our vocation may show up. But your vocation, your calling, your your purpose, your direction that

6:41 you're being called to that should show up in well, how I'm a dad to my son, how my husband to my wife, how I'm a member of a church, how I'm a member of a board for a nonprofit, as well as what I do in my career. So vocation supersedes or is bigger than career when you look at it that way and you really step back and go to the definition of it, which means by the way that if you're doing something right now and you're like, this really isn't my thing, you know, I'm just having to do it. Sometimes you do have to do a career for a while to help discover and uncover where you're calling shows up. It's okay to be uncomfortable in something you're doing. That's actually probably part of the process a lot of times.

7:34 Right well, I think in you, I mean one of the things I have begun to have some success with this podcast, which surprise the. Heck out of me. But one thing I didn't expect when I started the podcast. I didn't expect that I was going to enjoy it so much and interviewing people and how much I learn in the process. But like for you, the business, this thing that you're doing. The thing that we're talking about today is a callinggue for you. Yeah, yeah, it was even there before I was a coach. So what I mean by that is, for I spent sixteen years as a school teacher, I spent eleven years in the corporate world. Looking back and reflecting on it now, I see the way that I showed up as a teacher is related to the way I show up as a coach. Guess what. It was also related to the way I showed up in corporate leadership. You know. Yeah, both were good and ill. There were things about the way I led as a leader in an executive position.

8:39 I had a team of one hundred and eighty people, lots of client work, on a plane all the time, flying around the country. But yeah, but how I showed up was related to for me, the same thing now that happens in the way I show up as a coach, and that I'm very much. You know, I'm socratic. I tend to ask a lot of questions. I tend to be more focused in lifting other people up than myself. That's how I was as a teacher too. You know, my mom's thing is, Scott, you've been a coach since you were eight. You just didn't call it that, you know, It's like, yeah, exactly, I was. I was always the guy in high school that I was always in the friend zone because I was the guy that all the girls wanted to ask advice about their boyfriend. You know, it was stinky whenever I was in high school. As an adult male, now it served me. Well. You know, my current wife will go, yeah, that's why I married you, but in high school at sake. But because again, it's really authentic to how you show up in the world.

9:43 That's really what calling means. And it's, by the way, why we get stuck so often and feel uncomfortable so often is because when we're showing up one way and part of our life and then being forced to show up a completely different way and another part of our life where out of alignment. That's when we got more to disstonance. You know, that's when our brain starts going, wait, you know, one of these nintings is not like the other. You can tell we both watched Sesame Street. I was going to say, everyone of a certain age just now singing that song, so.

10:23 Well, I'm sure you'll you'll agree with me. That I feel like there's some people that feel stuck and just working. So where would be the first place that they should start with trying to uncover you know, if they can feel that cognitive dissonance and go this is not it, where would they start to start trying to figure out where they go from here? So I kind of want to step and you give a two part exercise, and this is literally something you can do. Got this down while you're listening. You can act do this in the next couple of days. So the first half is to look backwards. And the reason why I want to look backwards is we want to look at the pieces that have already presented to us, what's already shown up in our life, because a lot of times there's clues there. So this is a pretty simple activity. Take a sheet of paper. For those of us of more mature years, I'll put it that way.

11:25 We might need a couple of sheets of paper. But take a sheet of paper or two, divide it into three columns left hand, middle, right hand side, down the left hand side. Just start brainstorming everything you've done in your life. Let me be clear, I didn't say every job you've had, because that's usually where the first place people go. You could be broader than that. You can think about relationships, you can think about volunteering, you can think about all the different activities that you've done. Again, like I said, some of us have a more advanced age. We'll need a couple of sheets of paper or for the bull. Down the middle column, for each of those activities, write down one or more things that you enjoyed about that activity. Things that gave you joy, things that fed you energy, things that you love, things that you know when you did them, you were like this, clicks, I like this. And again, you can be as broad or as deep as you want. And then down the last column, write something about that activity that didn't give you energy, something that didn't feed your soul, something that took away joy.

12:34 Those sorts of things, and I hesitate to use the word hate, because that's a strong word, but the things that pulled you away right begin to breakthrough by the way. I don't care what the activity was, or what the job was, or what the thing you put down. You gotta find at least one thing to put in each of those columns, okay, because there is nothing out there that is perfect, and there is nothing out there that is completely imperfect. You always get information and there's always some little piece that it's like, yeah, I hated everything about this, but man, when I got to do that, that felt good. Okay, great, put that one thing down. There's always something that you can put down in these columns. So just begin to brainstorm and then it's a lot of times, by the way, this is a great activity to do over several days, Like you know, sit down and work on a little bit and then let the back of your mind work, and then pull it back out and write some more things down.

13:27 At three o'clock in the morning. You'll think that use this as a journaling activity, use this as a reflection activity. By the way, I actually have a lot of folks that say this is really fun to do because they get a real bit. You know, we never think about all the stuff that we do in our life. But there's tons, right, there's millions of things. Even a you know, twenty two year old like my son, he's done this activity and he ended up with like two and a half pages worth of stuff. But he's looking at it going I never would have thought there was this much. It's like, yeah, you know, we do a lot in our life. Put that down. So then youre going to look at this and start looking for patterns. What shows up over and over again and the love column, what shows up over and over again in the not so love column. You know, what are the patterns that keep showing up. You may use different words to describe them, but you'll start noticing that there's certain activities that kind of show up in different ways, but they keep showing up over and over again. That gave you energy, and the same thing for things that took away took energy away from you. So this is the information you already have.

14:32 And again, I don't care if you're fourteen, forty four or ninety four. You got some level of history for what you've done already that you can draw from. So that's looking backwards, that's looking for the building blocks. That's looking for the information that already exists. But you mentioned we need to transition, we need to figure out where we're going, and going is a forward looking So the second half of the activity is to do a forward looking activity to begin to project yourself into the future. So here's how I do it. I mentioned earlier I was in the corporate world. I used to be on planes all the time. So I'm gonna sit this in an airport kind of in honor of that portion of my life where it's been a lot of time in airports.

15:14 So imagine for a minute, you've been on a trip. I don't care where it is. This is five years from today, So it's five years in the future. Those of you listening right now, when if they're hearing this in those earbuds, this is something that you can begin to imagine and picture. Imagine it's five years in the future. You've been on a trip, and you know how a lot of times when you're flying back from a trip, you have that in between airport. You know, you fly from one airport, you land, and then you change planes, and then you fly the rest of the way home. And as you're walking through that in between airport, you get up to your gate and you look up and above the gate it has those dreaded words flight delayed. So you wait for a minute to talk to the person behind the counter and you're like, flight's delayed. How long is the flight delayed? They go to tell you this, but it's like four hours. You're like, oh great, So you do what anyone does when they're stuck in that kind of situation. In between, you go find a restaurant or a bar, depending on your particular flavor of poison in the time of day, to go hang out for a little while. So as you're walking in, I'm gonna send it in a restaurant. I'm a teetotaler. I don't drink, so child of an alcoholic, so I choose not to drink.

16:21 So I'm gonna set it in an airport. And walking into this restaurant there in the airport, and as you're walking in, remember five years from today. Across the restaurant, you hear a voice, Hey, bdita, how are you doing? And you're like, I haven't heard this voice in a while. And somebody keeps walking up. It's a friend of yours, somebody you knew fairly well, but they moved away. You moved away, y'all got busy. You lost track. You're in Hawaii for a year, you know, whatever it is, you lost track of each other. And you, oh, yeah, me too, you know. So you're walking into a strange place and so it's like, I haven't seen you since high school here, So what you have that moment and they're like, how long are you here? You're like, I'm here for four hours now. Unfortunately, they're like, well, I'm here for a few hours. Let's grab a table and catch up. You haven't talked to this friend for four or five years, five years in the future. You sit down at that corner table. Your friend looks at you and goes, man, you look great. How have things been? And you go, you know what, this has been the best five years of my life. Because that's your job. Tell me what comes after the word, Because what is showing up in your career, what is showing up in your relationships, what's showing up in your finances, what's showing up in your health, what's showing up in your entertainment, what's showing up in all of the different components of your life. That would make you honestly say to somebody that's a dear friend

17:51 of yours, somebody you're never going to lie to, you know what, this has been the best five years of my life. And here's why this is happening, and this that's happening. And you know what's interesting. I've never had anyone sit down and write something like I won ten million dollars in the lottery. That's not what makes us, you know, value the last five years. It's other things. It's how we show up in the world. So between these two activities, what you end up with is a list of kind of building blocks and information and a little bit of an inkling of a roadmap of the direction you need to head. And then step back and go, Okay, what is the next small action that I can take that would begin to move me in the direction of that five year plan? Yepe, based on what I've already got, what's the littlest, tiniest action I could take? And then go take it?

18:43 You know. And again that's where you take theory and begin to put it into activity and action. Well, do you believe that everyone has a calling or or do you think that it just sometimes just morse because of experience or growth or you know? But I mean, I you know, in me thinking about that, I think everyone has God given talents and things, and so maybe in that way we all have a calling. But do you think that that people will if they're attuned to this or they can find it, or do you think it's.

19:28 Sometimes just. Fritters away because people never pay attention. I think there's a I mean, I think what I want to ask you is we get distracted, right, we get so distracted that I think that people don't you know, Like when I was being asked what do you want to call this podcast? I knew in my life that all of the things that I had, all the mistakes i'd made, had been because I hadn't asked. The right questions. And so I knew that I wanted the name of my podcast to be asked questions. Yep. So do you think that people get distracted so they never get here?

20:12 So I think it's a both and not an either or. So here's what I mean by that. A lot of times we want to put things into box. You know, everyone has a calling or no, you know, and and the answer is yes to both of that. In that I think everyone has a calling, but you're what you're asking is what happens for us to uncover it? And the truly yeah, it's like. It's not a destination, so we think of calling it, We're done, we've found it, it's here. It's not like that. It's the journey. The journey is the calling. So yes, your calling can shift and change and you can uncover it more authentically and deeper. And you know, I'm living my calling now in a different way i was when I was a teacher, and I would argue in a way that feels more authentic, it feels like a better fit.

21:06 It's it's better connected all of those cognitive distance. But by the same copain, I'm open to the idea that I may discover some things over the next year, five years, ten years, however long I'm kicking around and sucking win. You know that things that make me go huh, that's an even better fit. I need to add more of that into my life. So it's it's not evolving, yeah, it's evolving all the time. It's growing. Yeah, So I mean that. I mean one of the things I was thinking about was like fleeting passions, And sometimes I've characterized myself as being subject to the bright, shiny objects. I've been drawn to this and drawn to that, and I've had interest in this and that. They're not really passions or callings but their interests. But I think that maybe maybe the those passionate things that we are interested in can lead to callings.

22:07 They can't. So there's for those of you that are listening and not watching There's a squirrel on the shift a shelf behind me, right over my shoulder, there's a squirrel. And there's a reason I have a squirrel on a shelf is because when I'm talking. About you like shiny options. We all do. Everyone does. But the question you need to ask is is it a squirrel or is it an opportunity? Okay, So going back to that five year plan activity that we did earlier, what you're looking at is, hey, this thing is coming along. Is it something that seems like it might move me in that direction? Not going to get me all the way there, but by doing this I might get a little bit more information, get a little bit more feedback, get a little bit more data, get a little bit more of an opportunity. Whatever it is that kind of moves me in that direction at least a little bit. Okay, that's clearly an opportunity. If it the answer to that is yes. If the answer is no, well now I need to go a little deeper, you know. Now I need to start thinking how much time is it going to take, how much energy is it going to take? What is it going to pull me away from?

23:15 What? Am I gonna have to say? No? To to be able to say yes to this thing, because guess what yes means a no? You know, every year there's always an opportunity cost. I don't care if it's time, I don't care, if it's money, I don't care if it's health. All of our life has opportunity costs. When we say yes to one thing, we're automatically saying no to something else. And so when you start realizing that, you can look at it and go a little deeper and go what am I going to have to say no to to say yes to this? And if what I'm saying no to is things that would move me in that direction, to say yes to something that's not going to move me in that direction, it's probably a squirrel. It's not really an opportunity. It's a squirrel. Well, what do you think of some do you think people sometimes have misconceptions or maybe are arguing with you right now, you know, saying you know, but I just there's got to be some misconceptions about finding your true calling.

24:10 Well, one of them, I think is that what we talked about at the very beginning. I think so many people think they're calling and their career or synonymous that that what I get paid to do has to be the part of my life that is one hundred percent my calling. And it's like that's false on a million different levels. You know. First off, I know people that go do something with their career that only overlaps with they're calling a teeny tiny amount, but they use that to fund their ability to go over here and do something that's one hundred percent alignment with their calling. And so if you think about it, it's still showing up big time, you know, in their life, but they're able to do compartmentalize and go, I'm going to do something over here that's not a perfect alignment. It's still not like it's completely out of alignment, but it's not perfect so that I can go over here and express this in a much more authentic way.

25:04 So it's it's that confusion that's the biggest misconception I see, is this confusion that every single part of your life has to be one hundred percent aligned with your calling for you to find authenticity and happiness. And it's like, I don't know anybody. I've yet to know. Maybe there's someone out there, but I haven't met them yet, you know, because guess what, the laundry still has to get done. You know, there's always something, there's some part of your life. And I know there's some people out there that love doing laundry. But the point is there's some part of your life that you kind of go I just kind of have to do this, you know, I just have to. It's part of being alive. And you're never going to get perfect alignment. So stop looking for it. Stop thinking that that's the goal. That's not the goal. The goal is simply to be a little bit more aligned today than you were yesterday.

25:54 Right, Well, do you think that sometimes people put up internal barriers from living their calling? Only if they're human. That would be yeah, that would be getting out of your own way, in minding. Out of your own head and getting out of your own way. The biggest and again the biggest internal barrier that I've seen just from personal and you know, I've worked with over a thousand clients in this area, so it's not just based on one or two things, is that belief that somehow we have to know all of the process and the end point. You know, we have to know everything that's going to happen. You'll never even get started. You know, I have to know everything, and then I'll get started and it's like, guess what. Number one, you're never going to know everything. And number two, what earlier when I said have that five year plan, let me give you a hint. You're not going to arrive at the destination and the picture that you wrote down, it's not going to be that picture. It will be different.

26:57 That doesn't mean it will be worse, though, because that's the again, the misconception is people will go, oh, well, if it doesn't work out exactly the way I thought, then it's bad. It's like, no, that's not what that means at all. A lot of times you'll uncover a destination that's ten times better than what you thought, and and you have to be open to that. And so all too often we close ourselves off to all of the great things because we're satisfied with the good things. And it's like no, no, no, no. Good can destroy great, actually more than bad can destroy great. It's easy content. You know I think that people, well, I you don't like it. For me, I can remember that I had the uh what do they call that? When when you say I'm not good enough?

27:47 Yeah? You know, yeah, the impost yes, And I think mindset can play into self sabotage. Absolutely, it's it's all mindset, you know. Again, and I talk to people about time and money, right, you took to our earlier said time, talent and treasures. Here's the trick. People think the problem is time or money. It's not the problem. The problem is always talent because it's not time or money. Those are just finite resources. You have a certain amount of time, you have a certain amount of money. You know, what matters is how you relate to them, how you use them, how you think about them, the beliefs you have about them. It all comes down to belief and behavior. So when you look at a budget of money and you write numbers down, those numbers don't really matter. What matters is the beliefs and behaviors that are reflected in those numbers, right, And that's mindset, That's what that is. So you know, I know people that they don't believe they deserve more. Well, guess what, You're never going to get it, you know. And I know other people that think, you know, it's no longer about deserving more, it's they think the world is obligated to give them more. They're not going to get it either, you know, because both of those are false outlooks how you relate to the world. And so it's when you get the mindset right, that's when you stop self sabotaging,

29:22 because you know, fear of failure self sabotage. Fear of success also self sabotage. Yeah, it could be either end of the extreme, because I think a lot of times we just focus on the fear of failure part. Right. I actually have seen just as many people messed up by fear of success as by fear of. Right. Yeah, I mean you're making me think of I It's like what you know, It's like why not me? You know? But like, whoa what if I'm successful doing this, then I have to show up? What's that going to mean? Yeah, what's that going to mean? Oh no, mister Bill. So what I'm what I. Want to ask you is can you think of a time when you had to get out of your own way?

30:05 Absolutely? So one I'll use kind of one example that's probably the most dramatic one in my life. But I've got this is one of those. We could talk for the rest of the hour and keep going because that's like I asked you somebody, how about time that you screwed up? Scott, I already know that I got to have you on another time to continue this. Well, that's fantastic. But what uh many years ago, back in and early kind of when I was in the transition between teaching and corporate. So I was kind of at the end of my teaching career. I was beginning to burn out on that I hadn't yet transitioned to the corporate. My wife and I were deeply in debt and kind of living like typical Americans spend more than you make and do all of these sorts of things.

30:55 We were actually in debt almost twice what I made in a year, and so we were about sixty eight thousand dollars in debt. I made a little less than forty thousand dollars a year, you know that kind of thing. Actually, with all of the different clients i've you know, when I do take of information, this is not that uncommon, not. As weird as it sounds like. But but and I actually had become suicidal because of finances so a lot. It's actually the number one cause of male suicide is financial stress and financial worries because a lot of men, myself included, look at ourselves as you know, we're the provider, We're the protector. You know, it's a lot of our self worth gets tied up in how well we provide for our family. And I was feeling like I was doing a terrible job. My wife would argue with me and tell me I wasn't, but I felt like I was.

31:45 And I began to listen to talk radio. I drove home down this long, windy road and I would listen to talk radio to keep myself awake while I was thinking about pretending like I fell asleep and driving off the road to commit suicide. Yes, I know that's ironic that I was listening to radio to keep myself awake so that I could pretend to fall asleep, but that was literally what was going through my mind. And they changed the line up on the radio, and I kind of began to hear the change from a I can't remember who it was, a Bill o'reigley, I think, or something that I would listen to. And again I really didn't care what was on. It was really just hearing somebody talk. They changed it to Dave Ramsey Show, and so I start hearing this Dave Ramsey show. He's talking about getting out of debt. He's talking about all this stuffy and they have people come on the show and start talking about being debt free. And I actually heard a story from a couple that was a lot like my wife and I wasn't exactly the same, but there was enough overlap. And I'm yelling at the radio. I'm arguing with the radio about how stupid this is, you know, And then I hear this story that's kind of like, huh wait, that's actually kind of close to us, and they did it. Maybe there's something to this, and so I began to hear it a little differently. So I went that weekend and I one of the things he said is he had come clean with his wife and told her what he was feeling. This is the getting

33:18 out of my own way part. You know. Just guess what. I have a little bit of ego and a little bit of pride, you know, I know, I know it's shocking. I can't see any of that. And I was going to protect my wife, and I had sheltered her from all of this. My wife's a smart lady. She knew everything that was. You're going to be a man. Yeah, exactly. All of that stuff is going on in my belief system and the way I was raised and all of these things. And I went, I sat down with my wife. I said, we need to talk. And we went and got in a private place and talked that weekend and I said, you know, this is what's going on. This is how much debt we have. She's like, yeah, I know. And because again she's a smart lady, she knew what was going on. Even though I was protect her, she was protecting me by not adding to my stress.

34:03 I'm protecting her by not adding to her stress, which basically meant we weren't talking to each other, which was the worst thing we could have done. So we agreed. We decided, hey, we're going to do something completely different. We're going to change how we're living. We're going to change what we're doing. And that's when we kind of came together and I was able to get out of my own way, give up a lot of the pride and a lot of that. That's also when I returned to faith, and a lot of things changed in my life, and all of these dominoes kind of fell in the same direction. Change careers, change this, change that, and in two years eleven months. I'm not allowed to round that up to three years because my wife gets mad if I round it up to three years. So it's two years eleven months. We ended up paying off seventy eight tho eight hundred and fifty four dollars and forty two cents, not that I know it to the penny, but I know it to the penny. For anyone who's listening carefully, you'll notice that that number is bigger than the number I said at the beginning. Yeah, because in the middle of that, I changed careers. I had emergency surgery. I actually had a collapse lung in December, and then it had to go back in January to have surgery because the lung collapsed again. Anyone who knows how insurance works.

35:12 That means I got to pay everything twice, you know, because one was in December and one was in January. So we ended up adding more to our debt before we got out of debt and then basically work to do that. Average income during that time was fifty five thousand dollars. And that's also where coaching came from, because all of a sudden, people started showing up and going, y'all are weird? Do you think you could help us be weird? And it's like, well, sure, we could help you. And I started helping people versus the ministry. And then was that the twenty eleven. That was back in twenty eleven, Yeah, okay, yeah, so I got out of debt. We got out of debt in two thousand and nine, and so twenty ten, and I was kind of helping people just you know, just friendly pro bono ministry through my church and stuff. And by twenty eleven I started turning it into a business and actually doing it, you know, and getting getting paid.

36:09 And then eventually. Time, Yeah, did you start doing some I mean, what helped that stick then? Because did you have some daily practices or habits that you develop for yourself? Because really, you can't coach people unless you've already done it yourself for yourself. I mean I learned that a long time ago too. I absolutely have daily habits and things and routines that I continue to this day. My wife and I continue to this day. We have weekly meetings about budget. I've done a budget every month since we started that process. But again, and I want to be careful when I say this, because people hear, oh, you've done a budget, that's what did it. That's not what did it. That's just the daily habit that lets us have a tool to communicate and be on the same page and agree about our decisions. And that's the important part. So don't don't miss the forest for the trees. Because I have so many people come up, what's the perfect app? It's like, well, you are you know your app? You know there is no tool out there that's going to fix your life.

37:16 You've got to fix your life, right, So it's that kind of realization. But yeah, that's that's the biggest routines and things that I've done, uh and and been able to keep in place, you know, to be able to keep the focus on the communication, the behavior, the mindset, those things. So let's explore that. I mean, okay, so there's you talked about time, talent, and treasures. How do those three intercept what's your if you step back, how do those three intercept. So at the end of the day, it all really comes down to talent. So time and treasures are the symptom. So here's what I mean. If you're if you have a problem your earlier you said finance and health are related, I would put time in that category. Two. I think those three things are related. Well, why are they related?

38:07 Because your mindset and your behaviors and your beliefs are reflected in your time, your money, and your health because they create the habits, the routines, the structure, the you know, all of that stuff. That's where it shows up. So if you think of time and money and health, those are symptoms. But the core problem, you know, comes back to between your ears and in your heart. You believe in what you how you that reflects in your behavior. And that's why again I talk about time, talent, and treasures because usually where we're seeing it, where we're feeling the alignment problem is in our time or our money.

38:55 You know, for time, it comes down to usually some version of I'm too busy to do what's important. So people will say things like I'm too busy to make it to my daughter's soccer game. That's a reflection of a misalignment of priorities. You know, it's actually not that you're too busy, it's that you've put a priority on some of your soccer game you've chosen with money, I'm too broke. Yeah, I'm too I make too much money to feel this broke. You know, that's an example of something someone would say. Again, what that is really reflecting is a misalignment between how you're using your money and how you really think, you know, you should be using your money. You your deep seated beliefs are causing a misalignment.

39:42 Yeah, I mean so I can see there where if someone's discerns, well, let's say that someone is saying, how can I tell if I'm investing my talents in the right places? It sounds like it's going to get back to individual choices that you make every day. Absolutely always, the tiny choices that we make aren't tiny. You know, we think they are, but they're not. It's again, and I've had the same experience as you. I'm working with somebody on time or I'm working with somebody on money, and they come back later and they're like, I'm losing weight. Why am I losing weight? And it's like, well, it's real easy. You start getting disciplined in one area of your life, it naturally makes you more disciplined than other areas, right, because discipline is a belief in a mindset and so it just spills over. And so it's not that we sat down and said stop eating so much. You just naturally started eating better and taking better care of yourself.

40:44 You know, it's I didn't have to tell you to do it. Same thing. It always happens that way. And by the way, I think it happens reverse too. I know health coaches that are like they started getting healthier and all of a sudden their money started getting straight. You know, how did that happen? You know? Same thing? You know, it's because the core is that discipline and that habit and the behaviors and the beliefs and the and so often we don't even know what our limiting beliefs are. They're invisible to us. Oh no, eternal dialogue is invisible. Yeah. So you you've gotten into personality types, right. Maybe what we'll do is we'll do a thing about that in one of these days. But do you think that understanding personality types and like taking some of them there's all.

41:31 I actually did a few of them not too long ago. Uh, And I think it's aren't you involved in the enneagram? I know I'm familiar with anyagram. I do not use anyagram. I use DISC. The only reason I use DISC is not because it's better or worse. And you know, there's Meyers Briggs, there's strength Finder. There's a million of them out there. Here's my problem with all of them except Disc. I'm not smart enough to carry it around in my head. Disc is simple enough that I can carry it around in my head and I can use it in real time with people. All the other thing. That I've got, okay, well, but do you think that that sort of thing can help you get some clarity?

42:12 Absolutely, because all of those things, by the way, none of them are good or bad. They're both. They're all just tools, right, They're insights that we can get. You know, God has made us in a certain way. This is my belief. God has made us in a certain way. I don't think any of these instruments gives us a complete picture, you know, of our whole design. I think all of them are glimpses through a little pinhole, you know, to let us see a glimpse of some of that wiring that we've been built with. And and so all of them are useful in the fact that they begin to give you insight right back to the same thing into beliefs and behaviors that you naturally have a tendency towards, and as you become aware of it, it lets you begin to you use them where there's strengths and mitigate them where they're weaknesses, because guess what, every one of them is a strength, and everything is also a weakness.

43:11 By definition, if you have a strength, it has to create a weakness. It just does. It's nobody's so perfectly well rounded. Is to be strong in all components. You know that that would make us God. You know, there's only one that I know of, and if. You know, I don't know about you. But one of the best days of my life was when I realized there was a God, and the second best days when I realized it wasn't me. That's as I tell people, that's about my pay grade. I don't get to make that decision. But as we get insights into ourselves, it lets us communicate better, lets us understand each other better. It let's us understand ourselfs better. And all of those things together begin to help us understand our beliefs and our behaviors, so now we can get more in alignment.

44:00 Scott, I have loved this conversation this and like I said, you're going to be on again. I can tell because I have a whole bunch of other things I want to talk about, but not today. I don't have me to come on anytime. Okay. So for listeners who feel like it's too late, or you know that they. I can't change direction. What would you say to encourage people to take a look at this? If you are sucking wind, it's not too late. So as long as you are breathing, it is not too late. So my mother just turned eighty five. Okay, guess what. My mom is still learning new things because you know, that's what she believes, and that's who she is, and that's how she lives her life. So there is no too old. My great grandmother died at ninety ninety four, ninety five years old. You know, my great grandfather died.

44:54 I've had all these long lived people, and I have all these great examples of looking at people that live their life well. And then I also have some examples in my family of folks that didn't right. The point isn't well they were too old or they were too young. The point is their attitude and their philosophy and their you know that that's what kept them. Well, I think you can or you think you can't. You're right, yeah, exactly the Henry Forward quote. Yep, yeah, so uh okay, so you're not too old? Never what's what's should? What's What's? One powerful question they can ask themselves today, what.

45:35 Do you want out of life? Another version of that. It's the same question, but phrase a different way. So for people that that question hit wrong, what do you want to be when you grow up? And by the way, I don't care if you're eighty five, you can still ask yourself that question. Good questions, Scott. Well, I hope so I tried to come on with good questions. That's the name of question. All right, We've got to wrap it up, Scott. So just to remind everybody, on my website, I have a place where I put all the information about my guests. So in a couple of days that information about Scott will be there, so you can go and if you want to follow up with him after this, then all the information about where to find him will be there.

46:25 So with that, thank you so much, my friend for joining me today. Absolutely, I'm honored to be here, and I hope you that are listening. You just got some value out of that and take action on it. Thank you so much, and thank you so much for joining the Ask Good Questions podcast. Bye bye bye bye. Today's episode is over, but we need Ask Good Questions again, didn't We don't miss out as we broadcast live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on a W four CY Radio at w fourcy dot com. Joined Nina Bellmerson next week for more conversations with experts on finances, retirement, behavioral finance issues, health and wellness and more. Until then, remember to ask good questions.