Latest / Books4Guys / Why Success Isn't Enough: Craig Robinson on Happiness, Purpose & Living a Meaningful Life

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Why Success Isn't Enough: Craig Robinson on Happiness, Purpose & Living a Meaningful Life · Books4Guys

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Before we jump into today's episode, I want to thank our executive development partner, Standard Pursuit.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Founded by Hunter Didrickson, Standard Pursuit is a coaching community built for founders, entrepreneurs, and high performers who are ready to step into the next version of themselves.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Through one-on-one coaching and the Standard Training Club, Hunter helps people strengthen both their physical and mental operating systems so they can think more clearly, lead more effectively, and perform at a higher level.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I appreciate most about what Hunter is building is that he understands success isn't just about business.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's about health, mindset, discipline, leadership, and becoming the type of person capable of achieving the goals you set for yourself.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking to sharpen your performance, improve your habits, and operate at a higher level both personally and professionally, I encourage you to check out StandardPursuit at standardpursuit.com.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get to today's episode.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, cool.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: So all roles lead to the Tapea Street Street, you know.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which one?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Which one there?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Craig, man, super uh man, so excited to have you on the Books for Guys podcast and excited to spotlight your book.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's pretty cool.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking at your background.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, dude, you've done so many things.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: You went to MIT, Harvard, you're uh you're a speaker, you're published author, you consult for companies, you've ran companies, you got all kinds of you've you've done it all, man.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Man, that's that's that's what happens when you get a hole.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: You just like keep adding sentences to the paragraph.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's awesome.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, man, for those, Craig, that don't know you, I would love for you to just take a moment and share a little bit about your story.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just share and you can go as far back as you want.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: But really, just just I mean, again, I I'd like you to go and start even before like MIT in Harvard.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to know just like the motivation, because I mean, you seem like a very just locked-in individual who want to accomplish a lot.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's kind of it kind of ties into your book from what I could tell, people just chasing, wanting to be high-level successful, and losing that, that happiness piece along the way.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to hear your story and then just kind of what you saw in yourself and other people that led you to write your book.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, first and foremost, thank you for having me.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh just thank you for this platform and what you're doing.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: It just like share and promote good thinking and good words and good ideas and community and anything I can do to support that, I'm always going to do it.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, a funny thing I talk about in my book is that the this whole kind of tragedy of bios and resumes.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And our lives are scatterplots.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of random stuff that just happens.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then someone just shows up and says, tell me about your life, and then you just draw this magical, real super neat line that just makes it look so intuitive and obvious.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not gonna do that, Chris.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's not that you you were kind to like draw that straight line.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: But the truth of the matter is, I grew up in Atlanta, man.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in a, you know, kind of a troubled household, went through a whole lot of stuff to just kind of find my way.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: And for a lot of folks who grew up in those environments, you you found something that you can control.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the one thing I can control in my life was school.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was the one place where I felt loved and seen and validated.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And there's this thing called the Golden Child Complex and syndrome, where over time you learn that if I can just bring home a trophy or bring home a good grade or get a good, you know, you know, uh program or something like that, you start to feel that that's when you're seen and you're loved and you're validated.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you carry that mindset through your life into college, into your career.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so the first part of my life was largely about just doing well in school, even though I had a really messy household and background.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that took me from Atlanta to uh in Atlanta Public Schools, where I went to school and went to MIT and thinking I wanted to be an engineer, got there and realized I don't want to be an engineer.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: I love people.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: I want to connect with people and uh then find my way and going back to business school and then into the world of real estate, which was about how do you create communities and connections and spaces and had a career, love my career in real estate.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: But that ultimately brought me to where I am right now, which is like, how do we create safe space, not just community, but safe space for us to be our authentic selves and to connect and to share our pain and our triumph and our lessons learned and our desire for happiness.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, I love that, man.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was talking to someone about this the other day, and it it sounds like you go even more in depth with this book.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't even think we said the title, The Happiness Reboot.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I, you know, I was kind of looking at it as uh, you know, people are always they're just working, they're constantly chasing the next thing, they're they're locked in, they're checked list every day, and you kind of just lose the passion for life and all these other things that can, I don't know, add value or have the why and the purpose.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: You kind of I think people can sometimes forget what that is or what they're working on and get kind of caught up.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: But what were your because you were you and you were talking about some different, just different aspects to it, but what I don't know, what group of people are or or what type of individuals are you reaching out to with your book and and who who is this book for?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great question.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you you asked the same question my publisher did.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I say it's everyone.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: What the human condition is the human condition.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: We all struggle with this, but I think there's some of us who struggle more.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: People who are high achievers, who are driven, they're super competitive.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in their life, they've defined winning, however, that looks as being kind of the path to happiness.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And generally these people are pretty good at winning.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: You look at their LinkedIn profiles, you look at their trophy shelf, you look at whatever, you know, their extra house, their boat, whatever the thing is.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And they will look like they're winning.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what I've found, Chris, is that sometimes these are the people who are hurting the most on the inside.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: These are the people who are empty, feeling empty, because they've prioritize all of these things, which aren't bad, but they generally aren't sources of fulfillment and real meaning.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we discount the things that are really important in the busyness of life.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I you mentioned I was an executive, I was a CEO of a few businesses.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I, the inertia and adrenaline, adrenaline of just running on the go.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you don't even know you're unhappy until things quiet down just enough, or you have what I call life wobble.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so, Chris, this will be the other group of people.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: A life wobble is when everything seems to be going great, and then you have a health scare.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: You have something that doesn't happen right at work and you feel a little bit fragile, money issues, a divorce.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And generally thou, those are the moments, Chris, when we take a step back and say, whoa, the script is not working.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is not supposed to happen to me.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is not going according to plan.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And generally that's when we become curious about our assumptions in life.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're humble and humbled to kind of revisit these assumptions.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what I'd love to do is reach uh people before they have those life wobbles, reach them before.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And how can I get people to be curious about why you're doing the things you're doing?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really what the book is for.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm glad you described it that way because it truly does reach everybody at that point.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: You've got your your individuals.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I I mean, I love this conversation because I was talking with someone just the other day about this on how there's that fine line.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we're created to to strive to be better.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the goalpost is always moving.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: When we accomplish that, it's you're always maximizing yourself.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when you stretch yourself, you grow and you can continue to do that over and over.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you got to find that balance of being content too and happy with what you've done and with other people around you, and not just always thinking of the next thing because then you can't appreciate what you've got.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can't appreciate life that you know around you.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: But then you also talked about the people who not I don't want to say play it safe, but they're comfortable.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: They they find a stable job, family, and and everything's going well.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, yes, it's inevitable.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Something bad.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: There you're gonna have a death in the family.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna someone's gonna lose a job.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it that that's life.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: But people think you you think you can get to a point where it's not gonna happen, but it is gonna happen.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad you described it that way, because that that truly does mean this book can talk to anyone in any situation that can help.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I I love that.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I'll tell you, it's never too late, right?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're a mid-career person, whether you you're just getting started in your career, you're just starting to think about family creation and formation, you're starting to think about that stuff, whether you've made some decisions and you feel like, hey, I'm kind of stuck here and I just have to figure out how to optimize it, or you're in the tail end and you're thinking about your legacy.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is a through line where the things that actually matter can always be reprioritized in your life.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I'll give you an example for the person who is constantly chasing the next trophy or the next win or the next bonus check.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: What happiness research tells us is that probably around 10, 15% of your happiness actually comes from your circumstances.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning when you say, if I could just get this next thing, if I could just get this promotion, the truth of the matter is you might get a quick little insulin spike, but by and large, your happiness will return to a base level, which has you kind of feeling like you're on this hedonic treadmill.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're constantly chasing the next high.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: And what we know is that at least 40 to 50% of your happiness comes from mindset, right?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Which basically says it really wouldn't matter whether you were in the corner office or in the bullpen, your mindset has a whole lot more to do with it.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And, but unfortunately, we don't spend a lot of time thinking about our mindset.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: We spend a lot of time chasing.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that's really interesting about the, you know, the work of Victor Frankel and people who've done a lot of serious work.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Craig has not done serious research in the sense of the Victor Frankl's.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've read a lot and I've understood, and I've basically editorialized it.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: But what he taught us is that purpose, when you find your purpose in life, happiness follows.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, if you organize your life to find happiness without first focusing on purpose, you're not going to get there.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so this is why you know happiness can be democratized for anybody.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: You prioritarize the right things, figure out your purpose, focus on relationships, connections, and uh and understand it's not mindset.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, man, big believer in the purpose, the purpose part there.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's cool.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: As long as I talk to some people and they they know purpose is what they've got to find.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's a journey to figure out what that purpose is.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and what wakes you up in the morning, what keeps you up late at night, what makes you want to work uh 20 hours in a day to accomplish something.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's that purpose.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as you're seeking that out and trying to find that, you're on the right path.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: There, there's a lot of people out there that don't they don't seek it out.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So then that's when they get stuck and that that kind of just the unhappiness and the staleness sets in.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, come on, we gotta find that purpose, man.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I love that you talked about mindset too, because I again had someone on the other day.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking about just how strong the mind is.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Can tell yourself certain things and how it truly, if you can flip the switch on the way you think, just the things you can accomplish and just crazy the way you can get through certain situations.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of my wife was making fun of me the other day, and she's like, I wish I was like you.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're stuck in traffic, and she, you know, she's like, Come on, like, let's go, let's go.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a song on and I'm just jamming.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: She's like a cucumber.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, I wish I was more like you.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you don't ever care about anything.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, I care, but like there's nothing we can do.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: We might as well just enjoy, you know, a good song.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, she's like, All right, I gotta get better at this, you know, this thing of frustration a little bit.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: We were just laughing about it.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Just a simple example, but it's a great example.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a good example because you you and your wife just ran an experiment.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: You can have two people experiencing the exact same thing, like physically going through the same thing, but processing it very, very different.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's controllable.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: You can decide how you're gonna view something.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Dan Gilbert, who wrote one of the early books around our understanding of happiness, share it with me.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and he talked about this in his TED talk, how someone who finds out they have a terminal illness and the person who finds out they just won a lottery, by and large, will converge to the same place.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like the scariness and fear of like having some horrible condition pronounced upon you, uh, as well as your belief of the joy that you'd get from coming into a windfall of money, by and large, you will return to your base level of happiness, which has more to do with your mindset.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: A person who wins all the time but is never satisfied, and a person who comes through great trials and tribulations, but but has a mental mindset of resilience and perseverance, and actually thinks of it like I'm supposed to get something out of this.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like Chris is sitting in traffic and is like, this is a great opportunity to listen to my song.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sitting with my wife, I'm chilling, look at the clouds, you know.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's a mindset, and you you're you're you're on a you're in a winning streak with that one, man.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm sure it took practice, reading books, learning about it, you know, it's something you can learn and a skill you can apply.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I just think I love people need to hear more of that and then and hopefully at least to some practice.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: But Craig, what are some things in it?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of a two-part question here, what were some things in your life specifically that you experienced that you had to catch yourself and go, hey, I'm this ain't working for me.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to figure out how to shift my mind.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what are some things or or some steps you help coach other people on?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're struggling with this.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: What are some pointers in your book that that you're really trying, some nuggets you want people to get from?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, I had a few wobbles in my own life, you know, was exhausted and not healthy physically, emotionally, otherwise from just being in this kind of corporate rat race for a while.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And although I was doing well professionally, I was on Zolof.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was pre-diabetic, I wasn't sleeping well.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a kind of a physical toll that may not be obvious.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Your coworkers think you're doing amazing, mentees want to be like you.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the reality is you're just exhausted.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, was going through some trials in my marriage, and just the confluence of a lot of things was kind of a forcing mechanism for me to say, you know what, this is not sustainable.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and in general, you don't have a lot of people you can talk to when you're going through those things.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people don't really, when people say, Hey man, how are you doing?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: You just kind of say, you know, performative.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing good.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: No one really wants to hear that you're not doing good.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to kind of steal away and just go sit and deal with why I am dealing with these things?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I pushing into this kind of pain?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and that led to, you know, work and therapy, but also just retooling my life where I realized I had to make big structural decisions that historically I had been unwilling to make.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I found it most people, the things that are professional choices, the relationships in our lives, our faith and how the role of that plays, all these are really important.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you just need to be intentional about them.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I found myself having to wrestle with those things for a few years.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And on the out, you know, the back end of that, it led me to some really interesting insights that I now, you know, have made frameworks for people.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: I I can't tell you what your answer is, but I can tell you where the pitfalls and traps are.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, what my book wants to do and seeks to do, it's a third of it is science.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not just Craig's opinion.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: I I've gone and I've researched.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you're going to understand the science and kind of the philosophy of happiness.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's storytelling because we actually have a lot more in common than we think we do.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: You think you're a snowflake, but you're not.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: We actually have a lot in common.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so being vulnerable about my story and others helps other people to realize you're not alone.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third are frameworks.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are some ways in which you can, in your own safe space, at a pace that makes sense for you, to start to chip away at some of these things?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the book deals with a lot of frameworks.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you an example.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you find yourself in a career that's draining you and it's not fulfilling you, then I have some diagnostics to help people like self-assess.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like what kind of career should I be focused on roles and like where would I thrive?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there really are self-assessments.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And if once once I figure that out, how do I pivot?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then once I pivot there, how do I thrive once I'm there?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so these are some frameworks.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I also do a few things that I think you would find helpful, which is like, here are some of the happiness traps.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and towards the end of the book, I said, All right, if you've made done all these frameworks and you figured out how to get into the career you want and assess these relationships in your life and the role of faith, then here's some happiness traps.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a few of them are what I call crowdsourcing happiness.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Happiness has to be really, really idiosyncratic.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be so focused on just you.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: You can't look to your neighbors, you can't look to your right or your left.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: You have to figure out how to focus on what happiness is to you.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard for humans because we're so used to doing things in tribal communal senses, but this is not one of them.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, the IRR of happiness.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you buy a house and you say, This house is gonna be worth 10 times one day when I retire.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we tell ourselves this big mythical story of something great that's gonna happen in the future that justifies big investments today.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we do the same thing in our happiness.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: We tell ourselves, when I retire, I'm gonna get in shape.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: When I get through this rough patch, I'm gonna focus on my marriage.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, next year we're gonna start traveling more, or I'm gonna focus on my kids.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: You're making the assumption that you're gonna have time that you should not.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: You should not make an assumption about a big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: You should pull it forth, and that's what I call the IRR, internal rate of return.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, the the last thing I just say, I have a chapter called Life is Short, we just don't know it, is just to treat every day um as though it could be your last.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and not in a morbid way.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: But when I ask somebody if you had, you know, uh 10 years to live, what would you do?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And most people probably wouldn't change much.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: But if you had 10 months to live, that's when that begins to be a forcing mechanism.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if I say you have 10 days to live, and just go through the exercise.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I bet you'll learn something about what's important to you.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: But anyhow, there's just so many of them.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the point, Chris, is to make it easy for people to do it in their own space in their own time.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I love that, man, because a lot of people, like you said, you ask, you know, what makes you happy or what makes you unhappy.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people probably don't think about it.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I I like that your book's interactive in a way to here's some reasons why you may be struggling.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Here's some things you can do to fix that.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a very like practical thing to figure it out and to take steps to improve instead of just, you know, again, like you said, Craig's opinion.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Here's you know what I blah blah blah.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's written in a way that everyone can kind of discover and and figure out what to do.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I like that you said the point too.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about communal happiness and and it's a it's your own self-happiness you gotta figure out how to do.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it's I think that's tougher now than ever just because of not just the people we're around, but social media.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: We can we can see so many people, whether they're legitimately happy or not, they look happy doing what they're doing.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so that can kind of trick you a little bit into thinking I'm the only one that doesn't take time.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: It is tough.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you, Chris, there's this organization called the uh the World Happiness Report uh that's sponsored by the UN and Oxford and Gallup, and they've been studying countries for almost the past 20 years, year over year over year happiness.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the US has never, since this report was authored, been in the top 10.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like it peaked at number 11.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it has been on this trend down for a while.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: This the last two years, it's not even in the top 20.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And last year, Chris, some of the research, just to your point, said one of the things that researchers are concerned about is the role of social media.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Our youth, particularly our youth, are more anxious, they're more depressed.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of it has to do with one of the things we learn in kind of the research of happiness is connections and relationships in community.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're not really in community.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're connected to a lot of people, but they're not in community.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And not only that, comparison is a thief of joy.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we're constantly comparing ourselves to these fictitious like avatars that people are promoting of themselves out there, and it's not real.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's like your body doesn't even know how to process real sugary because it's so like high off of like, you know, like sucralose or something.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and and so all of this is having a really, really negative effect, not only our young people, but anybody who really is kind of trapped in that space.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's really, really, really hard.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, the reason why I deal with and I talk about faith and relationships and career is because these things are reinforced by society.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're reinforced by the people who love you.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like the patterns that we're running, they were probably given to you by your parents because they loved you and they thought that this is what would make you happy or at least you survive.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it was given to them by their parents.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so we just keep passing this generationally down and it's not healthy.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I talk about rebooting because you almost kind of have to realize these things are scripts running silently.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: And if you and it's going to be really, really hard.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so you should you should have grace for yourself and and and love and passion for yourself because we're all struggling with it and it's not easy.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things I think you can do in community is encourage each other.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: We can encourage each other.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm big on that connection piece.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I tell people, I mean it's hard.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: You get you you get older, you get busier, you got more responsibilities, and you got a job, but man, you gotta be intentional and take that boy's trip, that couple's trip, do you the wife and husband solo vacation, call your parents, call a friend you haven't talked to in a while.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like that stuff will bring you so much happiness, just being with people that care about you and and love you.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh again, you gotta be intentional about it because it takes effort, but it's always so rewarding.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's and I say that I just got off my yearly golf trip, and I'm like, man, we look forward to this every year.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: We will never not do it because it just refills our cups as men and just as friends.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I encourage that a lot.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Craig, just a couple more questions for you.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: One of them I really wanted to ask you is you know, again, you were talking about growing up in Atlanta, not the easiest.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: But man, as you, if people just again look at kind of your highlight reel and it's like MIT, Harvard, CEO, author, all this stuff, who are some people that influenced you, or who were some mentors to you that you give a lot of credit to?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, especially at a young age, you know, was it a teacher?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Was it a coach?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then just throughout your career, who were some of those people you leaned on for guidance?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, again, it's it's kind of lonely at the top when you're the leader.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: You were talking about that.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have a lot of people you can lean on.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: But who were who were some of those people or authors or books that you kind of look to for inspiration and guidance?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Question.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it it takes a village, as you know, and there's no one person in the village who who who who has all the fingerprints on you, but there are quite a few in my life.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: And one was my Uncle Dale, and I write a chapter about him in my book.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: He he died a few years ago.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: But this was a man who grew up as a teacher, you know, worked in the union advocating for other teachers.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, when my mom and I were going through some tough times, he would mail money to my mom to make sure we could go to school and have school fees, and he would just do this religiously.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then he would also mail my brother and I subscriptions to National Geographic, just so we had exposure to things that we grew up in a neighborhood where you didn't have a lot of exposure.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and this was someone who, even as I later in life, he would send me books that say, Yeah, I think you should read this book.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: And this was a simple person who didn't have a whole lot, but he would just keep instilling these little seeds in my in me.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a way of knowing that one day these seeds were gonna bloom into like oak trees.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but he did that for kids, you know, and and I honor I wanted to honor him in my book by talking about the role uh that he modeled in my life.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and as I started thinking about writing a book about happiness, there were a few authors who I was really inspired by.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Arthur Brooks comes to mind from strength to strength.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: That book was really transformational for me.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and there are many books like his where I think people who have figured out how to bring this conversation to the mainstream in the way where rooms where people are used to talking about like their awards and their trophies and how important now people are starting to talk about like purpose and legacy and community.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I am just so grateful for all the people who do that kind of work.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so yeah, I and I I'm just grateful for my family who uh were supportive of me writing this book because there's a lot of personal things out there now.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: When you talk about your family, you talk about the hardships, you talk, I talked about my mom's drug addiction.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about the struggles that I had with my father.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Generally, families don't like to put their business out in the street.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that was also something that I had to get comfortable with, and I wanted my family to be comfortable with that if we're gonna help other people, we've got to be willing to talk about our pains and how we've navigated that.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm also just grateful that my family trusted me to respect what you know we've gone through and but also to know that this was in service of a greater thing and that is trying to help other people.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I love asking that question because you almost see this like just not teary-eyedness, but like a level of appreciation and warmth of you start you remember your uncle or someone remembers a teacher or coach, and you don't you don't you may not think about them every day, but when someone says, like, hey man, who who was the person that really, you know, launched you into to where you're at that you give credit to, and all of a sudden you're like, Man, there's been a few, and you kind of just you don't know it at the time.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: It takes triggering life.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that that that's a triggering question, yeah.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, and it's later in life when you're like, man, they had such an impact on me, and I'm so glad they did.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I love hearing that from people.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Craig, last question for you, and I ask everybody this that comes on the podcast just from a book standpoint, but I'm curious to know what is a book or two that has meant a lot to you personally or professionally, and what's a book or two that you love to recommend to other people?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the books, and I will just say the authors besides Arthur Brooks, and he's written some really good ones.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: I would say Adam Grant, his book, Think Again, a great one.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: How do we get inside of our head and catch ourselves before we double down on things that we have conviction where we should have curiosity?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: One of the best storytellers for me who just made me fall in love with reading books again was Malcolm Gladwell.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love his books and and I love the way he makes people think.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and and these are some of the people whose book inspired me to say, I want to be a great author.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be a great storyteller.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: I want to move people the way they moved me.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Christina Wallace, Portfolio Life, there's just so many.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm humbled.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: I sit at the footsteps of giants.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but Adam Grant, Malcolm Gladwell, Arthur Brooks, uh, you know, Dan Gilbert, these are some of my favorites.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: They're great.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: They're amazing.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, I love asking that question because your answer could change on the day I ask you, on the year, depending on what you've read.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm always curious to know is there a new one I haven't seen yet and all that good stuff.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, Craig Man, Soup Man, it's an honor to meet you.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's an honor to talk with you.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's an honor to spotlight your work and to share your story.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I have no doubt there are going to be people that listen or watch this that are going to find motivation to uh just attack life the right way and to maximize their potential and happiness and no matter what they do.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so very proud to share your message.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And man, keep doing what you're doing.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: You've done a lot, but there's there's a lot to be done, and there's no doubt.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: No doubt.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you for this platform and thank you for the community.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're ever down here in Atlanta, come holler at me.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, I will, man.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: I will.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks again, Craig.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right, take care.