Latest / Pathological Positivity / Socks On Purpose – with Kirk Weisler – Episode #683
Transcript
- This is Live on Purpose Radio, episode 683, Socks on Purpose with Kirk Weisler. Now is the only time to create and live the life you love. I'm doctor Paul Jenkins, the positivity psychologist. My job is to connect you to powerful positive psychology principles that immediately upgrade your relationships, business, and mental health. Are you ready? Let's jump in. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Live On Purpose Radio. This is doctor Paul, the shrink who expands your life with another episode of Live on Purpose Radio. Joining me today is a good friend of mine. And, Kirk, I am so happy to have you in that category. You know, I I got to know you first as an author and a speaker and one of those guys that I wanted to be like someday. Yeah. And, there are certain aspects I'm glad I didn't become like, but there's other ones that I think I'm there now. I'm a fellow speaker and author, and we've had some grand adventures together. For the benefit of you who are listening, Kirk is the author of The Dog Poop Initiative, one of my favorite books ever, and a best smelling book for now a couple of decades. Isn't that amazing? It's it's it's amazing, doctor Paul, how long we've known each other now. How... Where's that time gone? It's been it's been it's been a really good couple of decades. Well, if you notice that time accelerates as you get older. I've... Someone keeps telling me that, man. Slow down. So we're going to get to the sock part, but let me just give a little bit of a backstory because... It... And this has been probably, I wanna say, maybe six ish years ago, five or six years ago maybe. Yes. You invited me to be a guest speaker at one of your corporate events. You were training a leadership team. It was semi local for me, I mean, within an hour, hour and a half drive from where I live. And you invited me to join this leadership training that you were doing with a company called Auto Leave. Yep. 10 of 10 of their identified future leaders. Yes. And I gratefully accepted that invitation. We came and had a great time with you. And we we've been... We did some mind bending. You did some mind bending. It was a lot of fun. We had fun and you brought a gift for everyone in that room, including myself, where you had a variety of colorful, fun socks that were laid out on the table, and you invited us all to take any two as long as they didn't match. And at the time, I had a drawer full of plain gray and black and and navy socks. They were all matched up. You know, they come out of the laundry, you match them, you put them in the drawer. Boring. Kirk, at the time, my biggest decision when I was getting dressed, when it came to my socks was, does this clash with my pants? Yeah. I re... I remember... Listen. I I bet you a lot of your listeners remember that phase too. And many of us might still be in it. Yeah. That's true. But... And wherever you are, you know, we honor your journey. But at the time, Kirk, I was mister boring socks, and and you introduced a new idea to me that maybe maybe we could do even this aspect of our life more intentionally, more on purpose. And I'll come back to this at the end of our conversation today. Sure. But you have now launched a whole new sock line called walkie talkie socks. And you guys will put a link in the description. Just remember liveonpurposeradio.com, the name of the podcast, liveonpurposeradio.com/socks. And you will get right to Kirk's site. We're even gonna offer you a little discount if you use the the code doctor Paul at checkout, d r p a u l, without a space. Now, we'll come back to that, Kirk, because I I wanted to open up with this story about, you know, speaking with you. You gave me a sock. I felt like Dobby the house elf. Like you You were right. It was right. You were liberating me by giving me a sock. And if you remember Harry Potter, I mean, there's this whole thing about the house elf is freed if you give him clothing and he got a sock. And for me, this was very liberating on some other levels. And it got me thinking, and it changed my behavior. That's the part that I wanted to really emphasize. It changed my behavior permanently. And by permanently, I mean ever since. I don't know what's gonna happen in the future, but I don't think I even own a gray sock anymore. Woah. Woah. That... So you you really stepped away from those grays. I really stepped away from them, Kirk. I saw no more purpose in it. I... So, doctor Paul, I wanna hear more about where you're going with this, but but just to just to kind of highlight something there, as as influencers, right, as people that are trying to be a positive influence in the world, which is I'm I'm guessing a 100% of your audience, the people that are are part of your tribe and community that that love you and that you love. And as a professional adult educator, which is, you know, my chosen field, this idea of of helping people think or have a revelation or some insight like, oh, and it changes their behavior, ideally for the positive, for the future. I mean, that's really what we're after. So I hope that you'll now kinda unpack a little bit about this thought process. Well, so what shifted for me, Kirk, in that in that leadership training? I wasn't an attendee at the meeting. I was collaborating with you to provide the training. And you did a great job. But but that that was just my specific role for the day. I was there as a learner just like everyone else was. And you've probably experienced this when you do your trainings, Kirk, that we, as the facilitators, gain every bit as much as as the attendees do. And that's why this is the best job on the planet. I mean, it's just so cool. I agree with that. Yeah. Absolutely true. But here's what shifted for me. Okay. That this small shift in my morning routine, just putting my socks on Right. Right. Shifted from mechanical and and unintentional to purposeful and intentional. And not only that, it's a whole lot more fun. Who... So who trained me or taught me or educated me that you're supposed to have your socks match and they're supposed to be basically unnoticeable. Right. And not clash. And not clash with anything. Right? But the the takeaway for me then was that even small choices done on purpose can bring energy and joy into our lives. And if we can choose our socks on purpose, what else? Can we do on purpose? Yeah. Yeah. In so many ways, doctor Paul, that that sock exercise and, that was a part of my life, it seems like the most natural fit for the core message of of of your operational philosophy, to help people live with more purpose, with a sense of purpose, to live on purpose and have more purpose than all they do. So it seemed like a pretty good match. I don't think either one of us had that thought at the time. It wasn't my intent to, hey, this is a... You know? But in a similar way, on my own journey, I loved what you said about being a a student and that as facilitators, you know, I think we probably both sat next to people also that were the sages on the stages, and they were there to give, not to receive. You know? Like, I'm here. Great. And I just find that to be less attractive, far less attractive than someone who's on the stage as a major keynoter, but he's got his notebook out over there or her notebook out. And they're aggressively taking notes. Right? They're always in growth mode, always in that intention to become more and better people. In my own journey of trying to level up my personal disciplines and my confidence and my, you know, my my personal management, you know, when I started mismatching my socks, it really it really became a helpful thing. I think I was... I don't think I was hyper aware of it at the time, but I love how you said it. Right? These little things that we do on purpose can help us live more of our day on purpose. Once once we... Once we're choosing something and we're choosing it with intention, that intent... That that spirit of intention stays with us. It carries over. Like, every discipline's interlocked with every other discipline. So I don't know that that was any part of my strategic plan, but it's definitely a blessed outcome. And whether it's socks or or lots of things, but when we get more... Like the the, what's that? Miracle Mornings by Hal Elrod, is it? Oh, yeah. I think you're right, Hal Elrod. Yeah. He says he says our mornings are a microcosm of our day. And if if our mornings can have more intentions around it, then our day will have more intention around it. And so there's so many things there. Yeah. There's a lot in what you're sharing, doctor Paul, for sure. Well, it's it's fun. And why not? I think... I believe this more and more the older I get, Kirk. If we're not having fun, we're doing it wrong. Yeah. I... No. I'm I'm in... I'm on... Yeah. You've got my vote. And you've just always been one of those fun people in my life. Your your book for Pete's sake is about dog poop and it's fun and it rhymes and it has a powerful message. And so I enjoyed the fun. Here's here's where I've gone since then, Kirk, because you know I tend to overthink things. I'm a psychologist. It's what we do. It's what you do. And as I've overthought this one a little and had fun thinking about it, what else? What else has this created for me? And I'd love to explore this with you a little because I think it's healthy for us to rethink traditions that that may or may not serve us anymore. And I'm not saying we should toss all traditions, but I had a rote tradition of wearing gray socks that matched. Right? And when one wore out, I threw away the pair, which doesn't even make sense because they're all gray. But if they're not gonna match, they don't... They work. They work. These are simply traditions. Right? I don't even know where they started. Some traditions, like matching our socks, are held without question. And this is the part that I think is powerful. Even if they don't serve us, we just hold those traditions, we don't even get to the level of questioning them. Right. And I think that's one reason that we're having this conversation today. I invite everyone now to at least question it. Yeah. That doesn't mean you should toss it. It may serve you well. But if it doesn't, why would we hang on to it? There's so much power in inquiry. You know, the whole growth mindset is... Invites us to kind of question things. But, yeah, I I I love where you're going. I I, I built on that a little bit, you know, the the idea of what do I wanna... What do I want my focus to be for today? So I think I started off with simple affirmations, like, what am I gonna focus on today? But it was it... It was when it got to, the community level for me that, it really became even more powerful. Before I... As I as I kinda mentioned on the on the website when I tell the story about where this started from, but I just had a bunch of extra... A bun... I just had so many socks. I had so many fun socks. But when I started mismatching them and I said, okay, today I'm gonna do this and I put on a sock and I would... If it was the Hulk sock, it was gonna be about resilience. If it was a sock with a rooster on it, it was gonna be about getting up early and and and getting going, kinda starting my day right. And then kinda staying at my attention. And that was good for me. But when I started sharing with other people, it really leveled up in this way. Mhmm. So there was a... And there's a picture on the... And this is what kind of eventually led me to the the experience that you talked about at the... I... There were some young people at church, so some young men at church. And they're like, oh, you know, but what... But otherwise, what what what socks are you wearing today? So I pull up and they go, oh, and I would and then I would tell them about it. And they were like, cool. Well, then they started wearing mismatched socks. Right? Right. And then they were like, hey. And I go, oh. And so they would come up and show me their socks. They said, what are you focused on today? So they... And so it just kinda grew until pretty soon we were checking each other, checking in with each other. And it wasn't some kind of stuff, stuffy accountability. It was, where are you at today? What are you focused on today? What do you think about today? But it was about feeling seen, feeling known, feeling discovered, feeling curious about where you're at, what you were doing. And just... It was just... It was like this automatic light bulb moment where we're just lighting up for each other. And all of a sudden now there's four or five people standing in the circle over in the lobby just pulling up their pants to see to to see... And... Right? And for me as an old guy, I felt much younger and cooler because these young guys were wanting to do this with me. But there was there was... I was like, this is really... And then it kinda spread. And pretty soon, we have pictures with eight, 10, 15, as many 16 guys that showed up to church wearing different pairs of different mismatched socks. And so we would circle up and try to take a pic. And I was like, there's something here. And for someone who is, you know, trying to be an influencer and trying to trying to understand how do we reach people? How do we get people to surrender the things that are holding them back and lean into the the the growth phase? I thought, man, I need to unpack this some more. And so that kinda led me to to this idea of intentional leadership and and, you know, the most intentional footwear in the world. You know, these mental and cultural patterns that we just follow out of habit. It's not necessarily principle. It doesn't necessarily serve us. No. What we're talking about here is raising our awareness. And and I hope that as you're listening to this today, you're not thinking, oh, Kirk and Paul want me to wear different socks. That's totally up to you. We're inviting you to simply ask the question. Yeah. Is is there something more intentional I could do about even a small aspect of my life? And it brings up all kinds of things like, oh, what are people gonna think of me if I show up to church in different socks? Right. Well, we can live out of fear or we can grab hold of that. And, you know, like you were sharing, you know, Kirk, it's kind of fun because Vicky and I, in our church volunteer responsibilities right now, we work with the littles. Okay. The little children. They're called sunbeams. Okay. Oh, wow. The age three, four? Three and four year olds. Perfect. What a perfect age. And it's so fun that I'll go in and I'll sit on a chair that's much too small for me. And so my pant legs come up just a little bit and expose my socks. Right. But the kids, these little three year olds have learned, oh, we're gonna go see what Sox he has on today. And I always pick them on purpose to please these littles. Mhmm. And they know that they're not gonna just just check one side. Yes. There's gonna be two surprises. Right? Yes. I have been I have been amazed at, that that exact principle of discovery and discussion. And you're talking about four year olds. I'm talking about 45 year olds. For example, this one conference I go to every year, and I've been doing this Mismatchy Wing of Solace for probably eight or nine years, maybe maybe nine years. You're a couple of years ahead of me. Yeah. So now at this conference, that is just a thing. So that example that you just gave from your Sunday... Your primary class for the kids, the example I gave from my church and from that group of leaders we we would talk to, if I bump in any of those guys from auto leave that were in that 10 person coaching group, they're still wearing mismatched socks. Michael, Mike Dougherty. He's like, he sends me pictures. He sent me a picture over the years of him and his boys in mismatched socks. It was a thing that he took back to his home. It's a simple thing, but it's also a a thing that helps people to connect and to feel seen. At this conference, I'll I'll see these people once a year at this conference in Orlando. And there'll be a few of them that walk up and they'll hold their pant legs up and they expect me to do the same. And dog gone, I better have this match socks on. I feel like I've... I feel like I... If I don't, I've betrayed some kind of sick... Sacred trust. Like, I've broken the covenant. Kirk, I can't imagine how I would feel if I ran into you in person and you're wearing matched gray socks. I know. I've been I just don't know what I would do. It would... He's a hypocrite. He doesn't really...... My faith in humanity. No. It's a... No. It... It's a thing. And I've I've been impressed and and and, delighted to see what people have done with it on their own. Right? They're just like, oh, cool. And then they take the idea and they they grow with it and run with it and and have fun with it. Well, hey. Before I turn you loose today, I have to get back to your new venture. Because not only were you having fun doing this, you have created a sock line. It's called walkie talkie socks. And I mentioned these at the beginning, but, you can connect there, you guys. Just go to liveonpurposeradio.com/socks, and you can even use the discount code doctor paul, d r p a u l, without a space, and you'll get a ginormous discount on on the wonderful socks. And I brought a few, In an audio podcast, it's hard to show things off. But You hold it up, and I'll describe it. I've picked out a couple, like, there's one. I remember one of the first times I heard you speak, Gert, and you you had a banana on stage with you. Yes. And so I had to bring... I had to buy the banana sock. Yes. About when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Do you wanna comment about that at all? No. I was just... It was... Well, again, doctor Paul, you and I are fascinated. We... Because we wanna be... No. Someone told me, so if you wanna be a good teacher, you need to be a great student at teaching. You wanna be a good leader, you need to be a great student of leadership. Right? Yes. And so I'm I'm at a conference like you are and there's a a lady up there presenting and she gives this presentation about dressing for success, your, you know, your personal image and professional image and she's a marvelous presenter. She's got all the right gestures. She's got the look. She's she's articulate. But I'm looking around the room and I'm like, okay. Yeah. But no one in this room is naked. Right? No no one in this room is like, I don't know what to wear today. I'm not sure. And then she's at the first day of a four day conference in Las Vegas. I mean, I'm thinking what's the likelihood of any of these people going home and changing their buying and dressing habits because of her presentation is almost zero. And then she shifts. This master teacher that she is, she shifts and she she begins to talk about opening bananas. And she tells this story about her boyfriend down in South America at some banana plantation village where he's building a church for people or whatever he's doing down there. And they feed the missionaries bananas. And her boyfriend's asking, why are the children laughing at me? And she goes, oh, they laugh because you Americans always open your banana from the wrong end. And then she was talking about was the end I used, the stem end. You know, you grab that stem like it's a handle, and you use your fingernail and you open the banana from the stem end, which is the way I'd always successfully opened bananas. So we were trained, taught, and educated. Yeah. So she went on. It's like black... Wearing gray socks. It's the same thing. We... I never I never thought about doing it any other way. I never... It never crossed my mind. This works and it works well. It worked for me. And she said... Her boyfriend said, well, how do you guys open bananas? And this little child comes over, takes what I call the bottom of the banana Which is actually the top. Gives it a little squeeze and boom, it thing pops open like it like it like it was a secret button. I... And it never occurred to me. But then she tied her whole presentation to this banana. She goes, I'm not trying to find anything wrong with the way you're dressing or spending your money or your professional image. I'm just saying there's another way to look at it and another way the budget for it. And she tied her whole presentation as banana, and I have never forgotten it. So this idea... So that's what the the saga is all about. It's about when we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change. And change the way that we dress, change the way that we get intentional in the morning, change the way we open bananas. It's all the same. We gotta change the way we look at it. And as soon as we do, like, woah. There's more there than we ever saw before. I also ordered one of these. Well, that's your son. This is this is a positivity path sock, and, of course, I have to grab one of those, Kirk. Well, when I was designing these socks for these design guys, doctor Paul, that sock, you were all on my mind because this live on purpose, you know, the positivity path, all the things that I heard from... All the pain words I remember, Paul, I wanted to put on that sock. I wanted them actually on the bottom of the sock for it to say doctor Paul, the... But, I couldn't get everything done that I wanted. But, hopefully, in the future, we can do a stronger collaboration, but that sock is in honor of our relationship. It truly is. And I I... It truly is. That was gonna be my surprise sock to you. And, anyway... And now you have it. So there it is. And I am so honored that I get to be included in this fun sock line. And one of my favorites is the f bomb sock. That one was a... I I started going to men's groups. I went to... One year, I got invited to speak or be a part of five different men's groups. And all of them... Most all of them shared some common fundamental principles. And they were all f words. They were around the four pillars, family, faith, freedom, finance, fitness. And so we try to put those f bombs and take this negative and make it real positive. So those are the things that can really explode the positivity in your life. Those f's are the ones that count. You know what's so fun about this? I I love your socks, Kirk, because each one has a a colorful design, a meaningful message behind it. And it just takes this wearing our socks on purpose to a whole other level. It... Where you can literally walk the talk. Well, we say we're walkietalkiesocks.com, the world's most intentional footwear. So that's our vision. We hope by March to have 60 unique designs, the affirmation series, the... You know, with different focuses of different, stories, and and we hope that we'll have 60 powerful designs. That's the goal. And right now we'll have... We've got 10 designs, 21 by January 5 should be available for people to to purchase and and receive. And then we're just gonna keep going. And then our next phase is also to make a little bit smaller size. So we wanna do a a a line for teens. I love it. Kirk, I I... And I love you. I am so grateful that you're in my life and that we can have these kinds of conversations and share them with our friends and family all over the place. You guys, walkie talkie socks, and there's a .com for that. But you can get there through liveonpurposeradio.com/socks as well. And go check it out. If you've got somebody on your gifts... Gift list... And by the way, my kids always know what to get for me. You know, that's what... This this occurs to me because I'm wearing my Santa shirt. Uh-huh. These, for Christmas, these are not stocking stuffers. These are stocking stuffers. Yes. Okay. I'll let you guys play with that in your own mind. I have a warning though, and I have to do this warning because I know we're gonna get emails. We're going to get comments. Doctor Paul, I ordered the walkie talkie socks, and they didn't come in pairs. Yeah. They don't come in pairs. If you want a pair, order quantity two of that design. K? Just a little heads up. I don't wanna get the emails about this. If you're not quite as comfortable as Kirk and I are with buying a sock and then match... Putting a different sock on your other... You got two feet for some reason. You don't have to dress him alike. So, doctor Paul, we have a mutual friend named Art Coombs Yes. We do. Who is admittedly very OCD. So I sent him... Because he's... He he was my mentor. He was my boss. He was, he was the first person that put me on stage speaking over twenty, what, four years ago. Yeah. So I sent him some socks to thank him for his influence in my life. He immediately called me because, Kirk, he said, you only sent me one of each of these. I don't have any matching... He he he can't even... He can't... I don't think he could physically, emotionally wear mismatching socks, but he was the guy who might send you an email. So I I commend doctor Paul's words. It says clearly on the website, we're selling them one sock at a time and that's on purpose. And that's how I want you to live your life, with greater intention and purpose. Oh my god. Absolutely on purpose. You're you're still gonna get an email, though. You know you will. We still will. But go have some fun with that, you guys. We... We've talked about socks on purpose today with my good friend, Kirk Weisley. Thank you, Kirk, for showing up and creating value like you always do. You guys, you've heard it. It's time to apply it. Let's go live on purpose. Did you get what you came for? Give yourself the gift of taking real action on what you realized today. Please share this episode with someone you know would value it, and leave us a rating too. It's time now to live on purpose.