Unmasking Success: Dr. Angelo Valenti on Authentic Leadership, Joy, and Connection(Tech Difficulties Temp Down-Still on YouTube)

PODCAST TEMPORARILY DOWN DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

🎙️ Unmasking Success: Dr. Angelo Valenti on Authentic Leadership, Joy, and Connection

Guest: Dr. Angelo Valenti
Host: Dwight Heck
Podcast: Give A Heck

🔥 Episode Overview

Are you chasing success or curating it for the feed? In this soul-stirring episode of Give A Heck, Dwight sits down with Dr. Angelo Valenti, a consulting psychologist, author, and founder of The Company Psychologist, to explore what it truly means to live and lead authentically.

With over 40 years of experience guiding executives, entrepreneurs, and organizations, Angelo shares how early life with his grandparents shaped his values, how personal loss deepened his understanding of resilience, and why simplifying life is the key to rediscovering joy. This episode is a wake-up call for anyone stuck in the image trap and yearning for real connection.

💡 What You Will Learn in This Episode

  • 🧠 Why authenticity is the cornerstone of leadership and relationships
  • ✨ How to simplify your life and reconnect with genuine happiness
  • 📱 The hidden costs of social media and how to reclaim your mental space
  • 🙌 The role of gratitude and reflection in building a purposeful life

🔓 Breaking Free from the Image Trap

Discover how Angelo:

  • Helps leaders move beyond surface-level success to find true fulfillment
  • Encourages clients to embrace their uniqueness instead of comparison
  • Advocates for simplifying life and focusing on what truly matters

🌐 Navigating Relationships in the Digital Age

Angelo offers powerful insights on:

  • The psychological toll of social media and curated perfection
  • Building authentic connections in a virtual-first world
  • Maintaining healthy boundaries while staying emotionally present

🎯 Whether you are a high achiever feeling disconnected, a leader seeking deeper impact, or simply someone craving more meaning in your day-to-day life, this episode will challenge you to strip away the noise and embrace your authentic self.

🎧 Tune in now and take the first step toward living with clarity, connection, and purpose.
#AuthenticLeadership #MentalHealthMatters #LiveLifeOnPurpose

⏱️ Chapter Summary

  • 00:00:02 – Introduction to Dr. Angelo Valenti: Psychologist and Leadership Expert
    Angelo shares his background in psychology and consulting and how he helps leaders unlock their full potential through personalized guidance.
  • 00:01:37 – Angelo’s Origin Story: Values and Early Influences
    He reflects on growing up with his grandparents, whose integrity and emphasis on education shaped his worldview and consulting philosophy.
  • 00:31:43 – The Pitfalls of Social Media and Authentic Living
    Angelo discusses the impact of digital culture on mental health and relationships and how to stay grounded in authenticity.
  • 00:49:05 – Finding Joy and Simplicity in Life
    He shares insights from his book You’re Making This Way Too Hard, offering strategies to simplify life and rediscover true happiness.

🔗 Connect with Dr. Angelo Valenti

🔗 Connect with Dwight Heck

🎧 Available on:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/give-a-heck/id1538446144

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3wc2pFuCWhtLzAGYLSknzG?si=6231dbd1f36c4d93

Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/give-a-heck-1531597

Apple:

Spotify:

YouTube:

Full Unedited Transcript:

[00:00:00 – 00:01:20]
Cool. Welcome back to the Give a Heck podcast. I’m your host, Dwight Heck, here to help you live life on purpose, not by accident. Each week we dive into the real stories, raw truths, and powerful conversations that challenge you to give a heck about your life and the lives of others. Today’s guest is someone who spent decades helping people and companies unlock their full potential. Dr. Angelo Valenti, consulting psychologist, author and founder of the company. Psychologist. He has worked with leaders across industries, helping them build stronger teams, navigate change, and become the best versions of themselves. His new book, you’re making this way too hard, find your easy way to enjoy life and is a guide to simplifying life and rediscovering joy. Angelo believes that people are capable of dramatic change in growth and sometimes all they need is a guide. Today we’ll explore leadership, mindset, relationships, and how to stop making life harder than it needs to be. Let’s dive in. Welcome to the show, Angelo. I appreciate you coming on and agreeing to share with us some of your life journey, brother.

[00:01:21 – 00:01:25]
Thank you, Dwight. I’m happy to be here. I’m looking forward to visiting with you.

[00:01:25 – 00:03:08]
Oh, I look forward to it too. Listeners that are new to the show. Yeah, we had a great pre conversation. Those that are familiar with the show and been fan for many years, we had such a great pre Talk, sometimes they’re 10 minutes with a guest. This one was like 45 minutes. So it was so good to get to know Angelo and. And connect or Right. And commonalities and appreciation for one another and how we continue to level it up right to the day we take our last breath, which we can touch on that in a moment too. So excuse me, listeners and viewers, I’m getting over a head cold. I’ll just let you know if I cough the odd time or all of a sudden I pause, it’s because I’m, you know, I’m a trooper. I’m a tenacious person. I don’t give up, I don’t cancel. I show up. So if I end up sounding a little bit strange today, and that’s because I’m not feeling the best, but we’re still going to have an amazing conversation. I’m sure of it. So, Angelo, on this show, one of the things I love to start with is a person’s origin story. The reason being is people discount their earliest recollections, their earliest learned behaviors or moments that have defined who they are in their older years can be even as a teenager going into, you know, their first career, their first job in their twenties. Our origin story to me is fascinating and tells so much about the threads of where we are today. So can you take us back to your earliest recollections? Whether it was a moment of struggle, clarity, or transformation that shaped your purpose and led you to where you are today in your psychology and leadership coaching?

[00:03:09 – 00:09:16]
Oh, sure. I was born and raised in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, Shaker Heights, Ohio, which. And I was raised by my grandparents. My mother was disabled. She was in the house, but there wasn’t much she could do just because of her disability. But my grandmother was an amazing woman. She was a teacher. She got her teaching degree in the late 20s, and she taught deaf people. My grandfather was a dentist, so he’s a professional. He started his dental practice in the early 1920s, and by the time I came along in 1949, of course, they were. My grandmother wasn’t working anymore. My grandfather made a nice living. He supported us. And my grandmother instilled in me my value system. I mean, she was a woman of integrity. She didn’t. She was very honest, but in a kind way, being a teacher, she also instilled in me a love of learning. I was an only child, so I got a lot of attention. And in my house, I can’t remember anybody ever raising their voice. It was a house filled with love and respect. And there were disagreements, obviously, but there were disagreements without people being disagreeable. So that’s kind of the environment that I was raised in. If from a young age, if I had a question about anything, you know, why. Why is the rainbow different colors? My grandmother would say, well, there’s the World Book Encyclopedia right over there on the bookshelf. Why don’t you look up rainbows and write me a little report about it? So I just thought that was what everybody did. I was the normal. Instead of giving me the answer, I went to the World Book Encyclopedia and I looked it up and I wrote a little report, and I said, here’s why the rainbow has different colors. So when it came time later on in college and in graduate school for me to do research, research was just. Came second nature to me. And also high expectations came second nature to me too, because they did hold high expectations for me. I was also a very good athlete. I played football and baseball. I was a quarterback on the football team and the captain of the baseball team that came to all my games. And so I’ve been competitive all my life. And they were always very encouraging in my sporting and in my academic activities, but they expected me to excel. And the Idea of not going to college was not an option. So I went to college. I went to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, got a degree in psychology. I played football and baseball there also. And in 1971, about the only thing you could, and probably still today, about the only thing you can do with an undergraduate degree in psychology is go to graduate school. So I went to graduate school at the University of Georgia. And for those listeners in the United States and even in. In Canada, you know, there, there’s a line between Kentucky and, and Tennessee called the Mason Dixon Line. And once I got south of the Mason Dixon Line, when I went to Georgia, I decided I was never going to live north of the Mason Dick line again because the weather was much better in the south, the people were friendlier. So I got my PhD at the University of Georgia, and I was going to be a. My goal was to be a college professor, which I did. I was a college professor at Oklahoma City University for four years, taught psychology. I was chairman of the psychology department for three of the four years I was there. And in the late 70s, I realized I couldn’t raise my family. I had two young boys at the time, in the manner that I was raised, a pretty comfortable upbringing. So I left academia, joined the consulting firm. And that’s where I learned to work with businesses. And I really fell in love with business consulting. Got a chance to help people. And what I realized is that if I can help a business do what it does better, treat its people better, hire better people, build better teams, I could help 500 or a thousand people at one time by helping that company be better at what they do. So I worked with that consulting firm, RHR International, for two and a half years. And then I had an opportunity in 1982 to move to Nashville. I was in Memphis at the time. Time to move to Nashville and set up my own consulting practice. I had a client in Nashville who encouraged me to set up my own shop. And I did in June of 1982. And I’ve been doing it ever since. Working with businesses, working with leaders, working with aspiring leaders. And over the last couple years since my book came out, I’ve been also helping people to live their best life. Not over complicate their life and find more joy and contentment and inner peace, which I think everybody deserves. And a lot of people are sorely lacking in right now.

[00:09:16 – 00:09:26]
Oh, absolutely. It’s interesting. So you’ve been satisfied and moving your life forward over 40 some years?

[00:09:27 – 00:09:28]
Yes.

[00:09:28 – 00:09:52]
Doing. Doing what you’re doing, which is sounds Perfect. It sounds like obviously you have your ups and downs. I’m not saying that, but they’re overall what you’ve shared with us, you know, from your, from your beginnings with your grandparents to where you are at this moment. Sounds satisfying. It sounds perfect to me. Like, I’m not discounting that there’s journeys and character building moments.

[00:09:53 – 00:10:19]
Oh, there, there. Believe me, there have been some journeys and some character building moments. But to be able to say, and I told me I’m in the fourth quarter of my life, I’m 76, you know, so let’s say hopefully I’ll live to be a hundred. So that puts me in the fourth quarter. And the fourth quarter so far of my life has been the best. I mean, I’m enjoying myself more now than, than I ever have.

[00:10:19 – 00:10:23]
Oh, isn’t that because I, I love.

[00:10:24 – 00:11:08]
I love my wife, I love my kids, my dog, should mention my dog too. Grandkids, they’re all happy and successful and healthy and doing great. I love my work. I love the clients that I work with. I have schedule control, which is critically important. If you control your schedule, you control your life. So I have schedule control, which people don’t realize what a big deal that is to be able to pick and choose when you want to do what you love to do.

[00:11:09 – 00:11:53]
Yeah, exactly. It’s just, it’s euphoria really. People don’t realize going to work, go home, get paid at a 9 to 5 job. If that’s your, your dealio and you like it, great. But to be an entrepreneur, to own your own choices, we also own our own grief too, because you could be working at a company, I don’t have benefits, I got to pay for my own. I don’t have this pension, I got to do it myself. I’m sick, I gotta work. You know what I mean? I don’t get personal days that like, not all businesses get that. I know people listening are gonna say, well, I don’t get. I get that. But as an entrepreneur, it’s all on you. And it can be, it can be super scary, but it can be so super satisfying. Right.

[00:11:53 – 00:12:26]
It’s both those things. But, but the thing of it is, is when you are the person responsible, then you are the person that can make your life what you want it to be. If you’re working for a big company and that company has some downturn, there’s a downturn in their business or there’s a downturn in their economy, you might get fired or laid off through no fault of your own. And there’s nothing you can do.

[00:12:29 – 00:12:29]
To.

[00:12:29 – 00:13:09]
Keep that from happening. But when, when you’re, you know, I’ve worked for myself for 43 years, so I don’t know anything else, really. You can decide how hard you want to hustle to try to get more business. You can decide maybe to pivot, go in a different direction. You have a lot of choices. You can, you can make decisions that impact your life directly. Where a of people, the decisions are being made for them, they’re not. They’re going to have to react to them, but they’re not acting on them.

[00:13:09 – 00:13:31]
Yeah, our decisions can be good or bad and indifferent, but we reap the reward. We reap the, the, the glory. We reap the difficulties that come along with it. And I wouldn’t have it anyway. Obviously, it’s not as long as you, but I. Yeah, I’ve been an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur now for 32 years, so.

[00:13:31 – 00:13:33]
Oh, that’s a long time, too. Yeah.

[00:13:34 – 00:14:39]
Right. So I’ve been doing it a little bit, a bit of time, and being in control of my destiny is so fulfilling. Yes. As an entrepreneur, we have more bosses than the person that works the job. Right. Well, no, you don’t. Yes, you do. Yes, I do. Every client of mine, every client is a boss. Is a boss. And I have to take them as serious as the fact that they can be happy, sad, they can fire me, I can fire them. There’s the synergy goes both ways. But they are my boss. They are the one that is choosing to trust, have faith in me to work with them. So, yes, I’m steering the ship to help them through their life challenges and their financial challenges and to live a purposeful life. But at the end of the day, that’s still. They have to be in the committee of. They. They have to be willing. They have to be willing to suffer hurt, move forward. Most people are complacent. Sit back and Netflix binge every night of the week and again, wait for the weekends, like we talked about prior. Yep.

[00:14:41 – 00:15:30]
You know, you mentioned pain that, you know, growth can be painful. That’s why they’re called growing pains. Right. Because you’re gonna, you’re having to step out of your comfort zone. You’re trying new things. And one of, you know, whenever you try something new, chances are you’re going to suck at it at first. Right. And over time, you get better. But in order to be great at something, you have to be willing to suck at it first. And most people don’t want to take that leap and be and, and suck at it. Because either they’ll be embarrassed or they’re, they won’t get the results they were hoping for. But it’s a, It’s a progression. But you have to take that first step and be willing to be bad at something before you can be great at it.

[00:15:30 – 00:16:34]
No. 100%. And realize that, that the victory or whatever you’re looking for as an end result can be around the corner. Light doesn’t bend around the corner and neither does your vision. So sometimes you have to just step out on faith and realize, oh, I made a mistake. Put a band aid on, get up, dust yourself off, use it as a, what am I going to do different? It’s the mindset shift that people need so, so bad. And it goes always back to, you need to personally develop yourself. You need to stop going for confirmation bias, meaning for those that don’t understand looking for views and reading, watching or hanging out with people that always enhance your. Your thought process. Don’t challenge your thought process. They don’t make you think differently so that you can become more of a knowledge, bold thinker, critical thinker. And I believe that, you know, this all goes back to what you talked about. Encyclopedia. I love it. We had it on this shelf and I remember we get the yearly version. We had the whole set.

[00:16:34 – 00:16:36]
They get an update every year. Yeah.

[00:16:36 – 00:16:47]
And we’d open it up and I’d be looking at it. And my parents eventually stopped getting a subscription. And then they eventually stopped getting. They got rid of all of them. I wish they wouldn’t have. I wish I had.

[00:16:47 – 00:16:49]
Oh, me too. I wish I still had.

[00:16:50 – 00:17:00]
How many people got rid of them and ended up in landfills before they ever did paper recycling? Oh, my gosh, I can’t even imagine how many are buried and rotten in the landfills around the world.

[00:17:03 – 00:17:09]
Well, there’s, there’s whole generations don’t even know that there used to be physical encyclopedias.

[00:17:09 – 00:17:36]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I remember when the first computers, because this was back in the like early 80s, and they probably 81, 82, and they had the first computer labs. And I was in one of them when we were working on stuff, and all of a sudden, you know, the evolution of that, I think, where is this data gonna go? In a few years? You get into the 90s and the Internet, even before the Internet was really popular, Encyclopedia Britannic come out with a cd.

[00:17:37 – 00:17:40]
Oh, yeah. Encarta was a, was an encyclopedia.

[00:17:40 – 00:17:46]
Yes, yes. There was a cd. Yes. I had the encourage. Well, I own A computer company. So I seen them all.

[00:17:46 – 00:17:47]
Yeah.

[00:17:47 – 00:18:13]
Before I ever got into this industry I’m in now for the last 24 years. But yeah, it’s just interesting how the evolution of knowledge and information, it’s still there. You just got to be willing to turn on a computer now or open back then open up a book. Or maybe you’re still old school. Right. Good for you. Do it however you want. Just don’t stay camped. That’s my last piece of advice on that. So.

[00:18:15 – 00:18:25]
We have access to all the accumulated information in human history and we probably have less wisdom than we’ve ever had before.

[00:18:25 – 00:19:15]
Oh, absolutely. I look at, I look at our school system and how it’s in. In North America because I’m quite familiar with both school systems and, and both our school systems, they like Canada’s ranks in the top 10 in the world. Unfortunately, depending on where you are in the US it doesn’t rank as high because you have such a disparity between east, west, north, south. There’s congruency issues in the education system. But either way, even though it was ours ranks high. I think it’s broken. I think all education systems are broken. Pandemic proved that it was a giant babysitting service. It showed that kids could still excel and evolve if they had somebody watching over them, working at home, they had more free time. All of a sudden, more people were introduced to that homeschooling idea. And there’s a lot of people that didn’t send their kids back.

[00:19:16 – 00:19:16]
Right.

[00:19:17 – 00:19:28]
Right. They learned that their kids are more effective. They could work and get everything done in two, three hours and then they are playing outside or they have extracurricular activities, they have chores, they’re teaching. So they’re learning about living, they’re learning.

[00:19:28 – 00:19:31]
About life as well as learning about subject matter.

[00:19:32 – 00:20:01]
The pandemic proved that time and time again. The people that because daycares were closed for a while in Canada and they were relying on their families to watch their kids so they could still go to work. And it was just, it was a real eye opener. And I’ve been saying it before the pandemic, honestly, I swear to you, I’d been telling people the school system is a giant babysitting service. I’d stood on stage and talked about it and all of a sudden the pandemic hit. People weren’t arguing anymore. They were living it.

[00:20:02 – 00:20:02]
Right?

[00:20:03 – 00:20:41]
Right. So it is what it is. Right. We just got to keep on keeping on and realizing that our education system is going to come from the parents and teaching their kids. And not all kids are going to have that. That ability to have good parents like you with, you know, financial. Good financial backing, good, good value systems. Not everybody’s going to have that. But if you’re that person listening, thinking, and saying, well, I never had any of what Angelo had. I never had that. I never had what you had, Dwight. A stable family growing up. Okay, but if you can be aware and say that, you can change.

[00:20:42 – 00:20:43]
Right?

[00:20:43 – 00:20:46]
Let the past not define your future. And there’s people.

[00:20:46 – 00:21:02]
And you can say. And you can say, I’m gonna. I’m. I’m in a better situation now to do for my children what. What my parents weren’t able to do for me. You can break that pattern anytime.

[00:21:02 – 00:21:54]
Do you break that pattern with your children? And what I mean by that is, I’m really honest. If my par. My kids say to me, we used to do this, dad, or used to believe that, yeah, you’re right. And I had a change of heart. I had a change of mindset, and now I believe this. I’m not going to continue to spread the same things that I’ve spread all these years when I know there’s a difference, because I’m not worried about people going, we used to believe this, or afraid about their words, afraid about their. Their body or their verbal actions or whatever they say. To me, it doesn’t matter. I’ve changed. And I’m honest with my kids. I’m honest with everybody. I’ve talked about it on podcasts, like, yeah, I used to think this, but now, over the years, I’ve come to realize that the information I had was very biased toward one’s, you know, very confirmation biased. And. And I needed to stretch my vision, my mental vision.

[00:21:55 – 00:22:18]
Right. Well, my. My sons used to comment. They laugh and say, you don’t know what it’s like being raised by a psychologist. You can’t get away with any. But they did manage to get away with quite a bit. Not. But they’re still talking to me, which is good after all these years.

[00:22:18 – 00:22:51]
So I. I tell people it’s more than just talking. I’m lucky and blessed and crossing my fingers. None of them put in jail yet. I’m good. Right? Right. No jailbirds, no video calls. No. All right. And I want it to stay that way. My grandkids, too, and my great granddaughter. Right. So one of the things you didn’t really mention. I don’t know if you want to share anything about the fact that we did share in the beginning, before I hit Record is the fact that you lost your first love, your first wife at a young age.

[00:22:51 – 00:22:52]
Actually, my second wife.

[00:22:52 – 00:23:01]
Your second wife. So do you want to share some of that with the listeners? Because some people may find that very valuable that you can still find love even after loss.

[00:23:02 – 00:24:30]
Okay, well, I, I was married to my first wife for 20 years and it was not a great marriage and a lot of that was my fault. I didn’t know how to be a good husband to her and had two great kids, but I was really living a lie. I was trying to be perfect for everybody and I wasn’t being anything worth much to anybody. And I realized that as long as I stayed married to her, it was never going to get any better either for me or for her. It wasn’t a healthy marriage. Okay. So we divorced after 20 years and I met my second wife who has, she had a two year old son. When we met and we dated for a while, we fell in love, we got married. A lot of people said, cautioned me against dating somebody who had a son, who had a child. And it didn’t bother me because I raised two boys and I like boys and I knew how to do it. So raised him the way I raised my other two, except probably better because I, I liked their, her, his mother more than I liked the prior.

[00:24:30 – 00:24:31]
I get it, I get it.

[00:24:33 – 00:26:14]
So we had a great marriage. We got married in 1995 and in 2012, 2009. Excuse me. Her name was Ginger. She had a seizure and was in a coma for three weeks and the doctors couldn’t figure out why she was in a coma. So when she came out of the coma, she slowly recovered up to a point. And she never really regained her strength or physical vitality that she had before. And we could, the doctors couldn’t figure out why and we couldn’t figure out why. And she went, you know, we, we started to wonder if maybe she had something like multiple sclerosis or muscular dystrophy or something like that and, or maybe als. And we had a doctor tell us she didn’t have als. But after not getting better for a year, we went to her neurologist at Vanderbilt who specialized in als and he ran a bunch of tests and turns out that’s what she had. So als, Lou Gehrig’s disease, for some people, you know, when you get that diagnosis, that’s a death sentence. You just don’t know when it’s going to come. There’s no cure. You don’t know why people get it had and They’ve made great strides in the last several years, but. So we got that diagnosis in 2010.

[00:26:15 – 00:26:15]
And.

[00:26:17 – 00:26:20]
Over the next couple years, I took care of her the best I.

[00:26:20 – 00:26:20]
Could.

[00:26:22 – 00:27:22]
And she passed away in 2012 at 55 years old. Wasn’t part of my long term plan. It certainly wasn’t part of her long term plan, but, you know, I. Her son, my stepson, was living in Kingsport, Tennessee at the time. He moved back to Nashville, lived with me for a while, and we just tried to rebuild our life together and in. In a blessing. I met my wife Rachel about nine or ten months after Ginger passed. And I didn’t think I’d ever get married again. I was kind of a lost soul when, When Ginger died. But Rachel and I fell in love and we’ve been together ever since.

[00:27:22 – 00:27:35]
Wow. It’s important people hear this, though. It is. It’s important people hear that, that we’re not perfect. These people that are guests or hosts, we’re. We have lives, we have origins.

[00:27:36 – 00:28:50]
Well, and, and you know, really, for me, the point was I could, I grieved, believe me, I did. But after a certain point, you know, life has to go on. And even Ginger said when she was very, very sick and knew she was going to die shortly, she said, I want you to find somebody else. I want you to be happy. So kind of with her blessing, it made a little easier for me to move on to this phase in my life, which I’m still in and very happy in. And her son, her stepson, has two beautiful children, great wife, and she’d be very proud. She’s looking down, hopefully, and seeing what, how, how not being successful he’s been. So, you know, I’m gonna at a point now where I, I survived something that a lot of people don’t know whether they can or not, but I learned that I can.

[00:28:50 – 00:29:18]
Well, and I did, you know, just through our conversations before we hit record and just everything. Would you consider yourself to be a tenacious person? And the reason I asked that question is I consider tenacity to be a superpower that people don’t talk enough about. And the reason I see you to be a tenacious person is because you don’t give up. And tenacity is, is a, is a beautiful, beautiful thing that’s untapped in a lot of people or they don’t recognize in themselves or others.

[00:29:20 – 00:29:29]
Oh, I absolutely think I’m tenacious. I think I’m persistent, I think I’m resilient. I mean, and I have evidence to.

[00:29:29 – 00:29:33]
Back up your story. Your story.

[00:29:34 – 00:30:17]
But, you know, I. Quitting was never an option for me. You know, it was. My grandparents never instilled in me the idea that if something’s not going well, you just quit. They didn’t quit on their daughter, my mother, when she became disabled, they took care of her until she passed away. And so I just learned that that’s. You just keep going, keep moving forward, don’t look back. And that’s kind of the way I’ve lived my life. And, you know, I don’t know. I don’t know any other way. I don’t know any other way to be.

[00:30:18 – 00:31:29]
You know, that’s perfect, right? I believe, for me, I believe God brings me the guests that I have fabulous conversations with that are truly marked to make a difference continually through their whole lives. Right. And you being one of them. And, you know, I don’t want to interview somebody that’s. This is everything I’ve done now I’m retired. I do nothing. That. That doesn’t do nothing for me. I need tenacity. I need people that are compassionate and driven and. And knowing that Even in your 70s, like yourself, you know, at 76 years of age, that you’re still tenacious, you’re still driven. You. So you can hear the passion in your voice. Obviously, Those watching on YouTube, you can see it. So, yeah, that’s amazing, everything you’ve gone through. And you’re still got a smile, you’re still happy, you’re still driven, you wrote a book. But I also want to talk to you about what inspired you, you know, a little bit more about the origin and stuff before we get on to some other stuff. What inspired you to launch the company psychologist, and how did your early experiences that we’ve discussed influence the way you help others today?

[00:31:30 – 00:34:10]
Well, as I mentioned, I had a client in Nashville who encouraged me to set up my own practice. And I had never considered myself to be. To have that entrepreneurial spirit until the opportunity just fell into my lap. It just presented it. I had a choice to make. I could either keep working for this consulting firm, or I could strike out on my own. And fortunately, he made. He made it really easy for me. He said, I. I really want you in Nashville. I love what you’re doing for me. I’m going to give you an office that you can use. You can be part of my office. You can run your telephone through me, you can run your health insurance through me. And I’m on the board of the biggest bank in town. I’ll introduce you to all the business leaders in Nashville and then you can just go from there and I’ll guarantee you what you made last year. So it was kind of a sweetheart deal that I was 33 years old and I said, well, I can’t pass this up. How many times does an opportunity like this come along? And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just get another job. I’ll go back to teaching or I’ll join another consulting firm. I’ll figure out something to do. But I mean, it was a flyer. Took a chance on myself basically. And he did make it pretty easy. It would have been not impossible, but it would have been difficult for me to fall flat on my face. And he knew my style of consulting, which is a very personal approach. I, I try to treat every client based on the unique, the uniqueness of that individual and the uniqueness of that company’s culture so that they’re really getting a personalized consulting engagement. With me, you’re not getting a big firm where I worked for a big firm. And I know that sometimes you’ll get one consultant in there, sometimes you get another consultant and there’s no continuity. And they knew when they’re, if you’re working with me, you’re working with me. You’re not working with some other staff consultant. Because I am, I’m it. I am the company psychologist. And so they know that they’re going to get consistency because I have a history with them and they know they’re going to get honesty and they know that they’re going to get integrity.

[00:34:11 – 00:34:12]
And.

[00:34:14 – 00:34:25]
I’m not right for every organization, but for the organizations that I’m right for, I’m really right for. We really, we work really well together. And I have a lot of long term client relationships because of that.

[00:34:26 – 00:34:44]
Those are the best, those long term relationships where. Oh yeah, with me, where I’ve been invited to weddings, birthday parties. I know when they’ve had family members pass away, attend that, that funeral, SL celebration or whatever. Just because it’s based on relationships and connection.

[00:34:45 – 00:35:35]
Oh yeah. And when, when, when Ginger passed away, I got fruit baskets and flowers and stuff from several of the clients. That’s very, really surprised me because I didn’t really share that with anybody. I kind of went through it without sharing it from my clients. But they found, they found out what she paid. They didn’t know she was sick. They found out when she passed away and just on their own they said, you know, nice letters and like I said, flowers and fruit baskets of the things like that, which really touched me because it was something they didn’t have to do, but it made me realize that they cared about me as much as I cared about them.

[00:35:36 – 00:36:50]
That’s awesome. That’s great. Right? Like, I. I hear from some of my clients that I’ve had since pretty much the day I started, and, you know, their kids growing up from being in hockey ball, soccer, whatever, basketball, and all of a sudden, you have these conversations, you reach out, you touch base, do reviews. How’s the family? Oh, how’s this? You know, because I remember those little things, right? I make those notes down because people want to know that they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And then the rest is all gravy. Right? People just want to know that somebody gives a heck about their lives. Right? And. Oh, yeah, I know. Thanks for asking. He just did this or she just did that. And, oh, how’s the wife? Oh, the last time I heard, she was looking at a new career and a new job or going back. Oh, yeah, she did go back to school. Thanks for. You know, you can see the joy in people when they know that you care. Right, Right. Compassion and that connection. So here’s a question for you. When you’re coaching someone who’s lost their sense of direction, what’s the first thing you listen for? Not just in their words, but in their energy or their silence?

[00:36:53 – 00:38:40]
I’m listening for, and I’m looking for whether they’re really serious about making a change in their life. Because some people will say that they want to go in a different direction, they want to work on something, and you’ll give them some opportunities, some exercises, or you’ll listen for, why don’t you try this? And then they won’t really do it. They won’t put in the effort. So if somebody’s willing to put in the effort and somebody’s willing to try hard to make a difference in their life, I’ll work with that person all day long because they’re serious about their, you know, improving their life. Some people are just going through the motions. They’re just looking for. They’ll say, well, I tried that and it didn’t work. That’s an excuse for staying stuck where they are. Okay. You know, and. And I tell my clients, my coaching clients, especially when I start working with them, I’m going to be straight up honest with you. And if we ever get to a point where I don’t think I can help you, I’m going to tell you and sometimes that comes after the first or second session, and sometimes it comes after a year. Some people make progress for a little while and then they just get locked into where they are. They don’t want to, you know, they quit wanting to make those, those changes or it starts to get, I’ll ask them to go in a direction that might be a little too uncomfortable for them and they’ll just, you know, stop trying.

[00:38:41 – 00:41:03]
Yeah, it, at the end of the day, you talk about serious. I call it, call it the willing. You just have to be willing. And I have clients that I’ve sat with and you know, whether it’s on a virtual call using Zoom or at their home or they come to my house and we sit and have conversations and I have to have that sense that they’re really willing. And I will say to them, you know, you’re unique, just like your fingerprint, but you also have to be the willing. What do you mean by that? Are you really willing to go through and be vulnerable and share about your life? Because if you don’t, all the numbers, the black and white numbers mean nothing. And your ability to stay on a course, on a roadmap for your life, to live purposefully is going to fall apart within weeks. Then maybe, maybe you’ll be lucky, it’ll be months, but it’ll fall apart. We need to address your monsters in your life. And, you know, Mr. And Mrs. Client or business owner or whatever, I’ve got monsters. How about I share and be vulnerable with you? Some of the things I’ve dealt with and why I’ve got to where I’m at, where I understand that you may not be the willing because I wasn’t at one time. Right, right. One time I had to wake up and realize, oh my gosh, all these so called professionals and how they’re out trying to help me from when I was married, to going through divorce, to all this other stuff. You aren’t really a professional. You’re just a number cruncher. You’re not a relationship builder, you’re not a person that really gives two hoots. You’re going to try to manipulate me, pretend like you care, but you really don’t because you just want me to press hard, three copies, hand me my customer copy and you know, they’re gone. I realized I had to have that realization through personal development, through good conversations, avoiding confirmation bias, taking it on the chin when somebody was kindly telling me that I was wrong or that I needed to change. Or maybe this is why you lost that client, because When I asked you about it and you told me you said this to them, did you actually. Yeah. That’s why you lost them. You shouldn’t have said that. Or you could have said it different. Be a wordsmith. You need to understand the, the thoris. I know what I mean, right? All the things I learned because I was the willing.

[00:41:05 – 00:41:58]
Well, that’s a great way to put it. And I think the people who are willing are so much fun to work with because you can see progress and they can see progress. And it has a snowball effect when they, when they see that when you’re working with them that there are noticeable differences in how they think, how they speak and how they act, which is really all you can control what you think, how you speak, not what you know, how you act. It gets them excited. When that gets, when they get excited, that gets me excited.

[00:42:01 – 00:42:53]
Agreed. Right. You feed energy feed. So in, in life, those listening or watching, look for people that can reciprocate positive energy and not be an energy vampire. That’s part of, that’s part of a lot of your problems. You guys have group of people you’re hanging out that always feed you the same negativity, whether it’s politics, health, whatever you want to call food, nutrition, it doesn’t matter. They feed you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear. And you stick on that hamster wheel of life. Right. It’s your choice. You can change no matter where you are in life, at whatever age old dogs do learn new tricks when given the opportunity to not encapsulate them and put them into a compartment and say, this is what you’re defined to be. Nobody defines you.

[00:42:54 – 00:43:53]
You know, that’s. That is a great point. And you mentioned something. When you’re changing your life, you’re going to have to change some of your relationships. People come, people come in and out of your life at different stages and for different periods of time. And for example, if you wanted to stop drinking, if you had a drinking problem, you felt like you had a drinking problem, you’re not going to be able to hang out with your drinking buddies like you used to, because all the. Their whole life and their, your relationship with them is based on drinking. So you’re going to have to get new friends, new relationships if you’re going to break that habit. And if you mentioned the negativity, if you want. Misery doesn’t love company, misery loves miserable company.

[00:43:53 – 00:43:53]
Happy.

[00:43:55 – 00:44:40]
So if, if you’re miserable, you want to hang around other miserable people. But if you’re not miserable if you’re happy and if you’re moving forward, miserable people aren’t going to want to be around you, which is probably a good thing. And you’re not going to be around want to be around them. So you’re going to have to change those, those relationships that maybe you cherished, some of those relationships. But if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna become you 2.0, a better version of yourself, you’re gonna have to jettison some of those relationships and build new ones. And if you want to be, you know, if you want to be successful, hang around successful people. If you want to be smarter, hang around smart people. If you want to be richer, hang around rich people. You want to be an idiot, hang around idiots.

[00:44:44 – 00:46:51]
Pretty straightforward. Yeah. At the end of the day, our associations are so important. We could spend a whole podcast just talking about that, no question. And I coach on people, on how to, how to live through a filter to. To actually understand your associations and how they affect you. And people are floored. How simple it is. We won’t get into it today. My listeners have heard me discuss it so many times. But yeah, the principle of actually filtering your associations is so important. And associations, people don’t have to be your life association. It doesn’t have to be your life season. You can have an association that needs to change. You’ve had for I’ve had associations for 25 years and stuck with those associations and continually give to that association because something that happened 25 years ago, yet they’re one thing that I hang on saying, oh, I got to keep on helping them, supporting them, putting up with them is because of what they did for me 25 years ago. And I discounted what I’ve done for them, which is way more for those watching. I’m pulling on my association and support was way more than they ever did for me. But when you start loving yourself and stop discounting yourself, you start changing the way you look at your associations too. And the energy vampires become so real in your visual mindset. Right. They just really do. So we need to, we need to really take, take heed to your associations. If you want to learn more, reach out to either of us. I imagine both of us could have great conversations with you about your associations. I won’t even charge you just because if you’re stuck, I want to help you, lift you up. I’d rather just have a call, have a simple conversation and just on associations, you need more help than that. We’ll discuss that too but for now, associations are something that we need to address because you can’t stop being stuck in the hamster wheel and being the willing if you stick in the same group of drinkers, smokers, partiers. Right.

[00:46:51 – 00:47:05]
Or people who just know. Or people who just have no vision for the future, who keep just stuck where they are and are happy stuck where they are. Oh, I don’t realize that. Oh, the woods are full of them.

[00:47:05 – 00:48:24]
Yeah, but I got lots of clients like that and I love on them the way they need to be loved on. Right. They want to live that way. Their, their, their financial roadmap, their goal setting guy to extensive goal setting is smaller than somebody else’s. But I, I hear content, I see content. I’m not going to destroy content. You got to be aware of, of where they’re at, their lives, and actually listen and don’t impose. Listen, right. And don’t impose your value belief system. Impose education and knowledge based on their circumstances and where they need to be at. Yes. I talk to them about, hey, do you ever want to elevate? Do you want to get there? Oh, you put in your goal here. You’d like to own a business someday. You ever thought about it? You’re putting the effort into. That’s what that’s for. Open conversation. Let’s figure it out. Oh, here’s all the pitfalls of owning your own business. Here’s all your good things of owning your own business. Any questions? Does that fit into your life? Oh, no. Yes. Your job’s going to give you that simplicity that you’re looking for. You’re content, you’re happy. Who am I to say that your life should be explosive? Right. It all goes back to listening and just giving people what they need, not what they necessarily want. Needs are completely different than wants.

[00:48:24 – 00:48:25]
Totally different.

[00:48:25 – 00:48:46]
Yeah, right. And for those that are parents listening, you still got young kids. Start teaching them the difference. I started with my kids when they’re old enough to talk and they still hear from me. Drives them crazy, even as adults because they’ll look at me and go, yeah, we know. It’s a what? Not a need. I didn’t say anything. Good.

[00:48:46 – 00:48:49]
If they’ve internalized it, that’s good. You’ve done your job.

[00:48:50 – 00:49:18]
Oh, yeah. Am I perfect at it? They know I’m not. I bought something here recently and I went, they go, what? That’s. I bought a want. Oh, dad, that’s okay. You deserve it. Yeah, but it really wasn’t a need. And I justified it at being his need. And now that I got it home, I’m wondering, is it really a need or a want or should I wait? It didn’t question myself because that’s a good thing. I’m not complacent. And even in questioning myself and my choices and what I educate people on.

[00:49:20 – 00:49:21]
That’S good, right?

[00:49:22 – 00:49:32]
So just keep on moving forward. So, next question for you. You often say companies hire for skills, but fire for attitude. Can you unpack that for us?

[00:49:33 – 00:51:46]
Oh, sure. If you, most companies look at the hiring process, there’s a job opening. So they make that job opening known on Indeed. Or some of the other job sites. They might use a recruiter and they get a bunch of resumes in. And what do those resumes tell you? First of all, people lie on resumes. A resume is not a mini biography. A resume is a marketing document. Nobody’s going to put something in their resume that’s going to make them look bad. Right. So you have to sift through these resumes and all you can sift for is education, job history, whether they’re proficient in, you know, Microsoft Office environment or a Mac environment, what their technical skills are, that’s what you can test for and through their resume. Then in most, most companies, they’ll bring, they’ll bring the best of the resumes. They’ll bring those people in for interviews and they’ll focus on what, what their skill set is. And if the person has the right skill set and doesn’t make a complete fool out of themselves in the interview, they’ll hire that person based on that person’s skill set. Okay. Then they come in to work for the organization and after six months, they find out that the person can’t get along with their co workers or they’re rude to their biggest customer, or they keep showing up late, or maybe they’re stealing or they’re doing something that has really nothing to do with the skill set that they were hired for. It has to do with their attitude and their character. Right. And if you look at, when it. Have you ever fired somebody?

[00:51:47 – 00:51:47]
Oh, yeah.

[00:51:48 – 00:51:54]
Oh, yeah. Okay. Did you fire them because they were incompetent or did you fire them because of their attitude?

[00:51:55 – 00:52:07]
First off, it was their attitude and then the, the incompetency that it caused because their attitude, like it’s, they’re, they’re hand in hand, they’re in a relationship.

[00:52:07 – 00:54:18]
Yeah. Well, most, most people who get fired from businesses don’t get fired because they don’t know how to do their job. They get fired for some other reason, like I said either they, they don’t show up on time or they’re rude to customers, or they can’t get along with their coworkers, or they’re bucking so hard for an advancement that they irritate everybody else in their department or they communicate poorly. There’s a lot of things other than the skill set of the job that causes them not to be effective in that job. So what I try to do is help companies avoid that mistake by focusing in my assessment process. I assume when, by the time they get to me, I assume that they have the skill set to do the job. So what I’m looking for is how well are they going to work in that company’s particular culture? And every, every company has a culture. It’s their personality. Company has a personality just like an individual has a personality. So what I try to do is match the personality of the individual with the personality of the company. If it’s a good fit, then it’s going to be a win win for both and you’re going to get much less turnover because you’re hiring for that personality and character and attitude on the front end. You know, the best salesperson in a company is not the person who knows the product the best. It’s the person who can relate to the customer the best. Fill that customer’s needs the best. That’s a personality thing. That’s not a skill thing. Product knowledge is a skill. Okay, yeah, you can bring it. If a customer says, I want to know more about this product, you can bring in a product specialist to explain that product.

[00:54:19 – 00:54:22]
Every company’s got them, right?

[00:54:22 – 00:54:44]
But building that relationship, the salesperson who can build that relationship, where the customer doesn’t want to do business with anybody but them, that’s going to be the customer, the salesperson that’s the most successful. And that’s a personality and attitude thing. It’s not a skill thing.

[00:54:46 – 00:55:12]
I agree. So what, what would you say? Like, obviously you don’t want to release all your trade secrets, but what would be a couple points that you could share with us that you would. Once you know they have that skill level, what are you, are you using utilizing scenarios where you ask them questions to see how they respond to dealing with circumstances. Would you mind sharing some of that?

[00:55:16 – 00:55:43]
Tell me about a time when you were faced with a real difficult business obstacle. What did you do to overcome that? How did you react to that? And just see what they have to say. Tell me about a time when you and a coworker disagreed on something. How did you handle that. Those are just two simple questions.

[00:55:43 – 00:56:00]
What about a question like I just popped into my head? You seem like a great person to ask that. So if, what about a person that you ask them like in this scenario, you know, somebody is mistreated a client and you watch it, would you report?

[00:56:00 – 00:56:07]
That’s another good. Right, that’s another. Well that, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s a yes, no question. So I don’t like to ask.

[00:56:08 – 00:56:24]
Okay, sorry. Not yes, no, but how would, how would you, how would you handle yes, sorry, how would you handle that situation? I don’t like yes, no either. But it just popped into my head so I didn’t quite have the formulation for it. But anyway, thank you for, you know, re saying what I meant.

[00:56:24 – 00:56:29]
Well, you know, interviewing is what I do all day, every day. So I’m a little sensitive to the ask no question.

[00:56:29 – 00:56:30]
Yeah, I, I am.

[00:56:30 – 00:57:56]
But no, that’s a good, that’s, that’s a good question to ask if you’re, if you want to know about. There’s what their sense of integrity is and that puts them kind of in a spot because there’s an integrity question there, there’s a loyalty question in there too. Who you loyal to, you loyal to your co worker, you loyal to the company? So there are a bunch of questions like that you can ask. But I do ask a lot of open ended questions and I’m trying to get, and I try to ask questions that the person’s not expecting but nobody’s asked them before and that’s not that hard to do because most people in companies who are doing the interviewing, unless I’ve taught them how to interview, which I do with a lot of my clients, they’re lousy interviewers, they’re not used to it, they don’t like it, they think it’s a waste of time, they’d rather not be doing it. And so they don’t do a very good job. And in many cases they end up so excited about the company and about the opportunity that they sell, they’re starting to sell the candidate on the opportunity before they even know whether that’s the person they want to hire or not. So once you start selling the opportunity, you’re not interviewing anyone and all the person has to do is sit there and listen and then they leave and you go, oh boy, what a great person that was. And you don’t know anything about because you’ve done all the talking.

[00:57:57 – 00:59:15]
But what’s the big problem though? Like, I know I’ve Been dealing with corporations, done corporate consulting for years. Not just in my life and finance business, my computer industry. And we sitting there and talking and communicating with people and they really, at the end of the day, they promote within. My son’s going to this right now. Don’t matter if it’s a laboring company or if it’s a high end think tank or whatever. They promote within because somebody’s really good at what they do and they make them a boss. Yet they don’t send them to boss school. They don’t right how to be compassionate or empathetic and still get the results they need. They don’t do any of that stuff. And then that same person is throwing, oh, so now you’re the boss. Okay, we need to hire two more people. And like you say, they’re not trained. It’s like ridiculous. You know what I’d rather? I’d rather you hire a firm that specializes in it. Yes, right. Then you utilize and try to figure it out on your own. You just wasted all this time. Time is something, a resource you don’t get back. So invest money, invest. It’s not expense. Hire somebody to do it if you can’t figure it out. And some of these big companies have looked at me over the years and go well, that costs money. But yeah, but it’s going to save you money. You’re not looking.

[00:59:15 – 00:59:16]
What is it?

[00:59:16 – 00:59:17]
Was it.

[00:59:17 – 00:59:25]
What does it cost you to have a, a bad leader in that position? Even if you promoted them from within?

[00:59:25 – 00:59:51]
What cost you production companies? Oh, everything production of the whole team can be deflated. You could have a third, you could have your sales drop because of. And you don’t realize it because nobody’s looking at the metrics and they’re looking at 90 days, 180. They’re not looking at it tight enough. I’ve watched companies fall off and they don’t regain the business. Oh, we figured all out. They’ll come back. No, they won’t. You might get a.

[00:59:52 – 01:00:05]
They left for a reason. It’s like if you’re in a bad relationship and you get out of that relationship, chances are really good. Although I do know people have married the same person three or four times, which I don’t understand.

[01:00:06 – 01:00:07]
Neither do I.

[01:00:07 – 01:01:18]
But I mean, what if you leave a bad relationship? It takes. It’s twice as hard to get that relationship back than it would be to find a new relationship. And why make the same mistake twice when there’s so many new mistakes you can make? But the bit what we talked about There promoting somebody to a manager is the difference between a leader and an individual contributor. An individual contributor gets their rewards, whether they be monetary rewards or psychic rewards from what they do themselves. A leader gets their rewards from what other people do. Helping other people achieve success. That’s their definition of success. And a lot of people can’t make that leap from getting their psychic rewards from what they do to getting their psychic rewards from watching their team be successful. Right. So that’s why you end up losing a great individual contributor and ending up with a crappy leader.

[01:01:19 – 01:01:22]
And then you lose both when, when you have to let them go.

[01:01:22 – 01:01:23]
Right.

[01:01:23 – 01:01:40]
Because to go backwards is too late. You can’t demote somebody from being a supervisor manager. I’ve seen companies try to do it. Oh, we’ll put you back. You were so much better. Now you just said to that person, we don’t believe you. Believe in you. We, we made a mistake and you’re going to suffer for it.

[01:01:41 – 01:01:57]
Well, I, I have seen some situations where the person who is promoted to a leader realizes after the fact that it’s not for them and they’ll come back and say, would it be okay if I went back to my other job?

[01:01:58 – 01:01:59]
The key there.

[01:01:59 – 01:01:59]
They have.

[01:02:00 – 01:02:43]
They. Yes, they committee of. They, they have to be. They have to understand, they have to realize because if the boss decides it, it’s too late. Too late. It’s too late. Your mental game is done in my. And I have seen circumstances as you mentioned, but that’s because the realization of that contributor, they realize that they’re best suited. And you know, look at how many companies I know. You’re listening out there people. You’ve been promoted into a supervisor managed position. You got more hours. Maybe you’re now paying you a salary as opposed to paying you hourly. So you got to put in even more time. You’re away from your family more. But initially you thought you arrived. Have you really.

[01:02:43 – 01:02:50]
Where do you start getting, where do you start Getting emails at 11:00 clock at night or midnight or now it’s.

[01:02:50 – 01:02:54]
Text tax everybody all.

[01:02:54 – 01:02:55]
All weekend.

[01:02:55 – 01:03:30]
I hope this didn’t bother you. Like I got texts on thanks. Like this past weekend was Thanksgiving in Canada. We have our Thanksgiving weekend and I had somebody text me, oh, sorry. And they knew openly. Right. Gonna be a new client and that’s fine. I didn’t respond to them until. Yes. And I said, you know, thank you. Yeah, I know it’s been a family weekend. As I mentioned it was going to be. I’ll answer your question tomorrow. Right Tuesday. Right. And you can be compassionate. Now, if that happens a few times, that’s an indicator of a conversation, to have boundaries.

[01:03:31 – 01:03:31]
Right?

[01:03:32 – 01:03:57]
Boundaries. Even my good clients, that I’ve been to weddings and done this and that, they have boundaries. Just because you’re a business owner doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to have boundaries and understand that people should only communicate with you. Like you mentioned there, these supervisors, all of a sudden, they’re getting all this. It’s overwhelming. It affects their family chemistry. It affects everything about them, their routines. I’m not saying you shouldn’t take that people if you are the right person.

[01:03:58 – 01:03:58]
Right?

[01:03:59 – 01:04:16]
Okay. You know, Angela, I’ll take that, that supervisory position only if you allow me to take some courses so I can learn how to be a proper supervisor. Are you willing to pay for that? Are you willing me. For me to take a week off to go to this program or a lot of company?

[01:04:16 – 01:04:22]
A lot of companies will say yes if you ask them, but they’re not going to volunteer it.

[01:04:23 – 01:04:29]
Thank you. You don’t get if you don’t ask. I raised my kids. The worst you hear is a no.

[01:04:30 – 01:04:33]
If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. Right?

[01:04:33 – 01:05:28]
Yes, Absolutely. And for every no, there’s. For every no you say is a yes somewhere else. You just said right. Even if it’s unintentional. Right. People don’t look at life. It’s not as complicated as we make it out to be. Society’s made it this way. We can untangle it, uncomplicate it, and live a purposeful life. Right. With intent. We really, really can. I don’t care what age you are. I never started living an intentful life to the level like I talked about it. I preached, I used that phrase, how to live life on purpose and up accent for 24 years. I never really stepped into it until about 10 years ago. Do you understand what I’m saying? You understand what I’m saying? I. I could talk the walk. I lived the walk. I knew it, but I never truly stepped into it in an emotional mental soul kind of wrapping around.

[01:05:28 – 01:05:30]
Never became part of you?

[01:05:30 – 01:06:35]
No. I always thought it was, but it just. Yeah, it just. Things happened that evolved and changed and made me realize how much I appreciate being an entrepreneur. But then my granddaughter wasn’t even two years of age, the one that passed away, and she went to the hospital. And I was spending six days a week, initially seven days a week. Every day I go up there to be with my daughter and her and. And my granddaughter. As she was going through the trials and spent her second and third birthday in the hospital and stuff like that makes you reevaluate your life. This isn’t to make people feel sad. This is for you, for just to be honest and raw with you. That’s when I really understood my mission and my value. And really it connected and wrapped itself around me that anybody else out there at a 9 to 5 job would not have been able to do what I did to support my daughter, to be there, to, to totally have that. I had to have a purposeful life and really be more grateful than I was for it.

[01:06:36 – 01:06:36]
Right.

[01:06:36 – 01:07:05]
You know what I mean? And people said, well that’s make sense because I’ve talked about this to people on podcasts, I’ve talked on, you know, when I’ve been to events and stuff and they’ll say, well, what do you need? Well, I, I wasn’t truly at my elevated level. I wasn’t connected at my heart, mind and spirit. My soul was just not appreciating enough. I thought I was, I’d fooled myself into it. But then I really had that gratefulness when I knew I could get up, leave, go to the hospital.

[01:07:06 – 01:07:07]
Right.

[01:07:07 – 01:07:09]
I knew that within that I can.

[01:07:09 – 01:07:12]
Still deal with that opportunity that not everybody could do.

[01:07:13 – 01:07:13]
Exactly.

[01:07:13 – 01:07:16]
You didn’t have to ask and you didn’t have to ask anybody either.

[01:07:16 – 01:07:47]
No permission. I was very. Clients would reach out. A lot of my good clients knew what I was going through and some didn’t. And I would just say right now, is this, is this a 911 or can this wait till tomorrow or the next day? I have some personal family circumstances and as you know, my family is my priority over work. Right. Not that you aren’t a priority, but they are a priority. So if you’re a 91 1, then I will carve it out. But if you can wait for a couple of days, I’d really appreciate it. It’s just how you, what you.

[01:07:48 – 01:07:51]
9% of the time, couple days is fine.

[01:07:52 – 01:07:52]
Right.

[01:07:52 – 01:07:53]
You know? Right.

[01:07:54 – 01:08:24]
It’s just, it is what it is. We’re going to continue on. I absolutely love our conversation. We’re going to get into social media relationships and self worth and see what your, what your opinion is, your, your educated opinion or your, your actual factual opinion. Social media really has changed how we connect, but not always for the better. What do you see as the downsides of social media, especially when it comes to mental health and relationships?

[01:08:25 – 01:10:41]
Well, I, I have a love, hate relationship, mostly a hate relationship, but I have a love hate relationship with social media. I mean I’m on all the social media platforms, I post daily on TikTok and but my messages one of make it easy on your find joy, contentment, inner peace, quite over complicating your life. But I think people use social media as a substitute for their life, for their real life. They spend hours scrolling through other people’s what other people are posting and comparing themselves to the scripted, curated, edited, fake, in many cases posts that other people are posting. People who post, they’re posting what they want you to see, they’re not posting their real life and the algorithm they’re trying to get clicks, that’s all they care about. Yeah, so you know I’ve even talked to, I talked to a videographer a couple months ago who said that he know he’s worked with several influencers who will rent a Lamborghini for a day or they’ll rent a yacht for a day or they’ll rent a suite in a hotel for a day and record a bunch of long form videos that they can chop up into shorts and then after that day’s over they turn the car in, they turn the boat in, they leave the suite and they go back and live in their parents basement or whatever. So they’re showing you what they want you to see and if you’re comparing your everyday normal life to their basically movies with the car, then you’re going to fall short. You can’t compare to that. Well, nobody’s life can compare to that. So then you end up feeling crappy because your life isn’t as exciting or interesting or expensive as what you’re seeing on social media.

[01:10:42 – 01:10:43]
When.

[01:10:45 – 01:11:14]
If you spent that time with friends, family, maybe learning something new reading, you’d be much better off. But it numbs us to real life and this the second thing that’s bad about social media is it gives people an opportunity to take pot shots at you and you to take pot shots at them anonymously with no consequences.

[01:11:15 – 01:11:16]
Keyboard warriors, eh?

[01:11:17 – 01:11:26]
Yes. And if you can, I’ve, you know I’ve posted the most innocuous stuff.

[01:11:29 – 01:11:29]
And.

[01:11:30 – 01:11:51]
You know I posted something on Talk the other day. I don’t post anything political, religious, nothing. The things you’re not supposed to argue about at Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t post any of this. All of my posts are about finding joy, peace, inner contentment, making life easier on yourself.

[01:11:53 – 01:12:10]
That’s the influencer I want. Yeah, I want an influencer that family and doesn’t show the labo for shows the family shows the fun, shows excitement, shows connection. That’s what I want as an influencer.

[01:12:10 – 01:12:34]
This is just me talking to my phone and posting it. And somebody spun something I said so much that they made it. They made. They made a political comment about something that I posted that had nothing to do with politics.

[01:12:34 – 01:12:35]
Wow.

[01:12:35 – 01:12:53]
So that’s how, that’s how desperate people are to get into arguments or to make what they think is their point. And you end up. You can go into a serious downward spiral if you engage with those people.

[01:12:53 – 01:13:00]
Well, in social media, make sure you’re going to engage with them because they. Confirmation bias exists within every platform’s algorithm.

[01:13:01 – 01:13:09]
Right. But they can post. They can post the comment to me, but I don’t have to post a comment back to them.

[01:13:10 – 01:13:10]
Agreed.

[01:13:11 – 01:13:38]
So I end it right there. I don’t reply. I have a firm rule about never arguing with idiots. And so on social media, if somebody comments on something that I’ve posted, they’re certainly entitled to their opinion. I don’t respond at all. And it goes away if you don’t. If they don’t get a reaction from.

[01:13:38 – 01:13:43]
You, it goes away without, without fuel, a fire goes out.

[01:13:43 – 01:14:17]
The fire goes out. Absolutely. So I extinguish those fires immediately. And I’ll just, I’ll laugh at him. I said, is your life that devoid of purpose? You like to talk about purpose. I do, too. Is your life that devoid of purpose that you’ve got to take potshots at somebody who you don’t know over something that they posted that has nothing to do with what you’re commenting about? So I just let it, Let it die on the vine.

[01:14:17 – 01:15:01]
Right. And. And you should. Because social media is a curse and a blessing. I have to use, utilize it with my brand to continue to drive, but yet it’s so controlled by the algorithms that only the people that are. I want the people that don’t agree with me to comment. Like, follow, learn, move forward. The people that are commenting liking are already on the journey. Do you know what I’m saying? Those algorithms are bs. And then they want you to pay for boosted posts on TikTok, IG, Facebook ads, this and that. And then you can fool the algorithms and tell them what segments because you’re banned. Right.

[01:15:01 – 01:15:26]
What, what are the. What’s the social media? What has it become? It’s become an opportunity. It’s a big department store. What, what the algorithm wants you to do is spend money and argue with people. That’s what they want. That’s what it’s designed to do.

[01:15:26 – 01:15:29]
And every other scroll is an ad, right?

[01:15:30 – 01:15:45]
And it’s so it’s really, you’re not doing anything different than if you’re watching commercial TV where you’re going to see ads all the time. That’s all. It’s designed to make money and not make money for you. It’s designed to make money for them.

[01:15:47 – 01:16:44]
Absolutely. It is. It is. People say to me, well how do you, what do you, when you go on social, what do you do? I post what I need to do or maybe I’m responding to something and I have a rule and I’ve had this rule now for I don’t know how many years now. It’s been more than probably five, six, seven years. I scroll once, I’ll scroll twice, that’s it, Goodbye. And you know why? Because I want to see sometimes people within my circle of influence. If I don’t go creep their page and I don’t swipe tight twice up, I won’t see any of their stuff. And then some people get offended because you haven’t responded or engaged. So now I’ve been training people how I use social media if I didn’t respond like or comment probably because I haven’t seen it. You try having 6,700 followers on Facebook, you try having, you know, 5,6000 on Instagram each. Like I know you’re bigger than that. But my, oh no I’m not.

[01:16:44 – 01:16:47]
I am on TikTok but I’m not on Instagram or Facebook.

[01:16:47 – 01:17:35]
Right. So my point is though is really at the end of the day, social media is a disease that is expanded from people hiding behind non fiction or pardon me, fiction books to live in another world watching that drama tv. And now they’re around the water cooler and their water cooler conversations here. Did you see what Sally been last night on you know, as the world turtles or whatever, you know what I mean? It’s just, it’s. That is the life of a hamster wheel on, right, on and on. They just don’t understand that all social media did was add more fuel to the fire. And now, and now it’s controlled with an algorithm that gets to know you very quickly and is going to serve you up what you desire intentionally if.

[01:17:35 – 01:17:49]
You go, if you go too far down that rabbit hole. It’s caused divorces, it’s caused murders, it’s caused suicides, it’s caused families to break up. It’s, I mean over nonsense.

[01:17:51 – 01:18:12]
100% agree. It’s caused so much problems. Oh look at, they’re Always going on trips. They’re always going on holidays. My clients, I’ll say to me, like, my brother and sister had this house and this and that. I said, you know what? If you open the facade of their life. So for people watching them have my hands closed, and I’m opening it up, and I’m looking at the facade of somebody’s life, they are literally 90 days away from losing it all.

[01:18:13 – 01:18:14]
Exactly.

[01:18:14 – 01:18:54]
They can’t afford their payments. They got more month than they do money in the month, and they’re suffering, and they’re showing you a facade. And I’ll tell clients, man, your circumstance is awesome. Why do you want to be your brother, your sister, your mom, your dad, your best friend? Why do you want their challenges? Well, they don’t have any challenges. You’re basing the visual, the materialistic on a purposeful, happy life. They could be 90 days away from bankruptcy. They could be. One could be cheating on the other. One could be thinking about divorce. One could be drinking themselves to death because they can’t stand to listen to the other person. Or they’re miserable at work. Come on, that’s not life.

[01:18:55 – 01:19:41]
No, you. And nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors. You don’t know what another person’s life is until you’re living that life. And, you know, I think that if people just realized that if they took. If everybody that they knew, if you could take and throw their problems, you and everybody else throw their problems in the middle of a room, and you could choose one set of problems to pull out of that pile. You’d pull your own problems out of that pile and not anybody else’s if you really know what their problems were, because you got control over your problems, some control. And you got no control over other people’s problems.

[01:19:42 – 01:20:37]
I completely agree. You know, we don’t. So look at yourself, internalize. Grow from outward. Grow from there outward. And you know what? There’s so much great information if you’re not into reading. Listen. I use audible all the time because I do too much reading. Reading with my business. So I use audible. Listen to some good uplifting podcasts. Get away from fiction for now. I’m not saying you can’t have fiction in the future. It’s always nice to escape. But live a reality of the now, the living, to. To understand who you are, to grow and elevate. Get a good mentor, Angelo. There you go. Get a good somebody that can coach and help you to uplift. You quit listening to the committee of they that’s on the Negative side. Well, you need to do this in your life. You need to do that in your life. This is what, you know, putting you in round hole square into a round hole doesn’t work.

[01:20:38 – 01:20:48]
I call that, I call that, you know, people get a case of the shoulds. You know what I call that? I call that psychological diarrheas when you should all over yourself.

[01:20:50 – 01:21:19]
That’s awesome. So, you know, we both work at coaching people to be the best versions of themselves, right? We do in different ways, different unique factors. We’re unique like our fingerprints. What, so what specifically if somebody said, you know, Angelo, what can I do to learn my. To love myself more deeply and authentically? How can I really love myself? What would be something you’d say to them immediately if they asked you that question?

[01:21:20 – 01:22:11]
Oh, I’d say I want you to make a list of 10 qualities about yourself that are good qualities that you like, that you admire, that other people have told you are good quality. If you can’t come up with them yourself. What do other people compliment you about? What are your, if you have to have to ask your friends or your family members, what are some of my good qualities? They’ll tell you. And often if, if you have a problem with self worth, you might have trouble coming up with things that you like about yourself or that you think are good quality. But other people who are close to you, if you have friends and you have family and you have co workers, they know some good qualities about you. So first thing is make a list of 10 things that you like about yourself.

[01:22:14 – 01:22:17]
I love that, you know, and that’s, that’s, it’s simplistic though.

[01:22:18 – 01:22:19]
Yeah, so what?

[01:22:19 – 01:23:01]
But it’d be difficult for most, right? So if I had to think right now, because I’ve been challenged about this before and one of the things I think about myself and, and I would be put on that list of things I like about myself is my tenacity. Because I had somebody coach me on that 20 years ago and said, hey, you’re tenacious, I love it. What, Right? What do you mean, right? That open view of myself. To know that tenacity is a good thing. Right. Not a bad thing. Right. And then there’s to fill out 10 for me right now in my life is like, that’s not even a challenge anymore. But for those of you that it is a challenge.

[01:23:01 – 01:23:04]
Well, you’ve done, you’ve done a lot of self reflection.

[01:23:04 – 01:23:15]
Oh, absolutely. And I’m not saying that the people, I’m just saying it can be simple but it’s so much more complicated than that because I remember the first time I was challenged to do stuff like this, I struggled.

[01:23:16 – 01:23:55]
Sure. Well, we happen to be in a profession where while we’re trying to help other people be the best versions of themselves, you can’t help but reflect on yourself while you’re going through that process, while you’re helping them, it has an effect of helping you as well. So, you know, I probably am more self reflective than most people. I could come up with 10 things about myself that I like and 10 things about myself that I don’t like so much. Also, in fact, I’ll tell you a funny story if you, if you’ve got a minute, hopefully.

[01:23:56 – 01:23:56]
Okay.

[01:23:57 – 01:25:09]
So when, when I first started dating Ginger, my late wife, this was after my first disastrous marriage, we started getting serious. I wrote down a list on a legal pad. Everything that I could think of that was wrong with me and things that, you know, some of that came from my ex wife, some of that came from me. And I. So I made this list. There’s like 15, 20 things on this list. Might have been more, I can’t remember now, but. And I agreed with everything that was on this list. These are things that are not good, that are wrong with me. So when one day I handed that list to her and she says, what’s this? And I said, well, it’s a list of everything I can think of that’s wrong with me. So if we’re going to get serious, I want you to know that this is what you’re getting yourself into. So she looked at the list and she kind of laughed and she said, well, I think I can live with that. So we end up getting married and we bought a house and come home from work one day and she says.

[01:25:09 – 01:25:09]
The.

[01:25:13 – 01:26:11]
Switch in the guest bathroom isn’t working. Can you fix it? And I said, no. He says, what do you mean no? I said, no, it’s on the list. She said, what list? I said, the list that I gave you when we were dating. And number four is I don’t do home repair or home improvement projects. I just don’t, I don’t know how to do it. I’m not good at it, so I don’t do it. He said, I thought you were kidding. I said, no, I was not kidding. Call them electrician. I’m not doing. So that was an example of me being honest, right? I was being honest and I wasn’t going to fake it because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do It. So, you know, I think a healthy relationship is one where people love you. Warts and all right.

[01:26:11 – 01:26:13]
Absolutely. Absolutely.

[01:26:13 – 01:26:32]
And even to the point where they can find those warts, I call them quirks. Where you can find those quirks endearing, you know, the things that might irritate somebody else, I. About my wife Rachel, I find endearing. I think they’re cute, I think they’re funny. They don’t irritate me.

[01:26:33 – 01:26:36]
But it’s how you’re. It’s the lenses you’re wearing.

[01:26:37 – 01:26:37]
Exactly.

[01:26:37 – 01:26:38]
That’s how you’re looking.

[01:26:38 – 01:26:41]
You’re looking at it through exactly right.

[01:26:41 – 01:27:17]
And we can. We can either rise and appreciate or we can, you know, just be angry, negative, and dwelling in it and. And destroying that person and destroying ourselves directly through it. Or you just look at them and go, hey, that’s their unique little quirk. I’m going to smile at it once in a while. It might get a little bit too intense and I just go again. But that doesn’t mean that you’re disrespectful to them. You just inside your mindset, you go again. I’m just not in the right mood. It’s a me issue. It’s not a them issue.

[01:27:17 – 01:27:18]
Exactly.

[01:27:18 – 01:27:55]
Before, the day before, it was quirky and funny. Today it’s irritating me. Maybe. Maybe I need tend to reflect on me. All right. But no, people don’t do that enough. So I want to get into. We’ve been talking for a long time. We’re going to a couple more questions and wrap up the show. This has been a great conversation. I want to talk about you and your book. Right. You’re making this way too hard. Is a powerful invitation to simplify and enjoy life. What more could you add that inspired you to write this book? Because your story and everything we’ve talked about, I can see why. But what inspired you directly to write this book?

[01:27:56 – 01:27:58]
What inspired me to write the book.

[01:27:58 – 01:27:59]
Was.

[01:28:00 – 01:28:10]
In my coaching and in my consulting practice, I noticed that people who.

[01:28:10 – 01:28:10]
Had.

[01:28:12 – 01:29:17]
What society would define as success or the trappings of success, that great job, plenty of money, big house, lovely family, nice car, vacation, all the stuff, you know, the people, when on the outside looking in, look at as success and they just didn’t seem to be enjoying their life as much as I thought they should. Because I believe people were put on this earth to enjoy the time that we have on this earth. There are so many opportunities to find joy if you’re looking for it. And to me, these people weren’t looking for it. In fact, you know, I, I’d even comment. One of my golf buddies fell into this category. Somebody who had it all and just didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves. I said to one of my other, he just doesn’t know how to be happy. So I decided to write a book to help people figure out how to be happy if they’re not happy.

[01:29:18 – 01:29:18]
And.

[01:29:20 – 01:29:38]
You know, in my. On the COVID of the book, you’ll not. You’ll notice that Enjoy life is. Enjoy life is spelled N, J, O, Y, L, F, E. And the reason I did that is because that’s my license plate and it’s been on every car I’ve had since 1991.

[01:29:38 – 01:29:40]
That’s sweet. Personalized plate.

[01:29:41 – 01:30:48]
I’ve been preaching this for a long time before I wrote the book about. And one of the big impetuses for me writing the book was I like nice cars. I admit it, I spend more money on cars than I should, but it’s my guilty pleasure. So time I had a Mercedes convertible that I parked in the parking lot of a restaurant. I wanted to pick up a to go order. So I come back out and there’s a note on the windshield. And the note said, I’d enjoy life too if I had millions in the bank and drove $110,000 Mercedes. And I looked at that and I looked around because I wanted to talk to that person and let them know that they had cause and effect backwards words. I don’t enjoy life because I have whatever stuff I have. I have whatever stuff I have because I enjoy life.

[01:30:50 – 01:30:50]
Okay?

[01:30:51 – 01:31:03]
So some of the habs, some of the happiest people I know don’t have a lot of stuff, but they have something much deeper. They have good connections, they have inner.

[01:31:03 – 01:31:05]
Peace, great core values.

[01:31:06 – 01:32:57]
Right? So that’s why I put it on the COVID of my book and I put that story in the introduction to my book because I really believe that enjoyment of life comes from within and it’s individual for each person. You can’t enjoy your life trying to imitate somebody else who’s enjoying their life life. It might be a good idea to be around that person, but you’ve got to find that in yourself. And I think people over complicate their life by comparing themselves to other people. They over complicate their life by not taking care of themselves physically, mentally and emotionally. I think the first thing, you know, self care to me is critical. And the first step in self care is take care of yourself physically. And I know people, some people have physical challenges that are Very difficult. But everybody can take a little bit better care of themselves than they are right now. That could be eating a little better, exercising a little bit more, cutting back on the junk food, cutting back on the alcohol, cutting back on cigarettes. I’m not saying quit all that stuff cold turkey. I’m saying just cut back a little bit, get yourself in a little bit better shape. And then the. So that’s the first thing physically, because, you know, if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything. Right. I mean, there. I know, you know, people who have tons of money, tons of every big business of everything, once they lose their health. If you have your health, you might have a thousand problems. If you don’t have your health, you’d have one problem. But it’s a biggie.

[01:32:59 – 01:33:00]
Money doesn’t get rid of it.

[01:33:00 – 01:33:03]
Yeah, no, it doesn’t.

[01:33:03 – 01:33:04]
Look at Steve Jobs.

[01:33:05 – 01:33:07]
Exactly. And he made a.

[01:33:08 – 01:33:08]
He.

[01:33:08 – 01:33:15]
He made a choice. He was. He was. He wasn’t gonna get treated at the end. He’d had. You know, he was gonna.

[01:33:15 – 01:33:18]
Well, by then, though, he had gone all over the world seeking treatment.

[01:33:18 – 01:33:19]
Right, right.

[01:33:19 – 01:33:23]
He did. Very, very different man.

[01:33:24 – 01:33:25]
Very different.

[01:33:25 – 01:33:43]
Yeah. Very different man. I admired him. I just. He was a prime example of all this money, and his attitude turned people away, saved Apple. The list goes on. But at the end of the day, all that money and all his recognition and accolades did nothing. He’s gone.

[01:33:44 – 01:33:46]
Yep. Right.

[01:33:46 – 01:34:07]
So I appreciate you saying that. One of the things I wanted to. I’m going to wrap up the show with, though, is if you had to give our listeners one last piece of encouragement, Angelo, something from your own life that proves it’s always worth giving a heck and never giving up. What would that piece of advice be?

[01:34:08 – 01:34:57]
All right. That piece of advice would be recognizing that you are unique in all the world and appreciate the goodness that’s in you, your good qualities. Say nice things about yourself to yourself, and whenever you get an opportunity, try to pass on one little act of kindness to somebody else every day. That would. And you’re well on your way. If you could do. Say nice things about yourself to yourself and do one random act of kindness every day, you’ll be well on your way to finding your easier way to enjoy life.

[01:34:58 – 01:36:17]
Wow, that is so impactful. Because it’s. People that are listening to. Some of you will think, well, you know what that is? That’s just too simplistic. And. And other people will go, well, I already do that, depending on how you reacted to what Angelo just said. That’s that should tell you something about yourself. If you’re a person like me that’s smiling and nod in their head, I live that life. If you’re a person that goes right. I do that sometimes. He said daily. Oh, I’m gonna try doing that daily. Maybe I can look at myself in the mirror more often. Maybe I can say I do love myself more often. Keep it simple, right. Just be aware. Listen to what Angelo said. Rewind it. Listen to that again. Be kind to yourself. Show some acts of kindness and your life will be so much better. Almost instantly you will feel a sense of gratitude, gratefulness and what I call the warm fuzzies that I get right in my chest. Yep. Right. So I appreciate that. Any last actually, before we ask your last comments, for those that you know enjoyed your message and connected with you today, what’s the best way they can reach out to you?

[01:36:17 – 01:36:53]
The best way to reach me is to go to my website, which is Angelo Valenti.com real easy. If you want to book a free discovery call, free 30 minute discovery call, go to reachangelo.com I’d be happy to talk with you and you can buy my book on Amazon. You could buy it from my website. I did an audible version. I went to the studio and recorded an audible version. You can get it through Audible. I’d love to hear from you and I appreciate the opportunity to visit with you and your audience.

[01:36:54 – 01:38:12]
That’s awesome. For those new to the Give a Heck podcast, Please go to GiveAheck.com at the top of the website you’ll see podcasts. Click on that. You’ll see a picture of Angelo. You will see the detailed show notes. I’m making sure that you can easily find all his links, his access to his site, his everything to do with Angelo. Plus there’ll be chapter summaries. If you found something that you really listen, liked and you don’t, you’re driving, you don’t want to look down at what minute it was at. Go look at the chapter summaries. You’ll find that area that you can zip forward and watch and listen to again along with all the social media links and a full unedited transcript for those of you because I started doing that years ago, even before it became a norm. Like looking at the transcript. Some people want to go and actually read that. It’s all there, the full meal deal to ensure that Angelo’s message isn’t lost. Right. That you’re able to go and grab it. That one thing that he said that Made you feel fantastic. That made you go, I know I can do better. Hmm, I’m doing better. Maybe I can do more. Right? There’s nothing wrong with that. So anyway, Angelo, if you had anything else you’d like to add, I appreciate you doing it now. And I’m going to wrap up the show.

[01:38:14 – 01:39:33]
You mentioned it, but I’ll mention it again. Find something to be grateful for every day. You know, I encourage people if they don’t. If they don’t already do it. Write a gratitude journal. Wake up every day. Write three things you’re grateful for. Doesn’t have to be a big thing. Maybe if you like the rain, like my wife does. He’s a pluv file. She likes the rain. Do you wake up in the morning and say, oh, what a nice little gentle rain today. I’m grateful for that. Or, my cup of coffee tastes particularly good today. I’m grateful for that. Or, somebody complimented me on the shirt I was wearing. I’m grateful for that, whatever it might be. If you look for things to feel grateful for, you’ll find that they’re everywhere. And once you start embracing that, you know, the attitude of gratitude is what we commonly call it, you’ll find that your life will feel a little lighter every day. And when I. The reason I say every day is because it takes quite a while to create a new habit. So you gotta do it every day. Some people say 30 days. I say more like 60 or 90 days. If you do it every day for 90 days, it becomes part of your life.

[01:39:36 – 01:41:35]
Absolutely autonomous. Just happens, right? I remember when I first started my gratefulness exercises. I can’t remember what year it’s been so long. It did. It took time, right? When I wake up in the morning, having simple gratefulness for opening my eyes is the first gratefulness I have. Thanks for another shot, right? Just easy is easy, people. So thanks again for coming on. I really appreciate that. So my final message, my give a heck spirit before we close. Remember your mindset matters, your relationships matter, and your next decision can change everything, whether you’re leading a team or leading yourself. Give a heck. Give it boldly. Simplicity builds clarity, and your courage sets the pace. Pick one thing you’ve been over complicating. Apply Angelo’s life hacks from his book Right Philosophy. Find your easy way and let the clarity change your life. So this has been Angelo, Dr. Angelo Valenti, psychologist, author and guide to those ready to stop struggling and stop thriving. If this comes. Conversation moved you share it with somebody who needs a reminder that life doesn’t have to be so hard. If this episode resonated, please subscribe to the podcast. Hit subscribe on YouTube, leave a review or rating in your favorite app. Right Comments. All that stuff lets the algorithms know that this message matters and it will share with more people so that Angelo’s great teachings today can hit and affect and elevate more people. So please subscribe and comment and review the podcast. So again, until next time, remember, it’s never too late to give a heck.