In our second episode, we talk to Dr. Jessica Stern, a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. She has spent many hours sitting with people, helping them sort through what is true in their life, and guiding them as they name what they want to be true. 

We asked Dr. Stern to help us discuss passion and the longing for meaningful work. In this conversation, we cover passion projects, the drive to make a difference in the world, what drives people on a journey to create - like this podcast - and why people often fail in their endeavors. 

It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to pursue projects of passion. Dr. Stern helps us unpack the components of modern privilege, both in time and resources. These things put us in a position to create and build - whether it’s a new business, a non-profit, or a podcast. 

What is this “itch” many of us get -- the itch to venture out into new projects, often propelled by the question “am I doing enough?”

This is a great conversation. We hope you enjoy it! And make sure to throw us some stars!

Question Of The Day

What is the greater good you focus on that helps you rise above the scarcity mindset? Where are you helping others in a way that fuels you rather than depletes you? Who are the people living lives you'd like to emulate? 

Links From The Episode

JessicaSternMD.com : Dr. Jessica Stern's website

VeryWell Mind gives an overview of Erik Erikson: Psychosocial Development

Khan Academy teaches Erik Erikson: Psychosocial Development

The Last Dance Documentary on the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan

How I Built This podcast with host Guy Raz

Armchair Expert podcast with host Dax Shepard

WTF podcast with host Mark Maron

Career Rocket Fuel: Whether You're a Millennial of Eyeing Retirement, Here's What You Really Need to Get Right About Work

Music by Hygge - "Quarantrap". Please follow her on SoundCloud

Books

Atomic Habits by James Clear

The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris and Steven Hayes

The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

Disconnected by Thomas Kersting

Rare Air by Mark Vancil

Show Highlights

[4:09] Modern privileges in self exploration

[5:33] Definition of the scarcity mindset

[6:58] Numbing out our lives

[9:27] The importance of helping the team understand the bigger picture

[12:04] Is it okay to pursue passion in our work?

[14:22] Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Development theory

[21:28] What should we do to zero in our passions

[24:11] 3 steps to get started identify your passions

[27:19] Make decisions with values first rather than emotions first

[29:54] Book recommendations

[35:29] Perpetual feelings of not doing enough

[37:38] The third dimension in our career: time

[39:11] What Dr. Stern likes about Jake

The Interesting Lives of Normal People is a regular conversation with someone interesting. Our job is to ask good questions with a belief that on the other side of being asked good questions, everyone has a great story we can learn from.

The Interesting Lives of Normal People

Season 01 Episode 02

Guest: Dr. Jessica Stern MD

Hosts: Jake Smeester, Ryan Findley, Ryan Holdeman

Jake: [00:00:06] Yeah. It's the best there. That's where the podcast should be about is just the brain. Perfect.

Jake: [00:00:17] It's the

Wow.

It's our first interview with a guest Dr. Jessica stern, a psychiatrist. At this point in our journey, we didn't have a name. We were asking our guests to guide us in discovering a podcast focus. And we were in search of our interviewing vibe. So we start out, maybe fittingly talking to a psychiatrist about this longing.

We talked about in episode one. In this episode, we talk a lot about passion projects and I learned how normal this longing is from a human development perspective. And we'll unpack that a bit. Also, we talk with Dr. Stern about why people aren't passionate and typical hurdles. We trip over when pursuing passion projects, which is really intriguing before we get started.

She did have a quick,

Jake: [00:01:22] If you enjoy the real first interesting lives of normal people with my wise friend, Dr. Jessica stern. Hey welcome everybody. This is the second episode of the podcast that currently does not have a name.

Jake. So not the jig show. I am joined by Ryan Haldeman. Hello Ryan. Hello there. And Ryan, glad to be on Jake show this week. This is not the jig show. I am Jake, but I, this is not my show. Ryan Finley. Hello, Ryan. Hello, everybody also known as Finn. Today we are joined by Jessica CERN, Dr. Jessica stern MD, a psychiatrist in Denver, Colorado, where some of us reside.

Hey, Jessica, how are you?

Dr. Jess Stern MD: [00:02:08] doing well, glad to be here.

Holdeman: [00:02:25] And what's the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist?

Dr. Jess Stern MD: [00:02:31] Like I said, a lot of people get confused about it. So there's a lot of overlap between psychiatry and psychology, the main differences in the background of training.

So I did the traditional. Pre-med undergrad route and then did four years of medical school with Stifel comprehensive medical training, and then did a three year residency just in psychiatry and then a two year fellowship. Sub-specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. So there's an integration of the mind and the body.

I currently am in private practice and I. Primarily focused on psychotherapy, work a lot with people trying to just create lives that feel better for themselves, whether they're really unhappy with patterns and relationships, patterns at work patterns in their health, just a lot of behaviors that they're doing, and they're not sure why they're doing and are really getting in the way of a good quality of

One of the reasons we wanted to bring you onto the show is. We're trying to unpack Jake here. But really in, in pursuing, what should Jake make a podcast about? Why are we so passionate about being passionate? Why do people want to know that their work is meaningful? Why is it that we are on this?

Maybe even like unattainable hunt. For passion and identifying it. And just knowing that's some work that you do and helping people create their life. We thought you'd make a great guest here in the early days to help us unpack passion.

And a lot of people have the same question. They want to know what's the purpose of life. Does my life have meaning? And those are pretty big questions to be asking. And, fortunately we live at a time in history right now where people have a lot of time to think. And while that can lie, lead to some overthinking and unhelpful anxiety and neuroses.

It's a time where we really can try to live these lives that feel more transcendent. And that it's about more than us. What we know, whether you're talking. From a philosophy or a theology or a psychology standpoint is we tend to start feeling pretty miserable when we're only focused on ourselves.

That leads to things like a lot of fear, a scarcity mentality, and really prevents us from sometimes engaging in things. That make us just feel good. If you're even talking about certain things, like the rewards system in the brain are novelty seeking, us doing the same thing for ourselves to feel good, tends to have diminishing returns with time, but as helping somebody else, we don't tend to get tired of that, or it doesn't tend to become the all or nom.

I think, like I said, we're all. Looking to feel that maybe not necessarily that our lives are really easy or that we're really happy all the time, but I think we really want to have lives that feel

Maybe to find a scarcity mentality in general, not just in terms of there's a scarcity of milk or toilet paper, but scarcity mentality that actually like drives people away from doing what's important.

Am I happy? Do I have enough money? It tends to lead to more like to fear-based behaviors that are, that tend to be more chaotic because, fear-based behaviors just mean that we're instinctually avoiding some sort of like a versus stimulus stimuli or, feared outcome. So I was thinking of it in the sense that if I'm just really focused on me and mine and not a greater good or a greater view of things.

I think that it's not going to feel passionate, like as far as life-giving and moving towards something that I really believe in. And it's just more going to feel like I'm just constantly moving away from something that feels scary or feels bad. And you're not going to work. You're not going to work with other people.

It's going to be very defensive and like a small tribe,

Fin: [00:06:59] about passion if someone comes into your office and says, I don't feel like I'm very passionate about life. Do you feel like it comes back to a real issue around, I don't have anything outside of myself that I'm living for, or is that what they're actually saying?

Or are they saying something else? Like, how do you think, how do you see through that? When they say. I don't, I'm not living, my passions or I'm not passionate about anything.

Everybody, it means different things to different people. I see a lot of people that just. Talk about a more general sense of a lack of motivation or lack of spark or life. And they don't necessarily feel that what they do matters. And so for me, I think a lot of the people I work with the theme would be more like does it, does what they do matter.

Both from an anxiety or fear standpoint of. Am I just helpless and it doesn't matter at all what I do. I shouldn't try. I'm scared of trying. It would feel hard or I might be disappointed or if I try and it doesn't work out, that means certain things about me. Versus like I said, other people that just Are feeling very like numb and disconnected.

And, I hear a lot from people that they're not really enjoying life. And it makes sense to me because they're leading really numbed out lives. The. Our ability to access things that numb us out. And it's just unparalleled at this time in history, we have unlimited access to the resources.

You have really easy access to food, to alcohol, to Bernie much, any substance to TV shows. I feel like a lot of people are, don't even know what their passion is because they're spending so much time not thinking or not feeling about anything. I think part of it is that the suffering is inevitable for people psychically in some way.

And even if you have good, easy, Lives. There's going to be, you're going to ask questions of, am I content? Am I happy? Is this all that there is? And those questions tend to make people feel really uncomfortable because they're scary questions to ask. You don't know what the answer is. And you don't know if, as you seek these answers, is it going to rock your whole world and do this very inconvenient, disruptive paradigm shift?

Fin: [00:09:24] but do, is it that we're

That's like your work. And then we're put in a spot a lot of times where we're doing work on behalf of somebody, else's direction or mission is it, does it tie in partially that we spend so much time in a context where we're not really pursuing something that is, our initiate, our initiative or our mission personally?

And in America, we don't have that as much, so I think most people that I see and work with there. Presenting, not so much trying to find their passion, but more of am experiencing this emotional pain, but it's emotional suffering and discomfort and trying to find their way out of it and hope that, finding these things well will alleviate some of it.

And that'd be moving from, one location on the street corner to another. And I remember watching them and just thinking like, How often are we saying Oh, is my job satisfying to me right now? Maybe I need to find a new job. And I'm like, these people don't have the luxury to do that. They're just thinking I have to sell this foe or the whatever product by the end of the day or by the end of the week, like they don't have time or room to think about passions.

And so there's sometimes wrestle with, is it even. Is it healthy to think about like passions? Is this something we should be pursuing? Or should we be just be happy with the fact that we're taking care of her family and contributing to the community around us and having some sort of sphere of influence, more than anything?

Like what do I. What do I do with that thought in, into some of my wrestle with, for years between like I have the capacity to think about, Hey, I could do a podcast. If I find some spare time to do it versus, Hey, I'm just trying to survive literally day by day.

Jake: [00:12:41] here.

So provide some insight, please go.

I don't think it's, there's no way that you are going to be able to maintain a 10 out of 10 level of emotional intensity or satisfaction or drive or passion about anything long-term right. It would be meaningless. It has to come and go a little bit. So I think some of that, the people that.

I worked with and the people I know personally that have lives that I would really want to emulate are people that have this more kind of quiet contentment or this quiet reassurance that they're building lives that feel really worthwhile to them and really purposeful. And that doesn't mean avoiding boredom.

That doesn't mean of waiting pain or discomfort. It means that they have. Been very thoughtful and I've really considered how they want to live their lives, their relationships, and make a bunch of tiny kind of boring unsexy choices that line up with that. So I do sometimes push back against the idea of passion because you should almost, by its definition, you would think is relatively brief, right?

These brief interludes, not a highest sustained emotional state or emotional experience.

Dr. Jess Stern MD: [00:14:39] Yeah, there's many great resources. But an often mentioned theory in the psychological world comes from Eric Erickson, who is an ego psychology psychologist. And he talks a lot about the different really important developmental tasks at different ages and different stages for you to continue to develop appropriately and not get.

Stuck so to speak or to have a painful, psychological experience. And in your twenties, it's very relational and very focused on like into intimacy versus isolation. So most of that time is Psychologically you're working out. What does it mean to be close to somebody taking risks of being close to somebody back to seeing like more and more intimacy with friendships and with romantic relationships which is interesting.

And in current society, I have to wonder what does that look like in today's age? Where a lot of people are. Spending a lot of their time interacting on screens or via phones or different apps rather than in-person. Because all of those things just inherently reduce emotional risk when you're interacting that way, because you can edit yourself so much with text messaging or even in a video, you can look at your self preview and see how you look or, what your facial expressions look like, or It's just the live person interactions take so much more of an emotional risk than a lot of people are getting practice with today.

And then, from in your forties on there's the idea of stagnation versus generativity and his theories, and that's about the idea of leaving a legacy, leaving your Mark on the world. What. What will your life have meant if people do that in different ways, whether it's through their families, whether it's through their work, but that is a big focus of people's ongoing adult development at that time.

Dr. Jess Stern MD: [00:16:50] I think because it's really hard. And like I said earlier, it usually requires a succession of really like small, consistent choices. And in the moment don't always feel that good or don't feel that exciting a you mean, it's just like the idea of inertia too. It's so much easier. Just stay where we are then do these changes.

It's hard. Unless you have direction and a pretty clear idea of where you want to go, it can feel really chaotic or helped her Skelter and like in an inefficient use of your energy to get started. One of the things that Ryan said earlier is just how many opportunities we have right now.

And really, we know that humans don't. Do well with a plethora of choices. They need a few options. We just tend to get short-circuited when we have so many choices to make. And so the fact that there seems like there's unlimited. Directions are unlimited options can tend to keep us stuck because that can really overwhelm us mentally and emotionally.

Another thing is that we all tend to stick with what feels familiar because what's familiar tends to feel the most comfortable, even if it's not the best thing for us. We'll stay in situations that maybe really aren't that satisfying to us, or even situations that make us feel overly bad, just because they're very known.

They're very certain and we know what to expect. It doesn't take as much energy to stay in those circumstances or those States. And I think, one of the things I mentioned earlier, I think we also have access to things to really easily not mess up. So I start thinking, Oh, like I, think I want to become more involved in the homeless population.

And then. Thinking if I'm a someone that like, thinking about how to do that makes me feel like overwhelmed or stressed out or uncomfortable. It's really easy for me to just numb out that thought and feeling by watching a few TV episodes or we're doing something else to

And in maybe like episode eight maybe nine, something like that. Walter Jones who wrote a book called rare Arab, Michael Jordan brings up the thing that he thinks is the differentiator around Michael Jordan is he's not afraid of failure because he's in the moment. He's not playing out all the scenarios like, Oh, if it fails, this is what it'll feel like if it succeeds, this is what it'll feel like.

Is that a thing? Is that maybe part of it is we with familiar things? We're not asking any of those questions. We just keep doing it. And then when new things were playing out, Too far into the future and almost like talking ourselves out of it because we're going, Oh, I want to start a business.

And then we go, Oh, I'll never be able to start a business. How am I? I'd never be able to blah, blah, blah. And we like play it out and talk ourselves out of the risk to begin with.

So there's this more, primal mechanism in our brain that unfortunately we end up making a lot of choices based on because I feel uncomfortable. I do this thing. Oh, I feel better. I feel relieved. But the thing that we did is often not in our own best interests, so I really want if I really want to run a marathon, I think about Oh, I should run tonight after work.

Oh, I'm really tired. I don't feel like doing that. I stay home and it feels good to stay home is gonna. Be reinforcing compared to because it feels good in the moment versus doing the hard thing is not going to, but doing the hard thing that's in line with your goals and values is not going to provide you an emotional relief or an emotional reward in the moment.

Most likely. But yeah, I think the other thing you touched on is the idea of these self-limiting beliefs, or, if I try and it doesn't work out, it'll mean something about me. Like I'm a failure, I'm worthless, or I'm an adequate, people get really limited by those types of beliefs or concerns.

Yeah,

Dr. Jess Stern MD: [00:21:15] Yeah. It's the best

Perfect. For this

Jake: [00:21:27] Who knows the brand. What would you encourage us

As soon as we stop, what

Dr. Jess Stern MD: [00:21:54] I always encourage people if they're in a space in life where they have the emotional bandwidth and the emotional stability to explore these questions I really encourage them to look like philosophically or theologically. What do you think is the meaning or purpose of life to have more of 'em.

Cohesive conceptualization. Cause like I said, I think if we just focus on passion, sometimes that can focus too much on how we feel and not something that's going to be really sustaining and enduring across different life stages or circumstances. And our feelings are going to come and go that's.

That's just what they do. So I encourage it a pretty intense cognitive engagement in this. What do you really believe and why? And again, like you have to be in a pretty good space to do some of that because it's really destabilizing disorienting, dysregulating work if you're diving into it.

And then you know, a little bit more concretely, we talk a lot about now. The acceptance and commitment therapy. Ideas of values and commitment to action that the idea of do you have a really clearly defined idea of what your values are in life and are most of your choices on a day to day and week to week basis lining up with your values?

I think, five and 10 year plans worthless. If someone's has these black and white things, I'm like, Oh, I'm going to be a CEO by the time I'm 35. Like you could or couldn't, but there's so much that's out of your control at that point. What if the company you're working at goes bankrupt, even though you're perfectly teed up for that or what if there's nepotism, whatever it is.

But if your value is I want to be really Invested in my career and an expert in my field or in my content area. That's something you have a lot of control over and you'll be able to make a lot of decisions in line with that value or a goal. I think really trying to there's again, we have a finite amount of resources, right?

We have a limited amount of money. Of energy of our emotions available. And so there's a lot of really worthwhile goals and values out there, but you're going to have to focus them down and distill them down into something that you can really make decisions around to drive the trajectory of your life.

Or it's something that you really believe in.

Dr. Jess Stern MD: [00:24:23] Do you, when you think about asking really hard questions and not knowing what the answer might be, is that something that you can really sit with and tolerate for a prolonged period of time, or does thinking about that stuff immediately drive you into wanting to do something to avoid it?

Dr. Jess Stern MD: [00:24:49] I mean that also that for you, that might mean you're crying less. We'd have to look at the whole month, I don't know

Jake: [00:25:00] it was just an evening, nothing.

And then you

Dr. Jess Stern MD: [00:25:26] Yeah. It, like I said, for me, it's so much more about the idea of is your like feel, does it feel worthwhile or does it feel meaningful to you? And the thing is, I don't think any of us are going to have lives that feel worthwhile or meaningful. If we're doing things that we don't truly believe are important, or maybe aren't in our top five.

There's a lot of things that I think are really good and worthy endeavors, but if I invested a lot of my time and I'm not necessarily. Going to get that sense of fulfillment. I think you can also zoom out more and just thinking about what's a life that would make me feel really motivated to get out of bed to start the day or a life that I Yeah, just even the idea of what would a life worth living look like for me?

And sometimes it's hard to start with ourselves if we just go really stocker blank. And there's a lot of people that I've observed that even if we had different career goals or different education goals or different family goals, like the way they live their life and the things that they prioritize really excited me or really inspired me.

So I think looking around you to like, who do you think is living life well and why. Can easily identify those people, I think. But sometimes it's hard to be like why, like what's different about them from the other, an

That's cool. And then I think you're saying step three then is. Is, we only have so much capacity in our lives. And so there's a lot of good things that can't end up on the list. So you've got to vet that priority list and say, is the new thing, should the new thing, take a slot? And what's the thing that needs to get bumped out?

Of the top five to create a room for it. Kids bump the kids out. If they're in the fifth slot, get them out of there and get the new one up there. Start your multimillion dollar business. Got it. Yeah.

Can you just

People like dialectical behavior therapy, which is a very famous form of behavior therapy, talks a lot about why is mind, where you want to make choices where you're integrating, like what you know, to be true and what you know, to be there. Reality-based from an external perspective, as well as what feels like, authentic and true and, good from your perspective.

So you really want to integrate them. So you can't do, one to the exclusion of the other, but I think a lot of our world, because a lot of people's lives are again, we have this luxury to sometimes just do what feels good, a lot of people have to go to work no matter. No matter how they're feeling, but there are some people that they they don't feel like going to work and they have like parents to pay for them, or, other forms of income.

They have this ability, all of a sudden to make decisions based on their feelings. And so if they don't feel like going to work they sometimes don't. And I think we have this idea in America. That if something feels really uncomfortable or if it feels really it doesn't give us pleasure in the moment that we shouldn't do it.

And, we can all see big picture that really would not get any of us our lives set up to feel very good to us. And in the long run.

I should wait a week or two. And if I still want to do a podcast, I should do a podcast.

Jake: [00:29:28] Maggie. Yeah. And talk to my wife about it. She's the one who drives the whole thing.

Jake: [00:29:41] It's got to fit in somewhere.

Just kinda did close it up. I'd like to ask you two questions. One. What are some books or books that you recommend whether it's relevant to what we're talking about or not? Just some things that you're like, this is just something I feel like people should read or they could also have to do with what were those conversation here?

I think it can be really empowering, especially for people that feel like they've set a lot of goals or they set a lot of new year's resolutions and they haven't come to fruition. Another one would be the happiness trap by Steven Hayes. That's talks a lot about some of the concepts I talked today about acceptance and commitment therapy, especially this idea of, committing to your values and your goals.

I think coddling of the American mind by Jonathan height is really interesting too. Some of these concepts and some things that are going on culturally for us, especially, he juxtaposed that juxtaposes those things again. Some kind of like ancient wisdom from prior civilizations or societies different theological ideas other book, which I'm hesitant to talk about because he's pretty dogmatic and very anti-medication, even though I think that can be a really helpful thing for people when they're struggling with depression or anxiety is the book disconnected.

Which talks a lot about. How just, again, like the way our current society is set up, how disconnected people are and how much that does just breed this discontent and feeling feelings of sadness and anxiety and lack of meetings.

What are some things that you love or hate about podcasts or what is it in a podcast they're like, I hate it when they do this, or I love it when they do that.

Dr. Jess Stern MD: [00:31:49] I, as a psychiatrist, I love curiosity. And I think to truly be curious, you have to be able to like spit ball a little bit and throw some spaghetti against the wall and see if it sticks.

And so I like podcasts that really engender a lot of curiosity. And I think that's partly because it requires a lot of humility on the part of the host. Like you really can't be peacocking or really arrogant or showing off when you own, you have Just this heart or posture of curiosity. So those are the ones that I like.

I, I really a mixture of anecdotal expert discussions as well as trying to bring in More kind of research or science behind it, just because I think we live in a world where everyone has opinions and it's really easy to share those opinions. But I like to hear more about like, why someone thinks that and what is backing it up for them from their perspective.

Dr. Jess Stern MD: [00:33:10] Yeah, I like it. The end of armchair to how they do a little fact checked and correct thing. It's so easy to accidentally misrepresent something or give the incorrect information accident and sense of humor. And the other thing which you guys have in spades. And the final thing is obviously good radio voices, which you know this,

And microphone, that

Jake: [00:33:39] I'm getting sleepy over here. That's for sure. We

Jake: [00:33:45] over.

Like what type of software should we use or anything?

Jake: [00:33:55] Did

Jake: [00:33:59] I cannot confirm nor deny that my business bought this mic.

What about you, Ryan?

My grandpa has been a pastor for 74 years and I thought if he's, he's 96, he's not gonna live that much longer. And I thought I got to start capturing some of his thoughts. So I actually bought a bunch of stuff to go do a podcast with my Oh

Holdeman: [00:34:44] So keep your eyes out for that.

We'll call it.

That

Jake: [00:35:13] Oh yeah. Yeah, now they call And one of the things that I did today for work was actually take this kind of this questionnaire that I thought was really interesting because at the end of the, at the end of it, I had this open-ended question, which is what is the thing that you wish that you could do differently?

And it said, in other words, what is it, the thing that is always on your mind and I've thought about that. And I answered it with. I think that I'm always feeling like I need to do more and wondering if I need to do more. Should I do more investments? Am I spending enough time and playing enough with my kids?

Am I doing enough? Like passion projects? Am I working hard enough? Am I am I doing enough on my house? Am I spending enough time with my wife? And I like all of these questions? And I feel like the answer I ComEd up back to was like, you're not doing enough. You're not doing enough. And this is literally something I just had this idea today.

And any thoughts on like that driving force or that question to that perpetual you are not doing enough.

I'm not sure that I am like responsible enough. Oh, I can reassure myself that I'm responsible enough because I have this much money saved for retirement or I'm, not sure that I'm like a good enough dad. I can reassure myself and I'm a good enough dad because I, Did XYZ with my daughters this week.

I think some of it is just like the questions behind it. What is it, what does it mean to be a good dad? What does it mean to be financially responsible? All of that sounds really interesting to me.

Way less done in a day than you think you can be a way more done in a year than you think you can. We just don't when we make to-do lists, we don't spread it out over a year or over 10 years or over a career. We're just always if I'm not doing all of it right this second, that's me letting being a let down or whatever.

And I read this off to find this article so we can put it in the notes, but there's career coach who said. From really, and this tied into Eric, since they from 22 to 40, you should just diversify your skillset. Don't even be trying to like, get anywhere within your specific thing.

Like just diversify 40 to 55, really where you're in the month that 90 something like 90%. Of the money people make on average comes to between 40 and 55. It was like an insanely high percentage. And then 55 on that's where you do your meaningful. Give back coach other people help them aspire to their goals, that sort of a thing.

And that what outside of whether those stages are right, or whether you should wait till you're 55 to do anything meaningful or whatever the, I think the concept of think about this third dimension, that's there's more time than you think when you're 40 years old, you're not even halfway through your.

Career, like the part of the, of your life, where most people do their work at 40, you're not even halfway there. And you've developed a lot of stuff, a lot of skills, a lot of expertise, a lot of wisdom, and there's a lot of time left to deploy that. Yeah.

I think knowing you and loving you as a friend for a long time, you're someone who you just have a lot of depth and you lead a very self examined life, and you're very comfortable with your emotions. You're very comfortable with other people's emotions. So I think you asked a lot of questions and I think you think about things a lot, which is really really wonderful.

It's such a gift to your girls that you're asking yourself, am I spending as much time with them as I should? So I just want to clarify that my comment earlier was more about like in general, when people are really like, So would you focus or talking about like these external markers?

Cause like personally, I think you're someone you just are, you care a lot, you care a lot. You're very conscientious about what you're doing and you put so much care and thought and concern into your relationships. And so I can see how you would be asking yourself those questions a lot. I quite frequently, at least

Why don't you close this out? The title.

And so we'll have like the three steps that we got earlier. We'll have some tools in the notes for you to go download and use, to start exploring some of these questions for yourself and keep joining us each week as we move through this and unpack more and more ideas about how to dig into your own podcast or your own passion.

So thank you for. Just contributing your thoughts and just so much wisdom to, for people that are out there that want to reach you like either on your website or in other ways, how do people actually find you?

Jake: [00:41:34] Perfect. Great. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you all for listening, and we will see you in the next episode of this podcast. It currently does not have a name like Jake, Joe. We'll see. Thanks for listening to the interesting lives of normal people. If you like what you heard, we'd really appreciate a good rating and telling your friends it really helps.

The music you're hearing is from our good friend. Huga big. Thanks to her. Make sure to go check her out on Saturday.