(00:00:00) – Intro

full episode

Brent: Good time period, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Full Mental Bracket.

Paul: It never gets old.

Brent: It never gets old. We mentioned time period because we don’t know what time zone you could be on the other side of the planet from us. Yeah. You could be on the same side of the planet with us, but work on the night shift, desperately needing people like us in your corner to say, get out of bed, go to work, do the thing.

Paul: Desperately.

Brent: Desperately. It could be. Who did that song? I forgot. Oh, Slaughter. Desperately. Desperately, I’ve got to know. Never mind.

Paul: That’s good.

Brent: Anyway. That was a good job. So yes, everyone was busy bragging about their ADD, and then I pulled out the Slaughter lyrics. So here we go.

Announcer: This is The Full Mental Bracket. 00:39

Brent: So we are on the full mental bracket. We are coming on to part seven…

Paul: Wow!

Brent: …of our series on story.

Paul: It has happened. We’ve come full circle.

Brent: Theologians tell me that seven is the number of completion.

Paul: Okay.

Brent: So this phase is somewhat complete. I think we have more story to talk about, but this is the initial ingredients that we talked about. What are those ingredients, you ask? Let me tell you. We talked about the six main elements of seeing your life as a story, utilizing the hero’s journey and applying it to your life. We talked about becoming a protagonist.

Paul: Undertaking the quest.

Brent: We talked about finding your tribe.

Paul: Which is one of my favorites.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: Facing the obstacles.

Brent: Yes, you have to embrace the adversity. You use those obstacles to overcome and transform.

Paul: And finally, last but not least, drum roll. Return with a legacy.

Brent: I like it. That was very cinematic. Return of the legacy. I miss old school movie trailers. In a world where Paul’s seeking a legacy. I just think it’d be great. Anyway.

Paul:  No, I’m for real. I saw a new movie the other day and it had the longest intro that I’ve seen in a while. And I was like, I kind of miss it. It was very artsy.

Brent: And it could be nostalgic, but you just miss that from like.

Paul: I don’t know how we’ll tie that in, but I think we could.

Brent: Let’s tie it in. I saw that they’re making a Voltron movie. They’re looking to make a Voltron action movie.

Paul: Oh, no.

Brent: So I was thinking about our very first episode in the Voltron, and it’s like, in a world where all the mechanical lions are separate. Five lines of dare to combine.

Paul: Why didn’t you send that to me?

Brent: I will. I’ll send it to you.

Paul: That would be one email and read immediately.

Brent: We’ll send it to the listeners, too. The live action Voltron will keep you posted. We’re not invested in this movie, but in case you’re curious, because it is the metaphor for unity.

Paul: Oh. Yes.

Brent: Yes. Because you said unity and I thought you said unison and I was very confused.

Paul: Right.

Brent: And then we spontaneously came upon Voltron.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: The symbol of different parts coming together in unity. And then to kick planetary butt on monsters.

Paul:  There you go. And then someone else. told me that they liked the word harmony. And I’m like, okay, yes, we can use that too.

Brent: Yeah. Yeah. Cause we’re going way off topic. That’s okay. They love us.

Paul: I think we’ll pull it around.

Brent: We’ll pull it around. So when you first mentioned unity, so this is a flashback to episode one, so you can watch this if you want to, but I have to get this off my chest. When you said unity, I was thinking about, like, the Justice League movies and unity was always the buzzword of the bad guys. We’ll bring unity where your thoughts will be my thoughts, and I will do my thing and you’ll do you’ll march to my step.

Paul: And it’s like unity overkill.

Brent: Right. You’re like unity is the key. And I’m like, not the movies I’ve been watching. What are you talking about? And then as you went into it. We’ll put a pin in this. We’ll do an episode on unity.

Paul: Look, I think unity could be a legacy that someone leaves. Let’s touch on that later.

Brent: Let’s do that. We’re in politics season, and the elections are coming up. So we could talk about the leadership is the ability to bring people together in unity in a common cause versus I don’t know scapegoating and constantly dividing people and playing us versus them negative games.

Paul:  Yeah.

Brent: So that lesson could be made far be it for me to make that because I’m very like not that kind of guy anyway. So yes seeing your life as an epic story changes how you see the goal of your journey the goal of your journey becomes stops being hey, I got to make my mark. I got to make my place. I got to make my bag of money. It’s about bringing back healing and treasure to share with the community.

Paul: Yes. Yes.

Brent: You left because there was a problem in the community. The problem in the community is expressed You know explicitly in the character the character can’t make his life go anymore because the world has changed but it’s not just affecting him or her it’s affecting everybody around them. Yes, so you’re like hey, I went out and got my solution. I guess you guys have to do your own quest and maybe so but maybe but each person with a quest—

Paul: And

Brent: Yes and, it’s not either or it’s not I your quest and my quest it’s like You know, as we mentioned before, everyone in the community is their own protagonist, with their own quest, but maybe your quest is not the same as mine. I bring back this treasure.

Paul: Correct.

Brent: You need to go back and bring back your helping of this treasure. No, you’re bringing back a different treasure. And then we’re exchanging.

Paul: Because I’m a part of your story and you’re a part of my story.

Brent: And we are collectively healing the broken parts of our world with the legacy that we bring back.

Paul: You know, I had a double take on that line.

Brent: I thought you were going to say you had a double espresso. I was waiting for you.

Paul: That too.

Brent: OK, tell me.

Paul: Triple. So maybe I had a triple take. Actually, I did. I did look at this tree. Well, it’s just simple. You know, I think sometimes I look at the broken world and I’m like, we are addressing broken parts. I love the way that you said that. Broken parts. Because there is a brokenness that is really hard. If you think about that entire brokenness alone, you might get a little overwhelmed.

Brent: If you have to fix the whole world, that’s an overwhelming call.

Paul: And impossible.

Brent: That’s a call to adventure that people are like, I’m refusing that call. I’m staying home, put my phone on snooze. I’m not picking that up. But if there’s a part of the world that you find yourself passionate about or qualified for, like, I’m gonna fix this part. And if everybody is fixing individual parts, cumulatively, in unity, the fixes build. They reinforce each other.

Paul: Yeah, and I think that we have to also consider this idea that we are also not alone in the universe.

Brent: True.

Paul: I know that’s a challenge. It may not be the same belief that everyone has.

Brent: Right.

Paul:  But there is a brokenness that I think that unity is unity with each other, and unity with God Himself.

Brent: So we’re speaking about the unity brought by God or a higher power. We’re not talking about necessarily aliens per se. I’m just clarifying. I mean, not that I was confused, but you know, just to be clear.

Paul: Yes, yes.

Brent: That is also a point. So, you know, as you part of the I think we’ve mentioned before in some of these episodes, part of the satisfaction of life is investing in a higher purpose when people just focus on just their own good as we’re about to explore. Then their results and their legacy and all this stuff are less than satisfying. But when you tie when your wagon is hitched to everybody else’s wagon, when you’re investing in something bigger, a God, a higher power, a community, a thing that you’re giving to an organization, a cause, as you do that, then you find satisfaction and value coming out of that. Because it short circuits are selfish need. I can’t diagnose that. But anyway, if you just shoot for your own self, your own self good, it’s temporary and it evaporates. If you shoot for the good of something bigger than you, it sticks around and clings and is enjoyable.

Paul: So a true hero, I think is if I’m hearing you correctly, doesn’t go through this entire journey just to collect a paycheck.

Brent: No, that you were absolutely that you were hearing correctly. They are not.

Announcer: This is the full mental bracket. 7:54

Brent: So we’ve mentioned this guy, Vogler, who wrote The Writer’s Journey, which was the, he took Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell’s Hero’s Quest, Hero’s Journey, and then broke it down for for Hollywood.

Paul:  A lot of Vogler quotes today.

Brent: Yes. Well, I went back. I read his book a gazillion years ago when I was trying to write a hit story. And then only later did I realize how it connected to these things that we’re talking about now. So I went back, but one of the things that he talks about is like the legacy, the shorthand for that is returning with the elixir. Now elixir is not a commonly used word, but it’s kind of like a magical medicine. You know, in some stories there’s the fisher king and the king is wounded, and the knights have to go back and bring the medicine to heal him and somehow healing him heals the land because the king’s connected to the land. It’s very, it’s very…

Paul: Epic.

Brent: …it’s epic, but it’s also kind of mythical. You know, it’s like, how does the logic of that work? And it’s communicating an emotional theme. Yes. You go out, you find something, you bring it back. And it just it heals the world around you. It heals the people around you.

Paul:  Yeah. It reminds me of the Judeo-Christian concept of the Balm of Gilead.

Brent: Yes, that’s a very similar thing. Go out and bring that back to me.

Paul: Yes. To heal and to soothe.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: Which I like as well.

Brent: Was there a difficult journey to get that? Was there like a war zone to head across? I’m just curious.

Paul: Well, you got to think the Gilead where this balm existed. It was in a place that was hard to get to.

Brent: Okay. I was just curious if there was a quest involved. I mean, I was familiar with the term, but then I thought, how deep does this go? Is there a quest?

Paul: Yes. Well, and, and also like a place out where no one knew where it was.

Brent: Oh, that’s true. You have to find it.

Paul: You have to find it.

Brent: The quest.

Brent: That’s a good, that’s a good connection. So in the idea of the hero’s journey that we’ve talked about, which is a story form, and people have broken it down, but when they write it on a piece of paper, it usually forms a circle. You start from this point of origin, you leave the ordinary world, you go into the special world, you learn all these cool things, you plug into the matrix, you learn these superpowers, you learn the ways of the force, and then you come back home. And you come back home to a place similar to where you started and you look at how everything has changed now that you’ve had this adventure and how you’ve grown.

Paul: So someone could come full circle several times.

Brent: Yes. Yes. I think there’s a quote from Vogler. It’s like if you don’t learn the lesson to make the sacrifice, you’re going to go in the circle a bunch of times. Until you actually learn the lesson.

Paul: As many times as needed.

Brent: That’s going around the mountain. We were talking about that in the show.

Paul: Yes. That’s the growth mindset.

Brent: That’s true. Now, one example of this coming back home, and it’s kind of an older example and it’s not one of my favorite movies, but it’s it’s easy to see is this old thing. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy goes in this magical kingdom, does all this stuff, all these characters, and then she wakes up and it was all a dream. And all of the people from her movie are all her friends and neighbors. And she’s right back where she started. So she’s literally right back where she started, and she never actually left physically, but she’s a different person when she came back. She learned this lesson through this dream world.

Paul: Her mindset shifted.

Brent: Her mindset shifted, and she was transformed through her adventures and her adversities.

Paul: Or was it a dream?

Brent: I don’t know.

Paul: There’s been lots of movies and stories, offshoots. Was she psychotic? Did she have some… Some shock therapy. I remember one where Dorothy was like getting shock therapy. Anyway, I digress.

Brent: Well, yeah, you got a classic. So here you got a classic story form. It’s a it’s an open invitation for people to reinterpret it and to remix it. I saw like a sci fi version of The Wizard of Oz and it was a Tin Man or something. It was like told. From the metal-man’s point of view. And he was a sheriff in this old world.

Paul: And then of course, you know, we have our classic like villain backstory now, the musical that has, you know…

Brent: Wicked.

Paul: Wicked. Yes.

Paul: Yes. Changed your whole paradigm.

Brent: Yeah. And so, and that’s a good point, and that’d be probably a different podcast, but, you know, we have a lot of antagonists sometimes in our story. You know, the villain is a very specific role, but, you know, gravity can be an antagonist if you’re trying to lift weights. You know, your financial constrictions can be an antagonist. Other people can be an antagonist. But at the same time, other people are also the protagonists in their own story. So trying to figure this out. Are you really a villain?

Paul: Or are you an adversarial ally?

Brent: That’s also true. Sometimes the people that push back against you are really on your side. You haven’t figured it out yet.

Paul: Yes. Well, we talked about pain. There’s different kinds of pain, right? Yes. So before we can differentiate which pain we’re dealing with, sometimes we may misinterpret

Brent: That’s true. You got to pick your pain. There’s the stagnant pain of staying the same, and there’s the growth pain of moving on. Sometimes you don’t recognize it. You’re like, oh, it’s painful, I’m going to run away.

Paul: Yeah. Gosh, I could tie that into Legacy later.

Brent: I think that’s good. So when the hero comes back home for the return in the hero’s journey, a term that Vogler uses is the person is the master of two worlds. They went to the special world, they learned all these lessons, and they came back and they applied that to their new context.

Paul: I notated, hopefully.

Brent: Hopefully, yes. The thing I noticed about that is that you know you go to this you start off in the special ordinary world you go to the special world and then you come back and it’s not an either or it’s a yes And it’s a it’s a dialectic.

Paul: If you’ve learned

Brent: If you’ve learned. Oh, that’s right. Yeah to come home and not learn.

Paul: Yes, not to throw another dialectic.

Brent: Yeah, well let’s not depress people. So theoretically, if you’ve followed all our steps so far, you’ve embraced the obstacles, you’ve been transformed by them, and now you’ve come home with some lessons or some practical benefits that you can give people. If not, you’re just coming home to go back out again. But that’s a different podcast.

Paul: Growth mindset. If you have to, you have to.

Announcer:  Full Mental Bracket. 14:19

Brent: So I want to tell you this story, and I kind of threw this in the episode at the last possible moment, and it’s okay. Don’t be afraid, listeners, it’s all right. So, um, in the,

Paul: You talking to yourself?

Brent:  Yeah. Yeah. Don’t be afraid, Brent. Don’t be afraid of listeners, Brent. It’s okay. Um, so in the, in most people hopefully are familiar with, uh, the Lord of the Rings that was broken into three movies. And the third movie, the return of the king seems to go on for six hours as they have ending after ending and everyone’s getting their reward. Congratulations. You get your crown. Congratulations. You get to marry the king. Congratulations. You get to be the Lord of Gondor. Congratulations. Oh, uh, Bill, uh, hobbits, you bow to no man.

Paul: And it’s like, you get a prize, and you get a prize, and you get a prize.

Brent: Now begins the days of the king, and this whole kind of thing.

Paul: Does Oprah appear anywhere in there?

Brent: Yeah, it should be. But there’s a cool part that got left out of the movies that was really good in the book. So in the book after all that stuff happens the the four hobbits go home to the Shire. Now in the movie They kind of they kind of portray them as having PTSD is like this war veterans Everyone’s celebrating and living their tiny little Shire lives And they’re like they have no idea the evil we’ve seen and they just drink and they give melancholy looks back and forth at each other but in the book they come home, in the movie they come home and the shire hasn’t changed and they have and that’s the conflict. When they come home, in the book, when they come home, the shire has vastly changed. Trees are chopped down. There’s bullies and press gangs knocking people around and all the locals are scared and terrified. And they come over and they find out that Saruman didn’t get killed in this version. He just he’s got beat up by the tall people in the world of men. And he will walk over to the short people and hobbits and kick them around. We’ll be we’ll move our bully game to the next lower class.

Paul: We call that displacement.

Brent: They were displaced. So they come in and hobbits go, hey, you can’t do this. There’s a king and he’s not going to hear about it. It’s like, yeah, well, where’s the king’s men? And they literally throw back their overcoats like we’re the king’s men. They’re wearing their armor and their swords and they kick the living crap out of all these bullies and drive them out of the shower of the shire, the shower. There’s a bunch of bullies in my shower and I know that the chapter that’s called the scouring of the shire or something like that. And so these so these guys are changed.

Paul: So I’m hearing the music right now.

Brent: These gentle, agrarian, you know, hobbit people, they come home, but they have been changed by it. And they’re like, if they hadn’t gone on this journey, they would be as helpless as their neighbors to these bullies. But because of what they’ve seen, they’re like, I did not go all the way to Mordor and set this whole land back in order for bullies to move into my neighborhood and steal my lunch money. This ain’t happening.

Paul: That’s a great attitude to have, actually.

Brent: And they come and they’re changed.

Paul: That’s a new attitude for them.

Brent: Yes. Yes. They have synthesized this. They’ve worked the dialectic. They’ve synthesized it all. The new and the old, they come together. They’re sitting there, what would Aragorn do? Well, he would pull out a sword and start smiting people. Well, let’s do that.

Paul:  But all we have is this plow blade. I’ll use that.

Brent: That’ll work. That’ll work. All right, so we talked about how your legacy changes your end goal. And then from a very self-driven end goal to a more community-driven end goal.

Paul: If you’ve learned.

Brent: If you’ve learned. So it changes how you see your reward for your labors and your legacy.

Paul: I like how you put in here how happiness is a byproduct, that it’s not a direct result.

Brent: Yes. I don’t think we’ve done a whole episode on that. We probably should. Part of the problem that people have, and sometimes with the self-help people, is that people shoot for happiness. We were talking about this before, the cause bigger than you. If you don’t have the cause bigger than you, if you’re just shooting for your own satisfaction, it evaporates. This hedonic treadmill, it’s like, I got it, and it’s like, it’s in a sieve, and all of your happiness and satisfaction leaks away. And so you go back for another party or another dance or another round on Amazon to get that little dopamine hit, and it evaporates too, because you’re not investing and building in something.

Paul: Yeah, and also there’s an expectation that everything should be going a certain way. And there’s like the reality that the failures are going to happen obstacles are going to come, enemies are going to try to attack like if you expect everything to just be…

Brent:  You’re gonna be disappointed

Paul: …very disappointed all the time.

Brent: We did talk about that one of our episodes this expectation of life should be flawless and conflict is imperfect and you’re like I ever done this adversity to visit me you got out of bed adversity is part of every story if you’re in a story you’re gonna have adversity if you’re running from adversity you’re not having a story, you’re just I don’t know you’re just in bed yeah I didn’t from under the blankets. Don’t let them find me.

Paul: But there’s something about happiness when you expect it as something that I kind of put that it’s confirmation that you’re moving in the right direction.

Brent: So that the happiness that you feel from moment to moment or day to day. It’s not a long lasting thing, but it’s just like a little hit, a little clue that you’re on the right path.

Paul: I love it. A clue.

Brent: And it ties into what we talked about with your identity is just a snapshot on every day. It’s like, yes, like you get a little burst of happy. You get your identities change a little bit each day. Each day is a different step, a stepping stone on your way to the final goal.

Paul: Yes. And the final goal is not happiness. It’s to bring this legacy.

Brent: Yes, because that brings a different type of of well-being a lot more satisfaction a long-living. I was thinking about this metaphor so like you know, this if there’s there’s the short-lived spike of happiness like a sugar spike. I’m so happy! And then there’s this more sustaining Satisfaction the eudonic the hedonic and eudaimonic. Yeah, we’ll go into that But there’s this fancy word don’t be scared listeners, but the people have put fancy words on this to scare you We won’t let them…

Paul: We’ll explain it.

Brent: …we won’t let the mean people get you.

Paul: Wait a minute, these are my friends.

Brent: Oh, sorry. Yeah, they’re friendly mean people. They won’t get you either.

Paul: This is part of their legacy.

Brent: Right, okay, so.

Paul: We’ll explain it. We’ll explain it.  And we will assimilate you.

Brent: Yes, we will assimilate you. So, but there are two different types of well-being, right?

Paul: Resistance is futile.

Brent: So you have the spike, and then you have the sustain, and I don’t know if this reminds you of anything, but it reminds me, and possibly the mighty Brody, of the dynamic waveform of like a guitar note. You have the pluck, and then you have the sustain, and you have one without the other, it’s not the same.

Paul: That’s correct.

Brent: You have this pluck of happiness, but it doesn’t last, but it’s really cool when it happens. And then the whole, the string rings out for minutes at a time, or in your life could be years or decades. And so you’ve got to mix them both together.

Paul: You’ve got the peak and you’ve got the valley. Peak and the valley.

Brent: But a lot of advice you get and a lot of people live in their lives are just for that pluck of happiness and they’re ignoring everything that brings the lasting sustain. They’re like, how come my life feels so meaningless? It’s like, well, you’re doing it wrong.

: I don’t think you caught what I was saying.

Brent: Tell me.

Paul: The sound wave. The peaks and valleys.

Brent: Yes, the peaks and valleys of the sound wave.

Paul: Expect peaks and valleys.

Brent: Oh, I like it. You’re right. I’m glad you backed that. I’m glad you backed that bus back up, because I was missing it. Yes. The peaks and the valleys, the sound wave. Right now, I’m looking at Master Brody’s waveform, and our voices are going up and down.

Paul: Wow, look at those peaks, and look at those valleys. I am not depressed by those valleys, because I know that it’s going to go back up.

Brent: You know what happens if they’re all peaks? It sounds like this. (Obnoxious noise) It’s terrible. It’s terrible. Brody’s nodding enthusiastically. He knows what I’m talking about. It’s the world. It’s the world’s worst.

Paul: But what you just said is actually kind of important.

Brent: OK, let’s emphasize it.

Paul: So those peaks and valleys together. Create substance depth. Right. Dynamics.

Brent: Yes, and you can tie that into a dynamic story. If the protagonist is always failing, that’s kind of a depressing story. If they always get it right the first time, that’s kind of a boring story. They’ve got to be a win-lose, the try-fail cycle. Some win, some fail, some learning. That makes it satisfying because it relates to our real life.  As opposed to a fairy tale. Once upon a time, Paul got out of bed, magically did a great podcast, and went home. The end.

Paul: Boring.

Brent: Oh. Such an inspiring story. How can I be Paul?

Paul: I wrote down awareness next to this, this whole idea of that we want to fix a broken part of the world. And I was just thinking to myself, if we’re going to bring a legacy, we have to be aware of who we are in the tribe, what part do we play, because that legacy is gonna be unique.

Brent: True.

Paul: It’s gonna be a unique fix. to the community that probably very few people, possibly only you, can bring back to the community.

Brent: I get it. I like it. Because your legacy is going to be different depending on your experiences and what drives you. Your drive.

Paul: Your unique experiences.

Brent: Honestly, a lot of this particular theme came from some of my try-fail cycles. Like I was going to be a world record novelist and I studied these story forms and then I got really depressed in 2020 and then I studied a bunch of psychology and like, wait a minute, they’re all connected. And then it was like, ah! Because of that particular pattern of try-fail, we’re on a different, we’re kind of talking about this stuff today.

Paul: And hopefully this novel will be released in the near future.

Brent: Yes, yes. I don’t know about the near future. We’ll get back to it. I’d be more, right now I’m currently more motivated to bring…

Paul: It’s all relative.

Brent: …these kind of tools to our bracketeers. So if I’m going to write something, it’ll be more about that. But we’ll get back to it. I haven’t given up.

Paul: Hey, it’s okay. I’m promoting you.

Brent: I don’t quit anything.

Paul: He didn’t promote himself.

Brent: I don’t quit anything and I have 300 web tab browsers to prove it.

Paul: Look, if your book is anything like your descriptions of movies, I’m all in.

Brent: Oh, Firefox is like, why do you do this to me? I want my mommy.

Announcer: Full mental bracket. 24:58

Paul: I really like that. This idea that that as we begin to understand this idea that we’re bringing a legacy, that we are moving toward finding this elixir for our community, finding this soothing, healing elixir, that it’s gonna change the end goal of our lives, that it’s going to actually help us to grow. Because I think a lot of people think that even before they have something to bring, that it is their experience in and of itself that is going to bring some sort of, they have the wisdom. It’s kind of like us telling the world, hey, look, you know, we’re not necessarily experts on this. And yet we have a part to play.

Brent: Yeah. Right. It sounds like it’s a yes and to me.

Paul: It is a yes and.

Brent: And I think that’s something we’re going to discuss, you know, in the episode is like there is a personal reward for you, but there’s also a community award and it all comes together.

Paul: Yeah, exactly.

Brent: And then as we mentioned with the happiness being a byproduct, the reward for you is kind of a byproduct of what you’re bringing back to the community. And if you focus just on yourself. then it just, it doesn’t work. It escapes out of your hands.

Paul: Yeah. You know, the, the behavioral side of me says, you know, what, what fuels this though? Like just an idea of having the legacy. Sure. It’s, it’s just an idea though. There’s usually something that really pushes people to want that legacy, to want to bring the legacy. And in my observations over the last couple months as we’ve been studying this is I noticed I’ve been to a couple funerals and I noticed that people’s loss tends to highlight for people, like, what am I going to be remembered for? You know, like, what what am I going to bring to my community before I pass?

Brent: That is a key element of legacy. And as I age, I think about that more and more. Back in my 20s, I’m like, ah, you know, we’re we ain’t ever getting older, you know?

Paul: Yeah. Well, if I’m being honest, this whole study on legacy. I mean, I think legacy, and this goes back to awareness, it’s like, I don’t even know if legacy was, I don’t even know if it had value to me five years ago. I mean, maybe, maybe just a little bit, but it’s grown in its value as I’ve understood the importance of it. And I think that loss, experience loss, and then I also think that sometimes when you have responsibility. That that fuels you wanting to bring something of value to your community. When you have, you know, when you have a family, when you have children and a significant other, you know, you want to go and you want to go on your quest.

Brent: Right. I mean, a part of it and a part of it is, especially from like the age I’m, and I keep aging every time I figured out how old I am, it just keeps changing. But, um, you know, you just realize, you get to a point where you’re just like, I think there might be more time behind me than there is ahead of me. And it really changes your focus on what you focus on. It’s like, I don’t, I don’t want to just play around anymore. You know, you know, I lost both of my parents like in the last five years. And then at a very morbid sense of trying to plan some future retirement or whatever, I went and looked at all of the ages of all my aunts and uncles and parents. And they weren’t nearly as old as I thought they were gonna be. And I’m like, what if I only have 20 or 30 years left? Is this how I wanna spend it? When you do this, it’s morbid, but it really focuses you. It’s like, what is my legacy?

Paul: It’s a mindset shift.

Brent: How much time do I have to spend goofing off on little pleasure-pluck spikes, or where do I wanna build something long-term?

Paul: And I think that’s what I was trying to explain earlier is before you actually have the legacy, it’s like you have to have the drive for it.

Brent: Well, a part of it is realizing that you already have a legacy and realizing that it may not be what you want. This brings a good story. I had this story idea and we’ve mentioned it before, but it came to me as we were. I was coming to the podcast today. It’s like the best legacy mentor moment is Yinsin in the cave, Tony and Iron Man. Tony Stark is in the cave. And Yinsin says, hey, he basically says, you were in this ivory tower, this very luxury penthouse, and you thought that your your weapons were making the world safer for democracy. But the bad guys have drug you out of that and rubbed your face. And this is your legacy is that your the fruits of your brain are being used to murder and terrorize people.

Paul: You made a good point.

Brent: Like this is how the world is gonna remember you if you die now, so what are you gonna do about it? Yeah, and that drives the whole rest of the story He’s like is this how is this I mean, I’ve worked really hard on this. So I want this to be a tool for good or a tool for bad? And he starts building this suit and the whole story takes shape after that

Paul: So, he’s shaping his legacy at that point?

Brent: Yes, he realizes, and I think Yinsin even uses that, like, this is your legacy unless you change it.

Paul: As a self-absorbed, self-seeking legacy.

Brent: Yes, and that was the slap he needed, because he is very self-absorbed, he is very insulated from the pain of the world, so the pain of the world grabbed him and drug him in, rubbed him in the round in the dirt for a while, and it’s like, this is how the rest of us live. And he’s like, oh, snap, I gotta do something about this. But he it never lets up. And then as the movies continue, it’s just, oh no, now there’s aliens. I gotta build a suit big enough to take on aliens. I gotta build a suit big enough to take on this. But once it lights that fuse, it just keeps going. And so as me, as a guy who’s kind of getting older, it’s like, do I want people to remember me? How do I want people to remember me? What do I want to build that’s going to help people long after I’m gone? It’s kind of depressing thinking about how quickly people will stop mentioning your name and thinking about you after you’re gone. But life does go on, and you’re like, you know, it’s like…

Paul: And that may be an important part of legacy is that it’s not about you, right?

Brent: We should have rated this episode rated D for depressing. We’re going to mention some morbid concepts today.

Paul: Oh, man. But see, I would rate it R for reality.

Brent: But it’s awareness. It’s like I think it comes back to what you said about awareness. Awareness that you have a legacy, awareness that maybe this legacy is not going in the direction that you would like. Awareness that if you died today, people are not going to remember you the way that you want them to.

Paul: Exactly.

Brent: You haven’t left enough behind for people because you have all this potential in your head that you haven’t actually leaned into and worked and expressed.

Paul: Because I truly think that the listeners that are going to really do a deep dive and listen to this episode, they’re the ones that they’re being driven by some of these things right now.

Brent: You might be right. If you haven’t had your legacy moment, these words might be bouncing off your skull right now.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: Like ping, ping, ping.

Paul: And that’s okay. Well, until…

Brent: You’ll get there.

Paul: You’ll get there.

Brent: You’ll get there. We hope. We mentioned it. We pray and hope. I spent my 20s in the military. I wanted to get back and be fat and happy and then… That was a great, it was great. Why it lasted. And then it was like, nope, I got to go back out. I got to get back in the ring. Got to have another adventure. So you may not be there yet, but when you are, go back and listen to this episode again. We’ll be here. We’ll be here waiting for you.

Announcer: This is the Full Mental Bracket 32:42

Paul: That’s part of learning. That’s part of the lessons, right? So if you’re learning, and you begin growing into the place in your life where legacy is a value, that’s much different than the value of a hollow achievement. It’s not just something that, it’s not just, oh, this reward is, this reward is so, it’s just so good for me and my comfort and,

Brent: Well, I mean, I think you can kind of see that in Iron Man, too. Iron Man, as well, is like, you know, in the opening scene, he’s being given this trophy for Weapons Designer of the Year, and he doesn’t even show up to pick up the trophy. He’s like, ah, it’s just another trophy. What do I care? It was the definition of a hollow achievement.

Paul: Man.

Brent: He had all these toys and wealth around him, but none of it meant anything.

Paul: Man.

Brent: He had all these beautiful women. None of it meant anything. It was just one toy after another toy after another toy.

Paul: So you were talking earlier about Tony Stark. He’s like being like, you know, drug in the dirt.

Brent: Yeah. He’s in a crucible.

Paul: Right. And there is an element, I think, that. That needs to be said, and that is. I don’t think people are going to learn until these experiences humble them.

Brent: That’s true. And that’s, maybe that’s another thing that goes back to our episode on adversity. Is that adversity comes to teach you things. We talk about running away or embracing it. And if you run away, you go around the mountain again and you don’t learn the lesson.

Paul: Yeah. Who was it? Uh, was it Aristotle that said true knowledge is knowing you don’t know anything.

Brent: Oh, that was me. I think. Not me, it was Aristotle. I don’t know. I think you’re right, Aristotle.

Paul: Well, yeah, you know, this idea that you get it. Sometimes we don’t realize how much we don’t know until we get drug around in the mud. We’re like, hold on. All this. Oh, this awesomeness that I thought I had. I guess I don’t have it anymore.

Brent: There’s an example of that. And it’s, uh, what’s the guy’s, it’s an Italian guy. Um, or something like that. And you talk about his anti-library and he had this book, this library of like 30,000 books. And they’re like, how many of these have you read? He’s like, very few. They remind me of how much I don’t know. These books are all on the wall and I can’t open them if I live long enough, but I won’t live long enough to read all of them. And it reminds me constantly that what I know is a tiny little fraction of a microscope of what there is to know.

Paul: I really think that that’s one of the reasons that I have started reading so much more than I ever did.

Brent: And it helps me with people. When I look at people, you know, our brains make these snap judgments based on our experiences. I mean, and a lot of time they’re pretty accurate, but still what you know, this person is a microscope slide of what there is to know about them. You’re seeing that snapshot of identity today. You’re not seeing the whole journey. You’re not seeing where they’re going to be. You’re not seeing where they were five years ago. You’re not seeing how much they’ve improved. You’re not seeing the terrible week that they’re having this week. You’re just like, you, sir, are a jerk. It’s like, I’m just having a bad day. All right.

Paul: And that’s a big point that I wanted to make too, because as a therapist, it’s like, hold on, you just got a snapshot of somebody’s fight or flight. Like, I’m sorry, that’s actually not who they are.

Brent: Yeah, when someone goes into survival mode, that’s not the best portrait of them.

Paul: No. And to judge somebody while they’re in fight or flight, it’s like, okay, let me put you in fight or flight and see how you do.

Brent: What are all these disaster movies, like Independence Day or whatever, these panic crowds just screaming and running. Yeah, that’s how I remember you, running away, tripping over people, knocking this old man over as you were trying to escape the aliens. And it’s like, yeah, that’s not a good look on you.

Paul: Yeah. I think there are some much more, uh, oh, fancy ways of describing this that people have written about, but, you know, talking about, you know, the character of a man under stress and, you know, I was thinking of, I think Martin Luther King Jr. said something about that. If you really want to know the character of a man, you know, see how he, behaves under stress. That’s not an exact quote, but

Brent: I think that I came across a quote somewhere this week. It was a Voglar or Campbell was also saying something like you reveal a character by putting them by testing them severely by these adversities. When someone has when you just keep throwing rock after rock after rock at them, and then they snap it shows who they really are.

Paul: So bringing this full circle. When you notice that that is your legacy, this reactive type of person, then you realize that you’ve got some shaping to do.

Brent: So for the listeners in the audience, we do have a video version. If you didn’t see that on the video, I’m going to tell you that was a double take because  started that sentence talking about a hypothetical you and ended that sentence talking about an actual me, you sitting right here, like is reaction being reactive the way that you want your children and grandchildren, everyone to remember you. And it’s like, No, it reminds me why I’m on this long road to be less and less of that and grow and do something different because that would define me for a long while.

Paul: You know, you just brought up something that prompted me to think about another motivator for wanting to shape your legacy into something positive…

Brent: What’s that?

Paul: …something that will actually wind up bringing back to the community something of worth, something that will heal, something that will soothe. It is modeling.

Brent: Oh, yeah.

Paul: Yeah. I think sometimes when I hear someone say, oh, you know, you know, my my grandfather, you know, he was such a stable person. He, you know, just in the face of adversity, you know, anything could be happening. You know, we could get a flat tire. He was just always stable and kept a level head. And and when I hear those stories, stories. I’m like, I want to be like that.

Brent: I came across a quote and it was in, it ties us up beautifully. It said emotional regulation is generational wealth. If you demonstrate to your kids how to handle stressful situations and teach them up, then they teach their kids and they are successful and they spread that around. For some of us, in this room that didn’t get that model very well. We’re kind of figuring it out on the wing. I had a few kids before you even got that halfway figured out. And he’s like, ah, we’re repairing the plane while it’s in flight and we’re doing the best we can. Might be some technical disturbances.

Paul: That is my family. Yes. Rebuilding the plane while we’re flying. Yes.

Brent: Hand me that duct tape. Yes.

Paul: And it is quite a plane now.

Brent: Glorious plane.

Paul: Yes. And we learned quite a bit. And now we do. We’ve got some tips. We’ve got a few tips for those out there that are repairing their planes in flight. We have a legacy now.

Brent: And the other thing that you, what you said reminded me of, as I was thinking this week, I was thinking about the phrase, the idea of a role model. And how to me, at least in my brain, that kind of got diminished. It’s like, that’s something that parents say, or teachers say, and like you’re, and I just throw that away. But in the name, in the, in the bringing it back into story, in a story you have a role.

Paul: I love it.

Brent: Right, so you are the protagonist of this, or you are the adversarial ally, and we’re talking about people to use stories as models to learn from. So who is the role model?

Paul: Fantastic.

Brent: You know. What would Neo do in a situation like this? What would someone else do?

Paul: That’s awesome.

Brent: Or that could be a negative role model. What would someone else do?

Paul: Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.

Brent: Make sure you don’t do that.

Paul: Yeah, learn what not to do.

Brent: Yeah, what would Magneto do in this situation? Yeah, okay, mass murder is way out. No,

Paul: I know we brought up Thanos at some point, you know, because you think about like, what was he attempting to do, right? You know, bring about some sort of peace and what have you. And it’s just like, yeah, but how you’re going about doing that?

Brent: Well, that’s the thing is like his message has an aura of a scent of ecological soundness. We want to balance the universe. It just is so dumb. We could go. It was just so dumb. So with the same snap, you can double the resources of the universe or you can halve the population. And when you halve the population, you know, exponential growth. Right. So you need to bring the population down to 10 percent so that you have centuries to go. But half that’s just like two and a half jumps before you’re back to 100 again with exponential growth. It’s like you’ve done nothing. You’ve had all the power in the universe, and you found the most trivial project. Look at my flower garden. It’s like, woo, Thanos, how amazing you are. It’s like you spent all your time trying to get this thing, and then when it came time to use it, it was just dumb. Really, really dumb, for real.

Paul: Hide your kids, hide your wife.

Brent: Yes, yes. I was hoping you’d pick up on that.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket. 41:33

Brent: So as we’re talking about, when you bring back your legacy, there’s two types of outcomes. There is the positive outcome for the community, and there’s a positive outcome for you. Ideally, you are honored or recognized. That may not always happen, but sometimes it’s nice. You have this whole Star Wars moment and everyone’s getting medals. Except for Chewbacca didn’t get a medal. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. I think that’s why he’s crying at the end.

Paul: What about me?

Brent: Like you’re too tall. I couldn’t reach you. I don’t know. Clearly, it was prejudice in the movie. We need to boycott it. No, I’m just kidding.

Paul: But I do. I do like this section. And we’re going to touch on purpose here in a second. When we talk about wealth. But purpose. happens to be very similar in its definition, right? At least a working definition of purpose that I have seen that seems to resonate with most people is that it’s a sense of responsibility that benefits both you and the community.

Brent: I like that. Because that echoes the theme that we’re talking about. It’s like, if your purpose, if your meaning, if your legacy is only benefiting you, then it’s not a very good purpose and it’s not going to be very satisfying. And it’s not going to make a very good story.

Paul: Yeah. The long-term satisfaction, right? It might have that that short term buzz.

Brent: I keep thinking about the last thing we need is another rabbit trail. But I keep thinking about the the Italian job. Right. So these guys are stealing this. Like, what are you going to get? I’m going to get this super sports car. I’m going to get the super stereo. I’m like, what are you going to get? Oh, I want to each of what you guys. I didn’t really think about what I was going to get. I don’t really care. What is your purpose? Why are you here? I’m just here to be a bad guy. It’s like, what’s the point? And it’s like…

Paul: I can almost appreciate that.

Brent: Yeah, it feels very Thanos to me, like you did all this and then you didn’t really think about what you were going to do with it. I’m just going to have it, I guess. Like, what are you going to do with your legacy? Well, I’m just going to sit around and count my gold at the end of the day.

Paul: OK, morality aside. All right. Again, I think we’re definitely on a rabbit. But. I could see this though as being a sense of purpose. Right. Like I enjoy, like I get enjoyment out of doing something I’m good at doing. I don’t care what I’m going to do after this. Right. So they have it.

Brent: Yeah. They’re great. Tell me when the next job is. They’re great thieves. This is their next job. They were getting bored. Maybe they blew all their money. They make the justifications, well, the gold’s insured, we’re really only robbing from the insurance company.

Paul: A little Robin Hood going on here.

Brent: I want to say, insurance companies make a convenient victim. If you’re an insurance company, I’m sorry, you make a convenient victim. You should quit being so jerky. Quit being so antagonistic. But, you know, but then they say, hey, what do I want to get out of this? I want to get this great car. I want this stereo. I wanted the thrill of adventure. I wanted to to polish my skills again. I want the admiration of the fellow people on the crew because I can’t really brag to everybody what a great safe-cracker I am. But these five people, they’re going to know, wow, I can’t believe he cracked that safe like nobody ever cracked a safe. I don’t know.

Paul: Well, there it goes. There’s that legacy. Yeah, it could be negative. But we are hoping that we want to shape our legacies to benefit ourselves and the community.

Brent: Guaranteed right now, someone’s taking this out of context. Brentand Paul said, I could be a safe cracker. I’m going to be the best criminal in the world. You’re my inspirations. I’ll paste your picture up on the wall as I practice my crimes.

Paul: No, we don’t want you to be antagonists. We define that early on as someone who is intrusive. And taking from people, controlling others.

Brent: That makes you the antagonist, that makes you more villain-like than hero-like. That’s your warning, that’s your sign.

Paul: Man, I mean, that kind of reminds me that if your legacy is all about self, getting the reward for yourself, kind of leans toward the antagonist, being an antagonist.

Brent: It really does.

Paul: Because you have, you could have the potential to bring something back to the community. So it’s almost like negligence.

Brent: Yes, you were given all this stuff, like the Thanos snap again. You were given all this power, and what did you do with it? You did something stupid with it. You told me to put my finger down, and I put my finger right on this quote by Vogler. If a traveler doesn’t bring back something to share, he’s not heroic, he’s a heel, selfish and unenlightened.

Paul: I meant to put that right there.

Brent: Yeah, it was all planned.  is the master plan here. He’s got it all. He’s got it.

Announcer: This is the Full Mental Bracket. 46:21

Paul: So what do we bring back?

Brent: Um. That’s a great. And I think we’ve been kind of hinting around to it. At the risk of wearing out Vogler, I have a kind of a longer quote, but the short answer is that the elixir, we talked about bring back the elixir, it’s not one particular thing, it’s more of an idea. Here’s the quote, like everything else in the hero’s journey, returning with the elixir can be literal or metaphoric. The elixir may be an actual substance or medicine brought back to save an endangered community. Which reminded me, have you guys ever seen the animated movie Balto about the sled dogs that bring the cure back to like Alaska and stuff?

Paul: No.

Brent: There was a whole thing. These dogs, we have to save little Jenny if I don’t bring this medicine.

Brent: My kids watched it a million times.

Paul: Sounds like a good epic story though.

Brent: It was good for them. It was kind of annoying to me, but we watched it a million times. Anyway, it may be a literal treasure wrested from the special world and shared with a group of adventurers. More figuratively, it may also be any of the things that drive people to undertake an adventure. Money, fame, power, love, peace, happiness, success, health, knowledge, or having a good story to tell. So some people do take, in stories, some people do take the adventure for a paycheck, but if that’s all they come back with, then that ends up being a disappointing story or a tragedy for them.

Paul: Yeah, back to the Italian Job.

Brent: Yeah, it might take a paycheck to get you out of your comfort zone, but while you’re there, ideally, in a great story, you learn a great lesson while you’re doing it.

Paul: Yes, yes, yes.

Brent: To the end of the movie Rat Race, they donate their winnings to feed the earth or something like that. We’ve brought up incredible debts and physical injuries to try to win this money, but now we’re just going to give it all away and go into bankruptcy because, I mean, why not? It’s a movie. I love that movie, by the way.

Paul: Something I thought of as as I was reading through this was how this idea of legacy really ties into as in the in the world of therapy, you know, there’s you’re always building on knowledge that has been researched years prior and And I was thinking about how a good effective researcher is going to be someone who gives credit where credit is due.

Brent: Oh, yeah, that’s really good.

Paul: Yeah. And and I even looked up just a few people just to see what their thoughts were on legacy. And what was so interesting is instead of figuring out who some of these people’s or what their legacy was, I actually uh, found three different places where these people were citing, these are my most influential people that have shaped my research.

Brent: Oh, so they were in effect, the legacy of these other people.

Paul: Yes. And, and, and I love that about the community of research, you know, in psychology is that, um, that and I hope our listeners know that I’m not talking about Facebook science here. I’m talking about…

Brent: Absolutely.

Paul: …I’m talking about true research that takes years and years and years to substantiate and

Brent: Academic papers and peer reviews.

Paul: Yeah empirical evidence and and everything that we we we build as a foundation, you know is again its evidence-based and so Yeah, these communities of people give each other credit and completely understand this idea of legacy to the point where they actually say it. Like I want to give credit for the legacy that this researcher left behind. You know, and it’s just a powerful idea.

Brent: I was also really encouraged by that because I, you know, I mentioned I did this deep dive in psychology and I was just, you could follow the citations. It’s like so many other books I’d read were like, because I said so. or I had this dream and this is what I go like no okay so Jones said this in 62 and Smith said this in 72 and they have experiments to prove it.

Paul: Exactly.

Brent: So we can kind of agree that maybe that’s true and then you just kind of this whole this whole kind of Critical thinking skeptical kind of thing. It’s like we we’ve done some studies. It seems like it’s true. We’re not gonna say what 100% this is the gospel truth, but this seems pretty it’s been proven good enough for this, so using that as a building block we can take this next step using that as a building block we take this next step and then you can follow one’s logic you can follow the and then it’s just like this opposite of take my word for it, which is basically every Facebook conspiracy and do you think it’s an accident that  wore a Tennessee shirt today? It’s a conspiracy.

Paul: Actually, I, that was intentional.

Brent: Okay. It was a conspiracy. I was right. It’s a conspiracy. I knew it. I knew it.

Paul: Last week was Memphis Tigers.

Brent: I see. I’m looking for a great joke that riffs on the Illuminati in Tennessee and it’s not coming up with it.

Paul: Speaking of Tennessee, I have a Tennessee way of explaining what we just said.

Brent: Tell me.

Paul: Our milk can come from different sources, but we churn our own butter. I said it was coming from Tennessee, right?

Brent: That’s it. I don’t know if we mentioned that or not. We are currently in Tennessee. I haven’t ever churned my own butter, but I’m told it’s a thing.

Paul: Ah, but you have. Butter of the mind.

Brent: Metaphorical elixir of the butter that’s churned. I have stacked 27 metaphors on top of each other, so I can do that.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket. 52:00

Brent: You know, we talk about wealth and wisdom. Let’s just talk about wealth a little bit, because, you know, and this is we keep we keep railing about don’t be selfish. Don’t be just about yourself. But because the society that we live in is the messages are all programmed the other way. All that you can be. You deserve this. Yes, it’s all about you. They don’t say that out loud, but they kind of imply it very strongly. It’s all about you. It’s all about you.

Paul: And then sometimes they do.

Brent: And so we’re giving you a counterbalancing message. This is a dialectic. It’s like, yes, in some areas it is about you, but there’s also a whole bunch of other stuff. So when you bring back the wealth, one message we want to go on to accompany this is that wealth is not all about money. , I believe, gave us a great definition of wealth a couple episodes back, and it was about having resources when they’re needed.

Paul: Yes. Yeah, that was a great moment.

Brent: I was paying attention. It was a great moment because I was paying attention to you.  said something smart. I do really appreciate you. I’m going to write it down.

Paul: I do really appreciate this idea of wealth and I think months ago when we started coming up with these ideas for this podcast, I had to really sit on this idea of wealth for a while because it just wasn’t something that was in my purview and I just sat there for weeks and I’m like, I realized that I’m pretty wealthy. Like I don’t have a lot of money. However, I have a lot of resources, I really do, and I’m very thankful for them. So, one, I’m gonna go down the list, is this idea of emotional wealth. Now, again, I really honestly can say that all of the adversity that I have been through, ranging from an unstable childhood through being a self-employed, I mean, all kinds of different adversity, I could definitely say this, that I have come out on the other side with some ability to regulate my emotions better. I haven’t arrived. And to help others by co-regulating. And I believe that that’s a great idea behind emotional wealth. Yeah.

Brent: I was reading something about that this morning about how people with trauma often see deeper into the lives of other people. It just kind of changes their brain and they’re better, a little better at parts of storytelling just because of

Paul: a little more empathy

Brent: But they’ve had to look at life a little more deeper, try to figure out some, Why is life so crazy? And I’ve had some deeper thinking that maybe some other people haven’t had to do just yet. I like that idea of emotional wealth. I like the idea of that emotional regulation is generational wealth.

Paul: Yeah, you hand that down.

Brent: Yes, yes.

Paul: Generations.

Brent: So I mean, so I have grandkids and I watch my kids raise their kids and generally they do a really good job. In some areas it’s better than what we did. And I keep reminding them and reminding myself, because you can always have these regrets. is that I did the best I could with what sometimes felt like a train wreck with my own life to try to break these cycles and equip you to do better. And when you do better, I’m excited about that. It’s not like, oh yeah, I could’ve, if I had parented the way they’re parenting, everything would’ve been much better, but I didn’t even think, we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have all these resources. I was still trying to just, I was on the very rudiments of rooting out my own junk, you know, and this is like, It’s a different world, but I’m happy for it. So we’ve started this positive change that’s going down the generations.

Paul: What you just said, I think if there was a subcategory under emotional wealth, I would say like work ethic and grit.

Brent: Okay.

Paul: And here’s what came to mind when you said that you also were teaching your children, and I believe I’ve been teaching my children the same, is the idea behind growth mindset, which is, You may have made a mistake, but I’m gonna do a repair as many times as I need to to let you know that number one, I value this relationship and I’m not gonna stop trying to make sure that this relationship is of substance and it’s safe and stable.

Brent: I think that’s good. I would hope that my kids agree that when it comes to my relationship with them, I do have a growth mindset. A lot of other areas, I taught them some bad mindsets about career and other things, and take your toys and go home. I’m just now figuring it out and trying to encourage them. It’s like, hey, it’s not too late to change your mindset. I did here. I bought three mindsets at the store. Here’s a couple for you.

Paul: But it’s all part of the try-fail cycle.

Brent: It’s part of the try-fail cycle. Sometimes if you learn your own lessons, you learn them better than if they’re handed to you. So we go on to relational wealth. Having people to share your life and give and receive encouragement and direction. We talked about that with Finding Your Tribe. Just knowing that you’re not alone in struggles and victories is great.

Paul: Yes. There’s value in collaboration, there’s value in teamwork, there’s value in family, there’s value in community.

Brent: You know, people talk about being alone in their struggles, but I had a thought the other day when I was scribbling this, I’m like, a couple times I’ve been alone in victory and that was actually even worse. It’s like I’ve been trying so hard and no one around me understands the significance of this thing. Like, oh, good job. You got a thing. It’s like, no, this is the thing.

Paul: That’s a big deal.

Brent: This is the validation of my entire chapter of this life or this chapter of my life or whatever. And like there’s your besties aren’t around to understand that.

Paul: Man, we could do a whole podcast on that right there.

Brent: Let’s do.

Paul: Let’s do.

Brent: We’re sticking so many pins this week. We’re like acupuncturist over here. Necky potterist. All right, so we all got time wealth.

: Yes, time not being trapped or chronically rushed, having to give to think and consider and reflect on what is important, what is valuable. And, you know, it’s it’s interesting because, again, I feel like as I’ve gotten older, last, you know, five years or so, I don’t know why it’s only five, but ideas like legacy, ideas like wealth, and values have become so important to me.

Brent: Absolutely.

Paul: And this idea of there’s no way that you can have a time wealth if you don’t have time. Make time to evaluate your values. That may be redundant, but to assess your values.

Brent: It’s kind of the bootstrap. It’s kind of the starting point. You’ve got to make some time to think about what’s important to you. And so, I mean, a lot of times, you know, we see in our culture, people are, you know, they’re working and they’re trying to get their kids ready and they’re trying to rush them from one thing to the other to the other. And when they do get a few moments, then they, you know, that we’re trained to, we’ve built these habits of turn on the TV or turn on the podcast or turn on something. Have we discussed in this podcast how the word amusement means, muses were the inspirations, the great gods of inspiration, and amusement is to mute your inspiration.

Paul: Yeah, I don’t know if we, I know we talked about it.

Brent: So the voices of creativity don’t speak to you because you’re busy listening to somebody else’s voice. Which is not to shame anyone for that, but if you’re trying to get a bootstrap on how you’re doing your life, if you’re racing from one event to another event, and then you just mute out all the voices in your head between those, then you’re probably not gonna get a good start.

Paul: It’s kind of like, a good example is how I’m watching movies now that we were studying story. I have like this mission now. I want to break open a movie and especially like I already told you this the other day, I watched a rather terrible movie and now I want to know what made it terrible. I want to know what elements are missing, you know, and I don’t know, I feel like my movie watching has purpose now.

Brent: And that can be good because you can use that to diagnose your life. It’s like maybe what made this story terrible might be affecting this part of my life. Maybe I am writing this, this crappy script in this area and I could learn to do better.

Paul: Well, for one thing, there were no pauses in the dialogue and I kind of felt like, if I was going to learn anything, it would be to listen more because I was like, these people are annoying. They just keep talking and talking.

Brent: We’re going to start the silence podcast. Yeah, let’s start a podcast where we just breathe into the microphone.

Paul: Well, it’s almost like this time well thing. It’s like they did not have a legacy of time. Well, it’s like they they had no pauses. I mean, it’s this post-apocalyptic movie. And not once did they just sit down and problem-solve. They just complained and ran around yelling and screaming. And it was awful.

Brent: Well, you know, if all the jobs are gone and all the TV and radio stations are gone, seems like you’d have a lot of time and quiet to think the fact that they made a whole movie where none of that actually happened was a lot of work.

Paul: Well, and there it is, it’s probably an incongruence on what they were doing before these adversaries showed up and how they acted with the adversaries. I’m like, hold on, did you not train for this? Because you obviously, anyway, all right.

Brent: We’ll go into it. We’ll go into it. Right, so as we talk about the time wealth can be like a first step. If you can’t carve out a few minutes to think about what’s important to you and the other different parts of wealth, you’re not going to make a lot of gain on the other ones. So that’s the first thing to start. Find some time that you can actually think about some stuff that we’re talking about right now. Another form of wealth that I’ve taken from these various psychological lists is autonomy.

Paul: It’s a good one.

Brent: It’s like autonomy means kind of being in control of your own destiny to a certain extent. It’s kind of similar to our verb of protagging.

Paul: Yeah, well I think of the internal locus of control.

Brent: The internal locus of control. You have the steering wheels inside your car, not outside your car waiting for someone else to steer you.

Paul: Yeah, it’s not, you know, dialectically, I don’t think that what we’re talking about is, you know, bringing the legacy or teaching your children that you can control everything. It’s whatever is in your control, take the steering wheel. Take the bull by the horns.

Brent: And I was thinking more about working to carve out some autonomy. In my career path, I worked just with these jobs where I was always taking orders and I never got to think and it was punching the clock. And then slowly over time, I’ve got some more autonomy. It’s like, I’m gonna deliver these results. You don’t have to tell me how to do this thing. Just stand back and let me do my magic. And you do that, and it may not work on every part of your life, you know, but just carve out a part where you’re not taking orders everywhere and you can think for yourself and you can deliver some of your own results.

Paul: Yeah, I tried that with my wife the other day.

Brent: You give her orders?

Paul: Well, no, she gave me orders and I tried to practice autonomy.

Brent: I’m glad to see that you made it here today.

Paul: I’m okay. I’m just joking.

Brent: Yes. But there’s a nuance of communication with your spouses. That’s something to be said.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: There’s also mastery.

Paul: Yes. Leveling up in the areas that are important that we talked about earlier, which is really actually a great to differentiate, you know, that, you know, we are mastering things in our lives that are going to be useful. For our purpose. It’s it’s not necessarily just trying to get good at everything Just so that we can feel good about ourselves.

Brent: Well it goes back to the video game metaphor we keep going on you know you have leveled up you have mastered this thing you’ve unlocked these other skills. You’ve unlocked maybe this new equipment. You can use these new things you’ve been waiting Maybe you’ve been grinding on this level for hours like I finally I level up I can equip this equip that and start this new adventure, but I’ve got to get past this this hurdle here. And it’s a really great, it’s really satisfying. He’s like, yes, I am level 12. And he’s like, what’s going on in the other room? Nothing, nothing, nothing to see here. I mean, we talked about purpose.

Paul: Purpose, yeah, we touched on that. Yeah, I definitely think that passing down, it’s not like you’re telling people what their purpose is, but you’re modeling having a sense of purpose, right?

Brent: Yeah, you don’t need to define someone else’s purpose, but the fact that you live for a purpose instead of being blown around by the wind, just punching a clock, doing whatever, whatever you say, I’ll just do it. The fact that something is actually, there’s wind in your sails driving you in a direction,

Paul: And it leads me to a bullet point that I added, which was character, this idea of character. Now, that can be defined. I feel like it’s an effective mode of operation, if you’re looking at positive character, a mode of operation that people consistently demonstrate in their behavior. And a purpose-driven person. They’re going to be, you know, somebody who models true purpose is going to be, they’re going to be intentional whether people are watching or not.

Brent: Yeah, character being defined as what you are when no one’s looking.

Paul: Yeah, that’s kind of the street term. Yeah.

Brent: It’s like, are you playing for appearances or is this something really valued? Are you going to be honest and have integrity even if it costs you or are you just all about putting on a good show? And then finally, self-acceptance.

Paul: Yeah, I, uh… I actually want to reframe that as just acceptance in general. And which would wind up covering, you know, accepting yourself

Brent: And the radical responsibility, accepting the things that have happened in your life.

Brent: Exactly. And yourself and the people around you.

Paul: That’s it. And, and, and I just want to make sure that listeners understand that this idea of acceptance is, um, it’s interesting in that we’re not saying that it has to stay the same. It’s just, it’s a level of awareness.

Brent: Well, I mean, and you see that, and we’re gonna touch this very carefully. You see that in the political climate. Well, I don’t want anyone to think that I endorse this. Like, well, no one’s really asking for your endorsement, but you don’t have to disown people and shame them and create them as less than human. Can you accept your other human being, even if you don’t agree with their position or their values, can you at least treat them as a fellow human being

Paul: That’s it.

Brent: So that then you can have a conversation and maybe they can come more your way, or maybe you’ll come more their way. Maybe you’ll learn that you were wrong, I don’t know.

Paul: Well, I think that goes back to accepting people as people. You know, it’s like it starts there. Respect as a human being. You know, and then from there, you know, you’ve got the growth mindset and nobody’s perfect. And so you’re going to have this. Well, except for you.

Brent: I’m glad we grandfathered that in, because that was shocking. Shocking revelations on the show today.

Paul: Yeah. Okay. From now on, we understand that. I’m never talking about you when I talk about human imperfection.

Brent: Oh, man.

Paul: Anyway.

Brent: So, and the thing, just real quick, is that I think something that ties into the Judeo-Christian tradition is, you know, the saying, like, what is it good to you if you gain the whole world and lose your soul? If you get all these trappings and surface things, but you lose what’s most important to you, are you really wealthy? Are you really successful? And the challenge, there’s a lot of translations that you can go super theological on that, but what we’re looking at today is like, if you don’t define what success means to you, and if you take the default from your culture, then you might end up with a result that you’re not looking for. You have to define what success means to you, and that’s where we gotta find that time to do that.

Announcer: This is the Full Mental Bracket. 1:07:52

Brent: Takeaways, everyone?

Paul: Yeah, because we covered a lot of things.

Brent: I think we’ve covered this stuff. We are really good. We didn’t go in the order that we intended to go. We did it better. So much better. All right, so our takeaways this week. These are questions you think about from all of the words that we threw at you. Takeaway number one, what are you building with your life? What is your current legacy?

Paul: Yes, that’s such a good one. I would ask, what do you have to share with your community from previous journeys?

Brent: That’s right, because sometimes you’re the mentor or the assistant. I would ask you, is your wealth well-diversified? When you think of your wealth, is it all money, is it all status, or is it diversified into various different investments?

Paul: I love that.

Brent: Are you investing in friends, in your physical health, in your emotional health? Are you investing your time wisely?

Paul: And in your spiritual health.

Brent: And in your spiritual health. Are you going to get to the end of the race and realize that, oh man, I really did not. This is another video game. I didn’t assign those stat points very well. I invested in the wrong skill tree. And now I’m stuck.

Paul: Have you taken time to define what you consider to be success? Or are you working off of someone else’s default? Oh, that’s a good question.

Brent: And then finally, what are you building that will outlast you?

Paul: Oh, yes.

Brent: How will it continue to give back? After you’re gone?

Paul: Yes. My pastor just preached a sermon on that. Powerful.

Brent: It’s a good question to think about. Our lives are not as long as we would like them to be. Hopefully, you’re using that energy to build a trajectory into something that will outlast you and will continue to do what’s important to you after you’re no longer able to do it. Alright, Bracketeers, that’s wrapping it up for today. Thank you for sticking with us for another episode. We’ll be back with more. Please contact us. This is a very one-sided relationship so far. We’ve been talking for over an hour now. You need to contact us. You need to let us know. Contact at FullMentalBracket.com. Let us know what you think. Let us know about these takeaways. What took you? What are you working on? How is this helping you?

Paul: So we need them to be protagonists in their listening journey of the Full Mental Bracket.

Brent: If you are really offended by Paul’s Tennessee shirt, I mean, that’s what I’ll be emailing about, but yeah, just bring it on in and whatever you need to tell us, tell us, because we want to know.

Paul: I’ll wear a shirt for you guys.

Brent: I promise not to show up naked. There’s ‘s New Year’s resolution. We’re not even there yet. I promise to wear a shirt. Progress on the show. Progress on the show.

ANNOUNCER: Full Mental Bracket podcast hosted by Paul Burkes and Brent Diggs. Executive producer, Brody Scott. Art design, Colby Osborne. Interact with the show at FullMentalBracket.com. This is a Brody Scott production.