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Episode #51 - Finding Purpose and Empathy by Mastering Your Mind (Get Out of MY Head)

• ALIDA HERNANDEZ • Season 2 • Episode 51

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Episode #51 - Finding Purpose and Empathy by Mastering Your Mind (Get Out of MY Head)

Guest:   Andrew McConnell

Have you ever stopped to consider the monumental effect your thought patterns have on your life's trajectory? Today, I'm joined by Andrew McConnell, the insightful author of "Get Out of Your Head: Creating Modern Clarity with Stoic Wisdom," who will share his remarkable journey from the competitive world of swimming to the rigors of law and into the realm of entrepreneurship. Together, we peel back the layers of our mental conditioning, taking cues from Stoicism and other philosophical traditions, to reveal how we can harness the power of our minds to steer our lives towards clarity and purpose. This episode promises to challenge your perceptions and offer profound insights into the art of internal dialogue management.

Closing this episode, we'll dream together of a society steeped in unity and empathy, pondering the potential influence of early wisdom on young minds. Envisioning a children's book to guide them in thought control and their place in the world, we extend our arms to embrace inclusivity, especially for children with special needs, within my Fort Lauderdale event space. As we bid farewell, we hope you're inspired to explore these themes further. Keep an eye out for Andrew's life-altering book and join us again as we continue to explore the vast potential that lies in the power of our thoughts.

HOST:                  Alida Hernandez

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Speaker 1:

Hi, welcome to Rebooted Mindset, formerly Rebooted the Podcast. I'm your host, elita Hernandez. Come join me every Wednesday and Sunday afternoon at 2.30 pm Eastern time to hear real life conversations with experts around the world on how we can heal our body, mind, soul and spirit. So let's get talking. Hi everybody, elita Hernandez, rebooted Mindset. I'm back again. Episode 51. I can't believe it. 51. Today I'm with Andrew McConnell Lee, right? How do you say your name?

Speaker 2:

McConnell.

Speaker 1:

McConnell sorry, andrew McConnell and he wrote a fabulous book called Get Out of your Head Creating Modern Clarity and Stoic Wisdom. So we're going to deep dive into that and exactly what that means. So tell us a little bit about yourself, andrew.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I background was a swimmer all through school and everything. Went to law school, decided that wasn't for me, tried banking, tried consulting, practiced law a little bit and then just started doing my own thing. So I started a series of companies, sold my most recent company last year back in 2022, which was Rentedcom. And, yeah, in the same year, published Get Out of my Head Creating Modern Clarity with Stoic Wisdom. It's just something, a philosophy that I don't think Stoicism has a monopoly on, because I think there's a lot of just human truth to it. Taoism, buddhism, a lot of Judeo-Christian thoughts around prayer and other things all come to very similar conclusions on this stuff. But it was something that really, really helped me.

Speaker 2:

And as I looked around during COVID, we used to talk with Rentedcom about we worked in the vacation rental space, right, right, and we say these homes are people's most expensive asset, most valuable asset or second most valuable asset.

Speaker 2:

And as I started looking around, I was saying, well, actually, our most valuable asset is not anything that we buy with money, because it can be taken away from us, it could break, it can go down. That's not all that valuable. Our most valuable asset is something we're actually born with and it's our mindset, and yet we live our lives as tenants, not owners of that. We give it away, and when it puts us in a bad mood, the person cuts us off in traffic and we're angry, we're worried. We can't fall asleep at night because we're worried what someone might do or say tomorrow and we thought, well, that's kind of crazy. Why is this so common? Why are we all struggling with this? And send me down this path of researching the biology behind it and then how other cultures and times have dealt with this, and so that led to the publication to get out of my head.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's awesome because what you said is so true. I spend most of my life like that. I didn't learn about mindset so just recently, and it's changed my life completely, I mean I manifested my whole studio, my business. I mean it's just been amazing what the power within us that we don't understand, and what I find is that we're so disconnected, like society was so disconnected. We have religion, we have different types of religions. They teach you morals and they teach you a story. But now, since I was raised Catholic and I was in the church all my life, catholic schools, I read the Bible and I was still disconnected. That was something missing. And now that I understand the power within us and the control of your mind, now it makes more sense, like I was missing that piece to make it complete. So now it's a bigger thing. It's bigger than us.

Speaker 2:

I mean it's truly, in the most serious sense of the word, universal. And they have these quotes that we know about ChatGPT, the CEO of the company that created OpenAI, back in 2019, he was tweeting don't let jerks live rent-free in your head. Taylor Swift sings about everybody. No matter how much money you have, no matter how much quote success you have, everybody struggles with this, which means it's not something wrong with you. It's the human condition. But just because that's the default human condition doesn't mean we have to stay in that. The default human condition is to get sick. We didn't have antibiotics. The default was we didn't have antibiotics. You get a scratch, it gets infected, you die.

Speaker 2:

Just because something is the natural default doesn't mean we have to stick with it. So once we know what's going on, to your point, you say, oh, this is what's going on. Okay, my mindset is naturally going to jump ahead to this thing, but I can start noticing when it's doing that and say you know what I don't want to do, that that's not a good news. That's not going to make me happy. That's not going to make me successful. Let me step it back and take more proactive control, more agency and deciding the mindset I want to take into this situation. We don't have to default to our lizard brain the fear, the fight, the flight. We don't have to do that. We have enough in our prefrontal cortex to be able to pause, step back and take that control back.

Speaker 1:

Exactly and that's what we're hoping here at Reboot and Mindset. Right, I had changed it. My podcast was Reboot of the podcast and then I changed the Reboot at Mindset because it made more sense, because one I said I got rebooted because I'm a techie, so because I had a stroke six and a half years ago. So I kept saying I got rebooted, my mind got rebooted, my RAM got clear. You know like I would joke around about it, right? So people like what I go?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I got rebooted and I literally did, because six and a half years ago, when that happened to me, I had to change my thought process of my life, because I got to a point in my life I was physically unhealthy. I wasn't taking care of myself at all. I was abusing my body, basically with alcohol and things right and food and really not living to my potential. I was so unhappy, which made me sicker, and then I had diabetes. So that was all totally uncontrolled and when I had the stroke thank goodness that it wasn't a bleeding stroke that I was able to recover.

Speaker 1:

I did have a long trek ahead of me because I did lose 50% of my left side. So I had to, I had to do pool therapy and just constantly. But my will, my strength in my mind right and my will and my spirit to live was so big that I pushed forward. Because I have two children and I was not. I was going to make sure I was going to see my kids get married, maybe have children Like I wanted to see them grow up. I didn't want to, I wasn't ready to die yet.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I told everybody.

Speaker 1:

I made a decision. I made a decision either live or die. So I decided to live and continue and I went through acupuncture and detoxing my body and just learning, and until now that I have, I'm in a great group of women, a sisterhood, and we're all in the same mindset. We help each other, we hold each other up, we do sound healing, we do meditation. We do different things, rakey, we do all these different things that I didn't understand and I was fighting against it because of my religion. You know what I mean. So, because of the thought and I have to talk about it because I think it's important that, unfortunately, faith you can have faith and that's wonderful, but religion itself the institution okay can change the way you think.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's intended to right, Change it.

Speaker 1:

It's designed to Right and if you're wondering about the, but you don't realize how much you don't think about. You go to church and you're not thinking they're gonna change your mind, right. I mean, you think it's a spirit. It's more like oh, I'm gonna change my spirit, I'm gonna help my soul, right, but you don't realize that it's conditioning your mind. So now you think a different way. But you're still missing that piece about mindset, about how you think that you have and you can explain more about how we have control over our lives.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and honestly, it's not just religion, it's anything that we're conditioned to is shaping our mind and our mindset. So you think about learned helplessness, right, the dogs that they put in this, and you can't really do these studies anymore, but they did them in the 70s and they'd put them in this container where they were shocking the floor. But they would make it the wall so high the dog couldn't jump and get out, just stuck in it, stuck in it, stuck in it, and they'd do it long enough. And then they'd go put the dog in the same situation with a low wall and they'd shock the floor and the dog would just not even try to because they'd learn hey, I can't do anything to escape this. This is the same thing they do with elephants, right? They tie up the baby elephant when it's really really little to this post and so it learns I can't get away so that by the time it's a big adult, it could just rip up the whole tent and do everything, but it's learning. No, I can't move If I'm tied up to this, I'm stuck, it doesn't even try, and so it's not really about religion, it's about the environment that we get conditioned to and that becomes our default mindset and it takes at times something traumatic, like a stroke, like a reboot, to say wait, okay, that way of thinking isn't the only way of thinking.

Speaker 2:

There's a whole world of possibility out there. I get to actually I have the ability to choose how I think, not just to think what I've always thought. I can choose how to think and that's where the book it's really resonate. It's more kind of 35 to 55 year old. It's people. They're kind of where they are in their career, they're rethinking what they're doing and that's where it clicks. But people say, hey, who is this meant for? Say you know, where it might have the most impact Is with middle schoolers, is with 14 year olds. Because if you set this baseline before you start getting in the cliques and high school and college and jobs and everything, think about how much more agency you could exercise in your life if you knew that from that young and age. But it takes us so long to even discover we have that possibility. The rest of the time we're just, we get baked in whatever environment we are.

Speaker 2:

We say, okay, well, we're stuck here this is what it is, this is what life is, and it takes us a while, some people, they never get it, but it takes us a while to look up and say wait a minute. There are a whole lot of other ways of thinking, of being, of living, and those possibilities were always there. We just weren't able to see them because of the environment.

Speaker 1:

Right and it's unfortunate that our school system there's a whole nother subject Right, I'm happy my kids are grown now, but that our social like what you said is so true it should start in the school. It should start when they're young. If you can show these young children, especially now I've had some interviews with some other people that our children are really in danger now because since 2020, the suicide rate has gone up dramatically to the point which I'm still in shock. Even saying it, this one woman she told me she works out of school and these kids young, 10 years old, nine years old have suicide plans from ridding down from start to finish, like what I'm gonna do, what time, everything. I can't even fathom that in my head. How why a child so young would think that that's okay and have a plan to kill themselves.

Speaker 1:

Because society and the internet. There's too much information out there and I don't think as parents, parents don't monitor the time on the computer, on the phone. It's become now something that children live on the phone constantly and we're not watching. They're not watching what information is coming out here, because you know everything's on the cell, on the internet. So it's just really sad. It breaks my heart to even think that they're showing out there like that that are suffering with depression.

Speaker 2:

You bring up a good point. It's too much information. So let's just put this in context right, the human brain has evolved to bring in 11 million bits of information every second. Every second, 11 million bits. All our senses, what we see, all the colors, our sounds, the smells, the taste, everything is pouring into our brain, but we're only able to process, right, like that's all kind of thing, but we're only able to process. What percent of that? 11 million? What do you think we're processing?

Speaker 1:

Like 2%, I don't know?

Speaker 2:

Wait, wait, listen. 50 bits out of 11 million. Wow, that's all we're able to process. Now let's think what we would have evolved to process. So humans, around 300,000 years, for 295,000 of those years we're hunting and gathering. We're going to the watering hole. We're trying to stay alive. We get to the water.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's beautiful. We're looking out there. There's zebras, there's giraffes. It's a great sight. And we hear a little rustling on the side. And we have an ancestor who is a stop and smell the roses kind of person. She hears the rustling and she's like I'm going to enjoy this beautiful sight in front of me, but that's all well and good, except those times that that rustling was a lion and that lion jumps and eats her.

Speaker 2:

Those genes didn't come to us. The stop and smell the roses, the person that chose the beauty of the 50 bits out of the 11 million. That person didn't live, so their genes didn't come down to modern people. What if we had someone who was an optimist? They hear the rustling and they say you know what? There are 100 times more meerkats than there are lions. I hear the rustling, but I'm going to be an optimist and assume it's a meerkat. That person's rate 99 times out of 100, that's great, but all it takes is one time and that person's dead Lion eats.

Speaker 2:

At first the optimist genes didn't come to us. The person who sees the 50 bits and sees the rosiest picture the 50 bits that kept our ancestors alive were to imagine the worst thing that possibly could be coming to them and to always be on edge, because that's what kept them alive. But now we are not constantly in physical danger. We have climate controlled environments that we're living and we know where food's coming from. So that 50 bits is making us unhappy.

Speaker 2:

There's a separate problem that today, every single day, we produce more information than all of human history prior to the year 1900. So this was a problem 50 years ago, this was a problem 10 years ago, but the problem is getting worse. Every TikTok video, every podcast, every book, all the information constantly being poured onto our children, onto ourselves, makes it impossible to filter down to make it the good 50. We go, we see all of this, we can ingest it and we jump to the 50 worst things, the 50 bits out of that 11 million we're bringing in. And again, it's not the kid's fault, it's the biology their brain evolved for a world that they're not being raised in, and you have to override the biology, otherwise you end up in these situations.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's society. I mean, our lives are easy and, like I said, if I knew this 20 years ago, wow, who knows where I would be right now?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, the best time to learn it right is 20 years ago. The second best time is today.

Speaker 1:

Exactly that's why I say because I go, I'm here for a reason I survived and I've survived some other things too in my life that I go. It's not meant for me to leave yet until I give a message out there for other people. So that's how I feel that I finally came to my purpose in my life just to give back and to help other people change their mindset and live a better life, a fulfilled life, a happy life, a life that they can help their children and their grandchildren, especially if you can affect your children as much as you can. But if you can't make sure that you can affect your grandchildren, especially before I don't have any yet, so forget it. Well, my grandchildren are born.

Speaker 2:

I'm gonna be honest, yeah and the best way to do that is by example, right, exactly, it's just showing what living like that can look like, what thinking like that can look like. That's the best you can do for anyone is be that model. We could say the words all we want, but, as they always say, children won't always do as you say, but they will do as you do.

Speaker 1:

And yeah, that's true, yeah, that's very true. And I mean my kids are in their 20s. I mean they see the difference on me, my transformation, my more peaceful and all the stuff that I've accomplished in a year. They're like you know, they don't even question me like mom how'd you do that? Because they know I have drive and even through my worst times, that they've seen me, they know that I've changed my life for the better and they appreciate that, you know. And they've done the same thing. I mean my younger one, he's 23, he's, he's transformed his body. He was overweight, Now he's completely fit, bodybuilding, you know, going to a competition. And my other son is a data analyst and very, very smart, and he's 27. And so they're doing, they're both doing good. They're both doing good, and so I'm really grateful and thankful for that, that's for sure. It's wonderful. So in your book, so in your book. Explains a little bit about the book and how helpful that is for other people out there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so the book. It takes this premise of real estate that the real real estate we don't rate. You talked about all the things you went through with your stroke. Our body we don't have full control over it. A virus gets in, a bacteria can make us sick and kill it. Our body we don't fully, fully control. We can influence, we can't control it. Our physical items, right, they can be broken, they can be stolen. Russian billionaires have shown no matter how much money you have, they can be taken away from you. The government can come, confiscate, take it away, but our mindset is the one thing no one else can actually change.

Speaker 2:

We decide if we want to take control or give it away and despite that, our default state is to rent instead of home. So it says okay, why is that? What are the biological reasons for it? And then what are the solutions to it? How do we stop renting to other people? How do we stop renting to events and circumstances entirely outside our control? How do we stop renting to the most difficult, these different and imagined versions of ourselves? Oh, my parents really wanted me to do this. Oh, future me is going to be like this. How do we stop that?

Speaker 2:

And so the book goes through all these solutions for different manifestations of that problem and not just hey, here's the aha, right, because plenty of books, right, you've read. You're like this is amazing, I'm so inspired. You put it down. You go live life the exact same way you always did and nothing changes, and for me that wasn't good enough. So each chapter has exercises and tools that you put in practice in your life to actually change.

Speaker 2:

Because you talk about being healthy, you don't go eat healthy food for a week and say, right, I'm fixed I mean, cheeseburgers are not only the gym for one year and say, okay, I got to my ideal weight, I don't ever need to worry about physical fitness again. No, it's an ongoing process. This is a process for life and it's the same with our mindset and with mental health that our biology is going to be working against us, and so this is an ongoing process. People ask all the time okay, so how do you fix this? Maybe the Dalai Lama is set Like he's fixed it, he's all good, but for the rest of us it's an ongoing process. You can just get better at noticing when it starts going off the rails sooner so you can course correct, but it's never going to be snap. Okay, great, I have enlightenment and I'm all set that that's not a realistic target for any of us.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's true. That is true Because, I mean, every day you kind of struggle with something you know. And we talked about driving. I mean I'm in, I'm in South Florida. Okay, the traffic here is unbelievable. The drivers don't know how to drive because we have a lot of cultures.

Speaker 1:

I really believe it's due to all the different cultures that we have different styles of driving and they think they're in their country and maybe in their country they do certain things that we don't hear or whatever, and and it's frustrating. So I get in the car and it's like I'm peaceful when I get in. I don't say I'm peaceful when I get out, but you know, every day you have those challenges. So it's learning how how to react to things. That's what I've learned how to.

Speaker 1:

When a situation comes up, before I would scream and you know curves, and they can't even hear you. I used to laugh. I go, they can't hear you. Why are you screaming? So before that would be reaction. Now my reaction is you know what? I'm just staying on my lane and I'm driving and they have, they're in the rush, they can go around, and I just crank the radio on and I just zone. You know, keep myself in that state and I just keep driving, you know.

Speaker 1:

So it has to do with how you react to things, right and again, changing your mindset, understanding that you have the control not to be angry, not to be fearful. You know all these different emotions that come up, that you can control the emotion Because I've learned, I've been learning to do that. I was having some. I used to have panic attacks and and I learned that that's fear, it's a fear, right, it's your body reacting to a physical. You have emotional fear and it be physically manifest in your body. So the other day I had some thoughts and I was getting fearful and I could feel the anxiety literally coming up, like it was coming up from the ground like this up.

Speaker 1:

And I know, and I just said no, and I like squished it and I said no, I have no fear, because I'm in control of my mind and I'm not going to get that little fear to creep in to get me to change my mindset, to change, to help to think. I'm going to think a different way, right? And the minute I did that and went away, I was like wow, I can't believe I did that.

Speaker 1:

Like that was like amazing, that was a huge thing, like a huge breakthrough, to actually stop the anxiety and panic attack and realized that I was causing it myself in my own mind because from past things that I've done, from the past of being fearful, I would have panic attacks because I was lost. I didn't know what to do, so it was just automatic.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's. I mean you talk about the not just reacting, right, getting in the car and other people. Marcus Aurelius was the Roman emperor and he he kept this personal journal that's been published for thousands of years now and it's called Meditations, and it's his journal to himself with a lot of these things and I'm not going to get the exact wording right. But he has this one reminder one morning said today you're going to meet with selfish people, you're going to meet with jerks with you, right, all these things. This is what today is going to look like, and so you can kind of inoculate yourself before you put yourself in those situations. Hey, I'm not going to wake up and expect everyone to go out of their way, to be nice to me and do everything for me, right, I'm going to come across all these different kinds of people today and I need to know that going in. So if my expectations everything's going to be perfect for me and it doesn't meet that, I'm going to be frustrated. I'm going to be sad If I go in and say you know what?

Speaker 2:

Everybody's facing? A thousand invisible battles that I have no idea about. That person racing around. You know, sometimes I'm late and I may race around. And I know why I'm doing that. My, my child, just got checked into the ER. I'm trying to get there. I want to be there for it. Right. That person's zooming around. They may have the same situation. I have no idea. Maybe they're just trying to go get tacos, maybe I don't know, but maybe they have something else going on. I don't know what invisible battles they're fighting today.

Speaker 1:

Right, that's true.

Speaker 2:

And so it just inoculating, helps, helps make it a little easier to give that grace to others too. Uh, as you go through it. And then that that point of noticing what are the triggers, what are the signals, what are the symptoms. When it starts happening I know mine my chest starts to tighten up, right, my blood, my heart rate starts to go up, and so when I start noticing these things happening, the one thing I know to start do is to stop talking. I need to stop talking immediately and you to start listening better. I need to start breathing deeper breaths. I need to come back down so that I am the person I want to be in this situation, not the person in my fear or anger or whatever is triggering me to be. Let me, let me pull it back. Maybe I'm not hearing fully, right? I'm. I'm focused on this one mouth as opposed to these two ears. I'm focused on all these things, these stories I'm telling myself, versus what may actually be happening in this situation.

Speaker 2:

And so your example of the, the fear, feeling it coming up right, like you know the symptoms, the triggers of oh, I know where this is going helps you to take back that control. You always had it. You just didn't realize you had it till you start recognizing the triggers and the symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's true, that's true. And once you start getting, I mean, I've, I've been, how did I would say intuitive about my body, about certain things, like you know, and I tell I don't understand how other people don't even realize that they have a problem physically, just at a you know say like say, you have a pain in your leg or whatever.

Speaker 1:

Like you know after a while, like if it's still going on, you need to check it. You know what I mean. Like some people are just like, oh, it's fine, and they just keep going on and and some people might have cancer. Some of them people have you know what I mean?

Speaker 1:

That they don't even realize these symptoms and I always boggles my mind when a person goes in and they go I have stage four cancer and you didn't have one. You can't tell me you didn't have any symptoms, Like people are not even aware of their bodies.

Speaker 2:

Well, because it can happen so slowly over time. This is back to we're all fighting the thousand invisible battles, right? That if you woke up one day and it went from zero to that, it'd be very clear to you, like, okay, no, something is not right. But it doesn't happen like that. It's one day it's this little niggle and then, okay, it's a little more. It's a little more, but it happens so slowly you become acclimatized to it. It becomes the water you're swimming in. You think this is just what it is.

Speaker 2:

It gets back to the mindset, right? Like if you're raised in this environment, whether it's the church or the school or whatever it is, that is the only world you know. And so if it's every day, it just feels like, oh, this is just what life is, this is just what it feels like. I can have some empathy with them on that because it's you know, you go break an arm, people go to the hospital for that. Like it feels very right. From 10 seconds ago to right now it's very clear Something's wrong. I need to go fix this. But if it's something, this slow build is very hard for a lot of people to recognize because it's just half a percent different each day. It steps it into it.

Speaker 1:

And it goes back to get how we were trained right, our mind has been trained since we were, since we were born. So you have, you know, a whole lifetime of of the how do you call it? You have to reprogram your subconscious, your brain, and it's really amazing. I was just listening yesterday to about getting to the fifth dimension. I don't know. I was listening to something yesterday. I was so confused, but it's just the levels of consciousness and things like that. I'm, you know, I'm always reading and learning and and trying to absorb information. I'm, I'm a, I'm a how do you call it? I love information, right? So, being that, I was a technical person, all my life fixing computers and systems. I used to run, I used to be a, an IT manager for big data center.

Speaker 1:

So, I've always been analytical right, so I'm always like looking for cause and effect kind of thing. And but I was so into the world, into my job, right Into my job, that I didn't fix me, like I was trying to fix me but I really wasn't, because I wasn't paying attention. I really wasn't paying attention to certain things. And, and now that I've started to to take control of my thoughts and my habits, it's like wow, I just sell people. Wow, and I'm an example, like you're saying, we have to be an example so people can see, by my life and whatever I've accomplished, and people who really know me for a long time, they're you know, they see it they go wow, alita, you really change your life, you know everything.

Speaker 2:

And that you're talking about is you thought you're taking care of you but it really wasn't, and that's. Very few people go through the work and the exercise of understanding what it is they want, right, they just kind of defaulted. They do whatever the group they're around does. Okay, you know, I get this kind of car and move to this kind of neighborhood or whatever it is. My kids go to this kind of school and they don't think do they really want that, they just see that this is the normal thing to do.

Speaker 2:

But even the people that think about what, what is it that I want? Almost no one goes to the next step of saying why do I want that? Do I want that Because I think it'll impress my parents, I think it'll impress the kids I grew up with that I haven't talked to in 20 years. Like, why is it that I want this particular thing? Very, very few people dig into that and so almost no one knows what they, their core self, really wants. Right, because they say, okay, I want this, but the why may be something that actually isn't them that wants it. It's someone else wanted it for them. Right, that becomes what they pursue and it just it takes a lot of of unpacking and unpeeling to get under all those layers of conditioning from our environment, from the people we've been around, to get to the kernel that is us. That's in there, we've always been in there, but we just get layered and layered on all through life. You got to peel it back, get back to us. Yeah, the onion, the onion.

Speaker 1:

So you get the little center right, the little right in the middle.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because that's how we are. I feel like that's how we are. We're like this big onion, right. So we got all those layers, you got the childhood stuff and whatever your parents they want you to do this right. Many children, you hear them oh, I'm going to be a doctor because my parents want to. I mean, you see it in me, you see it everywhere.

Speaker 1:

You hear about people, or just that you were, we were raised to just go to school, get a job, get married, have children and do the cycle all over again, right, and then have our children do the same thing and we just go kind of follow along. We're like the herd, we're the herd of the horses. We just kind of move around and not realizing what did you do all your life? Are you happy? Are you? Are you? You know what is your purpose and it's taken me a long time. I never understood that. I always just ask God what is my purpose in life? What am I? Why am I here? I don't even know. Why am I here, you know? And and then, going through struggles, you start getting even more disconnected from from God, from faith, because you get discouraged. You get discouraged from disappointments or things that have happened, and then you blame right, you blame other people, you blame God, you do you constantly doing that, and then you don't realize that it's not even. It's not even that it's you.

Speaker 2:

It always has been, always will be. It was you yeah.

Speaker 1:

And it's about taking that responsibility. I mean, I'm 58 years old and I'm learning this, like the last few years. I'm going into this and I feel, I mean, I feel so much better now. I feel like I've left this huge weight, you know of, of past guilt, of all this guilt that I was accumulating. You know that you do things. Oh, it's your fault. You're a sinner.

Speaker 1:

You know you like constantly somebody pointing your finger at you because of decisions that I, that I made in my life and then I realized finally that the decisions I made, I made them.

Speaker 1:

I had to take responsibility for what I went through because it was my fault, it wasn't anybody else's fault. You know I chose to drink and get drunk or I chose to do drugs or whatever. It is right, you choose it because of whatever is lacking in your mind, you know. I mean it's, it's just, it's really amazing and I, like you said, the only way you can can be there for people is to is to show and prove how you you live your life and be an example to others. And and I find just being kind to people right now I feel I'm very at peace and and and my mission in life is just to help others to reach this, this goal, that they have a better mindset and they can change your life and make society better. I mean, I think that's the only thing our goal is is to make the world we live in better and help one person at a time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I can't. You can't overstate that kindness, point enough. This is a conversation I have with my daughter all the time, right, she, she's seven, she has all sorts of frustrations and can have a tantrum, all this and said look, you need to feel whatever you're feeling. Feel it If you're angry, if you're sad, whatever it is, feel it, but that never gives you the license to be unkind to someone else. That's right. Right, so you can feel whatever you want.

Speaker 2:

If you know you're going to say something unkind, do something unkind. Take yourself out of the situation, because the feeling is not the problem, it's what you do with that feeling to others. It can be the problem. Yeah, we, in every situation, every interaction we have, we have the choice to be kind. We can choose to be kind and in every single one of those instances, that's the right answer. We always have that option and we need to choose it. No one's great at it. No, there are people that are great at it. No one's perfect at it, right, and so you got to have a grease with yourself as well, but know that you can keep getting better, because that is always a choice we have and it's always the right choice.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, I watch. There's a few people on YouTube that do acts of kindness and there's one guy that he really just randomly goes up to homeless people and he'll ask them what is your biggest regret in life? You know, he'll ask them and they'll tell them. They'll say something like I left my, the mother of my daughter, or I left my child, you know, and they talk about it and they have the emotion and he comes and just gives them a note saying like don't give up, You're going to be good, You'll be fine, Just focus on this. And he gives them a little like a little sentence like just change, just to change their mindset just for a moment there.

Speaker 1:

And it always, it always gets to me because, you know, this one man said something like he says are you having a good day? He says I am now, because you're talking to me, and he goes. He goes. Why do you say that? Because nobody will talk to me, because he's homeless. So they don't see him, you don't see them and our society, unfortunately, whatever, we don't know, we fear, right, People are, I think it's just fear ignorance on things. And I have, where my studio is, there's, you know this, homeless people in the street and I say, hi, how are you? And you know things like that. And let me tell you, it makes a big difference. It makes a huge difference with knowledge of person that they exist. They feel like they don't exist, they feel like they're completely like nothing, Because they want it.

Speaker 2:

It's more conditioning, it's more conditioning. I remember going out the park, two or three, with my daughter and they're homeless people sleeping. And you said, daddy, why are people sleeping out here? So they don't have a home, they don't have a bed. So well, can they come back and sleep in our home? They have our bed right. Like we're getting from the mouths of babes, the children. They see them, they see them. They wonder wait, we have a bed. We're not in that bed right now. Why couldn't they be sleeping in our bed? It's only the default is oh, no, no, no. We just ignore that. They're sitting there, we move on, we step past this. That over time you learn because you see how all the adults around you are acting in this situation. Oh, this is how we treat these people. Because that, I would say, that's actually not the default human state. The default human state, from what I've seen with children, is a little different than the default for society we can mention ourselves to start acting like that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's so true. That is so true. And I remember when I was, I lived in California and I used to drive through like a back street, like to get to downtown LA, and so I would go through some parts that weren't too great, right. So I would see there was one homeless man I would see every day in the same spot and it was like I was drawn to him and I had never done anything. This was a long time ago, like 30 years ago. I had never done anything to help somebody in the street. I was a little afraid.

Speaker 1:

I was really I was truthfully afraid because I just didn't know. So I went and I made. When I was home, I made a plate of food and everything the next day and I brought like a little bag and I put, I went out and I made a little pamphlet with like all the main, all the 800 numbers he can call for help, like all this stuff. I put like $5 and I put a meal and I went out and I got. I was so scared, right, I got out of the car and I said I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. I got out there and I said, excuse me, sir, and he's like no, he didn't want to talk to me. I go, I'm sorry, so I just wanted to give you some food. He's like no, no, no. And I said well, I hope you have a good day and I'll just leave it on the floor. So I left the bag on the floor and as I got back into my car and I drove away, I looked in the mirror and I could see him going to get it and you know that I never saw him after that day.

Speaker 1:

I never saw him again. It was like, and I had chills when I talk about it because I feel like it was like was that an angel? Was that a test? You know what I mean? Or did he find his way and get to his family? I was just like I mean, you know what it is to see a person every day for months and I mean years, like a whole year would go by and I would see him the day I gave him the food. The next day he was gone. I was like I go, I pray that that means that he went and got somewhere.

Speaker 2:

You know, like or- that triggered like hey, you know, I am still a person, People do care, Let me yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know, I don't know, but it was just. It was it just stayed to me like I felt like God, was that a sign, was that like an angel in disguise to see if I would, if I would listen? You know what I mean, because it was so heavy on my heart. Every time I passed by it was like you need to stop, literally, like I would hear like a voice, you need to stop, and I'm like what is going on? And every day I would go by and I'm like, oh, this is really, it was weighing on me now. Now I was like every day I'm like, no, I have to do something.

Speaker 1:

So you know, and I did and I did and I prayed that he found his way. I mean, it's been so many years he's probably passed by now he's an older man but you know, I tried to do what I can. My husband always tells me please stop picking up strays, because, between animals and people, if I could bring them home, I would okay. Yeah, oh yeah, because he's like he sees me. I said what are you doing? He said, oh, I'm feeding this homeless guy and he just looks at me. He knows, and he does the same thing too, but he knows how I am, that my heart is. I want to bring him home. You know, like I want him to take a shower, I want him to. You know, and we talk about that If we ever won a lot of money, then I know what I'm gonna do, because that's my heart is, in that that I would give back. I would definitely give back.

Speaker 2:

You wanna do good by other people?

Speaker 1:

yeah, yes oh, definitely I always. I already have a thought that I'm gonna build a tiny house village for homeless people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and then have it that they go for, like, say, three to five, six months until they get themselves their own job. And they got themselves good you know, and then they get moved out, and then somebody else can move into that tiny house so they can start getting out of the street. That's my goal.

Speaker 2:

It's a beautiful dream.

Speaker 1:

You know, I just I don't believe. I believe that nobody should be homeless in the United States. I don't think anybody should be homeless anywhere.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and mathematically I think they've actually done pretty good studies of it is cheaper for society to just give them homes, right, because of everything that comes like. Once you have a stable home, then people are able to get jobs and then they can stabilize them and then they're not a burden on the system and everything that comes Exactly exactly, Even if all you cared about was economics and you just say, hey, I don't even care about doing right by people, but I just care about the right money answer.

Speaker 2:

I believe the data shows the right money answer is to just give people homes.

Speaker 1:

And I mean I mean and you know, and I'm not sure where you live, but you know, right now there's a crisis everywhere. I mean LA. I used to work in skid row in LA.

Speaker 1:

I used to. I used to volunteer at the. I used to go by the union rescue mission and I used to go to the Chrysler Center that there was downtown when they first started and I used to do Computer stuff for them for free, database and things like that. So they used to have a little center right in the hardest skid row that they would help people with clothing Like you needed a suit for for a job that would help your resume.

Speaker 1:

They would give you like guidance. They gave you an address so you can. You can have mail there. You can get an ID, you know, because you need an address for an ID. So a lot of these homeless people don't even have IDs because they don't have a home, they don't have an address. So how does both it's get anything? Yeah you know you can't even apply for food stamps or anything.

Speaker 1:

You can't fly for government aid if you don't have an address, so they used to do things like that. And back then there were homeless people and I remember I used to be so scared Because I was my first time, I was in my 20s, right, and I will walk down the street and I would be like I know these people here, you know and I know. Now LA is insane. Now now it's like thousands and thousands of people, which is really sad. It's just really sad, you know. So I, you know, I'm happy that you wrote this book and that you're on. You're on our, on our side, as they say, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I mean, that's the thing. We're all on the same side. No one, no one, intentionally does something they think is wrong. Right, they. They have the reason back to we're fighting a thousand invisible battles. They have the reason they think what they're doing is right. No one intentionally like goes out of their way to do something. They think this is bad, like I'm a bad person doing it. People don't do that. It's from the outside. We say, man, that's a really bad person. They did that, but they have some story Going on that tells them that this is the right thing for them to do. And so we're, we're all on the same team. We're just Working from different fact bases.

Speaker 2:

Somehow, right now that, now that we have alternative facts and all this, we're working off of different, different stories, different narratives. But you know the the point you were talking about before when it is truly universal, right, like we all are from the same substance, we all go back to the same substance. We are all One. This is just this one very, very minuscule manifestation of this material that makes us. But we all come from, we all go back, we're all of the same, and we forget that in this really, really short time period we forget and become. Oh, it's all about this one manifestation. But it's not right that the amount of time before us and the infinite time after us and this little manifestation Is Far, far longer than us in this form and the rest of the time, well, we're all part of each other and so recognize it. Even during this time we're part of each other. We've got to care about each other.

Speaker 1:

Exactly doesn't matter how you look, what color you are, we're all the same, and that's so important, it's so important to understand and and we have, you know, society has divided us and and it's a lot of nonsense out there, you know. No, we just have to help and again, help our children. I hope that you. I know you wrote this book for adults, I'm guessing but I hope it challenges you. I don't know why I just got this thought to write a book for children, since you have a seven-year-old. Yeah, something. I come back and back and forth to like, is it children.

Speaker 1:

How young is it a?

Speaker 2:

young adult thing. It is very much so I want to do, because the more I have these conversations, the more I believe and feel and seem to see that Getting to people earlier in life Just you get all the benefit of what. Why wait 20 years to learn this stuff? Why not get it sooner, right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you need it soon like your daughter or seven, she's, she's, she's, she's, she's understanding, she's, you know, processing, she's learning. I mean that's they say, what is it the age? I forgot what the age cutoff is when you really learn like language, and I don't have it seven or eight years Like the first seven years or something they say is good to learn like languages and certain things. So they should. That's what we should do incorporate it. I don't know. I have a vision that you're gonna write a book for children. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I've read some children's books, not on this and so I think it's time to do it for this, yeah and do it and like a more of a Cartoon base, you know, like a child, children's book. You know that they can see example and and what it is about your thought process and how they can control their mind. I don't know. I just got this vision. Now You're gonna do it. I'm gonna come back to you and ask you that was a great idea. Thank you, I'm happy.

Speaker 2:

Hey, why not I, not you?

Speaker 1:

want you want to make sure your daughter gets the right path and all these other children. I'm just, I'm really just Want to help the children. We I have a An event space in Fort Lauderdale so we put on different events and I work with special needs children. Which they? They got my heart now since I started working with them. Oh my gosh, I just love those children and and exactly that. We're all. We're all one and and just a point I want to make about that that when you see a Special need child or somebody in a wheelchair or somebody that's just different from you, they don't know the difference.

Speaker 1:

They don't know we know, we see the difference, but those children they, they don't. They think we're weird, how come you're different Really?

Speaker 2:

they think their default is their world right, so we're not like their world. Yeah, of course exactly.

Speaker 1:

So they think that you're different and then they don't understand how to process, why people look at them bad or or say things bad to them. I mean it's really sad, you know the the, the way society treats somebody, that's different. And so I'm making, I do a social so that way they can come to my studio and they can enjoy music and they can dance, and there's room for the wheelchairs and and I don't, we don't judge, they just come in and they love it.

Speaker 1:

You know. So it's just, it's a, it's an open space for anybody who wants to come. That's it, and we accept everybody, you know. Yeah, so just a little bit more love. Let's spread more love and kindness out there. That's how I want to end this one.

Speaker 2:

This is always a choice and it's always a right choice. Exactly, exactly. So where do we find your book Books? On Amazon, it's Barnes, noble, anywhere, anywhere you want to buy the book that it's hard copy. It's Kendall. It's audio book you can find on audible. It's on all formats in the library. You know you. If you don't want to buy it, you can get it there and then on my website in Andrew McConnell calm, there's free preview of it. If you want to download that, there's the workbook with exercises for free, so that there are a bunch of free resources that are accessible as well for those interested in learning more perfect, perfect.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to check everything out and and then see, maybe incorporated into one of my events that I do to help people with their mindset. Who knows?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, hopefully always doing, kind of doing different things. We're going to have, like, a wellness there and have different people there. So you know, it's one of those things anything. I'm always looking for different books like that, and that's how I find you. I got your press release and I saw this looks very interesting. So I really appreciate your time today. This was an awesome conversation and I hope you have a great rest of the year and holidays everything that's coming up.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much this been great.

Speaker 1:

And we'll keep in touch and I'm waiting for that child book.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'll let you know you get the credit. Say thank you for the inspiration.

Speaker 1:

All right, no problem, have a great one All right, you as well.

Speaker 1:

Everybody, hi everybody. So that was our last episode 51, and it was awesome, but our guests today and I hope that you will check out his book. I'll have all the information here when I publish this podcast and you're able to get his link and check out some samples of the book and see if it resonates with you. We're just trying to make a better world for everybody out there, so I appreciate you viewing us and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and all our platforms. Rebooted the podcast. It's still on the rebooted the podcast and the website as well, and I hope you have a great day everybody. So until next week, bye.

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Alida Hernandez

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