107 : Self Improvement Through Deliberate Practice with Dan Arwady

Welcome to the Mindful Fire Podcast, a show about crafting a life you love and making work optional using the tools of mindfulness, envisioning and financial independence. I'm your host, adam Cuello, and I'm so glad you're here. Each episode of the Mindful Fire Podcast explores these three tools through teachings, guided meditations and inspiring interviews with people actually living them to craft a life they love. At its core, mindful Fire is about creating more awareness and choice in your life. Mindfulness helps you develop self-awareness, to know yourself better and, what's most important to you, by practicing a kind, curious awareness. Envisioning is all about choosing to think big about your life and putting the power of your predicting brain to work to create the life you dream of. And financial independence brings awareness and choice to your financial life, empowering you to make your vision a reality by getting your money sorted out and, ultimately, making work optional. And here's the best part you don't have to wait until you reach financial independence to live out your vision. Mindful Fire is about using these tools to craft that life now, on the path to financial independence and beyond. If you're ready to start your Mindful Fire journey, go to MindfulFireorg slash start and download my free envisioning guide In just 10 minutes. this guide will help you craft a clear and inspiring vision for your life. Again, you can download it for free at MindfulFireorg slash start. Let's jump into today's episode. Welcome to the Mindful Fire podcast, dan. I'm really glad to have you here.

Thanks, Adam. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Yeah, and for the audience, just to give you a little background about how Dan and I know each other. Dan and I used to work on the same team at Google and I met Dan when I was visiting some clients in Chicago, probably about five years ago now. I was fairly new to the team. It was my first trip over there And Dan introduced himself and somehow we ended up going for a walk to just get to know each other and chat about work and life and all of that, and next thing, you know, we're walking around for three hours in Chicago. We walked all the way to Lake Michigan and ended up grabbing a beer over there and just really connected on life and have a similar way of thinking about some things, and so it was really cool And we've been pretty good friends ever since. We don't get to hang out as often as I'd like, but it's really cool to have you here and to dive into some interesting topics with you today, dan.

Yeah, thanks, man, for having me. We were talking on the phone a couple of weeks ago. I was thinking about that walk, completely independently of this whole thing, and it was such a great day. It was a great day at work. I remember the weather being beautiful and we were just hanging out. For me, i love a good walk and talk, because that's exactly how I like to have conversations. It's one of the most entertaining things to me, and it was so cool getting to know you that day. I knew you were just an awesome person from that moment on, so it was really cool that we got to stay in touch And I think it's so cool you're doing this And, for the record, we always ask Adam to come and do guided meditations and stuff for our teams. I think my wife reached out to him and he's done a bunch of these for other teams at Google and at YouTube and things like that, just because he's the boss. So, yeah, i think what you're doing is really cool. I feel like you're bringing a lot of value to everybody when you're doing this stuff. So thanks for having me on. It's nice to be.

Yeah, man, my pleasure, and it's funny to think that I led that session for Angie's team and that has grown into something. I created it for her team, but I've actually since been teaching that course with Paul Paul, my manager for those listening. We've been teaching it together for teams all across Google. Now We've probably done it 10 times already, and so it's pretty cool. It's all about building resilience through mindfulness, and so that really started with your wife's team.

Yeah that's so cool. I'm glad that you could take that and actually keep spreading that around. I remember her saying that people were having trouble paying attention and all that stuff with other parts of the day And then you came and you gave that session and people were re-vigorated and sharing again. It was super helpful for them. So it's awesome that you could take that and keep going with it. I think you've always really had a good gift for that Taking meditation and mindfulness and all that stuff and turning it not into this abstract concept. But hey, anybody could do this. Take these principles. I'll walk you through it a few times and then it's not that hard. You can access this whenever you want to get there, and I think that's cool. I think it's really it's very impactful, yeah.

I appreciate that And, yeah, that's the goal. I think that with this podcast especially right Mindfulness, financial independence both of them seem like they could be very complex and difficult, but when you really boil it down, they can also be super simple and make a huge impact in your life by just sticking to the basics. And so I appreciate you saying that And definitely is the goal, and I'm realizing it as you say that. So, thanks for that. What's alive for you, man? What's going on?

I have a lot of different things happening right now, which has been cool. That's actually made my headspace pretty divided. I was going to tell you I've been doing your guided meditations Nice, super good, the one about being that you put out.

Just being Yeah.

I've actually done that one twice. I did it last night and I did it a couple of days before that. It's great man, really helpful. At the end of the day, i feel like I've got so much going on trying to calm that down. That's a really good meditation for that, so well done.

I appreciate it, man. There's something about being intentional and saying look, right now I'm going to just set everything to the side and I'm just going to be here. I'm just going to feel what's going on, i'm going to get carried away and I'm going to come back and that's it. That's all there is to do right now. I went to a retreat with John and Will Kabat-Zinn right before Carter was born, and they have this phrase just this in breath. All you got to focus on right now is this in breath. That's it, and then this out breath, and each one is unique. I find that so liberating. You don't got to worry about anything beyond this in breath. I can do that.

That is a good technique too, because so I was trying to watch the breath and do all that stuff last night And even in between, when I got to the peak of the in breath and when I got to the peak of the out breath, once I really paid attention I could start to feel that's where my brain would start to wander, and once I started to notice that you had a really good line in there, if you're going into story mode, just let that happen. That's part of the moment too, and I was like, yeah, that is part of this moment right now, and it was just noticing that made me realize that my attention can get hijacked very quickly. It actually called me down, just noticing. It was really cool. I think it was a really well done guided meditation. I think a lot of people end up talking too much in a lot of those guided things, constantly interrupting, and you do a really good job of setting somebody up and then giving them space. So yeah, i found it great, really helpful.

That's great And I'm glad to hear it And I appreciate the feedback. For me when I started meditating in my mind was all over the place and I was convinced I was doing it wrong And that that was something to avoid the thoughts and the story that was going in my head. But really credit to Will Kabatzin and John Kabatzin. I've really started to realize the self compassion piece, the just including it in awareness. Right, all we're really practicing is awareness and attention, and so this field of awareness can be large enough to include everything. And resisting that thinking is happening is not really useful, and so just include it in awareness, see you And then make the choice to come back and start again, and then you'll get carried away over and over again. And something that was also helpful is that is the practice right. The practice is not having no thoughts. The practice is noticing where your attention is and, if it's not where you intended it to be, bringing it back. So that helped a lot.

Yeah, I love that you go really deep into that topic too.

Dan, I'd love to have you share with the audience a little bit about who you are and what you're up to in the world.

Oh man, okay, I struggle with who you are questions. That's why the mindfulness stuff is so helpful. I live in Pacifica, california, right now, which is a hip little surf town. I love living here. Everyone's really chill. It's a very cool vibe. So, anyways, we've been living here for about three years. I'm married. I live here with my wife, angela, and my one-year-old son, tj. We have a second one on the way, so we got a little family thing going on And, of course, my dog, levi very important. So, yeah, we live here. I've finally been working in the music business now for about four or five years now at Google, started working on Google Play music and then moved over to YouTube music and that's what I do currently. I'm in Operations Engineering role there, so I lead up what's called Partner Engineering and we do a lot of tool building and infrastructure work for the record labels in the United States, so work with a lot of the indie record labels in particular, but build some stuff that's used also for the major labels to here. So a lot of my day-to-day is just working with the record labels and gathering requirements and then basically going back to my laptop and whipping things up and doing that with a lot of other really capable and very smart people. It's a very cool job. I work with really amazing people, so I feel very lucky to have it, and so that's what I'm doing most of my days On the side. I'm a musician. I have been since I was 12. I started taking lessons and just completely fell in the hall of music and it's dictated so much of my life since then. I still practice regularly. I love it. I listen to music all the time with my son, and we're playing together a lot with drums and stuff. He's getting into it, which is really cool to see. So I do a lot of stuff with music on the side. I'm a session drummer. I record a lot of drum tracks for people. I'm collaborating with a few folks. My brother's a great musician, for example, and the process of doing a record together. And a good friend of mine, harry Griffin, i'm working with a lot. He's actually another guy who works at Google, a phenomenal musician. So we're doing some stuff together. So that keeps me pretty busy. And then, on this side, i also really love engineering. I fell in love with engineering late in life, so to speak. It wasn't something I went to college for, but I started to really get into it and I love it very much And that's been really feeding the curiosity part of me. You were talking about really getting into curiosity this year And so I'm actually back in school now, getting a bachelor's in computer science and for engineering. So these classes are so hard to and they're taking up a lot of time. It's been hard to keep up but there's this sort of independent reward I'm getting from that And it's been really fun to do it too. It's gotten me through COVID in a lot of ways, because I feel very busy. I feel I'm tired at the end of every day, but it feels like I'm tired in a good way, like it was a really fun day. I'm just worn out And so, yeah, that's what I'm all about and what I'm up to right now, and focusing on my family and on those things. And that's been the way it's been for a few years now.

That's really cool, sounds great. One thing that always struck me about you is just how you approach learning new things. When I was in Chicago, when we first met or perhaps another time, they had a little music room there and I remember you, harry and Doug all kind of jamming there And I guess I was just sitting around listening, which is great because I did a good job at that. But yeah, it was just super cool and just seeing how good you were at drumming. But you were still improving constantly And I remember you telling me how you actually hired a coach to teach you how to drum faster and better And I don't know exactly what those terms are for drumming.

First of all, thanks, man, i appreciate you saying that. And drums aren't interesting for me because I quote-unquote play a lot of instruments. I can play the bass a little bit, i play some guitar, i play piano, i'm an okay singer, but all those things really had this natural ceiling for me. I got okay at him, i got pretty good, but if I wanted to keep going further it would have taken quite a bit of effort.

And.

I almost understand the theory of him a little bit more than the performance aspect of it, whereas with drums I always felt, oh man, if I just throw a few more hours against this, there's more to dig there. You know what I mean. I can find more there, and that's just always been exciting to me for my whole life. I love the drums. I just love them. It just makes me so happy when I'm playing them, and so the idea of getting better at it, just to get better at it, it's completely joyful. It's exactly what I love to do. If I had a lot of spare time on my hands, i'd probably just sit around and do some lessons again and do work on a book and try and make some incremental progress. But anyways, yeah, that's just always been my instrument And I think I don't think everybody has the same instrument. My brother, again, great musician, and he plays a little bit of drums. He's kind of like that where he plays a lot of different things And he has that with the guitar. He's an incredible guitarist and he just he was great when he was 18. But he's better now and he's better now than he was three or four years ago. I think as you get older, you start to listen to things differently and you start to say, man, i just love the way that feels, i love the way that sits in the pocket and it's not flashy, it's just perfect. It's going from being a chef that has to use every crazy 21st century technique to make some far outmeal to being I'm going to make you the best sandwich you've ever had. You've had a million sandwiches, but this sandwich is just going to kick ass. And, man, i love someone who can take something. And it's a simple thing on its surface, but it's years and years of practice that turned it into this beautiful, marvelous thing. And that's how I'm trying to approach music. now. What do I really love to listen to And why do I like to listen to it? I love a lot of Motown music and a lot of stuff from stacks records like Otis Riding and Aretha Franklin recordings and things like that, and they're not hard tunes per se. If you were starting to play the piano or the drums or something like that a year or two into it, you should probably be able to noodle around on those tunes. They're not like classical compositions or anything like that, where they take years before you can even get there. But the reason they work so well is because they're beautifully simplistic and they're played perfectly with this gorgeous soul and collaboration between musicians and it almost feels like you're observing this moment in time And everyone was at that exact moment. Everyone was right together And they were playing together in this studio and they were making music and it's like you're lucky enough to just get to sit back and observe that And I love that stuff. And so now when I try to play, i try to approach it from that point of view, like what's the simplest, most beautiful way I could do this Instead of what's the thing that everyone's going to think this is the coolest on the internet, or something like that. So this is a really long answer to that thought, but I think about this a lot. I love music very much.

Thanks for sharing that. It's not just with the music, but with engineering. Right, it's a pretty daunting task to say I don't want to do sales anymore, i want to get into engineering, and so I'd love to have you share how you think about the idea or the concept of practice and improvement.

Yeah, okay, i would love to. So that was a big switch in my life, going from sales to engineering, and it wasn't something that the outside world was just going to let me do very easily. I couldn't just go knock on the engineering door and be like, hey, i like engineering, can I please do this? And they're like, well, no, you obviously can't. You don't have any of the requisite skills, you don't have a degree, you have no idea what you're doing. The stuff we're doing is very important and you're going to screw this up. We're not going to just let you do that. And I say all that because there were a lot of people who did help me. There were a lot of people who saw I was passionate about it and really helped me out in terms of building my skills, but in terms of the way that I approached it, i think a lot of people get into engineering because they see dollar signs in their eyes and they're like, oh, you're working out in California, new York or Chicago, wherever you're working, and that's a very highly paid position at a given company, especially a company like a tech company. So I want that because I want to make a lot of money And, honestly, if that's the reason you're doing it, it's probably a stupid reason because it's a really frustrating job. It takes a lot of brain power and a lot of work to sometimes do something very simple. In a lot of ways I feel a lot more drange at the end of a day than I did when I was doing sales because it can take a lot out of you. But as far as the approach to that, i think if you really fall in love with a lot of the cool aspects of it which is no one really thinks of engineering as the creative thing. They think it's very left brain like oh, it's a very math heavy thing to do And in a lot of ways it is You have to use a lot of logic. A lot of times there is a lot of math and counting and things like that. But the reason it was so cool to me and the reason it was worth the work was because You get to build stuff, you get to create things. You get to take what's in your brain. You're envisioning Okay, well, this is what it would look like at the end And you get to break that down into these little component parts and then you go start working on These little component parts and before you know it, you've built this thing. That's an amazingly rewarding thing. It feels similar to me to building a piece of music. So the way I approached it was first I had that kind of epiphany. I started to code very lightly And I was like this is awesome. I love that part of it. And I know that I am scraping the very tip of the iceberg here. So I started to practice. I was like, okay, i know what I can't do. So I started to watch some YouTube videos. I asked for a little bit of a harder project to work and I tried to work backwards and figure it out. And every time I got into Trouble with that, i would go and maybe ask a question here or there. A lot of times I embarrassed to say this, but a lot of times I just went on stack overflow or YouTube and I just Started to say, okay, what exactly is my question? And that's what I got better and better at. At first It was I didn't even know a question to ask. I was it doesn't work, i don't know why. But then I started to say, okay, but why doesn't it work? And once I got better at figuring out what question to ask. Suddenly, the internet was wide open to me And I would just ask these questions and people will hey, here's a 10 minute video of exactly what you're trying to do and you can see this concept. And I started to learn more concepts and Then I started to do a 20% project to work, which really meant I kept my normal job. But I went to an engineering team and I said, hey, i like this at some point in my life I don't know when, but I'd like to do this But you guys have any crappy throwaway work that you don't want to do and is not important. So that way, when I screw it up which I will things don't break and other people are pissed off. Right, is there anything like that out there? and I got really lucky because This team was like totally, we got stuff like that and this one guy in particular, tim Ashley, at work, totally mentored me, helped me out with several projects and that's how I started to learn how to do it at Google, which is a lot different even than learning Outside of Google, because Google has a lot of its own very unique systems. And at the same time, he was like look, you need a better Academic understanding of what's going on under the hood. And that's when I started to take classes. I was like I do need to start to understand the stuff better. And so I went back to school. And, dude, going back to school is not that hard anymore. I went back to a community college here to take calculus. Again, that was hard. I forgot how hard calculus is 10 years after you've seen calculus. But once I brush the rust off I Realized that, okay, a class at a community college, even an engineering class, was a couple hundred bucks. That's pretty attainable and Totally worth doing. And then I started to do on. Then I actually found Oregon State University does an online Bachelor's program in computer science for people who already have bachelor's degrees, so you don't have to do the electives and all that stuff again. I just started to fall in love with learning about this stuff and I started to read about it and I got really into it. And then You start to see what other people are doing with it and you start to appreciate the craft and like the art of it. And I remember feeling that with music too is when I started to play the drums. I'd listen to a song and be like, wow, that drummer like suddenly was I could hear differently, or something like that, and This sort of had that same effect. I started to see stupid apps online and be like man, that's really cool the way that they did that. So, anyways, long window way of saying I Kept getting deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. The hardest part was balancing that with the rest of my life. I was doing that while working full-time. Actually, my dad passed away while that was happening, which was really hard, but in a lot of ways, school gave me a little bit of an escape. I had to pay such strict attention because it was so Challenging. The material was that I didn't really have time to focus on other things And it was actually a bit of a good coping mechanism. Like I said, it's been great for cove it and I'm almost done now. I think I have four classes left and then I have a bachelor's in engineering and computer science. And it's just been one class at a time and doing more and more complicated stuff at work And now I feel very comfortable doing a lot of these things. So it was a very slow process and I think if you concentrate on how good you are at any given moment, it's it just it's very deflating. You're like I have been working on this for three years and I still don't know how to do this simple thing. But that's not really the way to look at it. What's the best way to eat an elephant? one bite at a time. And if you just really say, well, i don't have to be a great engineer tomorrow, i just have to show up, i just have to keep doing this and at some point I'm gonna get better, if you just trust that you're gonna get better. That's true of anything in life. You don't have to lose weight in a month, you just have to keep going to the gym and show up anything that you find in life where you're like okay, this is a really long, hard struggle and it's gonna take a while to show outcomes. Quit focusing on outcomes. Just do one thing over and over again and it's compound interest. It'll eventually just work out. Suddenly one day It'll be like, oh, this doesn't feel so hard anymore, and you'll swim past that breakwater and and I'm really glad I did it It's been one of the best things I've done in my life.

Very cool. Yeah, talk a little bit more about how you think about letting go of the outcome and just focusing on practice.

Yeah, you got to love practice. I think it's very anxiety inducing to look at an outcome and say I should have been an engineer by now, or I should be making this much money by now or anything that and I'm not. I think there's a lot of Failure feelings that come along with that. If you can take those and put those on a shelf and just say, man, i just really love spending this 20 minutes learning about this topic. If you start to actually mean that, like if you really find something where it's like I got 20 minutes to kill, i'm gonna watch a YouTube video on how they did this particular thing, and That's when things really start to unlock. And, to be clear, i don't feel like that about everything. There's a lot of stuff that I I don't care that deeply about. So I think I innately Found something in engineering or in drumming or whatever, where it was giving me that dopamine hit just by learning more about it. And if you find those things in life, pay attention, hold on to those things, even if they're just hobbies or whatever. Because if you fall in love with practicing anything, everything else just works out. Everything else is easy. There's actually a happiness response there. So I. I stopped measuring myself against the other great engineers. I knew I stopped Caring that this kid, who's 18 years old, could totally beat me in a hackathon. Figure this problem out in five minutes, when it took me three days. You can get super deflated like that, and I see that happen with people with music. All the time They're like, cool, i can play a song. And then they go and look up somebody on YouTube and they're like, oh my god, this guy's light years better than me and he's half my age. What, what am I even doing here? And when you start to say, look, that's not the point, it's you, you're trying to improve. And if you just stop and say, yeah, i just want to be a little bit better than Dan yesterday, i want to be a little bit more educated than Dan last year, that doesn't seem so scary anymore. You can do that. All you have to do is break it into really bite-sized chunks, and so I guess the short answer to that is find happiness in practice and That becomes a little bit of a habit. And then you start to realize when you don't do it, you start to be like man, i feel like I'm missing something from today. Oh, it's because I didn't sit and practice or do anything with my goals today. And go find 15 minutes. 15 minutes is not that hard to find, and Don't be afraid of only spending five to 15 minutes on something. I think people get a lot of failure out of that to like I'm gonna put an hour in every day And then they don't, and that's because putting an hour in every day is very difficult. Even with the best of intentions, you're probably taking that hour away from your spouse or from your kid, or even from your walk or from yourself or whatever. Five minutes is cool. Put in five minutes a day. It's so much better to just make a habit than it is to Say that you did this marathon for a long time. I read a really cool Jerry Seinfeld trick where he had a calendar and he said I'm going to write something every day and it doesn't have to be anything. It could fit on a post-it note, but if I do that, i'm going to have a big wall calendar on my wall. If I do that in a day, i'm going to put a big X through that day. If I don't, then I'm not going to put that big X there. Mind you, this is there's no app, there's no nothing. It's just a fricking wall calendar with a sharpie. He said then all I had to do is just not break the chain. He's like I just didn't break the chain. And so what made that work for him? He made the goal very achievable. It was write a joke on a post-it note. That takes 10 minutes. Especially if you're Jerry Seinfeld, you can probably whip that up very quickly. And not all the jokes are going to be good, they're not all going to be usable, but just write it. And if you do it, go put your X on the wall. And that's a very visual reminder of hey, i said I was going to do something and I made it really small and easy for myself to do it, and then I didn't do it. I'm going to go do that right now, and I thought that was just one of the coolest productivity tricks And I started to do that with practicing. It worked really well for me. So yeah, make it small, make it achievable and just keep doing it.

Yeah, that's great advice. It's actually something that came up in another episode I think it's episode 14 with Morgan Bricka, who I've had on the podcast three times. She's a professional mural artist And so obviously has put a lot of thought into practicing as well. She shared something which is basically the same idea. It's the habits that you want to be embodying, and just checkboxes. It's nothing fancy And you just put a check if you did the thing that you said you wanted to do, that you thought would support you And ultimately for her it ladders up into how she wants to feel. Yeah, for me, i have my meditation, affirmations, movement And it doesn't have to be that big of a deal, it doesn't have to be an hour long, it's did I do it? She has one that I took that is called Daily Greens. Did I eat something that's a vegetable or a salad? And if I did, i get a check. And then each night, when you go and you do these checks, then you see, oh, i haven't moved in a few days. Is that important to me? And if it is, then tomorrow maybe I'll do it so I can get my check. So I thought that was pretty cool.

I think it's so cool. First of all, you could do that with anything. I was just going to say. it doesn't have to be engineering or music. You could do that with a salad. I'm going to eat a salad every day. put an X if I do that. You could do that with saving, and everyone's always oh, you should be putting it beside X percent of your income. blah, blah, blah. That's achievable for some people and not for others. But you could take a buck out of your wallet and put it in a jar every day And, i think, making it so small that it's almost impossible not to achieve it if you just care about it, and then reminding yourself that you didn't do it. That's where the mindfulness part comes in. That's where the I'm not just floating around in a stream, getting bounced around by all these external stimuli. I have no control over what's going on. That's the check mark brings you to. the president says, hey, i made a promise to myself. did I do this or not? And how hard is it to really go? do that right now. And that's, i think, why the system works. It has to be really achievable and it has to be very simple. And the other thing I read about with this too, is that then some people start to beat themselves up when they don't get the check mark, because every so often you don't, and that's completely fine. It's not important whether you got a check mark on June 6th, it's not going to matter. What's important is whether or not by June 8th, you got another check. So you fall off the horse. everybody does, and that's completely cool. Don't beat yourself up, but tomorrow's another day. Just do it tomorrow. And if you don't do it tomorrow, do it the next day, but don't stop doing it for four months. Then there's something different going on, and I think that's a really good way to to turn small things into habits, and habits are really what. where you ended getting outcomes anyway, it's from really small work over a really long period of time. So, yeah, i love that she's using that system too. I think that's really cool.

I also love that it's on paper.

We both work in tech, and so it feels there should be a tech answer to everything. But should there?

Not necessarily Yeah.

I think it's cool to just be able to do that.

Yeah, it's been great. Honestly, i've fallen off the wagon with it a little bit, but when I had it next to where I brushed my teeth also known as the sink when I put it there, it's just I go there, i plug in my phone and then I check, check. It's one of those things that, as you said, you don't have to get a check every day and it's not that big of a deal that I didn't keep doing this. I can just start again, just like when you're meditating, your mind wanders, you can start again. You don't meditate one day or for a week. You can always just start again. And that is something that's been really challenging for me to remember and also really liberating when I actually do remember it, because I tend to make things into a much bigger deal than they need to be. Like I want to start a podcast. Okay, i have no idea about podcasting, nothing Zero. Then I was like, oh, does it need to be a blog and a podcast? What should be called? It's like a million things. And then at some point, my friend was like I think you're over complicating this. And I'm like, yeah, i am. And so then I was like okay, i'm just going to invite someone to the podcast. So I asked someone, a friendly that was going to say yes, and then I did it. I had it recorded. And then a friend I met at Google through meditation. He was like wait a second, you're telling me you already have it recorded and you haven't put it out. Just put it out, just get it out there. And I did. And that one action was the thing that created all of this momentum. And sure I have a long way to go. Just taking step after step, just little by little, has really helped and resulted in a good amount of progress. I have a podcast. I've had 2000 plus downloads, maybe 2200 downloads, since I launched the podcast And that feels pretty good And people have told me that it is really helpful for them. So that's been great.

It's so cool. That's exactly the thing I was talking about before, because, dude, all you did, you just jumped into the pool, and that's the hardest part about swimming, right It's? ah, i got to jump into this cold swimming pool. And it's what you did, And you did that, And now it's. I don't know what it is to be a podcaster or a blogger or have a great podcast, but I can go make one more episode And once the cost of making one more episode goes down, before you know it, dude, you're going to have 100 episodes and you're going to listen to an episode 100 and you're back. Man, that feels a lot better than episode number one did. But it's not because you sat and practiced or something, at least not deliberately. You just kept the habit. You kept doing it over and over again. You didn't give up and you started to develop the craft. I think it's the coolest thing. Everybody always says I want to start a podcast, but you actually started a podcast and that's the difference. You actually ended up going and doing it And I think that's very amorable. It's really neat.

I appreciate it, dude. Let's talk a little bit more about this topic of deliberate practice.

And practice thing is cool because I actually I love practicing. Just the act of practicing to me is very simple thing to do. If I had a lot of free time I would love to just be sitting outside with a practice pad for drums and just doing some exercises or doing yoga or doing anything that's kind of repetitive but gets you into that sound. That's very much where my happy place is, and I'm realizing that about my meditation too, that the more I do it, the more I'm triggering that same feeling that I get when I'm doing those other sort of practice exercises, and it's a very good state of mind for me. I feel very calm, i feel the world can just wash over me, i can just take it as it comes. It's definitely where my best self lies. I think most of my life it's been this struggle of having a lot to do and wanting to really go and maybe achieve something, or try to go and accomplish something or learn something or really try to work hard and do that stuff. And that sort of pulls counter to the thing I was just talking about, which is it's okay to hone a craft over a very long time or hone yourself over a very long period of time and just do the same thing and don't worry about progress. Progress really doesn't matter, it's much more. Progress is almost an effect And it's a nice thing that happened from generating really good habits, and so that's always been a dichotomy in my life, because on one side I want to be going and doing all the time, and on another side I'm happiest when I'm just sitting and being, and so that's always been a bit of a balancing act for me. Did you know what I'm saying with that? Does that ever cross your mind too?

Absolutely. It resonates a lot. What you were talking about is spot on. There's so much striving in the world And I don't know if it's people like us, but certainly people that work at Google are striving constantly. But I feel like everyone is doing that to some degree And it's just this focus on outcomes that I think is really detrimental to actually going where you want to go, because if you're feeling you're not where you should be, then you have a sense of lack, a sense of scarcity, and then you're acting from that place As opposed to operating from a grateful place or just a curiosity. And so, for me, i've really been trying to cultivate a mindset of curiosity, of practice and of ease this year. Those are the things that I tell myself in my affirmation practice that I do when I actually do it, and that makes a huge difference. It's a totally different feeling. I think about that all the time. Honestly, it's so important and so easy to forget, especially when you're trying to do things and learn things.

Yeah, no, i know It's because it's not the way that things are really set up. No one's giving you pets on the back for that. It's much more set up for outcomes and for the things we were just talking about. Yeah, and I actually really love the financial independence part of that because I feel okay. So for the audience, i live now basically in Silicon Valley. That's where I work. I've lived here for about four or five years now And I'm from Chicago originally, as Adam mentioned, born and raised in that area And so moving out here. There's a real difference in people's goals and the way that they look at their lives and things like that. Silicon Valley is very competitive. I feel there's a lot of focus on how much money people make or what position they are at a company, or whether they're achieving these life goals and all this kind of stuff. Some of that's healthy. I don't think people are malicious or bad or anything like that. There's a lot of people out here that just view the world that way. Okay, i'm going to go out and give it my best shot, and that's what it means to give it my best shot. But to bring that back to my original point, it's cool that, instead of talking about how you can get your next billion users or make your next billion dollars or whatever, i feel that's where the talk always comes from out here. So how do I go from basically okay to completely rich overnight? by the way, i want to do that in my 30s. I don't want to be rich in my 60s. I need to be rich now, tomorrow And sure. If that's really what you want to do, i'm totally cool with that. If that's really how you want to orchestrate your life. There's a stress factor that comes with not having enough money And I've been there in various parts of my life, not just personally some stuff with my family too And there's a very real stress response that comes from that And quelling that and achieving financial independence. So you don't have that anymore. There's a freedom to that And it doesn't actually take a lot of money to get there. You can do that with a day job. You can do that in a lot of different ways, but I like that. It's not like, hey, here's how to get rich. It's like, hey, here's how to make this not such a big deal in your life anymore, so you can focus on things that, in my opinion, really do matter Being present with your family or learning new things or bettering yourself or bettering your health And it's a cool approach. And it's neat that you combine that with mindfulness, i think, because I do think they're related.

Yeah, absolutely. I think Silicon Valley is America on steroids with regards to striving and chasing money and chasing status and whatever. And again, it's not a bad thing necessarily, but it is exhausting. I think the question that financial independence really points at is what is enough? What is enough to lead a life that is sustainable, comfortable, meaningful And honestly I'll be completely honest I struggle with what is enough Because I'm very fortunate both of us are very fortunate to work for a great company, make great income, have all the basics covered. But what is enough? And how do you recognize that when you have it in a world that's constantly saying that more and different is better?

Well, and that's the thing that links this to mindfulness, because if you let other people define what enough is, then you'll always be on that treadmill, because it's another people's best interest to always make you feel you don't have enough. That's where all of advertising comes from, whereas if you sit and ask yourself hard questions, okay, when would I be good, when would I be able to stop? What would be enough for me to maybe change the direction of my life? Is money stopping me from changing the direction of my life? Those are really scary questions. It's a lot easier to just wake up and go to work the next day than it is to sit and say am I doing this because I want to or am I doing this because I have to? And that's where the mindfulness thing comes in. I think that's where, if you stop and you quiet your mind a bit and you start to observe where your thoughts tend to go. That's something I was saying before. I've been doing Adam's gut and meditations and I think they're amazing, i started to notice when my mind wanders, there tends to be a theme and some of its recency. Oh, this is something that came up today at work, or this is something that came up in one of my classes or whatever, and some of it is very deep seated. I tend to go back to certain hard parts in my life or stuff like that And I think, just noticing that and saying that's cool, let your mind go there And realizing that's a theme, it gives you a place to start focusing, you start to realize what actually is affecting you or bothering you or giving you a lot of anxiety or anything like that. I know in certain times in my life I think some of that was around financial independence. So that makes a lot of sense. Where you stop you, quiet your mind, you start to realize what exactly about money is stressing you out. There's probably a fear component there And maybe there's a self-doubt or self-achievement kind of component, like, oh, i thought by the time I was this age, i would have this much saved up or be able to do these things, and I can't And so I'm a failure or something like that. And you start to realize that. You get to define that. You get to say, hey, this is my life and these are my thresholds. If I want to stay right about here, that's completely fine, as long as I'm paying for myself and giving myself and my family the life that we want. Anyways, yeah, i do think they're very linked. I think it's very thoughtfully linked in this podcast and it's not a get rich quick kind of thing. How do you alleviate the stress that comes from financial stuff?

Yeah, absolutely. It's certainly not get rich quick. It's been described as get rich slowly. It's all about awareness and choice. I think those are the concepts that really link mindfulness and financial independence, because without awareness, you don't know how much money you have, how much money you're spending, how much money your life costs And even where you want to go. Getting to the mindfulness and the just self awareness, really, what do I want my life to look like? Have you stopped and thought about that? And again, what is enough? You were describing it in money terms, but back to what we were talking about before and what we'll get into more. This idea of striving right. It's not just about getting rich, it's not about having enough money. It's also about did I do enough today? Am I far enough in my career? Do I have enough friends in good relationships? Am I enough? Do I feel content with who I am and how I'm living? In my mind, i've felt it like oh, if only this, then I'll be happy. And mindfulness really allows you to turn down the volume and everything else so that you can start to see the themes that come up over and over again. Right now, i am absolutely caught up in this idea of building a casita in my backyard with a skate park. I want to build a thousand square foot skate park, slash office, slash meditation thing. And my wife is like you are out of your freaking mind, you are not building that in my backyard. It's ridiculous. But I literally can't stop thinking about it. It's bad.

You know, I thought it wouldn't be ridiculous if that's what everybody did. And that's the funny thing is it's really not that ridiculous. You own the land and you can totally go and turn that into something. Those are activities that you enjoy and you're going to hang out with Carter and do that kind of stuff. You could argue there's a lot of value there.

I co-own the land and there's a constituent that isn't fully on board yet.

So it can be some politicking.

That's for sure. But anyways, again, I've been thinking about it so much It's out of control.

Wait, sorry man. Can we talk about that for a second? What is it coming for? Where did that originate? I love that.

Yeah, so honestly, it's been a dream of mine for my whole life honestly Not necessarily this specific incarnation, but so I used to be very into inline skating aggressive inline skating. I would do tricks and I would grind and I would flip and I would spin and all this stuff And I was super into it. When we were kids, skateboarding and skating and biking were all deranged. I was super into it and I actually went to this camp called Camp Woodward and it's the premier action sports facility in the world. It's amazing. I'm actually owned by a company that owns a bunch of snowboarding mountains and things like that, now Putting it out there that I'm going to be getting in touch with them and creating a mindfulness program for them, so I'm putting that out there as well. This is all swirling in my head, but, long story short, i would go there and it was always my dream to make my own Camp Woodward, mostly because I wanted to design my own skate park. Tony Hawks Pro Skater had a way where you could design your own skate park in the game back in PlayStation 2 days and I was like this is the best. So, long story short, i always wanted to design my own Camp Woodward and that's where the entrepreneurial spark came from for me to eventually do that, and so it's all tied up And then. So now I love mindfulness and I want to lead workshops and retreats and all of this, and so it's all coming together. My other related dream is to design and build my own house, because I wanted to be an architect. Actually, when I was in high school I took drafting and I got very interested in it and I wanted to be an architect. And then I actually started college as an architecture major and then very quickly realized this is so hard and I don't necessarily want to do this full time for a career, and thank God that I did make that decision. It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make because it was my dream. But again, striving, it was always like, okay, i'll get rich and then I will become an architect and design and build my own house, and so that was always there, and so I constantly visualize what I want that house to look like. And the crazy thing is I'm all about envisioning. I've been talking about a lot on the podcast recently. I'm going to be creating a workshop about it. I'm feeling very called to create a workshop about envisioning, and I told you I could talk about this all day.

Oh, I think he's fascinating.

So I have this visual in my head of what the great room is. I'll skip all the details, but the wild thing is that I essentially envisioned that house and then this house is that house? Wow, the house that we bought in November after moving to New Jersey is so similar. It has this sunroom that has a peak roof and some beams across, and then windows and sliding glass doors on all sides that go out to a deck, and it's better than I even imagined. But I didn't even have to build it, i just walked in. I bought it and walked in. It's wild. So the other thing is I've gotten back into skating.

So is it hard to pick it back up?

Is it like riding a bike where you could just get right back at it, or More or less honestly, i haven't done it in like 15 years at least, and so I was thinking about it for a long time. I listened to this talk with this woman, kelly McGonagall. She's a Stanford professor. I heard her on the 10% happier podcast and she was talking about if you want to exercise, do something you'll actually have fun with, and she's like a great way to figure that out is think about what you had fun doing as a kid. That was exercise, and I was like, huh, i used to love skating. Maybe I can get back into skating. And then I'm like I don't know, i could hurt myself. I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on skates. Obviously, i've escalated now that I want to build a skate park in the backyard.

I love that.

Exactly, it's escalated. So, basically, when I was like, all right, i'm ready to do it, i'm going to get the skates, i'm looking at it, and then Google was like, how I would you like $500 of well-being money? And I'm like, all right, i'm buying the skates today. And so I got the top of the line skates, the best ones, and they're $330. Come on, not that much money. And yeah, i just went out to the skate park. I got back out there and started doing it And I absolutely tore the ass of my pants the other day And I'm the oldest person there, for sure. But there are a lot of people that are getting back into it And Instagram is filled like there's this guy called back to blading And he basically is just a 35 year old man like me just skating again. It's hilarious, but it's been super fun. I'm like padded up like crazy dude. I got the wrist guards, i got the ass guards, i got the knee pads, i got the elbow pads, i got the helmet.

Yeah seems at least a helmet.

I'm feeling like we're off the rails, which is fine, i'm loving it, all right. So it will happen at some point. Somehow I might have to buy a different piece of land, but you know, we'll see Be creative about it. Yeah, it'll happen. This is the last thing I'll say. Also, I don't want to pay for it. I want someone else to pay for it. Yeah of course.

Right, yeah, i wouldn't say, of course.

So have sponsors. I'm going to get in touch with Woodward. There's this company that builds ramp kits. I think there's a lot of opportunity, maybe making it like a YouTube show. There's all those house building shows, like tiny house building and various things. I feel like there could be a show where people build their dream man cave or she shed or whatever you know, and mine just happens to have a skate park in it. Other people might have a trampoline in it or whatever.

Dude, if you've got the ambition to basically record and produce that while it's happening, I guarantee people would watch that on YouTube. It's exactly like what you said. there's huge communities of people who love that stuff And I feel this is the cool part about living in 2021. It's not nearly as unattainable like you had to probably be super rich to be able to do something like that back in the 90s or something. Now not so much. There's a lot of like Hey, here's the skills you need to build this thing. Go watch a few videos. There's way more entry level tools and classes and all that stuff. And there actually is this community around all that DIY stuff. I do a little bit of woodworking and I see it all over the place. People just love sharing that knowledge for free And it's really inspiring. Dude, yeah, if you had the wherewithal to record that while it was happening. I feel there's a total angle there.

Yeah, that's just percolating right. I don't know how it's going to happen or what it's going to look like or any of that, but it's going to happen. It may not be in the backyard, but it's going to happen somehow.

Yeah that's really cool, man. Man, i completely get where you're coming from. On everything you decide, you're a very creative person, it's obvious, and I think there's this sort of innate desire to make and build and shape and create, and I can completely understand that. I mean dude. In a way, i did the same thing When I was in high school. I wanted to be a session drummer, which is basically a drummer for hire. You can just walk into a studio, you lay down tracks. That was what I wanted to do with my life And then, at the same time, i started to get into recording, because I realized that if I wanted to be a session drummer, i needed to start practicing making good recordings, and that's different than practicing just being a good drummer. There's different techniques used to come out good on a record than a live performance. So the next step then is I got to go and start recording, but going to a studio was expensive and impossible. Basically, i could do it here and there. Maybe the cheapest one was $40 an hour. Back then I could maybe afford to do it once if me and my friends split it for four or six hours, but it wasn't something I could practice every day, and I was practicing every day and I was like man, if I could just start recording here, then I could hear myself and then I could get better at that. Anyways, life went on. I poked around at being a sound engineer in college. I took a lot of classes and I still love it. I do it many, many days in a year. I like to sit in the studio. It's like really a good happy place for me. I got an internship at a studio, started to realize people there felt, you know, pretty miserable is a lot of binge drinking, and this is me in my 20s, so I wasn't a stranger to binge drinking. But these are like people in their 40s and they're like 50s and it was they. Just they do a session and they go get loaded. It was depressing, a little bit like they had families and it was just real screwed up. The studio was incredible. I just wanted to live and sleep in this recording studio. That was the coolest place on earth, but it was like man. I don't know if I really want to do this for a living. I've seen a lot of red flags and a lot of that actually came down to money. People were really competitive because they were trying to get these sessions and like, basically get by maybe not living paycheck to paycheck, but close. So there's a lot of stress around it. It was very competitive. There wasn't this collaboration like, hey, let me come hang out in your studio and we can do this together. It was back off my client, that mentality. It was much more hostile than I originally thought it was going to be. I always thought of music as this beautiful collaborative thing And the way it relates to your story is. I was like, okay, maybe this isn't the right thing to do, but I really love recording and I love playing and I went a whole lot of that somehow. And the room I'm sitting in right now. We eventually got this house. It took a long time, but here we are. We have a house now and there was all this empty space and we bought it and we were going to put a window in there and turn it into a bedroom And for one reason or another, we couldn't put a window in there And it was like what if this was the studio? It's actually perfect for a studio. You don't want windows, you want a solid room. So this ended up being the studio, first of all. It's where I'm doing this, but I try not to even do real work in here. I come in here to be creative. It's like I go into a different part of my brain and it's the best. I walk in here and this is where I start to pick up a guitar and goof around. I'm not a good guitar player or a very good pianist or anything like that. but I feel like I could just come in here and start to make stuff And it's a great feeling. I have my drums in here, i flip a few switches, i can start to just lay something down, and that's actually turned into a really good tool with COVID, because I couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't go and play with people. There was nothing else that I could have used to do that. but I can relate to that. I took a really roundabout way to get to making this studio. My wife and I both. I mean she was completely on board and helped me out with it the whole time. She loves it in here too. But it doesn't have to be this straight, narrow path. I'm going to go be an architect, i'm going to go make my dream house and then I'm going to go and build this thing and blah, blah, blah. That's the obvious path and sometimes that works out. but I love that you held onto that and you bring that back around, because life is a weird path. It's just not a straight line. I think the fact that you're still thinking about it so hard is very. I think it's deep seated and it's really cool.

Yeah, it is interesting. That's an amazing story. I appreciate you sharing that because it's envisioning right. You had this idea that you wanted to have a studio, or you wanted to be in the studio and build that skill of recording music. And speaking again about outcomes, You didn't say it's got to look exactly like this and it's got to be in this timeframe and all of that. You just had the belief that it was going to happen somehow, some way, and you just put it out there and then, because it's in your mind, you start to notice when opportunities present themselves to make that a reality and it just starts to fall into place. I feel often that maybe I'm pulling together disparate things like maybe aren't even related. Financial independence and mindfulness I think they are related, but now I'm like how does rollerblading fit in? It doesn't.

If I had to define what a creative person was, it's not oh, you output creative things. It's that you take disparate things and you put them together, things that aren't obvious. you hook them up in a way that when people look at them, oh I guess that is kind of obvious. That's really cool Bare bones. I think that's what creativity is. I think you're a very creative person and I think mindfulness actually unlocks a lot of that creativity. It's hard to be creative when your mind is just going so many directions at the same time.

Yeah, that's true. That's so cool that major studio happened. And also, before I forget, i have several friends that are sound engineers for Dolby in SF some of our best friends from San Francisco that we would hang out with all the time just absolute lunatics. So I would love to introduce you sometime when COVID is all over.

Dude, i would love that man. I'm a huge fan of Dolby. They're incredible What they do there. it would be cool just to hang out and wrap.

Absolutely Yeah, so wanted to get that in there before we move on. All right, so let's switch gears now into what I call the mindful fire, final four, and the first question is is there any advice that you'd give to people who maybe are a little bit overwhelmed by starting something? Specifically, you mentioned breaking it down into small chunks. Well, how do you do that? Let's talk about a specific example.

Yeah, okay, i actually love this topic because I think everybody always says, oh, you work for Google, so it's easy for you to go do stuff on the side, or something like that. First of all, not necessarily true, it's a very demanding job, but let's say it was true. Okay, and in a lot of ways it is, i feel, very fortunate for the circumstances. Now, my first job out of college, i was working at this ad agency and they were like really on my ass and all this kind of stuff. But I knew I really wanted to practice, i wanted to get better at drums, and so what I ended up doing was okay, where's my one point in the day to practice? And it was during lunch And I was like what's the minimal amount of stuff that I need to make progress at all? So I grabbed a practice pad and a couple of sticks and I left them in my drawer at the office And at lunchtime I would sneak out and go and sit outside where I wasn't bothering anyone. I would go to this parking garage and that's where I would go and do that. And I would do that every day. And it was lunchtime And I got 20 minutes to do that because I still had to eat some lunch too, so I'd eat a sandwich on the way to the parking garage. I'd put the practice pad down and I'd sit in the parking garage and I'd do my rudiments or do whatever it was I was trying to practice.

And I'd go back and keep working.

And the reason I'm telling that story is because if I had thought of oh, i want to be a better drummer, where am I going to find three hours to sit at a drum set and do that? I basically would have never been able to do it. But when I talk about breaking things down to very small things, find the very smallest thing you could possibly do. That's going to give you a little bit of progress. And when I say small, i mean that in terms of time. So what could you do for 10 minutes? that's going to take you just a little bit further, and this could be for anything. It could be for something like music or engineering. It could be for your health. So what's the thing you could do in 10 minutes that's going to make you just a little bit healthier? Maybe that's honestly just going for a walk. I know a lot of people are very slammed and very overwhelmed and they want to better themselves. Find the one time in your day when maybe you can take five or 10 minutes and go walk your lap and then come back inside. Do that once a day And before you know it, you'll start to feel a little bit better And maybe that'll turn into a jog And maybe then you'll start to keep jogging pants and stuff at work and you can throw 15 minutes at it or something like that. I think the idea is break it down into very small pieces. With engineering, i had a list of YouTube videos, so even if I had five minutes when I was waiting in line somewhere, i wouldn't be like, oh, what's going on Instagram? or I'm going to open my news. I would just open that. You already put this together, hit, play and just watch it. That putting a lot of pre-work into it, so that when you have the time, you don't waste 30 seconds of that time, you can just execute. And that takes some prep from the night before, from the week before, whatever, like you have to have your, maybe you have to have your exercise clothes at work so that when you have that brief moment of time that you can actually go take a walk, everything's ready to go and you can just go do it. For me, it was having that drumming practice pad at work, and so I have 20 minutes. I'm eating my sandwich on my way out there and I'm just grabbing this thing And I'm just executing. I'm not even thinking about it If you could just put yourself in a good spot to go and execute when you have a little bit of time. Those improvements end up being pretty massive if you do them for a while. So I think that's the best advice I could give is break it down into very small chunks and make it achievable and put yourself in a good position to achieve it.

Absolutely Yeah. it's really about building it in, tying it to something that you're already doing. You're already eating lunch. It sounded like it was at the same time every day, but either way, you got to eat lunch, yeah. the more you can build it in, i think it's really important to actually stick to it.

You know it's worth reading too. I love to read, and a lot of times people always say that I love to read, but I never have any time to read a book. I would just take a book with me to lunch. This is after I was doing this practice pad thing, but a lot of times I'd do that. If I had to study something, i'd be like no, just take your book with you and leave your phone at the desk. Take your book with you and you're not going to have anything else to do except read that book, and that's the hack, right? Like you're saying, i'm not a good enough human that, if I have all this distraction, i'm just going to block it out and do the right thing. So don't put yourself in that position. Just put yourself in a position where I'm bored. What can I do? Open that book that's right next to you because you have nothing else to do. So I try to do that with a lot of stuff. I think that's a really good way to build in better habits in your life, and I try to be aware when I'm not doing that, and that's where I think mindfulness stuff really comes in. By the way, I'm not perfect at any of this. I'm not trying to preach from the hilltop, but I'm not going to preach from the hilltop But when I've done it, that's the stuff that's really worked.

Yeah, absolutely All right. The second question is what piece of advice would you give to someone early on their path to financial independence?

I think that actually you can do a lot with a little. When I think about financial independence, i think about when I really didn't have a lot of money and I really didn't even have much of a safety net with family or anything like that, and so I had to be pretty careful And I think I would say avoid credit cards almost entirely. I know that's maybe controversial to say, because some people are like, well, that's maybe a good time to start building credit, and there's probably arguments to be made for both ways. I got into a decent amount of credit card debt that I had to pay down, and it was mostly just because I needed to go and eat or groceries or whatever, and I understand that sometimes that's unavoidable and that's okay too. But if you can live on cash, i think it's a decent way to be very mindful of your spending. And actually, when I say live on cash, i mean pull cash out of an ATM and spend it as cash, because it hurts a lot more when you're doing that And so you don't necessarily buy stuff you don't need or anything like that. It feels different than a digital transaction. Learn how to cook I think that's a really easy thing that people don't do. When I was a graduate assistant, i was making like 12 grand a year And my rent was like 550 bucks a month, and so I had $500 a month basically to spend. But I was living in Champaign, illinois, where things were pretty cheap and you could get by on that, and one of the best things that I learned how to do was make a decent sandwich, make a good salad. You don't have to buy cheap food, you just have to buy ingredients, and actually ingredients are pretty cheap. If you don't buy things pre-prepared, you save yourself a lot of money because you can make things go very far. And so learn how to cook. It doesn't have to be like Gordon Ramsay, learn how to cook, but learn how to make a salad, because those are really good for you. Learn how to make a sandwich, learn how to make some pasta, learn how to make proteins, like how to make a burger or chicken like in a basic frying pan, and you'll save yourself a crazy amount of money And it's a lot better for your health typically if you do it right. So I think that and finally, i'd say, if you can at all, try to save a very small amount, because you'll get addicted to growth that you'll start to see in an account or even in a cookie jar or whatever, and it'll start to feel like an achievement. And honestly, if you can make it a visual thing, like you start to actually see dollar bills like wadding up in a cookie jar, i think that's actually pretty motivating in and of itself. It doesn't have to be a lot of money And I think people get really hooked on what percentage of their income they're supposed to be saving and all that stuff. Take a few bucks in a day like out of your wallet and put it somewhere else And if you really need that money, go grab it and don't hate yourself for doing it. But you'll start to do that and then it'll start to feel good when you do it and you'll perpetuate it And pretty soon it'll be like a few hundred bucks in a paycheck or a few thousand bucks from like a yearly bonus or whatever, and that'll really start to make a difference. So that would be the advice I would give.

Excellent. The third question is what piece of advice would you give to someone getting started with meditation and or mindfulness?

I would say start with a guided meditation. I think the thing that stops people from doing it is they don't really know whether or not they're meditating when they're meditating. I've said this before to you I love your guided meditations. They're short and like. You can do this in 10 minutes. It doesn't have to be like I sat in the woods for an hour and found God. You can sit in a chair for 10 minutes. I used to meditate on the train going back and forth and I just had headphones in and I got my guided meditation out And it made the train ride go by a lot faster. I was on the L in Chicago like jammed in like a sardine, but you just have to be by yourself and like holding onto a pole and you can actually meditate that way. So I would start with a guided meditation And then, once you've gotten to like your 10th or 20th time, try doing it for 10 minutes by yourself in a room and see how that goes. And I actually really like singing bowls too. So sometimes people, i think, who are very kinetic, almost like you want something in your hands or something like that. There's a lot of cool meditation aids for people like that too. So that'd be the advice I'd say start with a guided one and keep it short and you'll just start to really like awesome.

Thanks for sharing that. And yeah, of course you can find my guided meditations wherever you're listening to this, on your podcast player or at mindfulfireorg slash meditations. And the last question, Dan, is where can people connect with you online and find out more about your music and what you're working on?

Yeah, i should take a page out of your playbook and probably get better. I have many songs that are sitting on hard drives and not out there, which is a little bit of a shortcoming of mine, but I just put something out that I am pretty proud of, i think, essentially Spotify Arnis link. There's not a lot on Spotify right now, but there's some of the stuff I've done with Harry on there. There's a news tune I just put out that I did myself. Harry and I are coming out with an EP pretty soon, so that's going to be on there. So, yeah, follow me on Spotify and you'll start to see stuff appear as I get over that. So that's probably the best way to do it in a career kind of stuff or anything else. I'm on LinkedIn. That's something I keep up to date and check. So hit me up, have to talk.

Sounds great. Yeah, i'll link those in the show notes. But if you want to go directly to Dan's page on Spotify, you can go to mindfulfireorg. slash Dan and that will point you directly to Spotify. And also, i'd love the new song man. That was super cool And I want to listen to the stuff you've done with Harry as well.

Thanks a lot.

man Appreciate it All right. Thank you so much, dan, for joining me on the podcast today. It's been a pleasure to connect with you and we really covered a lot of interesting ground today, So thanks for being here.

Yeah, thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun. Appreciate it.

Thanks for joining me on today's episode of the Mindful Fire podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, i invite you to hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this. This just lets the platforms know you're getting value from the episodes and you want to be here when I release additional content. If you're ready to start your Mindful Fire journey, go to mindfulfireorg slash start and download my free envisioning guide In just 10 minutes. this guide will help you craft a clear and inspiring vision for your life. Again, you can download it for free at mindfulfireorg slash start. Thanks again and I'll catch you next time on the Mindful Fire podcast.