Ep. 495 - The Brass Tacks on Family

In tonight’s show, we're talking "Family."  We’re going to cover a bunch of questions and topics from the audience who are interested in what I have to say regarding the topic of “Family.” Questions and topics such as:

• What is a Family?
• Boundaries
• Death and Dying
• Family Dynamics
• Aging Parents
• Where to find family if you don’t have one?
• How to keep the art of conversation alive in families in the age of technology?
• My family sucks, so now what?
• My own personal love life...with Valentine’s Day last week
  • How close have I been to being married?
  • Do I prefer to walk alone?
• And MORE! 

(Live stream originally aired Sunday, 02/19/2023 - 7:30pm EST)

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Discussion Links:

Goal Setting Guide:  www.48dayseagles.com/get-goal-setting-workbook

Liberty All Day – Walking the path to liberty: libertyallday.home.blog

Food Forest Farms:  foodforestfarms.com

The LOTS Project:  thelotsproject.com

All Around Growth Telegram Group:  https://t.me/allaroundgrowth

11 Synonyms of INS AND OUTS | Merriam-Webster Thesaurus:  www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/ins%20and%20outs

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:06

Alright, well, hi there, and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Girl Podcast. My name is Rob Kaiser, and I am your host. In tonight's show, I'm gonna share my thoughts with you about the uh you know the ins and outs of family, the brass tacks on family. We're gonna cover a bunch of questions and topics from the audience, um, people who are interested in what I have to say regarding the topic of family. We're gonna talk about questions and topics such as what is family, boundaries, death and dying, family dynamics, aging parents, where to find a family if you don't have one, uh, how to keep the art of conversation alive in families in the age of technology. Questions like, my family sucks, so now what? And ultimately, we're gonna talk about my own personal love life. With Valentine's Day last week, there was some interest in this question, and people want to know how close I've been to being married, and uh if I prefer to walk alone. Besides all that, we're gonna talk about a lot more, but before we get into that, I would like to welcome anybody who is new to the show. For those of you who are new to the show, this is a show that has changed a great deal since its inception, uh, which started back in September of 2020. And in its current form, um, this is a show that discusses seven different aspects of life that we must strive to balance, right? We got to find balance in these seven areas of life in order to achieve true happiness, basically living a life of all-around growth. And those seven aspects of life are financial, physical, personal development, family, spiritual, social, and career. And the basis of this show or the framework of the show comes from the goal setting workbook by Dan Miller, which is available for free. And I've linked to it below in the show notes. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with Dan Miller, I'll go I'll go ahead and share how he describes himself. And he writes uh that that Dan Miller is um, I'll just read this in the in the in the in the third person so it doesn't sound so weird because I'm not Dan Miller describing myself, but in his bio, he writes that he specializes in creative thinking for increased personal and business success. And um he believes that meaningful work blends our natural skills and abilities, our unique personality traits, and our dreams and passions. He is active in helping individuals redirect their careers, evaluate new income sources, and achieve balanced living through his writing, coaching, speaking, and the 48 Days Eagles community. He also believes that a clear sense of direction can help us become all that God designed us to be.com. Um, like I said, everybody who's contributed something to the show has been linked to in the description below. I've also linked to Letty's work um at libertyallday.home.blog. Just check the description below, check everyone else or check everyone, check out the work that everyone is doing, show them some love because they help make this show what it is. And if you want to get to know the people, if you want to get to know Sean, you want to get to know Letty, you want to get to know Brian, you want to get to know um, you know, both Brian's actually, then come join us on Telegram at t.me slash allaround growth. And that is a community on Telegram that's been created for the listeners of the podcast to serve as a platform for people who are interested in the things that we talk about here, which is largely personal growth and development, centered around these seven topics. And we don't talk simply all about that, we talk about that and a lot more, and that place on Telegram, along with all other social media, serves as a great place to connect with other people of like mind and share experiences and interact with one another, and just you know, have a good solid community of people who are on the same page where we're not talking about a lot of other stuff that you might find elsewhere within social media. So I'm very grateful to the audience that is out there. I'm grateful for all the support that I get in doing this show and and creating this work. And I would also like to thank all of the new podcast subscribers and everyone who subscribes to the YouTube channel, especially my cousin Dave, who lives outside Houston. What's up, cuz? Um, and uh it's it's it's really cool to see some family tuning in, really cool to see some new people joining. Uh, and and just you know, if you like what you hear, please consider subscribing to the channel, hitting the notification bell, sharing it on social media, leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and ultimately joining us on social media, including but certainly not limited to Telegram. All of the information on the podcast and how to do all of that stuff is in the description below and in the show notes for those of you who are listening to the podcast itself in audio format, and links to everything, all podcast players, are available below. So just check it out and you know, enjoy the podcast, enjoy the show. But with all that said, let's get into the show itself tonight. All right, so why this title? Why are we talking about the brass tax on family? Well, initially, um, I wanted to title the show My Thoughts on the Ins and Outs of Family, but and actually you may have seen before I tried to change it around, and I think I did so successfully, but I initially created the cover art for the show with the title My Thoughts on the Ins and Outs of Family. But I don't know, that seemed a little weird and not really appropriate, not not that much of an attention getter. So I looked up some synonyms of ins and outs, and I read that uh 11 different synonyms for ins and outs are mechanics, ropes, workings, brass tacks, nuts and bolts, incidentals, minutiae, particulars, quirks, and details. And you know, a lot of people will say, let's get down to brass tacks, right? And brass tacks is a term that many people are familiar with, so I ran with it. And um, like I said, this show is going to cover feedback from the audience, and to simplify the show, what I'm going to do is simply scroll through the comments on Telegram. And the way Telegram works is you can pin a post so that every time you go to a group or a channel or what have you, uh, you will always see the pinned post at the top, and that is where I housed all the feedback for today's show. So um, you know, if you're like while we're talking, if you're watching live, feel free to drop a comment in the comments, and uh I'll be happy to address any and all comments that are listed as we move forward with the show. So, with that said, let's go ahead and take a look at Telegram and see what is um see what we can see and um oops, let's see here. What am I doing here, guys? Bear with me on some technical difficulties. Um, all right. So on telegram, what we can see here is uh how I lost my place and all of the previous information. So um lots of stuff on Telegram, but let's get down to today and we'll take a look at comments and see what it is that we're gonna talk about first. And um, first of all, we we are going to get into Letty's comment, which reads you know, and and again, these are all directed to me, and these are going to be my thoughts on what it is that uh, like how I'm responding to comments and questions, like, how have you guys discussed death, dying, and all that jazz? I know some folks don't want to talk about it or listen, and uh Letty mentions that she loves hearing how differently families handle it all. So, how do we as a family talk about death, dying, and all that jazz? Well, that's a good question. Um, we have had a family meeting a couple years ago, and that was the first official family meeting that we had, and um presumably at the next family meeting, which I I I think you know would be a good idea to have on a regular basis, especially with aging parents, uh, whatever regularly means, I think it's all relevant to the context of one's particular life and the f family dynamics that that uh you have within your own individual family. But um what we have done uh is we uh we didn't really discuss a whole lot about that, and I'm not going to speculate why, because it's it's it's not really my place to speculate why we haven't done that. Um, because the reality is uh I don't know it it it it it hasn't come up and that may simply be because well some folks don't want to talk about it, and um we are also doing a lot of changing and growing as a family here at York Meadow Farm, also one of the sponsors of the show. See all that information below. Um, and uh there's a lot going on, and I know that this is not unlike anybody else or everybody else in their family, but I think that if anything else, what I did do was I shared this this thread, this comment, this post in our general family chat, which you know most of our family is on telegram, and uh one of the one of the comments that we'll get to from uh it or we'll get to in a bit is from my mom. And I know that she has read these comments. I'm sure she's well, I'm not sure, but presumably she's talking about some of this with dad. And uh I hope that some conversation like this and comments like this promote some additional dialogue about that because it wasn't all that long ago where my father had to deal with the death of his father. Um, my grandmother died a while back, so you know, while we all grieved her loss and still continue to do so to a certain extent, you know, grandpa's death was is still fresh on our minds. As a matter of fact, I still have his funeral card um like in the tucked in the corner of my mirror, and I still have the the carnation that I I wore as a uh on my suit. I I I don't know what it's a call, a boutineer or something. Um and uh hanging up upside down so I could dry it out and sort of keep it as a little memento. I was I wasn't I wasn't extremely close with my grandfather, but I had a lot of respect for him and had some conversations with him literally while he was on his deathbed, and I don't know if those comments that I made to him uh registered due to the state of the physical condition that he was in. But I wanted to make sure that he knew how much of an impact that he had on my life through the way that he raised his kids, one of which being my dad. Because my dad's had a tremendous impact on my life, and I think that this important uh I think this discussion about death, dying, and and and and everything that goes along with it is an important one to have, it's a difficult one to have, but the reality is it's not one that we've talked about in great detail. So if anyone out there is listening and uh wants to contribute some dialogue on that, then um by all means feel free to chime in, shoot me an email at allaroundgrowth at gmail.com, join the social media groups and um let us know what it is that you have in mind when you're talking with your family about these things. Uh, as a matter of fact, it looks like mom is out there watching right now, and um mom has mentioned that she's talked in general terms about what she does and doesn't want if she's become critically ill. Mom, forgive me if you don't want me sharing comments like this, but I guess this is what happens in the live stream. Um, and yeah, we've we've talked in generalities about some of these things, and I know that this is probably really weird that I'm sitting here having a conversation about the things I haven't really talked with in detail with my family while my family's watching, right? So, this this is this also ties into the convert uh the comment that mom made about families later. So uh let's go ahead and get into that. So um question number two or comment number two is something that um that Sean shared, and I think that this is a real interesting type of comment to uh post because it concerns some of the issues that we experienced a couple years ago. And I'll just go ahead and read this for anybody out there that is listening. Sean writes, My grandmother passed away two years ago in California. It was peak time of the incident that occurred two years ago, and my dad and uncles had no memorial or funeral, just a graveside service with them and the clergy. He writes that he was really upset that he wasn't able to attend, and in contrast with her husband, his grandfather, who passed away 25 years earlier, had over 400 people at his memorial, and people were standing in the back of the church. Now, Sean writes that um he realized that his grandfather died at a relatively young age, the age of 69, and still had a lot of friends from his work and other places, but that lack of parody between their final arrangements has bothered him. And perhaps it bothers him because of his hidden secrets, which I'm sharing on the screen right now. Um, but uh yeah, you know, when when we have instances that occur that are health related, that impact us as a society that prevents us from interacting with our families in times of crisis like death and prevents us from grieving in the ways that we need to do so as human beings. I I I I have a problem with that, okay? Because let's understand where we are now at this point in time. The time of this recording, this is something I failed to mention earlier, it's Sunday evening. Recording started at 7 30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and the date is February 19th, 2023. All right. Um, a big contributing factor into why this show started in the first place was the events that began to go down about three years ago to the day. Things were really getting wild with the uh viral nature of the incident that occurred three years ago. So, where are we at now with our understanding of that compared to then? I don't have to talk about that a whole lot. You guys know what I'm talking about, but the way that collectively we all reacted to that was absurd, and quite frankly, I find it disgusting that things like that happened. People couldn't attend funerals of loved ones that passed away. People were prevented from being with loved ones who were actually in the act of or in the process of dying. Let that register for a minute, let that sink in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know there wasn't a whole lot that we could do about it, right? We had to we had to do what we were told, we had to comply. We had to uh we just we we you know there wasn't anything we can do about it. Okay, I get that. I'm not I'm not I'm not gonna sit here and waste your time and mine talking about the the things that were done and and the reasons why they were done. The fact of the matter is that those things happened. So what? So what can you do now? When that happens again, because I promise you it will it will soon enough too. I'm not some kind of prophetic person, or nor am I some kind of conspiracy theorist, but I'm a realist and I understand how things work. I understand information that's published in books that outline those events that occurred at that time, books that were published in January of that year, outlining the nature of the very problem that we experienced when it blew up in our faces just two months later. All right, a book was published in January, which leads me to believe that a lot of work went into that book in terms of writing, editing, drafting, everything that goes into a book when it's written and ultimately publicized and dropped in January, just to have something escalate in the manner that it did two months later. But I digress. My point is that what we can do and what we should do is reconnect with our families in the case that we've distanced ourselves from them, so that when this happens again, we don't have to sit around and wring our hands and wonder and think to ourselves, oh, I wish I could have done that. Oh, I wish I could have done this. Right. And I'm not talking about this comment from Sean, but I'm talking about things that we can do right here, right now, with family who is still with us when these things occur again, because it's not necessarily going to be something of the same nature, the same thread, the same context, but there will be something that prevents us from connecting with families in the way that we want to and need to in the future. So what's important is that we take time to connect with our families now. Next comment again from Sean. He writes that family is tough. There are a lot of things that are more objectively right answers. We might argue about diets or exercise routines, but we generally agree when someone is physically fit or not. Family is tough because of the specific dynamics in each boundaries, circumstances, etc. Especially with aging parents. When do we intervene and tell our aging parents that it's no longer safe for them to be driving? Or when to apply tough love to a problem sibling who's abusing trust. For example, someone who's stealing money from parents for an addiction. Closes out this comment with saying, I'm not saying you should choose family as a discussion topic, but it's a hot mess of a topic. And you know what? It absolutely is a hot mess of a topic, but it doesn't have to be. You see, when we start working towards balance in our life with these seven aspects of life: financial health, physical health, the health and development of our own, you know, personal development, strengthening our family relationships, the bonds within our family, strengthening our spiritual life, which is key in my opinion, working on our social lives, and ultimately finding balance in those six areas can lead us to a career that doesn't cause us the stress, the strife, the hardship, the heartache that so many of us experience on a daily basis because we're stuck working in jobs that we hate, right? So before I go off on a tangent about that, which I'll leave for a career episode coming up in just a few weeks. How do we talk about aging parents and when do we intervene and tell our aging parents that it's no longer safe for them to be driving? I don't know. Um personally, I think that would be a good conversation for me to have with my parents when they had that conversation with their parents. What were the contributing circumstances to that? What I can talk about is the interventions that we've had, for lack of a better term, with my parents about work around the house, work around the homestead here. You know, we're building and developing, and uh, we've built all this from scratch, basically. There wasn't anything here when my parents bought the land except for a small pavilion and uh the cabin that we all live in. Again, this is my office, right? Uh, but the cabin that we all live in, we we uh it was built by a contractor. We did all the finish work inside. The barn was framed out, built by a contractor. We did all the finish work and constructed my office here. Um, but that was you know, that was that was a few years ago now, and we've all done nothing except get older, and one of the things that happens when we get older is when we injure ourselves, it takes us a little bit longer to heal from those injuries, and I can speak for myself with my own personal experience on the amount of time that it takes to recover from an injury because just a few weeks ago I did the polar bear plunge in Chippewa Lake with my brother, and for whatever reason, the water was shallow and I landed funny when I jumped. That was back on the fourth of February. Um, yeah, it was the fourth of February, so two weeks and a day is when I sprained my knee, and two weeks and a day later, my knee is still swollen, it's feeling better. I can walk on it, I can jog on it. I'm not, I'm I'm I'm well, I'm walking on it a lot, I spend a lot of time on it on my you know, standing, but um it's a mess, it's a mess. It's it's taking a long time to heal, and I am 45 years old. Now, add three decades to that if I fall off a ladder or you know, do something else, it's it's gonna take me a lot longer to heal when I'm damn near twice as old as I am now. One and three-quarters times as old as I am now. My dad's a math teacher, and he's probably cringing at my head number math calculations, but uh, you know, um the reality is we need to understand that when we get older, uh our bodies change. We are not the people that we used to be when we were younger. I ultimately realized this too, going out for a run in December in preparation for this half marathon that I hopefully will be able to do in May with my brother in an attempt to start training for that. And I decided that I could go run five miles. I didn't run that five miles, but I walked and ran and walked and ran and walked and ran and whatever, and I did damn near five miles, and I injured my right knee, the knee that I've historically had problems with, because I just decided to jump right back into the training without easing into it, because I've done it before, and that's not how it works, you know. When when we get older, when we physically like the declination of our or the degradation of our bodies when we don't actively engage in physical activity consistently, I think declines a lot faster. I think the peak of our lives, I think life is like a bell curve, you know, and when we peak out in our 20s, you know, we're we're we're right there at that peak of the bell curve, and then as we age, you know, and we stop doing the things that we used to do in our 20s, we rapidly decline unless we're consistent with our behaviors. So luckily, we've had the discussion and reached an agreement with mom and dad both that look, you guys don't need to be on ladders. When things like fire uh or um smoke alarms need batteries changed, let me know, you know, or let someone know, we'll help. I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to live here with my parents and be of service whenever I can. It's an honor, it's a blessing. And if for whatever reason I'm not available when I'm running around, my sister and her husband are right down the road, and uh, you know, they are there to help. And um, I just think it's worth understanding that things change as we get older, and maybe it's a little bit easier for me to understand that things change, and there are times when we're not physically capable of doing things because I've been in a coma. I know what it's like to not be able, quite frankly, and pardon my French, I know what it's like to not be able to wipe your own ass. I know what it's like to have your bottom end scrubbed out while you're fully conscious and aware, knowing full well that you can't even take care of yourself. I know what it's like, and it was in that moment, in that time of my life, when I realized that the nurse who was doing that for me, a man from Somalia, took great pride and had immense gratitude for the ability that he had to wash my bottom. And when I recognized that in that moment, all I could do is break down in tears because here I am complaining about how bad I've got it. While this man is literally thanking God for the opportunity he has to do what he's doing in that moment, which is something that most of us here can't even comprehend, let alone would want to do. So maybe I've got a bit of a different perspective. I don't know. All I have is my own experiences, and all I know is what I know, and uh that's not a lot, but you know, that kind of brings up and is a good segue into some of the next topics from my friend Linny. Because, you know, what do you do if you're getting older and you don't have someone living with you? What do you do if you're getting older? And not only do you not have someone living with you, but you don't have someone close by who can help? You know, one of the questions that she writes is where do you find a family if you don't have one? If you don't have family around, and you're alone, well, then you're alone because you choose to be alone. There's all sorts of organizations and ways to be involved in your community through charitable organizations, volunteer groups, churches, book studies. You know, you've got to position yourself in life to give in order to receive. So, where do you find a family? If you don't have one, you create one, you do whatever you can, you don't need to build a community, you don't need to start a podcast, you don't need to you know start a YouTube channel, you don't need to do anything to build a community. There's community everywhere, but what we need to do is get comfortable being uncomfortable in order to find that community and actually engage. We can't just show up, we can't just be a part, you know. We can't just show up and expect all of these things to come to fruition to us with abundance. We actually have to participate, we actually have to go out and see what we can do to give back and be an active member in these communities, because then we've built relationships and established relationships and grown relationships so that when times get tough, and they will because they have as evidenced a couple years ago, three years ago now, and like I said, it's gonna happen again, it's just a matter of when. Who's going to be there to have your back? And where are you gonna be to have someone else's back when they need it? And it doesn't necessarily have to be your immediate family, but maybe you've got some friends, maybe there's some people in your community, maybe there's someone out there somewhere that needs help but doesn't have a damn thing. So think about Mr. Somalia man there. I don't know this, but I can say with a fair amount of confidence that he probably doesn't have a whole lot of family around here. He probably came here to create a better opportunity in his own life so that when he did have a family, he'd have someone and a family that maybe he didn't have before. So I guess that begs another question that Lenny wrote What is a family? You know, and ultimately another question that she wrote was my family sucks, so now what? So, you know, a lot of us just get stuck in this comparison trap when we think about families, when we think about everything, when we think about our careers, when we think about, you know, the Joneses next door. We get stuck in this comparison trap, you know. Lord knows I did for a long time, especially with the advent of social media. But a family, a family doesn't necessarily mean parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins. A family can be a brotherhood. A family can be, yeah, I'll leave it at that. Brotherhood, it can be a fellowship of people in your life that congregate together for a common purpose, a common objective. And it doesn't matter what it could be, it could be a chess club, could be a book study, could be a fellowship group, it could be a church, it could be one of these volunteer organizations, it could be any manner of things, but you engage long enough, you build and cultivate those relationships, it becomes strong enough that those people become your family. You want to know how I know that? Because I'm doing it in many different ways, and I do consider those guys my brothers. I do consider some of the people in these book studies that I attend my family. It doesn't take long, provided your intentions are in line with one another. A family is what you make of it, or in many cases, what you don't. Some other comments that Linny writes, she had some real thought-provoking comments, which is uh, you know, nurturing yourself while nurturing others and um family problems versus family solutions, and you know, dovetailing off what I just said, so my family sucks, so now what? Change it, change your life, right? Maybe you can't simply disassociate with your family because it sucks, surrounded by a bunch of trash, a bunch of um, I don't know, just unsavory characters, right? But we love our families, we can't just leave them in the gutter, but we can let them stay there if they want. Think about it like this we're up on the streets walking around, doing our thing, living our life, and our families. If this is the case, our families are down below, living in the sewers. We can remove that manhole cover. Look around down there, you know, just remove the manhole cover. Hey, how you doing down there? Everything all right? And they might look up at us and say, Yeah, man, everything's fine down here. I'm just I'm just doing my thing. You know, I'm I'm I'm just I'm just hanging out like like everything's good, man. Uh, I just gotta I just gotta make sure I get with uh I just gotta make sure I get with so and so and and hopefully I'll see you later, man. Uh, you know, uh uh okay, you just put that manhole cover back down. But before you put that manhole cover back down, you let them know that when they're ready to come out of the of the sewer, make sure they know your hand is there to help them out. But you can't change people. People are gonna do what they want to do, people are gonna stay where they want to be. Whether that means they're emotionally sick, physically sick, spiritually sick, socially sick, or just stuck in careers that they hate to contribute to all of that that I just mentioned, people are going to stay where they want to be because more often than not, the pain of change far outweighs the pain that they're currently in. And until they hit the proverbial rock bottom, which forces them, for lack of a better term, to make a change that they previously were not comfortable making, they're going to stay in the exact same place that they currently are, and there's not a damn thing that you can do about it, which is a great segue into nurturing yourself while nurturing others. Because what we have to do in those situations is we have to take care of ourselves, we have to make sure that we're financially healthy, we have to make sure that we're physically healthy, we have to do the hard work when it comes to personal development. And if our family sucks, then we need to go about establishing a family outside our family, within the brotherhood, within a fellowship, somewhere to surround ourselves with good people so that we can have a family away from our blood family to lift us up when the times get tough, so that when times get tough for our own blood, we can do the same for them and do better because they need us and they need you. So we have to nurture ourselves before nurturing others. This is precisely why, when it comes down to air travel, all passengers are specifically advised to put on their own oxygen mask first before helping others put on theirs. We can't help other people until or unless we help ourselves. So that's what I think of family is that's how you find a family, that's what you do when your family sucks. And you know, in terms of family problems versus family solutions, which is the last thing that Linny wrote about, you know, so many of us spend time, effort, and energy talking about problems instead of simply focusing on the solutions, and nine times out of ten, the solution begins with us and our own lives. We got to keep our own side of the street clean before we can help somebody else clean up theirs, all right? So before I talk about my own love life, which was the next comment in the thread, I'm gonna close it out with that. Um, I'm gonna address a question from mom, which is how do we keep the art of conversation alive in families in these technology-driven times? That is an excellent question. And one that Wayne chimed in on and says, This is a hard one, something that he's been trying to focus heavily on. So, Wayne, if you're out there, brother, this comment's for you, man. All I can do is share what we've been discussing here at York Meadow Farm and the things that we are doing to keep the art of conversation alive in families during these technology-driven times. Right now, uh, we have family dinners on a monthly basis, and um the kids, the grandkids, my nieces and nephews, they're still young. The oldest one is four, and um it's it's it's it's still pretty chaotic. It's hard to have a family meal because at any given point in time, you know, the kids need to eat on a schedule, the kids are napping, the kids are doing what kids do, and it's hard to have everyone sit down at the table and congregate at any given point in time, but when that time happens, I've heard this talked about in other groups on social media, and one of the things that they do is they have a device basket, and I've already proposed this idea to my family because I think that this is an awesome idea, and the device basket, I think, initially came was was pitched as an idea that uh everybody puts their cell phone into a basket at dinner, like if you're out at dinner with a group of friends, and the first one to reach for it has to grab the check. Now, that doesn't really work within the family dynamic at family dinner because we're not we're not, you know, we're not at a restaurant, however, what we can do is when the kids get older and we're actually in a position to where we can all sit down and share a meal, and we're not talking for an extended period of time, we're talking about 30 minutes, you know, 45 minutes. All phones and tablets go in the basket, they don't get looked at. We focus on that time with family in that moment, and um there is I'm gonna grab something. This is also this is also a good idea. There's something called the icebreaker deck by the best self company, and it's the icebreaker deeper talk deck, and I've talked about this in past episodes. And on the box, it reads developing strong friendships or relationships requires vulnerability, but sometimes it's hard to know how to share deep parts of ourselves. It's so easy to develop surface-level relationships with surface-level communities, but these kinds of relationships can feel somewhat empty. The icebreaker deeper talk deck is a tool for diving deep into meaningful conversations. Use it regularly to explore the deep parts of yourself and others. And inside this deck, there are, I don't know if you can see this on the screen, but there are six different colors, six different categories of cards that are broken down into topics such as self-awareness, life lessons, exposed courage, uh, beliefs, and um self-awareness. And just to give you guys some example of one of these talking points that you can use, I'll just pull a card out at random and dreams, okay? So, one of these cards that happens to be dreams is how do you imagine you'll spend your retirement? You can utilize that. What does retirement mean to you? How are you gonna go about doing that? You know, something in terms of beliefs. What's your definition of success? That's ironic. I just did an episode on that just not too long ago. You know, another one on courage is where's the edge of your comfort zone currently? You know, these are good questions to think about, things that oftentimes we don't think about because we're too caught up in social media, doom scrolling, talking about the news, talking about whatever the current situation is that quite frankly, is the circus that entertains us while we eat our bread. So you don't necessarily have to do this just at meal time, but when people are over together, pull it out to the best self icebreaker deeper talk deck. So, how do we keep the art of conversation alive in families in these technology-driven times? Get away from the technology, put it down, and actually engage in conversation like a human being was designed to do and created by God to do. Because when we grow up, that's gonna be how our children or the children in our lives remember us. Now, cell phones weren't a thing when I was a kid, I was a kid of the 80s, was born in 77. Cell phones didn't really become a thing until the early 2000s on the regular, so no one really had them in the way that they did now, but you know what was a thing: Atari, Nintendo, video game, uh uh not Sega, but uh Commodore game system or whatever, you know, video games started to become a thing when I was a kid. Now we were playing them, and and and dad would play sometimes. I I for just from memory, uh, I remember dad telling us stories about how he liked to play Frogger and stuff, but you know what I don't remember? I don't remember my dad geeking out on front of the in front of the TV, totally immersed in a video game. I don't remember that at all. I have zero recollection of that. And you know what? Thank God. Because if he'd have set that example for me, I'd have just known that to be normal, and that's exactly what we're doing with the children of today. We've got our I don't have a you can hear it dinging in the background somewhere over there, but we've got it buried in our faces, scrolling, scrolling, you know, getting angry because that's how the algorithm works. The algorithm doesn't care, the algorithm works solely on engagement, and human nature dictates that we engage more when we're angry than when we're happy. That's why my emotions have a tendency to show more, even on this podcast. When I get riled up about something, my voice increases, the tone of my voice changes. It does that more frequently when I'm upset than when I'm happy, joyous, and free. Because it's easier. So, you know, we all make choices, and when there's options like this around, it gives us the opportunity to make different choices, and it gives us the opportunity to live a different life, and I think I'm gonna make a point to bring this over when family's around and try it because I've yet to do that, I've used it as talking points for this show, and I actually initially bought this thing when I was dating, and um speaking of dating, I guess that might be a good segue to close out the show with Valentine's Day being last week, and Brian Norton from FoodforcedFarms.com suggested that I talk about my love life since Valentine's Day was just a few days ago, and uh so why don't I go ahead and do that? He wants to know how close I've been to being hitched and if I prefer to walk alone, all right. Well, it's been a few years since I've actually been on a date of any kind whatsoever. Um the reality is based on the way that I used to live my life, uh, I've never really had a long term relationship. Anything longer than oh, I would say a year and a half max. And that includes. A partial distance relationship, which I don't think really counts because it's hard to have a distance relationship. Now, ultimately, that turned into a relationship where we lived together, but um, and that was also probably the closest point to being hitched. At least the thought had crossed my mind. Um at a friend's wedding, probably 13 years ago now, I reconnected with an old friend from a state where we all currently lived over 20 years ago, and she was single, and I was single, and we really hit it off at that time, and at that time I was going through some career transitions, meaning I was burning out, and I was looking for a change. I met her, and things seemed to be good, and I flew out there a few times, and um and all during this time, you know, to see if what we thought it was actually what it was, and it was so I decided to move out there and we began living together, and we we had an apartment, and then we decided to upgrade and move to a nicer place, a cooler place, um a very uh in a very upscale location, and um during that time my my job continued to change. I was I was happier, I felt like I was on the fast track towards you know climbing the corporate ladder. And although we were fairly certain that we, you know, as our relationship progressed, that we weren't gonna have kids, I inevitably thought about what it would be like to be married to her. You know, she had met my family, she'd met my grandfather, I'd met her family, met her met a bunch of her friends, her friends' parents. Um, and uh and you know, these thoughts crossed my mind. Having having been in uh in a good job, in a good relationship, and and and and thinking about what the future had in store, I thought that we could potentially be that couple that had a second home somewhere, someplace warm that we could bring our families to and you know host the holidays and do things like that, but um it didn't work out that way. Uh we we ended up splitting up, and um, you know, I can I can happily say now that she is happily married, as far as I know. We haven't really had a whole lot of of dialogue, but I I've seen on social media that that she is now married and um living in an and just living a good life with her husband. And I'm I'm genuinely happy for her because uh you know I walked away from that relationship. I've walked away from just about every relationship that I've ever been in. And looking back, that's that's that's a fairly accurate statement to make. Very infrequently, if ever, did anyone break up with me. I was usually the one ending it. And looking back, yeah, the reality is that my preference was to walk alone because previously, even in the initial stages of this podcast for the past couple of years, you know, um, I was not living a balanced life. Still don't necessarily believe that I am, nor do I believe that I ever will have the balance that I believe is necessary to achieve true happiness, like I talked about in the very beginning of the show. However, what has happened is an increased awareness of all of this, and taking active steps to change that, to change my financial health, to change my physical health, to do work with regard to personal development, to work with my family directly and also indirectly, just in terms of improving relationships with people, to work on my spiritual life, which has been a tremendous part of all of that, taking active steps to improve my social life, taking active steps to decrease my usage of social media and interact with my local community in different ways that I've talked about in different shows in the past and have touched on previously here in this show today, and ultimately have made some changes to my career to better facilitate all of that. So, is my preference to walk alone? Well, lately it has been, and historically, yes, it always was. I just played the role of the victim and thought that you know everyone else was to blame for these failed relationships that everyone else had problems, that uh, you know, I was very good at identifying flaws and character defects in everyone around me, but it wasn't until I recently started engaging in some personal deep work that I've talked about in the telegram group at t.me slash all around growth. Feel free to join us there, that um that I've actually begun to realize that a lot of the flaws and character defects that I've identified in other people are actually flaws and character defects that reside within myself, and that, my friends, is a problem. So, what do we do about that? What am I doing about that? Like I said, I'm working to achieve balance in life, with the ultimate objective being true happiness, and I'm far more happy now than I was last week. Last week I was far more happy than I was last month. Last month I was far more happy than I was last year. And that, my friends, is progress. I seek progress, not perfection. No one in this world is perfect. We'll never find someone that's perfect, and we will never be perfect. But we can we can keep making progress. And is my preference going to be to continue to walk alone? I don't know. I'm not in a position to say that. And what I mean by that is I've determined that what it is that I seek in a relationship is far different now than it was just a couple months ago, just a couple years ago, and most certainly ten years ago. What I want, quite frankly, what I need in a relationship is someone who is in alignment with this thought process that I have, and largely the current thought process that I have is centered around the growth and development, the cultivation of my spiritual life. And we're going to talk about spirituality, the growth and cultivation of a spiritual life in next week's episode. So stay tuned for that because I will elaborate on that more. But that's not something I can I don't even feel comfortable seeking it, right? I know that when the time is right and I continue to do this work on myself, that the opportunity will present itself and I will cross paths with someone who's seeking the same, and we will align at that point in time and talk and establish a friendship and see if it grows into something more. But I'm in no rush to do anything like that now. I've got a lot of work to do on myself, and I feel comfortable talking about a lot of this work that I'm doing on and with myself in this show. That's what all around growth is all about, and um with that, guys, I don't really know what else to say. So, with that, I think I'll go ahead and conclude the episode for today. I will again encourage you to check out the show notes for links to everything or everyone that was discussed who had some contributions to today's show. I'd like to express some gratitude again to the audience for their contributions in the show. I would also like to express some gratitude to the sponsors of the show that make this possible, foodforestfarms.com. Please check out what's going on there. The home of air roasted specialty coffee, a fun hip camp, and a cozy Airbnb. You can learn more about what's going on with Food Forest Farms at foodforestfarms.com. And ultimately, where this all takes place here in the office is YorkmeadowFarm.com, where we make handcrafted batches of probiotic-rich fermented foods and all natural bath and body products. So if you're interested in buying things that you likely already use or consume on a regular basis, like coffee, fermented foods, soaps, hand creams, things like that, then check out Food Forest Farms, check out York Meadow Farm, and help support small businesses that make shows like this possible. And also, if you like what you hear, please make a point to subscribe to the YouTube channel uh at youtube.com slash at allaroundgrowth, and check out the show notes and the description for links on all of that, links to where you can find us on social media, and links to where you can listen to this show in all past episodes to date on your favorite podcast player. So, with that, guys, that's all I've got, and I look forward to catching you on the next episode where we are going to talk about spirituality, the spiritual life, the growth and cultivation of it. And perhaps I might even title the show Finding My Religion, where I will kind of piggyback on Letty Lose article from the Liberty All Day blog. She wrote an article that really outlined her own spiritual journey, and it inspired me to talk about mine. So I think that's what I'm going to do next week, and I most certainly look forward to seeing you at that time. So, guys, I hope that you have a wonderful week ahead. I sure do appreciate you tuning in today. And with that, this is Robert. Thank you.