SPEAKER_01 0:14

We bring you incredible guests who share their real life experiences of being an entrepreneur so you can have your whole life work. Now, here's your host, Amber Howard.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Welcome back, everyone, to What Would Amber Do? Thank you for joining us this week. It is like my privilege and profound honor to have this week on the show Gabriel Hawley. Gabriel is the youngest guest to be on the show. He is a communications coach who is obsessed with conversations about what it means to be a human being. Gabriel is committed that every person has the opportunity to play the game of living an engaged life. Gabriel, I'm so thankful to have this time with you and the opportunity to be with you today.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

Spending time with you makes me ludicrously happy. So you are very welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Ah, so good. So a little bit like we met back in, I guess it was 2018. And I, you know, for those listening, I was Gabriel's coach in a leadership training program. And the fact that it's 2021 and Gabriel's 22, like right there, that says everything that you need to know about Gabriel Holly, that he was engaged in a very intense leadership training program at the age of 20, is just like Gabriel, like you really are extraordinary. And I know, you know, you're probably killing me over there in your own mind for saying that so publicly, but to me just a extraordinary and just a little bit insane. You are the future, right? Like we we we we need more young adults like you who are willing to stand up and and stand for things. And so just thank you for being that. And I'm so grateful that we've got to continue our relationship. So, communications coach, right? Like 22 years old. What what has you choose at 22 years old to take on like that profession?

SPEAKER_03 2:18

Um well, there's a number of different pieces that are very instrumental in why I chose that. My personal belief is that everything that you want from life and everything that life has to offer is all inside of a conversation, and so learning how to have those conversations is critical, and learning how to have those conversations effectively is specifically critical. And I think that once you can give someone the tools to have effective communication, you can take that into any conversation, whether that's a conversation with yourself or whether that's a conversation with your family, your friends, your career, your you know, future, your past, whatever. You can enter into a conversation as long as you have the tools and you can create something new. So for me, it's just the easiest way to help people in the most eclectic way possible.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

I I hear in that like making a difference, the difference that makes the difference, right? And and I'm present to one of the leaders at Landmark where we met, you know, one of the courses there were talking about communication, says, like, life, human beings are just a network of conversations. And when you actually like really think about that, that that a human life, however many years we have on this planet, is just a network of conversations, there there's a lot of truth in that when I think back at my life, right? And and some of those conversations uh created things that I wanted, some of them created things I didn't. There's like the ongoing conversation that I have with myself in my own mind. But it's like it's a it's very powerful. And what what had you? You say that's your belief, like what had you, what were the experiences or you know, training or whatever that had you get to get to that belief?

SPEAKER_03 4:31

Um, so I think that I know that's probably a lot to unpack, but yeah, I I I think where we met at Landmark had a lot to do with that. Um and their communication courses specifically had a lot to do with that becoming my belief. But I think what was even more important is when I look at my life and every single incident that has led to who I became, for better or worse, every single one of them, it was not the incident itself that caused the change or caused the impact on me. It was the conversation that was had about that incident, positive or negative. So, for example, probably the best example of this was my last year in high school, I ended up having to drop out of my grade 12 uh physics class. And up until that point, the conversation I'd been in about myself is that I was smart, and I was smart without having to try. And that is a genius recipe for absolute failure at some point in your life. Um, and so for me, good having to accept and having to actually state to my vice principal that I can't understand what's being said in this class. It's not even that I can't do the work or I can't come to the right conclusions. I actually was, I hadn't been paying attention in my previous classes well enough to actually understand even the conversation that was being had about that class. And so that broke me. And it took me probably a full year to piece together some semblance of a human being, I guess, out of that. And when I look back at that time period, the part that broke me was the conversation I had with myself about what it meant to have to not be in that class. It wasn't actually leaving the class, because since then I've had many things where I'm like, I do not like this anymore, and I'm just going, stop. And I it means nothing about me, and I don't make it mean anything about me because I'm not in a conversation about how that means I'm stupid or how that means that I'm in some way inferior to what I should be in air quotations. And I look back at every other major incident, positive or negative, and all of them have been about the conversation that is had about the incident and not the incident itself.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah. It's so good, right? So from the work we do in neurolinguistic programming, we talk about like how our mind, our our subconscious mind is always filtering our perception of reality. And so it's like we generalize, you know, human beings make meaning. Think about mythology, religion, and and I'm not expressing a point of view about any of these things one way or the other. I'm just saying, human beings, one of the things that we do in order to be able to operate in the world is ascribe meaning to things. And often the meaning that we ascribe to events is not particularly helpful. And the pro the challenge becomes that we walk around in life like that meaning is what so or what happened, versus like that's just my interpretation or perception or thought I had about something. It's not the truth of it, but we don't live that way.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

Yeah. The the way I have described it to several of the people who have asked about that particular point of view is for anyone who's seen The Matrix, you are both Neo and the agent at the same time. And you create the meaning that you then choose to live within, but human beings have this nasty habit of forgetting that they created the meaning in the first place. So you relate to it like it's just something that's fact.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

We can have a lot of fun, not necessarily in this conversation, but like playing like out all of those, like, because I could also see how the divine in us is the oracle, right? Like we're also at the same time, you know, Neo and the Smith, and I I and Agent Smith, and I love that analogy, by the way, because I think it's apt. But as as you go further on your journey of spiritual awakening, like personal development, discovering, I can also see that like that Plato's theory of knowledge, like it's like my brain is just like firing, right? It's like all there that all of the knowledge that exists in the universe is inside of us. We just have to attune ourselves to it. So at the same time, we are that ongoing dialogue like the Neo and Age and Smith, where also what's available inside of us is also the oracle.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Really brilliant. So how old were you when that incident happened at school?

SPEAKER_03 9:54

Uh oh I was 17 at that point.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Um Yeah, because as a mom, like when you were sharing that, you I was just like, man, the pressure. The pressure that young people, young adults or children are are under ongoingly to be or or to be something or to achieve, to not fail, to meet expectations. And it starts so young, right? And and I know one of the things that is really important to you in a in a topic or you know, a cause, whatever you want to call it, that is close to your heart is the the epidemic of of suicide in in young people and young young adults. And so what you know, what would you say about the relationship between like that that pressure, those expectations, the environment, and the mental well-being of our children?

SPEAKER_03 10:54

So before I say anything, I will make a very clarifying point that I am not an expert on this. I just happen to have more exposure to suicide in teenage years than most people do. Um so I think the the general conversation that is typically had is that teenagers go under a lot of pressure and then at some point they buckle and a certain percentage of them will just choose to commit suicide as their way of releasing. And I don't think that is an accurate depiction of what is going on. I think there are a lot of different factors that are involved with it, and I think the most pressing one is that at least for me and those that I know that have dealt with suicide. It is looked at as just the ultimate weight. And it's interesting because so my first suicide attempt was when I was seven. And then there were three more between seven and fourteen. And then at fourteen I made a promise to my sister that I would never attempt suicide again. And that is the only reason I'm still alive today, is thanks to that promise that I made at 14 to a 16-year-old girl who was she was a rock star for dealing with that, when most 16-year-old girls that is not a conversation that you would expect them to be able to engage in. And my experience with it has been suicide was when I felt lost and confused, suicide was something I understood. At least conceptually. Because it's a really confusing world with thousands of different people all telling you that they know the best thing for you, and you're trying to pick and choose who to listen to while at the same time trying to develop your own inner dialogue so that you're learning to listen to yourself, and that's just hell. And so I think for a lot of kids, whether you actually attempt it or not, there's just something grounding in in having that piece where you know that I can see how this plays out. And even if you are inaccurate in your assumption of how it plays out, it's at least grounding to know that that's there. And that's not a popular opinion.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Well, I mean, he you know, I you know that I don't necessarily ascribe to this thing that human beings like to call truth. I think, you know, that there we all have our own experiences of life and our own perceptions and our own maps of the world, and we're trying to figure it out the best way we can. And along that way, we're gonna have beliefs that serve us, and then they stop serving us, and and it's an ongoing, you know, Socratic inquiry, in my opinion, right? So I think it's, you know, one, I want to acknowledge you for having the courage to talk about it. And it's interesting because I have my own experience of suicide at a young age. And I I find myself sitting here as a 42-year-old businesswoman and entrepreneur and going, like, wow, can I can I be that courageous? Can I have that conversation right now and talk about it? And like, there's this like, and that's why these conversations are so important, because this is not a Gabriel thing or an Amber thing. This is a you know, this is a human experience that you know so many people deal with. And and my core belief is that love, connection, and belonging are fundamental to success and well-being. Like I'm saying you can't have success and well-being without love, connection, and belonging. Now, does that mean you can't achieve things and get nice things and cause results? No, but like ultimate success and well-being are not available if love, connection, and belonging are not present. And and we know from the work of storytellers and sociologists like Brene Brown and so many others that human beings are hardwired for connection and belonging. And having dealt with suicide for myself and with those that have, and you know, I've lost people in my life to suicide, I I'm I really believe now that knowing what I know about connection, our need to connect and belong, that and this again, you know, we're we're all talking in personal opinions here, but and people can try on and consider and engage in in this inquiry wherever it finds you, but that for for those moments where I didn't want to live, for me, it was that I was so disconnected from my own sense of self-worth that I didn't, I didn't like didn't feel worthy. The the shame was so deep that I didn't and I couldn't see a way out of that. Now, thankfully, I was blessed to have some some divine interruptions on that journey. And and so I never took those actions. And and one of them probably is having my children as young as I did, because now all of a sudden I had something much bigger than myself to be responsible for. Um step up in life. But I think there is something to that idea. If we one of the reasons why human beings feel that they like the whole notion of shame is that we're unworthy. Like when someone is chain experiences deep shame, is that they're unworthy of connection and belonging. So if if we know that connection and belonging are fundamental to human human beings, and then you have people who are walking around with these this deep sense of shame and an inability to be able to talk about it, no safe space to talk about it, then of like I can understand why inside of that it's almost like wanting to get some control back. And when you talk about it being grounding, I heard like I feel out of control, and this is a way that I can take control.

SPEAKER_03 18:10

Yeah, I think that uh when you when you brought up unworthy, it brought up a point that I had forgotten for a second, which is I I Tom Bilew has an explanation on self-worth that I find very helpful and very illuminating in a conversation about uh teenage suicide, which was as much as to anyone else, your worth may be inherent. Unfortunately, one of the pieces of the human condition is that self-worth is based on you feeling you that you have done things that are worthy. And it takes a while to build that for yourself, and the problem is while you're building it, most people take on a shitty set of values that determine the metrics by which they're going to determine whether they're worthy or not. And this happens specifically as teenagers, because teenagers is the period between when your self-worth is entirely dictated by your parents, and then breaking away from that, and it's the period from there until you become an adult or whatever variation of man-child adult that you become after being a teenager. And the problem is almost no one has a has explained how to talk to teenagers about creating value systems in a way that actually promotes their health. Because if you look at the value systems teenagers are taught, there's a couple of different main ones. There's either like be the good kid, be the successful kid, be the smart kid, or be the rebel, and just go the complete opposite of all of that. And as long as you're fitting into one of those pieces, you you might be able to have some level of value. But in each case, those value systems have a breaking point. So let's say you're the good kid and the smart kid. The smart kid is this moment you stop being smart, that's a breaking point. And it depends on how you determine smart. Is it that you get good grades? Is it that you you know pass all your classes? Is it that you've got into the university of your choice? If it's if it's any of those things, and that doesn't follow through, that's a breaking point. And all of those things are not determined by you. Same thing with being a good kid. Being a good kid is determined on how your parents perceive being good. And every parent, and I think you can you can say it's like every parent has a different definition of what it means to be a good kid. And so if your parents decide to completely flip the rules on you about what it meant to be a good kid, that's a breaking point. And I think that's where the one of the biggest problems for teenagers show up is no one is addressing how they create their val their value systems, and no one is create addressing how those value systems manifest.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Well, yeah, and I there's so much gold in what you said, Gabriel, and you know, it's interesting because I believe that we come into this world like no one that I, you know, unless they've gotten some real break from connection in their humanity, no one could look at a brand new infant baby and not like. you know, children up until a certain page, like age, clearly understand their worth. They're amazing at being able to demand, ask for, generate, create what it is that they want. And then so many times I've heard this journey of personal development or discovery talked about like a an unbecoming, like shedding all of the things, the ideas, the beliefs, the notions, and like I call them, like to me, that's what the when we talk about pain patterns and generational curses, that's what we're talking about is belief systems that get passed down from generation to generation. And often, oftentimes unconsciously, because the parents aren't even conscious. They've got, and I love that you say this notion of being a good person or a good kid, right? I remember when my youngest son did the the Lammark forum for for young people, they had parents participate and they got us into a room and they had two massive whiteboards. And on one whiteboard they said what are all of your concerns for your child and so like you can imagine how quickly that thing filled up with about 50 parents in the room all writing down you know too much screen time, not enough screen time, bullying, weights like blah blah blah, all of this stuff, right? All these concerns. And then on the other whiteboard they said, what does it mean to be a good parent or a good child? And just as quickly that board filled up with all of these beliefs and expectations that have the parents have about and you can imagine that if you're the kind of parent that's putting your child in a personal development program at the age of like eight, nine, like starting at eight, you're probably a fairly aware parent because not every parent is doing that. And yet still what got uncovered in that room was all of this like conversation we have. And one of my biggest discoveries from that from that weekend and that conversation was I wasn't parenting Keegan from like it wasn't even about Keegan. All of my interactions were with him were in order to address some concern I had that was my concern wasn't even his concern. And and so much of what you were just talking about is like my commitment that people live a created life that they get to create the narrative for what their life is and they don't have to fit into some yardstick measurement for success and happiness that is given to them by society or their parents or their peers or anyone and so I love what you're you know I think this is very powerful what you're pointing to is how do we in a way that's responsible engage in conversations with our children or with other parents so that we can help or not even help but guide our children our teenagers into examining a value system that works for them. And it's it's so funny how things come full circle. So many many years ago I noticed that there was a gap in the education of Kayla and Matthew my older kids and the gap was around teaching like ethics morality and so I came up with this idea to create these workbooks like you know um what do I do? Like it was like questions like what do I do if I'm bullied? What do I do if you know is it ever right to lie and like pose these questions and it would be like a workbook for kids where they would work, they would look at what are all of the different philosophical religious points of view on bullying or whatever the issue was and and it would have like a a decision matrix for them to come up with a decision for themselves about how they wanted to handle that situation. And so maybe that's a conversation you and I can have offline but I think I think you're onto something there.

SPEAKER_03 25:58

I think there's a lot of I think that's very valuable inquiry to be in yeah the so there there's two pieces to that inquiry that are important. So the first piece is how do you how do you create your values and then the second one that's as important if not more important is how do you determine success in those values. Because like there is conversation about imparting values to your children but I rarely hear conversation about helping them determine what makes success in that job and I find that that is actually a more interesting conversation because however your what whatever your metric for success in a value is is how you're going to measure yourself. So like I think most people would agree having a value or placing a value on intelligence or at least in problem solving is re it's a reasonable value to hold because it that's very beneficial for most of your life to be able to have some skill in that area. However there's a lot of different metrics you can use you can use you have to get 90s in your classes to be smart and have intelligence.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

It could be you pass all your classes it could be you actually spent all your you showed all of your steps and your thinking is proper in coming to this conclusion there's a hundred different metrics you can use but oftentimes it's just have this value be honest okay what does honesty look like and is honesty in every situation valuable do you want to tell your teacher that she looks pregnant when she just gained 10 pounds probably not because that's insensitive but that's honest well yeah and and again like the perception like how you perceive your teacher that you know like it's like because we don't have an experience of reality that is not filtered by our own mind ever right so that in and of itself like I think it it comes for me anyway down to what is your fundamental belief about what your role is as a parent yeah and and each of us has to like has the opportunity to to to be in that inquiry for ourselves for me and I know I I they talk about being unconscious competence I I don't know where I adopted this belief but from a very young age I believed that my kids don't belong to me. They were gifted to me for a period of time to to guide them and make sure that they have as many tools as possible to be able to create the life that they want. And like any parent I've also bummed up against my own set of expectations right like I I didn't expect that they would have to go into a given profession or you know that their life would look a certain way. However I did you know recognize very recently that I did have an expectation that they would go on to be people who were of service and contribution and made a difference in the world. And then I had to check that and go oh well okay because that's like that's not it's their life that and they get to create the life that they want not my version of what I think their life should look like.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

Yeah. And absolutely and I I think there is something to be said though that that's also just a natural human inclination as a parent to or at least I'd assume I I got a parent myself and I have no intention of being in any time ever.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

My experience is don't say things like that because you know it's just an invitation to the universe and anyway moving past that rapidly I'm just saying you're the one who said it I still love you.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

So I think it's a natural inclination as a parent because of the amount of time that you sink into a child to have some desire for that to reflect a certain way. And so yes I I think it's a great thing to take on the understanding that they are their own people and they do not belong to you. But I also think that it's fairly human to with anyone you spend a lar a large period of time investing in, you sort of hope that they carry certain aspects out afterward.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

For sure I mean do I do I hope that the time I've spent with my children has imparted upon them certain values and certain beliefs. Yes and it's it's so important to me because I know that as I've gone through my own journey of development and awareness much of which has only been in like the real work has been in the last four years that I also am quite aware that I imparted to onto them or you know I gifted them many beliefs that probably were not so helpful. So it's important to me as much as it's I I want them to to carry certain aspects of what I think are important values to have I want them to have the tools and the knowledge to know that they're never stuck with any of my values or my beliefs and that they get to keep assessing for themselves and and observing their beliefs and their values and saying does this serve me? Is this what you know is this what I want I got that this is what my mom wanted I got that this is what's important to her and it's my life so what do I want? And I want them to to have the freedom the tools to be able to do that and the freedom to know that no matter what they create that I you know I love them and my my my only concern is that they get to live a life based on their own terms and what brings them joy and happiness. Yeah of course so you talk about your commitment that people have the opportunity to play the game of living an engaged life what does that mean to you and and how does that relate back to the conversation that we've been having to this point yeah um so my my sincere belief and one of the few things that I believe that I am genuinely in love with the fact that I believe it is that so I I first I want to make a distinction when I say an engaged life and I think that's a good place to start.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

So for me an engaged life is a life where you're actually playing the game where you're actually creating because most people live life reacting to life stimulus enters reaction ensues and every reaction is a is taken from the previous stimulus that came in and most people will spend their entire lives going like that and you'll think you're living and you'll think you're actually thinking because you interpreted a certain way and then you made a response but for me from what I've seen and the people I have worked with that is very empty and remarkably depressing most of the time to live that way. That is the kind of life where you work for 40 years retire and two years later you're dead because you have absolutely no idea what to do with your time because you spent the entire preceding period of your life for 40 plus years reacting and now there's nothing left to react so you're just dead so I take it from the perspective of okay if we don't want to react what does that look like and the opposite of reacting is to be proactive and so proact being proactive in life means you know creating and actually having life be on your terms. So you talk about a created life. But one of the things I found inside of because I've been in that conversation for several years but what does it mean to have my own creative life? There's a lot of people who understand that as a concept they're like yes there's this thing that I want that I'm doing but they sort of react their way into or out of what they want I am more interested in engaging with what I want and helping other people engage with what they want. And for me what that looks like is you're not waiting until the stimulus comes in and then responding to it. You're predicting the stimulus and then making a choice for yourself about how you're going to engage with it.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

And you're doing that every single day every single moment and in the process of that you're just playing the game I I call that being in the driver's seat of your own mind. Yeah you know versus like 94 to 96% of the time like the subconscious are automated our autopilot is just driving the car and we're we're going wherever we're going and we c we call that living and I think well it's important for people to at every age to get that they have choice and I think that's what you're pointing to Gabriel is that we actually like we have choice and and bringing people helping people get to the point where they have the awareness because I think most human beings don't even know that they have a choice. So it's like helping people get to the point by whatever means works for them that they actually have a say in the matter right of how their life goes so yes when when I talk about engagement I'm taking it one step beyond that though.

SPEAKER_03 37:23

So because one of the pieces I've distinguished for myself is you can have a powerful life and not be engaged. You can have an expressed life and not be engaged. You can have a life with choice and not be engaged in it because I've had that I've had you know my life where I and you know this you were the person who taught me this of the amount of power I'm able to generate when I choose to and the extraordinary results that can cause in other people when I choose to not be an ass about it. But one of the pitfalls I fell into myself was seeing that having that and knowing that to be real and I'd sort I'd poke at it every once in a while and be like that's fun and then just not do anything with it. And so when I talk about engagement I'm talking about it's the action after choice and that's the life I'm interested in people living because I have spent a long period of time and I think most people have spent a long period of time in self-development learning insights and insights are fucking useless.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Okay you're the first person to use the F-word on the show I should have warned him about that one we'll let you pass this time. I I I apologize yeah no I I 100% agree I mean and we're inside junkies right we we it's almost like that next high it's like oh I discovered something about myself and and is that actually resulting in any meaningful change in the results that you got and and this is why it's so important to me like my promise for people working with me is that your your actions and your results are like going to give us access like to to who you're being that's causing that right that it's integrated it's not one or the other it's not a matter of just looking at who you're being or your thoughts it's it's a complete system and and we've we've got to look at all parts of that in order to really be able to understand in a in a timely manner, right? Connecting those dots between all of them because I'm I'm like you I'm I have zero interest in in having a bunch of people walking around and it's interesting though because I think we're actually and you can correct me if I'm wrong talking about the same thing. When I talk about being in the driver's seat and actually being a choice like Noam Chomsky in his indoctrination theory talks about that there's like and he's talking about politics here so not exactly the same conversation but I think you could probably map the analogy he says that there's an indoctrination for the 80% you know television reality TV shows all of these other things that are designed in order to have us not pay attention to what's going on in society and not be engaged right be dis distracted. But he also says there's also an indoctrination for the other 20 the elites the academics the intellectuals those who think they are awoken to something that the masses are not right and he's and and so this I'm saying that that insight junkie is a function of brain patterns of the subconscious mind as well that even when we think we're thinking thinking takes energy people like if you like for people listening to the show right now I want you to go back in your mind to a time where you actually engaged in thinking about something and you were exhausted after and really hungry. So our brains are not interested in us thinking so even when we're in that space of like insight insight insight like personal discovery like all of that stuff it's still much of it is still automated patterns in the subconscious mind. It's just that our patterns shift over time right and I get what you're talking about is like no like actually engaging in life like living life and and not just like having the inquiry actually create something meaningful the so yeah we're we're talking about the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

I I make the distinction because I know that there are a lot of people who take the idea of oh a created life a powerful life whatever a life of choice and they understand that like a concept and they get bought off by the fact that they understand it like a concept and so I like to be clear that engagement is when you're actually taking the actions after the thought process so good and that's the life I'm interested in every leader.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

Well that's like where the create that's where the creation actually like your world starts to get recreated physically in terms of the things that you create like the actual manifestation of those things into your reality versus I'm I'm having thoughts about something and I'm wishing or hoping for it. It's like no like my thoughts are like actually physically transforming the world in which I live and also my experience of it. Because it's not just about transforming the physical world around you so you have a bunch of different stuff. It's like am I lit up? Do I love my life? Am I excited to get out of bed every day? Do I have and when you were talking about kind of like that ongoing process of reacting I was brought back to the first time I met a very important person to the both of us of our Lamar forum leader Uti. And the first event I ever met him at he talked about our relationship with problems. And he said that we have this relationship with problems like they shouldn't be. And so we spend our whole lives solving one problem and creating another one. And then we call that a life and he went through this really fun exercise talking about this young man who didn't want to be nagged by his parents and so he left home and now he has a new problem he needs a job. And so he just goes through like he literally like created this whole person's life showing that process that you're talking about Gabriel which is just like remote You know, stimulus reactions. So it's like problem, solve the problem, create a new problem. And he said the way out of a the trap was to create a problem big enough that you spend your whole life, your whole life gets created inside of solving that problem. Said a little bit differently, find your purpose.

SPEAKER_03 44:20

Yeah, there's a there's a fantastic book called uh, and I'm I'm going to swear again once more because it's in the title of the book. So just warning, you know, it's called The Settle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

You could have just said a subtle art of not giving an F-word, but I got it. It doesn't have the same F emphasis.

SPEAKER_03 44:39

Yeah. So in that book, uh one of Mark's tenets that I find very interesting and on Udi's line of thought was life having a problem for free life is not is to not live. So rather than having a problem for free life, just choose the problems you're willing to spend your time and energy solving, and have your life revolve around those. And when he was on Tom Belieu's Impact Theory Podcast, Tom asked him a question, which I believe was phrased as, what is a successful life to you? And his response, which I find brilliant, he said, uh, a successful life is a life with better problems.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

I love that. Or, you know, even like problems I chose, right? Like, like, yeah, it's so good. And I I think it's really important for us to to know, for me anyway, that there is like we talk about this thing like a successful life, like it exists out there in reality, as if something we could like all measure our lives up to with this ruler and be like, oh, you have a successful life, you don't. Like it's it's not that. There is no such thing as a successful life in reality. Now, we may have some agreements that we form with one another in different cultures and different places about what it looks like to be successful or not. And just like standards of beauty, that shifts and changed throughout history and throughout time, it's constantly evolving. And while you this is my thing, you can either choose to spend your life trying to measure up to some external measurement for success, that someone else has told you this is what success looks like, or you could actually choose to engage in that inquiry of what does success look like for me? At the end of my life, how do I define whether my life has been successful on my own terms? And I think uh that's someone very close to me, Moana, my mentors, says the question the quality of your life is given by the quality of the questions you ask. I think that's a quality question.

SPEAKER_03 47:07

It is a quality question. Uh it's actually interesting because one of the most impactful stories I've ever been told. Um my final year in high school, I ended up living with my best friend's parents. And one of the days I was I was sitting with uh his father, and I was asking him about how he came to marry uh my friend's mother. And he told me the story of how when they were dating, his parents did not like uh his now wife and did not think she was an appropriate choice. And so he found one of his mentors, and he went up and he asked him, and he said, I I really love Erie, and I think I want to marry her, but my parents don't think she's a good fit. What should I do? And what his mentor said, and it's something I've taken to heart, is that so if they're right and she's not a good fit, you have to forgive yourself. If they're wrong and she was the right fit, you have to forgive them. And it's way harder to forgive other people than it is to forgive yourself. Or at least to live with other people than it is to live with yourself. And I think what what I took from that, and where I think that this sort of loops in, is at the end of the day, you have to live with yourself. And so if you chase a standard or value that someone else imposes on you that you don't agree with, your life is going to be miserable. Even if you meet that standard. But if you have a standard for yourself, even if no one else agrees with it and you can live with yourself, asis.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

And my deep truth is that people will sell out on what they want in order to connect and belong, even especially if they have a belief that says living a life based on what you want is shameful or selfish. And so it's interesting that we are having this conversation, and and I think we're gonna leave it here with that question for people to ponder and think about, because I think that's very powerful. And literally, I say this on many shows, but I Gabriel, you and I could talk forever. And I don't know if people want to listen to a five-hour-long podcast. So, but we'll leave that there to hang out with and question. Like, if your definition of a successful life means in your mind, anyway, not in reality, that you're going to experience disconnection or not be able to have the approval and love of the, you know, what then what then how do you manage that? And I think that's you know, more to be impact about that the next time we have you on the show, because well, you know, you're 22, you're gonna be on the show a lot of times. And and I just like we'll finish this conversation by saying, I'm so proud of you. I just there are there are insufficient words to express what you mean to me. And to be 22 years old, Gabriel, and engaging, I I just there are very few 22-year-olds I know that engage in this depth and this level of conversation and the introspection and the care you've taken to inquire into these things for yourself so that you can be a leader of others and make a difference for for for people, not just young people and young adults, but their parents and and all of us really, because again, my truth is we're all connected. So, harm to one, when one person self-harms, that diminishes all of us. And and so just thank you for being that kind of human being and being out in the world up to the things that you're up to.

SPEAKER_03 51:30

As much as you have uh appreciation and pride for me, I have and will continue to have great enjoyment at sitting at the feet of the master.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

Well, thank you. And for those of you listening with us this week, I hope you got value and and really that Gabriel and I have left you with some things to consider about yourself, about where for those of you that are may not be parents but are entrepreneurs, where do these things show up for you? Definitions of success in your business and in your life. And for anyone who thank you for joining us this week, thank you for participating in this conversation just by by engaging with it. And we will see you next week.

SPEAKER_01 52:20

Thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode. For show info, visit whatwoodamberdo.com. And for information about Amber Howard and Associates' offerings and services, visit amberhowdenc.com.