When You Stop Waiting for the Storm to Pass with James Lang

 So much of life is spent waiting, waiting for the storm to pass, for circumstances to improve, for work to slow down, or for the future to feel certain. 

But what if building momentum isn’t about waiting for better conditions? What if it begins by noticing the life, and the calm, that already exists between the raindrops? 

Entrepreneur and business leader James Lang joins Pam for a candid, humorous and deeply reflective conversation about mental health, terminal illness, leadership, identity and finding purpose when the future feels uncertain.

James describes how years of high-pressure leadership taught him to become skilled, and eventually addicted, to solving fires while placing his own well-being on the shelf. When the noise suddenly stopped, he was left with a question many high achievers quietly face: Who am I without the title, the crisis or the constant momentum?

Together, Pam and James explore the power of creating decision space before reacting, the difference between purpose and joy, the relationships that remain when our circumstances change, and the possibility that peace is not something waiting for us after the storm. Sometimes, it is found in the calm between the raindrops.

This episode is part of Week 3: Building Momentum of Delay the Binge™: The Journey.

What you’ll take away

•  Why you do not have to respond immediately when emotions are high 
•  How constant crisis can become part of your identity 
•  What happens when a professional title disappears 
•  Why slowing down does not mean losing momentum 
•  How to stay present without pretending you can control the outcome 
•  A more intentional way to decide which people, goals and moments deserve your energy 

Buzzsprout show notes

Explore the complete Delay the Binge™: The Journey:
https://tpkkconcepts.com/delay-the-binge-the-journey/

Connect with James:

•  OverLang: https://overlang.com
•  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-overlang/
•  AI courses and resources

Connect with Pam:

•  Website: https://pamdwyer.com
•  Delay the Binge™: https://delaythebinge.com
•  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PamDwyerSpeaker
•  PJ Hamilton’s Front Porch: https://pjhamiltonauthor.substack.com/

Your past does not define you; it prepares you.

Pause. Choose. Build momentum. Finish stronger.

Transcript

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Welcome And The Power Of Pause

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Delay the Binge. I'm your host, Pam Dwyer. This is the podcast about the moment before the reaction when life gets hard. The moment before the binge, the outburst, the people-pleasing, the shutdown, the decision that pulls us further away from ourselves. Because transformation doesn't begin after the behavior. It begins in the pause. Today's guest is James Lang. When preparing for this conversation, one phrase immediately caught my attention: the calm between the raindrops. I love that so much. As someone balancing demanding professional responsibilities, mental health challenges, and a terminal illness, y'all. James has a unique perspective on what truly matters when life becomes uncertain. Today we're talking about resilience, perspective, purpose, and finding peace in the moments we often rush past. Please join me in welcoming James Lang.

Leadership Without Instant Reactions

SPEAKER_00 1:07

James, welcome to Delay the Bend.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Hey, thank you for having me. There was one memory that just like was flashing in my head the moment you went through your intro. That was a beautiful intro, by the way. Um, is so meaningful. And I used to work for someone who had a unique personality and some substance abuse issues and some other challenges. And there was a lot of things that what people don't realize is when you move into a leadership role sometimes, everyone thinks about the title, the people that are working for you, all the glory that you perceive from all the movies and everything else, right? Um, and that's just not the reality for a couple of reasons. But one reason is when you're leading, you have to also lead upwards. And sometimes you have to be that umbrella, that shield that keeps the rest of the team unaware of the drama and the bullshit and the craziness going on, maybe with the shareholders or other outside forces. And so if you have an amazing team that you're working with, you have to make sure that they have the space to be great. And you have to create that because you know it's on you. Anyways, the reason I'm thinking about that right now is you mentioned the calm before the storm, that moment where you're about to become something different from who you are, your core, your nature, and your spirit. And I remember having to literally mentor someone who is twice my age on the concept of when you get an email, you don't have to respond right away. It's this really cool thing where email's not live. I don't know if a lot of people realize that sometimes, or text messages. They're not live. They're coming in when they come in, but you have control to decide when you respond. And sometimes taking that beat is the thing that saves you from letting yourself that moment where you're pulled away from yourself and who you want to be or are. And in that moment, suddenly you fight through uh decision points of not only what do I want to say, what do I want to communicate, but being able to contain and understand and actually define how you feel combined with what you want. And those two things, if you if you respond right away, you're just gonna respond with how you feel. But if you can give yourself decision space, you can just respond with still how you feel, you're gonna understand how you feel and why a little bit better, hopefully. But then you're gonna be able to think about what you want and be able to merge those two together and be able to craft a message or response that allows you to move forward towards your goal versus creating a massive distraction or uh something you have to go clean up and create more work for everyone, including yourself.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yes. You just described the delay the binge pause, the almighty pause. Pause before you send that response, before you react. And that's what it's all about. Just taking a moment before you react, before you do that thing that you don't want to do or regret later, like you said, and having to clean up.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

Especially if you're in a leadership role in an organization that's hierarchical, is a lot of times you're gonna have to try to get people to do that who do not report to you. And sometimes you report to them. And so, how do you kind of walk that tightrope of being respectful and and respecting the relationship, but at the same time communicating something that's very challenging? And that was something I had to work at and get get good at fast.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

I would like to start with you today.

Purpose After A Health Wake-Up

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Like what are you most passionate about right now in your life?

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Yeah, so there's two things that really matter to me right now. Just the microcosm, and we can dive into the bigger pieces of the story. But basically, it's you go from college dropout, which is the classic startup story, you have to leave college and do the traditional thing and fail miserably. That's one of the rules. Uh, but you uh do that, and then you figure out how am I gonna feed myself. Then you start doing freelancing. And for me, it was like I was always good at communication. I write gooder, so people like that. So I did that. Then it was going in-house at a marketing agency that was uh loosely associated with a bunch of ex-Disney people. And then we got acquired. I'm skipping over so many things, uh, but acquired by this medtech company and in the middle doing marketing for law firms. I'm convinced I did something horrible in a past life because I had to deal with a lot of lawyers. You're doing one thing and then you're learning, you're earning, you're figuring out why I am being asked to do this thing, because that's how you move up in life and why behind the what and the how you can understand how to move up and be able to take on more responsibilities. I say all that to say this that my focus right now is having exited, having left a pretty lucrative space, and now being in a place where I moved to Denver and I moved a lot. But when I moved to Denver, I thought Denver Tech Center, we have an amazing startup, but also established a mature business community around technology. And I love technology. So I moved out here thinking I was gonna grab a corporate job, and I had a lot of recruiters and a lot of opportunities. And it was kind of like it was this moment in life of you climbed the hill, and climbing the hill is more satisfying than making it to the pop. I think we all know that. Uh, but when you get up to the top, the one nice thing is you get to do some window shopping. And it's like, what's gonna be my next thing? So I was doing that, and then I have this health crisis. Uh, it's like, okay, well, I guess I'm not gonna get to do all the things, all the menu, the menu just got smaller, right? For me, I've had to recalibrate in the last two years, roughly, and figure out what uh maybe priorities shift. A quote I heard recently is someone who has, and this isn't my situation, but someone who has like six months to live, you'll never meet somebody who's more clear and specific in their actions because they don't have time to or energy to waste.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

And that's a beautiful thing. And I've felt some of that in in this chapter of life. My focuses are very specific, and it's just two different focuses. I literally spend every waking moment on these two things, which is when I'm healthy enough to be here. And it's basically number one how do I build a company, a system that number one takes care of all the amazing people that I've worked with over the course of my career because uh it matters to me that people who have value, who are good people, who do the work and actually can trust, not only can you trust in their expertise, but you can trust them to be good human beings.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Those are people that you should take care of if you can, because they will take care of you in return. Um, so it's a very selfish thing, but it's also a sense of wanting to do right. And so what's cool about that goal is it's multidimensional in the sense that you're worried about the internal, the team, but you're also worried about the external. How do we provide value in the marketplace? And so that's why we chose the term venture partners for this, is because we see ourselves as every business owner's best friend. How do we help them solve challenges? Technology right now, AI is a huge area. So we've invested heavily in that. We have deep expertise in operations, finance, uh, recruiting, system optimization, systemization, all that fun stuff. So what's cool about that is we kind of have a 360-degree view for a lot of things. That's really cool, and that's a mission that's really important to me. And I spent a ton of time on that. But at the same time, the other side of the mission is how do I create a legacy that matters with this time? And maybe I have 50 years left. Who knows? There's no knowing. We all have an expiration on our melt card. So let's figure out how to use the time. The other piece, I mentioned two goals. The second goal for me is broadly leaving a legacy. And what that means to me, it's something different for everyone. So don't take my definition as everyone's definition, but it's taking all the knowledge, the experiences that you've had. I like to say I feel like I've had like a 20-year career and six or seven years. The wisdom that comes from that from messing up so much along the way and learning and figuring out how to do things better. I want to do everything I can to leave some breadcrumbs for people who are on the same journey or their journey rhymes with mine in some way. They can benefit. And so, in doing that, there's both the focus on what we're doing today, making myself available for these conversations with amazing people. But also on top of that, what am I doing with the resources I have? And so for me, it's there's family I care about. I don't have my own family. I've I'm a workaholic, but um the uh um, but I have amazing uh, you know, I have an amazing sister that, you know, I want to make sure that every decision she makes in her life is her own, not something that's dictated by, you know, debt or limited opportunities from a financial standpoint. So that's that's an easy decision. It's like, yep, okay, I know where that goes, right? But you know, where does the knowledge, the experience go? I'm like gonna write a book, nobody reads. So uh, you know, let's let's figure out how to create content that's a little bit more engaging and meaningful in a bite-sized format. So that's why I'm here, and I promise I'll stop talking here.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

No, it's beautiful. I love it. I could listen to that like on repeat, which a lot of times our listeners let me know. They're like, we played that at least 10 times because we wanted to hear, because the people that are guests on this podcast have such amazing uh stories. And sometimes it can be very deep. I'm always told you need to have a podcast that's at least 30 minutes or less. And I thought, man, my topics are way too deep for that.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

You can create multiple 30-minute podcasts out of one interview that goes as long as it has value. Why would you limit value to uh to 30 minutes? That seems very dumb. I guess it's somebody who doesn't want to edit very much.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Well, I'm the editor, so I don't know. I think I'm gonna write a short story using it.

What Calm Between Raindrops Means

SPEAKER_00 10:50

The calm between the raindrops. And the reason I love that is because I we used to have this game, and when it would rain, they would always be so sad because they couldn't go outside to play. And when it would rain, we'd go out in it anyway. And I told them the goal is to dance around and not let one raindrop hit you. Go in between the raindrops. And we would have the best time. Of course, we're getting hit by the raindrops, but in their little minds, they were like, We're in the space between the raindrops. So in the calm between the raindrops, that really hits a soft spot in my heart. But what does it mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 11:29

I think it means a few things. Um it encapsulates the sometimes when people think of raindrops, they think of things they can't control. In your story, your kids are running out there and they're running through the rain, and the rain's coming down no matter what. They have no impact over that. Well, the beauty of our life is we have agency to impact pretty much everything we touch in small ways, the butterfly effect. And so if you think about raindrops, if we're using it as a metaphor, what I like to think about is how do you create more space between the raindrops? How do you reduce the number of raindrops? And how do you determine what you're you what you want out of that space between the raindrops? So you, you know, it's not a given that that space is going to be large enough for you or going to be calm and be something that, you know, you that that feeds you and helps you move forward. Um, and that was something I learned the hard way I can unpack there. But the other piece of that, the the antithetical is my uh one of my mentors, someone who was like a father figure in my life, um, or another father figure, I have an amazing dad, not taking anything away from that, but another father figure I was lucky to have too. And remember, we had our company Christmas party. We're outside of this uh team favorite uh Chinese restaurant um or sushi place. I'm sorry. We were at this uh sushi place in a in the mall in LA. And um we're standing outside and we hadn't called ahead. And, you know, this is a moment where we had our Christmas party at this very amazing place, you know, the the magic castle. Um this amazing place in LA that's a place for um magicians. It's like the it's like the museum for magicians, but also like their holy grail. Like they have every major magician if they've made it into and have been accepted into the the society they have there in LA. Um, and it's really cool. It's up on a hill. It's like it looks like a castle. Um, so there's a lot of history there. Anyways, we we end up going there and um we had this amazing opportunity to spend time there, and then we end up at this sushi place afterwards, you know, because everybody knows you know you have these parties and these events and things, and there's food there, but you're always really hungry after the event to have like an actual meal. So, anyways, like like I said, we're we're at this sushi place and it is pouring down. And my my my mentor at the time, he actually had this Christmas suit made for him. It was obnoxious. Um, had like Christmas trees all over the place. He even had matching shoes made. Absurd uh and hilarious. In that moment, though, he was standing outside because we didn't have a reservation, obviously. Uh, it's pouring down rain. And so we're going inside, stay dry. And he's standing outside to leave room for others because it's a crowded area in the lobby, but it's dumping rain and he's just getting drenched. Uh, I walk out there with an umbrella and I'm like, dude, what are you doing? And he goes, I'm just waiting. What? I go, Yeah, but you're drenched. Like, what are you doing? He goes, I mean, my skin doesn't leak, dude. Your skin leaks. What's the issue? What's wrong? There was a mentality there that was like very revealing of this person who had had a lot of success in life, unorthodox success to say the least. Um, but uh a lot of success in life and a lot of wisdom um and a lot of shenanigans. But the value of that, like you just realize you get to look into somebody's soul a little bit of how they think. It's just rain. What are you worried about? It just didn't register in his head the same way it registered for us. We were focused on getting inside to get dry. And he was just okay, and his brain was always gone. He was always thinking about something as a serial inventor. It just changed my perspective. And not only did I learn later, I mean, of course he was drenched, but I also learned those stupid Christmas shoes he had made. And he did all this on purpose just to look like an absolute moron. Uh, he loved it. The Christmas shoes he had made on SC didn't fit well, they were very narrow in the front. Yeah. And he wore them all day and was just doing this thing. It was just one of those things where, and I'm not advocating that people do this, it's not like this some guru thing of like, oh, well, if I just get an ugly Christmas suit and these horrible shoes that don't fit, my life will be better.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Not everyone can get away with it.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

I don't think he did either, but he didn't really care. There's wisdom in that too. But he was having fun, but we spent so much time focused on I don't want to get wet. I gotta run inside. And if you found this to be true in life, you are in a good place mentally, if you are in a good place in a variety of ways and your mission focused on something that truly matters, all of a sudden the raindrops aren't as big of a deal. You're not running to avoid them as much. You're more focused on what you actually want to achieve. And there's there's for me a lot of peace in that and a lot of uh quietness in the storm.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yes, I love that story because I don't think people like your mentor, sometimes I don't think they realize the impact that they have on people. I'm sure that maybe you have shared that with him, but there were only a handful of people in my life that I can honestly say it took them, I didn't even really know them, but their actions and the way they handled a situation with me, it spoke volumes to me. It actually showed me what I wanted to be, what I wanted to do. And it took them seconds. How long was the rain situation, the rain story? How long was he out there? But look how it impacted you.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Yeah, well, it was about 20 minutes, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Uh it's a lot more than a few seconds, but right. But I'm just saying it doesn't take long. And someone that is so full of joy and love and compassion for other people, it's so important that we surround ourselves with people like that because that will heal heal you as well and encourage and just motivate it, motivates you to inspire. And I hope he knows that.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Well, my only caveat uh he's not with us anymore, unfortunately. And there's a whole story there. I mean, there's so many. So there's gonna be a movie about this period of my life. Uh there that's already in the works. Um there's also um probably a book that I'll probably contribute to at some point, um, that's gonna come out. And so I can't, there's a lot I can't talk about in specificity, but um, and there's also a ton of legal things surrounding it, which which will make a lot of sense once you know the rest of the story. But um the which thank God I'm not involved in. Uh, but what I would add or or provide some context there is I don't think that this person had a lot of joy in his life at the moment. He was really good at giving other people joy, but he was also very good at being the hammer. I'd say he had more purpose than joy at that moment in his life. I just want to be authentic around the sense that everything you said was amazing, but to be true to the story, I don't think joy was part of it. And I think that's okay. And I think that that's a lesson and of itself, too.

Pain, Love, And Real Acceptance

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Yes, and I think that a lot of times the main mantra of my book is your past doesn't define you, it prepares you. And what that means is that we can use the horrible things that are happening or have happened in our lives, we can use that pain for a purpose. Maybe he was very unhappy or in pain of some sort, but he was using that. He was using it to be able to show joy or support or love for those around him because that's what it takes, fuel, energy. And you have a choice. Do you use your situation for energy that helps others, or are you gonna just fall into a big deep hole or a well and stay there?

SPEAKER_02 19:15

I think my life experiences lead me to think about what you just said in the context of there's the lifetime movie channel where everything works out perfectly. The girl makes a cookie in the bakery, and this really hot guy walks in who's a lawyer from the big town just looking for a small town experience, right? There's a lifetime movie experience. I have a funny lifetime story, but I'm all uh I I get distracted easily. You'll realize this about me. So there's on one side of the spectrum, you have the lifetime movie network life, right? And it's our vision of what we want. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have like the wolf of Wall Street, which is just these two antithetical uh things, these visions, these ways of living, these goals. Uh, do you want the wholesomeness or do you want the the fast money and the fast boat and the eight ball of cocaine? Like, what are you going for, right? What's your life? Uh, what's your compass set to? Um, and somewhere in between, hopefully. The bottom line for me at least is there are so many moments, like pain is relative, and that's something I've come to appreciate recently. Uh, but in those moments where you can't be kind or you can't be your best self, there's the best option is just to turn off a little bit. You don't have to try necessarily, because it might be that what you're going through is taking all that energy, all the capacity that you have. And so just turning off a little bit and being okay with just being quiet or finding something that's meaningful to you and just focusing on that for a little bit and turning off the rest of the world, that's just as meaningful and as grace-filled as at other times when you have the ability and the capacity and the well within you to be an amazing human being to the people around you. Both of those things are equally valuable and meaningful. I think sometimes people get the idea that no pain, no gain, and there's a lot of truth to that, but that's not the only thing. It's within context. And within context, there's times where you're not going to be able to do the things or be the person you want to be. And choosing to turn off in those moments is just as powerful and meaningful as choosing to overcome or the joke that it's a choice in that moment. But the people who appear to overcome and be gracious, it's the same thing in my book. Those two outcomes are exactly as equally valuable.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I'm thinking to myself, who was James before life forced you to slow down and look at things differently? Was there a specific moment when your perspective on life changed? There has been one long journey that has brought you to this place.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Feel like I think that in the times before the easiest way to think about is the times before I lived in Denver, which is that's around the time that I started to have health issues. I grew up in Virginia Beach. I went to school for a hot moment in uh Ohio, then uh went to uh Orange County to uh help out a family member who is uh terminally ill. Uh, and then from there uh moved to LA, then to Scottsdale, then to uh Denver. So I've jumped around a bit. So all of my moves in life have either been motivated by uh wanting to take care of people that I care about, or uh financial opportunity and jobs and skill, skilling up and all that stuff. There's no greater feeling in life than giving back to someone that you care about that you love, that being able to be a value to them and a moment where they need it. That's incredibly rewarding. Um, so chicken soup for the soul kind of stuff. But um pre-red box, but that's a whole nother story. Um, then you go into the moments where you make a move to achieve financial success, achieve next opportunities in your career. The kind of person I was, I'm probably painting a very uh optimistic and overly indulgent picture of myself, right? It's like, well, I want to make money or I want to make people happy, right? I'm a great person. No, that's not the case at all. But those are the things that make the big moves. Yeah, I think so. I think that's fair. I think we all do. I think we we all have that little voice inside of us that's not always a voice. Sometimes it's a a sense in our gut, or um or it's a decision in the moment. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it, but also it's the ability for me in my career, which was very unconventional by every definition. The way it made it work was I always tried to learn from the people who were paying me. And I always tried to provide more value than they expected. And what happens when you do those two things is you become smarter, and but also at the same time, that person will never forget you as someone who over-delivered on what they needed. And there are people who I worked for who were deeply dealing with extreme difficulties in their life. And so the joke in my friend circle is often that you know I miss my calling as a um uh oh gosh, I'm totally blanking on the term. Um uh what's what's the guy that leaves the Jewish temple? Um the rabbi. Good lord. Uh, anyways, everyone's like, you missed your calling as a rabbi. In another life you're a rabbi. And I go, well, I'm not Jewish, so I don't know how that works, but big fan of the Jews, huge fan. Uh especially here in in Denver where I live, we have the National Jewish Hospital, which is one of the top respiratory research hospitals in the country. Incredible place if you're dealing with anything respiratory related. People literally fly in to go here. Um, so I just happen to live 30 minutes down the street. So uh very fortunate, and that was because uh to borrow one of their terms, uh, the value of just happening to be in the right place at the right time uh for me um what has been very valuable. But uh incredible people, incredible. And what's interesting in the what I've learned about the Jewish faith and the Jewish community is it's very regional in the sense that the Jewish community in LA is very different from the Jewish community in Denver. And not that I'm deeply embedded in either one, but this is just a total outsider's point of view. The people, the mannerisms, the way they prioritize things, sense of humor, those sorts of things, which I think goes to the point that, like, whenever you judge somebody by their religion, their skin color, their blood, whatever, that's number one, disgusting. But number two, it's not accurate because there's no such thing as a homogenous group based on how you interpret them visually or interpret them, you know, through your ears and other senses. But I enjoy that because there's so much value in meeting people where they are. And one of my favorite podcasts, it's um the diary of a CEO. I don't know if you've ever seen that one. Yeah. Yeah, fantastic podcast. And you recently had JD Vance on. And I'm all over the place politically. I don't like any of them. Uh, but uh, but the the thing I love about that podcast is you have somebody who's a divisive figure, you know, Trump's vice president. Um, and he walks into the room and the host makes a point of saying, like, look, I my goal in this conversation is not to take everything that's being said out there and bring it into here necessarily, but it's to talk to you as a as the person that walked through the door, despite the fact there's a bunch of guys with guns in the corner, to meet you where you are and actually have a human-to-human conversation and actually get to know the person for who they are in the room. And I think in the room is important. And I didn't really value this until recently, but everyone's different. The man, so there's a Japanese proverb, the man is the person he is in or the room he's in.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

In life, we go through all these different moments, these different uh chapters and episodes, even in a single day. But in every room, that person, who you are, is a little bit different. And you have to give grace and understanding to other people too, and understanding that everyone's different in every room, and you can't just sum up somebody's entire existence through every room in their life based on how they were in one room. And so, um, now if you can replicate and find a pattern, then you know maybe it's better. And so I'll I'll end that dialogue with uh one thing that um my same guy, the Mr. Christmas suit in the rain, um, what he used to say is when somebody shows you who they are, believe them. And so there's so much wisdom in that. Um, because I think a lot of us hope other people will be something that we hope they will be, and or we have this idea of who they are. But when somebody shows you who they are, believe them. But I think you have to couple that with understanding that they're just the person they are in the room as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

So we used to play this game in one of these group um, it was actually like a book club, but the we had to, if the book was about love, then the game was you had to describe love with one word. And my word was acceptance. To me, that is the ultimate love is to accept someone just the way they are.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

That is very altruistic, and I'm not there yet. Um, but I love that. Uh so I I think I have a way to a ways to go then. Um but uh love to me is is sacrifice and the the opportunity to deliver meaningful value even in ways they don't expect or understand that they need. That's kind of how I look at it.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Yeah, yeah. And your wisdom, you've navigated both I read mental health challenges and a terminal illness. Our listeners probably need to hear a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, all you need to know is I'm nuts. You know, that's uh, you know, so if we start there and work backwards, right? But uh we're all the nuts.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

We come full.

SPEAKER_02 29:29

No, so here's what's interesting. So I go through this path, and in the last two, three years that I was at my previous company, those are the moments I was in a meaningful leadership role where when you're talking about an organization that's in some months generating 20 million plus in revenue. Um you know, it's it's not a it's not a small concern. There's a lot of different things. It's like trying to steer an aircraft carrier in some ways. And so to do that, to you get addicted to the fires. The, the, you know, you wake up first thing in the morning, you look at your phone, and um, I've learned to not do that anymore in in life, but that's just a good life lesson. Uh, but you know, you jump out of bed, you look at the screen, and you see all of the things in your email that have popped off that it's like, well, all of these are disasters, but which ones are gonna be like critical, which ones are gonna be like that's gonna hurt, but we can survive it, and which ones are just distractions, right? So you're thinking through how do I focus my time and my energy? And so what you're not thinking through from the moment you wake up is how do I take care of my mental health? How am I, how am I making sure that I'm in good shape for the long haul? And all of a sudden, you know, all the things on the screen, there's almost never anything on the screen that says, hey, these are things that are important to you that you need to pay attention to. There's no engine warning light uh that comes on the dash. It's uh everything that we're looking at and focusing on the screens, the paper, the people around us, uh, especially in a business setting, all of that are focused on what they need from you. And what happens is if you're going to perform at the level required to not only get there, but be able to be functional there and be impactful there, you to a large extent have to like take yourself and put yourself in a little container and put it up on the shelf and be like, all right, I'll deal with that later. What's next? What's the problem?

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

And so in doing that, what I've learned is you actually start to, especially if you do it for a sustained period of time, you start to experience PTSD. You start to experience uh lots of different things. And so what I like to think about is there's one of my favorite TV shows, West Wing. Um, there's a moment where uh this guy who is advising the president on his re-election, he's like, Well, listen, you know, the reason that I went to the White House uh event office and had them uh look at the polling, based on the polling I did, figure out where your family was going to spend Thanksgiving, because you know, Jed Bartlett's very pissed off that, you know, suddenly his family's being used for political purposes, like my family's not political, I am kind of thing. And this guy, I believe his name was Bruno, um, he's explaining, you know, as he's getting torn a new one because the president found out that there was polling on where his family should spend Thanksgiving. Uh, Bruno comes in and the president's just reading him the riot act. And Bruno's just like, okay, well, have you ever been uh a competitive yachtsman or any sort of sailing uh competition? And of course I'm butchering this because it's been a while since I've seen it. So it's much better said in the show. But basically, the president's like, no, and Bruno says, well, in those types of environments, if there's just a little bit of algae or some sort of blemish on the side of the boat, the instinct of the crew is I've got to remove that. And so that sometimes people will start throwing their oar into the water trying to remove it. And suddenly the crew will start yelling at the guy saying, Stop, what are you doing? What are you doing? And it's not because he's trying to remove the friction from the side of the boat, but because what the action of putting your oar in the water and trying to whack at the side of the boat is adding so much more friction than the actual thing on the side of the boat. And so what you do to resolve that is you throw an oar in or something and then let it flow with the water and block and push the thing off the hull. Bruno makes the point of I always have trouble relating to people who don't have that life experience because if you're looking to win a race, every little thing, if you think I'm not going to do everything I can to get one little tiny bit of reduction in friction and more opportunity and more of an advantage as we move forward in this race, you're nuts. I'm not gonna, I'm just not gonna do anything that based on how somebody feels, it's gonna be based on what's best for the campaign. And um, anyways, I say that to say this, which is as you're going through life, you're dealing with all of the fires and the storms and the chaos and everything, you have to be careful not to get addicted to that.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Um, and it can be helpful, it can be useful to be addicted to it. And you don't even realize it. I look back, I I didn't realize it at all. I thought I'm just getting good at my job, I'm getting better at my job. Um, but what it meant was that even though all these great things were happening professionally, personally, my personal health, my personal mental health, I wasn't paying attention to any of that. I was paying attention to how do I deal with the next thing and how do I reduce the number of crazy things I'm gonna have to deal with in the in the future. What I would say is coming out of that after I exited, it's like you go from a million miles an hour every moment to it's like a light switch. All of a sudden, the noise is gone. And you think like this can be amazing, this incredible moment of your life. Like, I have a gap, I have a breather, I have the ability to do whatever James wants to do. And it's the most the worst moment in your life because all of a sudden everything your brain's been like completely programmed to deal with is gone. And now it's the silence. Now you're stuck in a room with yourself.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Yeah, you've got to figure out who that person is because a lot of my clients, when we start working on their issues, their patterns and their unhealthy behaviors, it's almost like they're scared or have fear of letting it go because then who am I without this thing that I've been battling my whole life? Who am I? And and they have no clue because it's just been all consuming. And I think what you're describing is is that. You're in this room all of a sudden where you've slowed things down, and you're like, wait a minute, who the heck am I?

SPEAKER_02 36:03

Yeah, I think for high performing people, not that I was necessarily that, but I was a performing person, but for people who um do who crave that momentum, whether intentionally or unintentionally, um the worst thing you can do is say, hey, go have a margarita on the beach and just relax. It's the worst thing you can do because it'll feel good for about five minutes. And then you're like, okay, but what's next? And there's nothing next. The the waves are coming in, the wave, the next wave's coming in, that's what's next. And it's not a wave that you have to fix that's gonna hit the beach and do what it's gonna do without you. And there's nothing you can do to change that. Not that you should, not that you would, but it's a very different place. So in that moment, um, what I started to realize is I was pretty banged up mentally. I just wasn't the person I wanted to be in in that room. But I started reaching out for you know help and I really started to invest in my mental. This is something I need to figure out because whatever the next chapter of my career is, whatever the next part of my story, I want to be a better version of myself, a more healed and full version of myself. I put a lot of energy and um time into working on that. And I learned all these things that I push back against when I was told, of course, because I'm perfect. What do you mean I have this? First, I learned, well, what we thought was depression is actually a combination of ADD and autism and PTSD all wrapped together, but the primary thing being PTSD. And it took a while, like I'm oversimplifying. Like it's not like we figured this out in a month. This took the better part of a year of like, well, we think it's this, we did dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. I'm the annoying person who like sits there and goes, so what are you writing? What are we thinking? I want to be a partner in this. Your job's not to know. You go through that, but eventually they do share with here's what we're thinking, and here's whatever. So I started to learn about these different terms. What blew me away is I'm the fat kid who sits on the couch and eats cookies, got ADD. I'm not bouncing off the wall. What is how could that be me? And then they learn more about what that means. There's been so much progress from what I've learned in psychology and psychiatry in the last 10 years, let's say. Um, in my experience with therapy was related to my parents' divorce. You had to go to therapy for a little bit to make sure that you weren't completely destroyed by it. And that's a good thing. But they totally misdiagnosed. And there's all these things that because I wasn't working on it in the way that I was working on it in this period of my life, there were things I couldn't get to, things I couldn't unlock. But having that space to say, you know what, this is a period of life that my job is to work on me. The things I worked on, the things I learned, it's defining or understanding the current definitions of things. So my encouragement to people is look, whatever you think ADD means, whatever you think depression means, whatever you think autism means, whatever you think all these things mean, you're probably outdated. No, and that's not your fault because it's not your job to be up to speed on these things as other people. That's why we go to experts. The things I've learned over the last year, especially. And then so it was weird. Like I get to this amazing place where I've my mental health has never been better.

Terminal Illness, Pain Care, Self-Advocacy

SPEAKER_02 39:01

And then my physical health takes a dump. It's like, but it wasn't like a light switch, it happened slowly. And it was like, okay. And at first you just think, like, this is weird, like I'm having a heart attack. What's going on? Like you're thinking it's something very acute. And then you realize it's chronic. And then you realize it's terminal. And I get pushback sometimes from my doctors, even I have a great team of doctors, call them the super juice, amazing. Um, anyways, the um I get pushback from some of them when I say terminal, because they're like, well, you know, it's not like you have a defined diagnosis. We're not telling you you're gonna die in a year or two. It's like, okay, well, think of it this way. I'm in so much pain that, you know, I'm not palliative care, which was one step before hospice. And so I'm in so much pain that like I'm gonna take myself out if this is gonna be reality. Like, I'm not gonna sit around and deal with this forever. Um, which was literally a conversation I had. I was, I was crying in my pulmonologist's office. I was saying, look, you guys are dealing with the problem, the diagnostics. You're looking at all these, you know, amazing 3D models of my lungs and how that how my chest expands. But I'm in so much fucking pain. Like, if you want to have me here for your next appointment, figure out how to deal with the pain. Let's shift and focus on that. And that's one of the problems in modern medicine. It's not their fault, it's the way our medical systems are set up. It's pain because of what happened with the oxycodone crisis and and that like for a while pain was a vital sign. And then now they've pulled way back and they're like, well, wait a second, you know, that's those things are addictive, and we got to be careful. And we do, they are addictive, and we do have to be careful. But that also doesn't mean that we should like sit here and think about what is the underlying thing rather than what is the symptom. Um, and I do want to know what the underlying thing is. But anyways, thankfully that conversation led to um palliative care and I get access to all sorts of things that are amazing. That's been a game changer. But you sometimes you have to advocate for yourself and be like, look, I know you're amazing at your job, but this sucks. So there's that. Um and um the other thing that I do now that they absolutely hate, and I know, and I say it to them every time I said, You're gonna hate me for this. Because I know it's your favorite thing in the world to say somebody Googled something and you know they want to talk to you about what Google MD says. And I don't do that to them, I don't Google it, but I use some pretty cool AI tools that actually die, you know, diagnose things. You look at the diagnostics, I've upload all my medical files to perplexity. And um, so that's a really great tool that I use quite a bit. And I'll tell you what, both me and my business partner, we both have the same experiences when we go to the doctors now. Um he he shared a wrist and had to go to the doctors that he uploads his x-ray and you know to perplexity. And that's just the tool we use. There's other AI out there, but um I like perplexity because it orchestrates, it goes to all the models, and so you're not dealing with just one source, and it's also they're so focused on like, let's cite the source so that you know we know that we're getting good information, or at least we know where the not so good information came from, or whatever the case may be. Um, but anyways, every time we've uploaded our stuff ahead of a doctor's appointment and said, like, hey, what are we thinking here? And then we go to the doctor's appointment. It's like, oh yeah, that's pretty much it. And so we've gotten to the point what we do is we write down, like before we either of us go to the doctor, we write down like what AI says, just a couple of sentences, and we hand it to the nurse and just say, just hold on to this. It's a folded piece of paper, it'll come back later. And then the doctor will, after doing all the things they do, will come back to whatever their thing is. And then you you ask the nurse, like, hey, do you mind looking at that folded up piece of paper real quick, just out of curiosity? And it's normally very close to what the doctor said, if not one-to-one. And it really pisses off the doctors, it's great. But also at the same time, it's validating that, like, I'm not crazy. This tool does work. Um, but also it validates that this doctor knows what they're talking about too, because a lot of times we get advice from someone who's an expert, and experts can be wrong, and experts can have a bad day, and so no matter how good they are. So it's good to have an outside voice that's as accessible as that. Doesn't mean it's perfect, but it's very accessible.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

And what a tool because it takes all the research that it's taken years and years and years for us to figure out, takes all of that data. And it's not like it's trying to replace humans. It's just taking all the work that the humans have already done and combining all of that to come up with a solution, which is basically what a good doctor will do. He'll take all the research, all the data, all the past of all the people that have had this same issue and look at it as a whole.

SPEAKER_02 43:34

If they're a good doctor, well, that's one thing I love about Nashville Jewish is they they have a really big endowment of Jewish. They're in good shape. And so they have the ability to do something at most uh hospital hospitals and their staff do not, which is they can take their time on things. They're not going back to back every 15 minutes seeing another patient because they've got to generate enough money from insurance to keep the lights on.

SPEAKER_01 43:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

And so what I love about that. Is it gives the the provider space to think about, okay, what do I need to research? What am I not current on? And so they spend a ton of time staying current, which most doctors they don't. They they can't because they're they're so busy seeing patients that number one, they don't have time to do the research and actually like go through everything. But number two, they've got patients coming in saying, I want this or I need this or whatever the case may be. And like, how much time can they spend arguing with the patient? So do they have even have room to give their best advice? And a lot of times that's not the case. So um so that's my advice is if you're dealing with something major, try to find care through a place, hopefully nearby, that um gives their providers the space because they're gonna be the best uh trained and most up to date on how that can help.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Yeah, and hello people, educate yourself. James, you're probably one of the most curious people I've ever met. Curiosity, I always say curiosity creates clarity and clarity creates growth. And if you're not curious enough to go and look and research and try to find out yourself what's happening to your body or what's happening to you mentally or physically, you can't just go in cold turkey to an expert. You have to be aware what's happening, what's going on in your body. So that's that curiosity has saved me my whole life. And being curious is what helped me evolve into who I am today. So curiosity is a great thing.

SPEAKER_02 45:37

You're not the first person to say that James is kind of curious, uh, but in this context, I really like it. Yeah, no, I it's uh it's interesting. Um I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of how do you identify challenges and opportunities and dig beneath the surface, just don't take things at face value. Doesn't mean that you don't trust. It just means that you always are looking to learn something new. And I I think for me, I've learned at least about how my brain works, is you know, if you give me three hours of free time where I have nothing to do, I love to just watch something on YouTube or whatever. And then there's something about something that comes up, some some data point or thing I want to learn more about. And that's what leads me to the next thing. And then I figure that out or learn more about it. Never figured out, I'm not that smart, but I just at least know a little bit more about it, right? And then that thing, there's something there that leads to the next thing, right? And so it's it's very much that it's not so much going down rabbit holes as much as it's going on just a little bit of a journey. And sometimes it's stupid stuff. Like you're like, you know, who's that guy in Mad Men? Like that's a great actor. I wonder what other show he's in, right? So it's like that's what's that's what decides what the next show you watch is. Um, it doesn't have to be like nuclear physics. So, you know, there's there's so much value in these things and um being able to experience life in the moment rather than experiencing the algorithm.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

I agree wholeheartedly on that. There's the small moments is often what people overlook, but it's the small moments that add up to the big moments, but you don't need a big giant moment. You you need to be able to slow down long enough to see, well, like they say, smell the roses. Take those small moments. And I'm sure someone in your position with your health has learned to do that.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

Well, so just to be the disagreeable one here, I think that there are moments of all shapes and sizes that matter. And I think that there's a lot of small moments that can be unhelpful if you over-magnify them. If you're able to figure out, if look at life as a microscope and say, okay, I need to calibrate this based on the value of the moment. And so sometimes those moments are small, sometimes those moments are big. And sometimes the big moments need to be small moments, and sometimes the small moments need to be big moments. So I this is where I like to think about like the lens of life. What are we looking at? Everyone has is looking through things through their own lens. I don't even know when you say your favorite color is blue, I don't even know if my version of blue is the same as your version of blue. How do I know? You know, we all have our own paycon thing.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

Let me make sure I understand. So my small moment could be completely different than your small. It could be a large moment for you for Pete's sake, what I think is a small moment. Or if I think it's a large moment, you could think that it's a small moment. So you're saying everybody has a different perspective on what these moments are, big or small.

SPEAKER_02 48:34

Absolutely. Absolutely. But then the next piece is the next layer on top of that is you have the ability to adjust your microscope to decide what the big and small moments are for you. So it's not something that you're just a victim of. You're not a passive observer in the small and big moment thing. Uh, you you do have agency, you do have the ability to make your own choices, set your own boundaries, and do things that change the shape and the impact of the moment. What you have to be careful of, though, is all those things I just said are absolutely true, but that doesn't mean you can control outcomes. And if you take what I just said and then think that for some reason we all have this superpower or really successful people have this ability to have like, we're this is gonna be the outcome, it's gonna be exactly this way because I've adjusted my microscope. It doesn't work that way. There's too many variables. So you're you're a you're a passenger on this journey, but you do get to affect and have a lot of agency over how you choose to take in all of the things you see as you ride the train of life.

SPEAKER_00 49:36

I love that. Now that which brings me to my next question.

Staying Present When The Future Shifts

SPEAKER_00 49:39

How do you stay present when the future feels uncertain?

SPEAKER_02 49:44

Yeah, I love this question. But basically, so I grew up in Virginia Beach. So that's a military town, largest naval base in the world. You've got SEAL Team 6 based out of there. Everyone knows who they are. Um, you know, so a lot of interesting folks in the community, so to speak. And so I not only got to grow up in this really interesting environment where in the Navy everybody moves around every three to four years. So you don't really have the same population that you're dealing with. You're constantly building new relationships, you're constantly figuring out life. But what's great is you're figuring out life with people from every background possible from around the country. And that's one reason I like to move around so much, is because it to me, it feels very natural to be new here to learn about, um, or there's a reason to jump over here and career-wise, that was the main driver. But there are other benefits of like it really echoed that part of my life. And that I was fortunate because of my medical issues. These have been lifetime things. Our family got to stay in Virginia Beach for a longer period than normal. The Navy's really good about that. Of like, if you have a major illness uh in the family, one of your dependents, or whatever, it's you can say, look, he has medical care here. We really don't want to mess with that. Um, so there's a lot of things that you can do to reduce the amount of moving around in that circumstance. And we were lucky to have that be the case. But my experience was everyone else was moving in and out. So that was a cool experience. But then add on top of that, we had Virginia Beach has one of the best public school systems in the country. It's a huge city, it's one of the largest, if not, I believe it's the largest by land mass in Virginia Beach or in the state of Virginia. People don't necessarily realize that. They think of the resort side and the beach, but they don't realize how far it goes inland. So as a result, they have 12 high schools, but then more than middle schools than that, and then more elementary schools than that. So it's a huge public education system. And so a lot of people, when they were growing up, they their high school sports team play the high school sports team from like the next town over or the other towns. We didn't do that. Virginia Beach was its own sports system, it just competed with itself in every dynamic. And then it was like, then you went to like regionals, and that was the when you saw people from outside of Virginia Beach that you're competing with. Anyways, I say all that to say that they have so many high schools that they have these magnet programs where if you're wanting to go pre-law or you're really interested in politics and uh global studies, or you're interested in um math and science, all the things that I'm bad at. So people are smarter than me went to the math and science ones. I went to the Global Studies Academy because I talk gooder, so I wanted to learn how to talk gooder to people from other backgrounds. So that was an amazing experience. So you layered the fact that you've got these people coming in and out of your life just as a default from the military. But then also you, this Global Studies Academy is really cool because it was the Global Studies and World Languages Academy. I took Arabic, German, did a whole bunch of different world religion studies, different things that are like not common in a high school setting. But then on top of that, because we were so close, like the Joint Forces Command College and you know, Norfolk Naval Base, the largest naval base in the world, you have these NATO figures coming in and out of that area. Whenever there's red flag exercises or war games, you've got uh Allied nations sending their leaders over to do that. So we would get this constant rotation of like these military leaders, these uh statesmen from other countries coming through and speaking. It was like part of their rotation through the area, it became uh to come speak at our school and offer their perspective. So it was this amazing opportunity. And there are only about 120 of us in that program. So it's like a school within a school, but each high school generally has their own magnet program that you can apply to and get into. That was a really cool experience. And I forget where I was going with this, but I think remind me of the question because I was going somewhere and I want to land it.

SPEAKER_00 53:30

It's how do you stay present when the future feels uncertain?

SPEAKER_02 53:35

Thank you. Perfect. I love where I was going with all this. I was building up the context to say this, which is again, SEAL team sick and all this, there's SEL team, multiple SEAL teams. You got Dan Neck and um Naval Air Station Oceana and all that stuff. Uh the cool thing about that is that means that you're more likely than not in any other part of the country, other than San Diego, probably, to go to school or have a classmate who's a dependent or uh a daughter or son of a uh special operations warfare uh soldier. And what you get is this like trickle down of like the things they learn to be able to do the crazy shit that they do. And they are crazy. No, they're absolutely not that we need them to do certain things. Apparently, it's podcasting now, from what I'm seeing all over the place, all these SEALs, uh all their podcasts, which by the way, all the people I know in the SEAL community hate these guys that are doing podcasting because it's like, dude, you're standing on the shoulders of all the people that like died in the service and went before you, and now you're out there cashing in on that. And I think the one exception is Sean Ryan. I don't think he's doing that, but there's others that I can point to that are what David Goggins has hated in the SEAL community, hated it. But anyways, at the end of the day, where I'm going with this that actually matters is when you're in an environment where you're dropped in behind enemy lines, let's say, and you're gonna be spending a lot of time there, like they don't move generally during the day. So they'll drop you in at night and you might be able to make it pretty close to your objective. But it's possible that you're gonna have to spend a night or spend a day in that environment. It could be after you've done your objective, which means they're looking for you because they know that you've done something. So, how do you say stay present when you can't move? Because movement is death. Because you can have somebody walk right by you, but if you don't move, they're generally not gonna see you. So there's a reason that they generally will eat the food of the local community because people have can smell you. I mean, if if you had, and I can speak to this through experience, if you had someone from, let's say, Africa or the Middle East come and spend a week with you at your home, they smell different because they eat different foods and they, you know, there, there's your senses pick up on their presence. So they'll do all sorts of things to minimize that. But one of the things in addition to consuming the local food ahead of time and all these other methods is they won't move. They'll they'll stay very still. But how do you not go crazy staying still for eight, nine, 10, 12 hours? Um, sometimes. You know, it's not quite that bad, but you can't move a ton. Um, what you'll hear from these guys is they'll say things like, your job is to focus on one thing in your environment at a time visually. So um, I've used this technique when I was stuck in a hospital uh and was completely miserable. You know, you you look at one thing in your immediate vicinity and you think about that thing. You put your brain to work like, how many ridges are on that leaf? What color is that? Is that leaf darker or lighter than the leaf next to it? And why is there a hole in that trunk over there, uh, in that tree trunk? How many grains of sand are over there and how many grains of sand do I think are right around me? So you're keeping your brain occupied with your the environment around you, and it does two things. One, it passes time, which is really useful. Uh, but two, it keeps you very, very alert about your surroundings. And so doing that, and I've used that strategy so many times um through my life, uh, stuck on a plane without a phone that my phone died, and I'm stuck in a plane, like that sucks. I've learned that the younger kids, like I'm that age now, I guess. The kids today, uh, they call it um uh raw dogging a flight, is when you have no entertainment whatsoever. You you're just sitting there on a plane for an hour and a half, two hours, and you're just looking around. Yeah, there's nothing entertaining you because you think about the digital bath that they've taken through every aspect of their life, and then they do that. And and some of them do it on purpose because it's so mentally clearing and just like kind of reset their ramp. Uh, anyways, raw dogging is a new part. Yeah, it has many connotations in my life, at least, as far as I've heard that term used in other connotations, but they they have adopted that phrase to mean like they're on a flight or something and they have no digital entertainment whatsoever. It's just they're forced to be present and they crave that. And that's why like record sales are up. It's the weirdest thing. Like they're buying analog. Uh, my sister, she's six years younger than me. Not only am I smarter, but I'm older and better looking, of course. I told her she got COVID, and I said, Laura, you can't lose something you never had in the first place because she was like, I can't taste anything. I'm like, Oh, you can't really lose something you never had in the first place. I was we she gives it right back. Uh, we love each other very much, which is the only reason I was saying anything like that publicly, if I didn't love her, uh, I would never. Uh, but anyways, you can, but no one else can. That's the rule. Oh, yeah. No, they're dead. Uh so we get to pick on each other, but then if somebody else picks on us, it's game off.

SPEAKER_00 58:20

I have a big brother, so there you go.

SPEAKER_02 58:22

Yeah, that's exactly how it works. Um, my point in all of this is to say that if you if you can think about what's happening in the moment, where you're at, and what is the bullshit that you've been programmed? Have you been watching too much lifetime movies? Is that something that you're thinking the world should work that way? It's not. Have you been on social media scrolling too much? You're looking at everybody's highlight reels, or you're looking at them acting outrageously to get your attention. Neither one represents the reality of their lives. So you're constantly in this reality distortion field. And so there's so much value. I spend a lot of time on PlayStation when I'm trying to just completely um download from the war from the day, and uh physically, it's not like I can do a lot of physical exercise. So PlayStation's been my go-to, which is funny because I used to believe in the PC gamer master, right? We got computers, the RAM, and better GPUs and whatever. And now I'm a console gamer, uh, which is another sign of getting old. It just works. I just turn it on, it works. What you'll hear all the time in multiplayer games like Call of Duty or something is uh, oh yeah, I bet you haven't touched grass in a while. Maybe you should go out and touch some grass. And what they're referring to is like you've spent too much time, you're pretty stale. You you need to go outside and like take your shoes off and go walk in the grass. And so, like the biggest insult that you'll hear traded in some of these games is like, oh yeah, that guy hasn't touched grass in like years. Uh and it's fascinating to me. It's like I I would never hear that on like an Xbox or something when I was a little kid.

SPEAKER_01 59:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:52

Because you know, those types of things came out when I was in middle school, I believe. Um I'm thankful that like a chunk of my life was not digitally absorbed. I I got to experience the digital absorption happening more and more. That was interesting, and I didn't understand it then. But in retrospect, you can.

unknown 1:00:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:09

But my point being is the things that were nerdy when I was a kid are suddenly cool. And that's, I guess, normal to an extent. The fascinating thing is this generation that didn't, every moment of their life has been an iPad in front of them.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:21

They don't know the difference and they crave it. My sister, she has this collection of Blu-ray discs streaming. Have you heard of Netflix? We need to talk. You know, because I'm not getting up off the couch to go put a disc. Like, what are you kidding me? She's like, no, but the thing is, I own it because this generation, they haven't owned anything. They've been subscribing. Like, no, no, I own it. No matter what, I have it. And also, no matter what, I don't have to worry about connection buffering or anything like that. So it's always perfect picture and all that stuff. They crave the authenticity of physical media. And that's what saved Barnes and Noble. If you go to Barnes and Noble now, they have books and they certainly do, but it's an experience. They have games, they have records, they have all these things, Blu-rays, because they're they're feeding that desire. That's how they get people into this the story, much less a library.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:08

That's why I love a book. I I love to hold a book and read it. I don't, I just like it.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:14

Yeah, you and I are very different people, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:19

We're called book sniffers. I don't know why like they can't. I I do like the smell of the books.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

Yeah. I do like to smell. So here's an interesting thing. So one of my therapists, so my joke with my therapist is okay, when are you gonna go off to the horse farm? Because I've gone through three of them at this point. And I get them all to quit, I think. Uh, or at least I think I've contributed to them looking for other things to do in life. That's what I think, at least. I'm putting little pictures on my wall, like put a little exit, like, yep, they're gone. Uh no, they're all amazing. A lot of what I've learned is in the therapy community, a lot of them kind of rotate through. So they'll do that for a while. And then a lot of them are like PAs or nurses or they have some other like medical background. So then they'll go back into the hospital setting. But what they're doing is they're just trying to rotate through different aspects of the medical system. At least that's what they do here in Denver, uh, quite a bit, having gone through a few different ones. But one of my therapists mentioned you probably need to sit down with a book rather than watching a movie or something, because what it'll do is it'll force your brain to process. Because what I was bringing up to her is like, I feel like my memory is crap. Like, I feel like I have to write everything down. And she's like, Well, why don't you start reading a book? I did it the James way, and I made it very clear that James won this one. I said, All right, I'm gonna get an e-reader. It's not connected to social media, it's on iPad, I can't go anywhere, which is the e-reader. So I'm not reading a book. I love the smell of books, but I just I hate the idea of carrying like here the here is what it is. Like, I've traveled so much in my life, the idea of carrying around something this thick that I'm gonna read, like an e-reader. Electronics make a lot of sense to me. Like it all fits on this little chip. So I can't get past that for some reason. No, I did the James Way, I got an e-reader. So I started reading, and I have never been a sci-fi person. I have never been into like dragons and twilight and all that crap. Uh, but my sister's like, oh, there's this series that me and my friends read. It's this dragon story, mythical creatures. Um, and it's I it's been a while since I've read it. I totally forgot the name of it. I wish I could recall it because you got my memory's crap. You know, I'm reading this book because I was told to. And I'm reading this, it's not something I would have picked up on my own. So it's not even something I'm remotely interested in. But what I'm forcing myself to do is okay, that character is this, like visualizing and processing and kind of building up the memory bank and exercising that muscle. And it was really valuable. It obviously didn't work because I can't remember the title of the book. But in that moment, what I found myself doing begrudgingly was really helpful in terms of just kind of recalibrating. And what it led me to is meditation and using that to because right now, again, I don't know what the expiration date on my melt carton is. And I shared a little bit. I haven't shared everything about the terminal stuff. And I feel because it was boring. The well it is. I wouldn't want to hear it. Look, I've spent time in like nursing homes and like a like I dealt with terminal illness with family members. I've spent time around the people that don't have a lot of time, and they're all like, oh, I my leg hurts. And it's like, okay, well, my leg hurts and my knee hurts. It's like, okay, great. Well, my whole left side hurts. And it's like, what are you? Just one-upping each other? You know what?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:10

What you've brought today is much more valuable. It really is. I mean, we know that it's a terminal illness, and that's enough said.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:18

I think so. And there's a lot more fun things to talk about. But what I've learned, I'm very focused in this moment of work. All right, try to work at least 16 hours a day up to 20 for two reasons. One, I have a lot I want to accomplish. But two, it's I don't know how much time I have left. And three, I have really bad days. There's weeks where I can't work. I'm just down for the count. So I have to use the days that I'm healthy. And that's the thing I think is most important to learn in life. And something I didn't appreciate is my dad, who was very successful in the Navy and then had a successful law career outside of the Navy and is now retired or semi-retired.

Who Stays When The Title Leaves

SPEAKER_02 1:04:57

Um what he would always tell me growing up is like a lot of people are in love with your title. They're not in love with you. And that always stuck in my head, but I didn't fully appreciate it until like I flipped the light switch and suddenly I'm not in that chief operating officer role. And all of a sudden, slowly but surely the call, I mean, the call volume dropped quite a bit right away. The people that you thought like spent time that you you cared about and you thought cared about you, it's not to say they didn't care about you in the moment, but it's contextually. They care about you because you're involved, you're on the team, you're involved. And they'll generally pick up the phone, but they're not going to call you. And they might not pick up the phone the first time you call them, but these are people that you talked to three, four, five times a day before for years on end. And so you have to realize there's a lot of people who are in love with the title. I I kind of taken that and co opted it, and I think a lot of people are in love with you in the context. And so you plus the context, they're in love with. But when the context changes, Now they just kind of like you and they have fond memories. For me, when I started to deal with this illness, and I was on the phone quite a bit with people who I like to call my chosen family, right? We were born with people who were stuck with people we're born with. And then you've got the people you get to choose that you bring into your chosen family. There are great people and crappy people in both circles. Um, but the great thing about the chosen family concept is you get to unchose them. And for me, um it's and there's some people in my family who are part of my chosen family. There's also people in my family who are part of my own chosen family. It's two circles, two groups. Um, and if you're lucky in life, you have at least you can get a handful of people who you could call them at two in the morning, you're stuck in a ditch somewhere, and they'd come out and pick pick you up out of that ditch in a heartbeat. They give you a lot of shit about it, but they'd come out and pick you up. Um but then there's the people who one of the best ways I heard it explained to me one time is they said, Well, it's totally true. Everything I'm about to say is dead rock truth. Is there are people in California, the California folks, that are like, oh my God, I'm so sorry that happened to you. Oh, how do you feel? You know, if you if you had a flat tire on the side of the road, they would stop, they would roll down the wind, they'd be very empathetic. Like, I just feel like my chakra and your chakra are aligned, and I can feel the pain and the frustration of having to change that tire. I'm so sorry. And then we'll drive on. Yeah. Uh and then you have the group of people who are like, what kind of moron drives over three nails and thinks that they're gonna make it all the way? And they but they'll give you a lot of crap, but they'll get out and help you change the tire. And so you have to know that in line. If you find people who both are empathetic and it will help you change the tire, that's pretty rare. Like held on to those people with both hands.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:49

Um, it's still okay to have the empathetic people that you can talk to that you know won't be there for you physically. And, you know, but it it's okay. They have their their value. Um, and it's okay to have the people who would completely talk shit the whole time and make you feel like crap, but at the end of the day, they help you get out of the rut. And to be able to control your own emotions and realize like, I don't have to like buy into the crap from either side. Like that's what they're putting out. I'm more worried about did you just drive on or did you help me get out of the ditch? And that completely changes how you calculate your friends. I used to calculate who am I investing my energy into based on who's helped me get to the next level professionally. Who gets in the ditch? And helps you get out of the way. Yeah, but right. But we had the same goal, right? It was like, who who can help me get to the next level and they want to get to the same level? I used to really value that, and that's one of the ways that you climb the ladder. And it's important to do that, but it can't be the only thing because you find out when you switch the light the light switch, and all of a sudden now you're not in that role. The context is different, the room is different. Uh, at that point, you've got to look at seriously who are the people that are still picking up the phone. And some of the people who I I used to, I was like a traveling hobo in Arizona when I lived out in Flagstaff because I actually never bought a house in Flagstaff, or I'm sorry, in uh um uh Scottsdale in Arizona. I never actually bought a home or rented an apartment. It was the weirdest thing where our company moved from LA to Scottsdale, and the really cool thing was the CEO of the company had a literal mansion there, so we called it the James Wing. I just would stay there uh from time to time, which is not healthy, by the way. But anyways, uh it was it was great in its own way. Um, and I'm very thankful for it that period. But then my grandmother lived up in Crescott, uh, Arizona, which and then you have Flagstaff, which is up even higher elevation. So that the southern part of Arizona is like Phoenix, you know, it's the uh really low sea level, and then you go up north and it's the Grand Canyon. You've got Flagstaff is higher than here in Denver. Denver's like, well, Miles said it. You get here and everyone's like, Are you okay? Can you breathe? It's kind of thin up here. I came from Flagstaff, so I'm just like, no, I'm good. But my point in saying that is outside of my grandmother, the people who I was like this triangle of just the traveling hobo. I would stay up at the one of my closest friends' homes and hit he and his wife, they had this great home up in Flagstaff. So I just bounced around. I would go from my grandma's house to Flagstaff to Scottsdale, and it just was depending on the weather, depending on the day, depending on the situation. And I worked generally remotely, or most of our company worked remotely. So it made it very easy to kind of just bop around.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:29

And that was a really enjoyable life because you didn't really have a lot to keep up with and you got to experience like the the backside of the Grand Canyon where Flagstaff is. And uh, if you're ever up there, go and do the trail to the edge of nowhere. Um, it's the most beautiful hidden spot. People just don't know about it. But it's it's all fire trails up, you know. Please don't take a lowered civic up this trail. It's a fire road. Uh take a truck or check the weather, make sure it's not like three feet of snow. And please, if it's three feet of snow, don't take a Subaru up there. I pulled so many of those out of the snow. Uh, but, anyways, I what was great was where my buddy's house was was right next to the trailhead for that trail. So I would literally work in the mornings, and then towards the evening afternoon, I'd hop in my Raptor and I would just tear up the trails and go enjoy uh that. And it was the healthiest like work-life balance you can imagine because you're starting in nature. It's like hiking for fat kids, right? But at the end, you you get to this area and you'll miss it unless you just go all the way to the end of the trail. You get to this point where you're at high elevation, and then there's a fence, you really can't go further. Um, and if it's open, don't go further. Go to the right, and you'll get you'll get through these trees. There's a ton of elk up there too. It's absolutely beautiful. But um, you get through the trees, and then there's this opening, and it's the backside of the Grand Canyon, and you're just up there, and it's just absolutely gorgeous. I have a lot of pictures of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:52

Um, it's beautiful. James, you've lived a lot of life listening to your stories, and you have a lot of life lesson. You've lived a lot of life, and that is a lot more than than most. You've seen so many things, you've had so many special people in your life, and you still are trying to make an impact, make a difference in this world. I just love that. I think you're amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:18

Oh, thank you. I've I've done a good job of convincing you.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:22

Well, how can listeners connect with you and learn more about your work?

How To Connect And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_02 1:12:26

Yeah, uh, my biggest project right now um is overlang, o-v-er, l-a-n-g uh.com. Uh, so we actually launched a uh free uh set of courses on AI. I mentioned at the beginning of this like our focus is being like the best friend of every business owner. You know, we'll work with people on equity arrangements or we'll work with people on a consulting retainer, whatever makes sense. But we have a team of people with a lot of deep experience doing it, but also trustworthy at the same time. So that's allowed us to be really valuable. What's cool is one angle, though I mentioned my business partner earlier. He's been involved in the AI and big data space, you know, the whole time. I've known him, we both made Eagle Scout together in Virginia Beach. Uh, and then we both kind of went our own separate ways. And then we both ended up in Denver at the same time. So that's how overlying became a thing is it's like building a company with people who have your back. Um, and so the great thing about that is I'm learning a ton about AI and getting up to speed on it because it's something that impacts every element. You can't get away from it now.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:25

Um, every business owner is terrified of it or actively using it and pissed off because these vendors keep changing the terms and all this stuff. So it's very frustrating either way. We've actually built our own proprietary tool over the last year. We've invested a ton in some systems that give people a little bit more ownership and privacy and security around still implementing AI in our organization, but only where it makes sense. So overlaying.com, that's our website. Learning.com uh is where you can take some of the free courses. There's also some paid courses we're releasing. But the idea is like we have all these conversations with employees within our clients' companies of like how do we not only understand how you work, but how do we build systems that support you and build around you rather than force you to adjust how you work to work for some off-the-shelf thing. Um, but in doing that, we keep having these same conversations. We're building these courses that are uh really helpful in terms of getting up to speed, like what's happening right now with AI, how do I leverage it uh in a way that makes sense, whether personal or professional. So that's our website. And then, of course, on LinkedIn, James Lang, L-A-N-G, uh, feel free to reach out. I get a ton of messages. So just be patient with me. I do respond to all of them. Um, but the easiest way is through our website. Feel free to play around. We're constantly updating some of the AI tools on there that you get to play with. Love to connect.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:44

Wonderful. Thank you so much, James. And I always at the end like to talk about what stood out to me. And what stands out to me is that so much of life is spent waiting for the storm to pass, waiting for circumstances to improve, and waiting until we're less busy or until things feel certain again. But what I hear in your story is something different. I hear an invitation to notice life, the calm that already exists to stop postponing our lives, to stop rushing past the moments that matter, and to recognize that peace isn't always found after the storm. Sometimes it's found between the raindrops. Thank you for sharing your story with us today. And to everyone listening, when life gets hard, and it will, remember this. The moment before the reaction matters, not because you can control every circumstance, but because you can choose how you meet it. A pause, a breath, a moment of awareness. Sometimes that's where everything begins. Until next time, pause, choose, build momentum, finish stronger than you started, and we'll see you next week. Thanks again, James. You're wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:05

Pleasure. This is great.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:07

Hey, it's me, Pam. And before we go, just a quick reminder: everything we share here is meant to encourage, educate, and get you thinking. But it's not a substitute for professional mental health, medical, legal, financial, or any other licensed advice. I'm simply someone who's walking through life, learning right alongside you. And I'm grateful we get to learn together. Always seek the guidance of a qualified professional for your unique situation. Thanks for spending this time with us. Until next time, remember sometimes the biggest change begins with one small pause. I'll see you on the next episode of Delay the Binge.