Today we'll explore the fourth quarter of life, Embracing what Matters Most by Matthew Kelly. A book filled with practical advice and heartfelt wisdom for navigating life's later stages. My pal Joe sent me this book as a gift and it's great timing as I've been thinking about the fourth quarter because I'm starting this now. This thoughtful gift from my friend Joe encourages us to reflect on what truly matters and live with fulfillment and joy. I think this book has some valuable insight no matter what quarter of life you're in. Let's explore these topics with my pal over there, Joe, because we are dudes in progress. Happy New Year, Joe.
Happy New Year, my friend.
Welcome back. Good to see you. Thank you. Hey, did you notice I'm coming back from a nice, long holiday vacation, that everybody wants everything done now?
Absolutely.
Does that happen to you?
Absolutely. Well, I came back. I call it a nice, relaxing holiday vacation. It was a nice, relaxing holiday vacation, no doubt about that. But I managed my email a little bit while I was gone, and I'm okay with it. I've been off. I think I. We may have even said this before, but I've been off. I was off since the 20th, from the 20th until the 2nd, 20th of December until the 2nd, and I did some work here and there. I don't want to call it exactly relaxing, but it was. It was awesome, man.
Yeah, you got some good movies laid around. I didn't do a lot. Although you challenged me in one of our previous episodes a couple episodes ago, talking about 2025. And it is a good time to reflect on the past year. Think of things you want to accomplish. What do you want to focus on for the upcoming year? I like that. But you know what? I took your advice and I think I was thinking the same way you were anyway, that I'm not gonna put a lot of pressure on myself to have it all figured out by January 1st, that I would ease into it and see what. What feels right, what's coming to it. And I've got a couple things I've been thinking about, but this book that you sent me through the Kindle is really fantastic. I have been really enjoying this book. This is. I know an author we've talked about. It's a book that. Well, there's a book that he wrote that you. We've read before and probably reviewed, but this one, the Fourth Quarter of Life, just that title resonated with me. And if you're thinking of four quarters like in a football game, this would be the year 60 through 80. If your average age of someone these days is around 80 years old, well.
You'Re well into your fourth quarter. I'm not there yet, but, man, a whole year right there.
I am a whole year into it. My birthday's coming up. I'll be. Well, I don't have to say. You can guess from the math. If I just gave you the math.
So you just turned 60, is that right?
Last year? Yeah.
Yeah. Not a day over 61 as far as I'm concerned.
That's right. But you start thinking about these. I was thinking of this when I turned 50. You're like, Ooh, that's a monumental birthday where you're, hmm, you know, I'm on the other end of this thing called life. Yeah, I think I referenced this. Fourth quarter reminds me of a football game. And I'll be watching a football game usually because of my fantasy football, which I really enjoy, and my players aren't doing that great. Three quarters into, I'm like, ah, I really need some points. And then the fourth quarter is where all the action happens. That's when they all start getting some points finally. And I sometimes right at the last minute, which made me think, with that analogy, that, you know, this fourth quarter could be one of the best quarters in your life.
It's actually kind of encouraging, isn't it?
Right.
If you need some encouragement about fourth quarter comeback and making it through the fourth quarter and victory in the fourth quarter, just go watch the super bowl between the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots where Tom Brady came back. What was it, 28, 30 something. He was about. I think he was about down 28 points. I don't remember what it was, but it's the biggest comeback in super bowl history and all happened in that fourth quarter. Late in the third quarter, but mainly happened in the fourth quarter where he just, he took the team on his shoulders and made it happen. And we can do that, right? We can. Whatever our team is, we can take the team on our shoulders and make it happen. It's not too late. And I like to think that we're in a pretty decent position in life. You and I both are. Some things we want to accomplish and some things we still want to make happen. If you're in a position in life where you think your life is over, you're 60 something years old or 50 something years old and your life is older. Wow. I really encourage you to check out this book, Fourth Quarter by Matthew Kelly. And you're right, Kurt. Matthew Kelly is one of My favorite authors, he wrote Dream Manager. He has a handful of books, but my favorite is the Rhythm of Life and I've read that book probably a dozen times or so and it's an important book to me. And Matthew Kelly is an important author. He clearly comes from a faith foundation and he doesn't hide it in this book either. He talks about many things and in the notes here I see that we're going to get into some overt faith based stuff. And I think that's. If that's your thing, awesome. But even if it's not your thing, this book can really give you some good wisdom on moving forward through this fourth quarter of your life.
Yeah. And if you're not, I think some of these topics are still relevant. You could start right where you're at. It doesn't matter if you're in the fourth quarter or not. I like these topics I picked. I was about halfway through this book and I reviewed, I think some of my favorite chapters. I wanted to go into a little bit deeper. It is seems to be excerpts from some of his other books, which is fine. And then I think there's some new material that's in this book. But yeah, he references some of his other books. I'm like, wow, I think I'd like to read that. And this is the kind of book. The chapters are short, fast to read, but some really good nuggets in there. I'm going to go through the whole book all the way through. And I'm almost through at chapter 33 now, but then probably circle back and pick some of the things that I'd like to really go deeper on. And we're going to go into a topic probably not in this episode. This will definitely be a multiple episode couple of shows because that Classroom of Silence chapter I know you thought was pretty cool and I've been using that in my prayer time that I've started. I'm really happy I'm back into my morning routine, Joe. A little bit of exercise and reading and prayer moments that I'm really enjoying it. That is one thing that I picked up from being off over the last holiday time.
You got back into your morning routine.
Yeah. Or one that I'm really enjoying, we'll put it that way. I'm doing some stretching too that I haven't done in a while, but I've been reading how that's really important. But let's get into this one. I'm going to go right over to chapter three. I like this. These five signs of a successful Fourth quarter. Rank these for yourself. Joe, let me ask you to tell me what you think of these five signs. Physically active lifestyle. I was thinking, I always thought of this for many years. I don't want to be that old boring person. I want to be active. I want to have fun all the way through mental stimulation. So important. Social engagement, meaning and purpose, and spiritual vitality. How would you rank those in importance for yourself?
As I read these from chapter three, the five signs of a successful fourth quarter. And I'd like to thank them. Got some momentum in all of them, but if I really think about it, I've got some momentum in most. But what is the ranking that they that he asks you to do in this book? One through five?
Yeah. Or one through 10. I think one through 10.
Well, let me just go through these. And I'm going to take my position right now. Not where I wish I'd be or not where I have been in the past, but I'm going to take this right now as this episode's coming out on January 13th at this moment, in fact, I'm going to go backwards. Spiritual vitality. If I'm talking 1 through 10, I'll say I'm a good solid 7. Meaning and purpose. This is where I'm taking a step back and I'm going to say, okay, I'm going to. If I need to hit reset on meaning and purpose, what does that look like? And because of that, and this score isn't necessarily a bad thing because of that, but I'm going to call myself a four. Because I'm rethinking some parts of my life and I'm rethinking some values. And because I'm doing that, I hit reset. And so I'm going to give myself a 4 on that and I'm going to ask you to do the same thing. By the way, you asked me to rank someone. I asked you to rank Kurt. Social engagement.
I'm comparing myself in my head to you right now.
Social engagement. I would honestly put myself about an 8 right there. I have both social engagement through online relationships, but I have a handful of deep personal, in person relationships. I meet with a group of guys every Tuesday morning for a Bible study. And social engagement. My relationship with you, Kurt, my relationship with Clay. Our Saturday mornings are very important to me. So I would really give myself a solid eight on social engagement. I have a decent social life. Right?
Yeah, I agree.
If I want to do something on the weekend, I can always find somebody to do. Somebody to do something with on the weekend. Mental stimulation. I read pretty regularly. I'm engaged in learning pretty regularly. So I'm going to give myself a seven, maybe six and a half a seven. Now we've gone through spiritual vitality, meaning and purpose, social engagement, mental stimulation. The last one, physically active lifestyle. I'm going to give myself a two.
Kurt, wow, you're hard on yourself in.
This moment right now. Now we just had a big snow storm come through Cincinnati. So over the past couple days I've probably been more physically active shoveling snow and salting the driveway and moving stuff out of the way than I have been in the past month. But generally not counting that my physical activity. Right now I'm being honest with you and I'm being honest with the group, with our listeners. I'm gonna give myself a 2. I spend way too much time just coming home and doing nothing. I've not been walking in the morning like I typically do. And so yeah, we don't need to spend a whole lot of time on this. But I would be curious to hear what your. How would you rank yourself right now with these five signs of a successful fourth quarter?
All right, I'll go in the same. I was pretty close. I think. Spiritual vitality. I don't know, you were saying me or your 7. I'm probably in the same place there with you. Meaning and purpose. I agree with you. I don't know if I'd go. I'm in the same evaluation, let's say. Not that I don't have meaning and purpose now. I'm thinking about it for the future is where I'm at. I think you said maybe a four.
Yeah, I said a four. And that's not a. That's not bad news. That's not a bad thing. That's not physically active lifestyle. This meaning and purpose, the reason I gave it a 4 is because I've hit reset and I'm rethinking some things and because there's not a whole lot of clarity right now, I don't want to call it. I don't want to give myself a higher score than that.
I'm looking for that fourth quarter. Meaning and purpose. I got plenty of meaning and purpose right now with my day to day work. I'm thinking about that a little further down the road. I want to be there when I get there. I want to be very as clear as I can with that. So I'm with you. I'm tracking you there. I'm a little less on my social engagement. I've got lots of got some social engagement, a lot more than I used to have. But I don't have a lot of local friends close by other than my family. Most of mine is through my podcasting efforts. Quite honestly, people think I joke about that. And I've got a lot there. So a good thing. Yeah.
Your weird Internet friends.
I got my weird Internet friends, and that's constant social engagement, which is. Which works well for me. Mental stimulation. I've got plenty of that. I don't know if you were. I'm. Because my work and my side gigs, so I got plenty of mental stimulation. I always want to continue learning, and I'm always going to be pushing that. But I like that. I like his list. I think his list is really good. And then physical, active. I'm doing better. Yeah. The wintertime is rough. I slowed down my walking, but I've picked it back up. Got a good start over the last week here. And when they say physical what. What is good for someone my age? And I'm starting to do my weights in the morning, my stretching. I don't know that I'm gonna go play pickleball, but I think I'm. I like getting a good brisk walk as far as that kind of thing. So maybe a More like a six or seven, something like that. There you go.
So what's missing from this list? What is conspicuously missing from this list?
Oh, it doesn't jump out at me. What are you thinking?
Financial. Oh, that's a good thing. Because so many times we measure ourselves based on where we are financially. How much money do we have in our 401k? How are our investments doing? Do we own any real estate? Do we have any kind of secondary income or anything like that? And I don't want to talk about those things. It's not on the list. And I think it's good that it's not on the list because you're doing pretty good if you're physically active, you're mentally stimulated, you have close friends that you can depend on that love you and that you love and you feel meaning and purpose in your life, in your spiritual life, is vital and engaging. I think you're doing pretty good, dude.
Very observant. That. Because now I think about that. It's not of a book that's talking about. It's not a retirement book. But he's talking about this fourth quarter. That's a topic that comes up more often than anything else. They don't really cover all these other things. That's why I like this Book. I was looking for a book like this that covers these types of topics, for sure. All right, chapter four, 12 qualities of a Good Person. That title really attracted me, too, because that is something that you triggered a little bit, talking about 2025, when you compare your goals with your values and how you were really thinking about values more than anything else. And that's what I fit these categories in there. But what is a good person? And this is his 12 qualities that he gave, and I think they're great. He says a good person strives to be honest, humble, generous, responsible, empathetic, selfless, patient, kind, moral, courageous, ethical, and grateful. And These are the 12 qualities of a person. And I don't know, do any of those in particular resonate for you? I know one very much in particular does for me.
Yeah. I can say this. As I look at these 12, I think I'm pretty much amazing at all 12 of these, especially being humble. I'll tell you this much. I'll just say this out loud. I don't want to embarrass you in any way, but I'm a lot more humble than you. I'm kidding. Come on.
You're huffing.
Come on.
Your humbleness is only surpassed by your greatness.
Yeah. And we've heard that before, right? My humility is only overshadowed by my greatness.
Yes.
That's funny. I'm joking around. Of course I'm joking around. Right.
I love that saying of. That's a joism. Yeah, I love.
Yeah, look at this list. Honest, honest, honest. What am I in England? That's one free there. Kevin Curtis Allen. Honest, humble, generous, responsible, empathetic, selfless, patient, kind, moral, courageous, ethical, and grateful.
What's three? That kind of you can speak to.
If I think about three that I really resonate with. Gosh, you hate to pick any of these three. Any of these out. I think a good person is definitely empathetic and grateful and courageous. Yeah. These are all important. I think empathy and selflessness go hand in hand. And these are things that stand out to me. Now, where do I need work? I have. I can tell you I need work on all these, but a handful. I think I'm a pretty honest person. But how would you know? I could be lying to you right now about that. The. Yeah, you know where I have. I'm just going to read my mail out loud here. Again, where I struggle is gratefulness. Not that I'm not grateful or I don't have a sense of gratitude, but I rarely stop and think about how grateful I am for the things in my life, the small things in my life I'm always just pushing for instead of stopping to say, you know what? I'm really grateful for this small thing or for this big thing. That's why I think journaling is so important. Kirk. Especially the journaling that we've talked about is where you're forced to write down a couple things that you're grateful for that day. But I think that's where I probably need some work is appreciating more of life's. The God's gifts. Right, the universe's gifts. And taking a moment to be grateful.
Because don't we all tend to be a little bit of catastrophizing things, making or worrying about things and yeah, you get all caught up in the problems of life and those seem to dominate. I think that's pretty common for everyone. That's why I like how a lot of these self help books really emphasize to be grateful. That was learning. When I first read about that years ago, I thought that was such a golden nugget. But I agree. And you just gotta keep it. You never, I don't know, do you ever conquer this one? I'm not sure. But it's something to strive for. I like that one sticks out to me too. And I've tried a lot there. The one I struggle with the most. And I'm. I think I'm gonna make it the year of doing my best at being patient. This is the one that's been at the top of my mind at least the first part of this year. This, the first few days of this year, it's. It is sticking with me. I'm thinking about it quite a bit when I go down to the grocery store after everyone's used up all of their holiday food and they're on a Saturday, they're hitting that grocery store and I can't get in the parking lot. I can't even. I can't even get a cart. There's so many people there and people are coming out the indoor when I'm trying to go in. Why does this. Why do I let these things annoy me? My patience in so many ways is something I have to look in a lot of different ways to combat that. So that's me personally. I don't know if that bothers anyone else. I suppose it would. My wife most mostly I don't want. I want to be patient with her. I want to be patient with a lot of people. I'm pretty good at work. But yeah, my Day to day. That's pretty tough. Yeah.
Sometimes we can be the least patient with the people that we are closest to and the people that we don't know at all. Like the people at work. It's pretty easy to be patient and.
Kind of part of my work.
Have a certain image that you're trying to uphold. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. At the grocery store, the middle walkers, the people who are in their cart walking right down the middle of the.
Road or they got the whole aisle blocked, you can't get by.
Right.
And they're contemplating life or death situation there. On which mustard to choose.
Strategically positioned diagonally.
Yes. So you, you know.
Yeah. So on purpose, just to be in your way.
And once you get it in your head, you can't get it out. This is why I have to work at this one, I think. Empathy. This is something I learned too, building a community online. I didn't realize. I thought I was just going to be making friends and having good times. I didn't realize that if you build relationships with people, they may have some tragedies in their life or bad things happen. And you gotta practice empathy. I feel like I'm horrible at it. I don't know what to say to folks that have some. Unless, maybe. Unless I have some experience there. But I feel like I struggle with that. I don't know. It's something that's tough on me, but I know that it is tough and so I try to be better with it.
I like this list as a measuring stick, but we can't beat ourselves up because we all have work to do in many areas of our life. But this is a good place to start this list of 12 qualities of a good person. We're not going to get tens on all these, but we certainly want to move in the right direction in all these. We certainly want to say, okay, here's what I need to work on right now. And it might be patience, it might be empathy, it might be gratitude, it might be being courageous. And I love that he put something like this on the list. Is courage being a quality of a good person? Because we don't necessarily think about courage being a good person. In fact, courage isn't necessarily seen as good. It's important and it's vital. But when we think about the qualities of a good person, I don't know if I would have put courage on this list, but now that I see it on the list, it's absolutely vital to being a good person. Because you can't follow A moral compass and be. And not be courageous, because the world's going to come at you, man.
Yeah, I like that they put courageous here, because I think that is a good. Most people would see that as a good attribute.
It absolutely is. I just wouldn't have thought to put it on a list like this.
Yeah, that's what a lot. That's a good reason why we're reviewing this book. And another topic he says in this chapter, you are not what has happened to you. You are more than the worst thing you have ever done. Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. Don't let your past rob you of your future. I know a lot of people struggle with that. I've said this before to you. I don't think that I understand it, but it doesn't. Getting my personal way, it's not something I think about a lot. But I could see how it could be someone who's concerned with that, because you can start right from now and work on being a good person and people will notice.
I love this part in chapter four, you are not what has happened to you. And I would. And I love that he points out that you are more than the worst thing you've ever done, because some things that happen to us aren't our fault, but some things that have happened to us are our fault. We did it. We're responsible for it. And it's my fault that this happened. And once we embrace that and move on, we're not that person anymore. You're not what has happened to you. You're not your thoughts. You're not your past. You are who you've decided, decide to be right now, and you can wash that away. And that's the Christian message generally. Accepting Christ into your life washes your sins away. Yeah. Now, there's a funny scene in oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? And I can't remember what's. What state he's in, but the guy's bragging about being forgiven of all his sins. And he says, well, that might be for God, but the state of Alabama might have something else to say about it. I don't know if it's Alabama or not, but it's one of those.
Yeah, I get the point.
Yeah.
My dad loves that movie. He's hilarious.
It's hilarious. But this is an important concept to embrace, Kurt, Especially those of us. And I am one of those people. And I'm really encouraged by your mindset on this. You don't live with a lot of regret, and I tend to Let it needle me sometimes more often than I'd like. So I need this message. You are not what has happened to you, even if it's your fault. You are more than the worst thing you've ever done. Heck, you're more than a mediocre mistake you've made. Just let it go, man.
Learn.
Take the lesson and move forward.
Yep, it's a new year, new time.
It's a new moment. It's a new second. It's a new day.
Yep, it's a new day. Every day is new. I like this. These are highlights that I did that you haven't noticed from the book. Flood your mind with goodness by reading books that elevate you. Flood your soul with goodness by developing the habit of prayer and other spiritual practices. Flood your relationships with goodness by embracing the 12 qualities above. And unleash a tidal wave of goodness in this world every chance you get. By creating holy moments. The good we do never dies. It lives on forever in other people, in other places and in other times. Let goodness be your legacy. Wow, that one just. That is so true. If you're looking for something in the fourth quarter, and like you said, he didn't talk about finances. He didn't talk about leaving money to people. He's talking about goodness be your legacy. Because people aren't going to remember what you did so much as how you made them feel. We've talked about that. This is a great thing to aspire to. I love this. And feeding your mind, feeding yourself with these things is so important. That's why I think this is a big inspiration, why I really started back up with my morning routine.
And I love how he words this. He just doesn't say, hey, read some books, get into some good habits. He uses the word flood. Flood your mind with goodness by reading books that elevate you. Flood your soul with goodness by developing the habit of prayer and other spiritual practices. Flood your relationships. When you think about a flood, there's this uncontrollable tidal wave of water coming your way, right? That if you let those things into your life, if you let this tidal wave of good books come to your life and spiritual practices and good relationships, you will be changed, man. And then, well, it says tidal wave right here. It really is important. And when we think about the end of our life, and this is one of those practices that everybody, every self help book that you read on legacy and creating values, I want people to say that I was a good man. The good we do never dies. It lives on forever in People in other places and other times. Think about that legacy. Man lives. You can change just by being good.
George Bailey.
Yeah, there you go.
That movie's so powerful. The rest of your life. So he talked about creating holy moments. And in chapter five, the rest of your life, it's titled. But he opens right up with what is a holy moment. A holy moment is a single moment in which you open yourself to God.
You.
You make yourself available to him. You set aside personal preferences and self interest, and for one moment, you do what you prayfully believe God is calling you to do.
Wow.
I gotta tell you, Joe, I didn't get a chance. I had a holy moment this week. I was feeling some anxiety. I don't. I. Sometimes the time I feel a little anxiety is like Sunday night, kind of nothing going on. Work's coming up the next day. Something maybe at work is caught really causing me some anxiety. I took that prayerfully to God the next morning. And here's the other thing about doing your morning routine, reading all this powerful stuff and open yourself up and just listening. And I come to work first thing at that first meeting in a good mood when I do this, that you get Monday morning crab person. You won't be if you do this things. But I just had this thing that I was anxious about. And that day it was at least for the moment has been solved. Somebody gave me the answer to something I was concerned about. And it was like the sky opened up. And I said, don't you forget this next tomorrow morning when you're having your quiet spiritual time. Remember to thank him about this because, oh my gosh, if this is the way the year's gonna go, let's do it. Let's rock and roll.
This idea of holy moments is overtly faith based, of course. A holy moment is a single moment in which you open yourself to God. If you're filling yourself with holy moments, that means you're opening up yourself to what God wants. Those little promptings in life. You're setting aside what you want and you're moving forward with what you feel. God is moving in your life. And that's a tough one to do, and it's a tough one to handle. I'm not sure about this and how holy moments manifest themselves, but I know that we need to be open. I know that we need to be open to God, and I don't. Some of my Christian friends might not like the way I say this, but whatever God is to you right now, I can make a pretty good argument for the Christian Faith. And we're not going to do that right now. But whatever God is to you right now, are you open up to that? Be it the universe, be it whatever it might be. Are you opened up? Are you open up to setting aside your own self interest? And for that one moment in time you do what God is calling you to do. It's something to really let soak in.
Yeah, listen to people you can replace God with. You can think of some of the things we've talked about that's in the different faiths or in the new age concept. And it's very similar being open. You're not going to hear something if you're not open to it. It's just very interesting the way that works.
Just challenge yourself to say for a moment I'm going to set aside my own personal self interest and listen for that still voice, for prompting and for motivation and for direction.
It's very similar what you and I talked about. We're not going to push it. We're just going to do these things and be open to what we hear in our quiet moments. Chapter 8 Mistakes and regrets. Most people have never asked what are your dreams? And most people spend more time planning their annual vacation than they spend planning their lives. I've heard that before somewhere else. This is very similar to the chapter we're just talking about. Especially in this fourth quarter. Why not ask yourself what are my dreams? What are the things that I could accomplish in this fourth quarter? What would be really cool? Wouldn't it be really cool if. That's a great question.
That's a great exercise.
Yeah. This is another book I was reading. That's what a lot of this book too has these little things. Wouldn't it be cool if this happens? Just have fun with it. That's a great exercise to get your mind in that state where you're open to something cool. And I tell you, this has happened to me so many times. Maybe someone will say something to me. Maybe it's my own intuition. My wife will say something to me and like. And. And it'll. And you'll hear it repeat maybe another day and another day. And because you're focused on it, you'll often be open to it. But yeah, wouldn't it be cool if. And you could do fun stuff. Wouldn't it be cool if I won the lottery? If you just had a big lottery that came through. If that's what. Just get yourself into that frame of mind. I think it's a great practice.
I do find this interesting that Most people spend more time planning their annual vacation. I can't tell you how many times my wife and I have sat down in front of a computer screen together, next to each other, laptop on my left knee and on her right knee. Correct. And we're looking at the vacation spots we want to go to. We're looking at VRBO to try to figure out the best place to go and what our budget is and how much we're going to spend and what we're going to do. And hours may go by, and those are neat moments, right? And I love those moments with my wife. But how often do we sit there and dream together about our life, where we want to end up, the things we want to do, the life we want to live, the impact we want to make? Sit there with a computer with half of it on my left knee and half of it on her right knee, making a budget. And yeah, we just don't do that. I'll be honest with you. I don't know we've ever done that. I think the closest we've done to something like that, Kurt, is many, many years ago. I picked up a course. I bought a course by Michael Hyatt called your Best year ever. And my wife and I locked ourselves in a hotel room for a couple days and went through that course from beginning to end. And it was very interesting. I think it made a dramatic impact on my life for quite a bit of time, but I only did it once. That's the closest I've done to anything like that. But, yeah, we do need to spend more time. Heck, just planning our month, not our whole lives. How about just spending a half an hour planning your month together?
You got to think about these things so you can put them into action, the things that are important to you. And then he gets into this list. And Joe and I challenge each other to pick three of these. I've got 10 of them. There's 24 in the book. I picked my favorite 10 just to narrow it down, but these are 24 things dying people wish for. I almost hate reading these because it is a little rough to think about this, but so true. I wish I had the courage to just be myself. I wish I had spent more time with the people I love. We can all resonate with these. I wish I had made spirituality more of a priority. I wish I hadn't spent so much time worrying about the things that never happened. I wish I had taken more risks. I wish I had realized earlier that happiness is a choice. I wish I had touched More lives. I wish I had thought about life's big question earlier. I wish I had traveled more, and I wish I had pursued more of my dreams.
I love this list. And there are 24 and. But I think you pulled out the big 10.
Okay.
And I like this. So from this 10, let's just go back and forth. Kurt. And I'll go first. From this 10, I picked three that I. That really stood out to me, that when, before I die, I want to make sure that I move forward on these three things. Now, who doesn't want to spend more time with your family and courage to be yourself? And some of these are overlapping. Right. But I spend a lot of time with my family, and I spend a lot of time with people that I love and the people who love me. My whole mantra, my life banner, is memories are better than stuff. And I think that safe doesn't make good memories. So, number one, I wish I had taken more risks. Up to this point in my life, I've been in business for myself a few times. I've owned a couple businesses, and I've taken some risks, but I don't think I've really taken any real risks. I don't think I've taken risks with investments, and I don't think I've taken risks to really put myself out there and maybe face some ridicule and maybe face some judgment on things that I do and things that I want to do. There is an underlying thought, how are the people closest to me going to think about this? And do I want to risk it? Do I want to risk this? And I think I want to take more risks. Going into this fourth quarter of my life up to this point, I wish I had taken more risks. Like I said, I've opened up businesses and I've failed in businesses and some of those things. But I do wish I had taken more risks. Because life, when you think about life, and this is something that the pastor of my church, and he's a good friend of mine, says, Mike Toll, he says safe doesn't make good stories. Right?
Yeah, yeah. I've told you some of the YouTube, I didn't watch the whole thing, but you think about the billionaires in the world, the one thing they all have in common are they are super big risk takers and very courageous. They, you, you look at the. What they've done and you're amazed at the risk they take. Yeah, I try to mitigate risk a lot. I don't know if I want to swim with sharks, but now started Thinking about that or skydiving. But you're right. Sure would be a better story if tried some of those things.
I always say this when I'm about to do something that is perceived as dangerous. I always say, man, there's going to be a great story come out of this. Either I'm going to tell it or somebody else is going to tell it.
Yeah, I don't want to go up on my roof anymore. That's one of the things, the risk I don't want to take. Yeah, especially not tonight. The wind is blowing. I wish I hadn't spent so much time worrying about things that never happened. This one really irritates me, the worrying. Not that I'm a big worrier. My wife would tell you she's more so than me. I think finance. You talked about finances. I think that's one thing I've probably worried about the most my whole life. And when I look back, what if I'm laying there on my worry about this? What if I'm laying on my deathbed? I think about all the time. I worried about finances and I'm sitting there doing just fine. This is the one I probably spent a lot more time worrying about than I needed to.
Even if you die, even if you're on your deathbed and you're not financially as financially successful as you think you should be, are people going to call you a good person? Are you going to have those things that we talked about earlier about what is a good person? I don't want people to call me rich. I would love for people to call me honest and humble and generous and responsible and empathetic and selfless and patient and kind.
Those things don't cost anything.
They don't cost a darn thing, dude. And gosh, if somebody is saying that in your eulogy, we've done something special, right?
So true. What's another one of yours?
You know, this kind of comes along with. Goes along with taking more risks. I wish I'd pursued more of my dreams. And like I said before, I've done a lot of stuff. I've opened up business. I've been a bar owner. I started a publishing company that mailed coupon magazines on the east side of Cincinnati. I had an insurance agency for a while. I've taken some risks and I've pursued some things that I thought that I wanted to do. But were any of those truly my dreams? Were they my dreams? Don't I even know what my dreams are?
That's going through my head again. The hard part Is defining them, deciding on them too. That's a big part of it.
And I know I haven't and I hope to this point I've not really pursued my dreams. I'm doing well. I've got a good job. I'm making a contribution to the lives of other people through my work, my primary income producing activity. Where we are. People get to feed their family based on the work that I do and the sales that I make. And people are building machines and taking care of their family because of the work that I do. And I can embrace that. But are those my dreams? Were those my dreams? I wish I'd pursued more of my dreams. And I wish I had taken some time to really think about what are my dreams.
Yeah, that is a good one. We talk about that a lot. I wish I had realized earlier that happiness is a choice. Maybe the way this is worded isn't really the way I would say it, because I did learn this several years ago. Practicing it is another thing altogether because sometimes you forget this, that I feel like you don't have to live in misery. You can make choice. You have the power to choose the way you react to things. And I've heard this many times, just gotta keep remind myself of it. If I'm feeling a little bit anxious or down, I can take control of these things. It's in our power to do that. And this is important, not that I don't know it. It's really practicing it. I would say I want to do that. I want to be happier more often than I am depressed or down on things. Yeah, I don't want to be that old grumpy guy. Yeah.
This concept I struggle with as well, Kurt, that happiness is a choice. And I wonder. I'd like to dig a little deeper into what he says about this, either in this book or maybe some of his other stuff. I wish I had realized earlier that happiness is a choice. When we talk about happiness, are we talking about the emotion of elation or joy or whatever it might be? Or are we talking about we're happy with the direction our life is headed. And if happiness is a choice, we can choose to move our life in a direction that will make us happier. Yeah, right.
That's part of it. We.
We can choose to say to change our mindset, but also we can choose to say what? Whatever this situation is, I'm going to choose joy, I'm going to choose happiness. Even though it might be sad, you can have an underlying current of happiness or joy. And I don't know how we choose that. I struggle with this, too, Kurt.
Yeah, there's. You can look at this as a. I think you started looking at this in a different couple, different ways, decide what does make you happy, and go do that. It's one of those things if you're in a situation, again, we've talked about, you're. If you're working in a job you don't enjoy, you have the choice to change that. You might not think so, but you do.
And it may take some time and.
Yeah, it's not gonna happen. That particular one might not take. Might not happen right away. And you were alluding this in your own job, even though you might not think that you're pursuing all your dreams. But I like how you were starting to frame that. You could look at, if you want to be someone who serves people, you can serve that and what you do every single day and look at that as a choice. Something that I know that makes me happy when I serve someone and really celebrate that. So there's lots of. This is a whole psychology that you could read around this one, the year of being happy. Now, I'm not saying you're going to run around with a big smile on your face and bad things aren't going to happen that are going to knock you down.
Yeah, we're not talking about. And he's not talking about fake contrived happiness. Right. This weird kind of somebody's going through a tragic thing in their life and they're just walking around with a smile on their face. I think that there's time to be sad. There's time to be. There's time to mourn. I don't think that we're talking about that. I don't think we're talking about choosing this fake contrived happiness. It is more of a state of being and understanding your direction and that you have autonomy in your life and you have agency and you can choose a different path that can make you happier. This is interesting for me, and this speaks to one thing that I want to accomplish about this coming year in 2025. One thing that I want to do this year in 2025 is I want to touch more lives. When I am talking about touching more lives, I am talking about human interactions, having more human experiences, human to human experiences, person to person, understanding and helping and lifting up more people at a. At an intimate level. Now, listen, when tragedy strikes, the funny thing is, Kurt, I love this. And this is a little. I don't mean. I don't mean this to be mean spirited. But when tragedy happens, what's the first thing you see all over social media? My thoughts and prayers are with you. Sending thoughts and prayers. Now listen, thoughts and prayers are awesome. We're both men of faith. Prayers are important. I want people to know that I'm thinking about them. But daggone, man, sometimes you gotta write a check, right?
Well, this gets back to that empathy I was talking about. I don't like to be fake about it. I like to say something honest and make a difference.
So I've always thought that way. I've always thought, okay, and honestly, I'm not being braggadocious here, but I don't have a problem writing a check. If there's a need that comes up and I have the money available, I want to be able to help. I want to write that check because thoughts and prayers are awesome. They're awesome. And I mean that sincerely. But sometimes you got to write a check. But beyond that, man, I want to touch more lives on a human to human basis, on a person to person basis.
If you thought about this and we've, we're discussing it now and you've said it's going to be something for this year. You're going to be open, you're going to be hearing, you'll hear something. I remember this was important to me. Instead of ignoring that prompt, you're more like, you're like this anyway. But you're more likely to get involved or whatever that means to do something because you know it's important.
I agree.
I don't want to be laying on my deathbed and say all those places I dreamt of going that I didn't do. So I want to travel to the places that are on my heart to go do.
Where do you want to go other than Disney World? Let's not go there.
Disneyland is one of them.
Other than Disneyland. It can't have the word Disney.
No, that's not true. Because I'll tell you why that's not true. It's because my wife has never been there and I think this would be just an incredible thing to accomplish for her. It goes back to being kids and not being able to go places. And to pull that one off would be really important. And it's across the country. I think Hawaii is one of those things. And some kind of European travel. I haven't a hundred percent defined it, but I gotta get to Europe. So there's a couple of easy ones.
There you go. That's what I was hoping to hear. Something beyond Disney And Disneyland's important. Your wife wants to go. You've never been there. It's cross country. It'd be a big event in your life. But I was hoping to hear something like Europe or Hawaii, something that is a brand new experience for you, dude. And I know that travel is important to you, and I know when you look back at your life, actually, you inspire me to travel, to travel more, because this is important to you. So you don't want to look back on your life and say, I wish I had traveled more. You want to make sure that you fulfill that value.
Yep, I understand that one. So these are tough things to read through or think about, but, yeah, these are the things, you know, dying people. If you were there, you would think about these things, too. Well, there you go. That's a good start on this book. I appreciate the conversation, Jo. It's Ben. It's a good. This doing a book, not a book review, book discussion.
Yeah.
Reading something and discussing with you is. They always say reading is great and then discussing it. And boy, if you could teach it to others, then you really absorb it. But this has been helpful.
That's the key to learning. Teach it to others. I'm really excited about this next chapter, though, the Classroom of Silence. This doesn't really make a big difference.
I don't know if we'll go further. I think we could pull three episodes out of this book. There's so many great topics in there.
No doubt, no doubt.
What's your win for the week?
Well, before we go into my win for week, I do want to say thank you, Kurt, for this episode, and we talked a lot about it, about using this book as the foundation of a few episodes. So thanks for kicking us off and thanks for putting together some good notes. I'm looking forward to digging further into this book with you. My win for the week is I went back to work. Now, that might sound funny, right? But I went back to work and I kept the same productivity momentum that I had the week leading up to the holiday break. I got a lot done that last week before the holiday break, and I went back to work on the second, and man, that first day, I just. It's like the momentum kept pushing me forward. So I'm really. I'm really glad that somehow I didn't come back with the doldrums. Right. With the holiday doldrums, wishing I was still eating Little Debbie snack cakes and watching tv. Right.
Binge watching the Netflix series.
So, yeah, that's awesome. I'm going to Call that my win for the week. I went back to work. That's a good thing. And I kept the productivity momentum that I had the week leading up to the holiday break. And I'm really happy for that.
It has been. It can be tough getting easing back into the after. It's like from going zero to a hundred pretty quick. Good for you. My win. Yeah, it was just a very relaxing holiday week off. Just, I'll say rejuvenating. It was what it was supposed to be. I didn't put a lot of pressure. I did a little building. I. I built a. I think I mentioned it in my win for the week. I built a vinyl storage cabinet or stand that, that I really liked. But yeah, I just. There, I like I said I got back into my morning routine like that first hour just quiet with the Christmas tree lights and just with my dog reading, meditating, quiet. And it was amazing. Maybe a nap in the afternoon, but it was really great.
Perfect.
Perfect. How about your resource?
Well, this is an interesting resource and I'll just give you a little bit of backstory for this One big debate in my house between my wife and me are horizontal surfaces. I don't like end tables. I don't like coffee tables. I don't like any of those things because it just gives you a place to lay crap down. It just gives you a place to pile up. It gives you a place to throw mail on there, throw books on there, throw whatever your glasses on there, throw whatever your. Whatever you don't want to deal with right now. You throw on some end table or some coffee table or whatever it might be. So I'm not a big fan of horizontal surfaces, but sometimes when you're sitting there watching tv, you need a place to put your cup of coffee or your drink or whatever it might be. And I thought I had the solution, man. I'm thinking in my mind if I could just design something that had a flat surface that I could lay over the cushion, the arm. The arm of the couch and had a flat surface and it draped over there, that would be a. That would be a product to have right there. I think I'm going to invent that. While I'll be darn if I didn't go on Amazon and found something right away. They're about 30 bucks. It's called the Gehe Bamboo Sofa tray table. And we'll put the link in the show notes from Amazon. But this is exactly what I wanted. It sits right there on the arm of the furniture. It's not a Large horizontal surface, just enough for a drink and maybe to set the remote control down or a little tiny bowl of snack, but it just. It gives you a flat surface right on the arm of your. Right on the arm of your couch or your chair or something like that. And I love it. I bought two of them, about 30 bucks a piece. And I get that out and I sit there and I put my coffee on there. And I'm not using a coffee table or coasters or anything like that. So there we go. The GE bamboo sofa tray table.
Do you put it away after you're done with it every day? No, it just sits there.
It sits there, but it's not this big surface to pile more crap on.
I have the same problem when I'm reading my Kindle. I want to lay back in my couch and I've got a table there that. We keep it. We do keep it clear. I understand your problem with clutter, because we can do that, but it stays pretty clear. But I can't lean back and put my coffee down because inevitably I'll spill it.
Right.
It's a really cool little invention that someone else made for you.
I like this. G E H E bamboo sofa tray table.
Well, in the same spirit. My wife is just so great. She's such a great Christmas shopper. She always comes up with something for me or the kids. This one she got for everybody. She found this Travelon windshield cleaner and defrogger. And that was just. We were going to see a show on Sunday. Saturday. It was no Sunday. We went into Hartford this time of year especially. You get that just slime that you just can't get off. Even when you. Sometimes when you clean the inside of your windshield, you still can't get that off.
Yeah.
This little gadget, palm of your hand. Keep it in your glove compartment or close by and just wipe it down. And it could be in an emergency. So you could see through that windshield a little better. Especially the lights shining, coming the opposite direction. Yeah, I found it on Amazon. We'll put the link there. But I thought that was when she. It's one of these gifts. When you get it, you go, yes, this is a great little gift. And like, I don't know, somewhere between three and five dollars.
I love this. I love this idea. And I'm most assuredly going to buy this it. Because it is. You need to wipe that wipe off the inside of your windshield. My thing is the. The mirror on the outside.
So true.
You know, when it gets moisture on there. And the mirror that I have is not heated. So when I'm driving down the road, I'm trying to look out, look through my mirror. I could just pull this little sponge thing out or whatever it is and. And wipe it down and be on with life. But, yeah, I like this, man. A windshield cleaner and defogger. Good stuff, man.
All right, let's finish up with our quotes for the week.
Yeah. These resources, tips and hacks aren't always life changing. Right. They're not always deep.
Right.
Deep life, discovery things. But I do like these things. I do. So here's my quote, talking about life changing this guy's work. I reference a lot, and if you've not read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, I really invite you to pick it up and read it. Get a good English, modern English version of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. There's a couple really good ones out there. I look on Amazon, I look for the ratings, get one that's highly rated. But Marcus Aurelius says, think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly. That's a lot of what we're talking about here, isn't it?
Yeah. It's very similar die to that old life.
You've lived it, it's done, it's over. That person is dead. You've lived that life. You can even separate it by saying, that's the old person. He's lived his life. Now it's time for the new person to live their life, which is very biblical, by the way. Now take what's left and live it properly.
Is it also saying those things that you feel like you left unfinished?
Yeah.
Take a look at those.
Yeah.
And now that you've taken this perspective, go do it.
Go live that life.
Go live that life. Yeah. And we've talked a lot about Marcus Aurelius, the Stoics. This is. I don't know if I would have picked. I would have known about this from him. Even though all the conversations we've had about the Stoics. Very good one. Like it?
Yeah, it's good stuff.
Fits right in what we were talking about today. My quote I took from the book from Matthew Kelly. The good we do never dies. It lives on forever in other people, in other places and in other times. Let goodness be your legacy. Yeah. I just think there's again, thinking about A Beautiful Life, the Jimmy Stewart character.
Oh, it's a wonderful life.
Yeah, It's a wonderful life. Yeah. You don't realize the impact that you can have. That you've already had with people. And that ripple effect, one little thing could carry on. It's obvious in your children that's going to be. But yeah, there are things that you don't realize have an impact on people. But again, with those 12 qualities, let goodness be. Your legacy doesn't have to be financial like Joe. Remind us Matthew Kelly.
I love this philosopher. I love this thought. This is a true legacy goodness and it does live on forever. I may not know of traits and attributes that I have, the positive traits and attributes that I have that were planted a few hundred years ago by some by great grandfather that filtered its way and made its way through some goodness that has happened that has made its way through down to Joe Taylor here in 2025. So do some good, man. I love.
I was thinking about this. My, my son is sending me pictures of my grandson and I'm thinking, boy, think back a couple of generations. What my grandfather did, what my father did, what advantages he gave me, what advantages I gave my son. And I'm feeling he's got my grandson's got some advantages we didn't have. Pretty awesome. All from the legacy going down. And if you're watching the news right now, we lost a president 100 years old, Jimmy Carter. And you heard a lot of criticisms about Jimmy Carter. But I wasn't listening to a lot of the news coverage today as he's going to be laying in state in Washington D.C. but I heard some really amazing stories about Jimmy Carter that I didn't know. And they're all talking about some of those amazing things and what an amazing person he was in his military service, which I had no idea. Yeah.
Jimmy Carter is probably the best former president in history. Now we can talk about the effectiveness of his presidency and we can certainly have a conversation about that. But as a man, once he left office, selfless.
Yeah.
I invite you to look up a meme on Facebook or wherever we find memes. Just look up Jimmy is a badass. Okay.
All right.
And I promise you it'll give you some insight as to who Jimmy Carter was.
A good man.
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Let's wrap up right there. Our website is dudesinprogress.com dudesinprogress.com head over there if you want to see a website that woefully needs some work. But still you can go there and reach out to us and support us there if you want to support us. Our email address is dudesudesinprogress.com if you want to comment about the show if you want to give us some ideas on things you want us to talk about. Even if you might want to come on the show and be a guest and talk about what motivates you possibly into this fourth quarter of your life, we'd love to hear from you. Dudesinprogress.com and this is the fourth quarter for many of us, Kurt. Right. We've not done it perfect, but if we're making progress, we're doing a pretty good thing because progress is better than perfection. Even in the fourth quarter, we got to keep moving forward.
Absolutely. You don't have to be in the fourth quarter. You could be in the third, second quarter. I think all of these topics we're covering here are just as relevant, but even more so if you're running out of time in the fourth quarter, get after it.
Exactly. Talk to you soon, my friend. It.