#166 - Mastery Isn't Where You Start

And maybe the biggest one is this.

The questions are more important than the answers.

It's a pretty big realization for someone who has spent a lot of his life searching for answers.

How do I grow the business? What venture is next? What's the right decision? What should I do? How do I become better at this? How do I fix that? You know, we love answers.

Answers make us feel safe.

Questions make us feel uncomfortable.

But I'm beginning to wonder if the quality of our lives is determined less by the answers we've accumulated and more by the questions we're willing to sit with.

And that's really what these last three days were about, creating enough space to sit with some really good questions.

Each morning, our friend Vanessa Colangelo, who has guested on this podcast before, led us through movement and meditation.

We'd get grounded and then we'd gather outside in a circle around a fire right next to Lake Vanderkamp.

That was our backdrop.

No conference room, no PowerPoint presentations, no phones, just 12 people.

fire, lake, space.

Jennifer Johnson Nazareth guided us through what she calls the seven tenets of thriving care, presence, safety, connection, peace, freedom, and joy.

And out of all those seven, it was so cool to see each one resonate a little bit differently, a little bit deeper with each person in our group.

But the one that hit me the hardest was joy.

You know, I spent a lot of time thinking about where I experienced the most joy in my life.

And what I realized is that joy is usually pretty simple.

It's being outside around the fire, great conversations, laughing with people I care about being present with Kelly, experiencing something new.

It's quiet.

It's nature.

It's connection.

It's, It's simplicity, which I wrote over and over and over again.

You know, I had to confront the other side of that realization, the fact that I've overcomplicated a lot in my life.

And maybe you have, too.