EP 80 | E-MOTIONS: Avoiding Burnout and Connecting to Purpose with Rich Bluni

David DeCelle  10:54

Interesting. So if we get more specific to that, so before, like I said, I would grab a notebook, grab a laptop, go to a quiet place, and be able to come up with these goals. So are you saying, do something totally different? Like, change the environment entirely? Perhaps even go away for a night somewhere? Or do the exercise with someone just, try and shake it up a little bit?

 

Rich Bluni  11:20

Yeah, go to the gym, put your air pods in, put on some music that is loud, or different, or distracting, or heavy, or whatever motivates you, and what maybe you might do is like, I don't know how you work out. But assuming you work out, let's say you do, you look like you do. You're having chest day, so when you go to do your reps, when you're doing your reps, you think about, what are my financial goals right now? And as you're pressing, you're thinking like, how much do I want to achieve financially? Just, that's not what you would normally do. What's going to happen is, it's like that old thing of when you're taking the same road to work every day. So if you work in an office, like some people do, or if you work in a place or location, you tend to take the same road all the time. How many of us have gotten somewhere, this is so cliche, but how many of us have gotten somewhere and you're like, I don't really even remember this drive? Well, that's on autopilot. But when you're on autopilot, you can't create something new. When you're doing what you've always done, you get what you've always got. When you're in the same state, you're going to create some of the same results. So yeah, literally, what you can do is you can look at the different areas of your life: mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, let's just take those, for example. Mental. Normally, you have yourself in a mental state where maybe you sit down in a calm, quiet environment, and you sit down calmly with a pen and paper; don't do that. Go for a long walk, and while you're on your walk, and you're in nature, and you're breathing, that's when you think about your goals. Spiritual. Maybe you meditate, maybe you don't, maybe you pray. So if normally you go to church, or if normally you're doing mindfulness and you're meditating, maybe go take a yoga class instead. And during the yoga class, your focus is on that. When you think about intellectual, maybe you normally read this book, or you listen to this podcast. Listen to a totally different podcast. Pick a podcast of a subject that you're really not sure if you're even interested in. I don't know, quantum physics, what's that? I'm going to go listen to this podcast, and just force yourself. If you force yourself into a different state, you'll all of a sudden start seeing that your brain starts to think and process in different ways than it normally did, which therefore is going to bring you different results. Now, can I guarantee they're going to be better results? No. But what I can guarantee is they're going to be different results. If you change your thinking, if you change your focus, if you change your habits, if you change your state, then you're going to force yourself to be shook up a little bit. When you work with financial planners, and you work with people that are money experts, a lot of the times you probably have a format that you would go through I'm sure. I'm sure you have a question, a way of asking different things. When you get somebody that's stuck in a rut, if you're always meeting with them in their office, maybe this time you say hey, let's go meet at a park; or, hey, the beach isn't too far from your office, which would be awesome. You want to just go for a walk. I mean, that might sound a little crazy. They might think like you're like maybe wanting to date or something, but it's not even about that; it doesn't to be a romantic walk, right? But maybe when you do that, when you change the state, you cause somebody to think in a different way. I think oftentimes, using Einstein's concept if he said that, is when we're coming at a problem the same way we always come at a problem, it becomes so predictable that the synapses in our brain just do the same thing over and over again. So you're not going to get something new and different. You're not going to get a different way. Your brain’s bored with how you create goals. Your brain’s like yeah, we do this all the time. This is what we always do, this is what I do, we did this last year, this is what we do. You need to do it in a different way. You have a significant other, you have a girlfriend I think. So have you ever done the, where do you want to go to eat today? Where do you want to go on date night? I don't know, where do you want to go? I don’t know, do you just want to go to Sushi Pop? Okay, well that's where you go all the time. But depending on her personality or your personality, if you were to say, hey, I got a great place for date night tonight, but I'm not going to tell you where it is, just get dressed up — you're going to see some excitement in those eyes. You're going to see she did that for you. Why? Because all of a sudden, you're turning on the endorphins, the dopamine, the excitement, like firing through the brain. That's maybe what it is. It's not that you're now all of a sudden unsuccessful at writing goals, you're just walking down the same roads, you're going to get to the same place no matter what you do.

 

David DeCelle  15:27

So that kind of leads me to another question, and I'll give you a little bit of a backdrop. So I was actually chatting with my girlfriend this morning before she headed out to work. And I chuckled, and she's like, what? I was like, I'm so routined; even the dishwasher is loaded the same exact way every single morning with the juicer and the blender and the glasses that I used and the metal straws and all this type of stuff. And I kind of just laughed it off, because I'm a creature of habit. And I feel like there's a lot of value to being routined in certain aspects of life. And I think that if gone unchecked, you can be routined to a fault in some circumstances, is kind of what I'm discovering as we're having this conversation. So my question then becomes, I don't know if it's a percentage, I don't know if it's X amount of times per year, I don't know if it's certain aspects of your life should be routine, and others shouldn't. But I guess just to remain conversational and kind of try and chat through this, what aspects or what percentage of your life should be routine compared to needing to change it up to continue to create new neural pathways in your brain so that you can continue to be creative and solve problems? So I don't really know if I'm asking the question appropriately. But based on what I said, what are your thoughts?

 

Rich Bluni  16:50

Yeah, so I think that it's all about what serves you. So if loading the dishwasher in a particular way, you found that when you put — because metal straws are little things, so they've got little holes, and it's a metal straw — if you load them sideways, or the wrong way, the water and the cleaning product’s not going to get in, so you probably have to put them standing upright. So there's different things. So if you look as a nurse, right, when I worked in the ICU, there were certain ways of sterile technique, or certain ways that you did a dressing, or certain ways that you put in lines. And you have to do it that way because it's been proven to be more effective and safer. So my whole thing is, until it's not. So back in the day, let's go pre-Civil War or whatever, people didn't wash their hands in between surgery. Okay, so there were surgeons and they’d go from one person to the other. And then Florence Nightingale was like, maybe we should wash our hands, and they laughed, and then they realized when they knew it was better. Now, if you would go back in those days, and you'd see some successful outcomes from surgeries, they'd be like, not washing your hands is great, it's no big deal. But then when they saw that it no longer served them, then they improved it. So if a routine serves you, if the results that you're getting based on the routine are successful, if the results are you're achieving what you want to achieve and seeing what you want to achieve. That's why “if it ain't broke, don't fix it” has been around for a long time. However, when the routine no longer serves you, when you're in a rut, when the relationship is stagnating, when now you got a new dishwasher, so your dishwasher broke, you get a brand new dishwasher, and now you load it the way you used to load the other one and you're noticing the juicer is not coming out as clean. Why? Well, because the cleaning mechanism and the way the water squirts in the new dishwasher is different. So that's the world. The way that financial planners worked pre COVID, I would imagine is a little different than it is right now. I bet you if you would have gone to 2007, told a bunch of financial planners, hey, do Zoom calls with your clients. NO, we have to be in person. But now it's like oh, we kind of have to. In other words, it didn't fit the environment. So, I don't know what the percentage is, but I do know that as human beings, we have to pay attention to something that we ignore. And that is our instinct and our gut. I think gut and instinct are powerful things. Your gut, your instinct has told you this doesn't feel right, the way I'm writing goals. I bet if I said to you, bro, David, you have to sit down by 5pm today, I need 10 goals from you. I know you could do it, couldn't you? But it wouldn't feel the same than if you did it in a different way. I think that — I hate when I can't remember who says quotes because I have so many quotes in my brain and things I forget — but an unexamined life, a life where you don't sit down and take a minute and really think about how do I think? How do I work? How do I speak to my significant other? How do I parent? How do I take care of my dog? How do I drive? I mean, we don't think about that stuff. We think about what we're going to wear. We think about what we're going to watch on TV; we're going to think about like should I watch Yellowstone, should I watch Ozark. Are they the same thing, they both take place in the woods? I mean, we think about that, but do we ever stop and think about how we think. So it's literally examining and being thoughtful at what you are. So I think routine is great; routine is great when it works. Routine starts to fall short, when it no longer is exciting, when it's no longer efficient, and when it's no longer effective. Now, something could be effective and efficient, and not be exciting. So should you still do it? It's up to you. Maybe you want it to be exciting. Maybe you don't. Maybe loading the dishwasher doesn't need to be an exciting process. You just want your stuff to be clean. But your relationship, your date night, you want that to be exciting. Your conversations with your clients, you want that to be exciting; you want to be stimulated, you want them to be stimulated. So I think you look at things, and you literally just sit down and say, do I need to change this process? You know, checkbox; yes, no. Yeah, it's working. It's no big deal. I love the dishwasher this way. Creature of habit is a powerful thing. There's that whole book, The Power of Habits, I mean, it's brilliant. I just think that when our habits no longer serve us, then it becomes kind of silly. It's like doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get a different result. It becomes kind of mundane; that's when we shake it up.

 

David DeCelle  21:18

What I'm realizing as you're talking is structure and a routine; those are two totally different things.

 

Rich Bluni  21:27

Yeah, I mean, I think structure and routine sometimes can be looked at as synonymous, but I think structure is, if you built a condo, it's the structure of the condo, the ten-story beautiful condo in St. Petersburg, the structure of it might look pretty boring. So it's going to be a bunch of steel things, and you're going to look at it, and you're going to go, that looks like a condo. That's the structure; that can be consistent over and over and over again. When you bring in the nuances, when you bring in the layout of the rooms, when you bring in a decorator, when you decide you're going to do plaster, when you decide it's going to be a marble or this is going to have onyx in it — that's the routine. The structure, you could stay within a structure, but change around the routine. So the structure itself has to be a certain way because it has to withstand storms, it has to be able to be strong, it has to pass inspection. But the routine or what you do within that structure, that's where you can play with it a little bit. If you paint, you need a canvas, paint brush, and color. That's the structure. It could be watercolors, it could be different kinds of paint brushes, it could be different kinds of canvases — that's going to be the routine.

 

David DeCelle  22:38

Love it. Yeah, it's the routine, because it's important to have structure as we just determined. But the routine that I've been in has become what we said earlier, which is that mindless drive to work where you try and think back and you're like, I don't even remember doing that, where it's like I'm going through the motions. So I think shaking up that routine within that structure, still wake up at a certain time, still be working out, but maybe changing out the workouts, maybe changing up the diet, maybe just continuing to shift and evolve within the parameters of structure, I think would be very, very helpful.

 

Rich Bluni  23:16

Well, and when you think about even what you said, going through the motions, you know, there's one letter that separates motions from something more powerful. And that's the letter E. When you think about E, you think about excitement, emotions, right? You put E in front of the word motions, you have emotions. When you think about emotions, that's feelings. That's why. That's hard. That's passion. I mean, look, I don't know about you, but I've worked in healthcare, but I'm part of the world. I'm 54 years old, I've encountered a lot of people. I would rather have somebody, I don't know, I would say like in your world, everybody's probably got a similar level of knowledge and education. I mean, it could vary up and down, but generally across the board. So if you just gave me two financial planners or financial advisors who were equally educated, equally certified, equally successful with their returns, but one was passionate. And when I say emotional, don't miss think like emotional, like ahhh. Emotions, heartfelt. I'm going with that person; I’m going with her hands down. So when you think about going through the motions, the way that you change it, is you throw in a little bit of E, a little bit of excitement. Then you got emotions. The passion that you put behind your goal setting is what's going to make the goal setting successful, not the goal setting. Big freakin deal. Like I can write down a number of the weight that I want to hit. But so what? So I'll decrease my calories, and I'll increase how much I burned my calories. Not a lot of excitement. But if I say I'm going to do that by going for walks with my 12 year old, and on each walk, we're going to take turns picking songs for each other from the generation present time and when I was a kid, then I'm adding emotions. I'm putting in something so now that exercise is taking on a whole other meaning. It really does come down to a lot of times the power of meaning. The meaning that we put behind things. What's the meaning? I'm asking you. What's the meaning behind you writing your goals? Is it just because you've always done it? It's kind of like your tradition? Or are you emotional about it? Do you have some passion behind it? Are you excited about it? And if you're not, then how do you get to that? Well, by doing it in different ways. So that's, I think, the difference between going through the motions and bringing in the emotions.

 

David DeCelle  25:32

Love it. Well, my commitment to you as a follow up of this conversation is I will change up my environment and work through goal setting, making sure to attach emotions to it, as well as a gameplan and whatnot, and I will shoot you an email. So for my own personal accountability, it's easy to let myself off the hook, or I should say, easier to let myself off the hook than it is someone else. So it's recorded. I'm putting it out there, you'll get that from me this weekend.

 

Rich Bluni  26:03

Kind of like when you send a text out to a bunch of friends and say, I will not be drinking for 60 days. Kind of like, the first time that they see you sip a Bud Light, they’re like, bro, bro. So I’ll hold you to it. But listen, at the end of the day, I truly believe that this whole thing about personal alchemy is really changing who we are; we’re ever changing. I mean, that the whole concept of the person you were at, if you're, let's say I'm 54. So the person I was at 44 — there's not a single cell, there's not a single skin cell; that's all a different person. Look at a picture of yourself when you're like a little kid. I'm looking, I have one like right here. So I've got like, this picture of myself from, oh my god, I'm one years old in that picture. What a cutie I was! So, I'm one years old in that picture. That's me. But that's not me. I mean, look.

 

David DeCelle  26:58

I didn't realize they had cameras back then.

 

Rich Bluni  27:01

They did! It was really cool. They put like the thing over and they held a flashing. That's the thing, and that's the excitement; we get to decide who we are. We get to decide how we're going to do things. But we're fooling ourselves because we're like living in the matrix, right? So we're thinking like, I've got to do this this way, because this is what I've always done. This is what I eat for breakfast. This is how I always sign my cards. This is how I send an email. And then we wonder why at some point in our lives, we're like, oh, I'm like not excited about this. It's got to be changed up.

 

David DeCelle  27:35

Let's transition slightly. Whether it be personal friends, clients, colleagues, myself, I've noticed themes whenever I'm working with someone or whenever I'm self-reflecting, with myself. I definitely want to include myself in this conversation as well, because I'm not perfect by any means. A lot of folks that I chat with, at some point in their life, experience something that you brought up when we first started recording this episode, and that's burnout. So I'm curious to know, from your perspective, from your experience with folks that you've spent some time with, what causes burnout? And we'll start there, and then ultimately, I want to work through that to the point of how do you get out of that burnout feeling? How do you lift yourself up to get excited again? And maybe it's similar themes as to what we were just talking about. But why do people get burnt out in the first place?

 

Rich Bluni  28:27

Well, you know, let's think about how you get a cold. Like if I said to you, how do you get a cold? Your answer might be, someone sneezes on me. That's one way. Another way is you touch a surface that someone else touched, and then you rub your nose. That's another way. So burnout happens to people in different ways. I would say that me personally, not being a researcher, I think that generally speaking, people get burnt out when they get disconnected from their why. I think that three letter word “why” is probably one of the most powerful words that exist. It doesn't matter what you do. It doesn't matter if you're a lawyer; doesn't matter if you're a financial advisor or a nurse. It doesn't matter if you're a landscaper or a house painter or a mortician. I think if you understand or have a connection, viscerally, emotionally, passionately, to your why, if you understand it, then I think that's how you at least can somewhat prevent burnout. I don't believe that people that don't care get burned out — and I can't prove it. Nothing's 100% right. But I believe if someone just doesn't care, like if I don't care — I'll use your world — if I don't care about my clients, I don't care, I think you don't get burnt out, but you also don't get inspired. You don't get passionate, you don't get fulfilled, you don't get joy. So I believe that underneath burnout, there's hope because it's because you care. You're burnt out because you have this sudden awareness that this doesn't feel right anymore. This doesn't feel good. I'm not happy. I'm not. I mean, I remember driving to work in my late 20s and early 30s, when I worked in a pediatric ICU. Now, let's just put this into perspective. I worked at a level one trauma center; I took care of critically ill children. I saw children, children, die, every day almost, almost every day, literally, children pass away. I have put children in body bags and brought them to morgues. Morbid, dark, sad, heartbreaking stuff. And I can remember driving to work, and all of a sudden feeling this sense of dread and nausea and fear. And I would say, yeah, panic. And it wasn't until I realized that I was getting disconnected from my why, that I was getting so wrapped up in the darkness, I was getting so wrapped up in the negativity, and I was getting so wrapped up in the knowledge base and the education and the skill set and the black and white and the literal, that I was forgetting to stay spiritual. It happened when I went to a child's funeral. And I had never gone to a patient's funeral, and I won't go into all the details, because I don't want to upset people. But it was a heartbreaking situation, and I left that funeral and I turned to my wife, and I said, I don't want to be a nurse anymore. I jumped from one thing to just the — I don't want to do this anymore. Because I was so overwhelmed by the emotions of that moment and how heartbreaking it was. And I realized I'm burnt out. And I had to stop, and I took a break. And I thought, why am I doing this? Came to a realization, for me personally, and this may be a little off so just give me one second to bring it in. But I realized that I thought I knew why I was doing what I was doing at the time. I just thought, you know, I care about the world, and I want to take care of children and I want to help people. And that's great. But I had a really tough childhood, bad, bad stuff. Okay, like the bad bad stuff. Bad, bad stuff. And what happened to me one day, and it was partially from being in therapy, and partially from changing my state and doing something that I had never done before, and going through a divorce, and just having like a lot of things in my world come apart. And I realized when I said no, why are you doing this? And I realized that I was trying to take care of the child that I once was. That I realized that the reason why that I was in pediatrics was because I had such a tough childhood, and had so many bad things happened to me. And no one was there. No one protected me, no one — it just didn't work, you know. And I realized my why was, I'm trying to heal myself. Like when I'm taking care of a dying child, when I'm holding a child in my arms that’s been abandoned by the system, they’re foster care and they're dying now. And they have no family. No one's there with them. It's just me. And they're about to pass. And I'm holding them in my arms, that this is actually me trying to heal me. So how I would bring that back to your question is that when we get to the deeper root of why we do what we do, and many people might not have thought about that. I mean, I've met people who are physicians because their mom was a physician, and their dad was a physician, and the grandmother was a physician, and they were expected to be. But they wanted to be a sculptor, they wanted to design cars, you know, and that's why their passion isn't there. But when you get to this is my deeper why, like, maybe there's people who are financial planners because their family was broke growing up. They had a dad who had a gambling problem, and they were living hand to mouth, and that stressed them out. And they wanted to have an understanding of how to deal with money and manage money, and that's what got them passionate about it. So they want to help people so they don't make that level of mistake. Somebody might have forgotten that that's in their past. That's part of who they are. Like, granted, there might be people who are in it just because, hey, it's a good field, and I can make good money, and I kind of understand numbers and whatever. But there's a why there, there's a why there. Your field is a field that helps people. You can't do stuff without money. You can't put food on the table without money. You can't pay hospital bills without money. You can't educate your children without — like, this is a necessity. So I think for me, it was that connection of why. So I think people get burnt out when they don't take a minute to really connect to why am I here? What is the big reason? What is the big reason behind me doing this? There's got to be, and if you can't think of it right away, you got to put in the work, and you got to sit there and figure it out. Because I'll tell you right now in your world and in your field, the difference between a successful and a super successful financial advisor is going to be the why. It's going to be the emotional connection. It’s going to be the understanding the passion and heart. Because I guarantee that if you and I walked into a financial advisors office and we started having this conversation, I guarantee we could take them from a six to a nine, like that.

 

David DeCelle  35:11

I'm processing all that at the moment. It's interesting, because at one point, when you're going through all of that, I was like, well, if you want to avoid burnout, just don't care. And then at the very end, you mentioned that to get from that six to a nine, to get from successful to super successful, then you do need to care. And you do need to understand that there may be moments of burnout along the way, but constantly reminding yourself of why you're doing what you're doing, what is that deeper purpose, ultimately keeps you going through those periods of time.

 

Rich Bluni  35:50

It's the same as saying, if you want to avoid being sore, don't work out. So yeah, you won't be sore, you also won't be fit. So my whole premise of if you don't care, you won't get burnt out. But most importantly, you won't be passionate, you won't be happy, you won't be inspired. So yeah, if you don't want to be sore, no pain, no gain, right? So if you don't want — I had a friend that always tease me, and I'd say no pain, no gain. He's like, no, bro, no pain, no pain. So I'm like, yeah, but if you're not sore, then you're not going to build muscle, you're not going to get into shape, you're not going to feel good, you're not going to look good in your clothes, you're not going to be cute to your significant other. So then yeah, you might avoid the soreness, but you're also depriving yourself of meaning in your life. So if you don't care, you probably won't get burnt out. But you also won't have meaning. And a life without meaning is kind of like, I don't know, like cake without frosting. It's kind of sad.

 

David DeCelle  36:53

So it seems like if I tracked your story, and please certainly correct me if I'm wrong, but you got into the medical field because you wanted to help people. And then at some point along that journey, you had this aha moment, where it was like, no, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. So then my question becomes, rather than just waiting for that light bulb to come off, if someone really hasn't explored their why, what are some things that they can do proactively to try and bubble that up to the surface?

 

Rich Bluni  37:27

Absolutely. There's a word in Japanese, and I apologize to anyone who speaks Japanese if I'm mispronouncing it, called Satori. And I don’t know if you have ever heard the word, I think it's S-a-t-o-r-i. Satori, as I understand it, and apologies again, if I'm coming up with a “Rich” definition, as I call them, but it is a sudden awareness, a sudden awakening, and we can all hope for that. We can all hope to be walking down the street and like all of a sudden go, ah, I get the meaning of life. Awesome. But in all fairness, that doesn't happen to a lot of people. I think that you got to put in the work. And you know, granted a satori might happen to you. And then if it does, blessings, that's awesome. Let me know. I think that, to your question, that you have to put in the work. And I think that it's a mix of, if I was going to give you a recipe, I'd say introspection, which a lot of times I think people avoid, because a lot of people don't want to think about how they're thinking. It's hard to do it. It's hard to be introspective. How many people have you heard say, I can't meditate, it's too hard. Right? Have you ever heard?

 

David DeCelle  

Yeah.

 

Rich Bluni  

And it's kind of funny, because then if you talk to meditation experts, they're like, yeah, don't make it hard. You're like, well, that sounds easy. And you're like, no, but no, seriously, just do it. Well, yeah, but it's hard. No, it's not hard, but just don't make it. It's like what, it's literally just doing it. So I think it's one part introspection. I think it's a little bit of an intellectual process, because I do think that you have to kind of sit down and be mindful about your thinking and kind of intellectualize a little bit. But then I think we get into the things that people think are soft skills, but are actually the most powerful skills. Number one is gratitude. I think gratitude is the most undervalued, underutilized, least appreciated method to wellness, to awareness, and to avoiding burnout and being passionate. I have made it a lifetime habit that as soon as I wake up in the morning, as soon as my eyes open, and I'm in a wakeful state. I mean, of course, you know, I'm thinking, oh, coffee; but I go, okay, I'm just not allowed. This is a process for me, this is something I do. I don't get out of bed without thinking about a bunch of things that I'm grateful for. And I no longer have a number, because it used to be three. Then I made it five. And then I was like, I got all competitive. I'm like, I'm gonna do ten. Now it's just like, whatever I feel like, and it could be anything. It could be like, I'm glad I'm over COVID. I'm glad I'm sleeping in bed with my wife now instead of being locked in the guest room for ten days. I'm glad I can smell coffee. I'm glad it's cold out right now. I think gratitude is number one. I think the other one is really paying attention to the words that we use. Because I think a part of that alchemy, that magic of creating who you are as you go, is how you speak. And I believe that if you go to any religious belief or spiritual path, they talk about the power of words. As a man speaketh, so is he. I mean, there's so many — you can go to the Bible, you can go to Buddha, you can go to Hindu philosophy and religion, you can go to whatever you want. And it talks about the power of words. I would start with gratitude. I would then look at how we speak to ourselves and how we speak to others. And I think that's part of the how do you get through burnout? How do you prevent it? How do you start dealing with it? It's very hard to be burnt out and grateful at the same time. It's almost impossible to do that. That's where I'd start. I'll pause just to get your, if I'm on the track with you that you want to be on. But that's the words that we use, and our level of gratitude, I think are powerful things. I mean, you probably sit with financial advisors and go man, I'm such a mess. So disorganized. I can't stand this. I mean, my clients are driving me crazy. And you know, you can hear the negativity in the words. The words are merely just a mirror of what they're thinking, right? Everything. This book was a thought. Actually this is funny. It's Marcus Aurelius, so it's meditations. It's actually his journal. So these were his thoughts, which are thousands of years old that my silly butt in 2022 is reading and going, whoa! But this was a thought, you know, this ohm was a thought. Somebody was like, let's think about this. And I think our thoughts, our gratitude, our words, sounds kind of basic. But I mean, the recipe for chocolate chip cookies is basic, too, but it's worth it.

 

David DeCelle  41:51

Like I said at the beginning of this episode, selfishly, I was looking forward to it. And I know I'm not the only one who's getting value from this, because people go through situations in their life, and they can relate to one another with whatever that situation is. And it's so interesting, because when I felt the most fired up, it was when I was consciously being grateful for specific things, both big, small and seemingly meaningless, and like, seemingly meaningless, like, wow, the sheets are soft this morning, you know, the basic stuff. So what you just said served as a friendly reminder to do that stuff. And I had a guest on our podcast last year, who I'm sure you know, he's a popular influencer. I mean, he speaks about gratitude a lot, Dave Meltzer, and he had coached me for a little bit when I left being an advisor to getting into consulting now. And he speaks about that all the time. And it's interesting to me, and I'm thinking out loud and trying to dissect this in my mind, live on this recording, so forgive me if I stumble. But it's interesting to me how humans, how I specifically can come across things that work really, really well. And then all of a sudden think it's a good idea to stop doing those. And I feel like those are some of the things that are a part of the structure, but I view them as part of their routine that's interchangeable with other things. But something like gratitude practice should be part of those steel beams, if we go back to that condo example, not part of the finishing touches.

 

Rich Bluni  43:32

Well, if you think about, and we can go deep into this and we don't have you, but if you think about life, people often experience a lot of pain, right? I mean, you can look at pain however you want. Pain could be, I'm having pain because I can't write my goals, or I'm in pain, because I got an argument with my significant other or whatever. And I think sometimes people confuse, at least in my opinion, pain with not getting what you want, with not feeling what you want. And I think it's not really about the getting what you want. It's the feeling what you want, because I know people that don't have a lot of stuff, they don't have a lot of things in their life, and they don't have a lot of getting, yet they don't seem to be experiencing the same level of pain. I've known some extremely successful, very wealthy people who seem to be a lot of pain, and they get what they want. I don't think they feel what they want. And I think there's great power, whether you're talking about NLP, which is what neuro linguistic programming; you go into the Anthony Robbins kind of thing where you get yourself in that state and you psych yourself up. Look, the reason why that dude's been around for so long, whatever you think of him, and I know there's this, that, and the other thing, but there's power to this. There's power to state, and I think that that feeling of gratitude, it does create that kind of template, it creates that structure. It's just one of the beams, but it's also paying attention to how we think. Because you can lay in bed and go through the exercise of I'm grateful for my bed. I'm grateful for my dog. I'm grateful that I'm breathing. I'm grateful for toothpaste. I'm grateful that I had scrambled eggs this morning. And okay, that's great. But I could say fifty things that I'm grateful for with no feeling; it has minimal effect. I can say two things that I'm grateful for with deep feeling, and that will have great effect. Anything done — when you talk about manifestation and law of attraction and all these things. No matter where you land on it, you think it's a bunch of New Age nonsense, or you think it's scientific, or you think it's somewhere in the middle, or it has something to do with string theory or whatever. The idea of putting emotion, coupled with desire, coupled with a goal, is a powerful motivator for a human being. Okay, so you get me to get into shape, because my doctor said, hey, you gained a lot of weight, cholesterol is high, you need to exercise or you could get very sick and die. Alright, so I joined the gym. You see him in the gym — you go to gym? You go to gym. You see him in the gym, their on the Stairmaster, right. And you can see the energy. You're like, huh; and then there's the person that's in there, that's like, yeah! Obviously, they've had too much pre workout, but maybe that's also coming from passion and desire, right? So, man, that passionate person that's connecting energy and passion into what they're doing is going to be more successful at it. Make it about your world. I come to work, and I'm like, I've got three client calls, and I've got this back to back, and then I've got to do this review of this, and then I've got the new intake and da, da, da. As opposed to like, you get yourself into this state where I'm going to change this person's life. Like, they're a recent widow, I know they're struggling, they’re going through a tough time. I've been through this, I've gotten people through this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. I know what it's like. When my dad died when I was 22, and I saw my mom struggling with money. And all of a sudden, when you're getting yourself into this state of — I used to do it. Like when I’d get on a helicopter, or I’d go to transport a child, or I’d go into somebody having cardiac arrest — I got myself in a state like I'm saving your life. Did I always? No, but man, I was present. I was there. I gave it my all. So I think that alchemy, having that emotion connected to goal, that's unstoppable stuff. That's unstoppable stuff. That truly is.

 

David DeCelle  47:31

I think that's a good point to kind of pause, because I feel like, I mean, we could continue. I mean, even our intro call that was supposed to be for a few minutes, you ended up spending time with me my entire ride home, which made it go by a lot faster, so thank you. But yeah, you get sort of this this tunnel vision and your Raz takes over, and all you see is solutions to what it is that you're trying to achieve. And you don't see all the reasons why you can't achieve it and allow that to — allow your brain to give that any time, space, or energy, because it's like, hey, no matter what, this needs to get done for these reasons. It aligns with your WHY, it allows you to deeply care throughout the process, and you find yourself with structure in a routine that ultimately is going to serve you to whatever that destination is, or at least the target that you're approaching.

 

Rich Bluni  

Yeah. 100%.

 

David DeCelle  

Love it. So to pivot slightly. So for all of you who are listening to our show, you know the deal. And for those of you who this is your first episode, one of the purposes of the podcast is to not only provide value to everyone listening and bring on some great guests, but also to serve as a pseudo reading list. So there are so many different books out there that can benefit you. But it's almost like, where do you start? So with bringing on top notch guests, I figured I would ask them about a top notch book that's had an impact on their life, and you can choose to read it, and obviously we encourage you to do so. So I'm curious, Rich, what's a book that you've read in your life that's had an impact on you, and tell me about that impact.

 

Rich Bluni  49:14

There's so many, it's so hard, when we had this kind of pre conversation. This might be a really weird one compared to what maybe other people have brought forward. My book is The Count of Monte Cristo by, I think it's Alexandre Dumas. So this book was written in like the 1800s. And I remember what brought me to the book was when I was a little kid, and I’m home from school sick. And on — this is probably before even cable, man — on local TV at some TV station, there was this black and white movie probably filmed in like the ’30s, I think, called The Count of Monte Cristo and it starts to “ohhhh,” you know. I remember, not since the Wizard of Oz as a child, have I've ever been transfixed by something. Now, I think there's something like twenty film versions of this movie. There was one that was done not very long ago, which was really done very well. The Count of Monte Cristo is a story of basically, a poor man in the Napoleonic days, and he's in love. And there's a bad guy, and he gets framed for a crime and goes away to jail, and then discover somebody who knows the existence of a hidden treasure. Long story short in case you read it, I don't want to do too many spoilers, but the book is all about — it sounds horrible, but bear with me. It's all about remaking yourself, and revenge and hope, and then learning about revenge. And I remember at that time here, I'm this little kid, bullied all the time, in horrible abusive situations — like all this this stuff. And there's this guy who has everything taken away from him, and comes back. It can literally crushes enemies, but then goes in this like kind of other direction. And I found the book to be this powerful reminder of the magic of remaking yourself. And the fantasy that we all would have, many people would have that, like when you lay in bed at night, and you're trying to fall asleep, and you picture what it would be like to be like a rock star and to be on stage. Or you picture what it would be like to be, like, that billionaire with your private jet and flying around. Whatever your dream would be. To be solving the world's problems, or whatever. And this whole idea of being somebody that felt so powerless as a kid, that this story of redemption and revenge and hope and all of these human emotions that come into play, and I remember that movie freaked me out. Here I am, this little kid, and the book, I mean, I guess the book’s probably written like most books at an eighth grade level. But I remember being in, I was probably, gosh, was it third grade? I was in third grade when I read this book. And it's written like how a book would be written in the 1800s. Like, it's not a present day language, you know. And I just was obsessed with it, obsessed with that book, so much. The Monte Cristo sandwich is not my favorite sandwich, just FYI. That is probably how most people know Monte Cristo is, you know, it's from a sandwich. I would say that book would be number one. I'd say this book, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which is like the whole stoic philosophy kind of stuff. This book has helped me a lot with thinking a little bit different. But I would say, man, I have to put aside like all the Hobbit books, and the Lord of the Rings, and all that stuff that I read — but The Count of Monte Cristo was a book that changed me in very interesting ways. And I haven't read it in a while, I probably should go back and reread it; I've probably read it ten times.

 

David DeCelle  52:59

When you put on your hat earlier, it kind of makes sense that you like Marvel and superheroes and whatnot, because that was kind of your original superhero, way back when.

 

Rich Bluni  53:11

It was. It's an amazing story. And actually, the movie that was done in the 2000s, and I'm terrible with actors’ names, but it's a remake, and they've put some modern twists onto it and some parts of it that didn't exist in the book, but it's a really cool story. So Dumas also wrote The Three Musketeers — not the candy bar. Interesting to think; one book was turned into a sandwich and his other book was turned into a candy bar. Hmm, that just occurred to me. But he also wrote The Three Musketeers, and it’s just a freakin’ cool story. And just, I can remember rereading, over and over again, the parts of where he discovers the treasure; and probably in my grown up mind, it's ten pages, it's probably two paragraphs. But I can just remember reading that, picturing what that would be like to find a cave filled with gold coins and diamonds. And it's just like, the coolest. I just love that book. I just love that story, I just do.

 

David DeCelle  54:06

Love it. I have not read it so I'll need to check it out. So this serves as, a lot of guests, when they come on, I'll be like, oh my God, that's a great book. And we're able to like chat back and forth about it. Then every now and again, I get stumped. And today, I'm stumped. So I'm gonna have to check it out, and we'll connect on that. But with that being said, Rich, if folks, I mean, you're pumping out content, you got a lot of eyeballs on to the messaging that you're putting out and the content that you're creating. So if folks want to connect with you and continue their relationship from afar, where can they find you?

 

Rich Bluni  54:38

First of all, the podcast that I do with your friends and mine, your friends and mine!, Above Board with CandorPath, which is doing great, and you've been on it. Your episode that you were on was my favorite one, and it was the one that I wasn't on, which like totally depressed me, which was why I think it was like — if you really think about it, I was petty. I was petty when I reached out to you and I was like, I loved your episode. Hey, do you have time to connect and talk? I just wanted to sit and talk to you. I was being really petty, but that's such, I mean, I encourage people to listen to that episode with David.

 

David DeCelle  55:11

At least I showed up to this podcast.

 

Rich Bluni  55:15

You did, I didn’t. I would say Above Board with CandorPath. I am on TikTok, as TheRichB; the, t-h-e, Rich, r-i-c-h, the letter B. Those are probably the best ways. And my content on TikTok is — I don't really have a niche. Sometimes it's inspirational. Sometimes I'm dressed as a fork. Sometimes I'm doing characters. Sometimes I'm doing lip syncs. It's just silly stuff. But those are probably the best ways. But number one, first and foremost would be our podcast, which I'm super proud of. I think John and Matt are just outstanding on it, and I love doing it with them. And I’ve loved being on this podcast. I hope you got — did you get something out of this? What did you learn from this? Did you learn anything?

 

David DeCelle  55:54

Yeah, honestly, the biggest takeaway, and there were a number of takeaways, and I'm gonna re-listen to this recording before it even gets published. But the biggest takeaways was understanding or even just acknowledging the difference between a structure and a routine. Because I feel as if that's the core of what's holding me back for the other topics that we had discussed. That and reminder to be intentionally and emotionally grateful on a daily basis on both big things and little things that have an impact, a positive impact, on your life. So thinking back, those would be the two main takeaways.

 

Rich Bluni  56:34

I love that. And to be clear, if we use the analogy of building a building, there's really no unimportant part. I mean, granted, the interior decoration might be the sexier part, but the foundation's pretty damn important, right? So the people that went and poured the cement in the foundation, you hope they're on point. When you think about it, the building can survive poor color choices, and maybe not the best surfaces, décor; but the building can’t survive poor structure or poor foundation. And I think a lot of times, people, when they're trying to change the alchemy, change their lives, they get so hung up on the exciting things. Like, I'm going to buy the most beautiful leather embossed journal, and I'm going to get a quill pen, and it's going to be…and that's great, that's awesome. But at the end of the day, if you got a cheap notebook from Target and this little G2 pen and you wrote, that's fine, too. There's no unimportant part. And I think the biggest thing is what serves you, what makes you feel good. If getting a quill pen and a leather journal puts you in a state where you feel excited to write down your thoughts, then that's awesome. If being outside does, then that's awesome. But I would just tell people, if you're stuck in a rut, change your state. Just literally do one or two things, that just changes how you — drink your coffee in a different way, call somebody in a different way, whatever it is. And I think for me, that's been absolutely life, life changing. And whenever I feel myself in that rut, I am very intentional about changing the state. So I'm glad you got a little bit of that from it. But I just want, you know, nothing's unimportant. All of that, every piece of that is important. The fact that you sit down to do your goals, that's super important. The fact that it's maybe like not hitting you like it used to? It's not because the goal writings bad or unimportant or stupid or a waste of your time. It's just that maybe you’ve got to do it in a different way.

 

David DeCelle  58:36

100%. Now, I'll report back, today's Friday the 14^th, so I'll report back; at some point this weekend, I'll set aside some time to do that. But Rich, I greatly appreciate your time today, I greatly appreciate the fact that I had an opportunity to be on yours, John, and Matt's podcast. Grateful for the fact that Matt and John, we've worked together for, man a few years now, which is fantastic, and they've become personal friends. So when I drive cross state from the West Coast over in your direction to see them, I'll make sure that you're included in that. So the more the merrier; it’ll be good to shake your hand in person and make a wish on that head of yours.

 

Rich Bluni  59:21

They absolutely love you, and the work that you do with your company has been very affirming for them, life changing. I mean, everything that they've said about the work that they do with you before I even, before we even had a podcast, before just — we're friends, we're neighbors, we're very close. I've heard nothing but amazing things about you and how you've helped them think differently and see things differently and grow. And they really, I mean, I'm not just saying this, honest, I wouldn't say this, trust me. Anybody that knows me knows I don't do this kind of stuff, but your value added, for sure, so good for you; because I appreciate you because not only have you helped my friends’ business become better, I think you've helped them become better. And that means a lot to me because John and Matt are two of the best human beings I know. So thank you for what you've done for them.

 

David DeCelle  1:00:11

Well I appreciate that. Giving each other all the feels this Friday, going into the weekend on a strong note, so I appreciate that greatly. But yeah, well, I forgot that you guys were all neighbors, so we'll have to do a block party or something like, that close off the street. Have a blast. But appreciate your time. I know that this will be a valuable episode and perhaps timely episode for some folks who are in the same boat as I am when I opened up the show, so I appreciate the time and we won't be strangers. We'll chat soon.

 

Rich Bluni  1:00:38

Grateful to be here. Thanks, David.

 

David DeCelle  

Take care.