Live In Alignment For A Life of Meaning
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Audio Transcript:
I'm sure, in an average day, you guys are asked all kinds of complex questions, difficult questions, deep questions, whatever.
But don't you hate it when those questions sometimes come with a writer of, well, give me the one thing, or your favorite thing, or say this in just one sentence.
Encapsulate this super complex, like, what's the meaning of the world, and give it to me in one sentence. Those are difficult, but that's what you all did to me on today's Q&A episode.
But before I get to that, I want to talk a little bit about just gratitude to you for listening and being a part of this group as we kind of walk through our lives and try to flourish together.
And if you are getting value from this podcast, I do ask again, review it. Add a star, whatever you think we're worth, maybe some comments about why it's important to you. That's helpful to us as people look in there.
They're looking for folks like you to join this journey and be a part of it. It's just great to see it. So I would appreciate you do that if you're willing.
So now on to the questions that they've got out here. And I'm joking, but it is a little difficult. And I cheated this time.
Normally, as you know, I just jump into these things right off the top of my head, roll in. But this one, I cheated a little bit because I saw it. And I'm like, oh, this requires me to just pause for just a minute.
I didn't take days. I didn't, you know, it's not, it may be, if you ask me again next week, I might word it slightly differently. I don't know.
But I think what I've got here, I think it does it justice. So the question is, if you had to define flourishing in just one sentence, what would it be? It's a good question.
All right. So here's what I've written down, and I'll read it to you so I don't mess this up.
Flourishing is living in alignment with your highest virtues where your thoughts, purpose, and actions come together in a life of meaning, contribution, encouragement, and growth. So that's my best cut today.
And there's reasons for why each of those pieces are in there. So just to dive in a little bit, you asked me one question, I'll give you one, or give to me one sentence, I'll give you one sentence, then I'll pile on with a bunch of words.
I'll try to be succinct here, but living in alignment, that's really key. Alignment with your virtues, your highest virtues.
I mean, we all have lots of things that are important to us, but those highest virtues, what really matters to you, living in alignment with that, and then aligning your thoughts, your purpose, your actions, what you're doing, right?
This isn't just all philosophy. This isn't just all thinking about things. This is a significant part of what you're doing.
And that all comes together in life, a life of meaning. And so you take that meaning. It needs to matter.
I mean, if you're just doing it, I don't know. I think there's got to be some kind of impact here that happens. And that's where the contribution comes in to your community, to the people around you, to yourself, whatever it may be, your mission.
And the encouragement piece, I think is really important. We've talked about this. Flourishment isn't just about you, those around you, and encouragement is one of the highest things you can do for someone, and growth.
I mean, this is not a destination. You're not just standing still, and there it is. It is a movement.
Flourishment is a movement. And so I think a journey, all those things. So I think that's why that statement is purposeful.
And I think it pretty much captures it. So we'll see as we keep going down this journey, but that's the way I'd answer that question. Okay, so now back on to things that I'll just be reading for the first time at this point.
So what's one thing most people get wrong about what it means to flourish? Oh, this one's easy. Okay, so it's so easy to equate flourishment with happiness.
And so, oh, I'm happy, so I must be flourishing, or I'm flourishing. I'm trying to flourish, but I'm not happy. Look, man, you can flourish and not be happy.
That's just the reality of things. Happiness is like weather to where flourishment is like climate. So a storm can go by, but is climate really changing, or what's the climate here?
Maybe it's a stormy day, but this is the one time it rains out of the whole year. Is it just because you're in that day on a stormy day? Does that mean it's a stormy climate?
Not really, right? So I think that's how we need to look at it. Happiness, I think, anyway, happiness comes and goes.
There's all kinds of things. There's external events. You can find your own eternal happiness, and you should, of course, but there are times where happiness isn't the right emotion.
It's not the appropriate emotion for what's happening around you, but that doesn't automatically mean you're not flourishing. So I think that's the biggest struggle, and I struggle with it as well. I think we all struggle with that.
If you're on a path for flourishment, it's easy to equate happiness with that. Why don't I feel better today? Well, you know what?
There's lots of things that happen in our lives where we're not going to feel good. It's natural. Doesn't mean we aren't flourishing.
So I think that's the biggest mistake that most of us make or could get wrong about what flourishment really is. Okay, next up. You've said before that flourishing isn't just about personal success.
It's about the people thriving around you too. Oh, yeah, we just talked about that. Can you share a moment where you realize this in your own leadership journey?
Yes, yeah, I can. So it may not be... I'll give you...
This happens over and over again. And it's a battle of egos, to a certain degree, in my own self. You know, we always have Frank.
I'm talking about those battles where Frank is telling me I'm worthless and all that kind of stuff, or you're stupid, or what are you doing? He didn't even talk to me now. I talked to this episode.
You hear sometimes when I'll qualify myself, and I'll be like, well, that's what I think. That's Frank telling me, who are you to tell somebody what to think? Right?
But it does balance it a bit, and I'm good with it. But on the other side of that is this whole concept of, you know, well, as I'm going through this whole path, you know, the things I bring, hey, they're important. It's mine.
I need to get recognition for this. And I'm the leader, or I'm the CEO, or I'm the manager, whatever you are in your world, or I'm the better familiar, as they would say in Brother Rocktown.
There's this ego that lives there in all of us, and we all tussle with it, and that's all fine, and it gets part of the path. But this one really hits.
So when you are encouraging others to flourish, which I think is, again, one of the highest impacts and highest goals with my flourishment, and I think for flourishment in general, you will find there's value.
You will have bestowed to others, given to others, supplied to others with whatever word you want to use, and encouraged them. They will take that encouragement.
They will take your magic, your information, whatever you've given them, your efforts, and sometimes, it just gets lost, that it came from you, and they own that.
And this is where it gets, hopefully, I articulate this well, because I didn't prep this bit, but hopefully, I articulate it well. And if I don't, bring some questions to clarity, and I'll try to clarify it.
But when that happens, that's the real magic. When people, when I'm at Mount Leverage, or, yeah, I'll start at Mount Leverage.
So when I'm at Mount Leverage, and I've been maybe talking to somebody, or a group of people, or whatever else, about an idea, thought, a strategy, whatever, a tactic, whatever it is, for months, years sometimes, sometimes just days or hours,
whatever. And they come back to me in the future with basically that idea, that brand new idea, or this strategy, or this plan, or whatever it is. And I'm like, yeah, dude, that's what I just, I've been trying to get you to hear this.
Now they're hearing it, but it's theirs, and they own it. And they're coming to you telling you about this cool thing they just thought they'll ever create it, or whatever.
It's so hard as a leader to not say, yeah, dude, yeah, well, I've been talking about this for months. I struggle with this. I will still say that occasionally.
And sometimes it's meaningful because it helps remind folks that collaboration is the magic, not necessarily their own genius or anybody else's genius. So you don't get this kind of genius complex of both sides. Like, oh, I can't think of anything.
I gotta wait till the genius brings it down, or I'm the genius and I'm not listening to anybody else. So it's all complex. But my ego will sometimes kick in there and be like, but, but, but, but, but, but, you know, start whining a little bit.
And that's tricky. So I think in these cases, but what I try to remember is that's magic. That's part of what I'm trying to do.
And if I've been able to be of value to somebody, even if it's a piece, a part, or even the whole, and they've been able to assimilate that, and it resonates with them so well that they own it as if it's theirs, and they take that and implement that
into the world, so they align it with their highest virtues, and they go to implement that with impact in the world, that's a win, man. That is force multiplier stuff.
Now, they're out there doing great things, and it's things you may not be able to get to anyway, or you needed them to do to be successful for something you're trying to do within the organization or whatever else.
It's just absolutely magic, but it plays on your ego a little bit. I'll use another example. Children, those are your parents.
You might tell your kid a thousand times, hey, here's something you should think about. Here's something you should do, whatever, right? It's for parents.
And inevitably, they'll come to you a month, a year, whatever, later years and say, oh, I was talking to so and so, or I saw this thing online, or somebody else said, and they'll come back to you with this beautiful bit of wisdom that you've been
trying to pound into their skull for years. And it makes you want to go, ah, you know. But the reality is they got it. They got it.
And maybe they attributed to somebody else. But you probably laid the groundwork, the foundation for that, for once somebody else come up and laid that block on there, for it to be there. And that's the way it works so long.
The things that I'm sharing with my kids or the things in the earlier example I'm sharing with our employees or whatever else, I didn't create all those anyway. Somebody else has put them in me. And so that's how the cycle of flourishment works.
And if we can flourish together that way and get over the hump of the ego and those things, that just, it creates this upcycle.
So right now, if you look around the world, there are certainly many, many, many circles of new cycles or echo chambers or whatever else, where there's this language cycle, where it's just, how can we cut each other down?
And how can we just steal stuff from each other? And, oh, I want to keep my foot on your head to keep you from getting up, all those things, right? Think about that in the opposite.
If we were all in it, if we were in an upcycle, and I see groups, I'm a part of groups, I think our company is that. I try to have my family to be that, where you're upcycling your friends groups and your communities.
Many of them are upcycling and flourishment. And that is, that's a force, that can't be stopped. I mean, it's just, it's amazing.
So I think when I get to the question is, why is it so important for others to flourish too? That's it. But I want to share this part.
It's not always easy. And that's where we all battle our own egos, our own demons. Maybe some of you are way easier at this.
And I don't consider myself an egomaniac, but we all want to feel like, hey, I got notified for that. Oftentimes, I will say this to myself, maybe to others that are close to me, the role of the CEO is not to be the show.
And so many, I think so many CEOs get that. So the role of a leader or manager, whoever it is, the role is not to be the show. It doesn't all have to be your idea.
And we all have known people like that, right? The other side of that is a group works really hard and comes up with this thing, and then the leader goes and takes it to the next level up.
And I say leader very loosely there, and it's all about them, and it's their credit and all that. You know, I got no tolerance for those folks. I got no time for them.
They could do something else. They're not encouraging others to flourish. They're on the other side of that.
They're just leeching and they're taking it. And that, we all fool ourselves and think that that really works for people. And yeah, their careers advance and whatever else.
But again, flourishment is a, you're playing a whole nother game, a whole nother game.
You're playing a game that matters on the inside, of course, but you're playing a game, I think, that matters, you know, metaphorically, or metaphorically, but metaphysically, it matters in the universe, if you will.
And whether you want, whether you're a person of spirituality or science or whatnot, it just matters in a whole different way.
And so, yeah, that person's gonna get some short-term gains or whatever else, but you just don't know what's going on in their heart and in their lives.
But the flip side of that is, I think, when you're contributing to others' flourishment and not just leeching, boy, I think that's magic. So anyway, that's a super long-winded answer to that question.
But I love that question because I really, it's so easy to be like, oh, well, I'm just gonna, you know, focus and go meditate for four days straight and not talk to anyone, and I'll be flourishing. And that's part of it. Don't get me wrong.
That is absolutely time-lone to yourself and all this stuff. But my point is, you have to then do something. You have to do something with it.
You have to connect. Others can be helped there. And I'm sure, you know, my wife might say me going away for four days and not talking would probably help her flourish.
So maybe it does help in that way. I get it. I get it.
I get it. I joke. She loves me.
I think it's fine. All right. So the last question I have here is, what's a time when you weren't flourishing and what got you back on track?
Man, there's lots of time. Look, I'm not struggling for when is a time that I've not flourished. I'm trying to say, OK, which one?
Which one do I talk about? There's lots of times where I have been stuck and I'm not flourishing. I will have moments of deceleration of flourishment.
You know, flourishment is never moving. It's not linear. You know, you're never just going to go, oh, I'm flourishing.
There's always going to be the ups and downs and kind of arounds and backs and two steps forward, one step back, all the stuff. Right. And sometimes many steps back on the flourishment journey.
But it is a journey. It's not a destination. It's not by going to somewhere, oh, I got derailed.
I'm coming back. It's just part of that path. You're on a path.
And so there's lots of times for me. And I can say in a personal experience, you know, in life, there are moments where you just feel like maybe you aren't, you know, I joke earlier about my wife. Maybe you just aren't vibing with your spouse.
And you're not, you know, you're not getting what you want from the relationship. Maybe they're not getting what they want from the relationship. And it's showing up in how you treat each other.
You know, your kids see all that stuff. Don't forget, obviously. It's showing up in how you perform elsewhere, because that maybe is a key part of your life or your importance.
And in those cases, you know, the follow on to this question is how you get back on track. In those cases, from a personal perspective, and look, everybody's situation is different. I can't tell you what works for you or doesn't work for you.
But for me, oftentimes it's like, get out of your way, man. What does she need right now? And, you know, do that.
And I know, look, if you're in a... There's really upside down relationships and uneven rest with all those things. And so I'm not here to be relationship advice.
But my point for me, oftentimes, if I'm not flourishing, I've somehow gotten kind of self-absorbed sometimes, and I'm looking only at my own stuff.
And so if I can get out of that and flip it around to what can I do to make this situation better, not how can I continue to sit and spin and cycle on how bad it is, that helps. The other side of that is a little bit of a mind game.
And look, I don't know, psychologists shout out, maybe I'm not doing the right thing, but it's a little bit of a mind game. And it's focusing on the positives. Again, it's counting your blessings, gratitudes, whatever you want.
That oftentimes is a superpower for me because there's always going to be bad things. And the more I focus on those bad things, there's more bad things. And that makes it hard to flourish when you, you only have so much visual.
You know, you've got peripheral vision, I can see a little bit to the sides. But like if I focus more and more on negativity and the negative things are going on, I have less room in my vision to see the positive things.
The more I see the positives, the less room to see the negative things. It's not that you ignore them. I mean, there's things, challenges you got to go after, of course.
But having that, the majority of my focus is the positive. That's how I get up. So I would apply both of those, I think, you know, the idea of what can I do to help this situation?
It's like, what's important now? OK, yeah, yeah, it sucks. I'm in a hole.
OK, this is terrible. So what can I do now? What do I start digging?
Can I crawl out? Do I yell? Well, you know, how do I get out of the hole?
And so it just ignites kind of that action piece, as opposed to just laying in there and languishing. And then the other side is, you know, what's positive about this? Well, the hole is comfy.
It's dark at night. I can sleep well. I don't know.
You know, I'm not saying get comfortable in your misery, but looking for the positives. Hey, the sun comes across for two hours a day, whatever it is. Right?
I'm joking there. But that's how I try to get back on track. I think we're on work perspective.
It's probably the same way. You know, there are times, the times that I really suffer the most, probably in flourishment. It's not in my own failings, which I've got plenty of those.
It's I think when I feel like fundamentally what I'm trying to implement in the company or whatnot is not landing, right? Or people are not flourishing.
There's something, a decision I've made or a bit of our culture that we've been trying to instill is maybe I didn't implement it well enough. Or I haven't communicated it well. Or maybe I'm not living it right or whatever else it is.
And it's impacted others in a negative way. So we talked about upcycling of flourishment, maybe I'm seeing some downcycling first. That really impacts me.
And when I do that, I have to remind myself that it's not all about me. I'm not the only one here. There's people that have to do their thing.
I mean, more on the seesaw. And so the other piece to that is again, it's always the what's important now. What can I do now?
Okay, here's this thing. It's raining. What now?
Do I go get a raincoat? Do I just stand in it? Do I find an umbrella?
What is it, right? And so I think for me, it's just, it's, man, sometimes just lean forward and it's one foot after the other. And I know this isn't, this is not magic.
Nothing, nothing here is super amazing. And you're probably underwhelmed to a certain degree by the answer. But that's just how it goes.
And then from a community standpoint, so, you know, father, family or founder, founder, friend, or founder, father, friend, the friend side for my community, what dejects me the most sometimes is when I see our communities undervaluing themselves and
really settling for less for our community and for one another and arguing over things that are not the real issue, but struggling. It feels like, you know, well, it feels depraved. It feels like we're never, there's no hope. And it gets difficult.
And in those moments, I try to find individual successes. I try to find people, one person, one person who's doing one thing that's positive. And again, I know I sound like it's a little bit of a mind game, but it is, right?
I mean, I just had a, hey, West Virginia fan, I just had a rough week this week with the whole March Madness Selection Committee. Then we lose our coach and all these things. And that sucks.
It sucks most. I hate it for the guys. I hate it for the team and the other coaches and certainly the rest of the fan base.
West Virginia has enough slaps across the face in our history and our lives to get that kind of thing. But, you know, nobody's crying for us. There's no pity party.
So now what are we going to do? And you kind of think, and I'm not on that team and I'm not in the university and they can make their choices and then you got the whole global kind of or the whole macro, what's going on in college sports today.
You got all those things. I could sit and just spin on all that. And I did.
And I have and I probably will. But but I also in moments that I'm like, all right, this first of all, how does this really affect me? Second of all, what can I do about it?
What can I do today? And and you know, it just it kind of plays together. So there's there's no shortage of those things that can come and knock you off your your flourishment path for a minute.
You've got to just get up, dust yourself off. And again, I focus on individuals sometimes in those cases, because there are great people everywhere. You can find them in one of the things I just loved about what I grew up on.
Mr. Rogers and many of many of you around my generation did some older, some younger, right? He's been around for a long time in in in that and even still still on on the retreads, right?
The where we call syndication. One of the things he would say is in any disaster, in any challenge, whether it's a fire, flood, you know, political disaster, war, whatever it is, look for the helpers, look for the helpers.
And I always love that that has stuck with me. And I will never forget that. And so when there are tough moments, look for the helpers, they're always there.
I don't care what's going on in your community or in your company or in your family. It's sometimes the smallest things. You know, my daughter will do something nice for my wife or whatever else in the middle of something going on.
It's just there's always something. My son, I don't want they both are great humans. They do.
But, you know, in your company, there's just somebody taking care of somebody else. They're championing them. They're mentoring them.
They're helping them with something. Pat on the back. There are helpers everywhere.
And I think that's the thing to look for the helpers. So that's, again, I kind of meandered all around on that answer.
But there will be times, even when you're on your journey, where you're not going to feel like you're flourishing, and sometimes you won't be. And you kind of got it. You can almost get in your own head and you can get sideways.
But again, if you are really committed to your virtues and you're driving towards, as we talked about that in early definition, towards impact and towards encouragement of others and those things, you won't have to reassess everything in life.
You just got to get back up, get back up on plane like a boat, get back up on plane, and then there might be things you need to assess. Maybe why you're not flourishing today is because you're off track and whatever.
But that time when you're in the hole is not always the best time to do that from my experience. Maybe your experience is different, but that's me. So anyway, going on long enough, I appreciate the questions.
These are great. I'm loving the engagement and the interest that you all are showing towards this. And I'm having fun.
And hopefully this is of value to you. I don't do this for my own ego, certainly. This is a very uncomfortable thing for me to share openly like this, as you know, and I've talked about a bunch.
You're probably sick of hearing it. But I just say that to say, it's cool. I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're coming along with us. And I'm anxious to see where this goes. So to that point, if you know anybody who would appreciate this, share it with them.
I think we'd appreciate to have them on the journey. And wherever you are on your journey, I hope you're flourishing.
Alex Reneman is the founder of Mountain Leverage and Unleash Tygart and host of Flourishing w/ Alex Reneman. For 20+ years he has worked as CEO of Mountain Leverage, honing the concept of flourishing and experimenting with it in the business. In July of 2024, he decided to begin to share this idea with others, which led to his podcast, social content, and the plans for other initiatives in the future.
