Hello, Come on in and make yourself at home. I want you to kick off your shoes. I want you to get comfortable, and I hope you'll do what I do. When I sit down and get a chance to connect with you. While I'm in the studio, I make myself a cup of Twinings tea of London. I'm holding my cup of Twinings tea right here right now. In fact, I want you to put the stress and the cares
and the worries of the day aside. Normally, when you listen to me at night on the radio, I have to stop talking every few minutes and play music because it's a request and dedication show, and that's what I do. But here on this podcast, I don't have to do that. I can talk as much as I want. I can talk as much as you want, and we can talk about things that matter, things that really truly matter in life. And you want to know, of funny thing, the things
that matter most in life aren't things at all. Things don't really matter. I want you to respect stuff. I really want my children to respect my stuff and other people's stuff. I don't want my children growing up to be self entitled, spoiled brats who think that they are entitled to stuff and things and who don't respect other
people's stuff and things. When we grow go grocery shopping, after we've put the groceries in the car, I want my children to take the cards and put it away in the little card holder so that it doesn't go rolling through the parking lot and hit someone else's car and do damage or cause an accident. One of the ways I teach them to respect other people's things when we go shopping. If we go into a store, I tell them to look with their eyes and out with
their hands. Keep their hands off stuff, because I don't want them breaking it or spoiling it or soiling it. I don't want to walk into my kid's bedroom and find their clothes that I just worked really hard to earn money to buy to put on them. I don't want to find their clothes, their nice clothes piled up in a big heap with wet towels on top. That's gonna,
you know, if it's odd, they be moldy. I want them to take care of their things, but I never ever ever want them to think that things have great value in life. What do I mean by that? I mean that things are just things. I want them to take care of them, but I want them to understand things are just things. I tell my kids when they're learning how to drive and they're so worried that they're going to scratch the car, get a bump, or get
in an accident, and they do. They scratch the car, and they get bumps and they get in you know, fender benders or whatever, And I say, are you okay, honey? Is everybody okay? Because if everybody's okay, cars are just metal and rubber and plastic held together with screws. That's all they are. Cars will come and cars will go. But your health, your life, your safety, that is what is important. Things are things, and we can attach emotional
value to those things. I got a lot of stuff that I've collected over the year just because it reminds me and my mama, or my grandma or my dad. And when they passed and I didn't get any of their stuff, I started collecting stuff that they would have owned or that reminds me of something they had at one time. But it's just stuff, and the only emotion attached to it is the emotions I attached to it. The things that really matter are respect, kindness, being there
emotionally for your family and your friends. Playing a game of cards or Shoots and Ladders, go fish far more valuable then giving your kid a tablet and letting them sit there zoning out, playing angry Birds. When they're setting there zoning out, they're not connecting with the world around them. They're not connecting with you. They're not learning life skills. Okay, they're developing handby coordination. They can do that with a
baseball too. But when you take the electronics away and you have your kids play cards with each other, or you have them play Monopoly or Apples to Apples, and you listen to their conversations, it's priceless, Absolutely priceless. Over the holiday weekend, I took five of my children and three of their friends, and my sister and a girlfriend and we went away for the weekend. And I laid on my bed, which is up in aloft in this cabin, and the living room dining room area is right below,
so it's an open loft. I can hear every word
the kids are saying. And they thought I was taking a nap, but I was actually laying up there listening to their conversations, and I was priceless, priceless the conversation my twenty one year old daughter was having with my sister, explaining her views on dating and how she accidentally accidentally kissed a boy, and my sister said, no, honey, that's not an accident, that's an on purpose And it just was a delightful conversation about young love and about hopes
and dreams for the future, and checking to see if she was on the right track, asking my sister important questions. All that happened over a card game at the table.
Had they been in separate rooms on their electronic devices, that conversation never would have taken place, and I wouldn't have had the joy of eavesdropping and hearing my beautiful daughter with great values talking about what she's looking for in a forever love, and my sister, who could be very jaded in her situation, instead offering so much love
to her niece. The things that matter in life aren't things, their people, their relationships, taking care of our planet, picking up trash, talking to a neighbor, picking flowers and giving them to somebody in a nursing home, adopting a child out of poverty. These are the things that matter. These are the things that will change the world. M