Julien Smith

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Julian Smith, CEO of Breather and on demand relaxation company that helps you find beautiful, practical spaces that you can

reserve on the go. Julian is also a New York Times best selling author of three books. Two of these Trust Agents and The Impact Equation. We're written with one of our other fantastic guests Chris Brogan. The third book, called The Flinch, has consistently remained one of the top Red Kindle books since it was published in two thousand eleven. Julian's online work has been read by millions. Here's the interview. Hi Julian, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me.

I'm glad to have you. I'm a big fan of your book The Flinch, and uh, I've I've read it several times. It's it's it's really wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate that put I put it up, work into it. I hope that it was good at the end. I'm happy you don't like that. Yes, So our podcast is based on the parable of of two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that

are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work and

writing that you do. Yeah. So, um, I'm familiar with the parable, and I don't know what does it mean to me? I think that I think it's just more about reinforcing habits at its core, like try, I'm really it's very easy to sort of fall into that kind of magical thinking or whatever, but to sort of bring it down to its core message, which is really about like, like, build the habits that you, even if you're not that person, build the habits so that you can become that person

that you want to be. Right and uh, And that's a sort of that's a question that can last a lifetime and maybe even should, which is why I think that story is very insightful and true and can be told probably over. You know, we'll still tell that story to our kids, and they'll plant that their kids, maybe exactly. And so, what are some of those habits you think that that are are important for you, that you work to build to to help you be the person you

want to be. It's funny because you're asking me so directly, and I'm so not used to being asked directly. So so the answer is what am I constantly working towards. I have a million different habits that I'm trying to build at any given time, and I you know if you so. When I wrote that book, The Flinch, it was published in two thousand and eleven, it's a totally

different place than where I am now. So I'll try to explain that difference so that you the listener, can appreciate exactly what it is that is different and how that sort of impacts your life. So um, into thousand eleven, I was I was starting like weightlifting, parkour, and a

bunch of really physical activities. And basically the book goes into this in this detail about how the physical action of flinching is akin to the psychological behavior that we've developed to shy away from challenge, and we do that over a period of a whole lifetime. So that's what I did then, is I wrote books for a living. I got advances from publishing companies and I would just write about ideas that I thought were really interesting and and my life was did not. It only had the

challenges that I decided to put into it. And so that would mean things like, oh, you know, that's very heavily into like physical exercise and training and all these things. Also, I was right challenging myself to write a book that was incredibly difficult and and and hard to to become, to make it as pure as I could. I hope I've succeeded to that took it. To contrast that to what I do now, I run a startup with several

million dollars in funding. That I started there was a crazy idea that no one believed in, and now that's that has a great deal of its own momentum in the public eye. And uh, and I have ten employees and I'm going to thirty employees. And so I have a totally different life than I had three years ago. And I can just see all of my habits breaking down.

So I was so good at like I'm so good at taking care of myself, at eating properly, at all these like positivity things, like I was very much in that shole self help kind of mindset, but trying to remove any magical thinking out of it. And now I still am that person who cares about those things. But I I understand when people are like I just don't have the time and all those things. So I'm I'm

in this to combat those things. I've develop up a series of really strong habits which was like certain you know, time very rigorous, like time to wake up, check emails, certain time in box zero every day. You know. I have a gratitude diary, like all these that are almost like religious rituals to keep me sane. And I mean, I don't know if I have a bunch of them, but it just speaks to how under stress you can become a totally different person, which is not at all

the person that you want to be if you're not careful. Oh, I agree. There's nothing like a startup to to sink

all your your normal, normal, good habits. And there is a real I think everybody that's and not not just startups are entrepreneurs, but anybody who is working really hard on something being able to do those other things that are for lack of a better word, more nourishing to our to our spirit or to our to our mental and emotional health and in our body, those things fall away pretty quickly in and I agree it is a there's a lot of discipline involved in in trying to

stay on top of those things. It's a it's a constant challenge. It totally is. And and uh it really the great irony of that whole thing actually is that the book that you were talking about at the beginning of this program is a book where you're trying to

develop the habit of challenging yourself. And of course I had written this book, right and and so when I had this idea for this company that was working on like become a huge part of my life, now, I was like, my god, this is the hardest thing that I could possibly ever think of doing. It. It looks like it's doable, but it's incredibly difficult, an incredibly arduous, and it's going to take five years or something like

that for sure at least. Right So, but I had written the book, and the book said do the hardest thing that you could possibly imagine doing. And otherwise what kind of like what kind of person are you really? You know? And and so I had no choice but to but to become that person, even though I was in that person, you know, turning myself into a CEO and turning myself into you know, like a like almost like a therapist talking to people that I work with,

and you know, like and while maintaining my relationship. And I just thinks so I was very much like I like to think that I had some authenticity and in being a talker then, but I was really a talker now I'm now I've become a doer and uh, and that and the ability to go and just like that's going to be incredibly hard and it's gonna be a challenge. Let's go has really become a way of life for me. Well, it's it certainly serves you well in in starting a

business or being the CEO. Do you want to tell us briefly about what your new businesses? I mean, you know, I worked on it for a year and a half, so I mean you could look it up if you want. It's called Breather, like take a breather, and we provide like sort of a network of rooms you can unlock with your phone at any time. I don't want to pitch it, but like, you can look it up. It's

a Breather dot com. It's doing super well. It's scrowing really fast and uh, and it was it was definitely one of those things where maybe it speaks to sort of the message of this of this show, which is like like maybe listening to yourself and all these things are really one of those things where you're starting something and everyone was like that is totally stupid and you should not do that, and really led me from what

I had like a super cushy life. Probably it was like in which I only did things that I want to do versus now where it's like my life is like a military exercise and precision as much as possible. And uh, yeah, you're just like you should have at least one at one point in your life. You should definitely like change absolutely everything about you and see what it's like, see how it goes. Yep, yep, I agree.

So let's let's spend a little time and and talk more about the book The Flinch and dig into some of those concepts, because I think they're really in line with a lot of what we talked about on this show and a lot of the things that themes that come up over and over again. So could you tell us again you alluded to it briefly, but what the concept behind the Flinch is? Okay, So here is the

the quick and easy version of that we have. It's a really short book and it's actually one of the only free, permanently free downloads, so you can get from Amazon. It's not possible, no, no person can put a book on Amazon perpetually for free. But somehow that when we were when we published this, we figured that out. So you can get it for free even now, even though it's been published three years ago. So go ahead and get that book. And it's super short and basically what

it's about. Highly recommended. Thank you. I appreciate that the book essentially says, here's a bunch of stuff that we claim we want to do. It doesn't matter what it is, it's not what the point is. Like, everyone has their own personal, really important list of things. Uh, they could be totally trivial. I want to get married and have children.

That's not trivial, but they could be commonplace. I could I want to get married and have children and then or I want to travel to go to the Paris one time, or you know, it could be anything from that too, totally otherworldly, foreign things that no one thinks are in or saying at all. It doesn't matter. We're always talking about these things, we're always thinking about them, and we do not do them. So it is it is a and yet we have all the information available

to us. And this is really like we're in the information age. And in this age, you can look up anything. Here's how to ride a bike and you can go to wiki, how dot com or what about website Google. It will tell you everything you need to know. Every single piece of information is there. And yet truly, if the information were accurate, you would have learned to do it by now, Like if the information was enough, I

would speak Spanish properly, but I don't why. And so essentially the book is about this this thing I guess, which we call the flint in the book, and it is like the it's that X, which is like that that unknown thing which prevents us from doing the things that we want to do. And it's it's a it's the secret, hidden thing in every action we take or

don't take. And that flinch is it's a fear response, right, it's you're describing that we have this response like if I were to slap my co host like I just did. There he flinches, right, and he doesn't have a choice. He doesn't have a choice, right, it's a it's a it's not really about him. So so and uh, and you've got these guys, right, the train in this thing called the Spear Program sp e a R. You can

look it up online. But it's like, essentially, like flinch retraining, it does really exists, and it's it's studied by a police and the military and all these other people. And essentially what this response is is like, you can never get rid of the flinch, this thing you were born with that when you fall that you're gonna close your eyes and protect your head. But you can retrain that thing physically. It is possible to retrain it. And so here's a here's a kind of mental retraining that you

were you're going to go through. And um. In parts of the book, you know, I make people go through very simple exercises that anyone can do in their own house by and large, but that are very difficult to do for psychological reasons, a number of different psychological reasons. So essentially I was, I'm pointing out almost and the reason that I think this book works, and it's it's

been read by like a million people or something. Now, the reason this book works is because it's speaking to you in your own voice that you have in your head. If I was out there going hey, guys, you know, yeah, you the hosts of this show, like your assholes and and and your cowards or something. I would be just be a horrible way to talk to some other person. But I wrote that book, and because you're reading it to yourself, it comes off as being you talking to yourself,

and so it makes it okay, Right, let's say those things. Yea, mm hmmm, h m hm. And the the idea is to learn to lean into that fear is that is that the heart of it that if we learned to lean into fear, then that gets us overdoing these things that we're not doing in life. Uh, you could say that, I think they It's very easy. You gotta be careful that cliches. Right, If cliches are cliches, you you naturally hear them, and when you hear them, you go, oh,

I've heard that before. And as soon as you think, oh, I've heard that before, you instantly you buy a large you're going to discount it. So you have to be very careful in the way that you talk about an idea like And that's why we talk about that's why in that book that we talked about it that way because we we wanted to be a new way that you heard it in reality. You know, everyone has written

every book ever. I know this, I've written several of them by this point, I've written a thousand blog posts. Every single thing has been said before. But for some reason, one particular message it hits you in the right way, and other versions of that message do not hit you in the right way. So when I wrote write the book, it's like it's almost like it's almost like being in a sweat lodge or whatever, and you're like, you've gotta you have to actually go there and be there in

that book to feel it. Because if I were to explain to you what that book is, like we're talking about a l it's so trivial that you're like, yeah, I know that I need to read that thing, but I actually, in actuality, you probably haven't solved the problem, so you should probably read the book. Even me, I don't know that I can properly explain it. And that's

kind of the magic of that thing. Uh. And that's why it's so hard to write that it requires the experience you're having having to go through it so you can feel the same way I felt when I wrote it in the same way you felt when you read it that several times that you've read it, right, yep, yep. And I think, but I think there are some maybe some some things you say in there that I'll point to specifically that maybe give some of the flavor and point out some of the things that I thought were

particularly um interesting in the book. One of them that you you talk about is that you say, the lessons you learn best by are those you get burned by. Without the scar, there's no evidence or strong memory adults know what's safe, so we we tend to listen to what's to advice. But it's we don't learn lessons that way. M hm, right, m you don't exactly, which is actually

exactly what I just said. It's like I can tell you something a hundred times, but unless you feel it, it will have no profound effect, right like, And you don't need And I think the exact thing that I say in there is like, you don't need to throw yourself into a fire to figure out that it's bad. But with that in mind, a lot of things do need to be felt in order to be uh, in

order for the change to really occur. There's another thing that you talk about in the book that I really love, and you say, whatever decision you make reinforces what you do next time, And I think that is such a critical life lesson that That's the way I think of the term karma, right, is that it's like wearing grooves into a record. Is it just every time I give into that bad habit, I'm make it easier to do

next time. I set that thing in motion. And I think that's what you're what you're getting at there, which is a really profound idea, which is that every every moment matters, not just what the impact of say, you know, let's just use I'm not gonna eat ice cream. Eating ice cream is not just the fact that I eat five hundred calories. It's the fact that I've made it easier to do it next time and next time and

next time. Yeah, I I built They have it, and you know, you know, I don't know if they say, like the gray matter in your brain is actually affected

by by the decisions that you make. And the reason creativity is so hard is because the decision process and the way that you think about an idea becomes reinforced over time, you know, and the way that people have new ideas is large, by and large by looking at something that they have never done before and looking at it in a new way and not knowing whether something is possible just because they have no experience versus people who have the experience and they're like, no, no, no,

I can't be done. So so with that and the natural conclusion of that idea is everything you're doing right now is going to make you into This is who you are. You are the person as you act right the way that I don't know if I wrote that in there, but it's like this, this whole idea Christianity is like well known Indian stage and he has this whole thing where he's like, you could you take a rock from the garden and and you just put it on your mantelpiece and it's just a regular rock. Right.

But then over over a period of days, if you just practice for thirty days, you're just gonna You're gonna like kneel and pray in front of the rock. At the end of that thirty days, that rock will be like a fucking religion to you, and and and you'll just be like, I love this rock. I cannot think

of getting rid of it. It means so much to me because you're behaving in that way, and it would be a sin not to walk by the rock and and to and to you know, to to bow down to it just because you've done it and you've been doing it your entire life. So uh so, with that in mind, and it could put this incredible weight to think about this the things in this way, you can put this incredible weight on your shoulders where you're like,

every thing that I do wrong is fucking my life. Yeah, I mean in a way like it kind of is. And and and actually one of my my false is that put a great deal of gravitas into everything that I say and thinking it's probably not always a good thing. But but I really think that that person that you are is being reinforced or being destroyed by every action

that you take. The same reason you could probably you know, you probably always start going up steps with the same foot every single time, and it's uncomfortable to do it with the other simple things like that all the way down to why I have arguments with my wife and I have the same argument every time. Yep, oh, I agree, And I think it is easy to to be too heavy handed about that to be constantly every moment freaking

out because I just did something I didn't want to do. Um, there's a there's a middle ground all of that, But it is a pretty fundamental truth that that what we are doing is shaping who we who we are, and who we become. But the good flip side to that is I can change that at any point, hopefully right exactly, you have the ability to do it. And the earlier that you begin reinforcing another thing, the easier it becomes for that. I think that thing that you prefer to

become a habit, and hopefully it will. You talk about in dealing with fear, you say you need to start recognizing your fight or flight response. This is the real challenge what you'll spend most of your time on because it's such a strong instinct. Every alternative you develop is highly valuable because it opens your options dramatically. Can you talk a little bit more about what you mean there? Um? I think I think it's a version of the same idea, which is a simple thing that I'm trying to fix

right now, is that I eat out a lot. And it's funny when you take these are really deep things in this book or whatever that the carry meaning and then you express them in relation to your regular life, right because then you're like, now it's just a boring anecdote compared to the depth of this thing. But the actually the triviality the anecdote shows just how powerful the

thing is. Like I'm gonna I'm gonna keep eating up for the rest of my life and I'm never gonna learn to cook unless I every day I was like, I'm gonna pick up that knife. And I don't know if you know, like be j fog, do you know about this thing? This? Uh, this just method of developing habits, which are called the tiny steps habits, And basically it's like you get up and a series of habits and I know, I'll tell you what mine is right now.

It's really really simple. I will wake up and if I go to well, get to my bathroom and I weigh myself as first day in the morning, very shortly thereafter, I'm gonna floss, I'm gonna brush my teeth, I'm gonna take a shower. Once I take a shower, I'm gonna get out. I'm gonna take my vitamins. That's gonna take vitamins I'm gonna undo, then clean, take the dish clean, dishwashers out, a dish out of the dishwasher. Then I'm gonna make coffee. I'm gonna bring it to my girlfriend

like that. That is what I do. If I do not weigh myself, none of those things will happen. Like That's how how you know our our machine to machine parts of our brain work is that we're literally like animals just doing the same thing over and over and over again. So building those grooves the first two times, you don't have to think about it as being like

every habit. You think about it in one thing. It's like if you say something like when I come home, I take my shoes off, and then I turn left in the kitchen and I put my hand on the handle of my chef's knife. And then once you do that, you'll be like, well, I guess I have to do something with the chef's knife, right, So, uh, that series it's it's actually not you know, people turn to try to turn the behavior changing. This really tough thing that takes a lot of that. But oh I got I

gotta quick the five course bill. No, no, just put your hand on the knife it's literally all you have to do. That's why in one of my habit things that I have on one of my apps, it says clean for two minutes. And what that really means is is just start cleaning, because two minutes is a non threatening number, and then once you start cleaning, it will

just happen by itself. I'm a I'm a huge fan and proponent of that, of that concept of you know, I'm a bit I set the timer for five minutes to get started on things I don't want to do or that I'm stuck on, to just get started. And momentum is such a powerful force. If you can, if we can just get moving in the right direction, often

that's that's enough. And and I agree it. I think that we've we've talked about this on this show over and over, which is doing a very little bit of something is much better than and doing that consistently is much better than going to the gym once every three weeks and lifting for three hours. You'll be far better off doing some small exercise for five minutes a day. That's right, because the habit is there, and you can do that seven days a week or whatever instead of

once a month. And I think you get that positive reinforcement by I said I was going to do this, I did it. I feel good about that, versus that negative reinforcement we talked about earlier, which as I said I was going to do this, I didn't do it. I got I'm a loser. Why bother? Why bother? Yeah, and you could always build from a small base, much much easier. I totally agree, exactly. And you don't. You

don't think about those things. And the thing is so much of it is managing your emotion, which is the only thing that that book is about. Um. Managing your emotion is all about. And and that's why I like the book is so short, because it makes you feel you you're gonna read it, and you're reading, like twenty minutes is so short. It's like an essay and not leave them. And then you've done, you're done reading it,

and then you feel good. And so much of of you going, I don't know, doing whatever that thing is that you want to do comes from the sense of all, I feel good, so I'm gonna go do it now. And if you so, it's almost like a deliberate here's here's this thing you can a hold a lot of it.

It's not a candy bar, you know, it's some other thing and that thing makes you feel good and then you can you feel like you know a lot of the There's like almost four reviews on Amazon by this point, and they're all like, I feel like I can smash through a wall when I when I read this thing, which is why the same you know, like you're saying, you read it quite a few times. Even I read it sometimes because I'm like, wow, I am amazing, Like I could do anything. After you read the book, It's

it's powerful. It's also a very um it's a challenging book to read though it's not a feel good I mean I think, yeah, you do. You do get a feeling of strength from it. But there are some lines and I'll read one now that when I when I read it, I go, oh, ship, yep, that sounds like me. And most people don't actually want to face the flinch. They just want to be in a movie about it. They want the glory, not the suffering. They don't want scars because they like being soft. They don't want to

be humiliated, they won't respect. They just don't want to earn it, which I think is a is a very good um summation, certainly of what my approach has been to things in the past, and a lot of people which ties a lot to this. I expect everything to be easy, fast, and now you know, and that that's not that's simply not the way life is and that's not the way change happens. And uh, I really like that.

And when I read it, though, it's it's a it's a sobering reminder that that if we want to be people that are worthy of being admired, or we want to be great people, there's a sacrifice and there's and there's effort that goes into that. Yeah, there's a there's a quote in there. It's like, it's interesting because I've never I've never gotten a comment about it. I don't think, I don't actually talked about but it's quote that comes

from the Koran. And I'm not a religious person, but those kinds of old texts are really interesting to me, both religious and not religious ones. So something like do you think that you will enter into the garden of the light before the suffering that you that of those who have come before you? You know, like it's like, well, look at all because you just you just look at

these people. I don't know, they're on stage or they have this great relationship, or you know, their dogs like just the best behaved or whatever, whatever thing it is that you're like looking and you're interested in and uh and and you're like, but why can't I like and I had that? Well, it's because you didn't do anything. You know, it doesn't come by itself. But people, the movie version of it is much easier. It's much easier

to watch than it is to do. And that's why, you know, that's that's why there's so few people like that. So again, it's not about like you being this perfect you know, uber mint or whatever the hell. It's really just like, like, be the person that you actually want to be, not the person that is easy to to be. You talk about there's a line you use and we tell was Again. What I like about the book is so many of the themes that I think come up

over and over for us in the show. And that's part of what I was I'm interested in with this show is what are the things that keep coming up over and over again because they really point to some fundamental, fundamental truths and lessons. And one of them is if you aren't willing, you say, if you aren't willing to

sacrifice your comfort, you don't have what it takes. And I think this gets back to that that that point of being willing to make that that extra effort and and being aware of needing to make that extra effort. It's it's the same thing you started companying. You know, they're always like, well, you're gonna have to be make sacrifices.

They just don't tell you what those sacrifices are ahead of time, and they don't tell you that they're going to be hard, for example, right, and and when you have when you're getting married and you're like hearing, oh, marriage is hard, but you know what I actually feel all those things, And then when it comes to it's understanding. It's a conversation about loyalty a few weeks ago with a friend of mine and and I think he pointed out and he said something like, loyalty is not being

loyal when it's convenient to you. Loyalty, the true quality comes from being loyal when it is not an easy decision. That's what loyalty is. It's not just like I'm loyalty loyal when I feel like it. It's I'm loyal when it's difficult. I'm loyal at war, not at peace. And and and so it's really easy that this rose colored glasses about yourself. And again, like talking about it right now, I can only probably talk about it in relation to myself because like I talked about in relation to you

or to you know, do the listener or whatever. And I'm a dick. But it's like, let's let's not. Let's not have rose colored glasses about ourselves because it does nobody at disservice. Somebody, you know, a front of mine, there's two kids, and he said, oh god, now I have to be that person them that that my kids would admire. I don't have a choice now because I have to admire to somebody. You know, they're gonna be

judging me. I better. I better be the person that they want as a bad I think that that whole thing points to this idea that there's no like, you know, courage, There's no courage unless there's fear. There's nothing to be courageous about unless there's fear. And in an attempt at a lot of times to eliminate all negativity from our lives,

are all all difficult events. We end up in a position where we eliminate all our ability to build those muscles because we're never confronted with anything, because we just simply say I don't like that, doesn't feel good, I don't want that thing, or I don't want a life

that has this or that in it. But almost all great lives have a pretty healthy degree of struggle, challenge, suffering, right, And you can see this in the UH in the what do they call it the hero's journey like that Joseph Campbell model twelve steps to get from the touch, from going from regular person to hero with the sword that kills the dragon and the returns from a great

quest and all these other things. Right, and and you're just looking at the question, You're like, you'd always be like, okay, so where am I in this quest? Right now? There's a step in the in the quest, it's called the refusal to the call. So first there's a call, which is, here's this great thing you were called to do it? You know, you know, the lady comes out of the lake and she hands you like a flower or some

other you know, a mythical story. And then part of that twelve step journey is not like a it's a different stewelve step journey is uh is the refusal to call, which is the hero says, no, I don't want I don't want to accept what this means. So he goes back to his regular life. But then he's given a second reminder. That second reminder says to him, No, remember that thing you forgot about. That thing is really important and only you can do it. And then you go out.

And then the hero goes back and lady on the lake, miraculously or whatever is still there, and she has the flower and she gives you the flower, and then you go, oh, I have to go out and bring this on top of the mountain or whatever. So I'm going to read one last quote from the book. We can maybe just talk about it for a second, and then we're near the end of our time so we can wrap up.

But I particularly love this one because I think it ties a lot of different things together, a lot of what we've just talked about, and it says flinch breaking is all about eliminating the pointless, cowardly and habitual and choosing the useful instead. Useful cannot be discovered in the abstract it has to actually happen. What do you think that's about? Well, I think it covers a little of everything we just talked about. You can't you you can't

discover these things via somebody else. Um, you you have to you have to go on the difficult journey that you have to eliminate the pointless and the cowardly and the habitual and do all those things in order and search for what what is useful to you? And only you are going to know what that thing is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. And it's like, here's a series of things that I do, Uh, should I really be this person?

You know? And it's weird because there's some versions of it that are like that are that are just about habits and behavior like I I can do it by by putting the hand on the knife so that I can start cooking or something. But other of them are actually mental happits like I want to remember to be grateful every day or something, you know. They so they there's all these ways that you can just you just think like I'm really a robot or I'm an animal

and I can just be trained. And the one layer or the one edge that we have on ourselves, and maybe others don't have it that you can actually train yourself. But but whether to do so is a choice, you know, and and and in order to do that, you have this layer of thinking that you can hopefully have above yourself to can convince yourself that it's worthwhile. And you get an opportunity to do that every day, and you can sort of start over every day, which is always

a mess yep yep. And I love that idea of eliminating I love the categories the pointless, the cowardly, and the habitual, which tends to cover a lot of ground of where we spend at least I spend time that doesn't doesn't mean anything to me. And I agree with the habitual part. And I say this all the time on the show. So much of the reason that I that we do this show is because we have to be reminded. I have to be reminded all the time

that I'm making these choices all the time. You know, I'm making the habitual choice or the pointless choice, and I'm not even aware of it very often. And so that's what I part of why I do this is to keep reminding myself, like, yes, these choices moment by moment, day by day add up and they matter, Yeah, absolutely, and it's uh yeah, and it's and it's not a thing that you would just figure out one day and then just live the rest of your wife blight by

yourself that way. And it needs to be done constantly, exactly. Well, Julian, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you are really busy with the new company. Um, good luck on expanding the Breathers. I hope someday there will be one in Columbus, Ohio. And uh and uh we will talk again soon. So thanks so much, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. All right, take

care bye, take care bye bye. You can learn more about Julian Smith and this podcast at one you feed dot net slash Smith