25. Yelling at Garbage Men & Other Signs You’re Not Thriving. We interview author Jon Rosemberg.

This week on Wrong Way Forward, Katy and Justin officially admit it:

They are not thriving.

Katy is rage-spiraling over lawn chairs.
 Justin is yelling at garbage men.
 And both of them are sleeping 14 hours a night but somehow still exhausted.

Enter Jon Rosenberg — author of A Guide to Thriving — to gently explain why their brains are wired for doom, why shame might actually be useful (rude), and why success is not the same thing as thriving (Justin objects).

They unpack:

• Why your brain is basically Yelp for negative experiences
• The difference between survival mode and thriving mode
• What “agency” actually means (and why you might have less than you think)
• How Catholic guilt accidentally funds philanthropy
• Why lawn chairs can trigger a full existential crisis
• And whether money, power, and status are secretly stealing your jo

Listen now and let us know:
 Are you thriving — or just surviving in nicer clothes?

New episodes every Thursday.
 Email us your survival stories at wrongwayforwardpodcast@gmail.com

Text line: 720-251-4450

Because the only thing worse than bad advice… is yelling at a garbage man about it.

To purchase Jon Rosemberg's book, "A Guide to Thriving" visit Amazon or your local favorite book dealer.

Transcript

Meet John Rosenberg And The Premise

Speaker 2 0:01

She's Katy Montgomery. He's Justin Joseph. These best friends are serving subpoenas to bad advice weekly with Wrong Way Forward. Now, here's Katy and Justin.

Justin Joseph 0:11

Hi, everybody. Welcome to this week's episode of Wrong Way Forward. I'm Justin Joseph here along with my best friend Katy Montgomery. Joining us this week, we're doing something different that we haven't done before. So we're having a guest this week to talk about something that we really frequently talk about on this podcast, and that's kind of how to be the best version of yourself. So you'll see John Rosenberg joining us here. He's the author of this book here that's called A Guide to Thrive. You can get it at your local bookstore or on Amazon. You can see Katy and I have gone through it. I've tabbed it. We're ready for the discussion today. John has more than two decades of experiencing uh teaching and leading uh Fortune 500 executives. Um he lives in Toronto and holds his holds advanced degrees from Cornell as well as the University of Penn. He's served leadership roles at Walmart, Procter and Gamble, and right now he's working as the CEO of Strongpoint Group and co-founder of Anther. And these are firms that are dedicated to helping people and organizations move from surviving to thriving. And so that's what

Survival Mode Defined

Justin Joseph 1:07

we're going to talk about today. John, why don't you give us quickly, um, sort of as a jumping-off point, what is the the difference and what is kind of the path from surviving to thriving? What what are you talking about there?

Speaker 5 1:17

So thank you for having me. So there's two things. Um number one, uh I I think let's define what survival mode and what thriving mode are, right? Because these are kind of this is the binary that I set up in the book. And then the bridge between those two is agency, which we can also talk a little bit about. So um, Justin, Katy, let me maybe ask you a question. Have you ever felt like you're in survival mode?

Katy Montgomery 1:42

It's very interesting that you asked that because one of the things that I wrote from write down wrote down from your book is that the patterns that have um kept us safe in the past keep us imprisoned. Um, and so I would say I am currently in survival mode. And I was talking to a fellow coach this morning, and she said, she said, I think that this week, you know, basically this week of February is everyone's survival mode. It's like when winter is just getting to you, it's like there's still ice on the ground. It's like that crux of like you haven't had the spring break vacation yet, everything's coming at once. I mean, you just feel like, you know, you are in automatic mode and you just keep saying it's gonna get better, but it might not. And so what I'm finding now is that I am losing my mind over just very small, inconsequential things. So I'm pretty, I think it's pretty fair to say I'm I would like to be thriving soon. And and John, I'm gonna put that burden on you.

Justin Joseph 2:44

I will say I am also in survival mode. I pulled over to yell at a garbage man the other day because he pulled out in front of me and just completely ignored me. And I felt the need to roll my window down and yell at him. So I realized at that point that I was there were issues going on. Um and John, just to kind of give you a big picture, I'm a real turn last year. I had a really great first and second quarter, and the fourth quarter was the hardest quarter I've ever had, and it has sort of ruined me right now, my mental um frame of mind. And so I am in survival mode. I was in thriving last year, I'm in survival mode now, I'm yelling at garbage people. So we both give you this.

Speaker 5 3:20

Yeah, so thank you for sharing and for being, you know, so open and vulnerable with your experience. And I think you I've asked this question of hundreds of people, and except for two people, and I'm not gonna talk about the outliers, everybody has said, oh my God,

Negativity Bias And Our Brains

Speaker 5 3:38

of course I have felt like I'm in survival mode. Um, and it's this space where you know our attention really narrows to hyper focus on the things that we believe matter most, and we are tense and snappy and tired. And you know what? Survival mode is a really useful uh mode to be in. I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and it was a very dangerous city. Um by some standards, uh by by some statistics, the year that I left Venezuela and moved to Toronto, there were 52,000 violent murders in the country. 52,000 so it's a war zone. So of course I want to be in survival mode. Because if I take the wrong turn, I might die. So survival mode is very useful. And evolutionarily speaking, when we were in the savannah, you know, and we heard uh Russell in the bushes, being in survival mode was very helpful. Now the challenge is that today most of our threats are psychological, not physical. Our actual lives are not at at risk. And Justin, I'm I'm not sure what your financial situation is any. So of course it's really hard to have a difficult quarter, but the big the bigger question would be what's really at risk here for you? Is it for in my case? So I spent two and a half decades in the corporate world and I thought that the day I got fired, two weeks later, I was gonna be living under a bridge, and I wasn't gonna be able to pay my rent and or my mortgage, and I wasn't gonna be able to support my family, and I wasn't gonna be able to put and that jump from I may get fired to I'm no longer going to be able to survive happened uh it wasn't even a conscious jump. It happened automatically. And our brain is designed for that, is designed with that negativity bias in mind in order to s save our lives and to protect us. It's our brain is not designed to make us happy. It's not designed for us to be tell me more about that.

Justin Joseph 5:38

You don't think our brain's designed to make us happy.

Speaker 5 5:40

Well, uh if you if you if you look at the research, I think there's between ten and a hundred million stimuli around us every second. Ten and a hundred million stimuli. Of those, about I think by some some researchers suggest that around forty to fifty make it into our conscious awareness, and we actually pick up maybe less than ten. And of those ten, there's like a five to one ratio of negative to positive. So there's all of this thing happening in the world. We pick up um

Parking Spot Rage As A Case Study

Speaker 5 6:16

an infinitesimal fraction of it. And then on of that of what which we pick up, we focus on the negative. Negativity bias is a very well-studied phenomenon.

Katy Montgomery 6:26

I think that you you nailed that because here's my example is like I've got a lot of important things going on. And for about two days straight, I was obsessed with the person. I cleared out my parking spot, and then they parked in it, and then when they left, they put long chairs in it to save it. And the injustice of that became a full-time job that I obsessed over for two days.

Justin Joseph 6:47

You should roll your wooden and yell at them, I'm telling you, for a few moments.

Katy Montgomery 6:51

But it's so interesting that he's saying that, like, you know, you're taking in all of the stimuli, and and I know how to prioritize, but I'm clearly surviving because I'm so obsessed with the person who doesn't know how to operate by community standards and is is reserving my parking spot that I spent hours and and cash to clear. You know, it that's ridiculous. But I think that's what's interesting too, John, is that when then we start the ruminating and the perseverating, and so then it even gets worse because I'm beating myself up for being a ridiculous survivalist.

Speaker 5 7:25

And and and the the most difficult part about that, Katy, is that the person who left the launchers there, they're not even thinking about it. So you're just you're just doing all of this to yourself. Whereas it with agency, right, and and often so I look at agency, let let's let's kind of define it first. Agency for me is the capacity to make intentional choices supported by the belief that those choices matter and have an impact in the world. So when you see your neighbor or whoever it was that left those lawn chairs there, what are your choices, Katy?

Katy Montgomery 8:03

Well, my first choice was Katy, it doesn't matter. It was my first choice. And then it clearly mattered because I thought about it obsessively for two days. So my choices were I could have moved the lawn chairs. I think the choice is I could have left a note that said this isn't fair, or I could have said this just doesn't matter, this isn't part of the big picture, and move on. Those were the three things that immediately came to mind.

Speaker 5 8:26

So look at all the choices that you have right now. But you said when I first experienced this, I felt like I didn't have a choice. And that's a very common experience. So one way to notice when we're in survival mode is when we feel like

What Agency Really Means

Speaker 5 8:41

we don't have a choice. And by the way, let's make a little parenthesis here and acknowledge that some people actually don't have choices. There are systemic issues in in the world that we live in. If you're in a war zone, you may actually not have agency, may not be accessible to you because of systemic choices. Now, for most of us, and I suspect for many of the folks listening to this podcast, choices are available. And by the way, uh one of my I'm I'm gonna call him my teacher, even though I've never met him because he died. Um but uh one of my teachers is Victor Frankel, and he went to a h through a harrowing experience uh in the Nazi concentration camps. And even as he was going through probably the most dehumanizing thing that uh that somebody in our species could experience, he said, even in the worst of circumstances, we have the choice to pick our own attitude to to decide how we confront the situation. So so if we believe in Victor Frankel's perspective, then we can see a choice almost anywhere.

Justin Joseph 9:47

And is that truly what agency is, John? Is that choice?

Speaker 5 9:50

Yeah. And and and and so one of the things that I suggest is that agency is a skill that we can develop. It's not something that it's God given to us. I don't know why I brought God into the conversation that will take us down a rabbit hole. But but it may be. For some people it may be. Um but i what I believe is that agency is a skill and you can develop it. Now, what does that mean? If it's a skill, first of all, the first thing that it means is that you can practice it. And as I was doing the research on agency, there were three things that kept coming up as to how we develop our agency. And I summarized them in an acronym, AIR, like the air we breathe. That's awareness, inquiry, and reframing. So that's number one. And we'll go into our in a second, but I I just want to make another point. If it's a skill that we can

AIR: Awareness, Inquiry, Reframing

Speaker 5 10:41

develop, it means that we can have less agency or more agency. It lives on a continuum. And what that means is that really low agency is what you experience, Katy, in the moment that you saw the lawns there. It's very low agency. You're like, there's nothing I can do here, right? You ruminate and you get angry and you say, whatever that looks like. And by the way, Katy, we all experience that. So you're in good company. Um, you're in really good company. And then higher agency would be, okay, so right now I can take those chairs and throw them in the garbage, or do nothing, just walk away. So there's only two choices: a black and white world, or black or white world. That that would be h a little bit of higher agency. Really high agency is what you just did a few minutes ago when you said, well, I could have done this and I could have done that, and I could have so now you're tapping into your prefrontal cortex, you're actually tapping into your executive center and trying to break down the problem and try and figure out what are the options that are available to me. And that in in in in based on what we see in history, is one of the most powerful capacities that humans have developed. And it's what separates us from most of the other species in in this planet.

Katy Montgomery 11:52

And and John, that's super clear. And I'm wondering, you know, and I think kind of the example I want to give is a lot of times when I have these, what I would define as kind of ridiculous thoughts or spending energy on something that's in the grand scheme of life not that important, then I go into kind of that shame spiral or that beating up spiral. I'm like, oh my gosh, you're throwing a hissy fit and you're spending energy on this. And there are people in war zones, and there are people who are scared they might be deported, and there's people, you know, who don't make a fair wage, and there's people who have food insecurity. Excuse my language, you dumb bitch, why are you worried about somebody taking your parking spot? It does that go to the R of air that I need to go and reframe? How would you suggest? What would your advice be when somebody, yeah? I mean, that might be trying to avoid having agency. It's being again in that kind of red zone and kind of panic to where I'm not using my prefrontal cortex. But what would you advise someone in that case?

Justin Joseph 12:53

John, let me stop you there. We're going to take a quick break. Our guest this week is John Rosenberg, uh, author of A Guide to Thriving: The Science Behind Breaking Your Old Patterns, Reclaiming Your Agency, and Finding Your Meaning. We will answer that question on the other side of this break. We'll be right back.

Katy Montgomery 13:07

You've been listening to Wrong Way Forward, where bad advice goes to die,

Break And Listener CTA

Katy Montgomery 13:12

and then gets resurrected just so we can roast it again.

Justin Joseph 13:15

If you're enjoying the chaos, hit like and subscribe and come back every Thursday for new episodes.

Katy Montgomery 13:20

Have a new topic or some disastrously bad advice you want to dissect? Email wrongwayforwardpodcast at gmail.com. Include your contact info.

Justin Joseph 13:30

Now back to Wrong Way Forward.

Speaker 2 13:31

Roasting the worst advice ever. Welcome back to the Katy and Justin podcast.

Katy Montgomery 13:36

Hi, and we're back with John Rosenberg, who's written a book about thriving, moving from survival mode. And I wanted to play John a clip because I saw this, and I feel like this is a lot of what I'm hearing from my friends. So I do need John to give me advice about how to get out of this kind of ruminating spiral

Live Reframing Exercise On Shame

Katy Montgomery 13:55

and beating myself up. Um, but I want I would love for him to hear this because this is very common in this time of year, and I would say in the you know 50-year-old women group that I'm in. I'm hearing this a lot. So I would love to get some advice about how, as a friend, you can help people get out of the survival mode. So, Justin, if you can play that clip.

Speaker 3 14:14

I'm depressed. I just feel like I'm in a thick, dark fog, and everyone disappoints me, and nothing works out. And what's the point of anything anyway? And before you ask, it's not because I'm not sleeping, okay? Because I'm getting 14 hours of sleep a night. And I think that's a good question.

Justin Joseph 14:30

So that was Julia Luis Dreyfus and Veep um talking about, I think, something we're all feeling. I mean, I go to bed at 7:30. I get plenty of sleep and I'm going through the same thing. So take it from there, John.

Speaker 5 14:40

Well, um, Katy, let's we were talking a little bit about the reframing here. Yeah. So can we would you be open to doing a little exercise and trying to play it out in real time? I don't know where this is gonna go.

Katy Montgomery 14:51

Always, yes.

Speaker 5 14:53

Okay. So what is the what is the situation here for you?

Katy Montgomery 14:56

Um, I think the situation is when I do get caught up in these small, inconsequential things, I then go into a spiral of you should be grateful. You are privileged, you have a you actually do have a lot of options, you know, just by the your experiences, your education, your, you know, financial stability. How dare you, how dare you spend time on this? You know, this is this is ridiculous. And then I go into that kind of shame spiral, which I think again reduces my agency because I'm in that kind of fight or flight mode.

Speaker 5 15:31

Hmm. So it's interesting because you you you brought up a really powerful emotion. So let's try and first bring some awareness to what's happening to it. And you're already showing it because you're naming the emotion, which in this case is shame. So can I ask you, Katy, how does that shame manifest itself? As you're telling me the story, how how does it feel in your body, somatically speaking?

Katy Montgomery 15:54

Um, I mean, I would say like, you know, shoulders down, you know, trying to kind of close myself off. It feels um, you know, maybe like a mild nausea, um, like a discomfort in my body.

Speaker 5 16:06

Okay, so there's discomfort, shoulders down, mild nausea, you know, you feel pain. So let's now that we've brought awareness to the emotion, let's work with the is it okay with you if we work with the emotion a little bit? Yeah, oh a hundred percent.

Justin Joseph 16:21

So This is fantastic getting Katy on the therapy couch. Sign me up.

Speaker 5 16:25

So so if if you could if you could talk to that shame, that nausea and that shoulder slump and that feeling that you're having, uh, if you could talk to it, what do you think it would say to you?

Katy Montgomery 16:37

Well, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind would be like, you're not a selfish person. You made a $500 donation to, you know, Minnesota immigrant rights justice from Mississippi, and some asshole burned down a synagogue, and I donated $500 to that. So I'm like, you're doing what you can. It's not all your responsibility, you know. And then probably my coaching voice would come in and be like, you know, if you had a friend who told you this, you know, how would you treat them? You know, like why aren't you why can't you give yourself grace and empathy? I don't know if that's helpful.

Speaker 5 17:12

Okay. So if you had a friend that came to you and said the exact same thing, what would you tell them? If they said, hey, I go into this shame spiral because I'm I'm feeling I'm, you know, I'm I'm having a difficult situation. I'm comparing myself to all these people who are suffering, and I realize that, you know, I've got it pretty good. What what would you say to a friend if they came and told you this?

Katy Montgomery 17:36

Ma maybe what I would try to do is to get them into a good place. So like, let's talk about what you're grateful for. Um, let's talk about what makes you happy. Um, let's talk about maybe going back to what you said, agency, like what are the actions you can take to potentially reduce that shame? Maybe going back to where do you think that shame comes from?

Speaker 5 17:56

Okay, and that's useful. Now, if you were it it that's useful because it it helps it would help them see a different way. Now, I'm curious if you wanted to validate the word the way that they're feeling in that moment when they come to you with this problem, what would you say to them?

Katy Montgomery 18:12

I wanted to validate, I think I would say I understand it's really heavy what's happening there and and it feels as though, you know, you know, one drop, you know, is not gonna make enough of a ripple effect to change. And so you do feel a little bit um handicapped or you know, and and not able to kind of fully move the needle. Like your impact is so small that it doesn't make a dent. And so I understand how that feels. That might that wasn't a very good job of validating. Probably feel worse.

Speaker 5 18:42

I thought I think it's it was a very it was a very good job, especially because you're saying, I understand this is this is difficult. You can't solve all the problems in the world, even though you want to to do that, right?

unknown 18:56

Right.

Speaker 5 18:56

So so with that in mind, I'm I'm curious. Now we're gonna go into the the reframing. So we did some awareness, then we inquired a little bit. So what do you think this shame is doing for you? What is it telling you?

Katy Montgomery 19:10

I think that's a fantastic question. What is it telling me? I can tell you what it's doing to me. It's making me feel not great. Um and and I intellectually know, and again, we know there's a difference between what you know and doing something about it and the behavior, but I know it's it's not healthy for me. I'm not sure, but I don't think it's doing me any favors, definitely.

Speaker 5 19:28

Okay. If you if you had to offer some compassion to that shame, it's coming with this really icky feely. And by the way, shame is one of the most icky. So I really appreciate you doing this, Katy, because because shame is a difficult emotion to work with.

Katy Montgomery 19:42

Yeah, it is. And Justin and I are are both we're both raised as Catholics. We have a lot of shame.

Speaker 5 19:48

Yes. Yeah. I I hear that. Hey, uh I'm raised as Jewish and and shame shame is is is uh is a pretty universal emotion. But so so if if you had if and I know shame it's a sucky emotion, and we know we're not we don't love it. If you if you had to be compassionate towards that shame and try and see what what is the what is the one tiny little one percent good thing that that shame may be bringing you?

Katy Montgomery 20:16

Well I think it shows that I'm an empathetic person and that I Ah that you care that I care more about And how did that caring manifest? In donations.

Speaker 5 20:26

Ah, there. But but but you understand the reframe here is that the shame is telling you that you care about something,

Takeaways: Thriving Begets Thriving

Speaker 5 20:35

that something is important to you. And this shame is so powerful that it actually helped you write a check for $500 to a synagogue that burnt out, which is a really powerful action that you're taking. Whether people think it's gonna change the world and rebuild the synagogue with the $500, that's that's irrelevant.

Speaker 3 20:53

Right.

Speaker 5 20:54

The reframe here is that the shame is giving you the gift of knowing what matters to you and what your values are. So in that case, shame does no longer becomes only the thing that makes you feel nauseous and your shoulders and it also becomes a guide to telling you what matters to you and what your values are. And I think it's really powerful that this shame is coming up for you. Because somebody who doesn't feel that shame may not make a donation. Somebody who doesn't feel that shame may not use space in their podcast to talk about it and for other people to relate to what you're doing.

Justin Joseph 21:28

And that's a good that's a good point, John. What's a big it's what what are the takeaways in our few minutes we have left for people who may be in a rut, et cetera? You're talking about reframing error, et cetera. Give us some big takeaways that anyone in a rut can side of use in their own life to make a change.

Speaker 5 21:44

I think the first one and the biggest one, and this one is for you, Katy. Yeah. Is that is that your actions in talking about this shame, in writing a check, in in bringing this uh awareness into this, will ripple. They they will ripple. Because the people who know that you wrote this check or that that and so thriving begets thriving. And by the way, there's lots of research around this. When our well-being improves, the well-being of people around us improves. And and that's a really, really powerful

Thriving Versus Success

Speaker 5 22:17

takeaway. That probably the best way to thrive is helping other people thrive.

Katy Montgomery 22:21

Yeah, I love that because emotional contagion is real. And you know what I also loved is that you wrote in your book is the journey from surviving to thriving is not linear. And I I think that's super helpful too, to know that it doesn't look like this, you know, that it it you know, it can ebb and flow. And so I think even just for me, ha resonating with that is to knowing, you know, it it's not gonna be kind of a consistent kind of upward motion. I that was very helpful to me to always remember too. Um that was that was a good one.

Speaker 5 22:53

So so we've been we've been trained in our society to think that things are linear and that they grow forever. This is the big difference. Thriving is not the same as success. And I think that's a really important point to make. Success, as we define it in our society, is made up mainly of money, status, and power. And money, status, and powers are metrics, are KPIs that you can continue growing to infinite and beyond. And that's great. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with success. I want success just as much as the next person. Thriving is a little bit different because thriving is about having agency over your own life. It's about finding meaning, coherence, the why behind what we do things, and it's about connection. And it could be a connection to yourself, it could be a connection to others, social connection, it could be a connection to nature or to animals, or connection to the transcendent, to God, or whatever it is that you believe in. So what I'm arguing is that a lot of times we're trading our thriving for success. It's not always a trade-off, but we're a lot of us are willing to say, here, take my thriving, take my agency, take my social connection, take take my meaning, and give me more money, more status, and more power. And that trade is impacting our well-being by all metrics. We are living in the golden age of humanity. We have we've never had so much access to water, to education, to technology, to transportation, to we are in the golden age of humanity. The only metric in which we're suffering, and that's over the past decade and a half, is mental health. There's a mental health now. This could be one, because we're measuring it more now than before. We don't know the causality, it's just a correlation. But I think it's important to consider that. So maybe if we start trading a little bit of our success for some thriving, and we say, here, take my money, take take my uh take my status, take my power, and give me some agency, some meaning, and some connection. That could be a really powerful way to go through life.

Katy Montgomery 25:03

So I love that. I you know, this has been absolutely amazing, John. Justin, can you give away a little bit of your success, power, and money for thriving?

One Practical Thing To Do Today

Justin Joseph 25:15

Oh gosh. Um, I'd really I would need at least an hour with John before I could commit to that. Um I really thrive on the power of success and money.

Speaker 1 25:27

I know we need to do a values card source with Justin. It would be like fame our money. Um John.

Justin Joseph 25:33

Most of us do, Justin. Most of us do. Let me ask you this. What's the one thing someone can do today to make their life better in our minute remaining?

Speaker 5 25:43

I I I think anything that you can do to develop your agency will go a very long way. Just to bring some awareness to what you're experiencing, to inquire and get really curious about it with a friend, with a coach, with a journal, whatever works for you. And if you can find a reframe that can be incredibly powerful and open the door to much more agency.

Wrap With John And Plugs

Justin Joseph 26:06

Well, thank you, John. Our guest today was John Rosenberg, author of A Guide to Thriving. Again, you can find this at Amazon, your local bookstore. Um, we really appreciate. We will have you back again. We didn't get enough time with you today. And like I said, next time what we're gonna do is bring some hot topics of things we've discussed on the show and get your take on them. We'll have you back again. John, thank you so much for joining us.

Katy Montgomery 26:24

Thank you, John.

Justin Joseph 26:25

Thank you. This was awesome. Thanks for streaming Wrong Way Forward, the weekly reminder that advice is usually free for a reason. We call out bad advice wherever it hides boardrooms, break rooms, and even book clubs.

Katy Montgomery 26:38

Enjoying this dumpster fire? Like, subscribe, and check back every Thursday for new episodes. Want us to roast your favorite piece of nonsense? Email us at wrongwayforwardpodcast at gmail.com. Be sure to include your contact info. We're not psychic, just judgmental. And now back to Wrong Way Forward.

Speaker 2 26:57

Roasting the worst advice ever. Welcome back to the Katy and Justin.

Lent, Awe, And Daily Practices

Justin Joseph 27:01

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to this week's episode of Wrong Way Forward. We just had joining us author John Rosenberg and discuss this um discussing his book, A Guide to Thriving. And Katy, he really has some insight into you. And like he said, he you were vulnerable. What did you think about it?

Katy Montgomery 27:15

I mean, I thought it was great. You know, I think it's so interesting. You know, it's a you coach people and it's so interesting. You could do that for other people, but you can't do it for yourself. It's like the cobbler's kid has no shoes, right? But I thought he was so articulate, he really broke it down and very quickly. And I love the idea of kind of like where's the place to start to kind of have agency. And it was really kind of crazy. Y'all know in this um new year, I'm not really on social media on my phone, but I checked social media once in a while on my laptop and I took a snapshot of this. I thought this was so interesting. My cousin Betsy down in Georgia posted this. And um, yesterday was Ash Wednesday. And so for us kind of, you know, Catholics, you know, we go get the ashes, and then Justin, we were raised to give something up.

Speaker 1 28:02

Right.

Katy Montgomery 28:03

Um, and I remember being a kid, and in Sunday school, we had a chart, and whatever you decided to give up or something you actively did, every time every week you did it, you got a star. And I think I was like in second grade and I said I would take out the trash, and I didn't do it one week, and I made my mom get me to Sunday school earlier. I erased it, changed it to something I had done so I could get the star because by damn it, I'm competitive and I wasn't gonna not get a star, but all that was a double negative. And I also wasn't gonna lie because that was a sin. So, but I really love the idea. And for anybody who's kind of doing the Lent thing, and lots of people are, you know, I have a friend who's giving up social media, you know, there's certain people who are like giving up meat or you know, try to give up gossip. I liked this, which was something that she mentioned, and I think this is an idea towards agency, what John was talking about. It's you know, it's what you should give up, but really what you can do. So give up harsh words, use generous ones. So I like

Thriving Check-In And Audience Invite

Katy Montgomery 29:05

that idea, use generous ones, give up unhappiness, take up gratitude, give up anger, take up gentleness and patience, give up pessimism, take up hope and optimism, give up complaining, value what you have. Um, and so it just keeps going on, you know, give up sorrow and bitterness, fill your heart with joy. And I think all of those positive emotions make me think of like those are the things you do when you're thriving.

Justin Joseph 29:29

100%. You know, when I I went to church yesterday for Ash Wednesday and I was thinking the same thing. Like the idea of giving something up is has such a negative connotation to me. I I decide I want to take something on. Okay, so like for I'm taking on um John calls it the transcendence, Oprah calls it the power of awe. I'm taking on the idea that every time I want to, every hour I want to be conscious of something I see in the world that gives me awe, whether it's a ray of sunlight.

Katy Montgomery 29:55

Um, I didn't expect that reaction until you said a ray of sunlight.

Justin Joseph 30:02

Well, something that's just like what a beautiful thing that exists in our world, a flower, things that I just walk by, but I want to be inspired by awe. And awe can come in all sorts of I find a on my dogs, I find on my husband. And so it's just reconnecting with that. I I that's what I want to take on. I love that.

Katy Montgomery 30:21

And I've heard this twist of like you wake up every day and you say, What's the best thing that's gonna happen to me today? Yeah, and what happens is it changes your viewpoint because you look out and you see the sunset and you're like, I wonder if that's the best thing. And then it's like you order a BLT and you get an extra side pickle, and you're like, oh my gosh, is this the best thing? And so you are starting, like you said, to see the beauty in everyday small things, which would be a flip for me, who's obsessing over the negative small things. I would love to spend my energy in awe than I would in that asshole across the street who took my parking spot.

Justin Joseph 30:56

Or the garbage man who pulled out in front of me. I just and I was so mad at myself. I was on the phone with Josh having a love conversation, and I just, and he's like, What is happening? And I'm like, sorry. And then I was just mad at myself. Yes. So anyway.

Katy Montgomery 31:10

Justin, Justin, let's let's do a thriving check-in.

Justin Joseph 31:15

I love it.

Katy Montgomery 31:15

You know, like maybe, you know, in a few weeks, let's see if both of us are thriving better. You know, if we are, you know,

Closing And How To Reach Us

Katy Montgomery 31:22

giving ourselves awareness, inquiry, reframing, we're building up that agency muscle in us. Let's kind of challenge each other to do that.

Justin Joseph 31:30

That sounds great. So let us know your thriving surviving stories. You can email us at wrongwayforwardpodcast at gmail.com. Of course, our text line is always open 720-251-4450. Um, we look forward to hearing from you. And as always, thanks for listening. We'll catch you next week on Wrong Way Forward. All right, that's a wrap on this week's episode of Wrong Way Forward. Remember, the only thing worse than taking bad advice is giving it.

Katy Montgomery 31:54

If you've liked what you've heard, like, subscribe, or follow us wherever you stream podcasts. And if you've got a topic or need some advice, we'll probably regret giving, email us at wrongwayforwardpodcast at gmail.com.

Justin Joseph 32:08

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Wrong Way Forward.