The Gifts of Your Weirdness with Warren Talbot – SMJ 008

You're About to Learn …

• A daily mantra practice that grounds you in purpose and action.
• What it really costs to live by strong personal principles.
• Why being weird is an act of service to the people around you.
• How 24/7 travel rebuilt a marriage that was heading toward divorce.
• How to ask better questions that spark genuine human connection.
• How inflection points work and why you can only spot them in reverse.
• Why contentment and joy can coexist once you stop resisting either one.

Hear It Here

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Resources and Items Mentioned in This Episode

Past SMJ Episodes

• Be Beautifully Boring with Charlie Gilkey – SMJ 001
• Rocks, Frogs, and the Flexible Mind with Ryan Nicodemus – SMJ 002

Other

• Joel's Personal User Guide

Where to Find Warren Talbot

He's intentionally not online. How about that?!

Timestamps and Topics

• [00:05:35] Loving-kindness meditation, tested on the hardest target.
• [00:16:19] “Beautifully boring”: why an intentional life beats an exciting one.
• [00:25:06] Are Warren and his wife Betsy ever out of sync on big decisions?
• [00:38:45] The brain-aneurysm question that reshaped Warren's entire life plan.
• [00:41:46] Joel's inflection point: praying at the Western Wall and feeling nothing.
• [00:43:45] Ayahuasca, expansion points, and chasing new states of consciousness.
• [00:49:35] Forget “are you happy.” Warren asks himself, “am I useful?”
• [00:57:53] Deliberate inefficiency: why Warren bought a scythe and hated it.
• [01:16:50] From barefoot to shirtless to naturist: Joel's gradual evolution explained.

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Transcript

Joel: Warren is requesting to record to his computer. You bet you can record, Warren. Do whatever you want with it. You can mix and remix this and have fun on your own if you like.

Warren: You kidding? I'm going to have a Surprise Warren podcast come out. It's just going to be amazing. My first guest, Joel Zaslofsky. Tell me, Joel, what have you been up to? Surprise me today.

Joel: Can we actually start there? That seems like a lovely place. I am pumped up like a blimp to talk to you on Surprise Me, Joel – also known as temporarily Surprise Me, Warren. I want to ask you, when we last spoke, I was explaining my loving kindness meditation that I do every morning. Did you give that a try?

Warren: I did give it a try. I like the concept of it and I love the concept of meditation. Obviously I'm a huge fan, and I'm always looking for a little more intentionality in my meditation. That's exactly what we were talking about. I really liked that idea, but I struggled to apply love to the people that I hate the most.

Warren: I tried. You talked to Ryan a few weeks ago, and I know in that conversation he talked all about not having judgment for other people. I listened to it, and as I was going through it, I thought this is a great idea. The next morning I sit down with my loving intention, thinking I'm going to be all good and everything, and I couldn't get into it. I struggled with it. I love the meditation part. I like saying I love Betsy, who's my wife, who's the most important thing in my world. But I still struggle with the other thing.

Warren: I think it is going to be – like all things with meditation – a practice, and you must practice with it. Did you struggle with it when you first started, or did you just leap in and it was easy?

Joel: I don't know. It's been a decade since loving kindness meditation has been the first thing I do when I wake up. I would imagine I had to work at it those first rounds. Just so people know what we're talking about – it's giving loving kindness to yourself, then to someone else that you love, your wife, your friend, or whatever it may happen to be. Then someone that you feel rather neutral towards. And then of course the fourth or fifth stage is someone who you actively dislike or really have a hard time giving loving kindness to, before you finish with all beings. I've kind of adapted the conventional Buddhist way and made it the Joel Zaslofsky way.

Warren: Yeah, that fourth point though – I have to imagine it was really hard.

Joel: Yeah, at first. And I think that's the best part, though. When I give loving kindness to Vladimir Putin, which is really hard for me to do –

Warren: Hopefully he's not listening to this.

Joel: That's fine if he is. No worries. And having that feel almost the same as giving loving kindness to myself or to my wife is just a super cool thing to be able to express and to do. So for me, I won't say that that's the point, because there is no goal in mind. I don't have a state of being that I'm trying to achieve through this loving kindness meditation. It's just something that I enjoy that I feel is beneficial. The vibes that I'm putting out into the world and beyond are good.

Warren: I wonder what would happen if you just skip that part. What if you just did – may I be loved, may I be at peace, may I be free of pain and suffering, may I be joyful – and then you go on to Betsy and then you go on to some random person and then you just skip the I-hate-you part and you go on to all beings. Is that worth doing?

Joel: That's what you're doing?

Warren: That's what I'm doing. And so I am still sticking with it. The issue is that's the one piece that feels false in my heart. I can tell that I don't really mean it. And that's part of the whole joy about getting to know yourself. I find that I love this practice because it is challenging. I don't dislike it. I'm being honest and saying that this is hard for me and I really don't like that part of it, but I love doing it. I feel better about myself and I feel more connected to the world. Even though I don't want to really connect with the world – I don't want to be out there interacting with humanity, that doesn't sound fun – but I like the concept.

Joel: You do hard and uncomfortable things though. I mean, you might do them physically all the time. So is it the mental or emotional? Do you find it easier to do hard and uncomfortable things if they don't have a mental or emotional component, if there's just a physical piece to it?

Warren: I don't think so. I mean, obviously you know my story. We've done all kinds of weird and crazy and bizarre things. Every day I walk out of that house, it's uncomfortable because I'm speaking a second or a third language. So that's normal for me. I'm used to all of that. I'm used to the physical element of it as well because I'm sitting here, waiting for the doorbell to ring – it probably will ring while we're recording – I'm getting a new chainsaw coming. That's an uncomfortable thing for me. Chainsawing is not something I've found that I enjoy, but it's necessary on the property I live on.

Warren: But I think the issue with this specifically – with loving kindness meditation – is I'm struggling with that element of, I'll be honest, I want to hold on to my dislike of certain people. It almost fuels me, and that is not healthy, and I appreciate that. But there's an element of it that actually grounds me and says, I am a good person and I believe the things I do are good and I'd like to put that out in the world, but I believe there are other people that don't.

Warren: I struggle. I would have trouble forgiving someone that did horrible things to me. I would like to forgive the person that killed my father, but I'm not going to be able to do that. And so maybe I can keep practicing. That goes back to part of what I think we were talking about – I just have to keep practicing and getting better at it. I want to do it, and I think that's the key. Whenever I want to do things that I struggle with, I can't do them yet – whatever those things are – but I want to do it. And I think that's where I am now on it. You have things that you –

Joel: Of course.

Warren: – struggle with. Maybe emotionally. I mean, physically, obviously there's a lot of things that we both would struggle with. Dunking a basketball would be hard for me. I don't know about you, but that would not be something I'm going to be doing. At five-six, that's not it.

Joel: Well, I'm almost six-six – or two meters tall – so dunking a basketball is a little bit easier for me. We've never actually met in person before. We're love-you friends. I can very comfortably say and express all of our emotions together. But yeah, this is one of the benefits of the internet. We've known each other for fifteen-ish years now and been great friends for a long time, and yet we've never hugged.

Warren: I can honestly tell you that would be a humorous experience for you and for me too. I would love to see that because I am not a basketball star. It is just not – this is an audio-only podcast, but I can tell you we would look like Mutt and Jeff standing next to each other.

Joel: I want to go back to what you were saying a moment ago. I love my daily rituals, and one thing that I do – so I do my loving kindness meditation, I'm still in bed when I'm doing that, and then depending on the time of year I'll go outside for the sunrise and then I will do a bit of a mantra. I don't know that I've told anyone about this, but I'm just going to roll with it and see what happens.

Warren: No one's listening. It's just me and you, Joel. No one else.

Joel: It feels kind of silly when I say it out loud and not in my own head. So here's how it goes. I'm a person who breathes – because I'm breathing all the time and breathing is really useful – and takes action that benefits future us. Us being everyone and everything. So – I'm a person who breathes and takes action that benefits future us. And then the second part is – I do hard, uncomfortable things. And yes, I want to be the person who can and does do hard, uncomfortable things in all realms of being a fleshy bag of goo that we call being human.

Joel: I mentioned that because that feels alive to me. But I hear you say you would lose some of your vibrancy, some of your aliveness, if you made the intentional choice to do certain things that you really are close to or that you don't want to do. And I think that's perfectly fine. There are some things that you're allowed to say – and I'm talking about you specifically – that you're allowed to say, no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to become that. Sure, that may objectively make me a better human or partner or friend or neighbor or whatever it is, but no, I'm passing. Thank you very much.

Warren: Yeah, well, I agree with that and I appreciate the statement. One of the things that I love about life – and I'm a huge fan of the life that we have, each one of us – it is short and it is sweet and it is amazing and we get to appreciate it. But it is constantly an opportunity to learn and to improve. That's what I look for. I've cut out almost everything in my life that would distract me from the opportunity to appreciate that life, and that is something I have been very blessed and very lucky to have been able to do over the course of the last 20 years.

Warren: Going back to something you said that I wanted to pick up on – it's a little bit of a deviation – but you mentioned your rituals in the morning. One of the things that I really believe has helped me to become at peace with my life and at peace with everything around me and at peace with all my flaws and everything else is the routines that I have in my day. I really like the ability to every single day sit down and take a few moments to myself and just think.

Warren: For me, I do the loving kindness meditation. I'm working on that because we talked, and I love the opportunity to do something that Joel gave me, so that's pretty cool. And then I also do my own meditation – just sitting quietly with no intention whatsoever, just trying to let go and enjoying that. And then I get out and I start my day.

Warren: Whenever I explain my routines to my neighbors, they all think I'm completely crazy because I live in Spain and I'm up between four-thirty and five in the morning, which is insane to them. And then I begin my day and I sit and I read, and I always read in Spanish for an hour or two in the morning – just Spanish novels – just to get in. I've been doing that for about seven or eight years. It helps me with the language, and now I just like doing it. It's just part of my life.

Warren: But I bring all this up because those rituals and those routines, as I do them again and again and again, have helped me to learn more things about myself because I'm doing the same thing. It's still not on rote. It's not the same every day. Every morning I get up and I have an appreciation for the life that I have. Every day I get up and I appreciate walking out. I'm usually out the door and we're on a walk when the sun is rising.

Warren: Just like with your mantra and everything else, there's a level of appreciation you can have when you stop and slow down and listen to what's happening around you. I find that that's been amazing. Every day I sit here, look outside, and appreciate the land that I have. But I'm reminded – because in your first podcast, you talked to Charles Gilkey – is that his name? Charlie Gilkey?

Joel: Charlie Gilkey. He was on an episode of Surprise Me, Joel, but Charlie and I also did a couple of podcast episodes on my previous podcast.

Warren: The reason I bring it up is that he mentioned something about being beautifully boring.

Joel: Oh, yeah.

Warren: And I really grokked onto that. I was like, oh yeah, that is my life right there. Everything kind of flows to the idea of intentionality in my life, and that's what I took from “be beautifully boring” – being intentional. My life is really boring, and I'm comfortable with that. All the things I did before, that's all fine and great and I loved it. But now I just get up, eat some oatmeal, have some coffee, go on a walk with my wife, work on the land for a few hours, and then sit and kind of contemplate life. That's my day. It is really dull. But I can tell you every single day I'm intentional about what I do. Do you find that – is everything you do every day intentional?

Joel: No.

Warren: Oh, what?

Joel: Oh, like I'm some kind of intentionality robot. Roar. No. I will say – before I address that more fully – boring to someone else, your life is awesome to you. And that is awesome.

Warren: Agreed. Oh no, I love the word boring. Rock on. It's more a function of how the world sees me, because people contact me and say, don't you want to travel anymore? And I'm like, no, I did that for four years. I'm not really that interested. Well, don't you miss the business world? No, not really. I liked what I did, loved my job, but I'm not interested in it. Well, don't you want to do this? Don't you want to do that? I'm like, no, not really.

Warren: So to their eyes, my life would seem boring, but I have never been happier. Like we talked about before we started recording – I'm happier every day. I'm a little bit more in love with my wife. I'm more in love with life. I'm more in love with just the components of the flowers that I have, the garden that I have. I'm more in love with all of those things, and I don't think it's boring. But what I liked about what he said was the idea that it is beautifully boring. I think that's the combination that I connect with, and I'm all right with that. Nobody can offend me when they call my life boring.

Joel: We should probably paint a more full picture of your landscape and what's outside for you in Northwestern Spain in the Galicia region. When you're talking about a second or third language, Spanish is spoken, but there's also a local dialect.

Warren: Yeah, Galician.

Joel: So you've got – well, English. You're very proficient, in my opinion.

Warren: Thank you. I'm practicing. I'm working on it.

Joel: And you have all kinds of things that you're growing – permaculture, food forests. You've got lots and lots of space to do what you want with the land, but you're not being careless about it. You're being intentional about it, if we can use that word again. You have a plan, and it involves being in sync with the natural environment – not trying to be like, you are mine now, nature. I conquer you. I do with you what I will. That's not your style.

Warren: We can believe we want to. We can try, but that isn't going to work – it's going to fail repeatedly.

Joel: Now that I've helped people get a better picture – because I think a lot of people, if they see the postcard version of you, they're like, oh, that's idyllic. You're in rural Northwestern Spain and you're having lovely conversations that last for hours with your neighbors, whether you want to or not. The food is there. It's peaceful. It's calm. You and your wife, Betsy, love each other and get along, seemingly gracefully moved into retirement together – or at least a lot of people's conception of what retirement is. It's all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows, which I know to you it is. To a lot of other people, though, that sounds terrible.

Joel: And that's fine too, because you're not trying to convince anyone that you're living the best way or the right way. You've just found through lots of experimentation or lots of evolution that you've got something great going for you for the last few years – in terms of where you ended up moving from your cave in the Andalusia region in southeastern Spain to Northwestern Spain where you are. Very different landscape, very different environment, very different opportunities.

Warren: Yeah, and a very different life. We loved it. For me, moving here was about growing things, the ability to grow things. We started a little garden when we were living in Andalusia, and it's an extreme environment. I'm going to use Celsius here because I can't even recall Fahrenheit.

Joel: I'll convert to Fahrenheit if necessary.

Warren: Thank you. I mean, it can be 40, 45 outside. It's just blazing hot.

Joel: That is freaking hot in Fahrenheit.

Warren: It's freaking hot. That's exactly what I was saying. I thought that but I didn't want to say it because I thought I got it wrong. And then it's going to be minus 10 in the winter. So you get both extremes, and it's really hard to grow things. That's the message. But tomatoes and peppers are really simple. I wanted to grow more things, more fruit and everything like that, and we were a little bit concerned about the water situation down south.

Warren: Moving up here was an opportunity to really change things, change our life. And we made a decision and we jumped on it. That's something I think we're really good at. Going back to what you were asking earlier, I think we're really good at changing. We made the decision in 2010 to just sell everything we owned and travel the world, and we did that. We made the decision overnight. It happened. We took two years to plan it, but the decision was made.

Warren: And then we moved up here. It was 2021 – still pandemic, hadn't quite gotten out of the pandemic here in terms of all the restrictions. But we said, we don't want to live here. We're a little bit concerned about water down here. So we're going to sell everything and move up here. We loaded up the van and we'd only been here for a hike. We came here – not even this region, another part of Galicia – and we came for a hike and fell in love with this particular climate and moved here.

Warren: It's like Seattle. It basically rains all winter. It's gray. Love it. Everything is so freaking green. We don't have the snow like you guys have, but it is really rather mild. Two and a half hectares of land that used to be all corn fields, and we are slowly but surely planting. I don't know – a thousand trees and shrubs. It doesn't look like it because it's so big. I have all this land and a large garden, and we grow all of our own vegetables and fruits. We're really happy.

Warren: Got eggs. Got eggs for days, my friend. You need eggs?

Joel: I am set.

Warren: So I think we have 82 eggs. I was counting them this morning. Out in the little outbuilding with an old bread oven – in there is all of our eggs, and the chickens just keep producing. Only four chickens, but man, they're going to make you work for it.

Joel: I want to talk about you and Betsy. Normally when we talk, it's you and me – philosophically, what we're thinking about, what we're reading, what we're doing. I've interacted with Betsy a couple of times when you had me on your Married with Luggage podcast, and then I had you on my Smart and Simple Matters podcast. I don't think I've ever talked one-on-one with Betsy. I sort of feel like I know her, but not really all that much. From the outside, things seem suspiciously smooth between the two of you.

Joel: Are you just in total alignment when there's big decisions to be made – like moving from Andalusia in your cave to Northwestern Spain and having a totally different lifestyle, a totally different environment? Was that easy? Was there a discussion? Where are you out of sync, if anywhere?

Warren: I would say that we're usually out of sync on the silliest of things – the smallest of small things, like should I buy this t-shirt or something like that. But all the big things – we're always aligned, and we're aligned almost instantaneously. That's through the course of many years. We traveled – it was just the two of us. We left Seattle in 2010 and just started traveling with just backpacks.

Warren: We were your normal couple. We both traveled for work. We rarely saw each other. We were constantly going in different directions. And then all of a sudden, we had a podcast and a website, and we both decided that we had to spend time together. All the time. All the time, Joel. All the time. And that was weird – difficult is a better word for it.

Warren: The first week we'd land in Ecuador. We've got one-way tickets, so we just land and we're in this little eco-village in the middle of nowhere. It's just the two of us. We speak zero Spanish, so we can't talk to anybody. No one speaks English. And so we're just there, and we begin the slow process of getting to know each other. That's what it felt like – it felt like we were getting to know each other.

Warren: That was 16 years ago. Through the course of that experience – traveling, going to places, most of the places we went we couldn't speak the language, so it was always just the two of us – we kind of decided early on we were going to become a team. Team Talbot. That's what we were going to do. We were going to go out and conquer the world – well, at least conquer our relationship. That was the goal.

Warren: We used Married with Luggage in a lot of ways to work through some of those things. The message was not about relationships, but it became about our relationship a little bit more because we were learning things as we were spending 24/7 together. We had never spent 24/7 with anyone, let alone each other. It was a strange experience.

Warren: What happened was we started learning – where do we want to go next? What do we want to eat today? What day are we going to do laundry? All the different things – big decisions, small decisions – all had to be made. So we learned this method of interacting, and it was just talking constantly. When we sit in a bar here in Spain, we'll talk all day. If we're there for an hour, two hours, three hours, we'll just talk. It doesn't matter about what. The topics can be anywhere from politics to what are we going to do with this particular piece of land. We can talk about anything.

Warren: And I think that's part of it. But it was hard. I would say that without the 24/7, without the trip, we probably would have been more likely divorced by now, because our life was going in such different directions. That's just honest. I think the time we spent together working on it and going through all the hard stuff – because there's a lot of fights and disagreements and everything – but now the big stuff is really easy for us. It doesn't matter what it is.

Warren: Do we want to move here? Do we need to construct something different? If something came up and there was a great opportunity for her to go live in New Zealand to learn how to card wool, to make her own yarn to be able to do better crochet – we would go to New Zealand. I would sell everything and go do it. That's just it. It wouldn't be a difficult conversation. It would be, is this really what we want to do? And I can guarantee it wouldn't take us more than a day to make the decision.

Warren: We've just gotten that good at it. I can't distill 16 years of knowledge down to a couple of minutes. But I can tell you that it has been repetitive – little by little, making those efforts. And I think that's the thing I'm learning about relationships. You were talking earlier about commanding nature, getting it to bend to our will. I think both of those things have the same result – neither a relationship nor nature will bend to your will.

Warren: What you have to do is little bits of effort every single day to guide it in the direction that you want. With a relationship, you have a partner. With your land, you have nature. Nature's a lot more powerful, but you do – you just kind of guide it in the direction that you want. You interact, you constantly ask, are you okay going this direction? And then I think you're dragged along. It's no different for any relationship. The difference for us is just that we spend a lot more time than the two of you or any other couple. We just spend an obscene amount of time together.

Joel: I'm wondering – I spread myself around a lot. I'm such an extrovert and I love groups and communities. I'm a joiner and I'm constantly joining more things and finding more friends, which is an awesome problem to have. I have too many amazing social opportunities – both passive and active – that I'm creating.

Joel: I've kind of known this, but you talking right now is making it a little bit clearer in my head about how much certain relationships have not grown, or I'm out of sync or out of alignment because I don't dedicate the time and attention to any one thing. I'm generally someone who's looking for breadth of social opportunities and relationships.

Joel: Yeah, I'll go deep. I have lots of people who I'm very close to. But most people have one or two or three people in their inner circle. I have probably 20, and then I have about 200 in another orbit. And then if you count my neighbors, another 800 or so in an outer, outer orbit. There's a thousand people that I might think about or interact with on any given day – not all of them in one day. And I like it that way. Yet the trade-off, hearing you describe your relationship with Betsy and all the time, is I do struggle. I do struggle to understand, to align with people often. And I'm just talking out loud at this point in time.

Warren: But see, you just hit on the key. I think this is the key of anything that I have learned. If I should boil it down to what is most important – everything is a trade-off. You can't travel the world and stay close to your family. You can't spend time with 800 people and spend 24/7 with one person. Everything in our life requires a trade-off.

Warren: I think that just realizing it and understanding that and acknowledging it and saying, I acknowledge that by spending time with these 800 people, I am not going to be able to spend the quality time I might want to with every single one – it is physically impossible. I think you have hit on probably the greatest lesson that any of us could learn to be more happy with our choices. Because it is a choice. You are making this as an active choice. Maybe it's more intentional now, but it's still a choice.

Warren: Would you reflect on it differently now that you have that realization? Would it change how you feel about it? I guess is what I'm trying to get at.

Joel: Yeah, well, I'll get back to you on that. I don't have some intuitive sense on it. I would need to feel into that longer than just now in order to understand that. One of the reasons why I enjoy talking to you is I had this picture of you as this gregarious extrovert for a long time. And then COVID hit and you moved to where you're living right now. You're certainly not isolated in any way.

Joel: You said something – I don't know, right around the time that COVID got going – that you were becoming who you were meant to become. I'm not getting the wording right. Or you were on the cusp of becoming something. You knew that you were evolving and you liked where you were going. And some of that is just not taking on more – some of it is shedding. Shedding identities or habits or behaviors that no longer serve you, that were an old version of you. Like a snake sheds its skin. Say that five times fast.

Warren: Snake sheds its skin. Oh, I could do that, actually. That's not as hard as I thought it was.

Joel: Do you feel like a cohesive person across five years, ten years, twenty years? Are you recognizable to yourself now?

Warren: It's a complex question because what I would say is that I have evolved dramatically. When I saw a picture of myself on my honeymoon, which was 23 years ago, I can tell you that in that particular moment I can't recognize that guy – very preppy, had a sweater tied around his collar.

Joel: It's a classy look, Warren. Classy look, completely classy.

Warren: I remember that person, but I don't recognize him within me right now. But I couldn't be who I am now if I wasn't that person. And I know that's the thing. So everything that's happened to me – one of the things we talked about in our last conversation was the issue of regrets, not having regrets. I'm coming to your question – actually, I don't even know if I'll get to your question. I'm just going to talk and we'll continue talking.

Warren: I find that as I look back on my life, everything I can recognize and remember, but I don't see myself as that person now. Am I a different person? Sure. But I had to be that person back then in order to be this person. I don't regret who I was. I don't regret the guy that was standing there on the bridge. I don't regret the issues – the good and the bad that happened to me back then. We talked about my father dying when I was 10. I don't regret that because I wouldn't be who I am now. And I love who I am now, but I have changed dramatically.

Warren: My life today – I am so much more at peace. I struggled with sleep for most of my life. I had trouble with stress constantly. All the things that you understand – you've read the books. But what I don't fully appreciate looking back is I don't have a desire to go back and tell that guy he needs to change who he is. I don't feel that, because that goes to the regret issue.

Warren: I know that I had to do that, but am I a different person? I'm a different person from the outside looking in. When I look at myself, I can see all the strands going back to the beginning and see how all those things changed me. But I believe this – and this is something I do believe in life as a whole – we are given three, four, maybe five major inflection points, opportunities, junctions in the road – the Robert Frost moment.

Warren: I feel like those moments come, and I look at each one of those inflection points in my life and I see that's where I changed – that's where I changed so dramatically because I took a decision. And it was a decision that maybe I didn't even have to take. Maybe I could have just wandered on and continued on the path. I had a great job. Betsy had a great job. Living in Seattle, living in the middle of the city, doing everything we thought we wanted.

Warren: And then boom – a dear friend of ours gets a brain aneurysm and we're like, what are we going to do? She's in the hospital and we're asked that question. We were both 37 at the time. If you could do anything by 40, what would you do? If you knew you were going to die in three years, what would you do right now? And that question changed everything, but it changed me. I couldn't have predicted it. I couldn't have told you it was going to happen. I couldn't have even told you two minutes before the question happened that it was going to change me, but it profoundly changed me.

Warren: When I look back on my life, each one of those major inflection points have changed me, but I only appreciate it in reverse – in looking back. I've shed all the things that I didn't care about. I've tried to get rid of the stress. I've tried to get rid of the worry. I've tried to get rid of people that I was holding onto that I felt like we were no longer aligned – our relationship had come to an end. Nobody had just killed it, and that was something I was not good at before.

Warren: I am an extrovert in my core, but now I get so much joy from just being here with my dog and my wife and my land. It's hard for me to leave. And I love that. So that's different. You're going to make me think a lot about this after this conversation. I can tell I'm going to spend a few hours thinking about this, which is always good.

Joel: So it surprised me, Warren, now. This is great – we're in a whole different world. I'm going to give you more to think about. I want to know – what were the questions associated with the other inflection points in your life?

Warren: The first inflection point was when I left and decided to take a job in Seattle from Texas. And it was – do you want this job? A job offer came, and that was a pretty easy one. Not nearly as profound. It was like, do you want it or not? But the other question – that question had been posed as part of sitting around having drinks at a restaurant. You've had a couple of margaritas and somebody just says these great theoretical questions. Usually they don't go that deep. You'll talk about it for a few minutes and they don't change your life. But for some reason, the stars aligned. Everything was right that one night sitting there in Seattle and that question came out from the group, and it was fundamentally a shift in my thinking. Have you ever had that? Have you ever had that in your life?

Joel: Had someone pose a question or just some moment of intuition where I asked myself a question?

Warren: Either one. Just something – an inflection point. I'm curious about your own inflection points and how you got to one that you want to talk about.

Joel: Yeah, I would almost do this rapid-fire and do each of them a disservice, but I'm going to do it anyway and see what happens. The first major one that I could think of was me in Israel, growing up Jewish, being at the Western Wall – the holiest site in all of Judaism – praying and expecting some feeling of transcendence, some connection with God. And I felt nothing, really. It was so weird.

Joel: It took me about three years to realize that I had kind of stopped believing in the monotheistic version of Judaism and Christianity and the concept of God. That was an inflection point that didn't hit me until later. But at that time, I remember praying at the Western Wall and being like, what's going on here? I'm not feeling this. Where are you, God? And for the last half of my life, at age 46, I've been an atheist. And that's worked out pretty well for me.

Joel: I've told this story to you probably in other ways, but when Melinda told me that she was pregnant with Grant, our first son – this was about 16 years ago – I had a moment of, what the hell am I doing? Working in the financial industry, 50-plus hours a week, purely for the money, staying up until one or two in the morning playing video games on a Tuesday night. For real – this is how I'm going to be an awesome father? No, the answer is absolutely no. So that set me on my path of personal renaissance.

Joel: I had a huge point in 2014 when I realized that my overarching theme – a couple of years after quitting my corporate gig and exploring the entrepreneurial wilderness – that bringing people together was really a huge part of not just what I did, but who I was and how I could be of service to others. That was a big one.

Joel: I'm skipping over some other things. There are so many things between 2010 and now – pivot points, or I like to consider them expansion points. That's been a general quest I've been on for a long time – how can I be a more expansive person? How can I expand what states of consciousness are available to me?

Joel: Finding plant medicine – ayahuasca specifically – in 2024. Going into my first ceremony at Luna Wolf in Minneapolis and communing with this divine spirit that people call ayahuasca, asking her questions and interacting with her in real time – that was just amazing. I can drink this brew and then ask whatever I want to this amazing spiritual force, and she will actually show me things that I want to be shown or expand my concept of what's possible.

Joel: So yes, I've had many, many moments and I'm grateful for every single one of them because I don't like the feeling of static. I like the feeling of change. I like the feeling of challenge – both challenging myself and having other people challenge me. And I'm just surrounded by that. It's amazing.

Warren: Well, I found that there's one thing that was life-changing for me – an understanding that I don't have to do what's expected of me. I can do all these other things. That's what I mean when I said inflection points – not everybody's doing ayahuasca. Not everybody is quitting their jobs at a financial firm. Not everybody is doing these things. They are fundamentally different because you stopped and you asked yourself, am I happy? Is this who I want to be going forward?

Warren: You can't change the past. Don't know who I was before. I was religious Joel up until this day, and then atheist Joel after that. I was a guy who didn't take ayahuasca, and then I was a guy who took ayahuasca. Those things change us if we let them. They don't have to. And I think that's what I've learned – I don't know that I necessarily look back and think I'm disappointed that I did something for so long. I look back and say, I'm so grateful that I stopped and had this moment of insight to say, I want to be happy. I want to live more intentionally. I want to have a life where I'm going and doing something in it.

Warren: I think that our society – and I don't mean America or Spain or anything, I mean society as a global society – we just kind of go along with whatever's expected of us. You and I do not. We are the weird ones. I always tell Betsy, anytime we have an interaction and people look at us a little strange – which is often – I always say, we're the weird ones. Understand that we are so weird, and everybody thinks that.

Warren: Every time we go to our neighbors – we spend a lot of time with our neighbors, they're about 20 years older than us, and they invite us over. It's always like, come over for coffee. Funny story that I think I've told you – when we went over the first time to have coffee when they invited us, that's a tradition here. We went over in the morning – not too early, at about nine-thirty or ten – and of course they were completely surprised to see us. Like, what are you doing here? We said, you invited us for coffee. We came for coffee. We've already had ours, but we'd love to have some with you.

Warren: And they said, coffee – we mean after lunch. Come around three-thirty or four, we'll see you then. We showed back up at three-thirty or four, and it is not coffee. There is coffee offered, but it is usually wine and a couple shots of liqueurs and some sweets. Then three and a half hours later, you stumble home. That's the experience.

Warren: But every time we go, we're strange – not just because we're foreigners, but because we have such a different outlook on life and the way that we interact. I recognize that that sets us apart. You're set apart. I know you are. When you go out, you're giving hugs at the end of your driveway. People think you're strange. And you have to embrace that, because that's what it means to be happy – to be viewed as weird by other people because you're going to be different. I'm more than comfortable with that.

Warren: I'm more than comfortable with the changes that have happened in me, because they have been by design and by choice. I feel like up until 2010, my life was pretty much – go to school, then you go to university, then you graduate, then you get a good job, then you have some kids, then you get a house, then you get a bigger house, and you get two cars, then you need three cars, and the kids go to college. There's this path and you're just on it. And the moment the first time you change that path in any major way, you're weird. For those of you listening – please, I invite more weirdos, because Joel and I need company.

Joel: No kidding. You mentioned the word happy a bunch. I have been interested in being happy. I'm more interested in being joyful, which I think is a state of being as opposed to something that's another level. Asking yourself, are you happy? I don't know that I've asked myself that in who knows how long. I tend to ask myself, am I useful?

Joel: I really like feeling useful to other people. I was so selfish for so long, and now I'm trying to be very selfless and service-oriented and other-centric. And even more than other-centric is us. I want the feeling of us wherever I go, whomever I'm with. I want to feel like we're together – we're an us-entity of more than just individual humans.

Joel: So I'm often thinking of – is what I'm doing useful to people? And sometimes it's the being-weird part, which is useful – to be able to just explain and show that there are alternate ways of thinking and being and doing. I'm not going to explicitly point to it every time, but to you friend group who is pretty conventional – you're cool, I like you, we hang out. But also, maybe there are other choices that you could make that would be weird and also cool and work out really great for you, because a lot of the weirdness that I've absorbed has certainly worked out great for me. And I think – no, I don't think, I know – there's a really cool ripple effect when you show up in different ways than mainstream thinking and doing. It can be a real gift that you give to other people.

Warren: And it can be. But I think that we humans are scared to be weird. And I think that's sad, because once you become a weirdo, you don't think about it anymore. It could be with age. I obviously can't tell my 25-year-old self to sell everything and go travel the world, because 25-year-old me was not ready for that. I appreciate that.

Warren: But I agree with you that once you understand being weird is okay, and you're giving something to other people – but you said something I think is important, which is that you recognize what makes you joyful or happy, which is being useful to others. And I think that most of us don't really know that. We don't know because we've never asked ourselves what makes us happy.

Warren: You said you haven't asked yourself in a long time, but the truth is, you're intuitive about this. You have a sense for it because you've done the work. You've thought about it. But was 25-year-old Joel as insightful as this?

Joel: Of course not. No, he was 25 years old.

Warren: There are 25-year-olds that have reached that level of epiphany, and I love them for it. And there are 75-year-olds that have just found this moment. We're all on our own path, and that's okay. But I think that if we could understand what makes us happy more and do more of that, the world could be a little bit better place – going back to your point.

Warren: If each of us were happy, doing more things that made us joyful and being accepted for it in our own ways, I think that would be the key. Because obviously there are people doing things that bring them joy, but they feel self-conscious, and so they don't do it. And that's sad. We're expounding the virtues of weirdness and being unconventional.

Joel: You are someone like me – you live by your values and your principles. You've told me in the past about getting 75 percent of all your food from Spain and 95 percent from Europe. You have your screen Sabbath on Saturday where you and Betsy don't use any of your – that's my terminology. Screen Sabbath.

Warren: I like it. No glowing screens.

Joel: And there are a number of other things that are principled ways that you live. What does that cost you though? Are there trade-offs that you are making based on your very principled way of being – whether it's in reputation or general opportunities or your level of physical comfort?

Warren: Of course – there are tons of trade-offs. Everything is a trade-off. By not being online on Saturdays, we miss opportunities. People call us, neighbors are telling us to come over. We're not online. They know if they really want to, they'll have to come over and knock on the door. Things have changed like that.

Warren: The whole thing about only buying things from Europe – it means that a lot of stuff is just outside of our access. Sometimes you just might want a Butterfinger.

Joel: Snickers.

Warren: I haven't had that in years. Those are things that you make trade-offs, and they are hard only until I remember why I chose to not buy from outside of Europe or what's important to me. I remind myself of those things.

Warren: We just had some friends visiting from Canada. They were mentioning a bunch of stuff for the land – they also have land – and things that we could get. And I'm like, well yeah, I could get that. But I don't want to use that product because it's from the US, or I don't want to use that particular thing because it's more efficient but it makes more noise, which is something else that I really focus on. I no longer care if I am the most efficient. I do things at my own pace. I often use manual tools. I have large trees I need to cut down, so I really do use a chainsaw – my body doesn't like the idea of using a hand saw to bring those down. But most of the time I just use a manual tool.

Warren: Not being efficient means it takes me five times longer than most people to do a lot of chores. But I have five times more time and I don't care. I enjoy doing that. So everything is a trade-off with what I do. If we don't grow it, it doesn't come onto the property. I don't buy vegetables or fruit from anybody else. If my corn – which is a really hard thing for us to grow here – doesn't come up, then I don't get corn that year. That's just it. Very simple. That's a trade-off, but it's a good trade-off.

Joel: I know you. I was thinking as you're talking – your Canadian friends having them import some stuff from North America. You didn't buy it, so that doesn't count, right? You get them bringing the Butterfinger and you can eat the Butterfinger.

Warren: Don't tell anybody.

Joel: What are the loopholes? Or where do you break – whether it's reliably or one-off? There has to be play. Your principles aren't perfect.

Warren: No, they're not. Absolutely not. There is no way to be that way. I would say that the five percent was us giving ourselves permission to break it. That's specifically why the five percent was there. Our friends brought us maple syrup, because maple syrup – we don't have it here. They brought a ridiculous amount. Their entire bag was filled with maple syrup, which I am more than comfortable breaking my principles for. More than comfortable. I have no issues with that whatsoever. I think everyone should have maple syrup. I think that would bring a more joyful world.

Warren: I use a couple of electric tools out in the garden because they're just easier on my body. I would love more than anything to – I own a scythe. I bought a scythe. I learned poorly how to use it. And then I used it a couple of times and was like, yeah, this sucks. This is not the move.

Joel: Deliberate efficiency is good most of the time, but not all the time.

Warren: Not all the time. Well, not when you have what is equivalent to six and a half acres to mow. So yeah, I bought a tractor. My principles do have a tendency – they guide me, but they don't control me. I find that on Saturdays, it seems like every time America decides to invade a country, it's always on a Saturday. So we find out about it and you're like, oh, I kind of need to know what's going on. Are we about to need to lock things down? Our big thing is if we lose power, we don't have water because we have a well. So it's like, do we need to fill up the buckets, fill up the tub?

Warren: So there are times we're on a Saturday because Friday night we find out something has been bombed and we need to go find out what's going on. So yes, I admit readily that we fall down on our principles. But you must have the same thing – you have principles that you live by. I don't know what they are. What are your principles?

Joel: I don't know that they would sound like a principle to a lot of people. One of them – you know what my principles are in what I call my lens statement. We were talking earlier about rituals and routines. I have a ritual of at least once a week of seeing a couple of times my lens statement, which is the guiding way that I live life. Maybe you want me to dust it off here? Do you want me to tell you?

Warren: Yeah, please. I'd love to hear it.

Joel: Now I got to actually – well, I know where it is. Of course there's a shortcut on my desktop.

Warren: There's a spreadsheet somewhere.

Joel: Well, this is one of the few things that is not in a spreadsheet. I'm going to say it first and then kind of explain it second. Does that work for you?

Warren: Yeah, of course.

Joel: Because some of this will make no sense. As you hear me say it, you'll be like, cool, Joel, those are words in English, but what do they actually mean? How do you live into them? Okay, here we go. I'm just going to read it.

Joel: We, we, we. Love and gratitude are always with me, can be amplified on demand, and magnify my kindness plus patience. My effortless connection and deep ownership of my gifts invites others to do the same. I am an outdoors animal. I am intentionally in relation with everyone and everything around me. I absorb the sun, and the charge helps me radiate enthusiasm, vitality, and light beyond the horizon. When I stray from my guiding virtues, I know right away and honor them enough to self-correct. I know why I do what I do, who and what is most important, how to show up the way I want, and I'm open to evolving at any moment. We are connected. I am love. I am grateful. I am aware. I am nature. I am kind.

Joel: That's my lens statement right there.

Warren: I love that. I didn't think you need to explain it at all. No, that's fantastic. It makes perfect sense. Because I know you – I know you pretty well. It fits so perfectly. It feels so honest and authentic. It just feels like you. So it's the encapsulation of Joel.

Joel: Sounds good. There are pieces in there about absorbing the sun and then radiating it out. I'm a sun worshiper. That's a principle that I have – I want to be out in the sun as much as possible. And the connection pieces – I feel so connected to humans and to the natural world.

Joel: I update this. There's a part in there – I'm open to evolving at any moment. The lens statement has evolved. I wish I had some kind of version control. I've had this for the last eight years, ever since my buddy Christopher Carter over at This Epic Life convinced me to do it. I've changed it pretty significantly, and I like the fact that it has changed and that I am open to evolving at any moment – whether it's my identity or my beliefs or my habits.

Joel: But the fundamental part – where it starts and where it ends. The first three words at the start – we, we, we – that feeling of togetherness. That is my guiding principle. What am I doing? How am I showing up? And how does that contribute to creating a more connected humanity and a better connection to the natural world?

Warren: I think it's amazing. I like the sense of just being able to encapsulate what goes on in our brains – these giant sacks of goo guided by this weird tiny little thing at the top. It's amazing to be able to capture that. I'd love to read the first one, because each one had to be so different. This one feels like it actually captures you.

Warren: The first version – if I wrote one now, I feel like I wouldn't do a good job because it has to evolve. You have to think, oh yeah, I should bring in this aspect and that aspect. I love the fact that you start with we, we, we, because I think that's the key. It has to be about us as a community, as a group. It's not just I, I, I or me, me, me. I like that. Do you update it on a consistent basis? Do you review it every year, or is it just as you feel like now's about the time I need to be thinking about this?

Joel: Yeah, this is an ad hoc one. Whenever it feels right, whenever there's something inside me that's shifted, I know. And I know I've got to go update my lens statement again. I don't think I have version control turned on in Microsoft Word. I don't think I can go back and see what the original one is, which I'm a little bit disappointed in myself for.

Joel: One thing that I do roughly every year is I have this thing called a personal user guide. I created it back in probably 2013, when I was doing the online blogger and entrepreneur thing. I'm very much into operations and systems, and I wanted to giveJoel: One thing that I do roughly every year is I have this thing called a personal user guide. I created it back in probably 2013, when I was doing the online blogger and entrepreneur thing. I'm very much into operations and systems, and I wanted to give people an idea of what makes me tick. What are my habits? What are my beliefs? So I created the personal user guide. It was a template – like, hey, you person reading my blog, which was nobody. But if anybody did, maybe you want to create a personal user guide because you can really communicate a lot, like your communication preferences.

Joel: I do update that every year. I think I'm on version 10 now.

Warren: Wow.

Joel: But there have been pretty incremental changes in the last three or four versions. It used to take me hours to make an annual update, and now it's like, oh yeah, that still feels relevant. I don't know that I'd use that word anymore, so I'll change the word choice a little bit. That's one way that I can kind of trace my evolution – by seeing what's changed in my personal user guide, especially the part about phrases or labels that are part of my identity. You're not going to see sun worshiper in there in 2013, but you definitely are now.

Joel: Ever since I learned about quantum biology and how light, water, and magnetism impact all life on this planet – the science of the sun gave me this deep spiritual connection to it where I literally worship the sun.

Warren: You said that when you update your personal user guide now, you find it takes you less time. Is that because you've become more comfortable with the process, or because Joel is now closer to the vision of where you want him to be?

Joel: It's not process-related. I love who I've become, and I've felt that way for seven or eight years. So when I change, it's not because there's something wrong. It's because there's an opportunity for growth or for expansion.

Joel: I'm not really seeking out change anymore. For a long time – from right around 2010 to let's call it 2019 – I was very active in going and finding ways to evolve and to change and to do new things. And now I'm pretty cool with who I am and what I do and how I show up – and I'm open to evolving at any moment. That's what my lens statement says, and it's true. But I'm good. In fact, I'm great. I really dig where life is right now.

Joel: A lot of that is increases in gratitude practice. I've become an even more grateful person. And this is just me – I won't have a gratitude Olympics with anybody else, although I think I'd do pretty well if there was one. Having this intense feeling of gratitude almost all the time really makes me super content with just about everything in my life, including myself.

Warren: I love that. And I think you just used a word that I loathed for years – content. People used to say, are you content? And I'd be like, oh, I hate that word. I couldn't stand it, because I was always thinking that I was the guy that when you asked me how I was, I was fantastic. And I'm still that guy – just say it in Spanish now.

Warren: The reason I do that is twofold. One, I usually am fantastic. I usually feel that way. And if I don't – if I'm having a bad day, because we're humans and we have those – by telling someone else I feel fantastic, they get a look on their face of like, wow, feeling fantastic. And they go about their day and they feel a little bit better. More importantly, and selfishly, I feel better. By saying those types of phrases, it is a way to pass on a little bit of joy to other people. Because they don't normally – it's like, fine, fine, I'm fine. But if you say fantastic – or here I say fenomenal, which is exactly the word you would think – people are like, what? And they think I have a problem with Spanish.

Joel: I love an opening.

Warren: I find that that's a good example of the fact that we are both very happy people on a regular basis. But content – I always felt like it was a step backwards from that, from the fantastic I was wanting to feel.

Joel: Like you'd resign yourself to feel contentment.

Warren: Yes, exactly. Oh really, I get to be content? All right, cool. And now I'm like, I love being content. I am content with everything in my life. I am also fantastic. I feel fantastic. I feel amazing. Sorry, go on. What were you saying?

Joel: One of my favorite things to do is – I don't ask people how they're doing. I ask them, how's your general well-being? Some people scrunch up their face like, did he just ask me how I'm doing? But he said, how's your general well-being? How am I supposed to take that? But that's my default – I want to know physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, whatever – how's your state of being right now?

Joel: When I'm in the – I do not get 75 percent of my food from local sources. I love Trader Joe's too much for that. But when I'm in line and I'm asking a Trader Joe's cashier, how's your general well-being? And they give me some kind of opening or they say good – oh yeah, what's contributing to that sense of goodness? I'm always looking for opportunities to ask other humans and to help them see things that are good in their life or to feel small senses of gratitude. I almost don't have any off switch, and I wonder how many people I confuse with my question and how many people I annoy with my follow-up. But I just love sprinkling that throughout my day.

Warren: I love that. I think that's wonderful, and it's part of the weirdness that is you. We should embrace that as much as possible. Even if everyone thinks you're weird when you do it, who cares? They're going to be thinking about it, and at some point they will say, what is contributing to my goodness? Is this what I want to be doing with my life? I always think that's a natural extension of those types of questions. It's wonderful that you're putting it out there, and you might encourage other people to do the same. Who knows? You might have other people – if you end up one day walking down the street and someone says, how is your general well-being? What's contributing to that sense of goodness? – you'll be like, oh, this is amazing.

Joel: When I'm walking down the street and I see someone barefoot, there are a couple of people in the neighborhood who I've caught walking barefoot, and when I first saw them, they didn't. I have to think – is that partially me and my influence, me being barefoot?

Joel: Going back to Trader Joe's briefly – there was a time last year where I got permission from the store captain, basically the store manager, to go barefoot in the store. He didn't make me sign a waiver or limited liability or indemnification thing. And then they got a new store captain at the Trader Joe's that I go to, and she was not so keen on me walking around barefoot in the store. So I thought, is this really worth it for me? But there are a few people in there who say, oh yeah, why are you wearing sandals? I thought you were the barefoot guy. And I had to make the decision – it just wasn't worth it. I didn't want to push things so far that everybody in the store – even though I wasn't walking on eggshells or glass, I was cool being barefoot – they were uncomfortable when they saw me. So there are times where we do have to restrict ourselves in some socially acceptable ways.

Warren: It's annoying, but I like the fact that you are trying it and you push it and you're being you. I think that's the thing. It's the same when you're sitting at the end of your driveway giving out free hugs. Some people will find that uncomfortable, but most people will just think, oh, that's pretty cool. When they get to know you as the hug guy – these are things that over time you get to be known as, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think it's wonderful.

Joel: Free hugs or kudos. I want people to know that is true. I'm in for more than just hugs. Obviously free hugs is the first word on the sign and kudos is the second. That is intentional. But hey, you just want some appreciation or gratitude? I'll make it up on the spot. I'll give you some kudos as well.

Warren: Are you still doing it? Are you still sitting out there?

Joel: I am, but it's less often because now that it's springtime and it's what I call neighboring season here where I live in Minnesota, I see people a lot more often. I'm also very active with helping to start a neighborhood association, and our family's going to host a block party on Friday. Part of when I started doing that was in the wintertime, so that would put me outside in the path of neighbors which I otherwise wouldn't see. Now I don't really need that as much. It's still important though. I do it from time to time, but I have a feeling it's going to be more of a cooler weather kind of thing where it gives me an opportunity to do what I call front yard neighboring. That's where I want to be. If I'm in the yard, I want to be in the front yard because then I can interact with my neighbors.

Warren: I like the idea. This goes back to how we started the whole conversation – I like the idea of being barefoot. I don't like the reality of being barefoot, but I love the idea of it. We have a lot of nettles on the property, and I find that they are not conducive to being barefoot.

Joel: Yeah, that sucks. I've stepped on plenty of nettles in my time, and it's not fun.

Warren: But you still do it, and I love the fact that you still do it even knowing that you might step on nettles or glass or something else. How long have you been doing it?

Joel: Close to a decade.

Warren: Yeah?

Joel: At first it was just kind of a casual thing, just an experiment. Once a week I'd go for a 30-minute walk and I'd just go barefoot because I was annoyed by my shoes. And then it just became the default way of being. I just really don't like shoes. As much as I love being barefoot – and I do really love it – I also almost equally dislike wearing shoes.

Warren: All shoes?

Joel: From sandals all the way up to hiking boots – anything that I have to put over or under or on my feet in any way, I just don't like. It's so uncomfortable.

Warren: I feel like you've done that and then you also don't wear a shirt when you're outside, right?

Joel: Sometimes. Yeah, if it's warm enough – especially if the sun's out. Or sometimes when it's not warm enough, but I just want to feel the sun.

Warren: You're well on your way. I feel like this is the gradual evolution from foot up to being a naturist. You're on your way to being a naturist, I feel like.

Joel: It's not legal or socially acceptable yet, but I hope we get to the point where I can just walk around naked in my neighborhood.

Warren: So that is a goal. You do have this as a goal. This is actually why – now we're getting to the root of it. It's been an hour now in this conversation, and we're getting to the root of why you started your neighborhood association.

Joel: Yes, I want to influence everybody to have it become socially acceptable for us to be naked together in public. That's it. It's been my plan the whole time. An evil plan.

Warren: I can see you. You're the Mr. Burns of your neighborhood association. Excellent.

Joel: Excellent. All I need is a Smithers. I need a right-hand man. I don't care to see any of you naked. I just want to be naked. That's the difference.

Warren: I'm fine with it.

Joel: Yeah, if I'm going to be naked, then other people can be naked too. I'm not going to be the only one who has permission or actually does it that way. Bodies are great. Show up the way that you want.

Warren: When we first got here – we had been in Spain maybe a couple months – we met some people, and they became very good friends of ours. They were naturists and had been naturists for a long time.

Joel: What's a naturist, by the way? Define that.

Warren: A naturist – same thing as a nudist. People who are basically naked all the time. They lived in a naturist community before they moved to where we were. I'm always curious, always wanting to learn things. I was always asking questions about what it's like to be a naturist – what it's like to sit down on chairs without any clothes on, silly questions.

Warren: They said, well, why don't you come with us? We'll go to the naturist community on the Mediterranean – we were just about 20 minutes from the sea. We're like, nervous as could be the night before – getting naked in front of our friends, in front of people you don't know. It's just weird.

Warren: We went down there, and as we drive up, they were having a fun run – maybe five or ten kilometers – and everyone's naked. Everyone is naked. It's just like you went from clothed people to naked people. We went in there, and the odd thing was we were the only ones with clothes on. Our friends immediately took their clothes off. You're like, well, all right, this is weird. When we get down to the beach, it's the opposite – everyone's looking at us like, why are you wearing clothes, weirdo? You get down to the beach, take off your clothes, and you're like, thank goodness, now everyone's naked.

Warren: Our friend – I'll never forget, he's passed away since then – made the comment that when you meet someone that's naked, you immediately don't have any preconceived notions about them based on their clothes, based on all the affectations that you put on there. You're just two people interacting. There's no sexual nature, there's no judgment, there's nothing else. It's like you strip everything away and you can be more honest with each other.

Warren: I was like, wow – that was mind-blowing to me. This was someone that had been a naturist for 45 or 50 years, so they were into it. But I thought that was a really good statement, because I feel like if we could get rid of a lot of the crap that we put on top of ourselves to tell other people who we are, we could actually just be who we are. I think there is something to your evil plan, is what I'm saying.

Joel: I'm just imagining a thousand people doing the fun run and not being comfortable – or seeing naked people. That's a lot of jiggling.

Warren: That's a lot of jiggling, a lot of bouncing. And you're just like, oh, that looks uncomfortable. They did wear shoes though. That is the one thing.

Joel: So they did wear shoes. I'm so curious – what is it like to hug someone else, especially a stranger, while being naked?

Warren: Wow. That whole question is just kind of blowing my mind right now. Well, I can tell you that is an uncomfortable moment. It's definitely a side hug. It's not genital to genital. You kind of move them to the side, because you can't control – the thing about our bodies is we can't control everything that happens when you touch another human. Even though it didn't start off sexual, as soon as you have contact – yeah. That first day, I was like, I'm not touching anyone. Don't touch me. No one touched me, nothing.

Joel: I might need to do version three of my “how to give a great hug” podcast episode, where I have the section about what variations you need to do when you're giving naked hugs.

Warren: Yeah, I think that would be it. I hope to have that firsthand knowledge someday.

Joel: Soon. You're going to be able to get it there in your community. You're going to be ready for it.

Warren: Oh, man.

Joel: We should probably be done talking sometime soon. Anything else coming up for you – whether it's your anticipated evolution of what's next or some other thing that you want to try?

Warren: I would say that for me, I am really trying to become more comfortable with the present. One thing that you mentioned earlier – about nature and trying to control nature – nature is the ultimate teacher of, you don't control anything. All your plans mean nothing to me. It has been really humbling.

Warren: I'm trying to learn to live more in the present and appreciate what I have. Every tiny little thing – this morning, looking at the okra I'm trying to grow here, seeing the little seedlings come up, the first little leaves popping out of the ground, and appreciating that and saying thank you. Being more of that sense of gratitude – but the sense of gratitude towards nature.

Warren: That's where I'm at now. That level of appreciation for everything that comes out in my garden, every bee that shows up, the grass that's too long, the things that need to be done – but appreciating all of it, living in that moment. When I walk around, I try my best to appreciate those things. The next evolution of Warren is being more in the now and in the appreciation that when I die, nature will still be here. And so will all the land, and it'll continue evolving. What I plant now is for the future. That's not for me. That's for another generation – for future bees and birds and deer and everything else. I think that's what I have to do – find a little peace and tranquility in the now.

Warren: What about you? What's the next evolution for Joel?

Joel: Well, I just want to say that's beautiful. The word that comes to my mind is steward. It's a word that I think about and try to be a lot – being a steward of the land, with the land. That's just wonderful.

Joel: What about me? I have this fledgling neighborhood association that I'm helping to get going. I need to think about what kind of events, what kind of rituals do we do? Who is the Lake Edina neighborhood? What are the things that we do? When people have an identity and they're like, oh yes, I live in Lake Edina in Minnesota – what does that mean? What's unique?

Warren: Naked.

Joel: Sure. I've been refining my facilitation skills and offers. On my new website, I'm going to have a service for sale for the first time in a decade – facilitation in a variety of different things. Some of them are like Offers and Needs Markets, which we don't need to get into. And I want to say more about that, but I'm not going to.

Joel: Generally, they fall under the umbrella of bringing people together. I'm feeling called more this year than ever to just be that outdoors animal that my lens statement says I am – to either invite the outside in to my home, or even better, to just be outside of the walls of this place that I call home as much as possible.

Warren: Sometimes you say invited in. What do you mean by that?

Joel: Opening the windows, for example, even when it's cool – to let wind and sun in. I would love to redesign this house and get some transparent wood, which allows most of the full spectrum of the sun to come through. If I could redesign this office, instead of putting in skylights, I would put in transparent wood so it'd still be somewhat opaque – or get quartz windows, which allow full-spectrum sunlight through. They don't filter out the ultraviolet spectrum like almost all manufactured windows.

Joel: Because I live in this amazing home, which I love and I'm grateful for, I just constantly need to push myself to not be in it – to either be in nature, just to be outside, to be the outdoors animal I claim that I am. And the awesome byproduct is there are a lot of other humans that happen to exist outside of my home. I get to interact with them when I'm outside of my home.

Warren: I love that. I like the fact that you are really tying that to your lens statement, and it sounds like it fits perfectly for you. I'm delighted for you. I'm very happy with you – happy for you, everything.

Warren: By the way, I believe that in Lake Edina – I'm pretty sure that you can get naked. I think the letters in “naked” actually are in there. So I think you can actually come up with an anagram for your block party.

Joel: I may need to do that on the next one. I've got a couple of days, and I think it'd be a bit of a bait and switch to have the 40 or 50 people that are going to be coming and hanging out on my front lawn. They may need more expectation-setting.

Warren: It seems like the perfect chance to just show up and be like, I'm sorry, didn't I tell you it was clothing-optional?

Joel: Yeah.

Warren: This is wonderful, friend. Thank you for doing this. It's really nice to talk to you. Thank you for sharing your lens statement. I know how personal that is, and it was really amazing. I have lots of thoughts after this conversation, which I always do after we talk. The fact that other people get to listen to this is just a secondary element for me, selfishly. I feel like I have connected deeper to you, and I like that.

Joel: Me too.