The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #330 - Andrew McConnell

TRANSCRIPT

Andrew McConnell
Is it better to be able to feel those really, really high peaks and suffer those really, really deep losses? Or do you want it more muted so you never suffer those deep, deep troughs?

Our mind is our most valuable asset because it can create new homes. It can create new universes. It can create rocket ships and all sorts of innovations. And yet we aren't maximizing the fight. In fact, we're not even owning it. We're just giving it away. Maybe sometimes it's also helpful to just sit in the feeling and just be as opposed to do.

Melanie Avalon
Welcome to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics of lying here in. So friends, are you ready to join me? Let's do this.

Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. Oh my goodness, friends. It was such an honor to have my dear friend Andrew McConnell on today's show. It honestly felt like one of those really epic conversations I would have with friends over wine.

And we talked about so many incredibly helpful tools and techniques from stoicism that you guys can apply to your life to really just help out with life's journey. Of course, it is sprinkled with a lot of Taylor Swift references because Andrew may be the person who was just as obsessed with Taylor Swift, especially her lyrics as I am. And we touch on so many cool topics from Andrew's book, Get Out of My Head. We talk about whether or not you should be a stoic in its entirety compared to picking and choosing different stoic tenets to apply to your life. The doing versus being controversy, AKA, do you feel bad about doing all the things all the time. Andrew's zero based calendaring system, which can help you truly take charge of and value your time in your life. Something I love, which is the law of inverse attraction, as well as the benefit of imagining worst case scenarios, the role of control in our life, and in particular, the locust of control, how we have a tendency to rent out our mind and so much more. In the show notes, we have links to some pretty cool things, a custom GPT that Andrew developed, which can work with you from the stoic mindset, a free workbook.

If you'd like access to these tools that we discuss, how to get a signed copy of Andrew's book and so much more. These show notes for today's episode will be at Melanie Avalon.com slash stoicism. Those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Definitely let me know in my Facebook group, I have biohackers intermittent fasting plus real foods plus life. Comment something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love. And then check out my Instagram, find the Friday announcement post. And again, comments there to enter to win something that I love. All right. I think that's all the things without further ado, please enjoy this enchanting conversation with my dear friend Andrew McConnell.

Hi friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I am about to have. It is a long time coming as somebody would say. So the backstory on today's conversation. I first met this incredible human actually. I don't remember. Was it a year ago? Maybe.

Andrew McConnell
It was yeah that would be perfect timing right around.

Melanie Avalon
It was right before eudaimonia, right? The first time? No.

Andrew McConnell
What do you mean we met online july maybe like in that time frame.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, so like a year-ish ago. Time flies when you're having fun. So I first met this incredible human, like I said, around a year ago. And oh my goodness, Andrew, you're up there for people that I have been just insanely alert by the presence that you have created when a person is exposed to your content, your resume, all the things that you do to give listeners a little idea. Andrew, I'm here with Andrew McConnell. He is the founder and CEO of a lively.com. He's also a fellow podcaster. And he was the founder and CEO of rented.com vacation futures, Inc. and rented capital LLC. Before that he worked. I mean, you did a lot of stuff. He worked at McKinsey and Company with private entities as a management consultant, lots of other things. But not just that you went to Harvard Law School, which is no small feat. You were a member of the US national team and open water swimming as well. It just doesn't end. Perhaps most importantly, not this part of it, but something I was exposed to in it. You have a TED talk with over 1 million views on YouTube. And I'm never going to forget when I first watched it because I hadn't met you yet. And you mentioned Taylor Swift, like at some point early into it. And I was like, Oh my goodness, we're gonna be friends. We're gonna be friends. And Andrew is here today for his incredible book, which is called Get Out of My Head, Creating Modern Clarity with Stoic Wisdom.

And friends, this book is a treasure. It has so many things I'm excited to talk about. It's interesting because stoicism, I pretty much identify with the mindset. I like to think that I have adapted it and utilize it in my life. And that said, I was thinking about this. I haven't actually read a work dedicated to it, which is no excuse. I definitely should be reading Ryan Holiday and people like that. I've listened to a lot of podcasts. I think I've just casually assimilated what I think stoicism to be. So this was actually my first time reading a book on the topic. And it was perfect for me to not to make this all selfish, but the application of stoicism in the book is to business and how we do our jobs and our careers and all the things while still learning the tenets of the mindset in general. And Andrew provides a lot of really something I like, really practical, implementable tools, which we will talk about, as well as diving into some more esoteric theories. And it was just wonderful. I've already started implementing some of the things I learned. So Andrew, that was a long introduction. And thank you so much for being here.

Andrew McConnell
It is my pleasure, Melanie. It's always a joy to spend time with you discussing Taylor Swift and all the things in general.

Melanie Avalon
for listeners when Andrew and I first met, we literally, and I'm using the word literally in the correct word, like the actually literally, not figuratively, we literally would communicate mostly in Taylor Swift lyrics. We should like, we should make a book out of everything we did.

It was very impressive, I think.

Andrew McConnell
I mean, I do have this belief that if you can express something through a Taylor Swift lyric, can you be sure that it's actually true?

Melanie Avalon
This is so true. Do you have a favorite lyric, by the way?

Andrew McConnell
Ah, it shifts with time. Darling I'm a Nightmare dressed like a daydream, I think, is one that I just, is very picture perfect.

And then the other one we discussed, you show me colors, you know, I can't see with anyone else. I really think that's, she's incredibly poetic. And I think the people who see her just as a pop princess or don't get into the depth that she provides in her lyricism are missing out on one of the greatest artists we've ever had.

Melanie Avalon
I'm going to put in the show notes the article you wrote in and did a commentary on somebody taking down Taylor. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Andrew McConnell
taking down Taylor. I know my first viral article ever was the genius of Uber and Taylor Swift and just how perfectly they had found product market fit and this was back in 20, maybe 2015, but someone taken, oh, oh no, it was the Economist.

They tried to do a take down of Taylor Swift and yes, I wrote them a very stern letter in response.

Melanie Avalon
It was incredible. It was absolutely amazing. Do you think Taylor is a stoic? I think.

Andrew McConnell
Stoicism does not have a monopoly on human truths, and Taylor's quoted in the book, and I have done three TEDx talks, and she's quoted in every single one of them. I think she demonstrates stoic principles at times, but I think she's also a high-feeling individual.

I remember when Speak Now came out, and I had just landed, I had been in Afghanistan, just landed, got the album immediately, started listening to it with friends who were from Australia but happened to be visiting, and I was saying, she's someone who's going to have her heartbroken so many times, and it's going to be so difficult for her, but we're going to be the beneficiaries of some incredible art as a result. And so I think she doesn't apply the stoicism all the time, which I think is what allows her to feel, experience, and share more, which I think is this open question of what life do you want to lead? I don't know if you've ever seen The Last Dance with Michael Jordan. It's about that last season where they won, and you follow his whole career at the Bulls, and what you walk away seeing is this is a terribly unhappy person, that the result was he became the greatest athlete of his time, basketball player, and we got to see some incredible basketball, and we were all the beneficiaries, but he suffered. And I think that's his question for anybody in greatness of what are they individually sacrificing that we get a benefit from? And that's where I don't know if stoic principles are universally the right answer for everyone, or the right answer for society, but they're tools that you can have at your disposal if and when you think they make sense for what you're trying to accomplish.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, this is incredible. I actually, I haven't actually seen that movie. I should add it to my list.

Andrew McConnell
Well, it's long. It's like a six-part series, I think, on ESPN.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, I'm not, okay, six, hmm, okay, maybe.

Andrew McConnell
It's very good. It's very, very good.

Melanie Avalon
At least it has an end in say, I don't know if we've talked about this, but I can't. I can. I shouldn't say I can't. I am hesitant to start TV shows when they have multiple seasons because I just get overwhelmed. Like that's a lot to commit to. So I, yeah, I have to like start when it's starting. Otherwise, yeah, it's probably not going to happen for me.

So fun fact. So actually a question I had for you to kind of start things off. Well, I definitely want to hear about your personal story. Just one really quick question before that. With these stoic principles, which you so clearly talked about how they doesn't necessarily have to be an entire mindset that a person has. You can use different pieces from it. Did you have a moment, well, do you currently identify as a stoic? And did you have a moment where you embrace that label? And with applying it to business, did you have an epiphany moment where you thought, oh, I have this paradigm version of it that I can create into like a book, for example. I'm always just really curious where that idea came from for you.

Andrew McConnell
I would not label myself as a stoic because I don't think I can consistently enough live by the principles. Right. Like I still feel and react and respond and I'll give these talks and like, well, how do you stop that? And I'm like, I don't know. Unless you're Buddha, I don't know if you can't stop it, but you can get better at noticing it sooner. And back to that Viktor Frankl between stimulus and response, you know, there's a space and can you tap into that space before you're reactive to actually make a conscious decision of how to respond. So I don't know if I'm truly a stoic as much of a student of stoic principles and a student of stoicism as well as Taoism and Buddhism and all these others that I don't think stoicism has again, a monopoly on these human truths.

I think, and I mentioned this in the book that Lao Zi, the Buddha, the Tanakh, Tora, you know, et cetera, are coming at these same ideas around a similar time in human history, Socrates. They're packaged in different ways, but it's not because it's this one philosophy is right. It's that all over the world, over time, people uncover these human truths. And I think we're living in a really interesting time now in that because of fMRI and a lot with a science, we're now able to understand why these are innate human truths. Oh, here's how the dopamine cycle works. This is why you want to do this, because if you allow yourself to fill the higher high, then you're going to get a longer and more prolonged and deeper trough afterwards, right? It's why gold medalists get depressed after the Olympics. And so this is a question back to, is Taylor Swift a stoic of like, Hey, I don't know, is it better to be able to feel those really, really high peaks and suffer those really, really deep losses? Or do you want it more muted so you never suffer those deep, deep troughs? And it's, I don't know if there's an objectively right answer that I think there is just a subjective choice and realizing it can be a choice that you can tap in to some of these things to either mute or amplify some of those feelings. But in terms of when I kind of had my aha moment with, with rented.com, we would have this line that we would always tell vacation homeowners. We help you maximize the value of your most valuable asset, right? Your home, we're going to help you make the most of it. And COVID hit and I looked around and I was doom scrolling. My wife at the time was doom scrolling. People are up in arms every tweet the president sent or the news cycle, everything like everybody was giving away and actually far more valuable asset. I was like, actually this physical home is not our most valuable asset. It's our mind. Our mind is our most valuable asset because it can create new homes. It can create new universes. It can create rocket ships and all sorts of innovations. And yet we aren't maximizing the value of it. In fact, we're not even owning it. We're just giving it away to the news cycle. We're giving it away to Johns Hopkins latest infection count. We're giving it away to Twitter or Netflix or any kind of social media.

Andrew McConnell
And so that just got me really curious of if even Taylor Swift can sing about living rent free in my mind, the most successful, uh, Sam Altman before everybody knew what chat GPT was, he tweet tweeted out, don't let jerks live rent free in your head. It's the most successful, most powerful, smartest people in the world are seeing this or dealing with this.

What's going on? Why is that? And so that, that's what sent me down this rabbit hole to really try to understand what it is about the human brain, human psychology that puts us in a position that our default is to do that. And then what can we do about it? And so stoicism became a good framework to really recognize, oh, okay, here's how we would operate naturally. But we don't naturally, we also wouldn't have clothes or shelter or all these other things just cause it's natural. It doesn't mean it's the right answer for us now. So how can we override some of these natural tendencies that we may have?

Melanie Avalon
Wow, okay so many things here. It was interesting hearing you talk about stoicism and Taylor Swift and her emotional arcs because I am very um I feel really intense highs.

Okay so maybe that's the whole question there because I feel like I'm pretty good about not having overwhelming lows and I feel like that's where I use the stoicism. Like that I'm a little bit selective in how I apply it to emotion and that I am all about the highs and happiness and emotions and all the things and yet when things get low for me like situational wise what I try to do and kind of like I mean not the same thing but you're talking about you know when the pandemic happened and you had this company like that's a very intense situation to be in that is the antithesis of what you were aiming for with the company seemingly so it's a lot to deal with and it could be a potential really big low for you. So when I experience lows that's where I try to implement the stoicism and be like oh this doesn't affect me. It's like selective stoicism like do I have to apply it just do I have to apply it to all the emotions or can I apply it just to the negative?

Andrew McConnell
No, that's, I think that's the point is it can be a tool that you decide when and how to use and that that's the idea of it doesn't have to be this entire way of life. And that's why it's broken up to, hey, here are different exercises to address different things. And so I think I'm very similar to you. If I'm playing with my daughter, doing something, I'm fully there, fully present. The joy is overwhelming, heart bursting.

And then there's this tool if things start to go the other way, well, here's another way to reframe it, or, okay, well, I can't control that. But I could go spend this time instead of sitting here worrying about it and working on a plan to address the things that are actually in my control and do and so try to turn maybe some of that anxiety into something productive to lessen the chance of something bad happening. Or if the bad thing already happened, right, instead of dwelling on it, say, okay, like what, what did I learn from that? How do I move on to lower that downside? I think this is, it's an interesting thing now because that is how I too have used it for a decade or so. And now I'm being advised by others of, are you missing out on something in doing that all the time, right? Like, look, that is a tool. And that is helpful. And there are times that that's helpful. But maybe sometimes it's also helpful to just sit in the feeling and just be as opposed to do.

And this is this whole thing that I'm trying to play with now on being versus doing because you're probably similar to me. Like if you look at all your podcasts and your book and everything you do, right? We're doers. We cheat. We go and see something and we solve it. And whether it's with our health or it's with business or whatever it is, we just do the things. And at the end of our days in this corporeal form, like, is it, is our life the sum of the things we did or the experiences that we had just being at times too?

And so I don't think it's a binary, like it's all this or it's all that. But I think I've at the cost of sitting and being have to this point in my life had a lot of doing and acting. And so I'm just trying to figure out, you know, are there a time and a season and a place for each of those things?

Melanie Avalon
getting hit with the Taylor Swift lyric. The one that like all I do is try, try, try, I think.

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, I've never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try, yeah.

Melanie Avalon
I was so ahead of the curve. The curve became a sphere.

I remember when I first heard that lyric, I just like sat there and thought about it for like five minutes. Well, to that point, I think there's this idea of doing versus being because that's a very common dichotomy that I think people look at and see. And you and I, like you talked about, we're definitely doers, doers, doers. There's probably also a third pillar, which or a third nuance to take in, which is when you're doing, like how much are you enjoying that? Like, are you just doing, doing, doing for the sake of doing or is what you're doing really fulfilling you? Or maybe I'm just trying to justify how much I like doing.

Andrew McConnell
This is, so you, my co-founder Lou in a lively, it's very similar, like, I love the doing. This is back to the, in that first step talk, like, if you don't like what you're doing, you know, it's your life, change what you're doing. And so the things I do are the things I like to do. It's not doing for empty activity.

I mean, I'm very deliberate where my time goes. And I'm only getting the same 24 hours a day as every single other person. So knowing the things that I'm choosing to do are the things I would want to do and be comfortable of like, okay, if this was the last day, was I happy that I chose these things? And so I, I don't know this is what I'm saying. I, I'm not like the, the sage that has all the answers. It's, I'm working through all these questions real time.

Melanie Avalon
I literally, I think about this so much. I remember I had a conversation with a friend a few years ago and it was, describe your perfect day situation. And he, his day was like, go to the beach and then like have food. And like, it was all very like a vacation type mindset. And then I described my day and it was literally all work. This was like for the ideal day. And I didn't even realize it. And then I remember he was like, do you realize that your entire day was work?

And I was like, oh yeah. But that speaks to what you just said, that we so enjoy it. One thing that really stuck with me from your book, you tell a story about how you, like when you were nine, you were playing with your friend and you weren't enjoying it because you had a book report to you on Abraham Lincoln, I think. And then what did your dad tell you? Or yeah, what happened when he picks you up? And then what did he tell you?

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, you said either do the thing or don't do the thing. But don't spend your time not doing the thing, worrying about the thing you're not doing. Because then you miss out on both. You didn't accomplish anything on the thing you thought you should be doing. And you didn't enjoy the time you took away from doing that thing.

And so it's this idea of really being present with the present. Like you made a choice. So just fully be here now. And I think back to people talk about I've never met him in person, but Bill Clinton, where when you would meet him, despite everything else going on, he would make you feel like you're the center of the universe, right? His presence was fully there, engaged with you. And he wasn't worried about, okay, I need to be at this next meeting. I have this decision of if we're going to bomb X, Y or Z, I have to deal with this with the bill. Like when he was talking with you, he was fully there. And that's the greatest gift we can give to anyone else is our presence.

And including ourselves, can we give ourselves a full presence of the life that we're actually in? You know, 47% of the time, our minds are somewhere other than the thing that we're doing at that time, we're missing out on being present for half our lives. That's the default. But again, it doesn't have to be the default. So we can, we can pull ourselves back in when we find our mind wondering, and this is where meditation, some other tools can be really helpful in getting practice in it, of pulling us back to right now. And I think this is what helps you get those higher peaks, because they're going to be muted of, Oh, my God, I can't sit and enjoy this movie or watch this show or whatever I'm doing, because there are all these other things I need to accomplish. Well, no, you've made this choice of right now, you're not trying to accomplish those things. You've chosen to sit here.

So just fully be here, fully enjoy this, and then fully be there when you go do the next thing. While you're working on that book report for Abraham Lincoln, fully be in that. Don't be thinking about Oh, well, I wish I was playing or anything else, just fully be there as well.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah. And by the way, I'm impressed that you still got the book report done that night.

I was stressed for you when reading that story. My inner nine-year-old was coming out. I was like, he's got to do his book report. Maybe that's a helpful lens for how we're judging our doing versus being with our careers and everything. Maybe if I'm doing the things and enjoying it and not thinking about doing other things during it, maybe that means something that I should be doing what I'm doing and I'm not overdoing. I don't know.

Andrew McConnell
I think so. I mean, it's really hard to tell because maybe you've experienced this, maybe you haven't, because of who you've curated to spend your life around and with. But people who see us, people like us, doing a lot of things, I think can feel anxiety or, well, I'm not doing that. And so they come up with a story of why we're doing those, that, hey, it's not coming from a positive place, it's coming from something else. And it's hard to know what's true.

Is there some unhealed trauma that's pushing us to this drive to keep doing, doing, doing? And so we create this story because we're both really good on preventing those downsides of, hey, creating the narrative, reworking it, we don't have the downsides, we're always feeling up. Is that the story we're telling ourselves it's not true because we didn't get down to that root trauma? Or do we have no root trauma? We're all good. Feel great. Wake up with energy every day. It's super happy. And that's just the story someone else created to give them more peace with not doing the things that we're choosing to do.

Melanie Avalon
I love this conversation so much, and here's like a case study example. It seems like we could have a person like me or you doing all the things and having X amount of happiness and feeling, loving it, doing it, and then you can have another person doing something that society sees does not ascribe that narrative to that you just, you know, came up with. So like, what was something that would seem like really noble? I don't know, like a stay-at-home mom taking care of her kids, and this is what she loves, and this is what she does. I don't think society would demonize her for that or say that that's like her trauma.

Like, basically, you could have people having this, I think, having the same amount of happiness from what they're doing. And depending on what it is, we may or may not say that it came from a place of trauma, and it may or may not come from a place of trauma, which makes it further confusing.

Andrew McConnell
there's no way to objectively know. You have those that think, hey, we're a result of all the trauma, everything we experience, et cetera. And then you have also from the book that Alfred Adler approach that's, no, we create the stories to justify who we are in the first place. It's changing the entire direction on it that we are this, and then we go looking and backcasting to create that narrative of, oh, here's why I'm doing the thing.

And I don't know if this is going to be a perfect corollary, but this is a question you often bring up on your bedtime, your sleep schedule. And we live in a society that that's not normal, that seems to laud the early to bad, early to rise. Go back to Ben Franklin or all these others. And so you have this question of, hey, I'd really like to be the kind of person that does this, but why? You're happy. You accomplish everything you want to do. You get the things done. You're really at peace with the things you do, but you just live in the society that's like, oh, well, this is a better thing.

And it's unclear what that's based on. And so I don't know if it's similar on, oh, well, there's a group of people, oh, beings better than doing. And so if you see people doing, they must not be doing it for the right reasons. Is that true or not? Or is this just the thing that we're valuing at this time as a society?

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, the sleep corollary is a good example and another reason I like Taylor Swift because so many of her songs reference being up at like 3am, 4am. I need that validation.

Andrew McConnell
I mean, literally an album midnights with a 3 a.m. addition.

Melanie Avalon
I saw this one meme one time and it was like how Taylor Swift bedtime changes through the years and because I think like if you like line up chronologically the songs like one mentions like midnight then it's like 2 a.m.

3 a.m. 4 a.m. she's going to bed later and later and it's interesting yeah I don't know if you listen to my gabor mate episode but he's an example of somebody who you know thinks everything comes from trauma and when I had him on the show I was like I don't really remember having childhood trauma and he's like oh but you do you know like in his accent and then he like took me through a moment where he found some trauma

Andrew McConnell
Does that have to be what defined you? I mean, like far be it for me to question anything from government, but back to that, if you're a hammer, then everything looks like a nail of, I'm just not sure.

There's anything that's so universally blanket true, but who am I?

Melanie Avalon
I mean that's how I feel. I feel like what it is for me is I think I was naturally inclined to be a high achiever and to enjoy doing things and I rapidly from an early age got rewarded for that.

So it was always like I was the good girl that you know this like the smartest girl in the grade did all the right things and got rewarded. So then I was so then not only did I like doing it but then I got dopamine from seeking that reward. So maybe that's the not trauma but the like seeking external validation piece.

Andrew McConnell
And what I question now for you and for anybody in that kind of situation though is this question of the process over the results of you seem like you enjoyed doing the thing enough that it's not about necessarily the results, right? You enjoy doing the research that you do and having the conversations that you have.

And so even if that was how it got started of the dopamine comes from the attagirl that you get at the end, now are you actually deriving the dopamine from the doing? Which is a very different thing because then it's internally driven. You're not externally, I need this validation from other people. You're saying, oh, I'm giving myself validation by doing these things that I like to do and I get the joy from.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah. And to that point, so many ways I want, places I want to go with this. Do you know Dr. Anna Lemke? Have you listened to her before?

Andrew McConnell
I'm not sure honestly.

Melanie Avalon
You would like her, she wrote dopamine nation.

Andrew McConnell
Oh, great. I literally was looking up that book to buy yesterday. So that's where I came across.

Melanie Avalon
it's a sign. You should read it.

And I had her on the show. She's amazing. She would actually probably, if you wanted to reach out to her for your show, because I just reached out to her through her, like her email from whatever Stanford, I think she's at Stanford. But I could connect you if you want to invite her on. We had a really good conversation because she's she talks a lot about, you know, the treadmill of dopamine. And basically, when you get the highs of dopamine, then there's always this low that comes after. And it's just basically a cycle. We were just talking about I was asking her about my career because I was like, oh, her book is a lot about addiction. And I was like, I feel like I'm addicted to my work, but I don't experience seemingly negative effects from it. I enjoy the work. I anticipate when it's gonna feel good. It feels good. It does feel good. Things do. Because people will say like, oh, it never feels as good as you think. I'm like, well, I think these accomplishments feel pretty good. And then I get excited because I know that it can start again. It doesn't that it doesn't stress me out this, this dopamine, these dopamine drips that I get. So it was a it was a really good conversation.

She was saying maybe that's like an exception to the addiction rule. But I don't know. But you would love it. So definitely read the book and we might

Andrew McConnell
Because my take on that, and I could be wrong, if you shift the dopamine to the outcome, the person says, hey, I'm going to start running because I want to train and run a marathon. Then the day that person runs a marathon, they've accomplished the thing. They get this big spike, huge, and then the falloff. Just like the gold medalist, Michael Phelps would have his DUIs right after the Olympics because you went from the highest high, eight gold medals, nobody had ever done it, to you have this really steep falloff if it's about the accomplishment.

Then on the other side, you have somebody who says, you know what, I'm going to start running because I really like the way it feels to run. I really like how I feel after. The day after that marathon, maybe they both ran the marathon. The day after the marathon, who do you think gets up and goes and continues to do it and is still getting that hit, that enjoyment from the process of doing the thing? I think you no doubt get joy, get fulfillment, et cetera, from the accomplishments calm, but at least how it sounds when you talk about it, it's like choosing the day, your perfect day and all the doing it. The day wasn't sitting around getting awards, it was doing the work. It seems like you're deriving most and generating most of that dopamine from the doing itself, not from the outcome of the doing, which I do think is significant and a big difference.

Melanie Avalon
I get really excited about life because you can always do more. So it's not like there's just a marathon and then, you know, it's over. There's not like one accomplishment. You can just keep going, like there's more to come.

So yeah, when you were at, because you talk in the book about how you were at one job and it took you like 12 months to, you know, work up the courage, I guess, to quit. And then when you quit, then they wanted you to come back and they offered you like a ton of money. So when you were in a job that you, I'm assuming, did not enjoy doing as much. Did you, like, like throughout your life, have you had different experiences of this relationship with enjoying doing?

Andrew McConnell
Oh, for sure. I think it does come down to the story in locust of control. So, McKinsey's a big name place and so people always ask about it. What was it like? Did you enjoy it? Did you love it? And the answer is I didn't.

But I think that said a lot about me and who I was at the time versus McKinsey as a place. So, I really took it as, hey, this is being forced upon me. This, I'm not able to control my own journey. Whereas there are other people that went in and say, hey, look, this is my interest. I'm going to go proactively seek this. I'm going to work with these kinds of people, these kinds of clients. I'm going to craft my own story and build a career myself. Whereas I think I came straight. I went straight undergrad into law school, into business, and didn't have that work experience in between the most of the business school people that went to McKinsey had. Where they felt a confidence or a knowledge or a certainty that, hey, look, this is my career. I'm going to take control and we're able to get a lot more out of it. So, I think there was a period in my life, including when I was at that earlier stage company after I left McKinsey, where things felt imposed upon me. If someone provided feedback, it was, oh, they're creating more work for me. If someone said you needed to do something, oh, they're making me do this. And once I started my own company, as I get the exact same kind of input, and I'd get it in my natural reaction and be, uh, then I reframe it like, wait a minute, this is only to benefit me. They're only trying to help me. There's no other motivation here other than to help me get better on this thing that I'm doing. And that completely changed how I experienced the work I was doing.

And I do think with that same mindset, it would have changed the experience of the work I did anywhere else as well. So I don't blame any location. I blame the person I was while I was in that location, not to perceive and live a different story while there.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And then when you left, how long did it take for your mindset to change surrounding that?

Andrew McConnell
I mean, it was pretty instantaneous, right? When you have always kind of had your own business, but when you go from, hey, I'm getting a paycheck, I know what the boss is saying, here's what this week looks like, or you need to do this month, or what needs to be accomplished for this client, to, oh, here's an idea. Nothing's gonna happen on this idea unless I go do the work, because it's just me. There's a lot of control, right? Like everything you get to decide every single day anew. And so that could be terrifying and paralyzing for people.

But I think from the very first day, I couldn't sleep, I was so excited. Like, oh my God, I get a design every single day and learn and make it better, and then change what tomorrow is and change what the next day is. And so maybe it wasn't as clean as this was an overnight light switch, and I'm sure it wasn't, right? Because I had the idea for my first company in January and I didn't quit the job until November. And so there was a lot of kind of marinating, ruminating, kind of bouncing on the sides. But by the time I got to that point, it was all in of excitement and pursuing it myself.

Melanie Avalon
Well, you mentioned earlier this idea of how we, you know, rent our minds to different things. And you say in the book that there's like three categories of things we rent our minds to.

Who were you renting your mind to in the McKinsey situation? And then when you, you know, quit, started your own job, you talk in the book about how you, you know, you did have a new challenge, which is that you thought you were going to be the boss now, but now you had like endless bosses and the forms of clients and things like that.

What is this? What is the role of who we actually rent our mind to with different experiences?

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, I mean, there are three big buckets, right? There are other people, there are events and circumstances outside our control, and then there are different or imagined versions of ourselves, right? The self we think we should be, oh, I really should be a person that does acts, or the person we think our parents want us to be, etc. And I would distinguish of, there's the idea of renting our mind to other people, which I would think is a proactive decision of, hey, I'm going to give, right? Like, if you go work for someone else, you're basically renting your mind to them. You're saying, okay, for this price between these hours, here's what I'm willing to give you of my mind. I think the bigger problem isn't the choice to rent our mind. It's the fact that too much of the time, we're just giving our mind away. And then we're just renting the pieces back people saying, I really wanted to work on this, I really wanted to write a book, but I didn't have time, I really wanted to go to the gym, but I ran out of time. I really wanted all these things that we've just given our life away.

And then we feel like there's no pieces left for us. And that is the bigger problem, giving it away for free and then renting back. And that's the kind of corollary of, you can't stop somebody cutting you off in traffic, right? But that person who does not know you exist, because they probably didn't see you, that's why they cut you off. If you let them put you in a mood for hours afterwards, you just gave them your mind. They didn't pay you anything for that. You didn't rent it to them, you just gave it to them. And you're left with this mood or only a different portion of the day that's enjoyable for yourself. Because for that portion, you gave it to this total stranger and gave it entirely away. And so I think the distinction when you're working for someone is back to being present, you say, okay, look, between these hours, I effectively am renting my mind to this client, or this company, or whatever it is, like, I'm going to be present, I'm going to do the work. They own this mind from me during this time. But you know what? Once I leave, when I'm sitting at dinner with my family, when I'm on the weekend playing with my kids, whatever it is, I'm not going to give them those hours for free. I've already decided here the hours I'm going to allocate that they get of my mind, but my time, my mind is going to then outside those hours, be with my friends with my family with even if I want to sit there and watch Netflix or whatever it read a book, I'm not going to let them get those other hours for free. Does that make sense?

Melanie Avalon
It does it actually answers a question I was going to ask because I was going to ask when we were talking about either do the thing or don't do the thing but don't don't do the thing and think about the thing you're not doing I was going to ask well what what about when you have to do something that you don't want to do like just objectively you don't want to do it and objectively you have to do it then what but it sounds like if you apply this framework an answer to that could be well you have to do the thing you have to quote rent your mind to this circumstance or this thing and you're choosing to do that so just be in it.

Andrew McConnell
Can we unpack this have to do the thing? Can you give me an example of you have to do the thing?

Melanie Avalon
I feel like in the past, before I was completely an entrepreneur, well, everything I'm going to say, I don't actually have to, you don't actually have to do anything, you could just do nothing. So I can't even answer it.

But for example, let's say I'm doing a serving job to support myself while building up these other businesses. So I quote, have to go into my shift. I don't want to go. I don't want to be there. I know I don't have to be there, but that's my example.

Andrew McConnell
Cause this is my point on the having is you don't have to go. You're just saying, Hey, I value getting the paycheck and the money more than my desire not to do this thing, right? It's, well, I can't do this because I have to pay the mortgage. You're like, you don't have to pay the mortgage. You're, your house will get foreclosed on, but you don't have to pay it. And what you're saying is I value not having my house foreclosed on more than not paying this mortgage. I mean, it's like to be super, super silly, you know, I breathing, like, I mean, I guess if you pass out, you're naturally would start breathing, but like, you don't have to breathe, but you're saying I value living more than I value not, not breathing. So I just, I push back on this having to do anything because then again, it changes that narrative of we're not controlling our lives.

And if realize that we all come from different circumstances and the tradeoffs are different of, okay, some people have more freedom, like there's a rich, they really truly don't have to work for money. Like, okay, that's fine. And you say, you do have to work for money, but that's the tradeoff you're making of, I value being able to have this money so that I can feed myself or my family or pay rent, whatever it is more than not this other thing. And I don't think it's a distinction without a difference. I think that difference makes a big difference. Once you realize this is a choice I'm making because of my values, I value this thing more than this thing that I say, I don't like this, but I don't like the alternative a lot more. So I'm going to proactively choose to do this. And I think going in with that mindset makes it, at least for me, a totally different story. If I feel like I have to do anything, like I'm a victim, this and the other, that's just not a great way to live.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah. So I guess a better, and I'm completely on the same page with victimhood and things.

So a better question would be if a person is choosing to do something that they do not enjoy doing because they value what that leads them to compared to the alternative, then in that situation in doing the thing they don't enjoy doing, they can just do the thing and just not think about how they don't enjoy it or just not enjoy it.

Andrew McConnell
I mean, they're allowed to do whatever they want. I think if you're doing something repeatedly, you really don't enjoy, then you should go back to that value question of like, do I actually value this more? Like if every single day I'm doing this thing that I really don't enjoy, do I truly value it more than what the alternative is? And so it forces you to make that assessment.

Now you can go in and say, I'm not enjoying doing it. You're not gonna have to lie to yourself about, hey, I enjoy doing it. But what changes is that idea of your locus of control of like, oh, somebody didn't make me do this. I'm choosing to do this, even though I don't like it because of this other reason. It gives me more of a why, not the why of I have to do it. It's giving me the why of I'm doing this for this other reason, that I value more than this.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, okay. Yeah, this definitely totally makes sense.

I think I notice it more now because I'm not in a situation where I'm, you know, daily doing something I don't enjoy that much like serving. And now it's really just it's one off things that happen where I feel like I feel like quote, I have to do it like go to this doctor appointment or go to jury duty, etc. And that I don't think I enjoy doing. It's rare now, but it's definitely a really helpful exercise for how I treat it. Like do I just be there or do I wish I was somewhere else the whole time?

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, I don't, I personally, and maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that wishing to be elsewhere is a great way to live life. I mean, I think there's a time and place to kind of daydream, plan for the future, or think back to the past. But the only time we live is right now in the present.

And so fully being present in that moment, even with the discomfort, and like getting curious of why is this so uncomfortable? Why am I having such a hard time with this? Like, there's so much self learning and awareness and growth that can happen just in that, if you're willing to set an

Melanie Avalon
So basically don't channel Taylor's song, I Hate It Here, which she just basically says, I hate it here over and over again. So actually that leads to a really good question, which is because you have a whole chapter on suffering. And I think you quote somebody who says, somebody said you should only ever suffer once. Like you should just suffer when the actually happening, not beforehand while anticipating it and not after looking back on it just once.

And should we even suffer once? Like is suffering optional? We just choose not to suffer. But then on the flip side, is suffering good because obstacles help us grow in life? So suffering, what do we do with suffering?

Andrew McConnell
So, I mean, I think you're probably referencing Seneca. We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. Or maybe you're referencing the founder of DocuSign.

Melanie Avalon
There was so many. My name is my more modern.

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, DocuSign, they're like, hey, don't, don't suffer the thing again. And so this, this idea of you have the experience and whether you call the experience suffering, good, bad, whatever, right? These are labels. This is a conversation I have with my daughter all the time of there's not a good or bad or suffering or anything like that. These are just labels that we get to decide. Do we want to put on the thing or not? The thing happened one way or the other. That's the only objective truth.

And then what adjective or whatever we want to go put on it is in a choice that we make, but I think the, the question around the pre and post suffering is a good place to start because back to this idea of there's one specific moment of suffering. So say, say you get hit in the arm, then that hurt, right? When you got hit, well, the anticipation of getting hit or these shocks, right? The, the electrical shock, uh, there've been studies on these, right? It was the anticipation of the shock that was way worse than just getting the big shock. And so in our imagination, we're suffering before the event even occurs. Oh my God, this is going to happen, right? The hurricane's coming. Here are all the things that could go wrong. Here's all the things that could be horrible. And so we're suffering in the whole lead up to it, suffering in our mind, in our imagination, we're after the fact we replay it. Oh my God, can you believe this happened? How horrible was it? And just reliving the trauma over and over. But the reality is whatever the trauma was happened just in that moment. That was the one moment of suffering.

And so what's in our control is maybe not that individual moment, but what we decide to do and think before and after the fact, so before, if you're worried about the thing, then what are the actions you can take to prepare for the thing? So the hurricane's coming. Okay, cool. Like, can you board up the windows? Can you make sure your insurance policies is set up? Can you evacuate? Like, what are the things in your control that you can do to limit when that thing, when that hurricane hits, what the suffering is? And then afterwards of, oh my God, it's so sad. No, maybe just get back to work on fixing the house and whatever damage there was, or you don't have to continue to suffer. You can just go do the work to address it on the backend. But to your point on, do we even have to suffer in that moment? That is all this question of the story we tell and what is the label that we want to give it?

This, I don't know, it's too personal, but conversation I have with my daughter about the divorce that, and saying, look, she's like, well, isn't divorce supposed to be this really sad thing? And I said, well, I don't know. I mean, we talk about all the time that you get to decide the labels you put. So yes, is there anything sadder in my life than losing half my time with you? No, like that, that's horrible. I miss you all the time. But on the flip side, here are all these things that we get to do. We get to do these trips together. We get this kind of one-on-one time. We get all these beautiful things as a result as well.

Andrew McConnell
And so as I decided to tell the story, instead of telling the story of, oh, here's this horrible thing that happened, I'm trying to focus on these things and say, hey, look at all these good things that came about as a result. And both things are objectively true.

And I'm just going to choose to put the spotlight of my attention on this so that the label I put on it isn't this one of suffering. It's just one of what a beautiful opportunity that I now have to go craft this life together with you.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I love that and especially when you think about how literally everything we experience is a story like everything that this is a reason that the first time something happens to me, that's really intense I actually get a little bit I don't know if I should say concerned or nervous, but I'm very much aware that the first time I retell the happening of that event I'm solidifying in my mind the story that I'm giving to it and that each time I retell it I'm probably getting farther away from what actually happened which just speaks to you know we really choose the stories and how we're experiencing things and to the control piece because I I definitely Historically and probably still presently identify as a little bit of a control freak with myself not with other people but with myself Are you controlling?

Andrew McConnell
This is, this is a debate at the moment. Yeah. I, I, I, especially being a stoic controlling of other things or other people, absolutely not because I don't believe we can control them anyway, but of myself, yes.

Right. Uh, what do I choose? When do I choose the, what exercise or sleep, whatever? Yeah. And some people, I think from outside of the C pathologic or their issues with it. And to me, I'm like, I don't know. I spent 40 plus years like crafting this and finding, Ooh, this works better for me. This doesn't, this works better. This doesn't and trying different things. And it's not static. I keep experimenting and trying different things and it seems to really work. And I seem really happy to myself and enjoying it. So I, I do control because I enjoy it. But again, this is other people would say, well, that's just the story you're telling, but it is the story that I'm telling. So I get to tell it.

Melanie Avalon
I'm the exact same way. And I think it's... So fellow control freaks of ourselves, not other people, I think we get it.

It doesn't sound pathological to me. It sounds like the way I live my life. I think it's people who are not like that. I think they project a fear of being controlled onto people they see who are controlling of themselves. That's been my experience. Like they think if I'm like that with myself, then I'm like a controlling person. And it's probably, they probably don't want to be controlled, either by themselves or other people. That's just my experience.

Andrew McConnell
potentially scared of that or, you know.

Melanie Avalon
But so an example of epiphanies, realizations I've had about the control aspect. And so one is about premeditated suffering versus the post suffering. I had a really good epiphany one day, which was that the power went out and I heard a loud sound go off before it happened, like an explosion type thing. I asked my friend about it and he was like, oh, that's probably a transformer that blew, you know, it could be a few weeks before the power comes back on, which was then I was really stressing out. That is not what it ended up being. And I had a brief moment when I realized, oh, it wasn't a transformer, it was this other thing. I was like, oh, but now I need to be worried about transformers blowing out. Like this is a whole thing I didn't even realize that I need to be stressed out about. And then I thought about that pathway in my mind and I was like, this is a very slippery slope. Like if I start realizing everything, I could be stressed out about all the time. There's probably so many things. So I'm just not gonna think about any of it was my solution there.

I'll circle back because you're talking about like preparing for a hurricane and such, which is clearly different. And then on the flip side, one of the most helpful things for me is the amount of peace I get if I'm in a situation or something that happened and I don't know what to do. And I just realized that I literally can't control it. Like once you just admit that to yourself, there's so much peace that comes from it, even though it's scary. For sure.

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, I mean, on that the former, like with the transformer and all that, I think the question is, are you going to do something about it, right? So if it's something like, okay, like now that I understand that's a risk and what that would mean to me, I'm going to go get a solar wall, etc. So that I have this backup, or I'm going to go get a diesel generator and keep that on site, whatever it is, to say, I'm prepared for this in a new way.

But if it's the, oh, my God, like, there's this percentage chance that a meteor the size of something else is going to hit, and they would have this kind of extinction event, oh, I'm going to be so stressed and, but you're doing nothing about it. That's the kind of the bucket of like, there are only so many fucks you are able to give in a day in a life and like, which ones are you going to choose to give? And that might just need to go in a different bucket of like, I'm not going to really worry about that, because I'm not going to do anything about it whatsoever.

Melanie Avalon
Exactly. And the exercise I really one of the exercises I really liked in your book, which by the way, really quick question, because you have quite a few so for listeners, definitely get the book each chapter goes into one of these different tenets and has real life case examples of people in you know, different jobs and careers that experienced, you know, the principle that you're trying to express.

And then there's oftentimes there's actual things you can implement actually do them. Did you come up with these like the different acronyms? Or were those are those like things out there like the own the rest?

Andrew McConnell
Oh, and so try to true rest. Yeah, I came up with them.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, you did?

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, it was, I did one, I was like, God, this would be a good way to do the book, like, it'll be easier, easier to remember and create a structure in these worksheets around them. So it's, I mean, it's similar to I think, how you even started this of, you embody a lot of stroke principles, you kind of came to it in your own life of hey, here's the thing that works for me.

And it was similar. Much of the book was structured in a way of like, oh, here are the things that I deal with and experience. And let me go research like, why do I do this? Do other people do it, let me go talk to them, and creating a framework to here's what I've been doing, that's I found helpful to deal with whatever the issue is.

Melanie Avalon
You have a lot of people in Atlanta, were they all like your friends or did you seek them out for the book? The people where it seemed like you had talked to them.

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, so they were all original interviews. So I knew all of them, like the founder of DocuSign, I got introduced from one of my investors, right, as an example.

But people like Katherine Petralia, she was on the Renna.com board. Kat Cole is married to one of my good friends. Bernice King was in my Leadership Atlanta Smallest Study Group. So most of the people were just personal relationships that I had.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, super cool. So in any case, I got on a little tangent, but one of the exercises I really liked, I don't think it's one of the, it might be, I don't think it was one of the acronyms, but it's the idea of, and I'm going to preface this by saying, I think there's this whole positive thinking, positivity mindset out there, which I don't know that it is always practiced in the most healthy way, and like law of attraction type stuff. Like there's this idea that you just need to think positive and think about what you do want because you don't want to attract what you don't want. And I have always not, I don't know how long, but I, I'm kind of on the mindset that it's kind of the opposite.

I often think, well, if I think about things that could happen, maybe it's like I'm not reverse jinxing. If I think of the things that could happen that could go wrong, I almost feel like it's less likely for them to happen because I thought of them beforehand. And that, that there is no like scientific reality thing to back that up. I just, I just do that proactively. And you talk in the book about this idea when you're, especially when you're going through something difficult to literally think about the worst thing that could actually happen and then sit with that and be like, okay, how, you know, how bad, like how bad actually is that? And that is that I hadn't, I had not done that before reading your books, like specifically as an exercise. And I did, since reading it, it is very helpful exercise because then you feel like, okay, I'm okay.

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, the law of inverse attraction. Yes. Yeah, I think I mean, I think there are three potential benefits from it. So one is you sit with it to kind of imagine, here's the worst worst thing that could happen. And like, well, if, if I don't do this, and I'll lose my job, I'm like, well, what's the problem with that? Well, then I'll lose my house. And then what happens with that? And you just kind of go all the way down. And so one could highlight for you the absurdity of this catastrophizing that you're doing, you're like, oh my god, no, the fact that I'm five minutes late for this appointment is not going to lead to, you know, nuclear death, right? That's absurd.

I took it to this extreme, it inoculates on that side. The other side is what you just talked about of you go down the path. And you're like, oh, wait, that's the worst thing that could happen. Now that I've actually mapped it out. I don't think that would be that that bad. I'm not so scared of it anymore, if that's truly the worst thing that could happen. And then the third one is as you do it, and you imagine the worst thing and how it happens. You can also develop an action plan to say, Oh, wait, and here are the things I can do to make sure that that doesn't happen, or to at least help mitigate the chances of that happening. And so any of those three can be beneficial, but you get the possibility of the benefit of all three going through the exercise.

Melanie Avalon
And also, I'm having flashbacks to 10th grade Bible class and right now, because I remember we had a debate with the teacher was saying, do we have to experience negative things in life to grow essentially? Like is that required?

And I was thinking right now how I think I have had a benefit where the quote worst case scenario did happen. And then going through that because then you realize, oh, okay, even when worst case scenarios do happen, you will survive. I mean, unless you don't, in which case.

Andrew McConnell
didn't matter. I'm 100%. I'm totally on board with that whole mindset of like, one friction polishes a stone, right in St. Augustine, that Hercules would have been nothing without the trials, like we're defined by the trials that we're faced with that we overcome.

And we build the confidence and the fact like, wow, I really got through that night. And so you kind of make it all through. And the flip side is, definition, you're going to make it through. Because if you don't, you're not here to talk about it anyway. So it doesn't matter. So at some level, it works out.

Melanie Avalon
It's also the way I view failure. I feel like you literally can't fail because you can always keep trying. Like you have to admit that you failed. You can always keep trying or until you die and then it doesn't matter.

But you can also choose not to be pursuing the thing you want to pursue anymore if you realize that it's not the thing you want. Related to this, because you have a big question. You said that you had an ongoing conversation with somebody about, I think it was about attachment. Yeah, it was about like attachment and do people just say that they enjoy or want to have this non-attachment situation in their life when things are going well? It's interesting because my immediate thought when I read that was I think I'm the opposite. Like I think I would more proactively choose non-attachment when things aren't going well because it would be like, okay, well, I'm not attached anyway. So why does it matter compared to when I'm really enjoying something? The concern for me with when I'm really enjoying something is the fear of loss of the thing, which apparently I was reading some other book and it was saying like, apparently like when we lose things, it's much more pain than the joy of getting it in the first place. So just don't buy new things. It's the...

Andrew McConnell
100%, right? There've been a lot of psych studies on like, how much would you pay for this coffee cup versus once I give it to you, how much would you give it away for, or the psychologically the pain of loss. Winning a dollar is not nearly the net utile bump as losing a dollar. And I learned that early on gambling, like I would go gamble. And I realized, wait a minute, I get zero joy from no matter how much I went, right? Like I don't go spend it. It's not changing anything about my life. But man, if I go lose half as much as I won the time before, I'm miserable for like a week. This is not a, people say they do it for entertainment. This is not a form of entertainment I enjoy.

I'm not going to do this anymore. So the last probably 10 times I've gone to Vegas, I didn't make a single bet. I just enjoyed other things.

Melanie Avalon
The last time I had like a gambling moment, I was like, this feels like gambling, it's not gambling, but have you looked up unclaimed assets in all the states you've lived in? How many states have you lived in?

Andrew McConnell
I've lived Alabama, Ohio, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida.

Melanie Avalon
You have six states where you might have unclaimed assets. You should go do this after this.

You Google unclaimed asset in the state. It'll be a government website. You put in your name, your address that you had there, and they'll let you know if you have money just waiting for you. I got like $300. I mean, it's not that much, but it's theater tickets.

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, it's greater than zero.

Melanie Avalon
It's a much safer form of gambling because all it takes is putting in your your information. The only loss is time Exactly, which by the way, you had me completely rethinking you mentioned in the book Whether or not we've like can you value time?

With a monetary, you know number I had read that that was helpful because it helps you kind of decide how you are You know doing your time But should we do that or is it? Should we put a monetary number to our time I guess you talk about costly versus costless time to

Andrew McConnell
It goes both ways. So I do think back to what is your work time worth? Like you need to figure out the buckets of time you're willing to have and kind of protect them. So as I think about how I create kind of my time budget, you know, there's the time with my daughter or family or friends, there's sleep time, there's fitness time or learning time, there's work time. And that work time may have a dollar value of, okay, if somebody is going to take an hour of this, they want advice on this, or they want me to consult on that, here's what the price of that per hour is and understanding the value that I bring in that hour and that other people would value as. I think that's important to have that number.

I think trying to port that number over to other areas doesn't necessarily getting my eight hours of sleep or with my daughter at her soccer game. But man, this person's willing to pay me X to take that time. I think that's dangerous because I think there's some time that's invaluable. And putting a dollar against those times can make you it's like that penny wise pound foolish that you're making a trade off. Yeah, you made more in that time than you would watching your child's soccer match or whatever. But I can promise at the end of the day, end of the life, whatever, looking at the bank account, that extra 2500 versus the memory you messed out and the fact that you do it repeatedly, that costs you way more in terms of the quality of your life. And so knowing what time should have monetary value and what time should not, I think.

Melanie Avalon
matters. So do you actively implement like to this day, because you talk about this zero based calendaring, I think.

Andrew McConnell
Yeah. So I actually have my notebook open right now next to me with my most recent, like, yes, I did it. I do it quarterly, go back and zero base calendar my time. And then people see my calendar and they get deep anxiety, because it's all blocked. I'm like, I have zero anxiety, right?

Like this time is blocked for the gym. This time is blocked for dinner with no devices. This time is blocked for, you know, every single thing. This time is blocked for recording podcasts. And this time is blocked for doing calls. And this time is blocked for doing research and learning, right? It's, it looks incredibly full. Because it is, because I don't want to just give it away to a bunch of other things. And then try to backfill say, Hey, you know what I really would like to do is all these things. Oh, I guess I don't have time today or this week or this month. No, like the things I want to do, I'm going to make sure they're the first things on the calendar. And then I'll decide how much flex time is in the middle for people that want to do want me to do other things.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, yeah, I was I was super curious because I live by my calendar live by it. And I feel I was really inspired by the zero based calendaring.

And I was wondering if I should implement it as an actual practice versus compared to what I'm doing already, which is basically I, I have things that are like the social external events are the things that I have a limit per week of how many I can do. So they go on the calendar, they're there, and then they automatically require protected time for getting ready, recovery, all the things. And then I like daily things that are in blocks that are kind of like rinse and repeat every day, every section of my life, like the time has a purpose and it's like attributed to some sort of category, but I don't necessarily write them all down because a lot of them are just repeated, if that makes sense.

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, I mean, my only suggestion since they're repeated is that's the traditional way of doing budgeting. Like, okay, here's what the budget was last week, month, year, whatever. And so if I want to make an adjustment, I do it off of that baseline.

What I think the zero based approach does is just gives you a canvas to say, what do I actually value, right? If I was starting from scratch, is the seven hours I allocate to social the right number? Do I feel like it should actually be 10 or it should be four. And so in all the different activities, you just build up and realize, wait, okay, I don't need all the time for these other things, I could and do want more time for social or whatever it is, just going from the ground up, gets back to what you value and deciding how you want to allocate that time, not just because you did in the past, but based on what you actually want.

Melanie Avalon
Okay. Yeah, I should definitely try this. It'll be really eye-opening.

What about for things where you can't really... So like preparing for this show, any given episode, I'm not certain how much time will be required for it.

Andrew McConnell
Yeah. Every time I do it, because I didn't the first few times, I create a 5-10 percent buffer. Saying, hey, because if you're at 100 percent when you allocate your time and something ends up taking more, you don't have any more. You're going to subtract from somewhere else.

If you say, okay, we have 168 hours in a week, I'm going to keep 17 hours in reserve or some number and maybe you only need five hours in reserve. But have a bucket for flex time of, here's the base that I know I need, and here's how much it can flex up to. I'm going to have that reflex time that maybe if I don't need extra time for the podcast, I can go read a different book or go grab an extra meal or drink with a friend, whatever it is. But that's where I deliberately have a flex time bucket.

Melanie Avalon
Do you think some people just, this is just not going to work for them? Like people who don't, the type of people who don't like scheduling, don't like calendars. I have some, I have some friends, I have this one friend and she, I have to plan. So like in order to go out, that must be planned. Like I'm not going to be spontaneous.

She will not plan. So takeaway is we don't have, she can't plan. Here we are.

Andrew McConnell
I mean, I would suggest for that person, not necessarily going the super anal, like me and blocking all the pieces, but doing the zero based calendar. Anyway, I'm saying, okay, I'm not going to say what the timeframe for each of these things are, but my ideal week, I would have this many hours per day sleeping, this many hours per day working, this many hours per day. Having meals with people I love versus, you know, whatever the buckets that they value are figuring out how, whether it's a percent of their day or week, or total number of hours, they want to live. And just having that as a sheet of like, here's how I want to live.

Then at the end of a few weeks, go back and audit of, okay, is this way working for me, this total flexibility? How much does that match with the life that I say I want? And if it is matching fine, you're like, great. This, my life aligns with my values, the thing I value and care about, and I'm living it. And so it all works for me. If I get to the end and each week I'm like, man, I really wish I had more time doing these things that I love, but I'm losing it all because it's going to this other thing, then putting some structure in place would probably help you live the life you actually want to live because you'd be doing it by design, not just passively by default.

Melanie Avalon
Awesome. Okay. Yeah. It's so interesting because I'm just such a planner. So it's interesting to think that there you could live in a situation. Like I get anxiety thinking about, you know, not planning and budgeting and calendaring and people on the flip side get anxiety at the thought of doing it. So we are all different is the point.

One big question that you end, I'm pretty sure it's like near the end of the book. And you say that it actually was a or the inspiration for the book was this idea of, you know, taking action and changing because there's so much of what we talked about on the show and what you talked about in the book is this role of control and what we can control, what we can't control, you know, controlling who we do or do not give our minds to. And yet there's this idea of changing things in the world and taking a stand and making action. So where have you landed on this idea of stoic principles and also making change to things in the world?

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, I mean, I think there's the things that we can control, which are our words, our actions, our mindset, right? And the things that we can't control, other people, events, circumstances, and then there's a whole massive area that's probably most of the universe of things that we can influence. If we don't do anything, then we're unlikely to influence. But if we take action, we write the book, we go start the company, we take the steps needed to start building the world that we envision and want, then we can influence the world that is thus created.

Back to your point of there is no failure, because you can always keep trying. And so no, I can't control, if in his lifetime, we're going to have a colony on Mars. And so a lot of people are like, well, I can't do that. So they don't do anything about it. He's like, you know what, I got a lot I could influence on this. Like I go figure out this thing on batteries, I can figure this thing out on rockets, I can become friends with the president, but then not be friends later, like all these things that I can do to influence this world that I want to exist. And we have way more influence, or the ability to influence than I think we give ourselves credit for. We get frustrated that we can't control things, but we don't give ourselves enough credit for the things and the ways that we can influence.

Melanie Avalon
It's just such a huge question. And so what are you in your daily life out of all these different principles, what comes most naturally to you and helps you in your life challenges and what do you struggle with to implement that you wish you could be implementing more?

Andrew McConnell
My reactivity, I wish I could be better, right? I've seen people that will hear something, will have something happen, whatever. And their first, at least from my perception, from the outside, their first response is just genuine curiosity. Like, huh, what's coming up for you there? Like, why would you say that? Not why would you say that in an accusatory way? But like, what is it that you're feeling that would make you say or feel that right now? And still, as much work as I do, my initial default is defensiveness, right? And as long as I can bite my tongue and hold my facial expression very quickly now, like it used to take me maybe weeks, then it was days, now I can kind of do it within a few seconds, I can get to, okay, wow, like, let me let me be curious in this moment about this thing. But it is not my immediate response.

And I want to keep working to get to make that the default make that the response or reaction as opposed to saying, okay, I need to override my reaction to get to the response that I want. Because I find I enjoy myself and my life and everything around it way more when I'm curious, as opposed to professorial or defensive, right? If I'm sitting there talking about a bunch of things I know, I'm not learning much. If I'm defending all the things that here's why you're wrong, then again, I'm not learning much. But if I can be curious, it's always an opportunity to learn so much. And so that that's one that I still will continue to work on until you know, I can become Buddha and just get get there. The tool. So you know, in the book, I talk about gratitude, and a gratitude practice and the scientifically backed gratitude practice actually not one where you're expressing gratitude, but it's where people are expressing gratitude to you, or you're observing other people receive gratitude. And that triggers certain parts of the brain, and it's wonderful. And that was one that I use for a while. But I go back to your story you're talking about of, you realize when you tell a story, that you're writing the pathways of what that story will now be. And the more you write it that that becomes what the story is that becomes your lived and experienced truth. And knowing that I've kind of shifted my gratitude practice into doing five to six things every day, for a minute each, that have to be brand new, it can't be something I've ever been grateful for before. And it does a few things. One, it keeps you from just going through the motions. Oh, I'm thankful for my health. I'm thankful for my family, whatever. And just kind of going through the motions, not getting any benefit from it. So it prevents that because you're having to think of five or six brand new things. Now, when you have to do five or six brand new things every single day, what it ends up meaning is you basically have to come up with things that happened in the past 24 hours, because you kind of run out of the things that are the generic after the first week or two.

Andrew McConnell
And when you do that, and you sit there and you meditate on these things you're really grateful for from the past 24 hours, it makes your memory of every day a really good day. Because you're like, man, I was grateful at this amazing thing happened. Wow, I just sat here. And that's, that's how you sit and remember the day.

And then as you go into that following day, you're on the lookout for things to be grateful for, because you know, you need five or six the next day. So leaving the experience, you're also more likely to have this optimistic, positive mindset, because you're looking for things to be grateful for not to complain about. And I'll sit there and say, Oh, here are the five things that didn't go well. No, here are the things that I'm grateful for. And so that's the one I use every single day still, that I really find I get a lot of benefit from.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness. Okay, I love these both.

So for the first one, for the reactivity, I think for me, one of the biggest epiphanies I had that has been just a game changer was when I realized that that defensive reaction, which is so common and so automatic. I know I'm curious are some people just not like they just don't have that reaction. They immediately jumped to curiosity. That would be nice. It's really helpful for me to reframe it and and see that defensive feeling that I get have her momentarily because I'm pretty good at like it sounds like you are now too with noticing it, catching it and then stepping back and, you know, reframing. I you could you could change it into a gratitude moment, having that defensive moment because it shows you what you are, you know, triggered by or what bothers you or what's upsetting you like it's kind of like a flashlight into yourself about something you need to look at more. So I actually kind of get not I don't know, I get a little bit excited when I have that reaction because I'm like, okay, this is something that I need to look at and me.

Andrew McConnell
That's really interesting. That reminds me of your episode with Dave Asprey, your most recent one, where he talks about that.

He's like, I love when things trigger me. Because I'm like, why am I allowing myself to be triggered? What is it about this that's triggering me? And it sounds like you've been able to develop that. Yeah, that's really neat.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, because I definitely like you I get the defensive reaction and then also like you I think I I can step back but that extra little layer of like, Oh, what is this like let's circle back to the his like what does this mean is really helpful and I'm also really aware I try to implement a lot of things just practically to help as well. So for example, I have lots of emails every day. I never I mean, I don't like to use absolutes. I almost never if I see an email that I know is going to be a little triggering or something I don't want to deal with I almost never open it right away. I let it sit and then I do other things and then I wait and I come back and so that I know I've had like a time I'd like I've had like a space between knowing that email is there and reading it. And then that helps me go in and not be as reactive right away. That's just like a little thing that I found really, really helpful.

I think I don't know if you've experienced this with podcasting podcasting is a great exercise and learning how to not interrupt people. And that skill has carried over into my life because it's really forced me to let people say everything before I respond. And of course, I'm not perfect. I just I really am thinking of being grateful. I'm really grateful for podcasting for helping me with that skill because I think our natural inclination is to just interrupt people at least for me in the past.

Andrew McConnell
For sure. I mean, it's not that you say I hadn't thought about it, but it's you're listening to actually hear what the other person's sharing and trying to convey versus to prepare for the next thing that you want to say, right? Like, hey, I'm listening to find the next break for me to be able to talk. It's just a different thing.

Melanie Avalon
Exactly. And you can't just easily interrupt because it won't sound good on the podcast. So you have to wait. So yeah, so no, I love that. And I just wish, I just feel like if everybody realized that this defensive moment of being triggered was something about them, we'd be in a different world completely.

And then I love the gratitude thing. I mean, that's a really good idea. I love that idea to come up with five or six new things every day. I should completely start doing that, which was a perfect segue to the last question. Before that, was there anything else you wanted to touch on? So listeners, and I didn't even ask you about a lively and everything. What all are you doing with a lively right now? How can people get your book? Yes. And when did you start a lively? You had just started it, I think, when we met, right?

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, yeah. We were just launching at the end of last year. It's not quite a year that we've been taking it out to market.

Melanie Avalon
What can people experience with a lively, what's your, your goal there?

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, so a lot of these trying to help people that they say they care about their health, but they don't know where to actually start, build the habits that those do stick with and that will last for them. And so instead of all the noise that you get, I mean, you we talk about all the time, all the things of, well, is it this red light? Is it this supplement? Is it all that we help them identify, here's the one thing to work on at any given moment, and dial in exactly how for them, they can and should work on it because not because it's the single best, but because it's a single best for them, because it's the thing they will actually do and stick with. And that's the only way to get transformation is to keep sticking with the thing.

And so we work mostly with employers as a corporate wellness benefit to help them get happier, healthier, longer living workforces to just help kind of move anybody to a happier, healthier, more lively life.

Melanie Avalon
When you first launched it, was the game plan to work a lot with employers or has it evolved since starting it?

Andrew McConnell
Yeah, we thought we would be B2C. So we thought we'd go straight to consumer and that's how we have to date.

And then once we started more marketplace, I think when we started talking, it was the marketplace launching alongside, getting the best brands in front of the people and helping them figure out what is the right thing for their sleep or fitness or nutrition to be working on. Once we built the wearable integration and all the data ingestion to help people not have to guess but know exactly, here's what you need to work on. Here's how to do it. That's when employers and corporate benefits brokers started coming to us and say, oh, wow, we want to have this. Can we offer it to our populations?

Melanie Avalon
Awesome, super cool. I'm super happy for you with that. That's amazing. How can people get your book? And you also you trained a GPT?

Andrew McConnell
Yes. Yes. So there's a custom GPT totally for free for people who just want to interact kind of with say a stoic AI agent. You can do it there.

If you want to get the book, you'd certainly get an Amazon and Barnes and Nobles anywhere. It's sold a lively.com. We have a whole shopping place, like I mentioned on the marketplace side, and you can buy signed copies there if you want to get a signed copy at any point.

Melanie Avalon
Awesome. Well, we will put links to all of that in the show notes. And oh my goodness, yes, this conversation was so amazing. I could talk to you for hours and hours, which I think we have already demonstrated in our, our friendship. So thank you so much for everything that you do. It's really, really incredible.

Just the breadth of knowledge that you have that you personally instill in yourself and share with others is just completely invaluable. No pun intended because so much of the book is about value. So the last question that I asked every single guest on this show, which I am sure you know, what is something that you're grateful for? Is this going to count as, so when you do your exercise at the end of the night, is this like taking away from your five or six that you do later?

Andrew McConnell
Well, I do it in the morning because it kind of puts me in a positive mindset. But I think this is a thing I've already been grateful for.

But I will share specifically to this. I am grateful that you were doing research for a dating app and that we got to meet and our friendship is blossomed from there. So I just coming across you, all the work you're doing and have done has been a true gift. And so I am really grateful for that.

Melanie Avalon
I am as well. And you know what, so I was thinking about this recently, how do I say this without offending the city of Atlanta? The majority of my, the majority of my friends now are people I've met from podcasting. They're not local to me here in Atlanta.

They're, you know, all over. And when I think about you, you're in that category of these really incredible amazing friends that I have. I love everything that you're doing. I love your content. I forget that you're like here, you know, I forget that we met completely. Yes. We met on a dating app because I'm still developing my dating app. And it's like wild to me. I forget the genesis of how we met completely. So awesome. Well, this was absolutely amazing, Andrew. Thank you so much for everything that you're doing. And can't wait to hopefully hang out with you in the future. Someday we're going to go to a Taylor Swift dance party.

Andrew McConnell
Absolutely. Long live the magic we made.

Melanie Avalon
Yep, at the time of my life, Fighting Dragons with you. Thanks, Melanie. Bye.

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast. For more information and resources, you can check out my book, What Win Wine, as well as my supplement line, Avalon X. Please visit MelanieAvalon.com to learn more about today's guest, and always feel free to contact me at contact at MelanieAvalon.com, and always remember, you got this.