My good friend, Anthony Gustin, is in Africa right now learning about what it’s like to live in tribal communities.

He has an amazing Q&A on his IG where his followers asked a bunch of awesome questions about what he’s learning and his answers.

Adee watched it first and shared something that jumped out at me. 

He said that they don’t spend much time contemplating complex existential questions like “what’s the meaning of life?” because they are so busy doing things in the physical world like hunting, gathering, and raising children. 

He also said that they are the happiest and most jovial people he’s ever met in his life.

I thought of that during a conversation last night. A friend and I were braving the Texas winter storm in my truck to go and check on our houses to see if any pipes had busted.

(Selfie taken last night)

On our way there, he asked me, 

“So what’s your stance on God?” 

I said many wise and profound things 🙂

Part of my answer that may make no sense at all was…

My form of spirituality has a lot to do with being present. As Eckhart Tolle says in his book, A New Earth, I believe that my primary purpose in life is to be present.

My barometer of living a spiritual life is directly related to the amount of time I am in my body vs in my head. 

When my attention is on what I’m doing right now, when “my head is where my feet are,” I feel alive and as connected to a higher power as possible.

So much of my spiritual “practice” has to do with doing fewer things that lead to me being distracted or in my head and more things that I can be present doing effortlessly. It also has to do with doing more things in the physical world than the virtual or abstract.

I’m trying to do less:    

• Time on computer and phone
• Consuming junk food content like social media or gifs
• Spending time with people that take energy to be around

Trying to do more:

• Time in nature
• Spending time with people that are fun, that I love, and that leave me feeling full
• Playing music
• Building or fixing things physically

Creatures of Mimicry

I read this article on philosophy recently (admittedly only part of it so far).

I loved this line: 

“Human beings are creatures of mimicry. We are evolutionarily supercharged to do one thing better than anyone else: learn by watching and copying others.”

If I have to hear one more person say anything about “the 5 people you spend the most time with” I’m going to sacrifice a lamb… or something like that. BUT, it’s an overused saying for a reason. 

I’ve learned that the people I spend time with have a bigger impact on my life than just about any other factor.

We all have criteria by which we choose the people we spend time with, whether conscious or not. Well I suppose some of us don’t “choose.” Some just spend time with people who are around. And that works for some people.

If you’re into intentionally building relationships I believe that the more aware you can be about why you want to spend time with the people you want to spend time with, the greater level of choice you have.

A few of my biggest criteria are:

• Fun – Do I have fun with them? Do I laugh when I’m around them?
• Very high integrity and moral code – Do they make me want to be a better, more generous, more compassionate person? Do they do what they say they’ll do when they say they’ll do it?
• Challenge me in some way – Do I feel like I learn something or grow in some way by spending time with them?

The clearer I get with this stuff, the easier it is for me to “say no” to relationships that don’t align and the more I attract people that fit that bill exactly.

Have sex, then decide

That’s a direct quote from my sex coach friend, Alexa Martinez.

That really hit home for me when I read it. When I have sex I’m:

• Calmer
• Happier
• More energetic
• More connected to Adee
• And in general make much better decisions

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time learning how to have more and better sex. 

One of the simplest, yet most effective pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten was from @estherperelofficial who said “If you want to have more sex, have more sex.” When we are in the habit of having sex, we are more likely to crave more sex.

That quote inspired us to create rituals in which we know we will have sex each week like our Tuesday afternoon at the start of date night and Saturday mornings. 

Sometimes it’s passionate, 5-star gourmet sex, and sometimes it’s “let’s meet in the bedroom, take our clothes off, and fuck” fast food sex. 

Letting go of the necessity of all sex to be spontaneous and incredible has led to us having more sex and just feeling more of all those good things above. 

It’s also led to us having more spontaneous, incredible sex. 

By scheduling it into our week, it has led to us having a more erotic life outside of those planned times.

New podcast uploads

I just released a podcast with my buddy, Nat Eliason, on hunting, lasting longer in bed, and the learning process. Nat is an app developer, serial entrepreneur, prolific writer, and meat connoisseur.

Nat is one of the people I respect most when it comes to following curiosity and learning new skills as quickly as possible. He has such a good mix of being grounded in the physical world while using cutting edge technologies to help him leverage his time.

I published another podcast recently with Monty Moran, former CEO of Chipotle. This was an amazing episode.

One of the things I learned was that as a leader of a company, at a certain point your role isn’t to serve the customer. It’s to serve your staff so that they can serve the customer. 

At WAG we have a long way to go, but this reinforced a mantra we’ve had for years that we want to treat our staff as well as we do our customers. Over the past two years I’ve been leaning into how I can connect with some of our key leaders and support them in their growth both personally and professionally. 

On this episode we also discuss:

• Empowering your employees. We go deep into how he practiced this in one of the largest companies in the world.
• How to hire the right person, and it has nothing to do with experience
• Building other leaders

    Winter is here,

    Michael Caz