Hey guys, how's it going?
Welcome to this episode of the Pursuit of Calling podcast with me, your host, Thomas
Carney.
This is the August recap episode where I get to give you some go over some of the previous
topics of the month and in case you missed them and some life updates.
So guys, if you're interested in my life, you know, listen to the episode and I'll see
in there.
But before we dive in, I want to ask you to send me a message.
If you have any questions or you want me to talk on a particular topic or you just want
to say some encouraging words, you can do so on Instagram or via the email that is listed
in the show notes of this episode.
Thank you and let's dive in.
All right, guys, let's get into it.
So I'm trying a new little bit of a new format, a little bit more of a structured format for
these monthly recaps.
So I have one thing that Don Marasco gave me after we were done recording was to go
over a couple of the previous episodes from this month.
So in case you missed them, you can go back and listen to them and I will talk about the
main topics I liked about them and give you some life updates, some health updates, how
I've grown in the last month.
And then if we have time, I'd like to talk about how I plan to improve moving forward
into next month.
So let's dive in to a little bit of a recap of the couple of last episodes from the pursuit
of calling podcast.
So staying joyful on the journey was the first episode from this month.
Again, if you haven't listened to it, you can go back and let's do it after this one,
of course.
And I talked about how I stay joyful on this journey of pursuing my calling while living
with the chronic pain condition, muscular dystonia.
And that's obviously applicable to anybody's life, not the exactly muscular dystonia, obviously,
but living with pain, living with struggles in your life and how you stay joyful in those
joyful, in spite of those struggles.
Like I said, like I know that there is a lot I said, like I say joyful because I know there
is a larger purpose on my life.
And that doesn't stop because of my circumstances.
Joy is an internal response of how we choose to respond to external circumstances.
So really look at your circumstances, look at where you're not joyful, when you're not
joyful, figure out why you're not joyful, and figure out how you can really turn that
internal response to express more joy to the external circumstance.
And listening to that episode, hopefully it will help you do that.
So and then in the last episode, I was talking with Cole Zimmerman where we, it was called
as Cole Zimmerman calling the creatives knowledge versus wisdom.
Whatever you, we talked about how like whatever you want to do, you can't just research it
and then think, you know what you're doing, you have to take action.
So that's where that's the knowledge versus wisdom piece.
Like Cole talked about doing research for the best cameras or computers to use to be
able to take the best, thinking that you'll be able to take even better pictures and that'll
make you a more professional photographer if you get better tools.
But then said that if you don't know how to actually use them by using them and you know,
messing up and trying again, then you really aren't going to get anywhere.
You have to take action.
That is the knowledge versus wisdom piece.
The knowledge is just the like the just knowing that the same information, knowing the information
and wisdom is applying knowing how to apply the information practically.
And that's going to take not knowing exactly how it's going to work out exactly how it's
going to be after your, after you apply that knowledge, after you applied that knowledge
and then possibly failing, could you imply to incorrectly and then learning from those
mistakes and learning from those mistakes and trying again and your wisdom will grow
as you learn from your mistakes.
You know, I've said it before, but John Maxwell has, John Maxwell has said and has a book
called sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.
And like Lee said in his episode, he said, Lee Hanyo said, talk about, he said, sorry,
the only failure is not starting.
So you can know all this stuff.
You can, you can have all this head knowledge of everything, but if you don't have the wisdom,
then you really don't know much.
I, that, that, that was a little hard hitting.
I know, but you know, if you don't, if you don't, if you don't apply the knowledge, then
what are you doing?
It's not very, that knowledge kind of useless if you're not applying it.
So if you haven't listened to either of those episodes, staying joyful on the journey or
Cole Zimmerman's episode, definitely go back and listen to those after you're done with
this one, add them to your queue.
Then, okay, so let's dive into a couple of my life updates.
So today actually, a little bit after I'm done recording this episode, I'm going to
be going to a bachelor bachelor party because my best friend, Andrew Vergato, which you,
which has w who was on a couple episodes way back in the beginning of this whole journey
of podcasting for me.
He's getting married in October and, and I'm the best man, so that's pretty cool.
And I've also learned though, I've been realizing what I really like about planning and the
things I don't like about planning.
And maybe I'll touch on that in a future episode.
There's, I, there's some things I just, you know, I was, I didn't do great at some things
I know I could have done better on, but overall it's going to be a really fun evening, a really
fun day because it's, I'm recording this early in the morning and yeah, it's going to be
a good day.
I'm really excited.
So if you know, Andrew, just tell him congratulations.
If you know his fiance, Alana, definitely reach out to her as well and say congratulations.
And yeah.
And I'm not sure if I mentioned, and then another actually cool thing that I didn't
mention in the last update, but I don't think so anyway.
But I'm an uncle.
My nephew Isaac was born about, I believe two months ago now and he's precious.
He is the best little boy ever.
And he, you know, doesn't do much right now.
He's young and all he does is eat, sleep and poop.
But he is great.
So my older sister, Amber had him and about again, about two months ago and yeah, her
and her husband's life has changed forever and it's really cool to see.
So let's move into life, some health updates.
My dystonia, as you know that I have, has been progressing to the point where it now
affects my face and sometimes my throat.
So that affects my eating sometimes.
It wasn't doing it yesterday, but can affect my eating, my speaking, which is a point you
might have, maybe you noticed it and maybe you'll, you will notice it in Don Marasco's
episode next month.
Ooh, yeah.
There's a little bit of a, a little bit of a drop for next month.
There's, but yeah, you might notice it toward the end of that episode where my voice sounds
a little bit raspy.
It might sound like I'm sick, but I'm not, I'm not sick.
My voice just gets a little bit more gravelly as my, as the muscles in my throat start to
contract, which I don't really know how muscles in your throat contract.
I never haven't really looked into that, but it essentially seems like my dystonia is starting
to affect all of my muscles in my body, which sounds really, really bad when I say that,
which I mean, it's not great.
It's not fun.
It's not good.
But like, clearly I'm still in a good mood.
Clearly I'm still having joy on the journey.
So my, so like, I, oh, I don't want you to feel bad for me.
I would, um, I guess I want, I would love your prayers and for healing, but I would
also just like you to see me as some, as like somebody who isn't letting their circumstance
define, define them.
I'm not just a person with muscular dystonia.
That's not my, that's not my whole, um, character.
That's not my whole being.
I'm not letting it define me.
So that's how I would prefer people see me instead of just, oh man, he's in pain all
the time.
Like that's really not helpful.
Um, so you know, I'm optimistic.
I have plans to move forward in my research and keep looking for things that can help
me improve my quality of life.
Whether that be a new environment, supplements, or an extreme diet.
My, the one diet I'm looking to go on in the actually nearer future is called the lion
diet and it's pretty nuts.
Like it's the, it's the most elimination.
It's like the, the elimination diets of elimination diets.
I've done an elimination diet before, but nothing like this.
This you only eat red meat.
Sounds bizarre, but I know I learned about this through Jordan Peterson and his daughter,
Michaela Peterson.
I know that, um, that whole family, I believe is using the lion diet.
They're the people who have kind of constructed it and figured out how that you can survive
and actually eliminate a lot of problems by going on this diet and then reusing foods
back in at a slow rate to figure out what, um, is affecting you and causing certain things.
I'm just curious if I would go on this diet, if it would help my dyspnea.
And I think if you have some crazy goals, like for me is being out of pain, you gotta
do some crazy things.
So I'm probably going to do the lion diet and I'll keep you guys updated whenever I
do that because I'm kind of excited.
It sounds weird, but I'm kind of excited to eat nothing but red meat, eat burgers and
steak all the time.
That's kind of fun.
Um, so now let's dive into how I've grown in the last month.
I could, I personally believe that we grow every day.
We're growing in some sort of way every day and the best way to grow is intentionally.
So I want to tell you guys how I've been intentionally growing this last month and things I've been
noticing about myself.
So I've gotten a new surge of motivation within the last month to really pursue what this
podcast was started for, you know, providing people with the tools to successfully discover
and pursue their God giving calling.
I'm going to be opening up an email list soon and hopefully be able to provide you guys
with some more value.
The goal is to give you guys a digital resource, maybe some exclusive episodes that you can
only get by subscribing to the email list.
So stay tuned for that and get subscribed so you don't miss when that happens.
And I'm real, I'm just super excited to start that.
I'm also, I've learned a lot about how whenever I am focusing on achieving the goals I've
set up for my, before myself, I become a lot more focused and motivated to be more effective
in my day to day life.
Like, so like I said, I've had found this new surge of motivation, but I've also found
that I've found this new like vigor to just be a better version of myself every single
day to make sure I'm living for excellence, even in my work, like my day to day life in
my, in my career as a web and mobile app developer.
So work has been going fantastic recently and my coworker and I have been killing it
this month with getting work done like we haven't done before.
Like I, I, I, I'm pretty sure we've at least added 50% to our output and or throughput,
whatever you want to say.
And it's pretty nuts.
Like we've been, we've been killing it.
So like, and I know it's not just because, oh, I like, I like, I like, I like develop,
it's not just because I like developing, it's because I really enjoy just not just being
productive.
I, I love, I love being effective.
I think that's the best way to say it.
I love being effective and figuring out ways how I could be more effective and how I can
like more effectively work with my coworker.
Like I've been working on some new techniques to get him and I to work more cohesively
together, like reaching out to him more and making sure we are staying on the same page
on the, on the features we're creating.
And it's definitely been paying off.
I hope I'm mentioning like we make like, I might make an episode because like there's
these new techniques, like, like I said, like reaching out to him more sounds obvious, but
like we work from remote.
So it's harder, it's definitely hard to stay connected with, with a coworker, with people
whenever you're 100% remote from them.
So, but it's, but I can definitely tell this last month has been, there's been some exponential
growth in our relationship.
So I'm thinking about making an episode because my boss made a, like a one small tweak to
how him and I, my coworker and I work together.
My boss made one small tweak to how our team functions.
And that is, I believe is one of the integral pieces to why we're working so well together.
So I'm thinking about making an episode called the one small tweak to work better as a team.
So again, stay tuned for that to get subscribed.
Don't miss it.
It's probably, probably going to be coming in September.
So stay tuned for that.
And finally, I'd like to just talk, just to hold myself accountable.
I'd like to hold, I'd like to talk about how I plan to improve moving forward into September.
So I'd like to get more focused on my to-do list and figure out some new systems to get
what I need and want to get done more effectively.
I'm really, I, I've, I used to call, I have this app called to-doist that I used to use
every single day.
I used to use it like, like, like clockwork every morning.
I would look at it.
I would see what I need to get done.
I would plan it in the evening for all of the little projects I have throughout my life.
I would plan, clean it, cleaning and all of these things.
And it just fell off.
And so I want to get more, I'm going to get better at applying that application back to
my life, applying to-doist back to my life.
And because it's really useful, I highly recommend using it.
So in anticipation, I wrote these notes yesterday or two days ago.
Just knowing that that was a goal in my head this morning, I actually went into to-doist
and I wrote out the things I want to do this morning before I leave for the bachelor party
I mentioned before.
And recording the episode was one of the, it's a part, was priority one.
Then I have a couple other things that I have set up to get done as well.
And that is what gets, it always just feels really nice whenever I do something I say
I'm going to do.
So creating a habit around that would be really useful.
Then my final thing I think I just realized this morning, something that has been integral
in me even sitting down right now to record this episode this morning, has been waking
up at the same time every morning.
Again, I used to do that week about 6 a.m. every day.
I know I'm weird.
I love being weird.
Like waking up at 6 a.m. every morning, like, and because that just keeps me on a habit
that keeps me in the process of being able to get things done every single day and then
being able to have fun and do other things that evening.
I'm a morning person, so I get it if you're not a morning person, but the mornings for
at least I see mornings as a time to get things done because nobody else is awake.
And I mean, I don't have a family, I'm single.
And so I feel like maybe obviously my my circumstances a little bit different, but I also I've heard
from fathers and mothers that the morning is still a really good time that you have
to wake up even earlier because when their kids wake up, they want to see their kids
off to school and things like that.
So waking up really early in the morning is a time when they get things done.
So which makes sense to me.
And so I guess you do also do the same thing if you if you're not now and work late into
the night, that would work fine, too.
But for us morning people, us early birds, I think that works the best.
And but I definitely fell out of that for a bit.
And it caused me to get less done during the day.
But I think all of this I've talked about, like how I've grown in the last month and
how I plan to grow moving forward is all definitely interconnected.
And I just want to use that as motivation to you who want you, the listener who wants to grow,
who wants to really get things done and work towards your goals.
I really want to motivate you to think about the habits in your life, the ones that aren't
helpful.
And so you can work on eliminating those habits and thinking about the habits that you want
to integrate into your life that would be integral to your productivity, to your personal
growth, to your quality of life.
So think about those.
Thank you for listening to this episode, guys.
That is all I have.
Again, yeah, I love that you listen to this episode.
If you like this episode, share it out on all your social media platforms on Facebook,
on Twitter or X.
Please share it on X.
On what is it called?
Instagram.
And if you know somebody that this would be useful for, share it with them as well, because
it would be really awesome to be able to get more people into this movement of growth,
the movement and growth of pursuing your calling.
I don't feel like enough people would do that.
Not enough people intentionally pursue your calling.
So if you want to share with somebody that maybe you want to want them to pursue their
calling or feel like they have a calling on their lives and you see it, but they don't
see it themselves, give them something.
Send them this episode, send them this podcast and or give them a particular episode.
Wasn't planning on planning on saying that.
But again, thank you for listening to this episode.
All right, guys, I'll see you next time.