Carbon monoxide. You can't see it. You can't smell it. And without an alarm, you may not know it's there. Install carbon monoxide alarms on every level of your home and test them monthly. The more you know, the safer you'll be. Learn more at embridgegas.com slash safety. Carbon monoxide. You can't see it. You can't smell it. And without an alarm, you may not know it's there. Install carbon monoxide alarms on every level of your home and test them monthly. The more you know, the safer you'll be. Learn more at embridgegas.com slash safety. Yep, that's right. It's that time of the year again. And since Happy Life Studios is the official podcast of the holidays, we know we gotta talk about it.
Okay, I know that the start of the NFL season isn't a holiday, but I bet there are a few out there who think it should be. And it kind of is a holiday, at least to me, because it's starting on my birthday this year. So if you want to know what to give me for my birthday, a Seahawks win would be great. I prefer a Packers win as well, but the Packers are not playing on my birthday. The Seahawks are. So if someone could pull it off for me, that would be great.
By the way, drop us a line. Call us on our Yoast Evo hotline, 425-200-HAYS. That's 425-200-4297. Or email us at podcast at happylife.studio. And let us know what you think. Should this be a holiday at the start of the NFL season?
And if so, which team would you like to win for your birthday? We would love to hear from you. So happy start of the NFL season. If I'm being honest, I have to admit that I use the NFL start theme, not just because it's the start of the season, but it fits in really well with what we talked about last episode, and it also ties in with what we want to talk about this episode. So stick around. You'll be happy in the day. This is Happy Life Studios. Welcome to Happy Life Studios. What is up, Happy Lifer? Thanks for joining us today. I'm so happy that you did.
You know, last episode, we talked about removing our interference. And interference are those things that get in our eye gate, our ear gate, our mind gate, the things that we look at or listen to or think about or remember that interfere with our happy, that interfere with the direction that we want to go. So that's why we have to be careful what we watch, what we listen to, what we remember, what we think on. Look, listen, remember. If the things that I'm looking at are getting in the way of me living a happy life, then instead of trying to not think about those things, I just need to think about something else. I just need to look at something else. I need to listen to something else. And the interference will automatically disappear versus trying to not think about that, trying to remove that interference any other way. It's a lot more of a big job to try to remove the interference versus just look at something else, listen to something else, think about something else.
But for that to work, we need to realize that there is interference out there. And we can't stop all the voices. We can't stop all the things from passing our eyes or our ears or things that we always hear. You can't always stop that. But we can determine whether we're going to allow that interference to get in the way or not. Are we going to believe those things? Are we going to keep filling our mind with those things? Are we going to keep listening to those things or keep watching those things? And so we wanted to bring that up and say we need to realize that there are things out there trying to get in the way of our happy, of our life, of our success, of us moving the direction we want to move. And that's what we called interference last week. So we talked about removing our interference.
I want to talk about running interference. Running interference. What is that? Well, the dictionary says it means to handle problems or block obstacles so another person can work or move forward. Safely. Isn't that a great definition? I love that. To run an interference basically means I am helping somebody else achieve their goal by handling some of the problems that... Carbon monoxide. You can't see it. You can't smell it. And without an alarm, you may not know it's there. Install carbon monoxide alarms on every level of your home and test them monthly. The more you know, the safer you'll be. Learn more at embridgegas.com slash safety. ...that are their interference. And interestingly enough, that term... Remember I said how the NFL theme fits this week as well? Well, that term, running interference, originated from football.
And no, not the World Cup kind of football we've been talking about. Good old American football. That's where running interference comes from. In football, to run interference means a player clears the path for their teammate by blocking anyone who would want to get in the way and interfere with that player's goal. And the goal, of course, is to score or to get a first down or at least get some yards toward the next first down. Their goal is to move the ball forward. But there is another team out there whose goal is to stop them from moving the ball forward. That's where the person who runs interference comes in. They actually have a position in football named for that person.
And it's called a fullback. And when I think of fullbacks, when I think of a person that runs interference in the NFL, the first person that comes to my mind is Max Strong. Yeah, Max Strong. Appropriately named. He was called the Mack truck.
But Max Strong, here's some interesting facts about Max Strong. He played for the Seahawks for 14 years, and he was incredible. He was kind of like a legend. Everybody loved Max Strong. But nobody wanted to draft Max Strong. He was undrafted. And maybe that's because the most yards he ever ran in his 14 years as a Seahawk was 174 yards. I'm not talking about in one game. I'm talking about in one season. In 16 games, the most yards he ever carried the ball was 174 yards.
Running backs, there are so many running backs out there that have done that in one game. They've done more than 174 yards in one game. Max Strong, it took him a whole season to do it, and he only did that much one time. Maybe that's why Max Strong was undrafted. Or maybe it was the fact that he only acquired 15 touchdowns. I'm not talking about in one season. That's what a player will do in one season. It took Max Strong 14 years in the league to get to 15 touchdowns. So maybe that's why nobody picked him in the draft. Yet, he became.
the Mack truck. He became one of the best lead blocking fullbacks in NFL history. In fact, he won the prestigious Seahawks Steve Largent Award five times, and he was only with the Seahawks 14 years. So a third of the time he was there, he had won the Steve Largent Award. This is what Mack Strong had to say about his position, about his seasons as a Seahawk. It was special for me to be a part of this organization during that time. That's the way I judge the success of my career, with how successful were those guys, and how successful was the running back, and how successful was the offense. Because behind all those...
you know, wins and points and touchdowns and things, there was somebody doing the dirty work. And I know I wasn't the only one, but I was for sure one of them. Yeah, that's exactly right. Mack is right. The Mack truck is right. Sometimes running interference is doing the dirty work. Running interference can get dirty, can get messy. But here's the thing. Here's the thing about running interference. Here's the thing about playing fullback. Mack Strong didn't get a whole lot of touchdowns, didn't get a whole lot of yards, but he was loved in Seattle, still is loved in Seattle. You know why? Because he helped the other players get those yards.
When the Seahawks won, Max Strong won. When I run interference for somebody, when they win, I win. The guy running interference may not have scored the touchdown, but his team did, and therefore he did. When we run interference for other people and they win, we do too. Sometimes it's easy to focus on me winning, me getting more views. Speaking of which, by the way, man, I want to thank you guys. We broke our all-time record. We were like 243 in all podcasts and number three in our category. So I just wanted to say thank you. But it's not about us getting more numbers than other people. It's not about making other people worse so that we can look better. When we run interference for other people, we're doing our best to try to make them win. When I'm trying to win, there's a lot of pressure on that. There's a lot of ways that I blow that. There's a lot of issues that come along with that. But when my mindset is to make somebody else win, that's freeing.
It's easy because at least to me, if I'm going to focus on making somebody else's life better, that's way easier than me trying to just make sure that I win. But man, to make somebody else win, it's as simple as a word of encouragement. There's so many things that we can do to help somebody else succeed in their day, in their career, in their mindset. Because when we run interference for others and they win, we do too. And here's the thing about running interference.
Mack Strong, that's what he did as a fullback. He ran interference. He got the obstacles out of the way so the guy carrying the ball could go farther, could move forward. Mack Strong's nickname was Mack Truck and was appropriately named. For more than just the fact that you would think, I want to hit it from another angle. What do Mack Trucks do? A Mack Truck is a semi-truck. What do semi-trucks do? Semi-trucks deliver things. Mack Trucks keep the country running. Where would our country be? Where would our countries be without the truck driver? Nobody ever thinks about.
The semi-truck, when they're eating their ice cream that they got from the grocery store. The Mack truck gets no credit for that, but I'm not so sure the Mack truck wants credit for that. Nonetheless, it's still good to give it to them. So if you know of a truck driver, someone who delivers things, someone who runs insurance for other people, you should share this episode with them and tell them thank you, because even though the Mack truck doesn't want recognition, it's still nice when they get it. But if it wasn't for the Mack truck...
we wouldn't be eating that ice cream from the grocery store. If the truck driver stopped driving semi today, we would notice it in a huge way. I shudder to think what would happen to our country. And the same is true when people that run interference. We don't always see them, but I think we should keep an eye open for them because they are heroes. And where would our life be without the people that run interference for us? I know personally.
It was about a month ago. I was on my way to speak, and my car broke down. I was speaking at a Sunday morning church service about an hour away, and I was 20 minutes away from where I needed to speak, and my car broke down. And I couldn't fix it. I didn't know how to fix it. I'm not a car guy, and I didn't have the money to fix it. And wouldn't you know it? This man from the church.
shows up because I couldn't wait for the tow truck to pick up my car. So this guy showed up, drove all the way out to where I was, said, let me wait on the side of the road here. You take my truck, get back into town. Your job is to do your job. I want you to speak. I want you to encourage those people and I'll wait here.
And not only did he wait there, but he had them tow the car to his house. He's got like a shop at his place. And he get this. He ordered all the parts. When I went to go meet him later, my speaking was done. He had been out there for a couple hours at this point, maybe three hours at this point. And by the time I finally got out there and they still hadn't come and he sat on the side of that road on that hot day just to help me out, just to run interference for me, to do something I couldn't do. And when I got there and I thanked him profusely, he said, hey, that was my job today. You were supposed to go speak and encourage those people. My job was to sit here so you could go do that. He ran interference for me. And not only that.
He ordered all the parts, and he fixed it, my car, for free, and it wasn't cheap. And he fixed it for free. He ran interference for me, and it wasn't just that I encouraged the people of his church that day. It still is fresh in my mind, and I'll probably remember that the rest of my life. Man, when someone runs interference for you, it doesn't get much better than that. When you run interference for somebody, when you block the obstacles that are getting in the way, and truth is we all have blind sides. We all have things that we're not good at, and we all have things that we're genius at. The person that runs interference might be good at that thing that gets in the way that I'm not good at. And when we work together, how much better life is. It's interesting that I want to talk about this because I started a new show on Netflix. And don't judge me, but it's a new Anne of Green Gables. I'll try to be as non-spoiler alert as possible.
But there was someone in the show. Of course, at Santa Green Gables, you expect this kind of drama, the kind of sad story, the triumphant story. You can't have triumph unless you have despair, right? And triumph is the rising above despair. That's what a person that runs interference does. They help those that are in despair to triumph through that. Like that guy did for me, like Mac Strong did for... He had three running backs that he blocked for over his 14 years that all broke 1,000 yards. Sean Alexander, I think, was one. I think Ricky Waters was one. Anyway, they all got the big names. Mac Strong didn't quite get the big names as them. And it wasn't that Mac couldn't run the football. In high school, he had like 83 touchdowns. He played college football for Georgia.
The guy knew how to run, but they wanted his role to be running interference. And we can all run. But to run interference, I can't think of a calling higher than that. And we can all help somebody else move farther down the road, down the field of life. Back to Anna Green Gables here. There was a person in the show who was not doing well. I haven't finished it, so I don't know if they passed away or not. But that's the diagnosis as at this point. And there's nothing anybody else could do. So you know what they did? Their whole community got together.
And they created this big day for Easter because this person loved Easter and they could barely stand up. They were so weak. But this whole community surprised them. All these friends showed up and they got friends from all over to come and show up. And these people allowed them to use their backyard. They had a really nice garden area back there. And so all these people showed up and they did all this stuff and cooked all this food and did it all for this one person who was on their deathbed and how it touched them.
They could hardly talk. They were singing a song. That's one of my favorite songs, actually, when it comes to hymns, It Is Well With My Soul, that no matter what I'm going through, it can still be well with my soul. That's kind of like the happy life mantra, to get and keep happy no matter what the circumstances are. That's what the hymn, It Is Well With My Soul, is all about. It's a really cool story. Anyway, that hymn was going on, and that's a hymn that they were singing. They started singing. When they finished that hymn, the person that was on their deathbed didn't know how to respond. So they said, I want to respond to this with saying my favorite prayer. And she couldn't even.
Get the prayer out. And then someone else saw that. And so they stepped forward and they started finishing. And they all finished the prayer together. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O divine master.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Maybe that didn't hit you like it hit me, but it hit me hard. So I looked up that prayer and found out there was actually called the Prayer for Peace by St. Francis of Assisi. And I want to read it again to close this episode out. This is what it means to run interference, to become that person. And sometimes just being a happy person runs interference for somebody. It doesn't have to be some big thing. Sometimes it's real simple. When I show up and I'm in a good mood, when I show up and I encourage somebody, when I show up and I make somebody laugh, when I show up and I do something nice for them, when I show up and I pay for somebody's coffee behind me, or when I show up and I pat someone on the back, or I compliment their attire, or I just smile at them or open the door for them, or sometimes I'll open the door and someone will say, thank you, and I'll say, you're worth it. It's little things like that.
This prayer right here fits in so well with running interference. When we live this life, when we try to live this life, when we pray this prayer, we run interference for others. When we run interference, we remove interference. Where would our country be? Where would our world be?
If we prayed a prayer like this and tried to live, we wouldn't have to be perfect at this. If we just tried living this prayer, our world would be so much better. We would, because we would be running interference and we would be removing interference. So when we remove interference from our world, our world only gets better. That's why people who run interference are Mack trucks. They're heroes. They changed the world. Literally, they changed their world. So here's the prayer. It's called the prayer for peace, but we should probably call it the prayer of running interference. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. This is so good. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. Or we should call this the prayer of Happy Life Studios. I'm telling you what. I'm tempted on ending every episode with this prayer. It's so good. The prayer ends with, O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Again, for me, it's just easier to, when I see someone down, I see hatred. For me to try to fight hatred, that's a big fight. But instead of trying to fight hatred, I'm just going to try to love somebody, especially someone in that situation.
When I see someone who's hurt, that's in despair, that's in doubt, that's in darkness or that is sad, boy, that's a hard thing to try to fix. But it's not so difficult when I just say, I'm just going to try to sow faith and hope and forgiveness. And I'm just going to try to be light. And I just want to be happy. I want to be happy in their presence. So run interference so we can remove interference and make somebody else's life happy.
Remember, life isn't perfect, but that doesn't mean it can't be happy. And happy NFL season.