Hey everyone, welcome to October 29th, 2021. This is Robert Britain with the Robert Britain podcast show. Welcome and thanks for tuning in today. And wow, it's been a little bit.
Sorry, I want to apologize to everybody. We've just been a while since we put out an episode here. We've been launching a new outdoor show, so I apologize. And I have some exciting news about my newest and latest book that's coming out actually to hit online yesterday, but I don't think it's all quite there yet, but we'll talk about it.
Stay tuned for Life's Puzzle Salt. And we're going to get into a little bit about the new book, Stand By. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. And today we are going to talk about my newest book that's just hitting stores today.
It should be online now on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and some other places. So I'm excited, but it's called Life's Puzzle Solved. And so I've made this idea come to life thinking, everybody tries to make life hard. And I made it something akin to this.
You know what? 200-piece puzzle, pretty easy to solve, not too hard. 500-piece puzzle, a little harder might take you a little longer. 1,000-piece puzzle, that might take you a couple of days.
A 10,000-piece puzzle, good lord, that could take quite a while and take some skill and some craft to do it. So I kind of looked at life that way. Sometimes life hands you a 200-piece puzzle and sometimes life hands you a 10,000-piece puzzle. The good news is it's both can be solved.
And so how do we do that? And that's what this book gets into. And I'm going to talk a little bit today about what the book, I'm not going to spoil everything, go buy the book, come on now. But I do want to kind of give you a preview of what you are getting.
And so we get into fear. We get into things that, why do we have fear? We get into knowledge. We get into meditation.
We get into clearing our mind, organizing our life. And what all that means and how you can wrap it all up into one amazing life. And that you can actually overcome, sorry, not overachieve, but overcome just about anything in life with knowledge. When you have knowledge to solve the 10,000-piece puzzle, for example.
And nothing in life can't be solved. And if anything throughout history has proven is that, look at skyscraper buildings, for example. Look at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. That's good Lord.
You can work out on the 76th floor and you can have dinner on the 120th floor. I mean, it's crazy. It's a beautiful, beautiful building. And it also is an engineering marvel.
I mean, it's the coolest thing ever. Usually buildings like that are built down to bedrock. Well, there's not bedrock in Dubai. So it's basically this engineering piles that they put in to hold the building up.
If you learn about it, it's really cool. It's really cool. So they learned how to solve the problem of putting not only with winds that can blow a human being off of a patio on the building. So think about that for a minute.
You're standing on the building and the wind can get so strong that it could blow you off of the building. There is a system on that building that actually locks doors on certain floors so you can't go out of them because if you did, the chances of you blowing off the 110th, 105th, 120th floor is above average. So everything has a solution. And one of the things that I talk about, and this is, I'm trying to overcome one of my fears.
I have a horrible fear of snakes. But when you think about this for a minute, there are guys who go out crazy as hell as it may seem and can handle venomous snakes, incredibly deadly venomous snakes. You know, there are guys who have black mambas. There are guys who have kinkobras that can handle these types of snakes.
There's not many of them. But when you think about it, this is something in what I want to really drive home is a person who's never even picked up a garter snake. Well, to walk into a room where there is a cobra and think that you're going to handle it professionally is stupid, okay? So, but if you learn how to handle this animal with a level of expertise that keeps you and the animal from getting hurt, keeps you in a position of being safe, keep those that you are working with safe, then you learn how to do it.
And I'm going to say handling an animal like this, handling a snake like this, it's one of the most dangerous things in the world that you could do, especially if you're handling a cobra, especially if you're handling a viper or you're handling a black mamba, you know, a black mamba, I guess, if it bites you, you got about 10, 15 minutes to go ahead and make peace with your maker because you're done. So, when you go to reach for this animal, you better damn well know what you're doing. And that's my point. When you reach for a goal, a dream, when you reach for something you want, you better damn well know what you're doing.
And when you think about your life and when you think about the things that you have to do, when you reach out to touch something that could literally bite you and kill you, you better damn well know what you're doing. Otherwise, you won't have a very long lived success. And that's my point. You have to know if you want long lasting success, then you better damn well know.
So think about that for a few minutes. You know, let that resonate in your head. Wow, if I knew what I wanted to do or what I wanted to change, you can't just go in and say, let's say in a relationship. If you're in your 20s and you get married, high school, sweetheart or just someone that you fell in love with, whatever, but you're anytime that you get married at an early age, one of the things that I can highly recommend to anyone doing so, even if you're doing it late in life, if you've had a couple divorces under your belt, well, maybe a good thing to learn is how to have a successful relationship.
Because if you've never, here's the thing, if you're early on in your life and you have maybe had girlfriends or two, okay, but you've never had a wife, how do you know what's going to make it last a long time? So you don't get tired of each other. You don't get pissed at each other because you, someone's setting their ways of doing something and they don't wanna, you know, the guy's underwear hits right before the clothes hamper and it's on the floor. Everything else can go in the dam hamper except you're nasty ass drawers.
And it just, and it boils to a point where the wife comes undone. And quite frankly, she comes undone justifiably because, you know, take your lazy ass over, pick it up and put your drawers in the dam hamper. But what comes from that statement right there is having enough love and respect for the person who's taking care of you or maybe taking care of more of the loads of the laundry. The thing to very least we can do is make it simple for her or him.
You know, it doesn't always have to be about, you know, who, you know, guys can pick up, I'm not saying women have to do the laundry all the time. But if there's something that you need to find out so that you don't become a pain in the ass to your counterparts, then find out about it. But find out what does a successful relationship look like? You may have an idea about it, but what are you doing about it?
You have to make an investment in your relationship every day. What happens is we get complacent, we get busy, we come home, we get into a routine which is totally fine. But what are you doing to give each other what you need? You know, if, for example, your wife needs you to come home and just, you know, hold her cuddle up with her, you know, just talk about stuff for a little while, but you wanna watch the game.
Make times for those things that each other needs to occur. You know, make sure that you're attentive to each other's needs. And that's where, that's what happens when we fail. But if you don't know what to pay attention to, then you won't pay attention to it.
Sorry for that double negative, but it's the truth. You don't, but when you have the knowledge of what each other needs or what questions you need to ask in order to get that information from your partner, then that's a wonderful thing. So when you have the knowledge of, you know, and here, and I'm not saying this is bad, ladies, but if your significant other is hormonal, you know, that's a real test. I remember once my ex who had to have a full hysterectomy started having hot flashes going, immediately sends you to menopause.
And when I understood this, then I really felt bad, then I was out buying the damn fans and trying to find things to help her keep cool. But you can feel on a woman's body, the physical heat that comes from a hot flash and it's damned hot, you can feel it to the touch. And I was like, holy shit, honey, damn. I had no idea because as a man, I don't get hormonal.
I don't have hot flashes, but women do. And when you understand what they're going through, then all of a sudden, you can, you can, I'm sorry, honey, you know, you don't want to hug them when they're having a hot flash because all they want is to have a bucket of ice dumped on them. But understanding with knowledge makes it easier for you to be the person they need you to be in that moment. And that's a vice versa deal, you know.
Guys are historically taught to keep and internalize everything. Oh, you're a man, you got to tough it up. And then, you know, suicide rates among men are higher than they are among women because guys don't have an outlet. So sometimes ladies, here's where you need to learn how to talk to your significant other, husband, spouse, boyfriend, or just a friend.
And learn how to talk, learn how to listen, learn how to be someone that this person can go to and say, you know, this has really bothered me. Learn how to not make it about yourself on either side, man or woman. Learn how to not make it about you. Something that someone's going through is legitimately something they're going through.
Don't judge. Don't make it about why I don't do that. Don't give a shit that you don't do that. I do.
It hurts me. So, you know, at that point in time, don't let it get to that point. Say, babe, I don't go through this, but I want to help you through it. Either side of the fence, but learn how to do those things.
Learn how to ask those questions. Imagine if you could do that in a relationship. How much longer and stronger and prouder you would be of that relationship if you could say, you know what? Our ability to talk to each other is amazing.
Because not only can we apply this to our relationship, but we can apply it to our family dynamic, our family marriage, because we know what it takes to make successful children, to help them to become successful, I should say. Not actually make them, but you can make an environment from which they learn your family values and what you believe and how you communicate. Because if you can communicate as a husband and wife, then certainly you can communicate to other people, just not on the same intimacy level, but you know how to communicate to people. A lot of times just knowing how to articulate yourself and be a better communicator can take you way further than you ever thought you could go.
And what is the common denominator in all of this is knowledge. If you've ever heard your parents or heard the saying, knowledge is power, nothing in life could be more true than that statement. So if you're sitting in a classroom, or if you're a young man and you're a young woman and you're, oh God, you know, high school sucks or class sucks, or I don't have to learn this, I don't need to know algebra. I can tell you how many times somebody in high school told me I didn't need to know algebra, and my life revolves around algebraic equations for a lot of things.
So I had to learn it later on in life when it was even harder to for me to learn. Still not very good at it, but at least I am making a earnest effort to learn as much as I need to know to make a better effective me into my workplace. I'm a writer in high school. I don't need all this stupid shit.
I don't even know how to write. I don't even know, I mean, I can write, but I don't need to know sentence structure and all that because I'm not gonna be a writer. Lo and behold, I'm an author. It just publishes 13th book.
I have, well, I have more than that, but book wise, it's 13th. So would that have helped me to know that earlier in life? Well, you can never have too much knowledge. I can tell you that right now.
After so many years of my life, you can never have enough knowledge. Learn to embrace that. Learn to give yourself that gift. Because when you know how to solve a problem, guess what it becomes?
Not a problem. So if you were having trouble in a relationship and you had taken the time to say, hey, you know what? And throw that piece of knowledge out there. Then the person that you're in a relationship with may look at you and go, wow, I didn't think of that either.
I love you too. And whether that's a father, son, father, daughter, mother, son, mother, daughter relationship or whatever it is, doesn't have to be an intimate relationship. But if you can supply them with an answer, out of the knowledge that you possess, to say, you know what, maybe think about it this way. Maybe try this.
And here's how you do that. So give yourself that gift in this book, Life's Puzzle Solve, gives you those, it earns you with everything you need in order to begin to do that. And here's the one thing. And you guys have heard me already.
I've talked about this a bajillion times if you're a regular listener or if you read my books. We talk about this all the time and I will never stop talking about it because it is completely 1,000%. It's one of the key ingredients that if you don't put it in your success cake, it ain't gonna bake into a cake. And that's organizing your life.
I wrote a book called Organize Your Life to Win and you seriously have to. You cannot go out and just shotgun blast out into the world and think that success is gonna find you because it's not. You're too wishy-washy. But when you know every day, and I mean from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, what you're doing, even if that is I'm giving my family time of myself.
So I'm gonna go in my bedroom. I'm gonna put my phone on silent. I'm gonna leave it on my nightstand and I'm gonna come back out into the family area and I'm gonna be present in that moment. Because I can promise you, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions in this scenario.
If someone asked your 18 year old child, what do you think about your dad? Was he attentive to you? Did he listen to you? Well, when you could get him off his phone, mom.
What do you think? Well, if you could get my mom off of her phone talking to her friends, the phone becomes an addiction. And so you need to learn to be present in the moment. I promise you, your friends can wait a little while.
Whatever the hell you're looking at on the internet can wait a little while. Because it would be nice for your children to answer, the best times I can remember is when my dad got home and we sat down, we talked about our day, but there was a certain time during the night that dad took his phone and put it in the bedroom, told everybody go put their phones in their bedroom and we were just a family. We put our electronics away just long enough to be a family. So it makes a difference.
It makes a huge difference. And the way that I teach or educate people about organizing their life is if you use the day properly, you'll have plenty of time for fun stuff. You'll have plenty of time to call your wife and go, you know what, honey, I got everything done today. I'm pretty caught up.
How about we take each other out to dinner? Can you get a babysitter or you want to take the kids and go out to eat, you want to take the kids and go down to the park and throw a frisbee? Imagine that. Imagine those things because they are yours and they are so attainable.
You can check, I don't care. Here's a couple things. Two that we discussed in the book at Great Wings. You know, it's learning the difference between activity and productivity.
And when you learn those two things or learn that one thing, the difference between two words, activity and productivity, when you learn what that truly means, you will see gigantic steps forward in your life. Absolutely. You will see amazing results from that. The other thing that is something that you will learn and I'm going to end with this last little bit.
We're gonna keep this one short, is fear. And fear comes from a couple of things, okay? So I'm not gonna touch on everything, but I do wanna touch on a couple things. Because I'm telling you in the book, we get into this in detail.
One is that we fear things that we have no knowledge of. If you see the outcome from something that you're gonna do, the path there is now easier. You don't fear it. Because the fear comes from you're walking a path and you don't know what's fixing to jump out in front of you.
But if you see the end result, you go, oh wait, that shouldn't be too hard. Because you understand and know that the outcome is greater than the path that you're taking. The success of the outcome is so much higher than the bumps and bruises you're gonna get along the path. We all trip and we walk some point in time in our life, maybe even more.
We stub our foot on something or whatever, and just bust our ass. But we get up and we don't fear walking again because we've walked enough in our life to know that it happens. It's the same thing. You have to know that even though you busted your ass, you can get up and go again.
So I use my, again, if you've listened to me before, here's the thing, it's my bicycle thing. When you first learn to ride a bike, you suck at it. Really bad. You fall down, you use training wheels and yada yada yada.
The first day your parents take your training wheels off, you're scared of shit. And you will bust your ass. You will fall over the ground. You will scan your arms.
You will hit your knees. You will, you know, rip your clothes. But there's gonna come a point in time and a day when all of a sudden, all of it starts to make sense. All of the things that you've been learning are trying to teach yourself to do.
All of a sudden, guess what you're doing? You're hauling ass down the road. Why? Because you can now ride.
You now get it. Your body has come to it and now you're going, oh my God, this is the coolest thing ever. And then what happens from there? Then you start finding the steepest hills, the biggest jumps.
And then when you do wipe out, you laugh your ass off, get back up and go, look at this one, you know? And you got this big old red mark going down your arm. Everybody's going, damn dude, that must have hurt. Now come on man, let's go, let's hit this jump again.
You know? And it becomes fun. Because you know, most of the outcomes are not that bad. It's worse than you're gonna slip on a wimp around.
Every time if you caught your hand in, or your foot on a bike pedal and busted your ass and it hurt like hell. But it didn't stop you from riding a bike. You got back on, you start doing it again. Same thing.
Same thing when you're learning something new, no matter what it is, at first you're gonna truly suck at it. You're not gonna be able to accomplish shit until you learn how to get through it. And once you learn how to get through it, guess what goes away? Fear.
You're no longer afraid of something that you were afraid of to begin with. And usually fear is nothing more than just the knowledge that you need. So you go, oh, well, if that's the worst thing that can happen, let's go. And another thing I wanna say is fear that you'll look stupid.
I can't do that, I'm gonna look stupid. Or this isn't ready because it's not perfect yet. I understand certain things are not gonna be perfect in your life. You can find a blemish in a Picasso.
You can find a blemish in something. There is never one thing that is 1,000% perfect. If one looks hard enough, you can find a displaced brush stroke, you can find a displaced color, you can find something. But it doesn't preclude it from being a masterpiece.
Doesn't not preclude it from being a true masterpiece. So when someone says, oh my God, I can't believe you're gonna do that, you're gonna look so stupid. Okay, get out of my way. If I look stupid, then laugh your ass off.
And then on the other side of that, guess where I'll be? About 10 miles ahead of you waving goodbye. I do not have time for people who don't want to support what I'm doing or tell me I'm stupid or tell me, you know what, that sucks. Just because someone thinks that your work sucks, doesn't, you know, there's 7 billion people on this planet and one frickin' person tells you it sucks.
Okay, great, bye. You don't have to buy it, you don't have to look at it. You don't have to read it. You don't have to enjoy the picture.
You don't have to do anything. You have to miss the point and say, oh God, that sucks. Instead of hearing the message or seeing the message, you know, so don't think, don't be afraid, to look stupid, look silly, who cares? And if that's all they can do in their life, you know, it's just like trolls on the internet.
Okay, fuck you then. You know, it's basically, you know, when someone says something nasty, okay, well, you know, have a nice day, insta-block. Be you, even if you look silly, even if you look dorky, be you. So, my new book, Life's Puzzle Solved, is just that.
Learning how to solve the puzzle and what pieces you need to put together in order to solve that puzzle. And that's what the whole book's about. So, I hope that you'll give it a read and I hope you enjoy it. I hope you enjoyed as much as I enjoyed writing it.
This is one of my most favorite books. There is a bonus section in it. Something that I wrote in 2018 that I threw in the back of the book just as a bonus. And because it meant a lot to me.
It is a little bit Christian based because that's what I choose to identify myself when I'm thinking of something spiritual. I like to identify myself as Christian. I don't particularly go to a Catholic. I'm not a Baptist.
I'm not a Methodist. I'm simply just one of God's children, a spiritual child of this life. And so, I share some of that with you and share some of the things that got me to the place where I am without really getting into a huge life story, which at some point in time puts people's feet to sleep. So, I really think that Life's Puzzle from the first chapter, actually from the introduction, really starts giving you things to do, giving you things to think about.
And we may hit on certain things several times in the book. It's not repetitious. It's done by design that I want you to get what we're talking about. So, we may talk about fear in a couple or three chapters.
We may talk about organization in a couple, three chapters. We may talk about meditation throughout the book. We may talk about quieting your mind throughout the book. But it's never repetitious.
And it's always something that leads you to the end result, which is if you can organize your life to win, if you can learn how to quiet your mind, if you can learn how to meditate and give yourself some peace so that you can. And meditation is more for me about being able to slow the hamster wheel in my head so that I'm able to get into some thought about what I need to hear, what my brain's trying to tell me. And it could be telling me how to solve something going on in my life or how to give me some inspiration towards something. But you can't do that with a chaotic mind.
And we talk about that in the book at great length. So, I hope that today sparked some interest and you will enjoy reading the book. And I'm so grateful for all of you. Thank you for being patient with me and not getting out some content.
I know that sometimes that's frustrating when you're trying to get into something. So, I promise we'll be doing some new podcasts. I've got some stuff coming up. And I love you all.
Thank you so much for listening. And this is Robert Bruton. Bye for now.