How to Find Time for Your Own Thoughts

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From all of us at Believe, have a Merry Christmas, everyone, and a Happy Holiday! Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Ryan Hanley Show. Today's just going to be me and you, and the audio on this episode is not going to be as good as it normally is, hopefully. Because I'm actually driving. I've got about four hours of windshield time heading from my home in Waterville, New York, to meet up with some of my oldest and best buds.

A lot of us played college baseball together. Our last unmarried friend has decided to tie the knot. We're very happy for him, and we will be celebrating the last few days of his bachelorhood here in Buffalo with a nice night out on the town, followed by a Bills game. Hopefully tomorrow they will stomp on the Washington Redskins. So that gives you some context as to when I'm recording this.

But as I was driving, and my friend's house, who I'm going to be staying at, I was just thinking about him and our relationship, and we've known each other for 20-plus years. And he's helped me through a lot of some of the hardest times in my life, and just good times, bad times, all that kind of stuff. He's the best man at my wedding. And I was thinking about something that he does as I was driving. And that is, he doesn't listen to music or podcasts when he drives.

He drives in silence. And I've always, you know, for the longest time, I thought that was weird. Like, I was like, dude, that is the weirdest thing. Like, you don't listen to any music. You don't, you know, I listen to podcasts.

I love podcasts when I'm driving. A lot of times I listen to podcasts. And I always used to, like, give him a hard time for that. And it hasn't been until later in my life that I've really started to appreciate what that habit, or whatever you want to call it is, what that really means. Before we get into that, I want to share with you a story.

It's actually the very first story that I tell in my book, Content Warfare, which I wrote back in 2014. It's all about content marketing. It was my truth at that time. A lot of the core principles still hold up today. So if you're interested, you can get that on Amazon.

Just go into Amazon and type Content Warfare. I think it's like three bucks on Kindle or something like that. I keep it super cheap because I just want people to read it. I don't actually make any money, really, on it. But it's the very first story that I tell in that book.

And it goes a little something like this. So when I was 12 years old, the town that I lived in, Nassau, New York, not Nassau County. That's down on Long Island. This is about a thousand-person village, I guess you could say. About seven or eight minutes from the Massachusetts border.

It's basically the middle of nowhere for upstate New York. It's the closest to the middle of nowhere that you can be and still be close to somewhere, I guess, would be a good way to describe it. Another way to describe it is the criminals live in Nassau. They didn't rob in Nassau. So we grew up in kind of a lower-middle, lower-lower-class town in basically what was the middle of nowhere.

Small. And it wasn't a tremendous place to grow up, if I'm being honest. Anytime I would leave that town, any of the friends that I had that didn't live there, you know, it was like a stigma. It was like a scarlet letter to a certain extent. They called us Nassholes.

It wasn't super. But that's not really the point. The point was, if you lived there, in general, your parents did not make a tremendous amount of money. Because otherwise you wouldn't choose to live there. That was the case for me.

As I said in the book, we weren't poor. But we did not live in luxury either. So I had to make my own money. And to do that, at 12 years old, I would wake up every Thursday morning at 4 a.m. And I would, you know, bundle up, depending on, I guess, what time of year it was.

And I would take three big, like, 50-gallon trash bags. And I would go out and collect bottles out of people's recycling bottles. It was recycling day. And there were blue bins. And everyone just put their recyclables in the blue bins.

This was before recycling was as, you could recycle as much stuff. So now your recycling bin is probably as big as your garbage can. But, you know, this was 93. So, you just, there were little blue bins. And at 12, I could easily dig through them.

And I would pick the cans out. And I didn't start with three bags. I started with just one bag. And I would go out and I'd fill that bag up. And I'd make seven or eight bucks in bottle returns.

You know, I was looking for the five-cent bottle returns. Coke cans, beer cans, beer bottles, you know, whatever. Whatever you could find. And I, and then I realized that if I brought two trash bags, I could fill up two trash bags. And I could carry two trash bags.

So I started doing two. And then anything beyond two, you know, when I, when I started to realize that two was, you know, that, that I can make about 15 bucks if I did two bags. But that was all I could carry. If I wanted more, I needed to be able to, like, pull them. Because the way I set my route up and where my house was to get it, to get all this done before I would have to go to school that day, I would, I needed to be, like, it didn't bring me back by my house.

So I couldn't drop the bag off. And I didn't want to leave a bag of recyclables on the side of the road because someone would definitely grab that and take it. So it's not like I could do drop-off points and then go pick it up. And my mom, you know, was taking care of my sister and had her own job to get ready for. So it wasn't like she was going to, like, follow me around and come pick it up.

Like, this was on me. This was my thing. So I, I got a wagon or found a wagon. To be honest with you, I can't remember if I bought it or found it or someone gave it to me. I can't remember.

I got a wagon, like one of those radio flyer wagons. And with a radio flyer wagon, I could pull three bags. So with the three bags, I, with the three bags, I can make about 25 bucks. And in the, like, hour and a half or so that I had to go out, about two hours probably because I had to be home about six in order to get ready for school because it took us about a half hour to get to school, which I think started at, like, 715. That's basically how the math works.

It's not 100% important. But in the time period that I had, I could get about three bags worth of stuff. And I, and I just kept doing and optimizing my route until I figured out, you know, how I could get three bags worth of bottles consistently in the shortest amount possible, which would give me my 25 bucks for that week. And then I would have $25 at the age of 12 to spend and save. And I saved most of it, spent all the rest on baseball cards and candy and other crap that kids spend money on.

And it felt good to have money in my pocket because otherwise I wouldn't have had money in my pocket. And, and it was my first soiree into entrepreneurism, I guess you could say. You know, I also did, you know, I sold some baseball cards. Not a lot, though. I didn't do, like, shows or anything like that.

I mostly just swapped them with friends for stuff. It was more of a barter system deal. You know, you want that wiffle ball bat and baseball card swap stuff. I did shovel driveways and shoveling driveways can be very lucrative, except it had to snow enough for you to miss school. Because knocking on people's doors at 6 a.m. to shovel their driveways, that didn't go over so well.

At least in my neighborhood, people didn't like that. So it had to be, like, people who were home who, on snow days, so there was a limited amount of cash that you could make there. And I guess in hindsight, I could have set up deals with people to shovel their driveways, but I didn't do that. I didn't have that wherewithal at that age to do that. But that would have been a good idea.

Set up, like, a subscription service, I guess you could say. But probably most people that would pay for that subscription service would have just hired a snowplow guy. So, needless to say, I had this entrepreneurial spirit. And that, you know, all the money I made, I made through getting jobs or, you know, doing these type of things. I got my first job at 13.

I swept the floor at a local car garage. That was terrible because of the fumes, and I just didn't like being in that environment very much. So I worked at a golf course until I became old enough to work at a Wendy's. And then from Wendy's, I went to Hannaford, which is like a local grocery. So I've always been working, always been making my own money.

You know, I paid for my, every car I've ever owned, I paid for myself. I've always paid for my own insurance. Like, I've never relied on my parents. And my, you know, like, my parents helped me a little bit with college, but, but like that, like not, like they signed the forms and helped co-sign the loans and stuff. But, you know, I came out of college basically with all that debt was mine.

I did that, which is fine. All that is fine. The point of this story in the book, The Content Warfare, was centered around the idea that we all have this entrepreneur inside of us. And that when we don't know any better at a young age, we're so willing to take the risks of being an entrepreneur, right? We're willing to get up at 4 a.m. in 10 degree weather and throw parkas on and wade through dirty, disgusting bottle bins, which is essentially just garbage, and for five cents a pop.

Like, we're willing to do that. And we're willing to have people kind of scowl at us. And, you know, I'd see blinds move because they'd hear me out there digging through their bins. And the funny part about that is, eventually, one of my neighbors got wise to what I was doing, who was like an adult, and just started driving around and plowing through all the bins before I could get to them and essentially put me out of business, which was a bummer. But for the solid, like, 10 months, this is how I made my money.

But, like, you don't care, like, as a kid. Like, it doesn't matter to you. Like, you just, you have this, the potential for shame or ridicule or questioning or failure. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, you have nothing to lose.

You're a kid. And then something happens. And for me, you know, my goal is I described where I was raised as much as my parents were amazing and did everything they could for me. And, you know, I never felt anything but love and had a wonderful childhood. I knew that I never, ever, ever wanted to live in the home, the place that I was raised, ever again.

Like, I never wanted to have to go back to that place. I wanted to get out of there and be done with that place once I was gone. And, you know, my dad worked for the railroad and he was a union guy. And my mom worked essentially for the state as a secretary or slash receptionist and still has that same job. So, their path was get a job at some place safe and conservative where you can do a good job and have stability.

And that's a wonderful mindset. But the problem with that mindset is it is tough to ascend. So, like, I wasn't taught entrepreneurialism. Not that they poo-pooed it. They certainly did not.

And they encouraged me and supported me in the different things that I wanted to do. But they weren't entrepreneurs, so I didn't, I wasn't ever exposed to that. And neither one of them went to college, so I wasn't pushed towards college. Again, they didn't poo-pooed college and they supported me when I decided that I wanted to go. But it wasn't pushed on me.

So, I really had no idea how I was going to get out of Nassau. Until one of my teachers, my junior year of high school, asked me, Where are you thinking about applying to college? And I was like, oh my gosh, I can go to college. Like, this is something that actually can happen. Like, I have good enough grades.

I could potentially go. And then at locked in, this is how I get out. This is how I get out of Nassau. This is how I never have to go back to that place. Is by getting, going to college, getting a degree, and then leveraging that degree for a job.

And that job will be someplace else. That job will be in some city, someplace that isn't here. And I have no idea what that'll be, what it'll look like. And frankly, I don't even care. I just don't want it to be here.

And so, that's what I did. I focused on getting good grades. I focused on getting into college. I leveraged some athletic ability to get some scholarships. And I went to college.

And I had no idea what I wanted to do. I told myself I wanted to be an engineer. Because that seemed like the safest job that also had a stable and healthy income. A few semesters in, with a 2.1 grade point average, I realized that engineering was not in my future. So, I scrambled and scraped and scratched out a math degree.

And graduated from college with, like, no idea what to do next. Like, you get this degree. Like, my goal had been, I just always assumed, like, you get the college degree. And then the college degree turns into the great job. And the great job turns into safety and security.

And the ability to never have to go back to the place that I was raised again. I go back all the time to see my mom. Because I love my mom. She's the best. But, like, not have to live there.

But the really interesting part, you know, and I don't go into any of this. In the book, it's, like, the next phase. Is that, you know, I got that degree. And I had no idea what I wanted to do next. Like, I literally had no idea what to do next.

No idea. I, what do you want to be? I had no clue. So, I got an office job. Right?

A bunch of my buddies moved to D.C. That I played baseball with. So, I said, that seems like as good a place as any. So, I followed them to Washington, D.C. I lived on a mattress in the living room of a three-bedroom house in Washington, D.C.

Which was amazing. I mean, we had a tremendous time. But, like, having a tremendous time does not equal moving forward in your life. So, I got an office job. That office job was terrible.

It made, like, $32,000 a year hawking spreadsheets. And then, you know, I got another job which paid me $5,000 more a year. And that was hawking spreadsheets. Because I had this math degree. So, I was, you know, I was decent at spreadsheets and good with, you know, I can work an equation and stuff like that.

And had some decent analytical skills, I guess you could say. So, I was able to leverage this one skill set I had. But it was terrible. I mean, these were awful jobs. I mean, nothing against those specific companies, but, like, just the jobs themselves were mind-numbing.

I mean, I could do the work that needed to be done in, like, the first hour that I was there. And then I became really good at falling asleep at work without anyone noticing. Like, I could fall asleep with, like, my hand on my chin or, like, you know, I was good at that. I also memorized just about every baseball stat for just about all 760-plus players that were listed in the Yahoo Fantasy Sports website. And became really, really good and really, really dedicated to fantasy baseball.

And that was my life. And it was, you know, I mean, it was fun. Because I literally didn't, there was no stress. I didn't think about work. I also didn't have any money.

I would live off about $5.50 of 7-Eleven a day. I'd get my breakfast from 7-Eleven. I would steal muffins or whatever type of office treats or office food there was laying around for lunch. And then I would eat about $3.15 of 7-Eleven for dinner. And that's how I lived my life.

And, like I said, it was fun. It was eye-opening. It was also awful, like, parts of it. You know what I mean? The part of just being broke and constantly maxing out credit cards.

And knowing how to leverage credit card off of credit card. And knowing who wouldn't charge a penalty for certain periods of time. Even though, you know, they would tell you they were going to charge a penalty so that I could skip certain months and not pay it. And it was just this constant game of, you know, being behind the eight ball. Like, feeling like, like in any given moment, I just would have all this debt and everything would come crashing down on me.

And I would be screwed. And I had, I hated my job. It was difficult, you know. And I had lost all sense of the entrepreneurial kid that would dig through garbage cans with zero shame for $25 a week. And I lost all of that.

That, that, that kid was gone. I was, I wasn't that person. You know, I, I, I just wanted the safety and security of a regular paycheck because I didn't know what, because the alternative going out on my own felt, it was, it was terrifying. And, and, and it wasn't until I hacked my way through a few more of those jobs and I ended up meeting my, my wife and, and, and ultimately getting offered a job by her father that, and becoming a salesman really, which is maybe the closest thing to an entrepreneur without actually owning a company that you can be, in my opinion. You know, salesman, salesperson, saleswoman, you know, you got to go out and, and do it.

People aren't going to hand you anything. Like, if you want to be good, if you want to make it, like, you have to think like an entrepreneur. You have to think like a business owner. You have to think, you have to use ingenuity and creativity and you have to be disciplined. You have to form good habits.

You have to be, you know, able to network and, and you have to be charming and, and knowledgeable and kind and generous and giving and learning all those skills. And feeling what it was like to first be absolutely terrible at sales. And then over the course of a period of, you know, seven, eight years, become more and more adept at the skill. Appreciate the skill more. I started to regrow that entrepreneurial spirit.

And fast forward, here I am at 38 years old, going to be 39 in a few months. I feel like I could be nothing other than an entrepreneur and not a tech entrepreneur because I don't know how to code and I don't have any good ideas for projects, products, I guess. But someone who creates and, and gives value and does it on their own terms, I guess, if you want to define an entrepreneur in that way. I don't know how I could be anything else. When I'm doing those things, I am my most happy.

And it makes me sad to a certain extent that it took me 26 years from age 12 to 38 to regain whatever I had lost. But I'm glad that I found it again. I'm glad that I feel this calling that to a certain extent, anyone who's listening to this podcast or has made it this deep into the podcast, has been listening to this show for any period of time, who watches the videos, has been reading the articles that I write on my website, like, like the creativity is just flowing out of me. It's a little disjointed, I think, because of the, maybe the floodgates are still wide open. And I'm just allowing that to happen right now to a certain extent to try to figure out what this entrepreneur journey is going to be.

But I'll tell you that bringing this all the way back to the beginning of the show, when I said I wanted to share this story with you because of a friend, the friend that I'm going to stay with, my buddy, who's also the best man at my wedding, is an entrepreneur himself, who doesn't listen to music or podcasts in the car. And what I didn't understand at the time that I understand now is what he was allowing himself to do was be with his own thoughts. I am a massive consumer of other people's content and ideas. I love it. I love, I love dissecting the way people think and taking it in and passing it through my own filters and, and finding ideas that resonate with me and other ideas that, that don't or that I disagree with.

And, and how does that work and why? And then dissecting, why do I disagree with them? But, but, but I oftentimes feel like I work with too many thoughts of other people. Like, like I, I, I do that too much. I don't allow enough time for my own thoughts or didn't for a very long time.

I was so caught up in what other people think, what other people do, how other people act. You know, I was looking for this path or, or I don't want to maybe permission or, or a guarantee that things were going to be okay, that maybe I was, not that they weren't okay when I was being raised, but I didn't feel like, I didn't feel like I had control over those things. And I, and I, and I, and, and, and it was that idea of, of needing the guarantee of needing that, that kept that, that I lost my entrepreneurial spirit and, and, and, and believing that somehow college was a guarantee to the safety and security that I thought was necessary for adulthood. I lost who I was as a 12 year old. And if you're listening to this and you're, and you resonate with this at all, I guess the reason I wanted to share it with you is that, is that you can get that back.

I feel like I have it back today and it took a long time to get it back. And how I've, how I've done that is spent more time with my own thoughts. I try to drive my car without his podcasts on, just in silence. I, I, I walk the dog. I'll do, I'll do a couple of laps around our neighborhood and usually the first lap, I'll listen to a podcast or something because there's so many, so much good stuff.

Um, and then I'll turn it off and I'll do a lap or two without, but just in silence, just me and I'll be watching and listening and letting my mind either be blank or, or, or numb or, or, or, or race, let it race and find things. And you find yourself thinking about all this crazy stuff and, and you can also do this with meditation, but meditation takes time out of your day and I don't necessarily have a ton of extra time, um, despite, despite technically being unemployed, I guess you could say. Um, but, but in these moments when you normally just shove someone else's thoughts into your brain, spend a little time with yourself. It's scary as hell because you don't know what's going to happen. And half the time you feel guilty for having thoughts or, or uncomfortable with thoughts that you have or, but even though no one else is listening, it's just you, it's just you and your, and your brain, right?

Your mind, it's whatever you actually are, your soul, your essence, whatever you want to call it. And the physical mind that operates and interfaces with whatever this reality is. And, and that it's just, if you spend time in that place, you start to realize what you actually want, what actually makes you happy. And in those time periods, you can, you can start to dial in on the things that are going to provide meaning to your life, right? Like I just had an incredible conversation with one of my buddies who's, who's an entrepreneur in the insurance space.

And, um, we were talking about joy versus happiness. And I shared with him my philosophy that, um, happiness is a derivative of meaning and meaning is a derivative of responsibility. That's, uh, Jordan Peterson, not, not me, but that's, I believe that construct is, is the construct in which I operate and, uh, I don't seek out happiness. I seek out meaning through responsibility. And, uh, I find that the most meaning comes from placing the responsibility on myself to create value for a group of individuals who are seeking more out of their life.

And that's the work that I do on this podcast, the interviews, I take them very seriously. Uh, the articles that I write, the videos I create, uh, I'm trying to help you find some nugget, some little thing, some twist of words or idea or example or case study or thought or statistic that triggers some Tumblr in your mind that opens you up to whatever that thing is that you are searching for because it's different for everybody. And that sounds very ethereal and woo wooey, but, uh, I think it's okay to go below the surface. And I think we should spend more time below the surface than on the surface. Uh, what I mean by that is we operate at the surface levels for so much of our day, right?

You gotta do things, you gotta do things, you have responsibilities and it's just, how do I get from the time I wake up to the time my head hits the pillow? How do I survive that time? How do I not get into a fight with my boss or my spouse? How do I, how do I, how do I make sure my kids are fed and, and, and get to where they need to be? And, and how do I make sure my clients aren't bitching at me?

And, and it's all up here and it, I find the more I allow myself opportunities to go below that and really dissect what's happening in that interface between my soul and my mind, um, that I start to figure things out. And, and, and I can provide all those people with more value. I can be a better spouse. I can be, uh, I can be a better father. I can be, uh, I can add more value to those that I work with or work for.

Um, or work for me. I can be a better mentor. I can be a better mentee. I can, I can just be at, put more positivity and abundance into the world. I'm more apt to hold the door and smile for somebody, uh, at the local convenience store.

I'm more apt to, to let someone go through the four way stop because they can't figure it out. Um, because why are four way stops so hard for people just, and just instead of getting mad at them going, just go ahead. Like I thought it's all good. I'm not going to get mad at this situation. And, and instead of putting that negativity into the world, um, uh, just operate a little more abundance.

And, and, uh, and I think that comes from spending time with your own thoughts and not constantly shoving other people's ideas into your brain. I think it's finding that balance. Obviously I want you to listen to this podcast and these are my thoughts, not yours. So that would be kind of hypocritical. I listened to a lot of podcasts.

I watch a lot of videos. I read a lot of articles, but I, but I've been more intentional. I'd say the last 18 to 24 months, I've been much, much more intentional about finding time for my own thoughts and it has been that work that, that discipline, the habit of finding time for my own thoughts that is broken me from the fear and anxiety. And, uh, I guess you could say the shackles of not feeling worthy or not feeling able, uh, or having the, the confidence to, to be my own man, to be my own person and to ultimately control my own destiny, uh, and to, and to regain whatever I had as a 12 year old at 38. Um, so I don't know.

I thought maybe that might help you just know that it's out there, that it's possible. And my journey is not complete. Jeez, I don't even really have an operating business yet. Um, uh, still figuring that part out, uh, creating a lot of content, connecting with people. Um, I don't know what the next iteration of my life will be, but I know I now have the filters in place to make sure that whatever that next thing is, it, it provides me with the meaning that I need to experience the moments of happiness that allow me to be the best version of myself for the people that I care about and want to add value to.

Uh, and if that makes sense to you, then I hope that this podcast helped. If it doesn't, then I'm sorry I just wasted 31 minutes of your life, but this was just something I was thinking about as I was cruising along I-90 here in upstate New York, somewhere between Syracuse and Rochester, this just hit me and, uh, I figured it's best to capture it and anything that I capture, I try to share with you guys. So, hope it helped. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. You can always email me, ryan at ryanhanley.com.

Email me. Let me know what you're thinking. Let me know if you've, where you are in this journey or if this is just fluffy nonsense and you think it's all silly and stupid, um, I may disagree with you, but I would love to hear if that's what you think too. Uh, otherwise, guys, I love you for listening to this show. The podcast and podcasting has always been a huge part of, of how I create, um, and the fact that you give me your time and, and allow me to, to come in your earbuds and, and, and, and play, play between your ears, uh, is very, very meaningful to me, uh, and the relationship that, that we have together.

So, uh, if you haven't already, please subscribe to this show. Tell your friends about the show if you think they were interested in this kind of stuff or just being part of this journey. And, uh, if you're feeling froggy, uh, leaving a rating review on iTunes helps us find more people. There's like a whole algorithm thing that I don't really understand, but I know more reviews helps, so, uh, so I appreciate you for that if you're willing to do it. Otherwise, I hope you have an absolutely fantastic day.

Just spend some time in your own mind. And if you do, and if you haven't done it in a while, I'd love to hear how it goes for you. Ryan at RyanHanley.com. Otherwise, I'll catch you. I'm out of here.

Go Bills! Peace! Peace! I'll see you next time. Next week.

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