#51 - Formula for JOY
To have genuine happiness in life, most people say you need to have a ton of accolades and achievements and reach a certain level of success that will equate to your fulfillment and satisfaction. But what we do not know is that happiness is not the goal; it is the result of the way you live your life. Joy is a state of mind and being rather than a tangible destination.
In this episode, Andrew and Sammy take us into the concept of having a basic formula to minimize stress, anxiety, and fear in pursuit of having more room for genuine joy, fulfillment, and wholeness.
Having a life of abundant joy and happiness means envisioning and dreaming without limitations and allowing yourself to experience the fullness of life.
Let that feeling of winning influence your actions rather than wait aimlessly to achieve your goal. This will put you in a higher state of mind. And when you are connected to that profound sense of security, you will have the deeper sense of contentment.
Being genuinely joyful also means anticipating and planning for a great day ahead and keeping that vision close to your heart.
The Basic Formula for Joy: Clarity, Experience and Belief
The first part of the formula: Envisioning without limitations
Your body can repair itself when you allow it to be in a reparative state
Soaking your mind with possibilities
Most people don't know what heaven on earth will look like because they haven’t given it serious thought
The second part of the formula: Let your body and heart experience it
The Third part of the formula: Be inspired and live in the high state
The world opens up when you are open
The things you do have a larger impact because it does not come from the small place of desperation
You are knocking on the door but not listening because you are only focusing on small things
Reducing the negative and increasing the positive
Changing the means to meet the ends, but you've experienced the end already
It's like not finding the right person but becoming a whole person
Quantum Way: Feel it first, then the results are the effects
Using this formula for the recovery process
Episode Transcript:
Andrew Love: Welcome back everybody to another very stimulating episode of Love, Life and Legacy with me, Andrew Love, and my co-host, which his name is,
Sammy Uyama: Mr. Sammy Uyama. And yes, stimulating is the word of the day.
Andrew Love: That's, that's what word for you. Welcome, welcome. We are too animated. So we're toning it down or not. We'll just go back to our normal voices. We have another episode for you today because we can't stop this train. It's going, Sammy. It's going. We started this thing, but now it's going downhill. We can't stop it. We can't stop.
Sammy Uyama: Yeah. You had me worried that, that was my normal voice, Andrew.
Andrew Love: Just acting when he acts happy, but he's really the most boring person ever. Today, we wanted to talk about. We're going to use an example from a real person. And without any judgment, because the first thing I did when I saw what happened to him was to judge him, to be honest. Because a part of me was jealous of him prior to this, right? And we'll get into the actual details. But the, the point is not that about a person, okay? But the point is we can't even really speculate what happened. But we're going to extrapolate a lesson that we learned from it and in order to tighten our reins. So that things like this don't happen to us, but they're a lot less likely. Okay? And so that was very mysterious because it gave no actual information. But Sammy, let's enlighten us. Tell us what happened.
Sammy Uyama: Like to tell you the story of Andrew Love and his fall from grace.
Andrew Love: Yes. Okay.
Sammy Uyama: Just kidding. Can you have any of the details?
Andrew Love: I was just trying to break it up because I was just talking. So
Sammy Uyama: I appreciate that.
Andrew Love: Last week, a pastor, Carl Lentz from Hillsong Church, which is probably the biggest church in the world. The definitely biggest church band in the world. But they have a bunch of plans. There's, you know, major cities around the world have them, and the biggest plan was in New York City. And that I used to be a pastor in New York City, so I consider them competition in my insecure, you know. And they're like the standard because they had something like five to seven services on Sundays. And packed every single one line-up around the block. And they were so cool. Everybody had tattoos. And these are cool because there's New York City, right? But they have the hipster crowd. You know, this guy started that ministry in 2010. So 10 years ago, he was like Justin Bieber's pastor. He was like, you know, he's the dude. He's famous. He was on like, Oprah's. He was on the Oprah show that, that one where they sit down under a tree and talk about feelings. I can describe anything that Oprah has ever done. But
Sammy Uyama: Was this the guy that convinced Justin Bieber to cancel his tour midway and like?
Andrew Love: don't know if he convinced him.
Sammy Uyama: As the story, I heard. I heard he's at Hillsong one day, and some pastor was like, "You need to stop touring and focus on God, and just to be there." You know, he did it. Something like that.
Andrew Love: Sure. I mean, if you look at where that kid is that, Justin. I can call him a kid because he's Canadian, and he's younger than me. Look where he's at. He's in a, he's finding himself in a much better place, you know. Largely thanks to him. So this guy anyway has a lot of influence. He's, he's like, the, the standard-bearer for like, being a hipster pastor, okay? But last week, he got fired. After 10 years of being this rock star. He was fired for having an affair with his wife, um, on his wife. But that sounds weird, too. So he just had an affair with a woman outside of his marriage, and he got fired. And he, he admitted it. He admitted us wrong. Yeah. But I mean, to be that famous when you're that high up, and the fall in the crash is really, really painful, right? So yeah, my knee jerk reaction was judging him and being like, "You've probably heard so many people's faith right there, right?" A lot of people are relying on you. Because I specifically remember going to one of the services back in New York, and him saying that he cannot afford to have a bad day, because so many people depend on him. But he had this secret life. And so, you know, after I breathe for a moment, and Sammy and I talked a little bit then it's like, okay, let's not, that's stupid. We have no idea what his situation is. There's no point. It doesn't serve anything. We're not doing anything productive. But we would like to talk about his accountability and the need for more accountability. The higher you go up in life, right? The more responsibilities you get. The more, um, I don't know, the more trust that you get from other people, the more that any little mistake could turn into something really, really devastating, right? So, Sammy, I want to stop talking to hear you right now.
Sammy Uyama: Appreciate the backstory, Andrew. And yeah, let's go. We just want to share, like what this made us reflect on. And this was a huge takeaway for us is like Andrew shares insight earlier, it's like actually the higher you go, the more important accountability is, maybe. And, and, and it's like for two reasons because there's more at stake. And also you know that the higher you climb in something, the, there's this like, opposite magnet. Just like the, what would you call it, the pushing force away with you? Just like an opposing force. Thank you, my teacher. There's an opposing force that repels you from like, feeling like, "Oh, I don't want that. I don't know." Not even I don't want that. "But I don't need that anymore. It's like, it's really a luring temptation." Or like, "Oh, yeah. I'm like, I'm reliable. I'm doing great. This is really real for me." So when we're talking about it, it really hit home. It's because I experience it as Sammy Uyama. You know, working in High Noon. They're like the porn experts and like, masters of sexual integrity. And above, that's like, okay, Sammy Uyama is acting director of the whole organization, right? And more than anybody in the world, you could argue. It's like, needs, he probably 's got his act together in the sexual realm, right? It's like, talks about sexual integrity all the time and the importance of, like, not looking at porn, and having a really great sex life with your spouse. And it's, like, really real for me. And that like that, opposing the repelling force of like, I don't want to like, check-in about how I'm doing. You know, I need some. One is like, "Yeah, I'm good. Yeah, I'm Sammy Uyama. Like the coolest guy in the world." Right? Then, and then other times, it's like, "Oh, there's a lot of people relying on me. It's like, if they, you know, it's gonna, like ruin their image of me a little bit. Whatever it is, they're looking up to me." And, you know, these, these things, if they're really real. And I think even more the second I get, in that way I can sympathize with people like it was named Carl. Yeah, I hit his position, right? And I'm grateful to be able to look at experiences like this and just take it as a reminder for myself. Do you know what I can learn from it? It's no point, like, he says. Like, it's a waste of time, just like, try to dissect his life and what went wrong, right? Yeah. But like, for me, it's like good opportunities to be humble without having to have this huge fall myself. I'm sure he's so humbled right now, right? So if I can, if I can take 10% of that, you know, without having to pay the cost to pay, right? That's great. And, yeah, like, I need to yeah, I need accountability. You know, which I'm grateful for uncle David, that he recognizes that because he does., he checks up on me, you know. How's it going? And like, I can talk with him. And, and, you know, talk with you know, when Andrew, when you and I talk. And, and with High Noon Connect, you know, we've got, we do have this place that we can share about how we're actually doing. And that's the culture I'm inspired to create where, wherever you are, on the totem pole, so to speak. If we're a totem pole with the lamest shortest totem pole out there.
Andrew Love: And totem poles are like seven characters, or at least a seven-character totem pole.
Sammy Uyama: And, yeah, but we've got these, that's a culture that I think is cool is that first and foremost, we recognize just the humaneness of, of each one of us. And we can connect based on that level. Not like, oh, this super cool guy, or, you know, whatever. That's my say.
Andrew Love: Yeah. There's this thing, imagine how sneaky the ego is in this scenario. Because I know people recently in this, in this realm, who kind of left the High Noon world because they're like, actually, well, I'm a leader. Now I have these responsibilities. So I don't want to report to other people. Like I have my own kind of accountability. And they kind of made this really sneaky way to kind of say that I don't want to report that to people that I'm supposed to be leading. I, because I'm a leader now. So I only report to my leaders, this kind of thing. And that's really, it's just a firewall that almost makes total sense until you realize that a true leader is somebody who's showing an example. And so sometimes, sometimes the best people to be accountable to are your followers, right? Maybe there's some stuff that they shouldn't know because it's above their pay grade. But for the most part, that's your ego talking and saying, "Oh no. Though these people, they won't understand because they don't have the same responsibility." That's all horse crap. Like to be, to be an open book to everybody is freedom. To feel like there are some people who can handle you and some people can't. That's really like largely ego-driven, you know. And also I want to mention, that, you know, last night, on a whim, we were coming back from somewhere and we were really hungry. So we stopped by this local restaurant. They are called wargs here. And they're really cheap, right? Because it's really basic food. It's like rice, fried rice, and stuff like this. And we haven't had food like that. We've been eating so well, like a lot of delicious fruits and all that. And we went to this place, just got so hungry, and we ate like crazy. Like, and the more we ate the hungry we got and it was fried rice, and chicken, right? The store. This all will make sense. In the end, when we got back home, you know, I couldn't sleep last night. My wife couldn't sleep last night. My son couldn't sleep. I said, all of our stomachs were all jacked up and we realized that there was MSG in this, which was why we were so eating it so voraciously, right? But the quality of the oil was really low. And the only reason why we knew that the quality of the food was bad was that our body was used to a higher standard and reacted. Do you know what I mean? Like if we were always eating junk food, and then we had more kinds of low-quality food, our body wouldn't have reacted. Because that's what it's used to. But in this case, we've been taking such good care of ourselves that when we went out and had some junk food, our body said, "No way, man. right?" And it's the same with anything is like, if you have a high standard of accountability to the people around you. Then when you start hanging out with that person, that you kind of like kind, of like they're kind of attractive. And when they say hi to you, they give you a layer of welfare. And you spend a little more time. You start getting a little bit, the lines become blurred. That is so apparent when you have accountability. You just know it in your heart. I should be doing this because I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to, you know. It talks to if you have no accountability, then it all becomes kind of, you know, shockingly relative. And it's not that bad things aren't so bad. And then, you end up getting yourself in a whole heap of trouble. So accountability really like keeps your standard visible to you. It keeps it close.
Sammy Uyama: Yeah. Only thing I can do is say, well, you said in different words.
Andrew Love: Okay, you're the director, right? Of High Noon, which is all about integrity. So how much? Is it important for you to be able to keep that high level, level of integrity? So what are your thoughts? As, because I'm technically your underling, right? And everybody listening is technically under, you know, your direction. You're the director. So what's your feeling about it? Should you hold back some stuff because you're the director? Or should, is it important for you to be an open book as much as possible?
Sammy Uyama: That's a, that's a question. I'm still trying to figure out the appropriateness. Is there such a thing? In it by American standards? No, right? You know, I have a really, it's one of the things, but one of the things going well in Asia is they take it to the extremes, but they definitely value dignity, like elegance and dignity, right? And a lot of that's based on this, this concept of appropriateness. And I, so at least where I am, you know, there's something I like, ideas and thoughts I bounced around with. Like, what, what's like a good level to share about and we've settled on right now at least. And if you've got any insight, great. I'm always happy to talk about anything. If anyone asks, right? Sure. And then, then those things, I feel like, if I feel like, oh, I don't want people to know about this, then that's like, I treat it as a flag. Okay, let's look at that. Why, why don't I want to, right? And so, you know, I those are, most of what comes up fit into that category. And then once in a while, there's something where we're, like, okay, what is this, is this appropriate for people to know, irrelevant? Maybe that's something else that deals with this relevant to talk about. And it's, it's really, it gets tricky, right? Because it's like if we're just in a space of creating openness, honesty like that's the point. Okay, yeah, see. It's valuable to share. But if we're talking about dealing with someone else, and like, trying to focus on them, having some kind of breakthrough. How relevant is what I'm dealing with, at that moment, talking about that?
Andrew Love: Their motivation for wanting to know.
Sammy Uyama: Right? Also, like my motivation for wanting to share and not to share, right? And so you know, sometimes we like to share things for attention. Not attention, it makes it sound petty, right? But, but like for, I guess, that's just what it is, right?
Andrew Love: Giving your example. You know, your version of when I was a kid, remember. It's like, is this for you to hear yourself talk or for them?
Sammy Uyama: Yeah, right. Right. Right. Exactly. It's like, is this actually just meant to help? Does it actually help people? And then, there's stuff like, actually, surprisingly, more than sex. It's I feel more uncomfortable talking about money, right? So weirdly. Yeah, yeah, just like, just like in general. Like, um, um, budget stuff, right? And like, get it, you know, High Noon has a board of directors and.
Andrew Love: He said. You're live censoring yourself while we're talking about.
Sammy Uyama: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if it's okay to talk, you know. This is exactly happening right now. You know, it's like, is this like, had anything, right? Or is this appropriate to talk about?
Andrew Love: In terms of relevance? Yeah, details are also important because even when you share, right? Let's say, you are sharing in a group setting and say, you and I are talking about the husband, wife stuff. We're talking to a bunch of single people, then you need to know the basis factors in, right? Like, how much details do they need to know that will actually help them and how much will be a giant distraction that will cause them to have all sorts of weird takeaways that they don't like actually gets in the way of their growth, right? So, yeah. What you just experienced as a live version of as, like, the level of details that you divulge would actually probably serve as a distraction rather than helping people understand the point that you're making. Which is, I think, the highest level of irony that you could reach.
Sammy Uyama: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, this is, there are different situations instead. Like, if it's about, if I'm actually in, I think that's the best I can do right now is, if we're in a place where we're talking, you know, everyone's talking about themselves, and whatever it happens to be going on in my life at that moment. Happy to talk about it. If I'm, I'm facilitating a group of guys. And if it comes up, "Hey, you know, people want to know how I'm doing. Happy to talk about it." But in general, if I'm facilitating a group of guys, it's really about them, right? And my job is just to like, facilitate. And you know, what do you think, how are you doing today, what do they need to hear anything about that I almost crashed my bike staring at some lady’s butt. That's, that didn't actually happen. That's just a hypothetical, right? But um.
Andrew Love: Yeah, no.
Sammy Uyama: I was saying you can, you can take it for me.
Andrew Love: I've struck a nerve. I think this is one thing that we're all begging for, right? A level of transparency with what's going on in America right now. There are so many layers of deception or misinformation, and nobody knows what is true, right? Like, who do you trust? You trust, you just your media? Like, how do you figure out what's true? Because the leaders, Sharon gonna tell on both sides, it's like, politicians have been trained at this point to deny everything until they're totally busted and then, they'll admit it. Even under oath, right? Bill Clinton is a great example of that to do with sex, specifically. So what society seems to be yearning for is somebody just to tell the truth. But even if at that level, if they told us the truth, and a bunch of details we didn't understand anyway, because few people actually understand the intricacies of politics. They just know the headlines. They don't know the details, right? And maybe that's not so helpful. So I think in terms of like, accountability too. Yeah. That you're an open book. If people ask you, with the right motivation to learn, and you give them relevant information and don't hold anything back based on fear. But that you tailor the content to help them. Does that make sense? They're gonna agree with that. It's like, it's not about whether you feel like telling them or not. If you tell them everything that you feel will be relevant to them?
Sammy Uyama: Yeah, it's very different when someone's asking you for specifics because they want to understand verses like, they're just looking for ammo to shoot you down with, right?
Andrew Love: Yeah, same with, like, if somebody asked me about what I believe, like my faith. And I'm like, "Well, why do you want to know? Are you, are you willing to have a five-hour conversation? Because I'm really passionate about this, right? And if you just want to make fun of me, then anyway, have fun." But trust somebody else, right? So yeah, motivation is a big factor. But, um.
Sammy Uyama: It gets tricky, right? Because like, how do you actually get good at or accurately assess this kind of stuff? There's a lot of factors to take into consideration.
Andrew Love: Sure. But what we're doing right now is we're, we're finding out the details that we’re asked a lot at live shows. Like what does it mean, what does accountability mean, and honestly? Those two things are what we're talking about right now. Because some people ask us a very great question, which is like, does this, does honesty mean just to tell everything, everybody, everything all the time? It's like, no, that's gross. People don't need to know about your bowel movements so much unless they're your doctor or a concerned friend or relative, right? You don't need to know all this stuff. You know, it's like FYI. You know, I don't know. But that, that, that does, it's really important because when you are struggling, who you tell, and what you tell them really makes a difference. Because I know a lot of people kind of dance around and they don't give you the details, right? But also, when you're in a group setting of accountability, I know some people give way too many details. Well, we don't need to know what exactly you watched and like, we don't like that. That's not relevant to these guys. That's probably a trigger for these guys. So, kind of, I think a good policy is to ask a lot of questions. Well, why do you ask? What do you want to know, like hope to gain from this? And then if you're divulging, or if you're asking somebody to ask them, you know, like, as many detailed questions as possible, as comfortable as they're willing to. You know, I think that's the real solution is asking. Because then you can find out what's, what's what, why is this conversation actually happening? Because there's the expressed stuff, and then there's this subtext and the real reason why. And so questions help to reveal the real reason why.
Sammy Uyama: I think the implication of this is the importance of face to face communication time with people. This, this seems, sounds really hard to do. And 144 characters or less, right? It's this level of conversation.
Andrew Love: Absolutely. Yeah. So I mean, that's, I think that's good. We struck on this, because, you know, we do get asked a lot. And it's really important. I mean, we started out with a very devastating story, right? This guy, Carl has a wife. He got kids. He's got daughters. I think two or three daughters who are looking to their dad as a role model for like, the standard-bearer of a husband, right? And then how much would this damage their own faith in him and even possibly, Christianity as a Christian pastor. So, um, we started there. But then we it's really about, well, what was he withholding from, from the people in his life? Because he didn't have obviously enough accountability with the right people to help them stay in line with his own. If he could map out his life, this would not be a part of that map. This was an accidental turn that veered off a cliff, right? So how did that happen? He, he lost his GPS. He lost his accountability. He lost, you know? So it's not to say, yeah, thank you, Sammy. Reminded me like, we don't need to judge. I need that sometimes. But yeah, the lesson that we can all learn from this is like, the more responsibility you have, the more pressure that you have, the easier it is to get squashed by that pressure and to let it define you. Rather than to help it turn you into pressure, turns coal into diamonds, right? Something like that. Through, through time. Isn't that the process? It's, anyway, I know diamonds are created to pressure. Yeah, yeah. So please, by all means, everybody find, find more accountability as your life goes on, not less. And figure out exactly what level of accountability you have with a given person. Because when you find an accountability partner, it's important to define the relationship and figure it out well. How much should I be divulging? How much can you handle and have different levels of accountability? Some people really, it's important to really get it all out even the details, right? Somebody who can handle hearing the details. Other people can handle it, they just need to know a basic overview of your day. So if you learn how, what, what level of honesty to apply to accountability, that's a great recipe. Because day to day, you usually don't have to report everything, every day. It's just a lot of times day to day, daily maintenance of accountability is just a basic overview of your day. But every once in a while, it's important to do a deep dive accountability with somebody to really practice honesty at a very high level. Because that's like very confronting. And what are you confronting? Your ego. Your desire to withhold information for the sake of salvaging your, your image in front of whoever it is that you're withholding from them.
Sammy Uyama: You gotta be clear on what you want, like, what what, what are you measuring against, or going towards? And then, and then divulging that, communicating that to people actually. That's a, it's really, so it makes it so much easier. You know, it's like, if you really clear the kind of relationship you want with your wife, it's so great to have like a buddy. Be like, "Hey, I know what kind of relationship you want in your marriage. The way you're talking to that lady back there. I don't see that going anywhere good." I mean, you can have people that can actually, you know, help keep you on track.
Andrew Love: Yeah. And eventually, you know, when you have enough accountability, then you see yourself talking to that lady. And then you report it says, yeah, this is not in line with the men that I want to be, right? That's the ultimate is when you have you're so good, you've exercised that accountability muscle that you can be accountable to yourself. And then it's nearly like getting it off your chest with somebody, as you see it. And we've seen a lot of people go through that, right? Where they learn the habit of accountability and they like, their reports are so wise. It's like they're reporting almost from a third-person perspective. They're like, oh, yeah, I saw myself do this and I stopped myself doing this.
Sammy Uyama: Even just the knowledge about having a relationship that exists in the back of your mind. You don't know it, you know, it's even just that being there makes such a difference.
Andrew Love: Yeah. Absolutely. So we hope this was helpful, because this is, you know, two of our five virtues are accountability and honesty. And they are one that, that especially honesty. People like "Yeah, yeah. I know what honesty looks like." But this is like the nuance of how much honesty to divulge to whom and how often. And that's something that you need to really define in order to create a really toned accountability muscle.
Sammy Uyama: What do you think of this as a rule of thumb out there? Whatever is typical of you, like practicing training the opposite. Hey, you're just a vomiter. And you just like blah, blah, blah, and you just go on and on about everything that's going on in your day in your life. The power and training conciseness and they actually reflect on what to say to communicate with another person. And for someone that really has a hard time divulging that you need to practice actually going deeper into what and how, whatever it is, how your day is going, or whatever is going on. And actually, get comfortable. It's very uncomfortable, right? Whatever is comfortable with oversharing. Whatever is uncomfortable for me. In a lot of areas, I'd be hands down. It's a great approach. I don't know, I'm not sure about this. What do you think?
Andrew Love: Yeah. I mean, in the cases that you presented, sure. Sure.
Sammy Uyama: Sure. Why not? Okay.
Andrew Love: I mean, it's good just to experiment. Because if these are muscle groups, it's the same. Like it's hard to find a really good style of exercise, modality, that's enjoyable. That you like. Take, you know, do you want to go to the gym? Do you want to go just walking in the park? Do you want to rock climb? It's hard to find the thing that really makes you excited. And the same with accountability, honesty, grace, integrity, courage, you got to find your way of doing it that's rewarding. And it's not going to be, none of them are going to be easy at first. Just like no exercise is easy at first. Your muscles hurt. When you haven't exercised all the time. Your ego will hurt when you start doing any of these at first but finding your way, that makes sense, will, will make it rewarding and easy. Easier.
Sammy Uyama: One last thing. Last thing. You know, these five virtues. They're not just, oh, these are good, right? Like, these are the essentials. So we didn't, we didn't pick these because they'll help. And it's like if you want a kind of life with no shadows. You want this kind of open. You don't want a High Noon life where you have, really you see others and you're seen by others. You have an amazing connection with other people and these are, this is what it takes. So account, and I bring them up because accountability is just essential for life to really build the kind of life we want. We're growing and we're excited about where we are now and where the future is taking us.
Andrew Love: Yeah, and to avoid disaster, as well as to achieve great heights. You gotta, you got to constantly get good at sharing. Like, oh, I just had this realization. I feel like I'm getting closer to my, my destiny, to my goals, right? And then also, I just got super scared. Totally screwed me over. I did something very self-destructive that impeded me to get to my goal. So to have both conversations are extremely important and will fast track you to joy and happiness and fulfillment.
Sammy Uyama: Yeah, so I suppose it's all we got for you guys today. Accountability. A-C-C-O-U-N-T.
Andrew Love: Gonna see. This is a double whammy. Double feature.
Sammy Uyama: You'd let me finish spelling. Good thing because I was losing steam there.
Andrew Love: People know how to spell Sammy.
Sammy Uyama: I'm worried about that. I don't.
Andrew Love: I don't either. We're not people. People, real people not as well. All right. All right, everybody.
Sammy Uyama: We'll see you guys next time. See you. Thank you, really.
Andrew Love: No, thank you.