Transcript Disclaimer - May contain the occasional confusing, inaccurate, or unintentionally funny transcription moment. It’s all part of the show.

Brent  00:00

Hey everybody, we're really excited for today's episode. But before we jump in, we have a couple of quick updates on our end. The first is gratitude share. We just have to thank you. Consistently, week in and week out, we are performing in the top five percent of downloads of all podcasts globally. So the only way that is possible is through you, our listeners. So we want to thank you for that. The second update that we have is we are going to be shifting to a bi-weekly distribution going forward after today's episode. The reason for this is pretty straightforward. Rob and I have a lot of fun activities planned, and we have to maintain that balance in our schedules as we always promote that within the Midlife Circus podcast. You got to make sure you're doing fun adventures. So that will happen starting after this week. We'll go to a bi-weekly distribution.

Rob  00:52

And since we're making this change, it's going to be really important that you're following our show so you can stay up to date on each and every release that's coming out. In two weeks, we're actually really excited to have Ezra Vansel joining us on our episode. Ezra is a musician and songwriter. And during that episode, he actually does a live performance for me and Brent of a new song that hasn't been released yet. So you'll definitely want to tune in to that. So thanks again for all of your support and listening. And now let's get into our show.

Brent  01:23

Rob, when you were a kid, what was the wildest thing that you tried to pull off in a single summer? And most importantly, were you actually able to finish it?

Rob  01:54

Yes, I was. I'll start with that as the answer. So this take, I'm going to go back, Brent, to the 1990. I was in high school, actually. I was a freshman in high school, and I barely made the freshman soccer team. In fact, I think I was technically cut, and they came back and had a second team that happened or something like that, like a second freshman team, which allowed me to be on a team, but didn't play much. I rode the bench the entire time. So I was what, 13 years old, 14 years old, didn't play a lot, and I was slow. I was ridiculously slow, out of shape, didn't know how to show up. It's I came back from having lived in New York City for a couple of years, not playing soccer, to then thinking I just, oh, I'll just play like I did before. I'll join the team with all the guys I grew up playing soccer with. Not a problem at all. Physically, I was the shape of an L. I was 5'2 with an 11-sized shoe.

Brent  02:52

An L. I've never heard that before.

Rob  02:54

Yeah, yeah. So big feet, but still little guy. And so I barely made the freshman soccer team. Fast forward to the next summer. I spent the entire next summer learning how to run and learning how to run faster. And so I went to a couple of speed camps. I worked out a ton over the summer in terms of running a lot just to get in good shape, practicing ball handling skills. So come fast forward to tryouts for my sophomore year of high school. And I'm in actually good shape. And I show up at fresh or sophomore tryouts, and I went from barely making the freshman team to practicing with the varsity team and being a swing player between varsity and JV. And that's how my season was going to set up swinging between varsity soccer and JV soccer. The very first game, I'm playing in the JV game that day, and I was going to sit the bench for the varsity game, maybe play a little bit. And in the first half of the game, coaches there, I'm having a really good game too. And uh I go in and I go in to challenge these two guys for the ball, fall down, and one of them lands on my arm, and I break my arm right next to my shoulder. First game of the season. So I go from not making a team to almost making varsity a year later. And the very first game of the season, I'm out for the rest of it. Can't play at all. So I yes, I accomplished what I did because I just didn't want to get cut next year as I was going into it and came back quite a bit better.

Brent  04:22

What's cool about that, not that you broke your arm. That's not good. But what's good about that is that it was showing you like if you put the effort in, you challenge yourself, you can get to the result that you want. Unfortunately, you didn't get a full season of it, but just help me finish the story. How was your next two years for on the varsity team the next two years?

Rob  04:43

Went played the state championship game, all of that, which was great. But I will tell you there was a consolation in the whole thing. Not that I didn't get a play, but I also had that major growth spurt that people go through that summer as well. So I went from being 5'2 to 6'2 and a little bit bigger size, which maybe I played a little bit better. So I yes, I finally went through puberty, and girls started taking notice, Brent. In fact, you know, practicing for the team was like, who's that guy? People that I've known for over a year, who's that new guy? Is that a new kid that came to this school? Because I'd grown so much over that summer, physically changed so much. I started to have not game. I wouldn't say I had game, but I was getting noticed a little bit more.

Brent  05:27

It's always helpful. Always helpful.

Rob  05:29

Yeah.

Brent  05:30

So that brings us to today's conversation. And we wanted to be a little bit nostalgic, but here we all are in our midlife. And we've got a summer approaching. We're right at the early stages of summer. And what we thought would be fun for today's episode is to do something a little bit different. So we're going to tie today's episode to what we call the midlife five rings. And this is called a five ring challenge. And each of the rings, we've discussed them in previous episodes. So just to refresh everybody's memory, if you haven't heard of them, is relationship, health, purpose, adventure, and finance. Those are the five rings of the midlife circus. So what we did in advance of this episode is we challenged each other to come up with one challenge each that we're going to take on for the upcoming summer associated with each one of the rings. So I came up with my five for the five separate rings. Rob came up with his five for the five separate rings, and we're going to share them today. We did not share it in advance because we wanted just to hear it live. So we're excited about it. But the whole idea of this episode is midlife is really important to challenge yourself. And a lot of times we allow challenges to kind of make their way to the end of the year. You're getting into that fourth quarter, the last three months of the year. You're like, oh, I got to start exercising more. I'm totally behind for my goal that I set it out in January of that year. So we're saying, why not pick some challenges that you can do this summer? So we're also going to challenge our listeners to maybe take on one or two of the rings or maybe all five and share some of those. Great way to share them, as always, is message the show on your podcast player app. And it's super simple. You can either text us or you can leave a voicemail. But we're going to share our five challenges that we've identified today. And the idea is to challenge ourselves in midlife. And so let's kick things off, Rob.

Rob  07:32

So five challenges over a three-month period of time, Brent, is the timeline. I'm thinking about summer lasting. So it's a three-month window to try and accomplish these things. The first ring of the circus we're going to talk about is finance. And a lot of people, in my experience, typically avoid financial topics when it comes to summer. They're going on vacation, they're enjoying vacation, might be spending a little bit more money during vacation than they normally would throughout the year. And so I've seen a lot of people avoid any financial change when in actuality summer's a really good time to kind of do an assessment because a lot of things typically in life slow down. So you can make some adjustments and can look at your finances, maybe from a different lens, being halfway through the year to make changes for the second half of the year. So when it comes to finance, Brent, what's your summer challenge?

Brent  08:21

So I'm going opposite of your advice that you just provided. And once again, we did not share anything. So here's my typical course of action over the last 30 years. I actively follow the stock market. I actively follow specific stocks and specific companies. So as I was preparing for this challenge, I'm like, oh, there's a couple of books that I want to read about finance. And I'm notoriously, I dive into them, I'm curious about them, but I often don't do anything with that information. So I'm starting to ask myself, like, why am I always tracking the stock market? Am I now being sucked into the emotions of the highs and the lows and everything that it brings? So here's the challenge that I'm putting on myself is I'm going to allow myself to check in on my own personal finances once a month for the entire summer, which I normally do. So I just do my checks and balances, and that's it. No stock market checks, no individual stock checks, nothing. Because I also have a financial advisor in place. So let's say there's a three-alarm fire and something's going on within my portfolio. His job is to reach out to me, not me reach out to him. And he actually does a great job of that. So this was a challenge that I have a habit, Rob, that I've been using for over 30 years of checking the market sometimes multiple times a day. What's going on with the market? What have we seen? What's the news? I'm going to turn it off for the entire summer. And I can't wait to try this, but it will be challenging for me because it's a habit.

Rob  09:56

This is going to be tough for you, I think, given how much you look at it and how much you pay attention to it. So what day of the month? I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions about this. What day of the month do you actually do your financial check through or your financial forecasting, the thing you said you do once a month? What day of the month are you going to do it?

Brent  10:13

I typically do it on the first or second or third day of the month. So all numbers are in from the prior month. And I just do my checks and balances and my reconciliation. And for me, also like with kids going to college and things like that, I got to make sure things are funded properly and so forth. So I'll still take care of the normal things, but that's it. Like I'm trying to say, I'm not going to try to evaluate my portfolio and look at all these different changes I could make. Nope. I've already done that work with my financial advisor. So I don't need to keep tweaking it and looking at it. But the key here is not looking at the daily market trends.

Rob  10:50

Which that'll be the toughest part since it is so accessible. So what have you done with the apps on your phone?

Brent  10:55

Okay. So my banking app that I use for investing, I'm taking off my phone. I'll keep it on my iPad because sometimes you have to do that authentication to through the bank that way. But it's my phone that I'd be the most guilty of tracking the market. So I'm going to delete it off of my phone. And then I'm going to be extra aware of the typical websites, like if it's a Yahoo Money or something like that, CNN Money, wherever it might be. No go. Like, not allowed to go there. So I've already started to put some of those measures in place, but this one's so tricky for me. Such a first world problem.

Rob  11:32

This might be one of the bigger, the tougher challenges you have, not looking to be a little bit more. Wait till you see some of my other ones. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. So let's hear yours.

Brent  11:40

Let's hear yours on the finance side.

Rob  11:41

I struggle coming up with this one as we were thinking about the five challenges. Because I is, as you said, you work with a financial advisor. I've been in the industry, work with a financial advisor for 20 plus years. And so a lot of my finances are kind of a set it and forget it. I don't have to worry about those things. And so I went a little bit different angle with my three-month challenge, Brent. And it has to do with something we mentioned, I think, a couple episodes ago, that I'm going to go deep in trying to help our podcast find a partner and a sponsor. And not uh not just anybody, but someone that really aligns with us and with our show. So I'm going to be a little more proactive with that. And it's not just to find someone that's going to finance the entire thing, but actually just maybe help offset some expenses that we might have. But find someone the next three months. So it'll be a little more outreach on my side of the table to go and see if we can find a good partner of the show from a brand that either both of us currently use or both of us would like to start using in our personal lives going forward.

Brent  12:35

I think that's a great one because I'm also a benefactor of that one. I thought you might like that. I yeah, I know when you and I were talking about this episode, and you're like, gosh, what am I going to do for finance? And then it was yesterday. You were like, light bulb went off, and you're like, I got one. I got one. What's cool about this is the easy gravitation for both of us is to dive into our personal finances and try to do more. Read more about our investments and tweak this and track more spending, but we already have built those systems in place. We've talked a lot about it on this podcast. So it's cool to see that you pick something that has a it's directly can impact you, but it also is tangential in the sense of like, yeah, it could benefit us, but it's something that it's financially related, but it's cool and it's something we've talked about. So hey, thanks for taking that one on. I like it.

Rob  13:30

If we by the end of the summer, if we could just get nothing out of our pocket to keep this thing afloat, I'd be okay, I'd be actually very ecstatic by that, by that movement.

Brent  13:38

Absolutely. That's great. Okay, you ready to move on to the next one? Let's go.

Brent  13:42

All right, so the next one is relationships. And here's what I find with relationships is relationships are the easiest ring to put on autopilot, but I like to say it's often the most expensive one to ignore because those are your regular relationships. Now, the summer brings all sorts of things vacations, time with family, more time outdoors. So it creates a lot of natural openings. But my challenge with this one to you, Rob, is you and I don't know your answer, is what's the intentionality behind relationships? Because I think autopilot can kind of come in the summer because you know you're going to have more connection points with people. What are you going to share with us as one of your growth goals for this ring of relationships for this summer?

Rob  14:28

This answer scares me a lot, uh, as I as I give some context to it, Brent. So this summer, I am actually going to start dating my wife again. Wow. Interesting, right? It's it you talked about relationships kind of getting into a rut or a habit that develops. And I started thinking about my relationship here at the house. And can I do something a little bit different here in our relationship and think about taking my wife, Tara, on a proper date at least once a month. Now, we go out to dinner from time to time. Uh, we love going out to different restaurants, but I don't think of those as dates. It's more of like, hey, let's go out to dinner tomorrow night. Nothing really planned except for the topic of we're going to go out to dinner. I think of a proper date as a true proper date. We've been married for 28 years, and so it's easy to not think about dating again, but I want to go back and think, how can I actually go back and date during this period of time and actually build out proper dates, only once a month. So that means I have to do three over the summer. I and I got to plan those now because she's probably going to listen to this podcast here in a couple of weeks. And so hopefully I've got one knocked out by then and it's just a surprise. If not, I'm probably going to hear about it. It's like when is you actually really going to do a date for me? Um, but that's uh that's my plan is this summer is to uh take my wife on three proper dates.

Brent  15:48

Let's define proper date because yeah, everybody knows that listens to the podcast regularly that you guys are always out doing adventures. So you're out camping, you're in your van, you're exploring new places. So that's already set because you guys are good about putting your schedule out there. But share what you say proper. What does that mean?

Rob  16:09

So when I think about it, it's more than just one thing planned and it kind of goes around something. So yes, we go out in the van and we do stuff. We just got back from a rafting trip, we're hanging out together doing those things. When I think about a proper date, it could either be a surprise thing that she's going to get to go experience that in a dinner or a hike on a new trail that we've never been to, that I plan and go find this location that we've never done something. So there's a little bit of awe and inspiration that comes from being out doing something new with a nice dinner attached to it. We do like going out to eat, but a nice dinner attached to that. And that nice dinner, and I think back to the last, this is going to make me sound awful, Brent. The last I would say proper date I took her on was during COVID. And I surprised her with, and it was at the time when everything was locked down, so I had to go and get a takeout pizza. And in the van, I had a separate location. We I went and picked up pizza, picked her up. We drove in the van, sat in the van, had a glass of wine, sat next to the river, and just had pizza together. But it was a whole outing planned around doing a meal together.

Brent  17:10

That is awesome. Like that's cool. Like 28 years, so congrats on that. Thank you. This year I'm celebrating my 25th anniversary. Nice, that's a big one. Um, and I just have to throw this out here, Rob, is you're going to make me look horrible. That's my goal. I mean, wait a minute. I'm not going to rewrite mine on the relationships, but mine is so self-centered compared to what you just said.

Rob  17:37

That was not my intent.

Brent  17:38

I do apologize to my wife. Her summers, as we know, are very, very busy because she's uh her business is occupies her. So we will find time uh to do amazing things. But I'm going to share mine because mine is so different than yours. So I've shared this before. I'm in this interesting stage of life where my kids are one is in college and he's going to stay now at his college for the summer. So in that town or that city. My other one is going to go to college next year, but he's going to start his goal is to work full-time this summer. A void that I have is for the past several years, is my golf buddies have been my kids. And I love playing golf. I'm not competitive, I just enjoy being outside. So I needed to solve this one. We belong to this club and we play golf there quite a bit, just but as a family. And my wife, I mean, Carolyn's busy, so we'll get a couple of rounds in. But I'm like, but where am I going to fill the void? I my last summer I played a couple times a week with one of my kids. It was great. So I reached out to the head pro of the club that I belong to, and I said, Do you have any sort of men's league or any sort of regular occurring thing? He said, Yeah, there's actually this group of guys that get together every single Friday. It's not really something that's overly formal, but it's about 16 to 20 guys that get together and they play golf and they play these fun games. And I know a couple of the guys, which is cool. So I joined that group. Nice. I know that I need to start making new connections, and this is a fun way in midlife to challenge myself. I'm a hermit, Rob. Like I play golf a lot by myself, and I'm like, I got to get past that. And I just realized this summer would be a big void with my older one being in college and staying at his college for the summer. So I'm like, I got to fill it. So that is going to be my relationship expansion for this summer. So something new for me. I'm super excited for it, but of course I'm nervous. And I also know there's some crazy good golfers on the list, and I'm not a crazy good golfer. No, you're not. Well, let's just keep it all. It's yeah, I am not a good golfer.

Rob  19:56

You are better than me, but you've also played a lot more than me.

Brent  19:59

I started when I was about eight. You started when you were about 50. So that's a different story. No, I can play golf pretty well, but I have my moments where it's not well.

Rob  20:09

Well, I'm interested in this, Brent, because for you, this is a pretty big step being somewhat introvert. It's you know just a couple of guys, but you're going to be thrown into a foursome with strangers almost every week for the most part. How do you see yourself getting ready for that?

Brent  20:23

I'm excited for it because uh it's easy for me to connect with people, especially when we're in the outdoors. And from my understanding, it's a pretty chill group. Like everybody's just out there to have fun. So I'm not really worried about the golf side of it. Like I'll have my good days and my bad days. But I'm really looking forward to meeting some new people in our community. And a lot of the people that they might be out-of-towners as well, but I'm just excited to go challenge myself. So, this is like you said, this is a new challenge for me because it's easy for me to be introverted. So I'm going to have to put on my extroverted hat for a few hours a week. I think I can do it.

Rob  21:01

I feel good about it. Have you been practicing? That's the other thing is our courses are just opening up right now, given our winter season up here in the mountains. Have you been swinging the clubs at all?

Brent  21:12

No. So I'm going to start out and I'm going to be a total mess. They'll be like, why did we let this guy in? And I'll be like, Well, um, I'm just here to have fun. So I will have to uh get myself an order. I think my first outing will be in about a week. Oh, wow, quick. And so yeah, yeah, I got to get on it.

Rob  21:35

Nice. Nice. Oh, that'll be fun. And that takes us into the next one, being the fact that we're going to be outdoors quite a bit this summer.

Rob  21:42

Both you and I love being outdoors. And the next area of the circus, the rings of the circus is health. And since we have the ability to be outdoors, I think it's an easier time for people to start thinking about their health and focusing on their health. Every time I know in the summer, if I'm going to go to the beach or go to a river, I take off my shirt and I look down. I wish I had paid attention to my health a couple months ago, or maybe a year ago or two years ago. And so it's a it's kind of in your face a little bit more in the summer, possibly, because you're wearing a little less clothing that you might want to adjust your health a little bit. Brent, when you think about health, what's your challenge for the next three months or for this summer focused on your health?

Brent  22:23

This one was super fun for me because I had to challenge myself, similar to some of the other rings, of what is my natural course of act action or activity? And so I said, I'm going to sign up for this race. I want to do a mountain bike race, I want to do a couple trail runs. And I started to get myself together there. I said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That's the easy button for me. What's one thing that I should try to do that I've been avoiding for years? So we talked about this in a previous episode. It was actually right at the beginning of this year. And one of the things that I want a better understanding of is what do I eat and what is the consistency of what I eat, meaning what's the nutrients and so forth. So I'm going to make the commitment to use an app to track my food intake through the entire summer. So the cool thing about the apps today and doing my research, and I've never done this before. So I have a general idea, but I think I'm probably off by about 2,000 calories a day. Because some days I go really big and get really big. So what is cool about the apps, and this might be a laughable moment for a lot of other people because they might be doing this, but you can take a picture through these apps today, and it'll actually give you kind of a general makeup of the meal. You can scan barcodes, you can do voice memos. So I was like, they're making it so easy for me to do this, but it's actually a curiosity question. I actually want to understand how much protein am I getting? How much fiber am I getting? What type of vitamins am I getting, with just my normal course of eating? So my goal is not to actually try to self-correct a whole lot. I just want to understand the data so then I can actually apply that to making possible corrections. What I do know, so my Achilles, I know you're chomping at the bit. My Achilles heel.

Rob  24:16

I got a bunch of questions.

Brent  24:17

My Achilles heel is always been eating too much. So I want to actually quantify that because I know like my metabolic like caloric intake, what it needs to be on a daily basis. And if I exercise more, I can make the adjustments. So I have the general baseline that I need to be at, but I actually want to understand what I'm really at because I think I've been avoiding this one. Not even think Rob. I know I've been avoiding this one, but I'm nervous about this because I have really like, do I really want to know the truth? I don't know if I can handle the truth. All right. So your challenge, Brent, you're telling me is to take a picture of your food every day.

Rob  24:54

Is that what your challenge is?

Brent  24:56

You may look like you may think you're asking a really catchy question with that. Yeah.

Rob  25:02

But yes, because my challenge. I just want to take a picture of my plate every day.

Brent  25:08

Mama, get over yourself here. I want to understand what I am consuming. And what I learned through these apps is that they will actually break it apart. So if you're lazy like me, you can take a picture of your meal. I tested it out, and I was like, wow, that was actually way more accurate than I thought. So I made these tacos, these veggie tacos, and I wanted just to understand the consistency of it. It says, Well, that's about the size of the tortilla, and that's the, you know, this many beans and whatever you put in veggies and things like that. It was pretty accurate. I was like, all right, I'm going to give this a shot, with the goal of just not having pretty pictures Rob of my food. That is the intent, is to have it simple because if I had to do a calorie counter in the sense of like getting down to the raw ingredients, I have that's why I haven't done it before. I have zero interest in that. So I feel like these apps have created the easy button for me to truly understand it. But ultimately, what am I trying to do with this information is constantly look at my health span. Can I actually have data that will give me a better indication? Because am I deficient on certain vitamins? I take the tests, but like there's certain cool things. Maybe I could just make some minor tweaks and could actually feel a little bit more energy. I don't know. So we'll learn.

Rob  26:25

All right, all right. And you eat healthy anyway, Brent, from at least my perspective. There's not a lot of junk food in your house that you're mostly plant-based and whole foods anyway. So I'd be interested to see what the outcome of that is. What app are you going to be using?

Brent  26:39

I actually found one that I like, and it's called this is not an advertisement for the app, but it's called Cronometer. And my whole goal was I wanted to tie to the Apple ecosystem because I use that for exercise and so forth. So I'm trying to look at this dynamically, like all the things in my life. I've got the Oura Ring for sleep. I've got the Apple Watch that I use for all my exercise and activities. So now I'm using this app. They all tie together in Apple Health. So that was one of my requirements there. But I'm challenged by this. Now, my only caveat that I'm going to throw out there is I do have a couple cool trips. I'm not going to get overly concerned when I'm traveling. I usually eat healthier when I travel. When I'm home is where I'm most guilty because the pantry is right around the corner. It's the snacks all day. I'm a snackaholic. I mean, I'm good at snacking. So I'm just going to see what is the impact of that. I'm just curious. There's some days I guarantee you I am throwing down 4,000 calories on a day that I do not need to eat 4,000 calories.

Rob  27:40

I may have thrown 4,000 calories down already this morning, Brent.

Brent  27:45

So maybe you're going to learn from me.

Rob  27:47

I'm going to I'm curious. I'm giving you a bad time because your goal or your commitment is to take a picture of your food, but I am going to selfishly get a benefit from that, understanding what you're doing, because we have pretty similar diets. I know mine my issue continues to be volume of food as well. And so my goal for this summer and my commitment this summer is actually more tactical and fundamental. It's going to be to lose 20 pounds. And I know what I need to do to do it. It's a big number. Since my last big race a year ago, which is a year ago right now, I finished it. I have not done much since then in terms of physical activity. I have added weightlifting to it, I have added running. They haven't been consistent, and I need to build that consistency in it. I got the ability to do it a lot during the summer. And so it's a 20-pound drop, which for me should actually happen, should happen by the end of the summer if I'm doing it right. For a lot of people, I know that they think that might be too much weight between now and the end of the three-month window, but between the physical activity that I'm doing and the type of diet, if I'm strong on my diet and I stay consistent with the diet, if I stay with that, um, I'm able to actually reduce weight fairly quickly. My metabolism is pretty high to be able to allow me to do that. I have a ProLon fast I'm going to do again here coming up in a couple of weeks, which does help. And I don't think of it more as a weight loss technique, but more of a diet reset for me and kind of a gut reset. That's I'll be using the ProLon fast, which I've done before. I know you've done a bunch of times. It's not a fun week. It's it's unpleasant. It's not uncomfortable, but it's an unpleasant week to try and reduce the calories that much. And then do a full reset. And my goal, Brent, and I didn't, I know it's fun to do this without having told you in advance, because I do have our follow-up episode. We're going to record at the end of this. You and I are going to go get a DEXA scan together.

Brent  29:33

Boy.

Rob  29:35

And for those that don't know, a DEXA scan is a full-body scanning and imagery where they actually are looking at bone density, muscle mass, lean muscle mass, as well as visceral fat. And so we'll get real accurate data on our body fat and body composition. And we're going to do a recording. And I'm committing this now. We're going to do a recording talking about the outcome of our DEXA scans at the end of this summer. There's a location down in Denver for us to go do it. I've done the research. There's a sale going on right now, too, for couples. We might qualify for that.

Brent  30:09

Couples on a podcast or couples in life? I don't know, but we'll see where that goes where they go with that. Rob, that is a huge goal. So I think it's awesome that you're taking it on. I think it's challenging. You're going to put yourself out there. It's amazing when you put big challenges out. Now we're sharing this with a pretty broad midlife circus audience. So I know we're going to get people going, hey, wow, guys, where are you at with this? So that's part of accountability. So thanks for putting it out there. I think it's a huge goal. I actually know you well enough that I think it's very doable, but it's going to take that discipline and it's tricky. I mean, that's uh and guess what, folks? You're at the early stage of your 50s. So Rob is newer to the 50 game. It's a little bit harder to lose that weight as you get a little bit older, as we both felt.

Rob  31:01

Yeah, I felt it. I felt it for the last couple of years, but it was really easy to gain it. So maybe, maybe it'll come off just as easily. You're going to do it. I feel confident. And you know, we bought a pizza oven, so I'm going to have to be really careful this summer on how I use that thing too. You like to eat. I do like to eat.

Brent  31:16

It's it so we can work with each other on this.

Rob  31:20

Yeah. I'm going to look at your pictures of food and say, Oh, I wish I had eaten that today instead of my other thing. You know, the avocado toast with three eggs on them.

Brent  31:29

Yeah, it'll be interesting. And for those that you weren't in the conversation, but Rob and I already talked about we got some stuff we need to work on. We're going to go to the diner next week. So that might change.

Rob  31:40

Well, it'll be my only meal.

Brent  31:41

Oh, right, right, right. That's awesome, Rob. So thanks for sharing that one. That's a really important goal. What I like about what you did with that one is you brought it and it's been threaded through a lot of our previous conversations, and you actually did not hit the easy button here. You actually took on a really hard challenge. So I'm here to support you there. And I know everybody else listening is here to support you. So let's move on to our next one.

Brent  32:07

The next ring in the five-ring midlife circus is purpose. And so when we think about purpose, this is not a to-do item, this is not a check the box. This is actually leaning towards something that matters. This is one that we constantly come back to, and this is critical in midlife because your purpose in the prior years was often tied to your work. So now the challenge for the summer is how do you look at how you can show up? How can you evolve your overall purpose? So why don't you take us through yours, Rob?

Rob  32:42

So mine is really straightforward, Brent, is to find two new volunteer opportunities this summer. You and I do uh trail work. I don't count that one because I'm on the trails. I figured, you know, it's my penance a little bit for using the trails as much as I do is to go work in the dirt. For me, it's going to be finding two new opportunities up here in our valley to actually have an impact with other people. And I know one of them is going to be the food pantry here. You and I have talked about it before. That is going to be one of them. I've never done anything there before, so I'm going to look to see if I could find something. And my goal at the outcome of this is to find two, but to find really one by the end of the summer that I could be consistently participating in.

Brent  33:21

That's awesome. And I like the idea because in our valley and most people's communities, there's so many opportunities to volunteer. But I like the idea of starting with just a couple, but by the end of summer, maybe you can narrow it down to one that you say, I want to actually hang on to this one for a while. We did that episode a while back of giving back. And so this is an example where you're actually saying, I want to use, if I heard you correctly, time. And you want to actually put your time towards that nonprofit. Is that correct? That's exactly what it is. Yeah. You mentioned the community market. So that's an option, but are there other things beyond the trail work that we already do? You'd said that's already in play. But is there anything else that comes to mind for you?

Rob  34:02

Nothing else is queued up yet. As uh in preparation for this, I didn't go do a bunch of research on other opportunities in the valley. We have a ton here in our area that I know I could go and pursue. I haven't done a lot of research yet. I'm going to wait and kind of see what comes to me along the way as well. I'll start with the food pantry. I'll ask other people questions, see what other people might be doing. Uh, if we have some listeners that know our area really well, I know we have some friends here that might listen to this. They may have one or two that they give me as an option as well. But just going to leave the door open to different opportunities, but actually be not just the door open, but looking through the door and actually try and find something else.

Brent  34:38

I think that's a great way to approach it. It's like crowdsourcing it a bit because as you said, there's so many opportunities. But if somebody's like, hey, I'm a part of this one and you know, I've just seen what they've done, maybe you could join me. That's a cool way to expand community, but also expand purpose. I think that's great. What a really cool example and good idea for the summer. Very doable, um, but fun. I hopefully that there'll be some meaning that you can gain from it as well. So for me in this one, what was interesting as I approached this one, Rob, is my easy button for this one would have been I want to expand the work that I'm doing with the podcast and purpose and career-oriented type purpose. That's my easy button. I had to put a time out there because that's easy for me to do. What I wanted to do is I stepped back, similar to you, is I started to look across what kind of effort am I making in the nonprofit community and how can I add more value. And what I've decided to do is we are both a part of the Vail Valley Mountain Trails Alliance. And last night I actually went to the team leader training, and it was a three hour, two or three hours, two-hour meeting, and it talked about all the different groups that are participating on working on the trails throughout our entire valley. There are so many. So, what I decided to do is I want to step up my game on the trail work, and I want to do a minimum of 15 hours this summer. Right now, the commitment that you and I have already made to um the trail group is doing six hours. Um, and they asked between six and nine, but I want to go up to a minimum of 15 hours, but I don't want to do it just with our group. I want to go meet a few other groups. So I want to expand my community reach because I it was interesting last night. There's two people that lead different groups that I actually knew that I know pretty well in the Valley and or were the community that we live in. So I could possibly join theirs uh or some of the other ones. So it's kind of fun. And I know every once in a while you volunteer for some of these other trails. So I just I decided to pick something that I'm already involved in, but I want to expand my involvement with it and expand my time with it. But the idea here was grow community, be outside. I love the physical nature of working on trails, and I wanted to pick an easy button of something I'm already involved in because I started with like, I want to do a bunch of other ones. And I'm like, wait a minute, why couldn't I just expand this? So it's really cool work that they're doing, and I'm excited for it. And that is my challenge for the summer is to go a minimum of 15 hours working on our local trails.

Rob  37:23

Have you figured out how many trail work days that's going to be over the summer?

Brent  37:27

Yeah, so they said that last night, uh, the person who leads the program, she said they're typically three-hour sessions or they're doing some six-hour sessions, so like full day sessions. So I've been thinking about I do want to join a full-day session. There's some really cool trails that I know well that I didn't know teams were assigned to them, and I'd like to get on those. I don't think it's going to be challenging to do, but guess what? Summer creeps up, and all of a sudden a lot of other things start to come into play. So uh I'm excited for it. So it should be roughly five working days to go do this throughout the summer.

Rob  38:01

That's neat. And I really appreciate Brent how you decided to go deep with something that you're already doing versus finding something new, which is the easy thing to try and do and go more broad with your volunteer. So I'm going a little bit broad to find another purpose uh in my life. You're going deep to find more purpose in something that you're doing already, which is I think really cool.

Rob  38:20

Great. And talking about being outside, that's going to take us to our final category of the five-ring circus, which is adventure. And as I said, from a health standpoint, it's quite a bit easier to be active in doing things because it's nice weather that we get to experience here in North America. I knew we had do have some audience members that might be listening from another part of the world where they're in their colder months than we are right now here in North America. Now is the time you can actually add some easier adventure into your life. And adventure is one of the things that actually can transpire into a lot of different areas. In fact, one of the neat things about the five rings of our circus, a lot of them actually can serve double purpose with something else. You can accomplish, you know, adventure you do with other people, I think is a lot more fun. So I can deepen relationships. Sometimes finding your purpose is an adventure. So a lot of our five rings go together. The adventure for me is kind of the really the fun topic that puts a bow on all of this discussion today. So, Brent, what's the new adventure that you're going to commit to doing this summer?

Brent  39:18

I'm so excited for this one because you're attached to it. Um I actually purchased what's called a pack raft based on your recommendation. So before I tell you the adventure, could you just share with everybody what a pack raft is and how it's used? And then I'll talk to you about the adventure I'm putting around the pack raft.

Rob  39:38

All right. So a pack raft is like a very small inflatable kayak. And it's built uh out of very thin rubber or PVC. I don't actually quite know what the material is, but the one that you bought, Brent, I think it weighs like seven pounds, six or seven pounds by itself. And you bought a paddle that actually condenses down. And really the goal is to put it in a backpack, hike in someplace, and then paddle somewhere else, and then be able to backpack out. So it's meant to actually be something you can travel with in a backpack to go and do different places, do it different experiences in more remote locations.

Brent  40:15

So I'm so excited for this one. So for those that are not in the state of Colorado, we've got some drought conditions. So our rivers are going to be really low. So the pack raft isn't going to be used in rivers this year. But the adventure that I'm going to take on is a couple of years ago, I did a solo retreat to this high mountain lake, and it was amazing. And there was only two other people that were in the opposite side of the lake that I could see the time that I went the time of the year that I was there. And they were out playing in the water and they had kayaks and so forth. So, what I actually want to do is take the pack raft back to that lake and explore the lake, but also pull off to the side, fish a little bit. And it was just, it's really high up there, and it's super fun. And it's reachable via van. So it's kind of this four-wheel drive route. So it's not as much about the pack raft, but it's getting out onto this lake that is so cool. So I have a formal invitation to you to join me. You could take your van, I could take my van. One thing that Rob and I talked about in the podcast is we need to have a little bit more fun together. So this is a checking that box, hopefully. So maybe in sometime in July or August, we can head up to this uh high mountain lake and play around on the pack rafts out on this lake. There's usually not a whole lot of people there. So that was my adventure. It's trying something new with this pack raft, but going to a place that I think would be really fun to do, but also doing it with somebody that I think we'd have a lot of fun together. So that is my invitation to you, Rob.

Rob  41:48

I'm in, and I'll even just put a bow on this one, Brent. I think we record one of our field trip episodes up at the lake after we go paddle around. We've talked about doing that, is doing a remote recording from our van someplace. I think we do a field trip in the van and actually record an episode and we can tell people that we're actually checking this item off.

Brent  42:06

That's great. Perfect. Perfect.

Rob  42:08

Yeah, that's the perfect way to start. So mine is quite a bit different here in the area of adventure. And you know that's something that's pretty consistent in my life. It's going off in the van, going on a rafting trip, doing something big. So adventure is always consistent in my life as something almost every week. I'm doing something that is a little bit of adventure for us. I'm going to go back to something that we talked about last year, Brent, and actually bring back a prior episode, which is my 50 items to learn during my 50s. And that's a list that has gotten a little bit neglected since we started this podcast and since I started getting into other things in my life. And so my commitment over the summer is to move five items, and I actually can tell you which five they are. I want to move five items forward on my 50 things to learn list. And so the it's not 50 things to do, it's 50 things to learn how to do or to do them better. Some of them I actually will be able to easily check the box off as done over the summer. And some of them are still going to be a work in progress following, but something I definitely want to move forward with over the summer.

Brent  43:13

Let's hear the five.

Rob  43:15

Uh, I think I mentioned on this episode on one of these episodes that I recently purchased a drone. And so learning this summer how to fly and pilot the drone, I have flown it just a little bit. I was very careful in the backyard that it not landed on the roof or didn't crash into the roof. I was uh half expecting that was going to happen. So learning how to fly it, it's not going to be, I'm going to be proficient, hopefully, by the end of the summer, but not an expert. So I won't be able to check the box off on that one. I do want to be able to check the box off on a Rubik's Cube. I got about halfway. Nice and I stopped doing it.

Brent  43:48

That's a muscle memory thing. I mean, I've learned how to do it. And if you the moment you stop, especially as we age, you will forget all the tricks and turns and everything.

Rob  43:56

I got half of it solved. I knew I had half of it left. I could consistently do the first half of it. That's why I just build on itself, build on the last movement, build on the last movement, just keep working forward. So I had it memorized. Halfway through, I while watching the videos on how to finish it, and I just quit watching them. So that means I get to start all over. But by the end of the summer, my goal is to solve a Rubik's Cube. I have signed up for a what's what is called in the industry a woofer class, Wilderness First Responder. And I'm doing that at the end of June. So that's a box I'm going to be able to check off as well is get my wilderness first responder certification. A lot of professional guides have this type of a certification. With the amount of time I spend in the outdoors, it's amazing that I haven't been hurt or haven't been around other people that have been seriously hurt. And so having this medical background is something that's on the list to be able to at least help people in an emergency when we're out doing something. The next one is uh perfect my espresso. So I got good enough to drink it, but not good enough that I'm proud of it to give to other people. And so I do need to work on my espresso skills. Currently, my uh cup of espresso is a little bit bitter. Um you've been consistently using the same beans, but it's a little bit bitter on its own. I mask it with some oat milk, so you never notice it's bitter, but I know it's bitter behind the scenes. So I want to actually master the espresso machine, ride a unicycle. So I want to be able to ride around on the unicycle this summer. And the last one is start surfing, which we're going to be at surf camp here in a couple weeks. So I'll be able to experience. And I don't think I'll check that box off between the unicycle and surfing, but I do want to move both of those forward.

Brent  45:31

So if I play this out, I mean, I could come to your house, you could drink espresso, hop on the unicycle, solve a Rubik's Cube while you're on the unicycle. We could have your drone follow you while you're doing this, and then we could talk about surfing.

Rob  45:48

And if I get hurt, I can actually tape my ankle myself because of the wilderness first responder.

Brent  45:52

You can repair yourself because you're now experienced in the wilderness. This is all going to come together great.

Rob  46:01

So I really like items on the list. I put six down. I my goal was at least five, but there are six things that I think I should be able to check off.

Brent  46:09

What I like about this grand list that we put together is there's a bit of overachiever in here. You did six, you know, we're going to do some bigger things, we're going to lose a lot of pounds, not a little bit of pounds, we're going to track all these different things. So it's exciting, which I'm excited about.

Rob  46:25

So of the five challenges, Brent. So we talked about uh finance relationships, health, purpose, and adventure. Which one of the five are you most scared about doing or most scared that you committed publicly to having done by the end of the summer?

Brent  46:41

Health. Tracking the food. It just seems so boring to me. And it seems like exposing myself to my own facts. So I'm excited for the outcome, but that's probably the commitment of all of them that I feel. I mean, the finance one, yeah, I can get over the habit side of that, but this one here is I might uncover some things on the health side and just the intake that I'm like, wow, that's interesting that I didn't kind of expect. So that one to me is probably going to be the most challenge. I'm looking forward to all of them. And I put a lot of effort and thought into this list because I felt like these are things I should do and want to do. So I'm excited for it, but the health one is the one that scares me the most. How about you? Scared of taking pictures.

Rob  47:27

Oh boy.

Brent  47:28

Scared of taking pictures. Are you still stuck on that?

Rob  47:34

I can't wait to hear some of the responses on our message board. This is going to be great. I love it. Uh, the one I'm most scared about, Brent, because you know the relationship a little bit, is the date nights and actually properly dating my wife, because I can't actually judge if I'm good enough on it or not. She's going to be the judge if I'm good enough at it or not. And so that's I'll hear about it. You'll hear about it. Yeah. Yeah. Guess what? Rob planned as a date. Lame. Yes, we're going to hear all about it. But uh, I am the most scared about it because it also puts a lot of responsibility on my shoulders to do planning, which I typically don't do a lot of in advance. So I'm a little bit more reactive in some of these things, but to do more planning in advance uh and actually having some surprise and uh and some things there.

Brent  48:21

So I'm going to just reiterate you threw both of us under the bus on that one. So you're putting it out there to say you're probably setting yourself up for failure, but you obviously set me up for an interesting conversation. I'm talking about playing more golf and you're talking about more date nights, like really good dates. I think you're going to do awesome at it. And I will be there to support you through it. So when I hear the story that your wife says, I will challenge her on that story. I'll just say it now.

Rob  48:52

And when I say, when I hear from Carolyn that you're not doing enough, I'm going to actually challenge her and say she doesn't know what she's talking about. You do more than enough, in my opinion. Of that is I got your back. I got your back, buddy. Right on, brother.

Brent  49:05

So that brings us through this episode. The idea is we've got the five ring challenge, and we've talked about the five rings so finance, relationship, health, purpose, and adventure. Rob and I have exposed ourselves and we put out what our five challenges are. So it's basically in between June, July, and August, and we'll circle back with our results sometime in September or October just to share what we came up with. But the whole idea behind this, once again, midlife is all about trying to challenge yourself. How are you going to grow? So, our challenge back to you is give it a shot. Maybe pick one of the rings and say, what do I want to do in the next three months? Is there an adventure I'm thinking about? Is there something health related? Give it a shot. I think you can have a lot of fun with this. And even more fun is to grab a friend and do it with each other and challenge each other, whether you pick five, whether you pick one, because the moment you start talking about it, the probability of you actually doing it goes way up. Rob and I don't want to come back on the podcast and said I failed on four out of the five. That's not my goal here. So we're going to do our best to follow through with each one of these.

Rob  50:16

And so if you pick one, two, or three, we're going to ask you to leave us a message on our show page. Uh, it's easy as Brent mentioned to do is to actually hit that button uh in the show notes. You can message the show and share with us what your challenge is for your summer. And who knows, we might be playing what you message us during a future episode. And that really leaves us with our wrap-up today, which I get to do, and really excited to actually share a listener message that we just got recently.

Rob  50:43

This came in anonymous, otherwise, we'd be calling out this person directly and thanking them for the message. But the message is thanks for all your great podcasts. Upon your recommendation, loaded up my bicycle and hit a scenic trail a short drive away for a solo micro-adventure. I love it that she's doing a solo micro-adventure. I saw two blue herons, turtles sunning themselves, and spring exploding in the forest. Just what the doctor ordered for this Gen X girl. Thank you. So, really cool to get that message. So, thank you for sending that in. Please continue to send us messages so we can share what other people are doing with our audience on the episodes. So, thanks for joining us today.

Lena  51:26

That's it for this episode of Midlife Circus. Visit midlifecircus.fm for show notes, transcripts, and all the latest happenings. And be sure to join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack. Follow Midlife Circus on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss your next great act. Quick reminder the opinions and stories shared here are personal reflections, not professional advice. This show is for entertainment and inspiration only. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you under the Big Top next time. Midlife Circus is a Burning Matches Media production.