The default, the baggage, the destination, and importance of the beyond.

How do you tell the difference between being in a default state and living beyond the default, but you're just getting in your head about things?

In this episode of Beyond Your Default, George and I delve into living beyond one's default state — what the heck it is, how we end up there, and what it means to start crawling your ay out. We discuss how people often carry historical baggage and fail to embrace the concept of forgiveness, leading to a life stuck in a rut.

George shares his personal experience of being stuck in a default state, working a low-paying job, and living a life he wasn't satisfied with. He emphasizes that living beyond the default doesn't mean a life of ease, but rather a life where one is constantly pushing their boundaries and seeking purpose.

Key Talking Points

• The default state is a rut or a state of being stuck, often due to confusion or lack of direction.
• Being stuck in a rut is different from taking valuable downtime.
• Escaping life through distractions like TV and bars is a sign of being in a default state.
• Living beyond the default may be more difficult because it involves more mental effort, but it's easier to maintain energy and motivation.
• People often end up in the default due to burnout, lack of purpose, or feeling stuck.
• It's important to ask oneself about their passions, purpose, and people, and how they can best serve them.
• Understanding the difference between feeling stuck and understanding stepping stones is crucial to moving beyond the default state.

Creators and Guests

Host

George B. Thomas

A catalyst for growth!

What is Beyond Your Default?

What Is Beyond Your Default? "Everyone keeps telling me I should be happy, but I'm not." “I feel stuck.” “I have a calling, but where do I start?"

Right now, you have a choice. You can continue living within your default norms, playing it safe, clocking in and out every day, and scraping by to achieve what's supposed to make you happy hopefully. Or you can choose to accept the challenge of living beyond your default. Stop wishing to live your "best life” and start living your best life. Success leaves clues. And they're waiting for you to discover them.

George B. Thomas: 00:02

The amount of people who have backpacks and suitcases of historical baggage that they have chosen to continue to walk around this planet with and not embrace a real simple word, but a real hard concept of forgiveness is mind blowing to me.

Liz Moorehead: 00:28

Welcome back to Beyond the Default. I am Liz Moorehead and as always joined by George b Thomas. How are you this morning?

George B. Thomas: 00:36

I'm doing wonderful, Liz. I'm sitting here. I just got done with a 3 day weekend. We went camping as a family. I had s'mores.

George B. Thomas: 00:45

I roasted hot dogs. I mean, how can life get any better?

Liz Moorehead: 00:48

I can't think of a better weekend, actually. Mine involved more cleaning and fewer s'mores, unfortunately. But we are not here to talk about s'mores. In fact, this week, I almost wanna call this a back to the future topic. We've dug in over the past few weeks into some pretty meaty topics.

Liz Moorehead: 01:07

But this week, I actually want us to take a beat here and go back to the beginning. And what I mean by that is, today, I want to define what it we mean when we say beyond the default. What is the default, and why is it important to go beyond that? You game for that topic?

George B. Thomas: 01:25

Yeah. I'm down for that topic. It's it's interesting because I quickly realized that this is probably an episode that we would need to do and I'm glad that we're getting it out of the way sooner than later because confusion can be the enemy. By the way, that can be in life that can be professionally, like, anytime you can get rid of confusion, it is gonna be for the betterment of your sanity and those around you. But when we launched this podcast, one of the things that I asked the family to do, say, I need you to listen to this and just give me your feedback.

George B. Thomas: 02:00

And my wife came back to me and she referenced the part where in the teaser episode, I talked about so if you wake up and you go to work and you come home and you watch TV and you eat dinner, and you wake up, and you go to work. I reference that as, like, you know, you might be looking to take your life to the next level, but my my wife, literally, we had a conversation. She's like, we do that. Like, you wake up and you go to work and you come home from work and we eat dinner, and we do watch some TV, and, then you go to bed. And so I said, yeah.

George B. Thomas: 02:37

But it's different. There's a different layer of what I'm talking about here. And so I immediately knew there was some confusion, and so, again, Liz, I'm glad that we're digging into this. We can talk about really what is the default because I don't want you to be listening to this and go, well, I watch TV. Crap.

George B. Thomas: 02:53

Am I in trouble? Why eat dinner? Crap. Am I in trouble? Like, I go to work.

George B. Thomas: 02:59

Crap. That's not what I'm saying. It's it's when it becomes a rut, when it becomes a detriment, when your mind starts to go in certain places or dance with certain things. And so, yeah, I'm glad we're we're digging into this.

Liz Moorehead: 03:11

So we're not necessarily saying that if you want to live beyond the default, we're anti dinner.

George B. Thomas: 03:17

Yeah. We're not anti dinner, and I'm not telling everybody to cancel their Netflix or their Hulu account. Right? Because there's a difference between being stuck in a rut, being able to go beyond that default rut that you may have been in for years, by the way, and the idea of just taking some valuable downtime. I don't wanna get those confused.

Liz Moorehead: 03:40

Let's dig right in then. So when we say default in beyond the default, what do you mean explicitly by it?

George B. Thomas: 03:48

Yeah. So in my life, I've seen so many people that I would use the word stuck. I would use the word rut. I would even use words like are perfectly fine with where they're at. The unfortunate thing is, and I know I don't mean to sound judgmental when I say this, but many times they shouldn't be.

George B. Thomas: 04:11

Like, they shouldn't be satisfied because of a belief structure that was either given to them or they've grabbed a hold of and just thought, well, it is what it is. I mean, this is what I've been given. So this is what I have to take. And to the point where if it's that and you're happy, I'll even say okay on that. But again, unfortunately, I have seen a lot of people that go to work and they hate it.

George B. Thomas: 04:41

I have seen a lot of people be in relationships and they hate them. I've seen a lot of people just live day in and day out and hate it and feel like they're suffering through this 365 day, however, many years are gonna be a live existence and I'm like, yo. Yo. Yo. Yo.

George B. Thomas: 05:07

Yo. There is more. How do you get out of that? Which by the way, how how you get out of the rut? How do you get unstuck?

George B. Thomas: 05:16

It's probably a whole either piece of this episode or a whole different episode in itself, but coming to the realization that it doesn't have to be the way that it is that you have the ability to change fundamentally, some things that might be going on and why you're accepting of the place. By the way, let me just say place or things that have you stuck or have you in a rut because many times it's where we're putting our mind or where we're putting our time and what that's creating as far as a dam and allowing us to blast through where we actually can head, which again is beyond the default or beyond your default state at this point.

Liz Moorehead: 06:02

Can you take us to a time in your life where you were in a default state just as an example?

George B. Thomas: 06:08

Yeah. That might get in yeah. That might get intense. You know, there was a time in my life where I just fundamentally believed that I didn't deserve the best out of life. I had surrendered myself to an existence of working at a very low rate job.

George B. Thomas: 06:34

I was in Cleveland, Ohio. I was working at a furniture store as a warehouse guy. So I I would pick things up and put them down all day long. Right? And I would load trucks and cars.

George B. Thomas: 06:54

I lived in a house, but I lived in a room of somebody else's house. I knew I didn't belong there. I knew, like, fundamentally that, man, there's gotta be more to life than this than just being, like, a warehouse guy. Nothing wrong with being a warehouse guy, but for me and this is the thing. That's what I want.

George B. Thomas: 07:16

I hopefully, people can hear the undertones of if your mind is telling you that there's more, if your body is telling you there's more, if you just come home or leave to go to the place that you're working and you're just like, like, you're not excited. You're not joyous. You don't wake up and you aren't immediately lit up by the fact of the potential that you have for the day. Like, you might be in a default state versus where you could be living past that and be exhilarated. There's things that happen back in those days where I let things, like, take my time, you know, I didn't really sit down and watch Netflix or Hulu or whatever the, you know, the VCR tape that I would rent from Blockbuster back in the day.

George B. Thomas: 08:12

I really didn't do that because I was taking downtime. I did that because I was escaping, and if you're escaping life, you're probably in a default. Again, big difference between escaping your life. If you're always daydreaming about a different life instead of just entertaining yourself because you want to relax for a little bit huge differences and so thinking about the time that I spent at the bar and the amount of bar tabs and the blockbuster tabs. All the ways that I could escape life tabs that happened when I had that job when I was allowing myself to be that person, when I was hanging around those people that made it real comfortable to be there.

George B. Thomas: 09:00

And by the way, there's a lot of little tidbits that I'm dropping right there of like, well, how do you get out of it? I fully realized it was coming off the back of something that I thought I was supposed to be doing. Right? So I had worked at a Christian camp for 3 years teaching people, kids, how to ride and about Jesus. And because of my own, this is what I wanna do, I moved to Cleveland.

George B. Thomas: 09:23

And it was almost like I moved a little bit from, like, my heaven on earth to my hell on earth, to be honest with you.

Liz Moorehead: 09:30

Why did you make that choice?

George B. Thomas: 09:32

Why do all men make the great choices they make? Because of a girl. That's so there was a girl that I met, and they're I'm but, hey. Listen. One of the things I wanna do on this podcast is when I get asked the question, I gotta give them the honest answer.

George B. Thomas: 09:48

Because if I'm gonna help people get into their own honesty and dig deep and say, why did I make that decision? They gotta be able to have as dumb answers as I have. And so it really was. I met a girl, and I was like, I wanna hang out with this girl more. And, god, I'm just gonna have to put you on hold for a little bit because I'm gonna go to Cleveland, Ohio, and I'm gonna figure this thing out.

Liz Moorehead: 10:12

So I have a quick question for you, though. How do you tell the difference between being in a default state and living beyond the default, but you're just getting in your head about things. Because you can choose to live the exhilarating life. You can choose to live beyond your default and still have days, sometimes even weeks, depending on what's happening in terms of circumstances at a given time where you are feeling the realm. You are feeling the disconnect.

Liz Moorehead: 10:43

You are living the dream. But let's face it, George. You know, even you and I, we both absolutely love what we do day in and day out. And there are some moments where it's like, oh, yeah. This is why it's called work and not happy fun time.

Liz Moorehead: 10:57

There are always going to be moments where life is lifing pretty hard. So how do you tell the difference between being on the hamster wheel of a default and, hey. Just buckle in. You're still in the right spot at the right time.

George B. Thomas: 11:10

Well, first of all, I wouldn't correlate a life beyond the default as a life of ease. Gotta be careful with this because if you are living a life that feels just really easy, by the way, you might be in the default. I honestly believe that living a life beyond the default may be a little bit more difficult because you're revving your engine, your brain up more. You are putting more output as far as life is lifing and you're working, but what I will also say is what's funny when I think about this, the beyond your default is life is lifing, but you're helping other people when their life is lifing. That's the thing.

George B. Thomas: 11:56

I will tell you that as aggressive as my life gets now with where I'm at and everything that I'm doing, I never feel like I don't have the ability to throttle down or throttle up the amount that I need to give myself love or the amount that I need to give others love. And the reason I'm bringing up the word love is because we all have to think about, you know, let's take a car for instance, And, Liz, the kind of metaphor or analogy that came to my brain as you're asking me this is like, well, yeah, occasionally, the car might run out of gas or we've all had those moments where it's about to run out of gas, but it starts to do that sputtering thing, but we actually have been able to coast right into the gas station and fill up at the last moment. Oh, maybe that's just me. Okay. Maybe that's just me, but it's like because we've pushed it to the edge.

George B. Thomas: 12:53

Right? We know we should have stopped for gas a while ago. We should have loved ourselves a while ago. We should have given ourselves a 3 day weekend. We should have given ourself a vacation.

George B. Thomas: 13:04

We should have given ourself downtime that I'm not saying is bad, but when I think about everything that's going on in my life now, I would say, is it a little bit more difficult than it was when I was a warehouse guy in default state? Absolutely. Do I run out of gas easier now than I did back then? No way. It's easier for me to keep the car filled up.

George B. Thomas: 13:32

It's easier for me to take harder journeys. It's easier because part of the answer is almost in your question. The brain is braining. Right? And what I mean by that is we're thinking about things.

George B. Thomas: 13:45

We're getting in our own head. We're tearing pieces apart. Part of this I would like to tie into is that we're taking the time to work on ourselves so that we can help others work on themselves as well because we can only love others once we love ourselves, and none of these things, none of this podcast wouldn't exist if I hadn't gone through the journey of this default dude who could have just stayed there as, you know, the warehouse guy in my case. For you, it might be the lawyer, by the way. Your default state might be something like and by the way, I'm not making this up.

George B. Thomas: 14:23

A lawyer who decided to just go do stuff around like Disney because that was beyond their default. And I could bring up and maybe that's another episode in the future. Like, what are 5, 6, 8 real life use cases where you look at somebody and they had a career, and then they went and did something totally different. Or listeners, I want you to think about your own life, your own family, grandmas, grandpas, cousins, uncles, mothers, whoever, where they were this thing, and then all of a sudden, they became this other thing, and you're like, well, how did that happen? Ladies and gentlemen, you witnessed somebody in your life transform beyond their default.

George B. Thomas: 15:04

They were able to pivot. They were able to transition. They had a new passion, a new look, a new road that they wanted to follow instead of just trudging down the same road day in day out in this rut feeling stuck, not feeling fueled up, not helping others, not adding value, but just kind of like rinse and repeat mode.

Liz Moorehead: 15:32

How do you think we end up in the default aside from, you know, us women

George B. Thomas: 15:36

Oh.

Liz Moorehead: 15:37

Luring you to Cleveland?

George B. Thomas: 15:39

No. No. No. No. No.

George B. Thomas: 15:40

First of all, I don't wanna get canceled. So I'm not saying that it was a woman's fault. It's just that was the precipice, the the turning point for me of, like, hey. She's kinda cute, and I like her. Let me

Liz Moorehead: 15:51

Then you

George B. Thomas: 15:52

were a catalyst for her.

Liz Moorehead: 15:53

Back then she was a catalyst for Cleveland. Yes.

George B. Thomas: 15:56

Yeah. Yeah. No, but how does.

Liz Moorehead: 15:59

So the reason I ask this question is I think a lot of people when they're growing up, and and maybe this is not true for everybody, but I think, you know, when we're younger, we do have some idealism about us. I'm gonna go out there and make my ding in the universe. I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna do all these different things. And then we end up in a default. It's not that we were seeking it out.

Liz Moorehead: 16:20

Some of us may have felt like this is just what we're supposed to do, or we just wake up one morning and go, oh, oh, no. But how do people who may be naturally programmed to live beyond the default, how do you end up in a default state? How does that happen?

George B. Thomas: 16:37

Yeah. It's actually really easy. I think one of the easiest ways be because if you are that kind of driven purpose, or driven person, and that's interesting that the word purpose came out. But if you're that type of driven person, what's this saying? It's not if, but when.

George B. Thomas: 16:53

You'll burn yourself out. You'll you'll do it. Trust me. Been there many times. Burn myself out.

George B. Thomas: 16:59

And having a action plan for when you burn yourself out, how to get yourself, like, refreshed and back in the game. It's a lot like boxing. I'm not a boxer, but, you know, if you watch boxing matches, you can get hit, but if you have a plan of, like, at least getting back on your feet, if you have a plan of at least guarding your face, you can get back in the fight. Some people, I think, they just get knocked out in life, and that's just what they lay there. They just stay there.

George B. Thomas: 17:29

Right? Either you burnt yourself out, your boss burnt you out, your situation in life burnt you out, but there was no strategy, no plan to, like, how do I get out of this? But here's the thing, and I'm gonna go back to the purpose word because I really do feel like that came out for a reason. It's real easy to just sit down, chill, stay there, eke out an existence. If you don't see that there's any purpose to anything that you're doing.

George B. Thomas: 18:01

I'm not making a big difference. I don't know if anybody would even know that I was here and sometimes people who are truly driven, there's a disconnect in what they're trying to do and the purpose that they were put on this planet, and so one of the things I would say if you feel like you're trying to live a life beyond the default, It seems like it's just not connecting. It's not that you should be stuck. It's not that you shouldn't keep going, but it's literally like the artwork of this podcast. You may just need to choose the better road, the different Road that is more aligned with your purpose that is more aligned with where your Beyond is located.

George B. Thomas: 18:53

Here's the thing. Your Beyond is not located the same place that your coworkers Beyond is. Your Beyond is not located the same place that your siblings or your parents is. Your Beyond is in a special place hidden down a very unique path that you need to find, and I think it comes down to what you're passionate about. I think it comes down to your purpose.

George B. Thomas: 19:19

I think it comes down to the tribe or audience that will actually end up surrounding you with whatever this thing that is your beyond, and so sometimes I think what we lack or what we maybe even subconsciously choose not to do when we're in this rut, when we're stuck, when we're living a life of the default, subconsciously we maybe stop asking our self, am I headed in the right direction? Do I understand truly what I'm passionate about? Do I know what my purpose on this planet is? Do I know who my people are? And if you're sitting here listening to this and you've never asked yourself those types of questions, Who are my people?

George B. Thomas: 20:09

What am I passionate about? What's my purpose? And then follow that up with, and how can I best serve them? Because by the way, the way that I fill my tank, I think the way that many people who are living a life beyond their default, The way they fill their tank is by understanding it's by filling others tanks. It's a really weird thing, but I get more joy out of understanding that I have been a catalyst to get somebody from their default state or a really bad state, even worse than default, to the next layer up or the next layer better or or even a maybe better way to look at this is to be able to unlock something that has been stopping them from their journey to their beyond, and that's that's what fuels me up.

George B. Thomas: 20:58

I think that's why I'll always spend hours and hours and hours giving because I understand what I'm giving of myself I'm actually getting. It's, like, coming right back to me.

Liz Moorehead: 21:09

You know, it reminds me of piece of scripture that you and I have actually talked about personally a couple of times, one of my favorites. Because I'm sitting here thinking about, you know, that moment when you realize, a, you are in a default state, and, b, you need to move beyond it. Sometimes your past in a default state is the exact prologue you need to move beyond it, if that makes sense. Like, sometimes you are exactly where you're supposed to be in the moment that you're supposed to be in it. And it reminds me of that piece of scripture from Deuteronomy.

Liz Moorehead: 21:41

You've been circling this hillside country long enough. Turn north, where you have that moment of, I keep doing the same thing. I'm in the default states. Right. Right.

Liz Moorehead: 21:50

Okay. So now it's time for you to move along. So my question to you would be this. How do you tell the difference between the moments of you are exactly where you're supposed to be and it's time to turn north.

George B. Thomas: 22:04

It's interesting because my brain goes in multiple directions, by the way, when you bring this up, Liz. First of all, I don't want anybody to misconstrue what I'm saying or what we're talking about here is, I'm gonna wake up one day and say, I'm gonna live a life beyond my default and I'm gonna be able to skip 7 steps of my life. That is not gonna happen, but here's the thing. What I will say is there's a difference between feeling stuck and understanding stepping stones. I can fundamentally tell you there was a difference from how I felt when I was stuck to when I had the mindset of this is the next stepping stone.

George B. Thomas: 22:49

This is the next piece. Let's journey back for a second to kind of move forward. When I felt like I was to become a pastor, Did I realize that it was only gonna be for a short time of my life? No. But was it the lessons and the things that I needed to have in my brain and in my body to move forward around this idea of serving?

George B. Thomas: 23:15

Absolutely. Was it the first time that really I, was put on and I use huge air quotes when I say this stage or behind the pulpit. Was it the first time that I was actually creating messages? Dare I say presentations? Was it the first time that I was creating graphics or building a website?

George B. Thomas: 23:36

Now, if you know me, you know now that I speak on stages and I design websites and help people with their marketing. God in his infinite wisdom when I had this, I need to go to school to be a pastor, knew where we are headed. So here's the thing. I want everybody to realize that life will give you stepping stones. Understanding that stepping stones are different from being stuck in a default state.

George B. Thomas: 24:04

I also want you to realize that you're always, hopefully somehow heading north. Yes. You're circling the hills as the scripture says, but as you're circling the hills, you're picking up tools. You're picking up mindsets. You're picking up best practices so that when it is time to take that journey, you're equipped.

George B. Thomas: 24:25

You got your backpack. Right? And you're equipped with the things that you need in your backpack to make it from where you are to where you have to get. And what's fun, Liz, is you asked me the question of, like, how do you know it's time or or how do you start to understand? I think we are all given this interesting brain that works in really fantastic ways, and I'll never forget the time when I was at a conference, at an event, and I realized this is why you did this.

George B. Thomas: 24:59

This is why you did this. This is why this happened in your life. This is why this happened in your life. This is why you did this. I literally was standing on stage and I felt inside my spirit and inside my mind 7 dominoes, large dominoes of my life and like got massive of goosebumps because I was like, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

George B. Thomas: 25:26

All of those things were exactly what were supposed to happen, but I couldn't have that moment until I reached the destination where my passion, my purpose, and my people were all in the same room and then it just was given to me, like, look. You are in the right place. Now keep heading in this direction.

Liz Moorehead: 25:49

One of the things that's really interesting about those moments where you realize you have to push into the beyond. And this is where we're gonna have to go there, George. We're gonna have to go there. I'm just warning, warning. We're going there.

George B. Thomas: 26:01

Warning. Danger, Will Robinson. Danger.

Liz Moorehead: 26:04

A long time ago, in another life, I was a beer writer for the Capital Gazette in the Baltimore Sun. And I interviewed a brewery owner who was considered the godfather of the Baltimore beer scene. He had ushered in brewpubs via legislation. He owned one of the oldest breweries in the county and just, overall, had such an incredible wealth of knowledge. Interestingly enough, he lived a life beyond the default.

Liz Moorehead: 26:32

He had gone to UVA for theater and ended up as a brewery founding father in Maryland. And I asked him if he could go back and tell himself something when he first started this journey. It was around the 21st anniversary of his brewery, and I decided to wait till the 21st year so that way his brewery was of legal drinking age. I thought that was funny. I asked him that question, and he said, I wish I could go back and tell myself that the people you start with are not always the people you grow with, and you need to be really careful about that.

Liz Moorehead: 27:09

What I'm leading up to here is often when we push through these barriers beyond our default into a new area of our life, That may cause friction with friends, family. You may have to make decisions about who's coming with you and who's staying. How do you navigate those types of challenges, and and are those things you've had to navigate yourself?

George B. Thomas: 27:35

Oh, god. Yes. Without a doubt. So it's interesting because, oh, there's so much we could unpack here. Many of us keep the friends that we have around us because we're afraid to be alone.

George B. Thomas: 27:51

Many of us will deal with family ish because we feel like we were born into a situation and we have to stick with it. Many of us find ourselves on a path filled with other business folks that because they were great at a set of tasks, got thrown into this fishbowl petri dish of a startup or a business, and we're, like it's almost like one of those which one of these don't belong game because you're like, man, I don't I don't belong here at all. And people I totally agree. People that were your friends at one point will not be your friends at another. And one of the things that I've heard and I have had seen happen in my own life, Liz, is when you're on the mountain top, there's a lot thinner not everybody is built to breathe the air at the mountaintop and so when you think about the friends you keep, the family you have, the coworkers that you hang out with, are they ready for the air at the top of the mountain?

George B. Thomas: 29:03

The answer fundamentally most times is probably gonna be probably not or no, just a flat out no, but there will be a select few. They'll be a select few that are supposed to Traverse to the top with you, but I don't think that anybody but yourself can go to the tippy top. I think every mountain, your mountain was designed specifically for you and who you become and I have had to make and I hope everybody listening this knows that you'll have to make hard decisions. This person is not right for me because when I'm with them, I always do this. These people are not right for me because when I'm with them, I always think this.

George B. Thomas: 29:46

To get to my ultimate destination. I need to be this and I need to think this anything that erodes from these things need to be removed from my life, which means we have to start to unpack this idea of why are we if we are because not all of you are why are we people pleasers? We need to start to unpack. How can I feel secure and safe if I am alone on my journey? We need to start to unpack some like real deep hefty.

George B. Thomas: 30:21

How has my perception of this world and the way that I've been willing to live it thus far? How does that have to change and who do we have to let go to actually get there? Imagine. Right? So so let's say you are on that trek to the top of your mountain.

George B. Thomas: 30:39

How much easier would it be if you weren't carrying 3 of your friends who decided they just didn't want to walk any further? It'd be easier. But what's funny in let's just take it off of friends. The amount of people who have backpacks and suitcases of historical baggage that they have chosen to continue to walk around this planet with and not embrace a real simple word, but a real hard concept of forgiveness is mind blowing to me, and so if you think about a

Liz Moorehead: 31:16

little deeper What what does that mean?

George B. Thomas: 31:19

I have had to forgive myself so that I could get further in life. I have had to forgive others so that I could get beyond what was my default and so many times in my life and I've seen others that we just have this either lack of a relationship with how powerful forgiveness can be and how when we forgive each other, like, the freedom that it equals. It's funny because I've literally heard people say these words. Well, I'm not gonna forgive them because they're a whatever it is. Right?

George B. Thomas: 32:01

Yo, forgiveness isn't for them. When you forgive them or you forgive yourself, you're literally freeing yourself. You're freeing your own mind. You're freeing your own spirit. And so, again, if we're talking about the multiple ways that you're not being able to climb up the mountain, you're carrying humans that don't belong in the atmosphere that you're in right now, time to shed them.

George B. Thomas: 32:30

You can always come back down and visit them, by the way, or you're carrying luggage and baggage that you have forgot that you were supposed to, like, check it before you got on the plane, or it's okay to just leave it sit somewhere because it's, like, clothes that don't fit you anymore. You still have 12 year old clothes that you're trying to put on a 30, 40, or 50 year old body. Just leave it go. Quit carrying around. It gets nonsense.

Liz Moorehead: 33:01

How do you prepare those that you want to come with you on this journey? So for example, George, right now, you're with your family and you've made big pivots, big changes. You've pushed beyond your default to get to this point where we're even sitting here recording today. There are going to be times where, you know, it it's what we were talking about before, and I'm not saying the examples we were giving before are binary or super straightforward. It is it is challenging and and sometimes very excruciating to realize, oh, gosh.

Liz Moorehead: 33:33

This person isn't coming with me. But when you have family, you not only want them as part of your journey, you need them as part of your journey because they're part of your heart. But change, even when it's positive, by its very nature, is change. It is disruptive. How do you bring other people along in that journey?

Liz Moorehead: 33:51

What are the things that need to be happening there?

George B. Thomas: 33:54

Yeah. So the first thing that, like, rushes into my brain is, like, patience. Be patient. The second thing that rushed into my brain is I don't necessarily know if I am trying to prepare them to be on my journey. Do I want them to be along for the ride in some sense or fashion of the word?

George B. Thomas: 34:13

Yes. But I also realized that for me, it's become a point of how do I actually get them on their own journey? How do I dictate like, hey, here's this mountain. There's 17 different ways that we can climb this mountain. We're all gonna meet at destination 1, destination 2, destination 3, and then the top of the mountain.

George B. Thomas: 34:37

Now here is the way that I'm gonna climb the mountain. However, I have said there are 17 different ways to climb this mountain. So how can I best equip each and every one of you with the way that you wanna climb the mountain? How do you wanna go? Oh, you wanna do that?

George B. Thomas: 34:53

Here are 2 pieces of advice. By the way, I'm gonna veer off of my path in about 7 days so that I can help you over this one piece of your path that I know from historical knowledge will probably be difficult for you. But I'll be there. I'll meet you there, then I'll get back on my path and right? What am I doing here?

George B. Thomas: 35:13

What am I waxing poetic on is the fact of understanding that my journey, your journey is not everybody's journey. And even if they are gonna come with you, you need to understand they're gonna have to take their own path. And even more importantly than their own path is you have to be okay with them taking their own amount of time. Listen. There are probably people in my life that are like, poof.

George B. Thomas: 35:39

Finally. Sheesh. He could have done that years ago. I needed my path, and I needed my time. And when I think about the people that I would love to be at the top of the mountain with me, where we could hang out, we could celebrate, and we could take great photos of our hands up in the air and a beautiful sun sunset or sunrise, I have to realize I might be at that mountain for a long time before anybody gets there, but I'm definitely giving them SMS messages or emails or I'm yelling through a megaphone ways to help them navigate their path.

George B. Thomas: 36:18

Here's the other thing that's fun, as I'm a okay with somebody beating me to the top of the mountain. Hey. I'm an old guy. I might need to grab a stick. I might hobble along, but I'm gonna make it there.

George B. Thomas: 36:32

See, what I think I'm banging on here is that it's about focus too. Right? Like, you're telling the people that are around you, Here's where we should go. Does everybody agree that we should go here? Okay.

George B. Thomas: 36:43

We all agree that we should go there. Let's focus on that. Let's understand we all have our own paths. Let's understand it's gonna take us all our own time, but at least as a cohesive unit of family, a set of friends, coworkers, a business. We have the focus.

George B. Thomas: 37:01

We have the paths, and we have the timing that we can pay attention to. And then as a group, we can help each other get to that destination that we're trying to go to. Versus, by the way, the default is like, yo, I'm just gonna come home, and I'm gonna not talk to anybody really. And my wife is gonna complain that I never listened to her and I ignore her, or the husband is gonna be like, why is the house this way or whatever. Right?

George B. Thomas: 37:28

I would much rather take the pains and aggressive paths of beyond the default than the pains and punching bag and boxing matches of, like, the opposite side of it.

Liz Moorehead: 37:43

Alright. Final question. You ready, George?

George B. Thomas: 37:45

I don't know. Last time you did this, I got emotional. I'm gonna try to make it through whatever you say the best I can, so so we'll see.

Liz Moorehead: 37:52

Fantastic. I want you to pick a moment in your life where you were in a default state. I want you to take us there, and I want to hear what you wish you could go back and tell yourself, whether that's a piece of advice or you're in the right spot, just keep going. But take us to not the easy default state because I think sometimes we can go through stages, the one that counted the most.

George B. Thomas: 38:14

As you asked me that question, my brain transported me back to a moment in time. I immediately fought it and said, I don't wanna talk about that.

Liz Moorehead: 38:22

Which means we're talking about it.

George B. Thomas: 38:24

Which means we're talking about it. I'll never forget, it was, it was an evening, and it was the beginning of an end, which then became the beginning that most people know of me or would tie back to most of the family that I have and stuff like that. Not my side, but, like, my wife's side, and it's the beginning of my kids and stuff. But I had worked for that furniture store as a warehouse guy. I ended up being a sales guy, ended up being a manager, ended up moving from Cleveland, Ohio to Youngstown.

George B. Thomas: 39:00

And I'll never forget one day in Youngstown, Ohio. I was sitting in an apartment with some people that I kind of knew. We had been drinking beers. I had been smoking some weed and popped a couple pills and I was sitting there watching TV with this other guy, and I heard these words come out of my mouth. Man, dude, this house could burn down right now, and I just sit and watch the flames.

George B. Thomas: 39:34

The next morning, I started making changes in my life. I was married to somebody that I shouldn't have been married to. I was working somewhere that I shouldn't have been working. I was hanging out with people that I shouldn't have been hanging out with, and so I aggressively got the knife of life out, if you will, and just started carving parts of my life away.

Liz Moorehead: 39:57

Let me ask you a quick question here, though. I think thematically and and maybe linearly, you say that then the next day you start hacking away. But was it the next morning that you realized you needed to make changes? Was it the moment those words came out of your mouth? What hit different, so to speak?

George B. Thomas: 40:13

No. It was the fact that my spirit, a guy who had worked at a Christian camp, a guy who knew that there was purpose for his life, a guy that had almost died in the military, a guy that had almost died on a motorcycle accident had gotten so deep into a default that he cared that little about himself that he wouldn't even try to move out of the building. Literally, when I heard those words, the words that were coming out of my mouth due to my brain and the spirit that was inside me, there was an immediate clash, and so quite literally, Liz, within the next day, I was changing things within the next couple weeks. I was actually going through a divorce. I had moved from Youngstown.

George B. Thomas: 41:03

I had moved back home to Ohio. I was living with my brother. And just when I say dramatically cutting out and carving out and changing life, it was absolutely a I have to get out of here and be done with this because this is not what I'm supposed to be doing. This, by the way, is the ending of that life, but the beginning of the one that has been a constant. How do I continue from this point on?

George B. Thomas: 41:32

Because then I ended up meeting my wife, right? Ended up having my kids. How do I continue on to be 1% better each and every day? How do I get a little bit of a better job? How do I become a little bit better of a person?

George B. Thomas: 41:46

How do I become who I am and who I will be in the future? That's the beginning of that story because it was this just aggressively chaotic dark crescendo of, like, woah. I will not be here much longer if I continue on this dumb path.

Liz Moorehead: 42:06

It's interesting how you tell that story because the original question I asked you is what would you go back and tell yourself at that point in time, but it sounds like you woke up on your own. Would you just lovingly observe from a distance?

George B. Thomas: 42:17

Well, I woke up, but, like, I wouldn't observe from a distance. I would actually probably have tried to catch myself earlier and try to give myself a little bit of advice because see what got me there was this wanting to be liked, This wanting to not be alone. This wanting to just fit in, and so I was putting myself where I didn't belong. And so if I could go back and give myself some advice, it might sound a little bit like and again, this is before the the great debacle of George b Thomas and that little apartment, but it would be something around the fact of it's not that important. I had the same problem in high school, by the way.

George B. Thomas: 43:06

I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be liked. We all wanna fit in. We all wanna be liked, but I'd give myself either the advice the lines of it's not that important to be liked and to fit in because if you stand out, you will be liked, and I wasn't trying to stand out. I was just trying to fit in.

George B. Thomas: 43:26

There's a big difference. That's prob by the way, that's probably an episode. Why you should stand out instead of fitting in? But the other part of this is I would maybe even go back and give myself a little advice of, like, wrong crowd, wrong circumstance. Because if I would been hanging out with the right crowd of people, it would have been a completely different circumstance that I would have found myself on that evening.

Liz Moorehead: 43:51

Okay. I know I said that was our last question, but I do have one more because we've covered a lot of ground today during this conversation. I would love to hear from you. What is a question you'd like to leave the audience with to ask themselves, whether that's self diagnosing where they are in their journey or anything around the application of anything that we discussed here today. Because like we said at the start of this conversation, this is the core.

Liz Moorehead: 44:18

This is the beating heart of every other conversation that we have in this podcast, this critical understanding of what the default state is and what it takes to break beyond it. So as people are going about their day, maybe stepping back into their homes, maybe heading into the office, maybe they're about to hop off the treadmill at the gym, or they're just hanging out at home. What is the question you want to leave them with?

George B. Thomas: 44:43

That's that's difficult because I think it's multiple. But if I have to break it down in some type of logical sense, I would be wanting them to ask themselves, do I know where I'm headed? I think that's a very important piece. The what is their mountaintop? What is their focus?

George B. Thomas: 45:02

Or is it just a flat plane ahead of, like, miles and miles of nothing, but tumbleweed and flatness? Or what is their mountain top? What is what is success look like for them? Once they have that and they've dreamt about that, because it will be a little bit of a dream and a little bit of, like, molding what you think it'll look like. It'll change, by the way, as you head towards it.

George B. Thomas: 45:27

Where's my mountain top? Where am I headed? And then I'll go right back to because I think it's important. When you understand or you've asked the question, where is my mountaintop? What is my focus?

George B. Thomas: 45:38

Where am I trying to go? Then I think it comes down to a couple things here. Who do I need to forgive so that I can get there? What do I need to let go of so I'm not weighted down? After I go through that framework, then I think it's all about the people and the processes and the education and the ability to then understand that for every step that you're gonna be climbing.

George B. Thomas: 46:05

It's making yourself a better human. It's adding value into the world that tribe and so just kind of go back and may maybe it's a rewind point at this point. Right? But I know where I'm headed. I know who I need to forgive and what I need to let go of, and now it's purpose, passion, and people, and what's the framework of that that I can start to serve to get myself to the place that I just dreamt of or my focus or my mountain top?

George B. Thomas: 46:33

That's what I'll give them. It's a little bit of a matrix, a rubrics, a framework, if you will. But it all starts with that where are you headed question.