In today's episode, we take a profound journey into the intricate tapestry of human connections and the deep-seated desire for recognition and support. As we navigate the paths of life, we often encounter challenges.
That's not a surprise to any of us, though, right? The human experience is defined as a spectrum of experiences, emotions, highs, and lows. There are also those moments in life in which we feel we are not getting what we deserve.
"I'm doing all the right things, where are my blessings?"
However, it's the people around us β the ones placed serendipitously in our lives β that shape our experiences and stories. This discourse emphasizes the universal longing we all feel: to be seen, to be understood, and to be helped.
Not out of pity, but genuine understanding.
π§ Related Episodes:
- The Importance of Relationships for Your Journey Through Life
- Unlocking Your Inner Power: Self-love, Core Circles, and Spiritual Wisdom
Through these reflections, we're reminded of the power of empathy, the significance of a helping hand, and the transformative effect of genuine human connection. Join us as we explore these themes, encouraging each listener to not just hear, but to act with compassion and purpose.
Creators & Guests
What is Beyond Your Default?
What Is Beyond Your Default? "Everyone keeps telling me I should be happy, but I'm not." βI feel stuck.β βI 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 lifeβ and start living your best life. Success leaves clues. And they're waiting for you to discover them.
The people around us, oh god, the people around us that are put in our path, they deserve it. They deserve it and when you realize how much you felt that you deserve it and you just wish that somebody would see that that you've always wanted a hand up, not a handout. You just wish somebody would see that you're struggling through life and maybe you'd get that moment in time that it would change you and we're all the same. We all feel that way. We're all looking for that.
George B. Thomas:The only difference is you're listening to this and you have the ability to take after the day and just be like, you know what? I need to be a blessing bomber too. I need to realize it's less about me, more about them. I need to realize that I reap what I sow. And from this day forward, this is how I'm gonna show up on the planet, and I'm gonna sow these things for 0 expectations, but in the understanding that they'll be returned to me in some shape, some form, some fashion.
Liz Moorehead:Welcome back to Beyond the Default. I'm Liz Morehead and as always, I'm joined by George b Thomas. How are you this morning?
George B. Thomas:Liz, I'm doing really good. I am 1 podcast away from getting in a car and heading down the road with a couple friends and my wife to go to a Lionel Richie concert.
Liz Moorehead:Oh my gosh. That sounds outstanding.
George B. Thomas:It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be fun.
Liz Moorehead:Well, we're gonna have one pretty big conversation before I let you go to get into that car. Are you ready?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I'm ready. I'm ready. I've been actually looking forward to this since we decided we're gonna do it. Unpacking this and documenting it for eternity is gonna be great.
Liz Moorehead:Well, let's let our listeners in on the secret of what we're gonna be talking about this week. The idea of getting what you deserve. What immediately comes to mind or what do you feel in your body when you hear the phrase getting what you deserve, George?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. It there's a couple different directions that my brain goes to be honest with you, Liz, but I can remember back in the day, young George, and, you know, people would throw different sayings around, like, you know, karma's a, you know, the rest of that saying, and what comes around goes around. And, you know, it's very easy for me to believe those types of sayings when I was what I like to affectionately now call dirty George. Meaning, I was just living life all about me. I was doing whatever I wanted to do.
George B. Thomas:A lot of it wasn't healthy. Some of it wasn't legal. And so it was like, okay. I deserve to be in this place because I'm being this type of human. Fundamentally, I feel like I understood.
George B. Thomas:If you got your stuff together, then maybe life would change. But, hey. You're out here, you know, just balling, doing your thing, not giving a care about anybody else. So good luck, buddy. Like, that's that's where my brain goes, but there's another place where when you start to change that and, fundamentally, you believe that other people should think different of you.
George B. Thomas:However, what's the interesting struggle is have you even started to think different about you? Right? So it's it's this whole, like, where you decide to rest or be stuck or not be pushing yourself because we're having a conversation on beyond your default, not pushing yourself beyond your default, and we'll kinda get a window into what a large part of this actually means for me out of today's conversation. You know, that's where my brain goes, Liz, is like, you kind of get what you get. You are what you are, or are you?
Liz Moorehead:You know, where your brain went when you started talking about making the conscious choice to elevate yourself, right the ship, do those different things. I think we've all had those moments in life no matter how big or small they might be, where it's like I am making the conscious decision to better myself. Whether that's breaking a bad habit, whether that's doing something more grander in scale. And then I think we can all admit we've had those moments of an of internally going, well, where's my parade?
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Liz Moorehead:Where are my accolades? Can can't everyone recognize how hard I'm working?
George B. Thomas:Doesn't the world see me? I mean, come on. I'm over here grinding.
Liz Moorehead:Exactly. And it's not that I'm looking for accolades, but where are they?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead:But you have a particular moment in mind, I know, that occurred in your life that I'd love for you to share with us that I think is gonna set the stage for our conversation today?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. The thing that people need to realize is that I have been on one heck of a dang journey, and I'll never forget, you know, after my first divorce and then I met Kelly, who is now my wife of, you know, a lot of years, a lot of special wonderful years. She's a fabulous woman. There was a time where when I first met her, she literally said, you can do that or you can be with me, and that was the start of something very interesting because I said, I'm not gonna do that anymore. I'd rather be with you.
George B. Thomas:And so it was her. It was me. It was my son, Seth, and I believe we had, shoot, I think we had 2 other children. I'm fast forwarding, by the way, listeners. We had 2 children, and I had gone from being this bouncer at a bar, hanging out late at night, doing things that I shouldn't, treating people probably the way that I shouldn't, had a really short fuse.
George B. Thomas:It was nothing at a drop of a coin for me just to get in a bar fight and just start ripping faces. I had gone from that place to my pastor's office because I started going to church, which I didn't think I would ever do, again at that point. But, again, thanks to my wife, I found myself in very interesting places. And I had said to Dave, hey. I think I'm supposed to be a pastor.
George B. Thomas:And, he just started laughing, and he slid this piece of paper across his desk, and it was where you could go to school for 3 years. And then at the end of the 3 years and it was weekend in intensive. Like, every quarter, you'd go up to this college for the weekend. You do all the studying from home because you gotta remember. 3 kids, a wife, you know, working a job trying to survive, like, eke out an existence.
George B. Thomas:And so I was like, I'm gonna do that. I wanna do that. And so it was this, like, large point of, like, okay. I'm going from what I would call dirty George. I'm gonna clean up my act.
George B. Thomas:I'm gonna do good things. Fast forward a little bit, longer. This is about maybe, I'm gonna say, a year and a half, 2 years into this journey, and I walk into Dave's office again, which I walked into Dave's office a lot, but there's really some major points in the story where I should talk about walking in Dave's office just not generally walking in to say hi and stuff, but I walked into his office, and I was super pissed. And I sat down, and I I said, Dave, I'm so frustrated right now. I've turned my life around.
George B. Thomas:I'm going to school. I'm working 2 jobs because by this time, I was I think I was working at Pizza Hut, and I was also then, the youth pastor at the church and going to school to be a pastor. I was like, I'm tired of this. Like, I've changed my life. You know, I'm doing the right thing.
George B. Thomas:Where the frick are my blessings? Like, I wanna see the blessings. God should be sending down manna from heaven because dirty George has turned into clean George. Where are my blessings? And, I mean, I just Liz, I was so angry.
George B. Thomas:So angry because I felt like I was investing in something and I wasn't seeing the payout for me. Now here's the thing. The problem, if I look back, is I was looking for the payout for me. If I look at who I was affecting that point, my wife, my kids, the kids that I was youth pastor to, I was probably impacting tons of people, but I didn't have any clue. I was blind to the fact.
George B. Thomas:But there I sat in his office, where are my blessings?
Liz Moorehead:It's interesting to think about that moment in time, right, where you are using almost the wrong measuring stick to understand what kind of impact you were having. Is there a way that you would have challenged yourself to look at that moment differently if you could go back in time and say, hey, younger George, I know you're you're baby stepping. You're doing the work. You're putting yourself out there. You gotta look in a different direction.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And I would say this to anybody listening to this, like, and this is gonna sound easy when I say it, but I realized fundamentally that it is just hyper difficult, and that's quit thinking about yourself. You don't measure things that are happening around you by you. You measure you by the things that are happening around you. And there was a a point in time, Liz, where that lesson just fundamentally became clear.
George B. Thomas:Now we've we've learned through past episodes that your boy, George, might be a little hard headed. Like, it usually takes a really bad accident or almost dying, and then he's like, oh, shoot. I get it. The same is very much true to the time when I actually learned about, hey hey, buddy. Hey.
George B. Thomas:Hey. It's not about you.
Liz Moorehead:So what happened next?
George B. Thomas:Timing is funny. Timing is everything. About 2 weeks later, we actually took the youth group to a mission trip. Because of being originally from Montana, my wife and I and the church had scheduled a mission trip to go work at an Indian reservation in Montana. So we drove from Ohio, went to Montana, started working on this Indian reservation, and the pastor was super nice.
George B. Thomas:We were putting in some, like, bathhouses and a playground for the kid and, you know, just just stuff you do when you're on a mission trip trying to take the not so blessed and move them a little bit forward in the life that they can live after you leave that mission trip. One of the things that happened while we were there is the pastor came up to us and said, hey. I got a really I got a really special thing. We've decided we're gonna do church on Sunday out in the middle of a field. We've got a big white tent.
George B. Thomas:We're gonna have a guest speaker, and I think it'd be really cool for kids from Ohio to just be able to have a church service in the valley, just being able to look at the mountains and see God's beauty and hear God's word. I was like, dude, sounds dope. Like, let's go with it. So we get to Sunday morning, and, you know, I'm still internally wrestling. Like, I'm there to help people, but I'm and I'm blessing people, but I'm still in the back of my mind, like, Where's my blessing?
George B. Thomas:What the you know, like, I'm just I'm I'm still fuming from, like, the conversation of 2 weeks earlier.
Liz Moorehead:Focused on getting what's yours.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Focused on getting, you know, what's mine still. And so what happened next is I would call it a miracle, to be honest with you, and I'll explain why.
George B. Thomas:And I gotta be I I just have to go somewhere. I need people to just kinda sit with me in this conversation for a minute. So first of all, this is back in the day, like, back back in the day. We're talking 20 years ago. So I would need you to put your mind frame in 20 years ago some of the things that I'm gonna say.
George B. Thomas:So we get to Sunday. We go out to this field. We sit under this white tent, and the band singing. It's like a guitar and like a tambourine and, like, because there's no electricity out there, people. It's like acoustic style worship.
George B. Thomas:All of a sudden, the pastor gets up, and he introduces the guest speaker, and her name is prophetess Juanita. Now I need to unpack 2 things right there. First of all, her name. Back then, especially in Montana, a woman behind the pulpit wasn't really a thing yet. Like, we've come a long way in the last 20 years for things that should be allowed to happen or shouldn't be allowed to happen, but here we are 20 years ago, Montana, and this prophetess, Juanita, goes to start to speak.
George B. Thomas:The second thing that I have to unpack is Juanita was an African American woman, which 20 years ago in Montana, there was not a lot of African American folks. Now there are now because moving from the places and the Internet, but back in the day, there was no Internet. There was, like, if you weren't a rancher, a bartender, like, worked at a gas station, nobody was moving there. K? But 20 years ago.
George B. Thomas:Now the other thing I want you to realize, we're on an Indian reservation, and it's a prophetess that is an African American woman preaching. I'm like, what is going on right now? God, what are you doing? Like, do you even know what you're doing? Now I want you to hear that, but that is literally the thought when I'm sitting there.
George B. Thomas:God, do you even know what you're doing? And so she's preaching, and I'm half paying attention. You know, the kids are they're getting it. Like, I can tell the kids are enjoying it, but I'm just I'm half half there. Until this one moment where she's preaching, and all of a sudden, the wind, you can just the wind starts to blow in the big white tent you because the wind hits the top of the tent, and it starts to flutter down.
George B. Thomas:And I get goosebumps. I mean, I just got. You know, Indians believe the spirits are in the wind, and we're literally having a worship service. And I'm just like, oh, God is in the house, baby. I don't know what I'm feeling, but I'm feeling something.
George B. Thomas:And so I start to pay attention to the message, and I start to feel a little, like, different. And I can't even explain. People have asked me, what do you mean different? I don't know. I just knew I felt a little different.
George B. Thomas:So the service gets over, and she's walking down the aisle. And I kinda look up at her, and I look down. I look at my wife, and I look down at the ground, and I see her feet are kinda coming close to me. I have my head down. My arms are literally, like, on my knees.
George B. Thomas:I have my head down. I'm just kinda like, oh, jeez. Okay. Let's get back at it. It's time to go to work.
George B. Thomas:And I feel somebody touch my shoulder. And I look up, and it's prophetess Juanita, and she says to me, when are you gonna realize you're the blessing? And she walks away. From that day forward, I was like, what? And I really embrace this idea of I've been sent here to be a blessing.
George B. Thomas:I'm screwing this up because I'm too focused on what's in it for me instead of what I can do for others. There's another sermon that happened when we got back to Ohio that was, called the blessing bomber because there were some conversations around what happened and Dave went and looked up some scripture and all of this stuff. From that day forward, I decided I'm gonna walk this earth and I'm gonna be a blessing bomber whether it's financially, which for a large part of my life, I couldn't do with my time or just showing up and realizing my job was to make people better than when I found them. I am literally called to be a blessing to those around me and so going from where are my blessings and 2 weeks later when are you gonna realize you're the blessing and then being able to just dramatically rewire my brain to, how can I help? How can I fix?
George B. Thomas:How can I be a catalyst in this moment that I'm in?
Liz Moorehead:Let me ask you this. Do you ever struggle to see the blessings in your life anymore now that you've made that subtle switch in your thinking?
George B. Thomas:Only when I'm being a butthead. Right? Because we all have those moments. Only when I'm being a butthead. But, typically, no.
George B. Thomas:Because the real funny thing about this whole ordeal is that I have been more blessed when blessing others than I ever was when I was looking for the blessings. Like, I find great joy. And what's funny, Liz, is I started this conversation about karma's up, and you, you know, you reap what you sow, you get what you do. Like, when you're sowing blessings, when you're focused on being a blessing bomber, yo, it comes back to you in so many ways. I would any of the listeners, I would challenge you.
George B. Thomas:2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years, like, rewire your brain to be a blessing in every way that you can to everybody that you can be, and watch what happens in your life over that time period.
Liz Moorehead:Okay. This is where Liz becomes a little bit probably too practical for her own good. Because I'm sitting here, and I'm loving this idea. Right? I'm loving this concept of moving away from the self focused notion of getting what you deserve to being the blessing.
Liz Moorehead:How do you keep it from going too far astray into the territory of people pleasing, neglecting your own needs? How do you find that line to walk where you are the blessing, but you are still taking care of yourself?
George B. Thomas:My initial thought is you're gonna have to ask somebody else. Although I I have been able to manage that. Like, it's funny because my brain goes to, you you know, you watch superhero movies. Right? And, Liz, when they first get this new superpower, they're a hot mess.
George B. Thomas:Like, their laser eyes are, like, burning down half a buildings. Like, they're flying and crashing, and there's, like, big, you know, crevices or, you know, it looks like a meteor hit the earth because they hadn't learned to fly yet. You might fall prey to everything that you just said when you're first starting to learn how to use this, what I'll call a superpower, being a blessing, focused on others instead of yourself. The second part, though, is where my brain went is that, like, you have a new level that you actually are willing to go to before you would have historically called it unhealthy because you have a new perspective. Your brain's wired differently.
George B. Thomas:And so I rarely get into a situation where I felt like I've overdone it, and I have to tie one word, I think, that has helped me unlock being a blessing bomber and not falling prey to feeling like I've been taken advantage of, and that is the word expectations.
Liz Moorehead:Oh.
George B. Thomas:I fundamentally have zero expectations of any of the people that I'm helping. I'm not helping them because I'm trying to get something out of it. I'm helping them because I'm called to be a blessing, but I know in the back of my head, the universe, God, however you believe, it will return to me in some shape, some form, some fashion, so that allows me to have 0 expectations for those around me. However, I have some real strict expectations for myself. You will never go back.
George B. Thomas:You will never be that guy again. You will always put others before you. And if you don't, you'll be cognizant of it. You'll remind yourself, and you'll get past your speed bump and continue to be what you know you're supposed to be. Don't you realize you're the blessing?
George B. Thomas:You know how many times that hits my brain, Liz, when I'm being an asshole? Are you being a blessing right now? Like, if somebody takes a big dagger and shoves it in my heart. My brain works in a way now because I program myself like, what are you doing? This is all about you.
George B. Thomas:It's supposed to be about them. Don't you realize you're supposed to be the blessing?
Liz Moorehead:What's incredible to me, just going back to that story, is just that comment to you was apropos of nothing. She didn't know your story. She didn't know that that was the exact thing you needed to hear in that moment that would change the course of your entire life.
George B. Thomas:Or did she? Anyway, I hear what you're saying. I hear what you're saying.
Liz Moorehead:Juanita, give us a call. Let us know.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Please. 330 no. I'm just kidding.
Liz Moorehead:So here's my question to you. What are the ways in your everyday life that you try to manifest this idea of being the blessing? Because you're a business owner. You're a busy you're a busy guy. You're a busy dad.
Liz Moorehead:You have lots of different ways in which you show up in the world. So what are some examples in which you are being the blessing in a way that's everyday and accessible?
George B. Thomas:Another word, compassionate. Realizing that everybody has their journey, giving them the grace and space to walk that journey, to educate themselves, to figure out their own things that they're supposed to figure out. Like, it's not easy employing your family, but if you're compassionate, if you learn to keep your mouth shut, if you on the side of being empathetic, they're not there yet, but at least they're on their way. The other thing too is I've had people be like, why do you pay so much? What?
George B. Thomas:Don't you realize you're supposed to be the blessing? That's the thing. I'll I'll pay people more than maybe they're worth. I'll pay people more than the average, you know, in the state of blah blah blah in the country of blah blah. No.
George B. Thomas:No. No. No. No. No.
George B. Thomas:No. I want people to go, wow. It's amazing when you work with George b Thomas. Like, first of all, he's not riding your butt. 2nd of all, he pays real good.
George B. Thomas:3rd of all, he actually, like, gives you time to educate yourself. 3rd of all, I just like hanging around with the guy. Just be a good human, Liz, and I do things above and beyond what would be oh, god. I do I do things above and beyond what would be called normal. Normal's boring.
George B. Thomas:Normal is the default. Normal is real close to getting stuck. And so, like, in all the ways, I'm trying to and by the way, as I'm saying this, I just want all the listeners know I am not perfect. Man, do I jack this up sometimes? If you talk to my wife, my kids, my friends, will they say he has his moments?
George B. Thomas:Yes.
Liz Moorehead:When was the last time you jacked it up?
George B. Thomas:Oh, jeez. I'd have to actually think about that. I mean, it here's the thing. For the last year and a half of owning the business, probably many times, they might be micro times. Right?
George B. Thomas:But when you ask me that question, my mind immediately started to search for, like, a massively large blowout. You know what? I'll give you an example, and I guess I'm supposed to share this because it's the one that immediately came to mind, and it might sound dumb. Over the last 10, 12 years since Inbound 2012, I've been on what one might call a come up. Building a brand, becoming god.
George B. Thomas:This makes me sick even Internet famous. HubSpot. Whatever. But I'll never forget this one time. I went to a hug.
George B. Thomas:It's it's a HubSpot user group. I'm sitting there, and I'm talking to some people, and I'm I'm being George b Thomas. And this, this lady walks up, and I can tell she's excited. She wants to talk to me. But one thing leads to another, and I go from talking to people, and I have to go speak on stage, and I speak on stage.
George B. Thomas:And then I see that she's trying to make it around to talk to me, but I'm like, oh, yeah. Thanks. And and I and I I go. And I get in my car, and I'm driving away. And I'm like, I felt this feeling before.
George B. Thomas:I just really let that person down. They wanted to talk to me. They wanted to share their story. They wanted to spend some time with me, and I just I let that person down. I know I felt that way before because I had been her to somebody who had been dramatically influential in me making a decision that I had made that at one point I got to see them at an event, and it was the worst experience of my life.
George B. Thomas:Worst experience of my life. I was like, well, that was anticlimactic, but here's the thing. I knew that I screwed up. It was about a year later. I was at another event.
George B. Thomas:I saw this human. I beelined it to this human, and I said, hey. The last time I saw you, we're at a HubSpot user group. I want to apologize. When I left, I realized that you were wanting to spend time with me, that you had something to tell me, a story to share.
George B. Thomas:You just wanted to be in the space. I don't know exactly what it is, but I just want you to know I apologize because I felt like I wasn't important before, and I hope by all that is holy, I didn't make you feel unimportant. Her reaction was priceless because it was a big smile, and it was this kindred understanding of he's a good dude. Like, it's hard to put into words, but we just but we have a great conversation after that. But I knew that I had to step out of my comfort zone, be vulnerable, say it was my fault.
George B. Thomas:I wasn't at my best. I wasn't paying attention. I was still trying to, like, hone in the superpowers, if you will. But that's why now any event that I go to, I could give 2 craps less about if I registered for a session. If somebody stops me in the hallway, breaks.
George B. Thomas:K. God, why do you have me here? What am I supposed to hear? What am I supposed to say? How am I supposed to help?
George B. Thomas:Because I can educate myself when I get back home, but I can't get back this moment. I can't get back this moment. And that runs through my head so many times, like, you can't get back this moment. And don't you realize you're supposed to be the blessing right here, right now?
Liz Moorehead:What's so wrong with getting what you deserve?
George B. Thomas:Comes from the wrong place. You will get what you deserve. You will get what you deserve. By the way, karma is a. It's not just a little saying, but here's the thing that saying jacked up because the original, like, thing that I would say is you reap what you sow.
George B. Thomas:If you sow love, you'll get love. If you so compassion, you'll get compassion. If you so blessings, you'll get blessings. If you get to be a ninja and you can do all of those things the life that you will live, you can't but help strap yourself into the roller coaster and hold on because it's not about if you wanna go past your default, you will be escorted out of your default. And I've never really said that before, Liz, but that's how I feel What's happening in my life is I'm being escorted out of something that I'm no longer supposed to be in, that I've, like, found the secret unlock key, and I've practiced the unlock key enough that the universe is saying, hey.
George B. Thomas:We need you to go over here. We need you to do these things. We need you to share your story. It's time for you to help people see the unlock button in their own lives. I'm being ushered out of dirty George, of where's where's my blessings?
George B. Thomas:What's in it for me? Oh, I'm not gonna spend time doing that. I'm not gonna I would make no money doing that. That's the thing. If I take it back to out of personal and to professional, I can give you plenty of stories where people are like, yeah.
George B. Thomas:I called him up. He didn't even charge me. He just, like, gave me the answer. Why do you think why do you think, by the way, I've created probably over 2,000, some a 100 HubSpot tutorials and never really charged anybody? Like, I threw them up on YouTube and was like, here, world.
George B. Thomas:Because I knew that I could move them from point a to point b. They just need to watch a video. They would make their life easier. It would make their life better in a business sense, but I try to do that at a more grandiose level on the personal side, and what's fun is watching my family come along for the ride. I'll never forget.
George B. Thomas:Here's another story, Liz. There's a thing I love to do, and it could be considered fun, funny, or you're a sick man. I'm not sure which it is yet, but I love to make waitresses cry. And what I mean by that is when you leave a tip and you know they felt something. And I'll never forget this one time my wife and I were sitting at Logan's, Logan's steakhouse, and it was my wife, my daughter, Kaylee, and me.
George B. Thomas:And we're eating a nice dinner. I we had just had a win, by the way. And I'm like, we're going out to dinner. We're gonna celebrate. And we're celebrating.
George B. Thomas:And our waitress comes up, and she's a good waitress. She's doing a great job, and she starts to talk about how, yeah, on Thursdays, I work here. I'm a school teacher, and I felt my insides being ripped out. And she walked away. I looked at my wife, and I go, can you believe that?
George B. Thomas:Like, a school teacher has to work a second job just to make ends meet. This is the world we live in. Like, something's fundamentally wrong. And so we get done with the meal, and I said, babe, leave a leave a good tip. Well, how much?
George B. Thomas:Babe, I don't care. Just leave a good tip. She needs to be blessed. She's working 2 jobs. She's a school teacher.
George B. Thomas:She needs to be blessed. I won't disclose the amount, but it was a good amount. It was I'd have been happy with the tip. We tried to sneak out. Like, we left the tip, and they were like, Anne, break.
George B. Thomas:Let's go. Trying to get out of there, but she cut us off with the pass. And her words were, uh-uh. You can't. No.
George B. Thomas:And she was starting to cry. My wife looks over, and she goes, oh, honey, you deserve it. The people around us oh, god. The people around us that are put in our path, they deserve it. They deserve it, and when you realize how much you felt that you deserve it and you just wish that somebody would see that, that you've always wanted a hand up, not a handout.
George B. Thomas:You just wish somebody would see that you're struggling through life, and maybe you'd get that moment in time that it would change you. And we're all the same. We all feel that way. We're all looking for that. The only difference is you're listening to this, and you have the ability to take after the day and just be like, you know what?
George B. Thomas:I need to be a blessing bomber too. I need to realize it's less about me, more about them. I need to realize that I reap what I sow. And from this day forward, this is how I'm gonna show up on the planet, and I'm gonna sow these things for 0 expectations, but in the understanding that they'll be returned to me in some shape, some form, some fashion.
Liz Moorehead:What's interesting of how you phrase that is it's so we've been talking about this in the context of being the blessing. But the reality is is that instead of focusing on getting what you deserve, it's looking around at the world and asking yourself, is everyone else getting what they deserve in the best possible way?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. The I mean and it could be a kind word. That's super powerful, by the way. I've seen grown men break down by a kind word. It could be a a tip.
George B. Thomas:Right? It could be just spending time. Shoot. It could be 5 minutes of silence just sitting there holding their hand. That's the part that's hard, by the way.
George B. Thomas:We haven't even talked about it, but the the hardest part is diagnosing what blessing is it that you're supposed to deliver because if it's the wrong gift, then nobody likes the gift, but if you can tune yourself into, like, what do they need in this moment? By the way, there is a part of your brain. We'll just call it the still small voice that you might wanna tune into in those moments where you're like, what am I supposed to do here? And then just shut up and listen, and then you'll realize you'll know. Oh, I'm supposed to give this person a hug.
George B. Thomas:I'm supposed to ask this person this question. You gotta get out of your own way. You gotta shut yourself up for a hot minute, and you gotta rewire the brain to be like about them about them about them. You gotta know your job. Be a blessing.
George B. Thomas:Be a blessing. Be a blessing.
Liz Moorehead:If our listeners only took away one concept, one idea that isn't be the blessing from today's conversation, what should it be and why?
George B. Thomas:It's funny. I wanted to end this podcast with, don't you realize you're the blessing? That's how I wanted to end this podcast, but you just asked me that question in a way where I feel like I can end with be the blessing.
Liz Moorehead:Nope. You can't.
George B. Thomas:So this whole time, we have talked about this at an exterior level. This is what I'll end with because you kind of started to lean into it, by the way. It's okay to bless yourself. It's okay to love yourself. It's okay to give yourself a mental hug.
George B. Thomas:It's okay to give yourself grace and empathy. It's okay. That's what I wanna leave everybody with, by the way. I feel those words. It's okay.