Bridging Wisdom and Spirituality – Exploring Meditation and Taoism with Bob Martin

Brad Minus: [00:00:00] And welcome back to a another episode of Life-Changing Challengers. I am super, super excited to be talking to Bob Martin. Bob is a trial lawyer, meditation teacher and author. And he has two books out right now. One is called I am the Way: Finding the Truth and the Life through the biblical Reimagining of the Tao.

So that sounds super interesting. We're kind of mixing up things there. And then he has a novel out called The Children of Abraham and we'll let him tell a little bit about why he ended up writing that a little bit later. But anyway, first of all, Bob, how you doing today? 

Bob Martin: Doing great.

Thank you for having me. Let me just take a moment to thank you for the incredible amount of work that it takes to put on a podcast, and give a platform to people like me to be able to share some of the wisdom that we've picked up over life. It's a lot of work and, we appreciate it.

And I'm sure your listeners do. So I want to thank you for that. 

Brad Minus: Well, I appreciate [00:01:00] you and the ability for you to come on the show and give some small nuggets of information to everyone. Some of the nuggets that you give will, connect with some, and some of the other nuggets you give will connect with others.

As long as they take one piece that they can take to further their lives in the way that they want to move, I'm excited. 

So, Bob, can you tell us a little bit about your childhood, the complement of your family, where you grew up and What was it like to be Bob as a kid? 

Bob Martin: So, I think gotta kind of go back to my mom and dad. Dad was born, in 1898. Just to give you a timeline, mom was born in the early 20th century.

Dad was Hungarian royalty. And, he escaped from Hungary when the Bolsheviks, invaded from Russia to take over Hungary as a communist country in the early part of the 20th century, he met my mom here and she was Roma Gypsy. I tell you this [00:02:00] because all of their ancestors on both sides were just wiped out.

And they came to a conclusion that there really couldn't be a very merciful God, that would allow that to happen. So, in my family, we were what I would call non theists. They weren't atheists because they weren't against anything. It's just not a conversation that we had. And it wasn't a common conversation in the carnival and the amusement parks that I grew up in because my father's path to the American dream was through popcorn.

That's interesting. He found popcorn and cotton candy and he made a business of it. And so that's where I grew up in carnivals and amusement parks and I was a chubby little boy. 

Brad Minus: Popcorn and cotton candy. 

Bob Martin: Mean, 

Brad Minus: that was your main staple. 

Bob Martin: Yeah. Well, it was popcorn and cotton candy and orange drink and grape drink. That's that was my daily diet. So, you know, it was a [00:03:00] chubby little boy and as a chubby little boy, you know, you get kidded a lot and you get bullied a bit. So that's part of some of the pain that kind of followed me around through my life.

I was a happy kid. I was fixing cotton candy machines and burning off the sugar melting heads by the time I was eight years old and I was hawking at nickel pitches by the time I was 12. It was kind of an exciting life. In a carnival, everybody in it is your family.

So, even though we moved around a lot, there was always this sense of belonging. One of the things that my dad required of me, though, was to, even though we never spoke about religion or church or attended, he demanded that I go to children's, Bible, Sunday school, I guess you call it. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. 

Bob Martin: We automaticans, you must learn the Bible stories, he would say to me. And so, I would go and learn them. One of the things that I think was impactful in my life is that, [00:04:00] no matter where I went, whatever contact I had with those Sunday schools, they kept telling me that there was this, Guy, Jesus, and he lived up there somewhere and he wasn't completely human and he was something else.

But the important thing that they all impressed upon me was that he loved me. And I think that I accepted that somewhere in my being, and that was something that gave me a certain strength when I, confronted, my life changing challenges. So that's part of it. There's a couple of other things that I've come to know that had a big influence on me.

One was in my teens, I read a lot of science fiction. So I started thinking in universal cosmic terms about things, and a lot of science fiction, you know, has semi cosmic energy things in [00:05:00] it. I started asking, you know, what was the organizing force of the universe and that kind of thing. Was a question in my mind.

I also read To Kill a Mockingbird, and I fell in love with Atticus Finch, the lawyer in the book, when I was 14. So did I, did that have anything to do with me becoming a lawyer? Maybe. And the other book and movie that I absolutely was drawn to was Man of La Mancha. And the character of Don Quixote, right?

There was something about his tilting at windmills and dreaming the impossible dream, but for a moral and just cause that that cut a deep path to my heart. So those were some of the things that I think had a lot to do with. You know who Bob was. That's 

Brad Minus: interesting. 

Bob Martin: Did, do you have any brothers or sisters?

I had one brother who was eight years older. And he, well, of course, you know, so we were, [00:06:00] when, think of it, if I was eight, he was 16. If I was 10, he was 18. Yeah. So we traveled in different circles. He's a Marine. He's 82, 80, 82 years old now, and he's a marine. And so he served his country and later on, I'll tell you a story about when I left the law how that question of being of service came full circle for me.

Brad Minus: Excellent. So, when you say moved all around, so are we talking like, have you literally circumnavigated the country? 

Bob Martin: Well, we went to various places with the carnival, went to Mexico for a year and I learned Spanish there, which has been just a wonderful skill to have in your life to be able to move into a separate culture.

With the language. This is a wonderful thing. So I learned Spanish there, but that was only for my first nine years, 10 years. After that my father established, reestablished his position in an amusement [00:07:00] park in Queens, New York called Rockaways Playland, and after that, it was just the amusement park.

Brad Minus: Okay, nice. So, What was so what was high school like for you? 

Bob Martin: High school was difficult. Because I started going to a regular, normal schools, like around third grade and because I was chubby and in those days we're talking. You know, we're talking the late fifties, early sixties, they didn't make clothes for chubby kids.

They did. JCPennies was the only place you could get them. They called them huskies, right? But they didn't fit well. And I had to keep the clothes kept riding up in my crotch and I had to pull it out. And as a result, all the girls call me cooties and they ran away from me whenever I came near.

So when I left my elementary school and went on to the next school, The most important thing in my life was to be the center, [00:08:00] to be the class clown. That's what I was left with. I wanted people to laugh with me, to want me to be around. And I had a friend named Charlie Greenfield who saw the power that these girls had on me.

And he took a very different direction. He concentrated on his sports, his piano playing, his studies. And he kind of shied away from crowds. Later on, I realized that about him and thanked him for having stood up for me and been my champion all those years again, it was a, again, I had somebody in my life.

Who believed in me and yeah, I think that makes a huge difference. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. Kids were cruel kids were, I mean, and they're still that way. It's, and then it makes it even worse. So, but yeah, kids can be cruel until they start to grow up. So where did you end up going to college? 

Bob Martin: Well, [00:09:00] I got I found that there was something that my body was good for, and that was football.

Brad Minus: Oh, there we go. 

Bob Martin: There we go. So I became lettered in high school. I was starting defensive tackle and got a full ride to Boston university and and on October 17 of 1969 at two o'clock in the afternoon, I broke up with my girlfriend, but who's counting and the Next Saturday was homecoming game and I had a career ending injury.

So that October was pretty bad. After that, all I did was smoke pot eat mushrooms, not go to school and flunk out of Boston university. Oh, wow. But I wound up at Pratt Institute which had a restaurant and hotel management course, and it was my [00:10:00] dream and my goal and my desire to sell enough hot dogs in the summer on the boardwalk.

To not have to work in the winter. That was my total goal. 

Well, I guess in that time, I mean, that's one way to do it, right? It wasn't something that was as prevalent as it is now. 

And you know, that's the business that I kind of grew up in. And so yeah, it seemed like it made sense to me. You might wonder how I wound up being a lawyer.

That was my next question. So this is a little bit this is a bit unusual. So once I flunked out of Boston university and I was no longer a jock, I became a hippie and we had a little hippie pad and you never know who is going to be living in it at any time, but there was a couple of regulars and one of them was John Berman.

John Berman was kind of a Woody Allen type character. Where he's just kind of. In Yiddish, you would call him a [00:11:00] shlemiel. And but he kept telling me, Bob, you should be a lawyer, Bob, you should be a lawyer. And I go, I just want to sell hotdogs. So this guy disappears for three weeks. and gets a job and earns enough money to buy a postal money order, which is unredeemable, made out to the educational testing service for 350 bucks.

And he said, here is your ticket to the law school aptitude test. You should be a lawyer. Go take the test. So I went and I took the test and one law school took a chance on me, and that's how I became a lawyer. 

Brad Minus: Wow. That's crazy. So that is 

Bob Martin: crazy. 

Brad Minus: So did you actually get a bachelor's degree from this Pratt school?

Bob Martin: I did. I finally graduated after a total of five and a half or six years of college. Yes, I graduated . [00:12:00] But that's, so, 

Brad Minus: That's amazing. So what was the law school. 

Bob Martin: Law School was Nova Southeastern Institute for the Study of Law, which is in Fort Lauderdale. 

Brad Minus: Excellent. Yeah. So yeah, I'm in Tampa.

So I've been down there a few times. Yeah, beautiful place. And it must have been even more beautiful when you were out there. It was 

Bob Martin: very rural when I was there. Right. It's very rural. We were the only building in a couple of miles circumference. 

Brad Minus: So, so, how did you feel about law school? Like, I, I've always heard, I've always heard different things about law school.

I actually was accepted to law school at one point, but I was already making the money that I would have been, I would have had to take a, I would have had to take a pay cut to become an associate once I spent all that time because it had been five years for me because it would have to be part time.

Right? And I didn't want to put the work in after graduate school. I just didn't, I guess you couldn't do it. Yeah I, it probably would have been the best thing for me at [00:13:00] that point, but I just, I didn't have it to keep going to school. And that was. you know, probably a wimpy thing to do, but either way.

So I always tell me like the first year they scare you to death. The second year they work you to death and the third year they bore you to 

Bob Martin: death. I'd say the first two are right. The third year we were able to intern in in public service officers. We had a choice of the public defender, the district attorney or legal aid.

And I chose the district attorney. But I should tell you one thing is that John Berman, who really was a heroin addict, we pulled him out of shooting galleries in Harlem three times, had a sit on him as he went through DTs. But he went clean when I got into law school and I was going to be Perry Mason and he was going to be my Paul Drake.

A lot of your, a lot of your audience won't know those references, but I was going to be the lawyer and he was going to be my investigator. [00:14:00] So he went and enrolled at Miami Dade Community College. He came down to South Florida, enrolled in Miami Dade Community College at to become a paralegal investigator.

And so he is the one that kind of held to be accountable. And I got to tell you, when you walk into the bookstore on your first day of law school and you see a stack of books that is as tall as you are, it takes three or four trips to bring them to your car. Yeah. It scares the hell out of you.

Brad Minus: Yeah. So it sounds like that was right. But this John, he really, he, I mean, he got you to where you were. Well, he gave you the tools and you went and took the test. So this, so he was somebody that really believed in you. 

Bob Martin: He did. He did. And he stayed with me all through law school. And then I finished law school and I was at the DA's office and I had the, first of all, he asked me how I liked it.

There was something transformational [00:15:00] about going to law school because all of a sudden either my brain finally solidified or I matured. But I. I loved it. I ate it up. I loved it. And John was always there. And by the time I, I interned in the DA's office and I was able to intern in a felony division.

So I was doing you know, support work for a felony prosecutor. And then he came along one day and he, while I was in my third year of law school, he said, do you want to try a case? I said a felony case, jury trial. He goes, yeah. So he gave me this case because he knew it was a loser. And so by the time I I graduated law school, I had two felony trials under my belt.

And the DA's office hired me without even blinking an eye. And I got, I graduated, took the law exam, was sworn in, and the next day I had a job and I had an office. Love it. [00:16:00] Three days later, I came up from court. And my secretary came out of the office and said to me, Bob, do you know a John Berman?

And I go yeah, I do. Why? Well, the Miami beach police just called. I'm sorry, but he's passed away.

Excuse me. Turns out John had run into some chick who was shooting up and he decided that he'd shoot up with her. Probably he was looking to get some and forgot that he had dropped his tolerance over three years of being straight. OD'ed and died. 

Brad Minus: Oh 

Bob Martin: man. I'm 

Brad Minus: sorry to hear that. 'cause that sounds like somebody that was really in your corner.

He was, 

Bob Martin: yeah. But maybe, you know, he had fulfilled his mission. Maybe I don't know. You know, those kinds of things. I don't know. It's way above my pay grade. I don't know how the cosmic, you know, forces work and if [00:17:00] that's really true, that people have missions. But you know what? I'm going to choose to believe that it's true because that particular story, that particular truth works for me.

Brad Minus: No I would definitely agree with, you know, there's certain ways we need to think about things. We want to think about things and you don't know if it's true or not, but if you choose to believe it and it helps you, then, you know, more power to you. That's all I, that's all. Cause you don't 

Bob Martin: know it's not true.

Brad Minus: Exactly. So you was it during your, was it during that third year internship that you were actually interning with Janet Reno? 

Bob Martin: Yeah. Yeah. She was the boss. And and when I, well, of course, when I graduated, she hired me and I worked my way through the ranks. I got to start in a felony division. So that short circuited.

Maybe three years of career because normally you start an intake and then you do misdemeanors and you do traffic cases and you [00:18:00] know, you work your way up to felonies, but it short circuited three. So I was able to rise very careful, very fast in in the DA's office. And then we, I worked in the, became a a lead prosecutor in the economic crimes and consumer frauds.

And we had a federal task force that was going after the money of the mob and we hit him for a lot of money over 70 million. And then shortly after that I left the DA's office and I hung my shingle out and that's when I will call him Johnny. Who was the head of the Italian portion of the Miami cartel came to see me.

And it was a little nerve wracking when he walked in the door, cause I knew who he was. And basically he said, you gotta be pretty good to get us for that much. We want to send you some clients. [00:19:00] And that's when my relationship with the top heads of the Miami cocaine cowboy days. Started, 

Brad Minus: you have books and movies in you already.

I mean, I just, a couple of things that you've already said. I'm like, man, that could be a movie, that could be a book. And some of it's in my book. Yeah. That's amazing. I that Yeah I'd love to get into some more detail about that with you. But there's some things that I really want to I wanna cover.

. So you hung a shingle out, and now you got you're kind of working, we're gonna say with the . You know, with the Italian side of the of the Miami mafia. 

Bob Martin: Well, actually at his level, he was also talking to the heads of the Cubans, the Colombians, the Peruvians, and the Haitians.

Brad Minus: Jeez. That's 

Bob Martin: I can't even imagine. It was wild. You saw the movie Scarface maybe with, you know, that, that movie [00:20:00] captures the vibe of Miami perfectly during those days. . 

Brad Minus: Interesting. Yeah. I, you know, obviously as a kid, we always grew up, we hear about this stuff and you're like, ah, that's what I'd like to do.

You know, you got one side of, you know, one side of my clown car friends would be, yeah, it would be great to be in the mob. You know, blah, blah, blah. And then the other parents was like, yeah, it'd be great to take down the mob, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. So, and then here you are, you're living both sides of it.

That's just amazing to me. So, I mean, yeah, the amount of stories you must have is just got to be ridiculous. So, how long, so how long did you have a shingle out? 

Bob Martin: Well, for several, for a decade. But here's where my life changing challenges came about. So, you know, I was a hippie during the, you know, marijuana mushroom LSD days.

I'm not going to say I didn't partake. So, you know, the use of drugs wasn't something that [00:21:00] was foreign to me. And this were the cocaine cowboy days. I mean, cocaine was like powder was all over Miami crack was just starting to come in and that was something that. You know, good folks didn't do but there's a lot of powder around and I would go out with my clients to these chrome and glass discotheques of the seventies and partook.

And although I was fortunate never to allow it to affect my professional career, my personal life was going down the tubes. I was seeing a therapist. And one of the effects of that particular drug is that it makes you feel like you're Superman. Like, anything that you do is like, you're gonna touch, you're gonna, you're gonna turn lead into gold.

And, you know, you just, anything you do is gonna work out. It's gonna be great. You know, very arrogant very ego driven. And So I was taking on some projects that I thought was going to make me billions of dollars and it was bleeding me [00:22:00] dry. I had already paid my house off by the time I was 32.

And I was facing now with having to refinance it and to feed these projects. And I went and I asked my therapist, what should I do? What should I do? So, he looked at me, and he reached behind, and he picked up a bag, and he shook his hands with three coins, he dropped them on the table, made some mathematical calculations, drew a line on a piece of paper, did it again and again, six times, figured something out, looked at a chart, wrote down a number, opened up a book to that chapter number, showed it to me, and the title of the chapter was Retreat.

And, well, what do you do when the therapist you're paying 65 an hour to for therapy, you know, pulls out something that looks like tarot cards or some fortune telling doohickey, you [00:23:00] curse them out. Of course. I didn't like the answer anyway. And I stomped out, but it was the right word that I needed to hear.

And I went and I closed down the projects and my ass. Excuse my language. But it did. And, I pulled up and Started to clean up and what the NA and AA the 12 steps we talk about making amends and I started making my amends and pulling in and it what I found out was that my therapist was actually the disciple devotee and English language editor for the books written by master watching me, who was a 72nd.

Now think about that. For fourteen hundred years or so, his family had handed down this priesthood of the Shaolin temple in China. [00:24:00] Wow. 14, 72 generations. So he was a Shaolin monk like Kung Fu, that old movie Kung Fu. That's the same thing. And so Master Ni came to Miami and I said, what is the I Ching?

And he said, it's Taoism. I didn't know what Taoism was. So. I asked him a few questions about it and he said, well, it's kind of like an operating system for life, but you don't have to believe in anything supernatural. I said, well, it seems like I fit into that. And so I took to it and I studied under Master Ni and studied under George for eight years.

And he taught me the I Ching and we studied the Tao Te Ching and Tai Chi and Qi Gong. And I practiced and became a pretty devoted Taoist. Now, right about that time, I ran into a little conflict with Johnny. It [00:25:00] wasn't a conflict. We had a good arrangement. Nothing illegal, nothing unethical. And that was good for him, because it was good for him to have a respected lawyer.

But then his son got arrested and he wouldn't take no for an answer when he asked me to do something that was over the bridge and I didn't see any way out of it. So, happened to be driving to driving my ex wife, my first wife up to see her folks in New York. And we passed through North Carolina. The azaleas were out, dogwoods were blooming.

And I looked around and said, let's move here. I went back and I told Johnny and he goes, sometimes a man just has to move on. This way we can part friends. And so I moved and it was. It was wonderful. Again, a life changing challenge was, I was confronted with it. I couldn't and wouldn't [00:26:00] do what he wanted me to do, nor could I allow, based on the ethics of lawyering, nor could I allow another lawyer to do it.

If I knew another lawyer was doing that, I would be obligated to report it. That would get me in trouble with Johnny. So I was challenged. And so I decided I'd moved to North Carolina and it was like a breath of fresh air. I all of a sudden had the opportunity to take all of the learning and all of the study that I had with master knee and really start putting it into effect.

So I left my like shedding his skin, you know, like a snake would shed its skin. I shed my skin of arrogance. And I devoted myself to public service and it was just absolutely transformational. I worked for the DA's office here for a little while. They went out in private practice. I was the only [00:27:00] Spanish speaking lawyer in town.

So I got all of the Hispanics. So my practice flourished, but what I saw was that even though I was handling the legal matters, my clients had. They still had so many other issues that kept them getting back into trouble. And quite frankly I started coasting again. And then one day I went out and I did some weeding, weeding in the garden, kept bending over and I tore my hamstrings.

So the doc gave me a Percocet. And I took that Percocet and I'm going to tell you, not only did the pain in my hamstrings go away, but all the pain in my life just went away. It was like I laid back and everything was good. In spite of the training, in spite of [00:28:00] eight years with Masturne, in spite of everything else, my brain just said, you want this more than anything else.

So I started seeking it out. And one pill led to two pills, led to five pills, led to ten pills. And I developed a pretty good addiction. And my wife was was an alcoholic. My daughter was anorexic. So it was a mess. I gotta tell you, it was a mess. Yeah. And all angles, Bob, from all 

Brad Minus: angles. Dang, that had to be, that had to feel like, I mean, I can see why you're taking Percocet because the minute that it, well, the minute that that it leaves you all of a sudden, all this pressure comes in.

You know, you got issues with your daughter. You got issues with your wife. You got, I mean, so yeah, so I, I can see it, you know, obviously, you know, you were getting a part of this before we had this whole idea of the, opioid at, [00:29:00] you know, a crisis. 

Bob Martin: Yeah. It was easy to go to a doctor and get, you know, a prescription for 30 percocets, 10, 10, double, you know, doubles or triples or quadruples even.

Brad Minus: Oh, geez. That before it became a a schedule C drug. Yeah. 

Bob Martin: Right. And I remember sitting one day I ran out and I'm starting to get real sick, you know, puking and my stomach's cramping and he's shaking and I'm waiting for my dealer, because I'm buying it on the street now, I'm waiting for my dealer to come and they don't show up.

And it start getting real worse. And I say, I never forget this. I was sitting on the side of the bed and I go, well, I guess I'm an addict. No, duh, fella. You know? Oh how do you know?

Well, Sometimes you gotta, you know, you got the old expression, you gotta fish or cut bait. I had to cut [00:30:00] bait. I had to get out of the situation, the sick situation that I had with my ex wife, which was harming my children. So, we needed to separate and that way, you know, I could develop an individual relationship with my kids.

And I think it was with my kids, they gave me the motivation to want, at least to want to get straight. And so that's what I started doing. I remember getting up at six o'clock in the morning in Burlington, North Carolina, because the best NA meeting was in Greensboro, North Carolina, about an hour's drive.

I'd get over there, that meeting started at eight o'clock, and I'd always get back in time for court, and and I'd just get up every single morning, day after day after day after day. In the meantime I'm still following my Taoist practices. And there came a time when NA and AA just they kind of started running out of steam.

And that's when I fell back to my spiritual [00:31:00] roots and Buddhism then helped me out of that. So when the end of the century came. I decided that I would want to go back and see about learning more about recovery and treatment. So I left my law practice and went back to school to get a master's in social work, concentrating on addiction and positive psychology was introduced to Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology.

And I, I just love the guy and I loved his theories and how he thought Marty, Marty says this, that most psychology talks about making you better from being sick, going from minus 10 to 0. He said, why doesn't psychology also consider taking you from 0 to plus 10, so that you can flourish, so that your life can be extraordinary?

Psychology can do that. And he developed an entire psychology around that. [00:32:00] So that was my concentration. 

Brad Minus: Interesting. So I want to take, I just want to take one little step back. I want to get some definitions from you real quick. Just to help out me and somebody, what is the difference?

Or can you explain Taoism versus Buddhism? 

Bob Martin: So you can think of Chinese thinking as a stool with three legs. There's Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. And they all have basically the same theme, which is it's not what happens in life. It's what you do with what happens in life that causes your suffering.

They all distinguish between pain and suffering. Pain is Inevitable. You get, you have heartbreaks, you have cuts in your skin, you know, you have disease, you have old age, you know, I mean, pain is inevitable, but disappointment. all those things. [00:33:00] It's what you do with it that causes suffering. Ouch. You I stuck my finger in the door.

Ouch. Okay. So that really hurts. Now, if I start saying, I always do this to myself, this is just horrible. This, these kinds of things always happen to me and that's, what's going through my head. That's suffering. That's what suffering is. So they all have means and mechanisms to try to Help you be able to deal with the changing challenges of life in more effective and efficient ways.

Confucius thought that those thoughts and those desires, those wants and hatreds and things like that were so powerful that you had to have a set rule of etiquette. So Confucianism is very strict, very etiquette oriented, lots of rules. Buddhism is a lot more flowing. [00:34:00] And it says that you need to, you can't resist these thoughts, but you have to be with them and allow them to be.

And it's through the allowing of the thoughts to be that they kind of let you be. It's kind of counterintuitive. And it also says that we don't, we're not going to tell you how the cosmos works, but we will tell you this. If you cultivate generosity. You will be less greedy. If you cultivate compassion, you will be less hateful.

If you cultivate wisdom, you'll be less ignorant. So those are the things, greed, hatred, and ignorance, which cause you all of your dissatisfaction. So practice generosity, compassion, and wisdom, and you will be more effective and happy in life. Taoism is a little bit more hippie like. It's really the [00:35:00] go with the flow concept.

Daoism says this, it says your life is like being in a stream, and you can either work real hard to paddle upstream and don't make a lot of progress, or you can go downstream. But if you go downstream, don't fall into trap. That think that you can just relax and not navigate the boat. There are still rocks and they're still running aground and there are still shorelines.

So you have to do it carefully. But there is a way to live life where you can interfere with the natural flow of things the least so that you're acting as effectively and as efficiently by using the flow around you to your benefit. The two keys to that is Understand the flow and then learn how to align yourself with it.

Brad Minus: Interesting. [00:36:00] So I've taken a couple of Tai Chi courses in my life and I really enjoyed them. And that's the, and that was kind of the story behind it. And I know Tai Chi and Daoism kind of work hand in hand. They are the same. The Tai Chi, the physical manifestation of Taoism. 

Bob Martin: Yes, absolutely. If I can just take a second, you know the old symbol of the yin yang?

Brad Minus: Yes. 

Bob Martin: Most people recognize the single, but they don't understand the symbolism. So, The dark is the yin, that's the female energy, the light is the male energy, the yang. But you notice that in the white side there is a dark dot, and in the dark side there is a white dot. What that symbolizes is that inside of yin is the seed of yang.

And that seed of yang will grow and eventually it will take over yin. [00:37:00] Just as yang will be taken over by yin, yin is taken over by yang, and so the black becomes white and the white becomes black, which is the symbol of that fact that the universe always cycles. Day turns to night turns to day, summer turns to winter.

But what most people don't understand about bringing that concept into their life is that good times always go down. And bad times always go up. And the proof of that is that you look back at your life and it's never been good times all the time. It's never been bad times all the time. It's always changing.

And the I Ching. It means the classical book of changes. E means changes. So what Taoism says is that if you can, if you are, if everything's going great, you're, you know, you're [00:38:00] doing really, it's a, it's good times. There are certain things that you have to be aware of during good times, and that is that it ain't going to last forever.

And just like a good chipmunk, you got to start storing nuts. Because time is going to get more difficult and you need to have your stores there. And if you don't see that you're going to be in trouble. And when times are bad, you must not give up hope because if you just have patience and you'll hold.

long enough, times will get better. So you have to prepare yourself when openings occur so that you can take advantage of it. So you're always aligning yourself with the times that are in to become effective and efficient. And that's where Daoism really is applicable to business because business is cyclical.

Brad Minus: Exactly. I mean, well, I think the whole world is cyclical in some point. We have seasons, we've got days, we've got right now, I mean, the whole, you know, the [00:39:00] environment, you know, we've got the, you know, environmentalists where I certainly think that's cyclical too. If you go back and you look at the history of the world and the history of weather and stuff like that, we've had all of this, that's happening now.

We've had it way back when. So like I said, I think the whole, There's everything's got a cycle life cycle season cycle of environment cycle. You know what I mean? So yeah, it totally makes a lot of sense 

Bob Martin: In its natural state. So 

Brad Minus: yeah, 

Bob Martin: We as human beings can disrupt.

The cycles, you know, when you have, yeah, well, think of it. You have you have generational wealth that continues to build to the point that it's worthless, ineffective, and inefficient is more than anybody can use while people now in the normal cycle of things, the way the universe works. The way nature works is the tree will come and it will bear fruit and then it will lose its fruit and then it'll go into [00:40:00] winter and it'll regenerate, but it doesn't grow and grow and grow so that it has so much fruit that it's got more than anybody can use.

It's just not what happens in nature. So, you know, we can through our greed and, hatred and fears and the like, we can disrupt it. You know, we are, we're not the human being that we were designed for a very primitive, hard life, you know, in the jungle you know, hunter gatherers eating berries and onions and working hard during Now we get more salt and sugar in a McDonald's happy meal.

No wonder there's you know, a epidemic of obesity. We're not designed to be able to eat the way that we're eating today. 

Brad Minus: You. Yeah. You don't have to tell me twice. Listen. So I don't know if you've, I don't know if you've read my biography, but I literally, I'm an endurance coach Uhhuh, I coach people to do like, like [00:41:00] marathons and ultra marathons and Ironmans and all 

I coach people to do that stuff, and that's one of my first things that I always talk about is that, you know, people talk about their injuries and how they, you know, they can't do certain things. And when I tell 'em like, you know what? It's our fault. You know, our our society is having us do what we're doing right now, what you and I are doing right now, sitting on our butts.

We were not meant to do this. You know, if you really think about it, you know, if you really think about it, you're putting so much weight on your butt and look at us, we're both even still doing it. And I'm, you know, and I'm educated in this and I still. I still have to catch myself making sure my posture is good, but you know, we're sitting there and condensing our spines.

No wonder we all have back issues. Right, right, right. People want to say, Oh, I can't run. But it's been proven over and over again that our bodies. Most efficient posture is the running. That [00:42:00] is the most right posture. We were meant to be transport ourselves by running. Even walking is not as efficient as running.

So it's really interesting, but people are like, well, I can't run. I can't do that. And I'm like, well, yeah, that's because we sit at our desk, we're hunched over and you know, you fricking muscle in a body right now is it's our thumbs. Because we're always like this.

So, so yeah, no, I get it. That's the disruption that you're talking about. 

Bob Martin: Right, right. Can you imagine what primitive man would think if he looked into a gym and saw people Taking time out of their day to do physical exercise. He would think, why don't you get enough, just trying to get enough food for the day.

Don't you get enough exercise? You know, why are you like pushing, you know, I 

Brad Minus: mean, it would make no sense. And, you know, and we still have like ranchers and people that, you know, that they're on [00:43:00] horseback or they're riding or they're running walking, running, you know what I mean? Where, you know, that's where we get this.

of country strong, you know, the people that are still out there still bailing hay and still, you know what I mean? Now they've got more tools for it, but we still have people that are, you know, they ride out to get cows and they pasture their cows and they pull it back. And yeah, so it's really it's, we still have that ability.

So, you know, people are like, no, I mean, I don't need to friggin. Workout because my whole day is a workout, you know, but 

Bob Martin: so I want to draw something together for you there. So we say that because we're living in a society that we didn't evolve for. We have to be intentional about giving our body what it needs in order to be physically healthy by working it.

Right, right. What we sometimes don't forget is that our mind is exactly [00:44:00] the same. Our mind was designed for a primitive environment where we could trust our senses and we feel like for things. More. And when danger presented itself in our mind, we saw a snake. We had all these physical reactions. Today, when we miss a deadline, or we turn in a paper that we think that we may not have proofread, We have the same physical reactions, but we don't burn it off.

And so I would say the same thing about the mind as you would say about running, if we don't do something intentional to adapt ourselves to the current environment. We're going to go down a rabbit hole and be unbalanced. 

Brad Minus: I agree with that. I 100 percent agree with that. I even to this day one of my morning routine is I've got an app that I use that it's got all reading, [00:45:00] writing, math speaking and that type of thing.

And it keeps running a lot of those questions through that. I bet you, I did back in grade school and stuff that we don't use every day. So it's constantly getting my mind to work. It's called elevate. It's actually real. It's really good. And it's gamified a little bit. I know that. Oh, yeah, there you go. So let's, but I dig, but let's jump back in here.

So, you so you started. Going into the mental health aspect, here you are this, here you are very a very wellknown, well known and experienced lawyer, and you find yourself going into the mental health field. 

Bob Martin: Tell 

Brad Minus: us a little about 

Bob Martin: that. Yeah. Well, initially it was great. The way that mental health services were organized was that there was a central, state clinic where mental health, developmental disabilities and substance abuse issues were all dealt with. And all the best psychologists and therapists were all there. [00:46:00] There was great interning. There was great mentoring. It was great. And everybody was salaried. So all you had to do was worry about the client that you just whatever the client needs.

That's the way it should be. And then a lot of folks you know, who are into privatization and they don't like the government and they think the government's inefficient, they all got together and they passed mental health reform. And so the state was taken out of the business and it was all sent out to private agencies and all the private agencies cared about was billable hours.

And I went to work with those agencies. I got fired by two and I quit one. And I said, forget that. I hung my shingle back out and I started my law office over again, but I was working with my clients, not only with their legal problems, these were the people that couldn't afford lawyers. Who we did court appointed work for them [00:47:00] and dealt with their legal issues, but they very unskilled.

I'm not saying they were not unintelligent. It's not like they weren't smart. They were just unskilled. They were unskilled at dealing with life's life changing challenges. And and I had the opportunity then to work with them and help them develop some skills that might keep them out of the revolving door.

And I guess one of the biggest prides of my life is that even today in this smaller community, people will come up and say, Oh, Mr. Martin, you were the fellow who represented me a few years ago. I want you to know I never got in trouble again. 

Brad Minus: That's amazing. And yes, that is, that's really helping people right there.

Bob Martin: You 

Brad Minus: know, we all want to be able to have that feeling, you know, at least a lot of us, you know, we've got this goal and this charge in our hearts that to help people and to, you know, and to further our fellow human into You know, [00:48:00] an increased potential, you know, but that sounds like something that you were able to bring them where they were, I don't want to say rock bottom, but they're in the, you know, in a shallow of their life and get them out of that to propel them forward.

That's something that's incredibly that's something that's incredible that we need people like that. So you went out and you and you hung your shingle back out, but you were doing it, You were, and you said you were doing it this differently, right? You were doing kind of this holistic approach, 

Bob Martin: right?

Right. So 

Brad Minus: you explain that just a little bit for us, as far as this holistic approach where you were you know, you kind of had a, an overall aspect to the practice. 

Bob Martin: Well, by this time by this time we're talking now, the early part of this century, 2005, 2006. I had been meditating for a long time and that You know, I mean, going down that path is life changing in itself.

And I was called by the Engaged [00:49:00] Mindfulness Institute. They reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to take their training to become a teacher. And that training's quite intense two years. And so going the process of doing that, you know, it's also you gain more skill in dealing with life.

And you. You develop an ability to really get where somebody's coming from and be able to speak into their listening. I don't know if that language makes any sense when I say that but I know from my experience from Charlie Greenfield, from John Berman from, you know, other folks in my life from Jesus that loved me, although I never understood him much until I wrote my book.

And that

you, What I found with my clients is, and my commitment to [00:50:00] them was this, they would come to me with a legal problem, a criminal problem, and something was going to happen to them. They would be dismissed or get on parole, probation, or go to jail or prison. But when they left my presence, I wanted them to felt like they were listened to.

Felt like there was somebody who wanted to stand up for them and that was on their side and somebody that could help them understand why what was happening to them was happening to them. And I felt that if they could leave my presence with that, they would feel less unjust. Cause I found that it is the sense that I have been treated unjustly and nobody has understood me.

That is the driving force. to preventing change. It's the [00:51:00] game. It's the perception, you know, that nobody understands me and nobody understands me because I'm not understandable and I'm not understandable because I'm a piece of, 

Brad Minus: it's, yeah it's the issues that we're having now. You know what I mean?

It's that victimhood thing that we need to, you know, start, you know, Educating ourselves on those thoughts of victimhood and to understand that's what we're that's what's happening and to get out of it. Yeah, I believe that 100%. And so, yeah, go ahead. So I started. Yeah. So you I'm working 

Bob Martin: with them.

Yeah. And then 2015 comes along and I said, okay, you know, I've done enough wanna take some time. So I decided I'd retire from law and within two months, Elon University reaches out to me. They say, you want to come teach, you know, to undergraduates, you want to come teach business [00:52:00] law. And when I got there, I found that they had a whole spiritual center.

So that was, I was much more attracted to their spiritual center, a multi interfaith spiritual center, much more attracted to that than I was to the business school, but that's where I did my work. And and about this time I left my first wife, which was necessary for my kids sakes. And I opened up a little restaurant and this woman that came to be my manager I mean, we just.

Oh, we were to, she was, I was the right side and she was the left side. No, I was the left side and she was the right side. I was the planner and the visionary and she would man, make it happen. I, all I had to do is mention something and it would, and we just clicked. And we got married in 2000.

In 2001, we've been married 23 years now. Maybe I have my timelines a little mixed [00:53:00] up. And so she here I am a Taoist Buddhist, right? She is a Southern Baptist Bible literalist.

But we clicked and we both had the same desire to make a difference in people's lives I mean she would want to make up even if she made a ham sandwich She wanted it to be a great ham sandwich that somebody loved Because it would make a difference in their life and that's just how she was and But we couldn't really talk about our cosmologies, you know, she thought my stuff was real weird You And I thought her stuff was my science didn't agree with the world being 4000 years old, right?

And you know, she started telling me, you know, what some of you know, her sermons, she would go off to church and come back and I'd ask her about, you know, what did she [00:54:00] learn? And she'd tell me and I would go, well, You know, in the doubt of Tzu, he's talking about the same lesson. So that got me going.

So I started looking in the doubt of Jing and then asking Google, you know, what does the Bible say about humility? And what does the Bible say about service? And what does the Bible say about leadership? And I would spend. Quite a bit of time going back and forth, you know, finding the different parts of the Bible.

And I guess the skills I built up in law school really helped out. And so I, and also, you know, I'd taken up writing poetry and I said to myself, Could it be, could it possibly take this chapter of the Tao Te Ching, which, you know, are very pithy, one page, almost poems that speak to, you know, the virtues of life, and could I find the same lesson in the Bible, and then could I re imagine this in Christian [00:55:00] terms, but could I keep the same cadence And the same feel as the Dao De Jing has, so it was a real good challenge.

So I started trying, I got a chapter done, picked a chapter at random, did it, and I read it to it, and it like, wow, is that your stuff? I said, no, that comes from the Dao De Jing, she said, let me see that. So she took it. Looks at it. She goes, You got this from that. How did you do that? I said, Well, you know, I mean, I only studied for eight years under a measure.

Huh. So she goes, Do another one. Do another one. So I did another and another. And it became a Rosetta Stone where it translated our belief systems for each other. And finally, I did all 81 chapters. And somehow a national publisher heard about it and they reached out to me and they said, we'd like to publish a book.

Brad Minus: And that became, I am the way I am the way. I love it. [00:56:00] Yeah. I'm I wish I would have picked that up earlier. So we could talk a little bit more about maybe not, maybe we'll do a second, we'll do a second episode. Cause I'd love to talk about that. But so just so you, what you're hearing about is, well, what I mentioned in the beginning of the podcast is I am the way finding the truth And the life through a biblical reimagining of the Tao where he's actually using the Bible and the Tao and putting, merging it together to show you different ways of looking at things which is, I.

Knowing that the little bit I know about the Bible and a little bit I know about the Tao, I did do some studying as far as Buddhism goes when I was younger and in Taoism. And so I do know, you know, a little bit, not as much as nearly as much as you do but it makes sense to me now, the way that you just explained it, it totally makes sense.

Way this, we have this revolving thing, not to mention that if you put other books, Together, you know, obviously, I mean, obviously, we already know that the Torah is [00:57:00] basically the Old Testament of the Bible, right? It's basically the Old Testament. There's a little bit more to it, you know, but then again, you, I mean, we still have the Talmud and then, you know, and then Christianity but then you know, the Islam, there's obviously, you know, they even talk about Jesus in the Koran, but now, and again, it's kind of like the same thing.

They respected Jesus, the Jews respected him, but believed he was a human being. They don't go as far as saying that it was God's it was God's child. They, you know, the Jews believed that he was a man who was a prophet. But it was a very well known and very good person. And he was the king, you know, he was the king of the Jews at one point.

So before Chris, you know, before then he died, then Christianity started. So all these things, there are similarities and all of it, you know, the Quran has David. So does the Torah. So it is, so does the Bible. So it's, yeah, there, [00:58:00] you can find, we can find cohesiveness in all of our religions. So. I don't know if you've ever seen the bumper sticker that I see a lot of people having for years and it says like coexist and yes, it's got all of the religious symbols in it.

So I always think about that. And then starting to read and stuff, I started realizing that, wow, these religions really kind of merge up, but I never thought about Christianity and Taoism. And I think that's, I think that's amazing. So now I'm super interested. Oh, there you go. Wow. See 

Bob Martin: that's got all the religions on it.

Brad Minus: Yeah. Yes. Yes. And, there's another religion now it's interesting that you mentioned, and I'm probably going to link it. But I had another episode, with a guy that was, matter of fact, we couldn't even show his face, that was, that grew up in the mob and he is part of a different religion called.

And which is more they're the [00:59:00] religious artifacts and everything is in Israel. They're still in the Christianity Jew, Judaism type area. They, their main tenant is exception, accepted acceptance is their main tenant. is that we don't care that you're not a part of our religion. You are accepted.

We don't care what you believe. We, you know, if you, what you believe is the right thing to do, you're accepted. So it's interesting. So like I said, you had these dealings with the mob and then I had another guy that, that had dealings with the mob and multiply link that. But yeah, he, I couldn't put his picture up and he was talking in a voice voice modulator to mask his voice.

So it was it was a real, but it was a really cool episode. So I'll link that into this one, into the notes as well. But 

Bob Martin: cool. Cool. 

Brad Minus: So you now you've taken it a step further and you're starting, you're teaching mindfulness and meditation. How is that [01:00:00] going? 

Bob Martin: I love it. I love it. A lot of times I give lunch and learns.

And I always end and then what comes out of my mouth, you know, people, you know, I end the thing and, maybe I get a little applause. People say, thank you. And what I always say is thank you for letting me do what I love doing. And I love teaching meditation right now. I've got, I'm teaching a four credit meditation course at Elon University.

And I've got 17 students and they, we meet once a week. And, we talk about, you know, how the week went and I give them some tips and I give them a technique. I teach them how to do a belly breathing or a breath awareness or a body scan. There's so many different meditations. And, then they have an app which was designed at Duke university, [01:01:00] which is the best way to learn meditation.

Cause you make. You make the progress of almost six months and four weeks. And the way it works is all the meditations, guided meditations are on the app. They listen to a meditation for 10 minutes. It has about 3 or 4 minutes of silent time in it. And then they write a log. And every morning, I get up at 4 o'clock in the morning, I feed my dogs and take them for a walk and do my meditation.

Then I open up my, my, my computer and I get their logs. They're all in my dashboard. And I get to coach them every single day. Every single day they'll send me a log like, Oh, this was a terrible meditation. I wasn't able to, I wasn't able to concentrate at all. My focus kept moving away and I was distracted by things.

And I, I didn't even realize that I was distracted. [01:02:00] And then the session was over and I didn't even meditate. I get something like that. And this is in the first week or two. And so what I get to say back to them is whoa. This is a great log. Look at everything you notice, you know, first of all, you know, you noticed that your mind left your focus, that it wandered away from your focus.

Now you call it concentrate. I don't particularly think that's the best word to use because it has a lot of baggage to it. Like if you can concentrate, it's good. And if you can't concentrate, it's bad. And that's not necessarily true. What it is that your mind wanders and minds do that. And that's fine.

And you noticed it. So this is really great. And you also noticed that your sense of time was compressed because you said that before you knew it, it was over. So you know that being distracted has some effect on how you perceive time. Look at all [01:03:00] the stuff you learned about yourself. This is great. Just you keep, you know, trust the process.

Just do it again. And I get to coach him like that every single day so that after four or five weeks, They really got it. They really understand what meditation is and they're seeing the effects in their life. And I mean, 17, 20 somethings and I get to play with them, you know, for seven weeks at a time.

How cool is that? 

Brad Minus: Yeah, no, that is super cool, but I got to ask. What's the final exam like? 

Bob Martin: Ha, yeah, the final exam is just a reflection paper. It's just, you know, what did you find out? What did you learn about yourself? It really doesn't count for much. The only thing that I grade them on is, if they do their ten minutes, an average of five times a week, they get an A.

They do it an average of four times a week, they get a B, an average of three times a week, they get a C. [01:04:00] And I only do that to give them some reward for doing it better, because I remember when I asked my teacher, I said, how often should I do it? He just said, more better. Yeah, I get it. 

Brad Minus: So, 

Bob Martin: it is a practice, it's a practice, you know, it's like, you somebody says, how often should I practice running?

Yeah. Give me a break. More, better, 

Brad Minus: more, better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's nuances to it, but yeah, definitely. You know, it is actually, it's just depending on what you're doing. It's kind of like what you're saying, you know, it's not the meditation. It's what you're doing. It's. What is going, what are you noticing during the meditation?

Right. Right. And for us, it's when it's running, it's not about, okay, what is the specificity of that specific run, you know? And so it's really the same, it's really does have this cohesiveness. And I think My kids, my, you know, my roster of [01:05:00] athletes could use the meditation. Cause I usually have people that even do more than they should, because there is a certain point where you're you're losing out due to muscle constraints.

 You risking for energy for, injury. So yeah, I think they probably could use the meditation more of it. But speaking of that, I just want to let everybody know that, you know, it's. Bob's Website is a wise and happy life. com. And I'm going to hold, put that in the notes. And again, his, he's got a book out.

I am the way, and you need to, you could pick that up and we'll link that also, and you also have a novel that you wrote children of Abraham. So that looks like a lot of fun. 

Bob Martin: Yeah, I wrote that a little after 2000 2008, but 2001, there was still a lot of stuff going on from that from 911. Right?

People were running around, you know, killing in God's name, a lot of killing in God's name. And [01:06:00] I just kept thinking, you know, and I don't put forward the thesis that God looks like us and he has a long white beard and he thinks like us and he used any things in English, right? But for the purpose of the book, I put out the question.

If God was looking down at this earth and saw us running around killing in God's name, would he think that we were doing good? And maybe he would think that, you know, even that it was time for a midcourse correction. If you know, are an adherent of Christianity and believe that God gave his only begotten son, you know, to the earth so that we could be saved.

I would say that he picked the time that he picked because we needed a midcourse correction. And that was the time he sent. So maybe this would be another time. So I brought God down, not in person or in spirit, but in tickers on Times Square and tickers on the bottom of your TV, where mysterious [01:07:00] messages started to appear saying things like, you're all my children, God, and everybody thinks it's a hoax.

Everybody thinks it's a hoax. And the question is, Will the sex addict redeem? Will the mobster redeem? Will the arrogant lawyer redeem? Will the self conscious accountant redeem? Which ones will redeem? Which character faults? are prone to redemption and which are not. 

Brad Minus: I see. I see what you did there, Bob.

And I, you know, some of the stuff we talked to before we talked about beforehand and then during the podcast, I'm starting to see what's going on with your jail. So, yeah, I would suggest you all do that. And actually, so I read fiction before I go to bed at night. And I read nonfiction as part of my morning routine and and throughout the day.

So, and I've been looking, I just finished off a book, so I think that's my new before bed book right now, right there. So I'm [01:08:00] looking interesting. I'm excited about that, but by, you know what, so much for what you're sharing and what you moving forward and the idea of how you were able to turn, you know, your, the challenges you had into.

Ways to help other people taking the experiences that you went through and going through Addiction and then learning the Tao Taoism under the you know the master teacher obviously And you know a lot of that is Such good information and a lot of things for people to try. If you know, if you're feeling stuck, which is a big part of this, of what this podcast is about is you being stuck and needing a nugget of information to nudge you in the right direction, right?

I think a lot of what Bob said is about looking into Taoism and Buddhism, checking out his, you know, meditation and getting into more into this mindfulness, you might just find those answers of, all right, I'm stuck because of this, but where do I want [01:09:00] to go? And I think through what we've learned in this podcast episode is.

You know that there are several different directions, several different ways to find that, right? . Because obviously everything that you do is you finding your journey your way? 

Bob Martin: If 

Brad Minus: you, 

Bob Martin: If you if anyone, if any of your listeners is interested in knowing more about meditation, I've written a 40 page primer.

On meditation and it's a free ebook. There's no obligations. It is freely downloadable. Just go to my website and there's a button to push and you can, it's a free ebook. And again, it's thank you for letting me do what I love doing. If you are interested in Taoism but I would suggest is pick up a copy of the Tao Te Ching, T A O, second word, T E, last word, Ching.

Ching means the classical book, Tao means the way, and Te means virtue. [01:10:00] So the book means the classical book of the way of virtue. And you don't have to read a chapter, you know, from beginning to end, just Pick a chapter. It's one page. Takes five minutes to read. Open it up randomly. Read one. Think about it.

Read one again. I would suggest the Stephen Mitchell translation. That seems to be the one that's most easily adaptable to the modern Westerner. So I pick up a copy of the Tao Te Ching, the Stephen Mitchell translation. And I think that you'll find that, at first, you're going to find That you're going to go WTF, you gotta look at it and say, what the heck is this stuff?

But when you sit with it for a little while, it will. It will get in, it will get 

Brad Minus: it. Okay. You know what? I will find a copy of that on Amazon and I will link that in the show notes as well. His primer is what is [01:11:00] meditation anyway? And is it for me a primer of meditation, what it is not, how to do it and how to get started by Bob Martin, JD MSW.

So, I will definitely, I'll have a link directly to that, but you also could just go to his website.

It says, Oh, you know what? It's a little bit different on that one. There it is a wise and happy life. com. It was, yeah, the landing page is a different URL and it's crazy. But, yeah, a wise and happy life. com and there's a big yellow button at the top says free meditation book. And again, you just click that and you'll get that down.

You'll be able to download that. So, but Bob, thank you so much for all of your wisdom and the nuggets of information that are going to help a lot of people. Thank you so much. Thank you. And for the rest of you if you're watching this on YouTube, please go ahead. And if already subscribe, like, and.

Hit that notification bell. So you'll know when [01:12:00] another episode is coming up. If you're listening on Apple or on Spotify or any of the other podcast apps, please leave a review. And you know what? If you leave a bad review, I'm not going to be mad at you as all it does is give me feedback so I can make this better.

So thank you so much for listening and I will see you in the