The Art of Being Happy – Andrew Matthews on Purpose, Perspective & Resilience

Brad Minus: [00:00:00] And welcome back to another episode of Life-Changing Challengers. I'm really excited today. I have Andrew Matthews all the way from Queensland, Australia, it's 5:00 AM the next day. So we are talking to the future, ladies and gentlemen. Andrew is an author, a speaker, and he calls himself a happiness coach.

He's got a lot of books out there right now on just that being happy. And it's, his books are amazing. They've got some, illustrations in them that just kind of like, it makes you happy to read 'em. He's got a couple books, being happy, follow Your Heart and the new one that he has just released called Bouncing Back.

And this is all about finding your purpose, becoming happy with yourself, which is what all of our journeys, all of the challenges that we go through life. Isn't that what we're looking for? We're looking for happiness. And this gentleman right [00:01:00] here, this author and speaker and coach, he is the absolute expert on it.

And we're gonna talk to him right now. But first, Andrew, how you doing today? 

Andrew Matthews: Well, Brad, nice to be with you. Thanks for having me. 

Brad Minus: Oh, the pleasure is all mine. But Andrew, can you tell us a little bit about your childhood? You know, like, , what was the compliment of your family? Where did you grow up, and what was it like to be Andrew as a kid?

Andrew Matthews: I was lucky, Brad. I grew up with loving parents. I lived in the country, Australia, south Australia, a long way from anywhere. My father was a professional landscape painter which was unusual. He was a very creative guy. He used to do other things like at some point in his life.

He was an inventor. He was a small time real estate developer. He was a farmer. My mother, had a love for language. As I look back, as I became [00:02:00] an artist and then an author who illustrates his books, I can see how my parents' interests and their encouragement, helped to create the life that I now have.

So, I love playing Australian rules football, which, is pretty foreign to you, but it's like a cross between rugby and soccer and doing things like playing tennis and sailing. The big challenge for me, Brad, was that I was the smallest kid in school. And when I started high school, I was smaller than all the boys.

I was smaller than all the girls. And I remember going home after my first day at high school, I said to my mother, I hated, I'm the smallest kid in the whole school. What do I do? And she said, well, why don't you wait a year? Because in a year's time, there's gonna be a hundred more [00:03:00] students come to school, and there's no way that you're gonna be the smallest kid then.

I waited a year. I couldn't wait for second year high school, and there was a hundred new kids and they were all bigger than me. I went home and I said to my mom, I hate it. It's not fair. You know, they make fun of me. I mean, I used to get locked in cupboards. They'd throw me over, the kids would, throw me over the school fence.

One guy, Tony Ferguson used to hold me upside down and drop me into puddles. I said to my mother, what do I do? I'm still the smallest kid in school. And she said, wait another year. And there's no way when you're in third year high school, you're gonna be the smallest kid, you know. So third year high school came and I was still the smallest kid in school.

And all you wanna do is like, be big and you know, manly. And I'm like 15 and I'm the size of a 10-year-old. And, [00:04:00] so my poor mother, what could she say? She said, well, here's how it is in life. You change what you can change and you accept what you can't change. And, I, I didn't take that fully on board, but I remember that as being okay.

So that seems to be some kind of recipe for happiness. And, you know, eventually I grew to be an average sized human being, but, that was an enormous thing for me as a kid. Having finished high school, I, first thought I was gonna be a lawyer, because apparently being a little kid I had a big mouth and people thought, well, you know, that's what lawyers do.

But my real love was drawing and painting, and so I ended up studying classical drawing and painting. I became an artist. I used to teach, drawing and painting. I had a private art school and most of the time I [00:05:00] spent painting portraits of judges and company presidents and that sort of thing, into my mid twenties.

When, at age 25, I made a shocking discovery. I discovered that the happiest people I knew had bigger problems than me, and that made no sense. I thought that as you had less problems, you would become happier. But I noticed that there were people around me who were dealing with cancer, or I knew families that had lost loved ones Way too soon.

People who had gone broke. I remember meeting a family whose house had burned down and they were the happiest family I ever met. And suddenly I was faced with this reality that we think that when life gets easier, we are going to [00:06:00] be happier human beings. But in actual fact, it's not about what happens to us, but it's how we think about what happens to us.

And Brad, I'm thinking that maybe you've come across people who have been seriously challenged or disadvantaged, and yet somehow they find more meaning and more purpose in life than most other people. 

Brad Minus: Absolutely. So it's actually one of the things that I profess about that, but I just wanna step back, just a couple of minutes, 'cause you're starting to get into the meat and let's.

Keep going with the appetizer real quick. So, just brothers or sisters? 

Andrew Matthews: I had an older brother and an older sister. 

Brad Minus: Okay. And you mentioned that you had a really loving household, so I'm assuming that your routines were kind of normal, you know, school, sports or whatever, that you did homework, mom cooks dinner, you all have dinner at the same time and 

Andrew Matthews: Yes.

[00:07:00] Yeah. And so that, I mean, that was not unusual back then that you'd have a whole family at a table and we, we had that every night and, and so it was a simpler life, of course, back then. And of course when you're out in the country, we lived like three miles from town and so I was limited with how many playmates I could have because there weren't too many people around me.

So I grew up doing a lot of stuff. In fact, here's what's interesting. My brother, whenever he had an opportunity to watch television, was just obsessed with it. And so my mother said, we are not having a television in the house, so we didn't have a television in my house until I was 15. 

Brad Minus: That's a good parent right there. 

Andrew Matthews: Yeah. I mean, so as I look at the things that I did as a kid, I was building stuff. I was making boxes and building boats and painting or [00:08:00] just learning to do stuff because what else are you gonna do? 

Brad Minus: Yeah. When I was a kid with your brother, I was addicted to television, so my parents would limit it, absolutely limit it. But I still had people that were in our neighborhood to play with and stuff, and riding bikes and the whole bit. But I will be somewhat in the same camp as you, is that I was small and skinny, and I used to get bullied in high school and the whole bit it got stuffed into lockers just like you.

I remember they were going to an intro to wrestling in our PE class, and the guys would come right over and put me in a headlock or put me in a figure four it was detrimental. It really would hurt, until I grew just a little bit in junior year and I stood up for myself one time and then all of a sudden everything changed.

Can I say that I was. Happy, like overwhelmingly happy at home. I had a nuclear family. I was the only child at home. I was pretty [00:09:00] happy. I mean, except for the fact that I disappointed my parents a lot 'cause I wasn't the greatest kid in the world. But, it seemed to turn out all right. So that was good.

But it's an interesting, it, it's interesting to go back and think about the simple life and now where technology's kind of started to rule the world and yet we now have more people unhappy than it seemed like we did when technology didn't rule our lives. And here I am now going into the meat of this whole thing, because it's something that I was interested to talk to you about.

So we have, some comparatives between the two of us about the way that we grew up. I again was just like, you, simple. Dinner was on the table, help clear the table, mom would clean, she'd shuffle me off to whatever, events or friends' houses I had and the whole bit.

I'm super excited to hear more about your, art and how that took over. When, you found it, what was your first set of pencils? Did you just start drawing somewhere?

Because I know it's a lot of people, even friends of [00:10:00] mine growing up, that, you know, none of them had any drawing classes or anything, and all of a sudden you could look at it and they were like, wow, they, these guys are artists. And obviously as their skills developed and they did get instruction, they just got better and better.

But, so when did you first put pen pencil to paper and realize that you could draw. 

Andrew Matthews: I was like four or five. And so really, yes. And, and I was, everyone gets labeled like the class artist or you know, most, when I say everyone, people who love to draw and draw a lot. And, so I had that label. And my father was painting.

He painted landscapes of the Australian Outback and of the Murray River and the mountains. And, he was successful in that. He raised a family. We were, a middle class family who had everything we needed. And he was quite an adventurous guy. And he would, go off painting and he would sell his work when he was, traveling.

And al also sell his work in galleries around Australia. So for [00:11:00] me it was just a natural thing like. Kids grow up in families that are musical and there's always conversation about music. In my home, there was always conversation about, drawing and painting and great paintings.

My dad even used to get a magazine from America, American artist, which had some of the very best artists in America featured every month. As a kid, I would copy those paintings and read the articles. Early on my thought was, I should become a lawyer and art will be my hobby.

When I began law school and I didn't like it, I thought, well, I'm gonna do what I really love. 

Brad Minus: You know what, you and I do have another comparison there. Exactly. When I moved to DC from Korea, for military sake, I got, assigned to the Pentagon. But prior to that, when I was in high school, one thing that I did was I loved doing theater.

I loved acting rather [00:12:00] in either in studio shows or musicals or anything like that, but I never thought of it as a, you know, as it was a long time thing just like you. So I'd been away from it for a while and a friend of mine brought me to a stage show and I saw it and I went, oh my God, I missed this so much.

So I started to do some stage shows, but on the other side of it, you know, here I am, I'm in DC so I've got like five law schools around me, right? I've got, Georgetown, George Washington, George Mason, American University, Columbia College of Law. I mean, they're just all over the place 

and I thought the same thing that you did. I was like, oh, you know what? I'm gonna get out of the military and I'm going to become a lawyer and I'm gonna be able to change the world. But on the other hand here, I was starting to be back in chosen on stage. So the letter comes from Georgetown and I'm thinking, oh, I'm gonna be a lawyer now, [00:13:00] but I'm in this show and I'm like.

I loved theater too much, so I went the other way that I was already going. I was already into it and you know, computers and stuff like that. So I just went that route and never looked back. I gave up law school so I can remain in theater. You gave up law school so you can continue to do your art.

So yeah, kudos. We got a little comparative. We got a little cross. Fascinating parallel spread. Yeah. But that's fantastic. And like some of the drawings I've seen in your books, they're fantastic and they're lively and even though a lot of 'em are black and white, or at least what I saw was in black and white.

So now let's move from that appetizer and let's go into the meat. Let's go back to the meat. So you were talking about that you had started meeting people that even though they had challenges, they were still happy.

What was the common denominator that you found? 

Andrew Matthews: Gratitude. I'd never really thought about being consciously grateful, but what I [00:14:00] noticed was that, happy people ask themselves on a daily basis what's good about my life, what's good about my family, what's good about living here, what do I love about my job?

And, we find in life what we look for. So that is, that's the common denominator. I've got a cartoon in one of my books, and there's two panels. The first panel is a guy with one slice of cake. And he's deliriously happy and he's eating his one slice of cake. And the caption is happy.

People focus on what they have. And in the second panel, there's a very unhappy looking guy with an entire huge cake minus one slice. And the caption to that panel is unhappy. People focus on what's missing. And we've all come across people who have a lot and they're miserable. And many of us have been to countries where most [00:15:00] people have almost nothing, and yet they're a lot happier than the people, who live around us.

So that was, that was the common denominator. But there's another part of it, and that is Brad, that happiness is very much a decision that we make. There was a day in my life when I actually took inventory of how I was doing romance, pathetic money in the bank, not very good. Am I happy in my day-to-day career, even though I was drawing and painting and doing what I loved?

I decided I'm going to see my life differently and I'm going to behave differently and I'm going to be more appreciative of what I have, and I'm going to be more courageous. I'm going to be a different person from today. That was the 19th of October, 1983. And my life didn't change from that day, but [00:16:00] the direction I was headed changed from that day.

And that's the important thing. Sometimes we've just gotta be on our knees and be honest and say. How much longer can I blame the government or being in the wrong place at the right time? Or you've just gotta say, I have to, I have to do some critical things to live a better life. 

Brad Minus: Wow. What a great segue. I was just reading in the, some of the sample stuff that you sent me. And there is four bullets that you put in the, bouncing back. And there are things that I've never put. To paper, but are absolutely critical, I think, in life. And I think that it's something that would make people happy once they got through with it.

And it's things that I dictate to a lot to my clients. I just never put it in this fashion, [00:17:00] is do what we're too scared to do. Do what we're too lazy to do, do what we are too comfortable to do, and do what we always wanted to do. I think those are the tenets of life. My practice is basically getting people to do things they never thought or imagined that they could pull off physically.

I'm an endurance coach. I get people to do marathons, ironman, triathlons, obstacle course races. And a lot of the times these are like bucket list items that people never thought they could do, but they wanted to try. And a lot of times they start with me with one thing. Like they knock off that marathon bucket and we turn them into an Ironman where they do a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and then they do a marathon.

You know, and these are things they never thought they possibly could do, which [00:18:00] gets you to do what we're too lazy to do, do what we're too scared to do, do what we're too comfortable to do, which will allow you to do what you always wanted to do. And sometimes we don't even know what we wanted to do.

And that's what I like about my job is that, I pull that stuff out of people and they realize that, wow, I always did wanna do this. And it's hard and I'm uncomfortable, but Wow. As the, the results are amazing. 

Andrew Matthews: Well, that's extraordinary. At that point, Brad, when I made that decision, I had a little motto for life, which was, if in doubt, do it.

And it wasn't that I wanted to go out and do things that were dangerous and were likely to kill me, but I wanted to, for my first reaction to it, whenever someone said, do you want to come to this party? You want to come on this hike? Do you want to go to this [00:19:00] seminar? Do you want to try writing a book?

Do you want, I, I would say yes. And that if in doubt, do it as, as a mindset was, was critical. If we come forward a couple of years and, I met my wife Julie, who was this extraordinary, elegant, sophisticated. If you ever want to talk about this, someone being out of your league, that was Julie.

She had a finishing school. She was well traveled, she was prosperous, and she was beautiful and she was courageous. And when I first met her, and she said to me, I was a winds surfer at the time, and she said, out of politeness, well, I live on a lake. If you want, you could windsurf off my lawn.

And so I, the very next weekend, I loaded my windsurfer on the car and I drove to her house. And the [00:20:00] story she tells is that I never left. It's not quite like that.

Brad Minus: I have to ask, so, 'cause you kind of like said that you met her, but you gotta tell me the circumstances. How did you decide this woman that is like so far outta your league and you decided to use the hey if in doubt do it, but you must have had to talk to her first. How did that happen? 

Andrew Matthews: Okay.

Here's the thing. Even before I was writing books, I was running weekend seminars on relaxation and goal setting and, memory improvement. A whole variety of things that I would cover in these weekend seminars. Amongst the things that I covered was how to sleep better without drugs, through a practical form of meditation, a very simple kind of meditation that I would teach.

And she was having trouble sleeping, to hear my introductory, you know, often if you do a seminar, you do an introductory evening, come and hear amazing Andrew Matthews. He's [00:21:00] talking about breakthroughs in, how you can sleep better and remember better. And so I saw this apparition walk into the room and like the most beautiful person I'd ever seen, and so confident and well groomed.

She came to hear me speak and, I guess sheath was impressed enough that she did my weekend seminar. And it was at the end of the seminar when everyone who did my program went out to dinner that we got chatting. And it was then that she said, I live on a lake and you could Windsor windsurf off my lawn.

But I, I, I know that it was just, you know, some sort of polite thing. She to this day, Brad, she says, that I, it's not true. She says, I asked her to marry me six times, but it's, it's not actually true because I think it was only five. [00:22:00] But, yeah. So this, this idea and, and you, expressed it in the same way, if in doubt, do it, do what you're too scared to do.

Do what you're too lazy to do. Yeah. It's a big deal. 

Brad Minus: I think it's huge and like I said, you put it into words. What I always was thinking about, you know, there's all the old cliches now, you know, be comfortable being uncomfortable. But I think the simpler aspect of it is these four tenets.

I think it's something to live by. And that's gonna be my new mantra and, I'm gonna move people into that realm as well, to think about it. And then, you know, the other thing about it, and you had mentioned it just rarely, but is the idea of accepting the things you cannot change.

And even though it seems to be relative to the recovery right now, is the Serenity Prayer. And I think the Serenity Prayer is by far, it's something to live [00:23:00] by for everybody. I don't think it's just recovering addicts. Please God, allow me the strength to change the things that I can change.

Accept the things that I cannot change. And give me the wisdom to know the difference. It's not exactly in that order. But that's basically what it is. And I think that's something else that you seem to have automatically built in after you went through your four years of trying to be bigger than everybody else.

Andrew Matthews: Yeah. This whole thing of acceptance, Brad, it's I mean, whenever life knocks us down or people let us down, it is natural that we are going to be upset and irritated and maybe angry. And we are saying things like, this shouldn't have happened or it's not fair. You know, maybe we lose a job or a relationship comes to an end or we break our leg and we, you know, this should never have happened.

And it's like we have this idea that if I don't accept it, I won't be stuck with it. But the reverse is actually true. [00:24:00] It's only when you accept the stuff that you don't like and say, I wouldn't have chosen this, but I'm in it. Now I move on, what do I do now? Some people never get to that point that they see that actually acceptance is power.

Brad Minus: I agree wholeheartedly. So in 1983, you decided at this point that you're gonna say yes to things. And there's some challenges out there where they're like, Hey, for the next week or two weeks, whatever, say yes to everything. You're not allowed to say no.

And you put that through your, obviously there's things, you know, you're gonna say no to shooting somebody or, you know, doing something that's evil. But anything that you normally wouldn't do, you would just say yes to. And you give yourself two weeks and you say, no matter what I'm saying, yes. Right. And I think that's pretty powerful.

And it sounded like in 1983 when you made that decision that that's when things, you know, that's when things started for you. You learned meditation and started teaching it.

[00:25:00] You started windsurfing and you were, now you were a wind surfer. And so this stuff is like just coming outta nowhere. You're teaching people how to, how to do goals. You're pt how to do, memory stuff. So you had to learn all this stuff. So in 1983, so what was the first thing that you said yes to? And then let's talk about how you came up with all these other skills.

Andrew Matthews: Okay, so this is key, Brad. The moment that you commit to something, then the universe begins to support you. When you say, with all your heart, I'm going to be a happier person no matter what, or I'm going to be fitter no matter what, or I'm going to lose these kilos. And you are absolutely committed, I will do this.

Then the universe moves to support you. So what happened was that the 19th of October, 1983, I made this decision. Two days later I turned on the radio to a show that I never listened to, and I [00:26:00] heard about a course that was available to teach people, how to improve their memory, how to sleep better, how to function better, the importance of setting goals, how to set them and achieve them 

and it wasn't even in my town. It was in Melbourne, which was, you know, 700 kilometers away, you know, 400 miles. And I didn't even have much more than, I didn't even have the spare a thousand dollars to actually fly there and do the course. But I remembered my new logo, mantra, that I set up two days before, if in doubt, do it.

So I went and did it, and it changed my whole perspective. I learned about the subconscious and how important that is, and I saw this course changing the lives of so many people in the course. And then I thought, I wanna learn to teach this. So, maybe you've heard of a course that used to [00:27:00] be available called the Silver Mine Control Course.

It rings a bell. It was big probably in the seventies. Mm-hmm. So it taught principles like that, how you think about something or you become what you think about. And, it talked about our subconscious and so many important things that I never. Had even given any thought to. So then I was teaching this course for three or four years.

And in the course of that, I saw the need for a book, which could reach a lot more people than I was reaching, teaching my weekend personal growth courses. So, I wrote this book called Being Happy. Now I knew that I could illustrate it, I just wasn't sure if I could write it. But, what I knew was that everybody, most [00:28:00] people are very comfortable in reading magazines, but only a fraction of people are comfortable in going into bookshops or reading books.

So I thought if I can create a book that feels a bit like a magazine with some, you know, funny, interesting cartoons. Also headings throughout the book so that you can see what this section's about and whether you want to read it or not. Then I could create a book, which would be really a, a self-help book for people who hate self-help books, or maybe for people who don't even read much or have never thought about reading a self helpful.

So that was where being happy came from. 

Brad Minus: That's amazing. So, if I'm not mistaken, being happy was the first edition released in 1991? 

Andrew Matthews: That was, that came out in 1988. So in 88. Okay. Yeah. I said it to, 17 publishers. My [00:29:00] first book was a kid's book. It's not, not even a book, it is still a manuscript.

So I sent that to 60 publishers and got 61 rejections. One publisher, one publisher wrote to me twice and said, forget it. So yeah. Okay. So I, I knew that it can be a tough road becoming an author, but once I got onto the idea of writing a book that encapsulated all of the things that had been helping me for the last four years.

Simple ideas. No, don't blame your mother. Set small goals and you feel that you're taking control of your life, you'll be happier. Happiness is a decision. Giving compliments to people makes them happier, but it makes you feel better because you're noticing good things or, be kind because kind people are happier.

All of these things. Observations, I thought if I can put them in a book that is fun, then I can [00:30:00] reach. People who aren't currently reading self-help books. There were no books on happiness in 1988. Even so, even though I thought it was such a great idea, 17 publishers rejected being happy.

And then finally I connected with a publisher in Singapore, whose previous publication was the Vanuatu Telephone Directory. Now, you maybe haven't been to Vanuatu, but it's a tiny little island in the Pacific. 

And they said, we love your cartoons and we love the spirit of this book, and we think it's gonna sell a million copies, so let's do this together. Extraordinary. 

Brad Minus: That's incredible. So when it was released, did you see an immediate spike once it got out to the stores? How did that work back then?

Because back then it wasn't like now where you can self-publish on [00:31:00] Amazon and by the time it gets released you can start seeing, stats back then. You gotta like, sit and wait. So what, the first time that you've got some sort of, I don't know, statistics or something from the publisher, what did you see?

Andrew Matthews: Okay, so, Brad, one of my themes is if you see any opportunity, you grab it and you grab it by the throat and you do it for all your worth. So there was a, a book fair coming up in Singapore, which was, like just a big, a big fair for the public where they can come and, walk through this huge convention center.

See, or, as it turned out, 144,000 different titles on display. And, so I went to the book fair. We had a little stall set up by my publisher and I started drawing cartoons on an easel. And, so people would gather around to watch me draw the cartoons, and then I would give them away to, if [00:32:00] I gave someone a cartoon, they'd think, well, maybe I should buy a book.

Brad Minus: So, 

Andrew Matthews: so what happened was, I started at, it opened at nine o'clock. I was there at nine. It went for nine days. And so I stood there for 12 hours a day for, for nine days, drawing cartoons and talking to people about my books. So I was the only author there pretty much. So I.

At the end of the fair, who do you think had the biggest selling book at the Singapore Book Fair? We did. 

Brad Minus: That is brilliant. I love that. And that's really interesting because as I started to try and get some more, listeners for this, the same thing. Now I can't offer them anything, but one of my mentors, Alex Sanfilippo, he had stated in a post, or I think it was during a seminar or something, he's like, just talk to everyone you possibly can about the, about your, about your podcast.

Anytime that you come across [00:33:00] somebody mention it, work it in the conversation and just make people aware of it. And I started doing that, and then the same thing started to happen all of a sudden. Roles started coming in. 'cause obviously one person listens and they say, oh, this is pretty cool, and they show it to somebody else and it just, you know, you get referrals that way.

So that was the only thing that I could do. But it's kind of the same premise. You were able to sit in front of, you had nine days worth of people in this giant, book fair. And you were able to give them something of value for free, in which they felt like, Hey, if these cartoons are as good as they are, the book's gotta be pretty good too.

Let's pick up the book, I think. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And the interesting thing is that's when everything was analog, right? Yes. So did it go into stores after that? 

Andrew Matthews: We were in stores. In fact, we started to sell huge numbers in the stores and within a few months, being happy was the biggest selling book in Singapore.

Then I started getting invited [00:34:00] into high schools. I started speaking to the police, and then companies like Hewlett Packard would invite me and I was going into hospitals. I would speak in prisons. Prisoners are a great audience. You know, they can't leave.

Brad Minus: It's another term or the cliche of the captive audience. Yeah. Prisoners. That's hilarious. 

Andrew Matthews: That's it. So, what I would then do is I would go into bookstores and I would draw cartoons in bookstores, and I would have a microphone and I would, I had a spiel. You know, you may have just wandered into the bookstore and you're wondering what I'm doing here, drawing cartoons.

My name's Andrew Matthews. I'm an author from Australia. I've been invited here to share some of my ideas and to talk a little bit about my new book, being Happy, and I would draw cartoons. Now, here's the thing, Brad, if you are an unknown author, which I was, you've got a real problem because [00:35:00] if you go into a bookstore doing a book, signing in a bookstore, nobody wants to talk to you because they, if they come up and talk to you and they look at your book and they don't like it, it's really embarrassing.

What are they going to do? Put it down and walk away. So they just avoid you. So I, my technique was that I would have an easel and I would just draw cartoons. I had the books behind me on a table. I would just talk to the people and draw cartoons. And usually what happened was that when somebody came up and said, can you sign a book for me?

That's when the people who were around me watching me draw cartoons would. Get bored because I'm signing a book for somebody. Then they pick up the books and think, what is this book about? They'd see the cartoons in the books and think, well, maybe I can buy this for my husband or something. So I spent about six years traveling the world.

[00:36:00] I've been into almost every major bookstore in, the Philippines, in Korea, in America, in Australia, in New Zealand. We just took our product to the world, one bookstore at a time. 

Brad Minus: So it's, transcripted in what, eight different languages.

Andrew Matthews: We're in 49 different languages, 

Brad Minus: 49 different languages. 

Andrew Matthews: My wife sold the rights to, as a Baja for my book. Follow Your Heart. So, yeah, it's been an extraordinary journey. So once you get some momentum, then exciting things happen. But here's the thing, lots of things that we do don't work.

I mean, whether you are trying to promote a ball court, a podcast, or, you know, we, and, and you know, I share this with our listeners because, my philosophy and my experience is [00:37:00] that so many things that we do don't work like we hope they will. You build a website hoping that people come and they don't, or so you make a YouTube video thinking this thing's gonna go viral and it doesn't.

So you write an ad and that doesn't work, or you. Send a manuscript to a publisher and they say, no, not really. Or even if you just go on a first date and you think, well, maybe this is gonna be the one. And halfway through the evening you think, not sure about this one. So you say, well, what do we do if so many things don't work?

Here's the thing. If we put everything we have into everything, we do enough things work, that we still gather momentum, and usually when we least expect it, an opportunity or a wonderful happening comes from somewhere that we never imagined. And usually one day when we least expect [00:38:00] it, something happens that is even better than we imagined.

Brad Minus: Wow. That is words to live by right there. So you started with, being happy. What was the next one? Because you've got numerous books, obviously. 

Andrew Matthews: So even though my books are around the theme of being happy, they each, take a different angle. My second book was Making Friends.

It was really about relationships and common sense stuff for relationships. A lot of the things that I write about, it's not that no one's ever thought about them, but often we need to be reminded about things that we already know. We all know that we should exercise and we should eat well, but we don't until we see someone like Brad on a podcast and we think that makes sense, and the way he has encapsulated that I can work with that.[00:39:00] 

So. In many ways, my books are reminding people about things that they already know, but this may be a cartoon or a sentence there that they think, yeah, that makes sense to me. So, making Friends. And then that was followed by Follow Your Half, which is, a book about, finding purpose in our life and work career.

Very much. Happiness in a nutshell was a little pocket book that we did for people who don't wanna read too much. Then I, I was told that there were a lot of teenagers reading my books, but they wanted a book explicitly for teenagers. So I did a book called Being a Happy Teen, that led to a book called Happiness Now, which was, a regular sized book with even more cartoons and all in color.

For people who liked to, what I hope was gonna be a beautiful, colorful, self-help book. One of the world's first [00:40:00] full color self-help books. Happiness in Hard Times was, during the financial crisis. And, how Life Works is a book that's a little bit more metaphysical. Okay. How, why are happy people more successful and how can I be like them?

That's a question that a lot of us had. And then more recently bouncing back, which is we're all bouncing back from something. So, what I've sought to do is hone in on a particular angle, for people who've maybe want to dive a bit deeper. 

Brad Minus: No, I'm truly excited about actually getting into, getting to more of them.

So with everything that you've gone through, somebody may be listening to this or maybe they've maybe just barely just happened to see your cover or anything like that, and they realize that, Hey, you know what? I'm not happy and something's gotta change. [00:41:00] What would be, if they were come to you as a coach, what would be the first step?

The very first step, 

Andrew Matthews: it would be to recognize that happiness is a daily decision. Sometimes we need to be on our knees, but basically it's a decision we make. We've all seen, a toddler playing on the furniture, and he falls on his head and the first thing he does is he looks around to see who's watching.

And based on the audience, he decides whether he's going to laugh or cry. And we think that's really cute, but we may not make the connection that we are exactly the same. And we are out there on the freeway and someone cuts across in front of us, and there's a split second where we make a decision. Am I gonna get angry about this or am I gonna save myself?

Maybe this guy's just having a tough day. We are making a decision moment by moment. And so the first thing [00:42:00] is to say, just today, I don't need to make my whole life work. I'll just make today work. And, I will give other people the benefit of the doubt. I will choose, to look for good things and just today.

And if I've got a whole lot of stuff to deal with, a whole lot of challenges, then I'll just fix what I can today. It's a little bit like, if you're climbing a mountain and life can be a bit like climbing a mountain. You're climbing a mountain and you get stuck on a ledge, suddenly all of your focus goes into that ledge and getting yourself safely off that ledge and you're not thinking about everything you have to do in the next month.

You're not thinking about all the bills you're gonna need to pay in the next year. You are just focused on that bit. And the more that we can, you know this because you are an endurance coach. If you just focused [00:43:00] on, let me deal with today. Sometimes it's just the next few minutes. 

Brad Minus: That is crucial.

Interesting that you mentioned that. 'cause so I started, when I started coaching, I would. Teach stuff that seemed to help me. So a lot of times you go on these long runs, you know, long fitness runs, and when I first used to talk about it, I used to be like, all right, throw in some headphones and think about anything but running.

Just go ahead and think about, you know, you got problems to solve. Do it on the run. And I used to tell it. I used to say it myself. I'm like, listen, running is meditation for me because I actually don't think about anything. I don't think about running. I think about everything, but, and I just let my legs do what they're gonna do.

And then I saw this TED talk and I started going the other direction. So now when I run, I literally think every step, I'm like in the moment thinking about every step, which is kind of what you were just talking about, [00:44:00] is not thinking about everything else, but just thinking about what you're doing in that current moment and stay in that moment.

For as much as I claimed that having headphones on and, and running and thinking about anything but running and your time will go by faster. Yes, that's absolutely true. But I notice the same thing about staying in the moment and looking at every single step, every single breath, every single thing.

Before you know it, it's over. It's the same results, except that when you're thinking about it, you've got more quality. And I would think the same thing is about for life is when you're thinking about just that one thing and the one thing that you're focusing on, whether it be your relationship, your work, the individual task, that it will give you a better sense of accomplishment.

It'll provide you with a better sense of harmony when you are actually completed. 

Andrew Matthews: I'm so glad you shared that with me because I'm going to try it [00:45:00] because, running has always been a struggle for me. I can play tennis for three hours and, and I, I'm delly happy, but when I haven't got a ball to chase, I've always struggled.

So, so I've, I've never, I've never focused to that extent on, on my running, so let me do that. But what you mentioned brings up a, a thought, and that is that so often, especially if we're having a difficult week, we, we think, well, I'm not happy now, and it maybe it's only Tuesday, but on Friday I've, I've got this hot date, so I'm gonna be happy on Friday.

And so we kind of make it through the week. Friday evening comes and we hop in our car, we pull out into the traffic and we're in a traffic jam. So we say, well. Bloody traffic jam. I'll be happy when I get to the restaurant and we get to the restaurant now we're running late and there's this whole liner of customers.

So [00:46:00] we are not happy yet. I'll be happy when I get a table and, eventually we get a table, but our date hasn't arrived yet. I'll be happy 'cause she's in traffic. I'll be happy when she arrives and the waiters are running around furiously. I'll be happy when I get to place my order and then we place our order and I'll be happy when the meal comes and the meal comes and we take a photo and we put it on Instagram.

I'll be happy when somebody likes my chicken parmesano, you know, and we think that I'm gonna be happy in the next moment and we will never be happy in the next moment because when the next moment comes, we are going to be thinking about the moment after that. 

Brad Minus: So you're always anticipating happiness, but never actually being happy.

Andrew Matthews: Yeah. So we've gotta bring ourselves back to the moment. I mean, goals are a great thing to have in the background if you like. But while we're pursuing [00:47:00] those goals, we've gotta enjoy the process. 

Brad Minus: That is an interesting concept. So for money, and being an endurance coach, I coach high school, cross country, and I coach high school track but it's really all those are like, side hustles.

I have a, my real job is I'm a project program manager most of the time it's in the family of it. So we basically have this project, which you would call a goal. There's objectives to the project, and then there's tasks that have to be done, which is how I take. My coaching, I do the same thing with coaching.

You've got a certain goal, you have to break it down into steps and going that way. Now the whole idea is, as I'm thinking about what you're saying and then the things that we've talked about, I'm like, okay, so instead of thinking that, when I finish up my training plan, I get to the race and I finish the race, I'm gonna be happy.

No, we should be thinking about, oh my God. So I coach for athletes. The idea of, I get a chance, like I get up at a chance in the morning. I get a chance to be on my bike. I get to [00:48:00] feel the wind through my hair. I get to, challenge my body and then be grateful for it, that I get a chance to do this.

So yes, you get to cross off a task, off your list. You get to cross off a workout, but we, within it, we can be happy because as you stated, the choice of being happy in every given moment. Now we can talk about, okay, instead of thinking about the anticipatory happiness is to be, happiness is right there in that moment, in that task, in that, and finding those things that make you happy.

Like, you know, even in my job, I'm happy communicating with people of like minds. And my job a lot of time is making something out of nothing. Kind of like what you do. You have a piece of paper and a pencil and you make this glorious artwork and it really is something that came from your brain.

It's something from nothing. And what we do is we create, you know, in my job, I create applications, and websites and I secure, certain [00:49:00] environments I build athletes out of, people that out of pure want. You know, I want to do this. Okay, well let me help you.

I'm gonna turn that want. Into fruition. But my new thing now is just talking to you is now I'm like, alright, well be happy in the process of, and every single process, not just the idea that because you're doing it, you're happy, it's the individual piece. Like I said, you're on your bike, you feel the wind through your hair, you're running, you feel like, Hey, I'm doing this under my own power.

There's a lot of people that can't do it under their own power. And again, it's the wind, it's the, it's the sounds of things going on around you. It's the, you know, either the, the sweat dripping down your body, feeling that sense of accomplishment. That's all happiness right there. And yes, that's an epiphany that you just gave me, so thank you.[00:50:00] 

Yeah. So. So Andrew, wow. You know, I am like completely, completely happy right now in this conversation. Some of the epiphanies that you gave out, so listen everybody, first of all, Andrew Matthews, he has a website, andrew matthews.com. He looks like he's on every single social networking, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok.

What would you say Andrew is the one that you're most active on? 

Andrew Matthews: I usually post to all, but probably YouTube is a good place to find me because it's a little bit more controllable so I've created, maybe a few hundred videos that I've posted over the last few years. Usually they're maybe a minute or two and, focus on something around happiness or enjoying [00:51:00] work or relationships, things like that.

If you would like to go to my website, andrew matthews.com, that's with two T's. I have a newsletter that I put out every two weeks, which is very short and it's got a cartoon. And, um, just a little bit of, um, joy and something to uplift you. If you become too happy, you can unsubscribe at any time.

So that's my newsletter and, and all of my books are on Amazon. The easiest place for wherever you are in the world on, uh, Amazon. They are in hard copy. They're in ebook and follow your heart and bouncing back are both on Audible as well. If you enjoy your books with an Australian accent, then you can find those there too.

Brad Minus: Did you do the narration? 

Andrew Matthews: I did. 

Brad Minus: Great. Oh, and you can listen to 'em. Listen to me. Guys got a very, very like great [00:52:00] tamber to his voice and very happy. I would listen to it in a heartbeat, but I, but if you only get it on audio, you're gonna miss out on the cartoons, just so you know. That's right. So, so, you know, so what I'm gonna do is, because of all these, I'm definitely going to, we're gonna make sure that we have the latest one.

Have an automatic link to the latest one, we'll have a link to all of his social media, including his, his YouTube channel, which is, uh, Andrew Matthews author, is his handle on YouTube. And we'll have that linked. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna link his. Author page on Amazon, which has every single one of his books on a carousel in the middle of the page.

So that will give you the ability to see every single one of them and choose the ones you want, and, uh, and get those either in hard copy or Kindle or whatever, however you want it. So we're gonna have that for you all. And, um, and yeah, so again, Andrew, um, really appreciate you being with us. [00:53:00] And I think that, you know, some of the things that you've given, you've given us is ame immense.

So gratitude, accepting the things that you cannot change if in doubt, do it. And then the four tenets that I absolutely are crazy about, do what you're too scared to do. Do what you're too lazy to do. Do what we're too comfortable to do, and do what we always wanted to do. Make sure you, you, you, you put that in them.

We're gonna make sure that those are in the show notes as well. Copy paste them, put 'em on a piece of paper, attach 'em to your mirror so you see those every morning as affirmation. So again, Andrew, thank you for being with us today. I really appreciate it. 

Andrew Matthews: My pleasure, Brad. It's been a joy. It, 

Brad Minus: it definitely has been.

So if you are watching this on YouTube, I would really appreciate it if the like button to subscribe. Maybe hit the bell so you always know when we drop a new episode, if you're on Spotify or on on Apple Podcasts, we'd love for you to give us a review, even if it's a bad review, because any kind of feedback is just gonna help me evolve the [00:54:00] podcast and make it better and better for you.

And other than that, all I wanna say is thank you so much for listening and for Andrew and myself, we'll see you in the next one.