The Secret to Life and Living Every Day Like It’s Your Last (DF#139)

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:00]:
I thought about the quote, live every day like it's your last. I thought about that quote a lot in the past, and I used to think that that was true. I used to live my life like that and, like, live every day like it's your last. But what I've realized is that, at least for me, I can't live every day like it's my last because then I wouldn't get anything done.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:25]:
Aloha folks and welcome back

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:26]:
to Degree Free. I am super excited to have you back. Again, this is a little bit of a different episode. I'm in a different location background for all those that are just listening. You might sound a little bit different because I am on the backup of the backup gear and I'll explain why. And I'm wearing a Aloha shirt, the Aloha at the very beginning was very appropriate. I am in Hawaii currently. The grind never stops.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:52]:
I'm here for you and I am making this content for you. I'm actually in Hawaii because of a death and, I had to come back home and take care of some things and pretty tragic, but I'm here and I wanna get this information out to you.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:08]:
So this week's episode is gonna be

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:10]:
a little different. Just some housekeeping things, the audio, I tried my best, I've been messing with the settings forever, for the past like hour literally, that I don't sound like absolute I just need to get this done at this point, the mic is really far away from my face and so I am going to try to do my best to make this sound good in post production, but give us a little bit of leeway. I'm also in the city, so there's a lot more sirens. There's gonna be dogs barking. We're gonna try to get all of that out for you. Just give us a little bit of leeway. As usual, if you have any questions, go to ask that degreefree.coforward/question. You can ask our us your questions there.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:52]:
I really just have one ask for you this week, and my favor just comes at the very beginning before I give you any value. Just tell your loved ones that you love them. That's it. That's the ask this week. If there's somebody in your life that you haven't told that you love them in a while, just shoot them a text, give them a call because you never know when it's over. And that's it. That's the ask. Let's jump into today's episode.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:14]:
Today's episode is gonna be a little bit different because I'm in a different headspace. We're gonna be talking about fulfillment, about contentment, and really we're gonna be talking about thinking about thinking. And so, for everyone that needs the super actionable stuff, I promise, I understand. What I've seen in my own life is that the higher up in the game of business or careers or success, whatever you wanna call it, the more time I find myself thinking, and then the more time I think about thinking. The more positive gains I get from the outcome of taking that time to think. And I know if you need the super actionable stuff, 1, go back and listen to the backlog of the podcast. Almost every single episode in the podcast is evergreen. Go back and listen to the really actionable stuff, volume applying, the 5 degree free pathways, how to find a job backwards.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:16]:
It's all there. I'll put it all in the show notes, degreefree.coforward/podcast. 2, starting to think about things differently can lead to massive realizations and may help you realize what you need to do to get to where you're aiming to go to, or at least it has for me. So even if you need the really actionable stuff, this episode is going to be for you. This would be for everybody. With considering where I am and the reason why I'm here right now, I thought about the quote, live every day like it's your last. I thought about that quote a lot in the past and I used

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:57]:
to think that that was true.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:59]:
I used to live my life like that and, like, live every day like it's your last. But what I've realized is that, at least for me, I can't live every day like it's my last because then I wouldn't get anything done. Hey there. I hope you're enjoying this episode of the degree free podcast. At degree free, we wanna help everyone thrive and succeed without needing a college degree. And the only way to truly reach everyone is with your help. If you're getting value out of this episode or if this is your 2nd, 3rd, or 4th episode that you're tuning into, if you could just ship this to a friend, just click that one button and share it with someone in your contacts or on your stories. It would mean the world to us.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:36]:
And more importantly, get our message out to more people who need help getting out of their current situation. If you could do that right now, that would mean a whole lot, and that wasn't like a novel thought to me. I think I heard that somewhere, like, we can't live every day like it's our last because then nothing would get done. And I loved it. And it resonated with me because really what they're saying is that instead think about incremental improvements every single day because if we thought, okay, well, we're gonna pass away tomorrow, then we would live our lives completely different. If I would have thought that I was gonna pass away tomorrow, I probably wouldn't be making this podcast today. I probably would be spending time with my family. I would probably be doing literally anything else in the world or I would be spending my last dollar, or I would be betting it all on black.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:27]:
Whatever it is, I probably wouldn't be doing whatever it is that I'm doing right now. I'm doing whatever it is that I'm doing right now because I think that there's gonna be incremental gains over time and my actions now will all add up so that I can get to where I wanna go and accomplish the things that I want to accomplish in

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:44]:
my life later. Even though I'm here for a very tragic death, the truth of

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:50]:
the matter is that tomorrow is actually highly likely to come. Obviously, you might be listening to this and have some sort of terminal illness or have a family member that has a terminal illness, and I'm sorry to hear that. And I'm sorry that you're going through that, and my condolences. Because most of the people listening to this are working age. Tomorrow is likely to come. Tomorrow is going to come and many more tomorrows are going to come than what do we want our future to look like? And what are the actions that we're gonna take today to get there? And I wanna say before we go on, I spent hours writing this episode or writing the outline for this episode to get these thoughts clear. I think a lot of it is just where I am mentally in my head right now. So I'm gonna do my best to connect all of these thoughts for you and I try to.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:40]:
I move paragraphs. I move outlines around for you. I've spent hours working on this thing. Maybe it won't be like that and I apologize. But I

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:49]:
do think that these thoughts, at least in my life, they've helped me think about the actions that

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:56]:
I take every day. I think a lot of it has helped me feel a little bit better about where I am in my life at every step that I've been once I've started to think like this. And one of the stories that you might have heard before is like the fisherman and the businessman story. I am gonna read this. This is from the storytellers.com. This isn't my story. But I've heard this story like 7,000 different ways. This is one of them.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:24]:
And so I'll just I'll read it. It'll take about a minute. For those that haven't heard it, I wanna get you on the same page. One day, a fisherman was lying on a beautiful beach with his fishing pole propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf. He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a fish. About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach trying to relieve some of the stress of his work day. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:57]:
a living for himself and his family. You aren't going

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:01]:
to catch many fish that way, said the businessman to the fisherman. You should be working rather than lying on the beach. The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled, and replied, and what

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:12]:
will my reward be? Well, you

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:14]:
can get bigger nets and catch more fish, was the businessman's answer. And then, what will my reward be? Asked the fisherman, still smiling. The businessman replied, you will make money and you will be able to buy a boat, which will then result in larger catches of fish. And then what will my reward be? Asked the fisherman again. The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman's questions. You can buy a bigger boat and hire some people to work for you, he said. And then, what will my reward be? Repeated the fisherman. The businessman was getting angry.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:47]:
Don't you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all of your employees catch fish for you. Once again, the fisherman asked, and then what will my reward be? The businessman was red with rage and shouted to the fisherman, don't you understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again? You could spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won't have a care in the world. The fishermen still smiled and looked up and said, and what do you think I'm doing right now? That is one version of the story.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:19]:
I have heard it myself many times

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:19]:
differently about how, myself many times differently about how businessmen needs to go and work so that eventually he can do all of those things that he told the fisherman to do, create a big company, get a bunch of employees so that eventually he can have what the fisherman has now. And so he would go back to New York or wherever it is that he's from, some big city. He's on vacation. And then he would work really hard so that eventually he can have what the fisherman has, but then being right, the moral of the stories that, okay. Well, maybe he can have what the fisherman has right now. I mean, the fisherman has a lot less than him, so he can have it right now. And so it's kinda similar, but not really. Largely, I believe that there are a couple of morals to the story.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:05]:
The first one is that what you want is closer than you think. The fisherman already has the end goal. And then if you heard the story, like how I heard the story before, how the businessman goes back and tries to work or wants to work really hard to then get that thing. The businessman could just quit his job and have that thing right now. So if you think about your goals in abstract ways or you define your goals really well, you might find that what you want is actually closer than you think. I think there's a second thing behind that and it's the probably overarching moral of the story or the larger moral of the story and it is being content. The reason why I have thought about this story a lot is that second moral is that contentment. Hannah and I, long time ago, Hannah and I, we were just dating and we were in San Francisco.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:59]:
I might have told this story before so if I have, I apologize. It was very formative for me, this experience. And we were in San Francisco and we took a cab. This older Sikh gentleman was driving the cab and he looked at Hannah and myself and we were must have been in love or whatever, puppy love stage. And so he looked back and he looked at me

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:23]:
in the rear room mirror and he's like, you guys wanna know the secret to life? Which is just like a hilarious question to ask somebody. And then, also, if you were ever asked if you would want

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:37]:
to know the secret to life, I mean, the answer is always yes. Right? I mean, the answer is always yes. Like, I mean, yeah. Tell me. I would love to know. And he said to me, and Hannah, he said, The secret to life is contentment. And I've thought about that a lot. It's basically just being content with where you are in life and not wanting more, not wishing you had less, whatever the case may be.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:03]:
Just being completely okay with where you are, being content in your situation. And that's really, to me, the moral of the story is just being okay in your situation. Whenever I analyze these characters of this story, and I'm talking about it from my perspective of how this businessman thought about going back and doing this all all on his own, working really hard in the city to then get employees, to then hire more people, than to run a big conglomerate, to then do exactly what this fisherman was doing, which is sitting on a beach and fishing. Whenever I analyze these stories, I always felt more of a pull towards the businessmen. And I think a lot of people or most people feel the same way or feel the same thing. From the perspective of the story that I heard, after thinking about it for a long time, I realized I always thought I was the businessman more not because of what he said he wanted, but instead, I read a little more into the story and identified more as a businessman for what he implicitly wanted or at least what I projected onto him and my thoughts on what he wants. It's my opinion that what the businessman craves is options. And this is me totally projecting my own stuff onto this fake dude.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:23]:
The businessman wants the option to sit on the beach. He wants the option to do nothing and just be totally content with where he is. But it seems to me that he also wants the option to not do those things. I'm thinking about options. I've talked about this before on the podcast as well, and the immortal words of the philosopher, Dave Chappell, money is options. Money is choices. With more money, your optionality increases. With more money, your choices increase.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:56]:
And that's what the businessman was after. If you look

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:58]:
at the fisherman, the fisherman can't really leave. Not that he can't leave, Can, but it'll be very difficult. And then he's

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:06]:
gonna have to find a different career. He's gonna have to find a different thing. Not to say that you shouldn't live your life that way. You totally can, and it's totally valid. But I think that what the businessman wanted was the choice to do those things.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:18]:
I also think that you can be both the fishermen and you can be the businessman in various stages of your life. For me, I think about okay. Well, when I lived here in Hawaii where I

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:31]:
am filming this episode right now, I think I was the closest to content as possible, at least in certain aspects of my life or at least in certain times of my life. If you had asked me in 3 to 4 month increments, are you content? And I would tell you at least at the time, yeah, I was. I was a fireman. I was married. I was doing well. I had a side business going on that made more money than me being a fireman. So not that I was volunteering to be a fireman, but I had options because the side business that Hannah and I was operating made more money than either of us brought in from our jobs. But we were working a lot, but we had a lot of options, or at least a

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:15]:
lot of options we thought at the time. And because of that, we were pretty content, at least if you had asked me in a specific time frame. And then you asked me later,

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:27]:
and I probably would have answered that I feel like the businessman now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:29]:
Because when we started to achieve a certain goal, we were content for a second, and then we realized now we want more. And we're

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:40]:
not content anymore because we don't have as much options or as many options as we would like. We have way more options now than what we did before, but we want this level of options now. You know, I'm not gonna talk about quitting, why I quit firefighting. I actually did an entire episode. I'll put that in the show notes, degreefree.c04/podcast, so you can listen to that story and figure out why I left such a job that actually fulfilled my soul. But while we had more options than what we did before, we didn't have the amount of options that we wanted and what the businessman wanted, which is more options. Think about for us, and I'm just talking about money now, it's very expensive to live here, to live in Hawaii. It's very, very expensive.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:25]:
And while we were doing well,

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:28]:
we weren't doing anywhere near the level that we wanted to in order to live here.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:35]:
You know, we had to make a bunch of hard decisions because we wanted more options. It reminds me of a quote. I think it's Mark Cuban. And this isn't a quote. I won't look it up here, but I'm summing it up. He says that one of the reasons why you're never satisfied with your goals is that the person that you had to become to reach those goals is always different than the person you began as. And because those two people are different, this next person isn't satisfied and they want to move to the next level. Thinking about the contentment piece and then hooking in who you are as a person to these goals or your happiness to these goals, which is what a lot of people do, it makes me think of one of my friends.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:19]:
I was having a conversation and I've talked a lot about him here. Whenever I think about contentment, I think about one of my friends and this conversation that I had with our friend's friend mutual friend, but just a friend also of him. So I'll tell you a story real quick and I'm gonna anonymize their names here so that we don't get this all jumbled together. My friend, who is the protagonist of this story, is going to be Kevin. And then let's say that my friend's friend, the person that I was having this conversation with, his name is James. So Kevin, growing up, he always had the same goal. He had pretty much one goal since high school, which was go to college, get good grades, go to

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:59]:
a name brand school, become an engineer, and then, make a

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:04]:
lot of money. But that was that was his goal forever and it's what he said he was gonna do. And I've talked about this guy a lot in his past. I don't know what name I gave you before. He's definitely a real person. He's one of my best friends. Whatever name I gave him, his name is Kevin in this story. Fast forward 10 years, he does go to a name brand school.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:20]:
He does become an engineer today. He makes a lot of money. He's an engineer, and he's not happy. In my opinion, the reason why he's not happy is because of the exact thing that we just talked about, which is contentment, which is the optionality, which is Mark Cuban thing that the person that he had to become to do that is different than the person that he was when he made those goals. He's thinking to himself as 30 something year old man, he's thinking, why am I not content with where I'm at in life? I mean, everything's going well for me. I accomplished everything that I set out to do. And I was just like, well, that's exactly

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:58]:
the reason. That's why you're not content. You're not content because you achieved all

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:04]:
of your goals. I mean, all of your goals were to climb this mountain and now you're at the peak of this mountain that you're, like, this is it. You look at the top and you're, like, this is it. I mean, yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:12]:
I guess and now, you just have the task of living at the top of this mountain forever and ever. And you just

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:20]:
have to be content living at the top of this mountain, at the peak of this mountain, because you don't have anything else to strive for. You're only you're not going for anything else. So it's well known amongst our friend group that Kevin is unhappy in his work and his personal life, but at least his professional life. I was having a conversation with James about this a few months ago, and this is maybe a year ago now. And James and I were talking, and he's like, have you talked to Kevin? Have you talked to him? I was like, yeah. I've been talking to him. And what I told Kevin was, you know, hey. You You have to start putting another goal out there that you have something else to strive for.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:57]:
Because right now, you're just sitting at the top of this peak, and then it's cold. And you're just, like, doing life at the top of this peak, and you don't have a next goal, nothing else to strive for because you've played defined ending game. You're just like, okay, well, this is the end of it. Like, you ran a marathon. If the goal was to run a marathon, you well, you ran it. And now, you're at the end of it and you're sitting down, you're like,

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:18]:
is this it? When maybe the goal should be to just run.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:25]:
Maybe the goal should just be to run. I mean, if you just say my goal is to run, well, you can never reach the top of that mountain. What does

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:32]:
that mean? I don't know. It just means to run. So you just go and

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:36]:
you run every single day, every single day, every single day, and you just do that. And you keep working towards that goal. And that goal, there is never a peak for that type of goal. And so I was trying to explain what I had told Kevin to James, and I used the example of myself. I said, I am now in a game. I'm using my professional life as an example. I'm now in a game that there's almost an infinite amount of levels to. And that's the game of being a business owner, and that's the game of being an entrepreneur.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:09]:
Sure. Do I make a lot more money than I used to? And I'm just using money as a gauge here. The money doesn't matter, but I'm just saying most people need money, and it's a metric that

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:18]:
I can actually measure

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:20]:
in that I can't really measure other things like happiness or fulfillment and things

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:24]:
like that. So sure, do do I make more money than I used to when I was just an employee? Absolutely. Definitely.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:32]:
I mean, the game is infinite. We've talked about this before. I think it was episode 135, where we talked about being in the right vehicle. We talked about Alex's taco cart, and then his restaurant, and then something else and something else because we're always moving up. We're always moving into different vehicles. And if you're always moving in into different opportunities, then now you're playing a never ending game. And now you don't have to experience what Kevin is experiencing right now and sitting at the top of the peak that was his defined benefit goal or defined n or finite goal. You don't have to do that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:11]:
You don't have to sit there and be like, wow, is this the peak? Is this everything that I work my way towards? If you play a different game, you can play that game forever and never feel like that or hardly ever feel like that. And so, I had explained all of this to James that I had explained all of this to Kevin, and Kevin didn't listen to me. Right? I mean, you don't listen to your friends. And James sat back. He listened. He's like, that's great, Brian. But wouldn't it just be better if you were just okay with being at the peak of the mountain? What he was asking is, wouldn't it just be better if he was content with his life? I just looked at him, I was like, yeah, that would absolutely be better. That is way harder than it is to just find some sort of infinite game that that you can just play for the rest of your life.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:56]:
I don't know what that means for you, but for me, that infinite game is business. I probably am never gonna be the richest person in the world. I have no ambition of being the richest person in the world, but I know that goal will never stop or at least, you know, the goal of business and increasing the size of a business will never stop. Or starting another one and then try to see if I could do it again. That'll never stop. It's just an infinite game that just keeps going and going and going. And, sure, there are little peaks at the top and then you go there are valleys and then peaks and valleys. Just like everything else in life, over the long term, I can keep striving and keep striving and keep striving and have to deal with being saddened by me accomplishing all of my goals and not having something the next thing to look forward to.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:42]:
I can just find one thing or a couple of things where I can just keep going forever and ever on. I hopefully won't ever feel what Kevin is feeling now. It's interesting. I was talking to James about it, and I never turned it to look at his life. But he is a very successful and driven person in his own life. I don't wanna say what he does for a living, but he has a goal in his own life. And it's taken many, many years, almost 10 years, to reach that goal. And he's still not at that goal.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:16]:
He doesn't know what Kevin's experiencing yet because he is still striving to reach that peak of that goal. And I haven't talked to him about any goal past where he wants to be because it was always, I want to be x. I want to do this as a career. That was always his goal and he hasn't reached it yet. But I imagine that if he doesn't have some sort of talk like this with himself and he doesn't come up with some sort of realization, that he's gonna be in a very very very similar place to where Kevin is right now. Because he's gonna realize, is this the mountain that I was climbing? I mean, sure. I'm in a very respected profession. I make a lot of money.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:00]:
I do good in the world. Whatever. Whatever. But, like, is this the thing that I wanted so much? Is this the thing that I was fighting for? And, like, this is it. So like I said, I actually spent a lot of time on this episode. I apologize if there was no point to it or this is a dumb one. Like I said, I'm in a very interesting headspace right now, very different than what I normally do. But I wanted to keep this podcast going, and I wanted to get this information out to you.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:25]:
And so I hope you enjoyed it. If you have a question, go to ask.degreefree.c04/question. If you wanted super actionable things, I'm gonna put some links to resources at degreefree.c0forward/podcast. Let me know how I did on this, but I don't really care about that for this week. I mean, sure. Leave a review if you can or whatever. Share this with a friend. My only ask is to tell somebody in your life that you love them, especially if you haven't told them in a really long time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:51]:
Until next week, guys. Aloha.