Episode 20: Joe Villarreal - Stories From the Road

Purpose in the Process

If you’re a life-long learner, you will undoubtedly create a lot of stories. The more careers, jobs, skills, and new circumstances you experience, the more people you will cross paths with. But, at the end of the day, who are those stories really for? My friend and fellow polymath Joe Villarreal joined me in this episode for a wide-ranging discussion about the importance of surrendering our own hopes and fears to experience the joy and fulfillment that comes from living a life in the eternal space we know only as “now”…and the importance of sharing what we experience in that space with others.

Joe and I discussed:

• Why it’s important to embrace who you are

• The need for change agents

• How to know what to do next (or, “letting the bubbles land”)

• What does it mean to have “now” faith?

• The necessity of surrender

• How we can often get lost in our own “joy creation”

• Why regret and hesitation must be “removed from the equation”

• Why our own happiness is also our own responsibility

I hope you enjoy our conversation about the purpose in the process of telling our own story!

More Information and Resources Mentioned:

Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward book - I’ve previously discussed this book in other episodes. Another book that has some great short contemplations is Rohr’s Just This. I am still in the process of wrapping my head around some of Rohr’s other writings - and I may not agree with everything Rohr believes to be true, but regardless, these are two books I have very much enjoyed (and one thing I appreciate about Rohr is that he doesn’t expect everyone to agree with everything he believes either).

Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is another book I have referenced before - a must-read.

Here’s a link to a Hollywood Reporter piece on the documentary “The Lady in Number 6” - you can check it out on Netflix.

Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.