Stop Making This Mistake, It's Time to Step Up
Host: Eric Chow · May 29, 2022 · Episode 65 · 20 minutes
Transcribed from the episode audio and edited for names and terms. Wording can differ slightly from what was said; the episode itself is the record.
Quoted from this episode: 1 quote on the quotes page.
This is episode number 65 of the Eric Chow Empowers Podcast. My name is Eric Chow and this is a monologue Talking about a mistake that I saw a lot of people make in the pla in the past two plus years through this pandemic And this we come out of the pandemic a mistake that I hope a few of you who listen to this episode will stop making Enjoy. All right. Hey everybody Thank Eric Chow here. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Eric Chow Empowers podcast. I'm going to get right into the topic today because I have a limited amount of time before I have to hop on a meeting.
A couple of conversations I've had in the past maybe week and a half or so talking about this. Something that I think I've done fairly well and you know the flip side of it being a mistake that I feel many people made especially in the past couple of years during this pandemic, that big mistake is people who stepped back from life. And what I mean by that is stepping back and escaping from it. And I want to clarify what I'm talking about here, right? During the pandemic, we had this incredible opportunity to step back and reevaluate, okay, this is what my life looks like. This is what I like.
This is what I don't like. And that was incredibly valuable. It also, it allowed us to, you know, we were stuck kind of at home. Many of us were stuck with family and we learned to gain that perspective and appreciate family again or appreciate, you know, whoever you happen to be with or maybe some cases, some conflict occurred, right? But it gave you that time to step back and gain perspective to see what's going on and see how you wanted to change your life.
And that was really important, right? You were able to appreciate what's happening, realign your priorities. It also gave us an opportunity to relax, which is just fantastic, of course. But what I'm talking about is people who stepped back from life in the sense that they stepped back from, for example, hobbies and interests. And I hear it all the time, especially nowadays. I don't have time for that. And for me, it's just a totally different mindset. Like I just, I, at a logical sense, I understand it. But at an emotional sense, it does not make any sense to me. Because those hobbies and passions and interests, the things you really care about, those are the things that give you life.
And so stepping back from that just feels like you're not living a full life. And I understand that we're growing older, we're becoming adults and we have responsibilities now. But that does not mean that we can't be adults and figure out how to experience life fully. I was talking to somebody a few weeks ago and I was just telling them, you know, we were having lunch. And it was me, one, two, three, four other people. So there were five of us having lunch and we were just having a great time and I was sharing something and I said, honestly, the one thing I wanted growing up and the one thing I knew was I just wanted to enjoy life.
I wanted to experience life fully and completely and I just wanted to just live it and for me thinking about, okay, yes, I'm going to have responsibilities as an adult as I grow up but I want to make sure no matter what happens I'm able to really experience life and if I'm not finding time for the things I care about like hobbies like interests like passions but also like the people and the relationships that matter to me then I feel like I'm missing out and I'm not doing things right so stepping back from life and that sense is like hey I care about this and I've stepped back from it so a lot of people stepped back from their hobbies and their interests and their passions. We also saw a lot of people stepping back from relationships.
And of course, a lot of us got to reconnect with our families because we went home. And that was fantastic for many of us, of course, and not for everybody. But we also lost touch with a lot of the people, you know, in terms of friendships or in terms of extended family or people that you just didn't happen to live with. And, you know, people struggled to make new friends. That was another another thing, right? And for me it was very different because, you know, one, one was thanks to this podcast, thanks to this podcast, which I had started several months prior to the pandemic.
I had this platform where I was able to tell somebody, hey, I'd love to have you on my podcast and that that opened the door to some very interesting conversation that touched on subjects that I probably wouldn't otherwise touch on with somebody who I was meeting for the first time or friend I wanted to catch up with. And so I had already realized that and so I already had a platform for me to do that. Furthermore, in the months leading up to the pandemic, I had done an incredible amount of networking. I had gone to several, several networking events, shaken a lot of hands, met a lot of people.
And that led me to several incredible relationships, some of my absolute best friends today. And, you know, some of them obviously, you know, went nowhere and, you know, I wish them all the best and they're amazing people, but I just I just haven't seen them, right?
I haven't kept in touch and somehow maybe I didn't get their contact information or something like that. But I I remember, you know, as a student, right, going into online classes in the fall of 2022, you know, six months into the pandemic and a lot of my classmates were saying, Hey, I can't connect with people. I'm not making friends. And I just remember sitting there thinking, I really don't have that problem because I had gotten so comfortable podcasting and doing networking. And I had done a lot of, you know, I had gone to a lot of online zoom events, right, where socializing networking events on zoom and met a lot of people using breakout rooms and so many things, right?
So I was wondering like, why is it so different from me? And I would tell people, listen, I think the big thing for me is I do things outside of school.
I do things outside of school that get me to meet people. Because that was all I could understand. But really, I think what I missed at that time in terms of what I could tell those people was people were stepping back. Because they were locked in their rooms, what they started doing was they started consuming excessive content scrolling on social media, hunkering down in their room with nothing meaningful to do. And what I was doing was I was immersing myself. I was stepping in. I was saying, Hey, I have this podcast, let me find people to talk to. I have this event that's going on.
Let me go attend that. You know, there's this person, you know, I just, I would find these opportunities to step in to my hobbies and my interests. I got into entrepreneurship in 2020.
Now, an entrepreneurship and business that became a big thing for me. So I wanted to learn as much as I can about that. So I stepped into it. I stepped into opportunities to meet people. When a lot of people were just saying, Hey, I don't know how to do it. I can't do it. And they were stepping back instead of trying to figure out ways to step forward. And yes, I under understand that people wanted to but wanting to doesn't mean anything, right? If you wanted to you'd be calling people If you wanted to you'd be texting people and I understand there's social anxiety and it feels weird and whatever But listen, I felt the same way Right, I am I'm empathetic to that because it was unusual for me too I remember I would do this thing where every couple of months And this was a suggestion of a friend of mine.
He said, Eric, I challenge you to go through your phone And I want you to pick a few people and I just want you to call them out of the blue And I was like, dude, I don't cold call like I don't and of course it's not like a total cold contact It's somebody who is in my phone, but I don't just call people out of I don't even really call people that often There are very few people who I have that kind of a relationship with and he's like Eric I'm telling you just do it and I said, okay, so I did I would literally just sit there I would pick up the phone and I'd scroll through my contacts and I'd pick somebody and I'd called them and you know three of them would answer and You know three of them wouldn't answer and I'd leave a voicemail one person would answer say hey, so sorry It's a bad time and we would hang up like ten seconds later But then you know I would go through the numbers and somebody you know one person would be rude to me I don't know because for whatever reason I don't know But then eventually I would find somebody who actually happened to be available, who was friendly, who was actually you know overjoyed to hear hear that I had called them and we had a beautiful conversation right and I would do this every couple of months.
So there are so many things that we can do to immerse our self to step in. To seek out these experiences that that make us human, that make us feel alive because like I said all I wanted as a kid was to was that I believed as a kid that life was meant to be experienced fully and completely. So again, I understand the value in stepping back to relax, to reflect, to appreciate what's happening, to gain perspective, to realign your priorities and reevaluate your life. But escaping from it is a huge mistake in my opinion. So what is immersing yourself in life look like one it could be seeking out new experiences I got into entrepreneurship and business in 2020 that was the first time where I really was like I want to learn about entrepreneurship I want to learn about business.
I want to network with people and So it was a new experience for me. It was a lot of learning. It was weird for me very different I remember sitting with people and and I'd be this is just like I don't know this is very weird to me And they would just be encouraging me. I would need that. So Seeking out those new experiences and I'm you know challenging yourself to be better There were so many moments where I had to challenge myself and push myself to do something new But you know if you're gonna pick up a new hobby or pursue an interest or try to connect with somebody Sometimes you need that little push if you're not that kind of a person right?
I did not see myself as an entrepreneur or a business guy. I just I had gotten interested in it. I wanted to learn more about it and I'd met a lot of people who were like that but I didn't see myself like that. So for me I had to seek out something new. I had to challenge myself. There were other things that you know I might find natural right and it was just like okay no problem I can definitely do this and I would do amazing at it. So there are different aspects where you're going to figure that out, right? You're going to find out.
But the key is actually stepping into it. That's the key. If you step into it and you figure out, okay, do I, is this going to be a challenge? Do I need to challenge myself to be better here?
Is this going to be just something I simply enjoy right off the bat? You'll see, but the key is stepping in. You just need to step in. What else does immersing yourself in life look like? It means talking to people, getting to know people. I understand, you know, I'm, listen, I'm not the most extroverted human being on the planet. Some of my friends are ridiculous. They will literally just walk around talking to anybody. And it's amazing. I love watching them, but I just, it's not me. I can't do it, right? But I learned to get fascinated by people. I was fascinated by life. I was fascinated by people.
And I, one thing that's really helped me with this podcast is I go into every conversation believing that the other person is absolutely a fascinating human being and it's my responsibility to figure out what is fascinating about them.
They're fascinating. They're super interesting. I just need to figure out what about them makes me interested, makes me want to get to know them more, makes me think this person is amazing. I just need to figure out what, but they are. And I would go into conversation like that. And so I'd be so interested in them, so curious. So in trying to find something where we could relate and connect, right? The other thing, and this is actually one of the ones that I'm still working on today, and that is feeling emotions. When I say life is meant to be experienced fully and completely, that doesn't just mean the ups, that also means the downs. It doesn't just mean the happiness.
It means the sadness. doesn't just mean the excitement. It means the confusion and the doubt. And during the pandemic, I can reflect and see so many times where I would be having these challenging situations. And I would just retreat. I would just escape from it. You know, I disappear and try to distract myself and come back to it later. And I guess there's I'm not sure that there's anything necessarily wrong with that or right with that. It's certainly a valid thing to do. But for me, I feel that it goes against that philosophy, which I have, which is I want to immerse myself in life.
I want to experience this thing. Because for me, I feel like if I'm not experiencing all that life has to offer, then what am I doing?
What am I doing? And so something I'm working on today is, hey, there's this situation that is, you know, maybe it's not a challenge or a problem, but it's a difficult situation to handle primarily because of emotions. And what I'm trying to do and I'm working on is, hey, let me instead of leaning back, let me just lean into this. It's going to be uncomfortable, but this is a chance for me to immerse myself in life and to experience more of what life has to offer. It doesn't mean that I'm going out intentionally trying to find, you know, pain. That's not what I'm saying. But when it happens, I want to lean into it.
And I want to, you know, it's not like I'm going to try and make it worse, but I'm going to lean into it. I'm going to just give it the best I can, whatever the situation is, because I want to experience what life has to offer. Because for me, that's what makes this thing called life beautiful.
And I've only got a few minutes left, so what I want to do right now is I want to share this, I guess you could call it an equation, and that's a little bit of my math background. But I have this equation that says quality equals quantity plus interaction. So for example, let's talk about people and networking. How do you find good people to be around? In a professional sense, how do you build that network? in a more friendly casual sense, how do you find that few close friends who are just the best of the best in your opinion? I think about my friends and they are people who I absolutely just admire. I look up to them, I respect them.
And in various ways, I look at each of my close friends and I honestly, I look at them and I'm like, man, I would love to be like this person in a certain way. and I aspire to be like them in various different ways. And so how do you find quality people like that in terms of friendships and in terms of your more professional network? And for me, the answer is very simple. Quality equals quantity plus interaction. So quantity means you need to be connecting with a larger quantity of people. I'm not talking about hundreds and thousands, but more. It doesn't actually take a crazy, crazy amount.
It takes certainly more quantity. But if you increase the quantity, like for example, if I talk to a hundred people, I'm bound to find one, two, three quality people.
And it doesn't take a hundred. That's just a ridiculous number. Of course not. Even if I talk to 10 people, 10 different people in 10 different groups, I'm gonna find some interesting people who I decide, hey, this is a great person who I'd love to get to know. They may not be my closest friend ever, but it's somebody who I wanna get to know. So, one, you increase the quantity until you increase the number of interactions. How can I interact with this person? And so, if you can increase the quantity and the interaction a little bit, a little bit more than what you're doing, you're gonna find some quality relationships is what you're gonna find.
How about quality of life? Well, if you spend more time interacting with life, having more experiences, increase the quantity of your experiences, which means doing things. Are you doing things, right? And interacting with life more. If you immerse yourself in life, I believe you're gonna get more quality experiences because if you have more experiences and if you're interacting with life and with people and you're immersing yourself in that, I believe you're going to find more quality experiences. It's as simple as if I do five things, one thing is going to be really damn cool. Not everything's going to be amazing, but there's this great simple image that I remember a friend of mine did for me.
And he had a deck of cards, he shuffled them. And he was saying, Eric, I'm looking for aces, kings, queens, and jacks and tens. and he would flip the card and it'd be a 5 and he'd flip the next card and be a 3 and he'd flip the next card and be a 7 and he'd flip the next card and be a 9 or an 8 and I'm like 8 or 9 that's not bad at all and he'd flip it again and it would be a 3 and it'd be a 4 and it'd be a 5 but eventually he hit a jack or he hit a queen or he hit a queen or an ace and it's just like that if I talk to people and I say hi to somebody.
It doesn't mean I need to do anything crazy. If I say hi to somebody, eventually I'm going to find that 10 out of 10 best friend. I'm going to find that king or queen or that ace. If I go through life seeking experiences, I'm going to find those 10 out of 10 moments that I just absolutely cherish. But there are going to be those moments where I have threes and force and tools. But I think that's what life is all about, immersing yourself in it, enjoying it.
So I got to get going. I have about 10 seconds to hop onto the SU meeting, but okay, not really 10 seconds, but whatever it is. But thank you for listening to this episode of the Eric Chow and Powers podcast. I wish you the absolute best. I hope you found value in this, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.