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  1. "Contribute to making the world a better place" - Richard Friesen Terry McMullen 52:19

Rich wants to make the world a better place for his family and for society at large. He was a philosophy major, has a masters in psychology, spent years as a futures broker/floor trader, and now has developed a program to help business leaders increase their personal effectiveness. He believes his experiences, including his time as a child when he was constantly seeking ways to make his depressive mother feel better, have given him insight into the human psyche. Rich created his “Mind Muscles” model (https://conversations.money/) to teach his clients mental models they can use to catch themselves when their mind breaks bad (e.g., biases, irrational insecurities, ego issues, etc.).

The concept that came through most in this discussion is “chipping away.” From the prior paragraph you might assume Rich is another quick-fix self improvement guy; coming up with some gimmicky model or program to help you be successful, happy, and fulfilled. But that is not what I got from this discussion. Rich has a deep appreciation for how hard it is to deal with our inherent mental flaws. He makes no promises of a quick fix. But he does believe with consistent work and effort you can find better, healthier ways to deal with your mental baggage.

I’m on board with all of that, so we spent a good bit of the discussion exploring if it is actually doable. Given how hard it is to challenge our own ego and address our own mental flaws, do we really think we can pull it off? And even if we can, what does it say about humanity that we have to work so hard to be the best version of ourselves? This all led us to some interesting discussions about the value of money in our society, religion, liberalism, and the right approach to raising a well adjusted child. We took that “chipping away” approach to these questions, not claiming to have any definitive answers, but trying to do the work to understand them a little bit better and improve the quality of our lives and the lives of those around us.

As always, for those interested in getting more philosophy in their lives or just want to support the cause, please check out my Patreon page- patreon.com/whatsthevalue

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Terry McMullen Podcast Host

I spent much of my career trying to consult companies on how to better achieve their goals. I was a Finance major, a Harvard Business School graduate, and a business strategist. I've always been curious and I've always loved trying to solve problems. It was a really good fit for a while, but then life happened.

Within the span of a couple of years I had a son, my sister tragically passed away, and my wife became severely ill with Multiple Sclerosis. All of a sudden everything I thought I knew about life didn't seem to make sense anymore. I needed to raise my son and teach him how to be a good person but I realized I didn't even know what it meant to be a good person, let alone know how to teach him to be one. I also realized that I wasn't capable of being the person my wife needed me to be to help care for her. Simply put, I wasn't good enough.