From Problem-Solving to Abiding Joy: Will Acuff’s Daily Joy Practices

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the people in our life are not problems to solve, but they're

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people to know and enjoy.

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So what would it look like to step in to, to full presence in the midst of that?

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You know, to ride out the, the intense moments and then be there

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to hold them after, Hey, I can't climb in there with you, it's yours.

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but I can be here right on the edge of it.

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I'm not going anywhere.

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I can hold this space with you and you tell me what would be supportive.

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I'm not running away, but it's not mine to solve.

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Right.

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and holding that dynamic tension in our relationship.

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What if the path to Joy isn't a mountaintop moment, but

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a daily deliberate climb?

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In this episode of Seek Go Create the leadership journey.

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We sit down with Will Acuff, co-founder of the Nashville nonprofit corner to corner

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and author of No Elevator to Everest.

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Will's story is one of resilience, faith, and the pursuit of joy.

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Amidst life's challenges from supporting underestimated entrepreneurs

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to navigating personal trials, he offers insights into building a life

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rooted in purpose and community.

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us as we explore how intentional leadership and unwavering faith can

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transform not only our own lives, but also the lives of those around us.

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Will welcome to seek, go create.

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Thank you so much for having me, Tim.

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It is a joy to be with you today.

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It is a joy to be with you too.

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You know what I'm excited about is that we kind of got started with one of the

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techniques in your book, which is we just kind of took a few really deep breaths

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Mm-hmm.

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man, it helped me.

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Oh, absolutely, man.

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it always tells my body that I am here right now and I'm present to this moment.

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You know, lets me fully show up as, one friend of mine says, be here now.

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Be somewhere else later, you know?

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I just, I realized maybe I go, go, go and I'm, not fully breathing and I had a lot

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going on this morning with, a company.

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I'm doing some work for now, and I'm sure had a lot going on.

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It's just kind of good to slow down and say, okay, it's

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Tim and Will for 60 minutes.

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Let's have some fun here.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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go with it.

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I got a bunch of stuff here.

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We're gonna have fun.

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But first off, let's kind of do the, jumping into the deep end of the

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pool question that I like to do, and that is, and we give you a choice.

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start off with the what do you do, question, or are you Pick

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it and just start answering.

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Yeah, I'm definitely gonna answer the who I am in the world as

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I, you know, think of myself.

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I would say I am, an image bearer of the most high God of who is

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abiding in the living spirit of God.

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And out of that, I am aligned with my family, my wonderful

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wife, Tiffany of 20 plus years.

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My kids, 13-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter.

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I, I live my life as much as I'm possible, grounded in the love of my father, so that

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I can live out of that towards my family.

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Then out of that, towards the work I'm called to in the world, right?

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Like in alignment, and all of that when taken together, right?

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Alignment with God, alignment with self, others, and with

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my work is what I describe as,

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Being played in tune, right?

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Like, it feels like, oh, this is who I am meant to be.

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Let's go.

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And so that's who I am in the world.

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I'm a person who, strives to more and more live out of that place and

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that peace every moment of every day.

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That's good.

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So how do you know if that's working well for you?

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Oh, dude, you can tell in seconds.

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Yeah, no joke.

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can you tell if it's working or can you tell more if it's not working?

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Which one do you do better at?

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so I would say at this point in my life, I do both really well.

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but that took a lot of work and a lot of getting my butt kicked, right?

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Like, I don't want this to sound, overly easy or overly simplified, right?

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and what I mean by this is something like, I believe all of us are uniquely

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called to be where we are and do the thing that we were made to do.

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And to the extent that we get out of alignment with that, right?

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We feel it as like a drain and as stress and as pressure.

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Right?

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You almost feel like that clinched fist energy, you know what I'm talking about?

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And we start saying things to ourselves like, I must, I have to, right?

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That's kind of how life feels when we're out of that alignment.

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and when we're in that place of abiding trust that I'm kind of pointing to what

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it feels like is, ooh, I get to right.

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and it feels like flow instead of grind.

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and the only way I know to get better at being, intentional about

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detecting that is through, walking out a daily practice of stillness.

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and then doing check-ins throughout the day.

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You know, back in the day if you had said, Hey, will, would you spend 10

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minutes of prayer and meditation?

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I would've been like, get outta here.

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I got too much to do.

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You know, fast forward nowadays, like I will sit for an hour and feel

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like it was too little, you know?

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but then during the day, I will feel it go, oh, huh.

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That meeting went a little left when I thought it was gonna go a little right.

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And now I'm feeling this way about it, and I'm starting to tell myself this story.

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Huh?

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This feels off.

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What do I need to know about this?

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How do I get realigned?

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And it happens like that.

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So people will hear this and they might think that you have mastered

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this and have it all figured out.

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No, no.

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That is not what I'm trying to say.

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my wife sometimes said, your tone makes you seem as if you know it all.

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I said, ah, I don't know what to do about my tone, man.

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I'm just, don't know how to tone that down.

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Uhhuh.

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as that.

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But how, how would you, if you go back maybe 10 years, you said you're

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Mm-hmm.

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mid forties,

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Mm-hmm.

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years and give yourself a grade on the description you just gave, and now

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give yourself a grade now, either on a scale of one to 10 or an A, B, C, D, F.

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Yeah.

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Totally.

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about 10 years ago in my life, we were, my wife and I were in the journey of,

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parenthood, we adopted our son, and around actually a little over 10 years ago.

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That was when we realized that our life was taking a different turn, it started

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with our son not sleeping through the night, not for a couple days, but

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rather weeks than months, than years.

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And that was our introduction to the fact that we were gonna be a family

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that was touched by disability, right?

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so if I go back in my head to that point, what I see is, a young man who

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only had one way of doing life and that was find a problem and solve it.

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That was my entire framework, right?

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And so there were some really good things about that, maybe effective in

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a lot of different areas, but when it comes to how you navigate life with

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a child with disabilities, that is a losing recipe, And a recipe for burnout.

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I did not know at all at that point in my life.

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How to do what I would describe as more internal work, Like

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self-awareness, like what am I feeling?

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What am I believing as true?

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And then how is that affecting my behaviors?

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Right?

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I had no framework for that.

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My only answer was when in doubt do more.

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In fact, at at that point in my life, that was my password

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for my laptop do more, right?

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2025 or 2015 or whatever year, right?

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And I, and I updated that password every year with just a new year, right?

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fast forward.

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Now what's different is my context is the same.

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Right.

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I still have dynamically challenging situations, but every single day I

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start the day by getting, still getting curious, and approaching my inner life

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with a sense of compassion and curiosity.

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and then I might still do all that activity that day.

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You know, I might still problem solve, but I'm doing it from

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a different place, right?

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And I don't mean to say that I live perfectly in that space all day, I

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mean, this weekend had a challenging, you know, situation at home.

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And I allowed myself to go, oh yeah, I feel awful right now.

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Oh, what am I feeling?

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I'm feeling a lot of sorrow.

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Hmm, yeah.

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Do I want to repair what's bringing about that sorrow?

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Or is there something I need to let go of and I need to mourn the loss of it, right?

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And the difference now is I never even would've had that language.

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Does that make sense?

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You get to a certain place and you never feel sadness anymore, right?

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that is nonsense.

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you were made with a body that produces emotions, like, welcome to humanity.

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Yeah.

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I kept seeing the word joy pop up and I wanna talk about that in just a moment.

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But, I wanna tell you the scripture that came to mind as

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I was doing my research on you.

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Yeah.

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I told you this a little bit right before we hit record week.

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I was traveling, we were moving RV from Arizona.

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We're in Colorado now visiting grandparent grandkids, and then we're on our way

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up to the Black Hills of South Dakota to spend a good bit of the summer.

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Awesome.

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to a few podcasts and I don't know how I did this, but I listened to

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one PO podcast you were a guest on, and I think it was right around

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when Covid started, like it was

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Hmm.

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ago,

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Yeah.

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your first book or something with corner to corner, which we're gonna talk about

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Yeah.

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I.

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Yeah.

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But then I listened to another one right after that about your new book.

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I've got it here.

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We're gonna be talking about it more.

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no Elevator to Everest.

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And I saw a big difference in just your tone to use

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Mm-hmm.

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words.

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and then I want to give this scripture, and then I want us to start getting

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into the, to some details here on some

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Yeah.

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The scripture that came to mind is the scripture that Jesus or the

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teaching that Jesus has at the tail end of the Sermon on the Mount.

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I've always been fascinated by this, and I listen to the Sermon on the Mount

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quite a bit sometimes in my meditation.

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Mm-hmm.

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to the Audible sermon on the Mount.

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It's 15 minutes, by the way.

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It's a great, it's a

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Hmm.

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meditation.

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he's talking about the, the subtitle is Built on the Rock.

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He says, therefore, whoever hears these sayings.

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Of mine and does them.

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I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock

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Hmm.

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and the rains descended.

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The floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not

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fall for, it was founded on the rock.

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But everyone who hears these sayings and does not do them will be like a

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foolish man who built this house on the sand and the rains descended,

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the floods came and the winds blew and beat on the house and it fell.

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And great was its fall.

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Hmm.

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Here's what came to me after probably about a hundred times of

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meditating on the sermon on the mount.

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The range came, the floods came, and the winds came to both people.

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Yeah.

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The situations were the same.

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Mm-hmm.

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that was different, and to me, will, that's what jumped

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out at me about your story.

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Would that

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Thank you.

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Yeah, man.

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Thank you.

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Yeah, thank you Tim, so much.

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That is such a kind word.

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yeah.

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I would say that.

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That is accurate.

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My, my story definitely, like the context of my life hasn't changed, right?

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In a lot of ways the rain and the winds, right?

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Still happening, but with the foundation of rest, right?

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And like, rest in the hands of my maker who is doing something beautiful, right?

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Like there's a certain type of piece that comes with that.

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Like when, you know, the foundation isn't going anywhere, right?

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You can be in the middle of your living room on a big, rainy,

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blustery day and make yourself a cup of tea, grab a good book.

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You know what I mean?

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but if your foundation is such that you always have to be shoring it up.

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You know what I mean?

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Like it is a invitation into a life of frantic activity, that is

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designed, you know, I think all of us, you know, this goes back to

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my theory of like how humans form.

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I think all of us when we're kids, we ask the question, am I safe?

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And at some point in our development, we say, no.

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Right?

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I need to figure out how to get safe.

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And you know, what we chase after that, I think, can go a million different

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ways, But what the Lord is calling us into is to go, Hey, you are always

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safe and you're safe right now.

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And then meanwhile, our lizard brain might freak out and go, no, I'm not safe.

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Right?

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The rain's coming and he's saying, no, no, no, no, no, I got you.

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I got you.

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so yeah, I think I'll, I'll take that.

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That's an encouraging word, Tim.

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So you, used the word abide at least twice in this 13 minutes that we've

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been talking, and you just use the word rest you're a pastor's kid, grew up in

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church, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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We're talking about that in just a moment, by the way, one of the reasons is the way

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the church dealt with money that I noticed

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Hmm.

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book we'll talk about that if we get to it,

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Yeah.

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some people are, might be listening in and go, you know, that word abide, I don't

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Mm-hmm.

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That sounds a bit churchy

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Yeah.

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rest sounds like just taking a lot of naps.

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I don't know that I understand that.

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a little bit more on how, maybe explain it to a second or third grader.

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What does the word

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Yeah.

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That was great.

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to you now?

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Yeah, for sure.

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so the first, I'd make a clarification that, when I say the word abide, I

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don't mean a ceasing of activity.

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I think sometimes we have this false dichotomy that you're either abiding,

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which looks like you doing nothing, we might even say like, you being lazy or

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that old image, you know, that story of like the person in the flood and they're

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standing on the roof waiting, praying, God send me some rescue, and the boat comes,

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they say, no, no, I'm waiting on God.

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you know that story, right?

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And so when I say abide, I'm not saying a ceasing of activity.

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What I am saying is where your activity is coming from, right?

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And to me the word abide is where is the ground of yourself resting in?

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And to explain it to a second grader, I'd say, Hey, are you doing this homework?

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Because in order to get a good grade, you've gotta do this.

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And a good grade tells you who your identity is.

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It tells you something core about you.

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You're the kid who performs well, And there's, uh, you know, in

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Tennessee we have a really intense third grade test to mark if you're

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going into fourth grade, right?

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These kids get freaked out, man, right?

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Like it is massive stress on some of our third grade population.

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and you can easily, you could ask 'em this question, they go, yeah, man,

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if I don't do good on my third grade test, I'm not the kid I thought I was.

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Do you know what I mean?

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That's not abiding, right?

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so when I say abide, I don't just necessarily mean it as a churchy word.

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I mean it as a who, who are you?

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Where is your identity coming from?

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What platform do you stand upon to do your work in the world?

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You know?

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And I even mean that with relationships, right?

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Like if you're in a relationship and you're like, I need that person to

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behave like this so I can be happy.

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Oof recipe for disaster.

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That is the opposite of abiding, right?

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If instead, you're coming from a place of, oh, you know what?

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I'm good.

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I'm loved, I'm cared for, and out of that piece, I can meet this person.

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Oh, man, something special is gonna happen there.

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Yeah.

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And Will, one of the things you brought up earlier is, a lot of

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things I think began changing for you when you and Tiffany adopted,

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Yeah.

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I think a lot of parents, they go from, you know, you're, you know,

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when you're single and then you get married, still sort of single.

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You're just with another adult,

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Yeah.

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What?

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Yeah.

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Dual.

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Dual income.

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No kids.

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Yeah.

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and to me that still doesn't count.

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You can still be, I'll call it selfish, or

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Mm-hmm.

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still control most of your world, even though we know we can't control

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Oh, yeah.

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when a child arrives,

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Mm-hmm.

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we're gonna discuss your story here in just a moment.

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we're gonna kind of get rolling with that.

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But when a child arrives, you realize my words, how out of control

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we probably are, and I know yours

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Absolutely.

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dimension to it.

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I do think that part of our journey is realizing how little

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control we really do have.

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Mm-hmm.

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A younger age, I think I thought I could control and bend

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everyone around me to my will

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Yep.

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and we just realized we're not in much control.

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And I think abiding is, for me, has been a lot of just letting go

Speaker: 00:16:53

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:16:54

control.

Speaker: 00:16:55

Yep.

Speaker: 00:16:55

theory I have, and this is gonna get us started on your journey that you've

Speaker: 00:16:58

been on, I actually believe that's a process that has at least one, maybe more

Speaker: 00:17:06

significant events along the way that get

Speaker: 00:17:08

Oh,

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point.

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So

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absolutely.

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having said that, I wanna talk a little bit about Will, growing up

Speaker: 00:17:15

pastor's kid, man, I love talking to pastor's kids and like finding

Speaker: 00:17:20

out all the issues they dealt with.

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That's so

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Uhhuh.

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get into Corner to Corner and then your family to get into talking

Speaker: 00:17:25

about the book and all that.

Speaker: 00:17:26

what was revealed to you through the book.

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So tell me what you want to about your, you know, the early years.

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Yeah.

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So for context for me, I was born in Durham, North Carolina.

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Like we were a southern family.

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Mom and dad both from Charlotte, North Carolina.

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Both went to University of North Carolina, you know, back in the day.

Speaker: 00:17:45

so very southern right.

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Coming out of college.

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my dad was a campus minister for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

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Right.

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and so he was, you know, doing campus ministry at Duke and NC

Speaker: 00:17:57

State, and we were like this young, Ministry family in Durham.

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and he felt a call to be like a pastor.

Speaker: 00:18:04

Pastor, right?

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Because campus ministers, they're kind of like sidekicks, you know, he wants to

Speaker: 00:18:08

go to seminary, do the full deal, right?

Speaker: 00:18:11

but so he ends up, taking our whole family up to New England for him to,

Speaker: 00:18:15

go to seminary and he, the plan was go up to the north and then come back

Speaker: 00:18:19

to the south where we're from, right?

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and instead he got caught up in the church planting movement up in the northeast.

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And think of church planters as the people who are most entrepreneurial

Speaker: 00:18:30

in the church world, right?

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they are gonna start a new church where there might be a community

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that doesn't have one right.

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Kind of vibe.

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and so he started church in the office of a gas station in 1985.

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The kind of place where like you bring your own folding chair and or

Speaker: 00:18:45

tambourine, right, was kind of the vibe.

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and by the mid nineties had grown it to, on some Sundays there

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were 1000, 2000 people there.

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it was a wild ride.

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And I think the joy of seeing that for me and probably my two brothers,

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I have a younger sister, but she was born when I was 11, so she grew

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up with kind of a different version of our family in a lot of ways.

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But was that you could build something in the world.

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Like you could take a crazy swing with a ton of risk, Or what people perceive

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as risk and do something awesome.

Speaker: 00:19:18

That was the upside.

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I think the downside was, you know, the family rhythms and my

Speaker: 00:19:22

dad and I have had a lot of good conversation and healing around this.

Speaker: 00:19:24

This is no surprise, but back in that day, it was very much

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the mission is the mission and the family is kind of secondary.

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Right.

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And so I think a lot of my childhood, there was a sense of my parents

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love me and care for me, and also I better figure it out, and so I

Speaker: 00:19:44

think that also helped, me and my brothers we're all entrepreneurial.

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We've all built stuff in our still building stuff, right?

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So that was kinda my childhood.

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And then I felt called to like, I'm gonna be a pastor, like my

Speaker: 00:19:56

dad, my senior year of high school.

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And so I went to NC State big, you know, state school, like at that

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point, like 30,000 students because I wanted to see what ministry looked

Speaker: 00:20:08

like in a large secular environment.

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It always seems silly to me to wanna be in ministry and to go to

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a place with only Christians or something, do you know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:20:16

Like, there's just too much echo chamber for me.

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and so I go to that college.

Speaker: 00:20:21

And instead of being on a path to seminary, I fall in love with

Speaker: 00:20:25

being in a rock and roll band.

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I grew out my hair to my shoulders.

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Like I'm talking Italian soccer player hair, right?

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learned how to be a lead guitarist and a songwriter and all the things.

Speaker: 00:20:35

coming outta college, I put a new band together and we started touring

Speaker: 00:20:39

everywhere from the Apollo in Harlem, all the way to the Dallas Hard Rock

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and a bunch of crappy bars in between.

Speaker: 00:20:46

our high watermark.

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I was a big Wilco fan.

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We got to open up for Wilco once, you know, I was like,

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I have made it, you know?

Speaker: 00:20:53

but what it started off as a sincere expression of my

Speaker: 00:20:56

creativity turned into an ego play.

Speaker: 00:20:59

Like I'm building the will kingdom, if you will.

Speaker: 00:21:02

and I would've been on that path, Like I would've kept it going.

Speaker: 00:21:05

but God got ahold of me through this epidemiologist who was an

Speaker: 00:21:10

expert in the AIDS pandemic, This is early two thousands.

Speaker: 00:21:14

and this guy, made us meet at his house for six months to get ready

Speaker: 00:21:18

for a trip to Nairobi, right?

Speaker: 00:21:20

And so every week we're reading like doctrinal things.

Speaker: 00:21:24

We're reading, global economic papers, right?

Speaker: 00:21:27

What happens if the energy price is pegged at this in North

Speaker: 00:21:31

America to Sub-Saharan Africa?

Speaker: 00:21:33

Like really complicated stuff that I was just like a dumb

Speaker: 00:21:37

rock kid, you know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:21:39

Like, I felt like, I was like, what is happening?

Speaker: 00:21:41

and so I go on this trip And we all split up, right?

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So we weren't like staying at a hotel downtown kind of vibe.

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I was staying with this Kenyan family on the edge of one of the worst slums

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in Sub-Saharan Africa, no running water.

Speaker: 00:21:55

it's a cliche story, like middle class white boy has to go to Africa

Speaker: 00:21:59

to realize poverty's real, but it is 100% what happened to me.

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And I came back from that, with my worldview blown up, and I didn't even

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know I had a worldview until then.

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You know what I mean?

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and I felt nauseous, honestly.

Speaker: 00:22:15

Like how can this exist in the world?

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And this isn't what we're all talking about.

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How old

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You know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:22:22

I was 22.

Speaker: 00:22:23

All right, so a couple quick questions before we keep moving forward.

Speaker: 00:22:27

Was the rock star.

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Era, well, we'll use the term era.

Speaker: 00:22:34

sure.

Speaker: 00:22:34

rockstar era?

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Mm-hmm.

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Was there any rebellion with that, with the way you grew up?

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Or was it just you like, I mean, see, I, man, I love me some good rock and roll and

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Yeah,

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the circus last night with our granddaughters and they lit

Speaker: 00:22:48

into some A CDC and I'm going,

Speaker: 00:22:50

yeah,

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I

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absolutely.

Speaker: 00:22:52

thunderstruck.

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yeah,

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I am wondering if, you know, growing up in a preacher's kid

Speaker: 00:22:56

family, I know there was a lot

Speaker: 00:22:58

yeah.

Speaker: 00:22:58

religion there, and I'm

Speaker: 00:22:59

Uhhuh.

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your money tapes, your

Speaker: 00:23:01

Yeah, yeah,

Speaker: 00:23:02

stuff here in just a second.

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But

Speaker: 00:23:03

yeah.

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at all that you've looked back on and say, you know what, I

Speaker: 00:23:06

was just sort of rebelling just to, stick it to mom and dad.

Speaker: 00:23:10

Honestly, no.

Speaker: 00:23:11

my dad had also introduced me to led Zeppelin and Three Dog Night,

Speaker: 00:23:15

That's a

Speaker: 00:23:15

right?

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And the Beatles, like the Rolling Stones were a bridge too far, I think, for him,

Speaker: 00:23:20

he needed the cleaner British invasion.

Speaker: 00:23:22

But I mean, it was Jimi Hendrix that made me fall in love with guitar, you know?

Speaker: 00:23:26

I was like, if you can make that sound with that thing,

Speaker: 00:23:28

I have to learn how to do it.

Speaker: 00:23:31

And so if anything, my parents were very enthusiastic, like true story

Speaker: 00:23:35

my senior year of high school.

Speaker: 00:23:38

'cause I was determined to be the best guitar player I knew, Like,

Speaker: 00:23:41

I've always been very goal oriented.

Speaker: 00:23:43

and so I spent a winter in Massachusetts where I turned my parents' basement

Speaker: 00:23:48

into a Jimi Hendrix shrine.

Speaker: 00:23:51

Like I painted the entire door on the inside to the basement with Jimi

Speaker: 00:23:56

Hendrix face from a cover of an album.

Speaker: 00:23:59

And then I locked myself in there and I just wood shed it on the guitar, you know?

Speaker: 00:24:03

So it wasn't much about rebellion, but what it became about was this

Speaker: 00:24:08

really strokes my ego, you know, and, and stand like playing guitar behind

Speaker: 00:24:15

your head in front of a thousand people losing their minds, right?

Speaker: 00:24:19

That is a uniquely good feeling in the world, right?

Speaker: 00:24:23

and so my own internal values alignment started to shift.

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Does that make sense?

Speaker: 00:24:28

Like,

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Yeah, it

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yeah.

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and that's a good self-awareness.

Speaker: 00:24:33

I realized that when I was doing some things in business and I was

Speaker: 00:24:36

speaking in front of groups a lot, and I look at a lot of people that

Speaker: 00:24:38

are pastors and ministers, you know,

Speaker: 00:24:40

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:24:41

all of a sudden this starts becoming the deal instead of what's the real deal.

Speaker: 00:24:46

Totally.

Speaker: 00:24:47

and we can kind of get outta whack there.

Speaker: 00:24:49

there's something I wanna address about you growing up though,

Speaker: 00:24:53

that you had in your book.

Speaker: 00:24:54

I'm on, mean, I've got a physical copy here so that

Speaker: 00:24:57

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:24:58

uh, page one 60 and I just highlighted this.

Speaker: 00:25:01

We are poor for Jesus, and that is the right way to follow him.

Speaker: 00:25:06

Yeah.

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and that was truthfully my challenge with Southern.

Speaker: 00:25:11

I grew up in the south, outside of Atlanta, and I

Speaker: 00:25:14

was gonna make me some money

Speaker: 00:25:16

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:25:17

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:25:17

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:25:18

like the church supported that, which is one of the reasons when

Speaker: 00:25:21

after I got saved, I got sucked into Prosperity Gospel, which has

Speaker: 00:25:25

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:25:26

Mm-hmm.

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liked it better

Speaker: 00:25:28

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Totally.

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need for that.

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So we won't go

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Yeah.

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tell me about how you thought about money as you went along

Speaker: 00:25:35

your path from an early age.

Speaker: 00:25:37

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker: 00:25:38

I mean, so I think I'll fo first say.

Speaker: 00:25:42

most kids don't get like a really clear mon money lesson

Speaker: 00:25:46

from their parents, right?

Speaker: 00:25:48

It's mostly they pick it up through what I would refer to as osmosis.

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You know what I mean?

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It's just kinda, they're picking it up in little bits and drips and drabs that

Speaker: 00:25:57

they feel or hear in the home, you know?

Speaker: 00:26:00

So, ooh, money is something to be scared of, right?

Speaker: 00:26:03

Or bills are always bad, right?

Speaker: 00:26:06

There's all sorts of ways that I think we could pick that up.

Speaker: 00:26:08

And in my own childhood, what happened for me was, my parents very much so had

Speaker: 00:26:14

a sense of we are on mission for Jesus, which means, that we're gonna be broke.

Speaker: 00:26:20

Right.

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And they didn't ever come right out and straight up say

Speaker: 00:26:23

that, do you know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:26:25

But it was in, and again, I've talked to my, I love my mom and dad.

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We have a wonderful relationship.

Speaker: 00:26:29

We've talked all about this stuff.

Speaker: 00:26:32

But like, there were moments, I mean, my mom would say things

Speaker: 00:26:34

like, oh, we would take that kind of trip, you know, referring to

Speaker: 00:26:37

another family, doing some kind of ski trip or something in the winter.

Speaker: 00:26:40

but we've made a decision to follow Jesus so we can't.

Speaker: 00:26:43

Right.

Speaker: 00:26:44

and so it equated in my mind that there's only one way to follow Jesus.

Speaker: 00:26:50

Right.

Speaker: 00:26:51

and I think anytime you make a hard and fast rule about how to interact

Speaker: 00:26:57

with money, that's actually when you're in the most danger, wherever

Speaker: 00:27:00

you're landing on that rule.

Speaker: 00:27:02

Right?

Speaker: 00:27:02

If you're like, I should only be uber wealthy, and that's the only plan that

Speaker: 00:27:05

God has for me, Ooh, good luck, buddy.

Speaker: 00:27:08

You might be rolling the dice on what God intends, right?

Speaker: 00:27:10

And conversely, if you're like, I could only be broke for Jesus, 'cause

Speaker: 00:27:13

that's what righteousness looks like, I would say, oh no, you're starting

Speaker: 00:27:17

to touch on self-righteousness.

Speaker: 00:27:18

Be careful, right?

Speaker: 00:27:20

so fast forward, you know, in my own journey, when we launched a nonprofit as

Speaker: 00:27:26

my wife and I did, it made all the sense in the world for me to repeat the patterns

Speaker: 00:27:31

of being downwardly mobile for Jesus.

Speaker: 00:27:34

You know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:27:35

that felt like a really safe and comfortable place.

Speaker: 00:27:38

and I think it was shaped by those uninvestigated childhood things.

Speaker: 00:27:41

And it is no longer how I view it.

Speaker: 00:27:43

how'd you erase that?

Speaker: 00:27:45

'cause there, there are a lot of people outside of church world or religion that

Speaker: 00:27:48

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:27:49

with money, it almost seems like it's a double whammy or triple or whatever.

Speaker: 00:27:54

When, we bring scripture or we

Speaker: 00:27:56

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:27:57

you know, when we bring religion into it, give us, give us your

Speaker: 00:28:02

three steps to overcome that?

Speaker: 00:28:03

No.

Speaker: 00:28:03

Or what,

Speaker: 00:28:04

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:28:05

are the

Speaker: 00:28:05

And you can find this in my new book.

Speaker: 00:28:07

to overcome your

Speaker: 00:28:08

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:28:08

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:28:08

just whatever.

Speaker: 00:28:09

Whatever you can share that helped you.

Speaker: 00:28:11

You say you're overcome it.

Speaker: 00:28:13

I actually had a situation recently where I thought I had.

Speaker: 00:28:16

Mm,

Speaker: 00:28:17

But it reared back up

Speaker: 00:28:18

mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:28:19

and something

Speaker: 00:28:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Speaker: 00:28:20

Ooh, maybe I don't have that resolved at 60 something years old.

Speaker: 00:28:24

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:28:25

And let me be clear, what I was trying to say was I no longer

Speaker: 00:28:28

affirm what I grew up with.

Speaker: 00:28:30

But unwinding it from my heart and my body is a different thing.

Speaker: 00:28:35

the only way I know how to do this is to be honest, right?

Speaker: 00:28:39

Like, I would feel safer if I had X amount of money in the bank.

Speaker: 00:28:45

Oh, really?

Speaker: 00:28:47

That's where you're getting your sense of safety.

Speaker: 00:28:49

Whew.

Speaker: 00:28:50

We're not in the God territory anymore.

Speaker: 00:28:53

You know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:28:54

we're in the mammon territory.

Speaker: 00:28:56

You can only serve one.

Speaker: 00:28:58

Or conversely somebody going, oh man, if I don't have that

Speaker: 00:29:01

car, then I don't feel important enough to be in my social circle.

Speaker: 00:29:06

there's a million ways it shows up, but the only way I know how to really

Speaker: 00:29:09

get at it is one, be honest, be honest with what's coming up for you.

Speaker: 00:29:14

are there things that around money that make you feel like you are the man?

Speaker: 00:29:19

that's a great indicator.

Speaker: 00:29:20

Do some curiosity work there.

Speaker: 00:29:22

Are there things where you feel terrified about money?

Speaker: 00:29:25

Great place to do some curiosity work, right?

Speaker: 00:29:28

And then actually do the work to write it out.

Speaker: 00:29:31

Oh, I'm feeling this because of this.

Speaker: 00:29:34

Where did that story start for me?

Speaker: 00:29:36

Oh, it started because when I saw my dad lose his job, or whatever

Speaker: 00:29:40

your story might be, right?

Speaker: 00:29:42

and you can't live in our western culture, which is so many ways, obsessed, right?

Speaker: 00:29:49

With what's going on with financial resources, and not have some

Speaker: 00:29:53

sort of thing you need to heal.

Speaker: 00:29:55

Right?

Speaker: 00:29:56

and personally, I think that the ultimate place to arrive

Speaker: 00:29:58

at is where you go, oh, huh.

Speaker: 00:30:00

Money is a tool for doing what God has called me to do in the world.

Speaker: 00:30:04

Amazing.

Speaker: 00:30:05

Right?

Speaker: 00:30:06

and if God owns the cattle on a thousand Hills, I don't have to, like, I can own

Speaker: 00:30:10

what he gives me to do with, you know,

Speaker: 00:30:14

I know the thing that bothered me as I realized that my mood went

Speaker: 00:30:18

up and down based on balance.

Speaker: 00:30:20

My wife and I, you know, we've been married almost 37 years,

Speaker: 00:30:23

been together for 40 plus.

Speaker: 00:30:25

man, congratulations.

Speaker: 00:30:26

It's like, yeah, thanks.

Speaker: 00:30:28

and we kinda realized it's like, you know what?

Speaker: 00:30:29

Why is our mood this way now versus this?

Speaker: 00:30:35

And, you know, a lot of it's that, that I think that tension between,

Speaker: 00:30:39

you know, we really are citizens of the kingdom of God, but yet we

Speaker: 00:30:43

somehow seem to be living in Babylon

Speaker: 00:30:46

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:30:46

we start doing this Babylonian stuff and mindset.

Speaker: 00:30:49

And anyway, that's, that's another topic.

Speaker: 00:30:52

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:30:53

I don't think we'll get to it, but I would really love to know, I know we were kind

Speaker: 00:30:56

of going along the path of your journey.

Speaker: 00:30:59

Yeah,

Speaker: 00:30:59

want to allow some time, 'cause this corner to corner is fascinating to me.

Speaker: 00:31:03

yeah,

Speaker: 00:31:04

and I think with the people we have leaders in business and ministry, I

Speaker: 00:31:09

Absolutely.

Speaker: 00:31:09

love to hear some things about that.

Speaker: 00:31:12

Then we're gonna, some things going on in your family to kind of get

Speaker: 00:31:14

to where, what allowed you to write or forced you to write this book?

Speaker: 00:31:18

No Elevator to Everest, but tell us about Corner to Corner.

Speaker: 00:31:22

Yeah, so, let me pick back up the story here so you get context,

Speaker: 00:31:25

coming back from that trip, right.

Speaker: 00:31:27

I would argue that God often gives us the gentle whisper, Hey, this

Speaker: 00:31:30

is where I want you in your life.

Speaker: 00:31:31

And that trip to Nairobi was that gentle whisper, right?

Speaker: 00:31:34

but I tuned it out, right?

Speaker: 00:31:37

Like a teenager, here's a loud thumping in their car.

Speaker: 00:31:39

They turn down the volume instead of getting it fixed, right?

Speaker: 00:31:43

and often I think the loving sledgehammer comes next, right?

Speaker: 00:31:46

for me, my wife and I, when we got married, 2004, we had a

Speaker: 00:31:51

health crisis on our honeymoon.

Speaker: 00:31:53

And I'll just say this, it's never a good sign when your honeymoon

Speaker: 00:31:57

ends in the emergency room, right?

Speaker: 00:32:00

and it led to like the band thing was gone.

Speaker: 00:32:04

The life we thought we were gonna build is gone, right?

Speaker: 00:32:07

And there were two years of really intense suffering.

Speaker: 00:32:10

You know, some medical suffering as well as some just, who are

Speaker: 00:32:14

we without these things, right?

Speaker: 00:32:16

Or the path that we thought we were on.

Speaker: 00:32:18

And coming out of that, my wife and I, we had this deep sense of, okay, we are

Speaker: 00:32:23

more sure than ever that God is, is real.

Speaker: 00:32:26

We're a little more like iffy on like religion.

Speaker: 00:32:29

and we're sure that if we are gonna say we follow this Jesus, we

Speaker: 00:32:32

better get a theology of neighbor.

Speaker: 00:32:35

How do you love neighbor as self, right?

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not as like a one-off thing, but as a lived reality every day.

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And we didn't know how to do it.

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And so we moved into a historically low income neighborhood in

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Nashville, 18 years ago, right?

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And this is a neighborhood that has all the stats and all the stories, And we

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moved in and my wife got a job working behind bars at the men's prison, as a

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former offender job training specialist.

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A fancy way of saying she helped people come home to jobs in

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that tornado of a moment, right?

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Of coming out of prison and back into the community.

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and so we started doing life in that neighborhood.

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oftentimes, with guys coming in and outta prison, all that stuff.

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what we saw over time was there are these incredible people with all

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these god-given passions, skills, and drive, but don't have a bridge

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to express that in the marketplace.

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and so we got really curious about like, what would it look like to create a

Speaker: 00:33:35

nonprofit that was kingdom-minded, right?

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Like we're, we're not shy about our faith, but we're focused on economic development.

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Like we should be the most creative and, you know, to, excuse the

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language, but we should be bad asses at economic development, right?

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and I would argue Christians should be the most highly risk taking

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creative beings in the world, right?

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'cause if the story is that we're good, then let's go build some stuff, right?

Speaker: 00:34:03

and so we launched corner to corner with this vision, okay?

Speaker: 00:34:06

Economic development relationship kingdom.

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and what we learned over a few years was that entrepreneurship was

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the right way to do that for us.

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And so we started this program that gave underestimated entrepreneurs the

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tools they needed to plan, start and grow their own small business, right?

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Using like the Lean Canvas model, very popular and kind of

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business startup communities.

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Who's your target customer?

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What problem are you solving for them?

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What's your financial model that will actually make sense?

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You know, all the things.

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And we started holding that at like a local rec center.

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and we were very iterative.

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You know, I come from software development as well, like the Kanban

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two do, doing done kind of world.

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And so we built our nonprofit that way.

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and I'll never forget, like we are testing out this entrepreneurial program and

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I was like, do we have something here?

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You know, you're never sure.

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until our first graduation right here, we've got 13 of these new

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entrepreneurs and one of them is sharing about her business to a

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crowd of about 40 business leaders.

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And she was a 13-year-old Who came every week with her mom and she

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had set the pace for the class.

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You know that student who's like, oh man, they're killing it, right?

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This was her.

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And she gets up and she shares this vision about how, she's creating a line

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of custom business cards, and buttons so that she can, get her fellow teenage girls

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to speak to each other off the internet.

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Right.

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Every parent in the audience was like, oh my gosh, I want that for my teenager.

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Right?

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and then she goes, and by the end of Q2, I'm gonna sell a hundred

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units, And this business leader here in town, in Nashville, she stood

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up and she goes, I'm buying your first 100 units tonight, darling.

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And then another business leader stood up and I'm buying your second 100 units.

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And you visibly saw this girl who was a little nervous talking in front of people.

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Her shoulders were kind of down.

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You saw her shoulders go back, her chin come up, and you witnessed the

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moment that her horizon got larger.

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Right.

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And I was like, Ooh, this, this is it.

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And so we went from one site, you know, 13 people.

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now as of this last week, we've now graduated over 1600 entrepreneurs.

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Last year we put 37 million back into the neighborhood economy, and

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this year we're on track to clear 40.

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it has been the joy of my life to see neighbors who are often told,

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Hey, low income neighbor, the best you get to hope for is stability.

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to hear instead, no, no, no.

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I believe that you have given to you by God what you need to build something that

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can turn you into the economic engine of your family and your neighborhood.

Speaker: 00:36:49

And you don't have to do it alone.

Speaker: 00:36:50

We're gonna do it with you.

Speaker: 00:36:52

Will, I've got a few questions I wanna follow up, but I,

Speaker: 00:36:54

there's one I wanna back up.

Speaker: 00:36:56

Tiffany fall in love with rockstar Will or with African missionary Will?

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Because I, I missed that along the story.

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We don't have to go into detail there, but

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Oh man, that is such a good question.

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And what's really funny about that question, Tim, is the answer is both.

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I have a theory, Tim, that all of us have a moment where we peak, right?

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I have the benefit of knowing the exact moment I peaked, and I played

Speaker: 00:37:23

a show at a party, on a Saturday night, playing rock and roll guitar,

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crazy house party kind of vibes.

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And this line of young ladies walks by and most of 'em are dressed up super fancy,

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you know, like really dressed to impress.

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And that was not my style.

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And then there's this one beautiful young woman wearing a t-shirt that said

Speaker: 00:37:43

Windy Gap, which was a Christian, summer camp that my dad used to preach at.

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And I leaned away from the microphone and I just said, nice shirt.

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That's all I said, little did I know that was Tiffany who

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would go on to become my wife.

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Um, but that, that she walked out that night going, oh my gosh, that felt nice.

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Who was that guy And she couldn't stop thinking about it.

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Right.

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Well, the next morning I didn't know my, at that point my parents had moved

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back to North Carolina and my dad was a pastor at like a big church there

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in town and Tiffany and all of her college roommates went to that church.

Speaker: 00:38:18

So the very next Sunday morning, they're doing a slideshow about my

Speaker: 00:38:23

trip to Nairobi with a epidemiologist.

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And I'm on stage playing the grand piano with a song I wrote while a slideshow of

Speaker: 00:38:33

my mission trip is up on stage, right?

Speaker: 00:38:35

Like, I could not have planned a better, a game like slightly dangerous rock and roll

Speaker: 00:38:40

guy Saturday night, like songwriter who loves kids, you know, like Sunday morning.

Speaker: 00:38:47

and Tiffany would tell you, after that she, she pursued

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me until I got the signal.

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And we've been married over 20 years.

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smitten, truthfully.

Speaker: 00:38:56

I mean, that is, you're, that's impressive.

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the unfortunate thing though, is that you really, I hate to say

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this, you can't go higher after

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No, no, no.

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That was it.

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Totally it.

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Like she caught me in my best 12 hours.

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Like that was it.

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You know what I mean?

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That's also how many of us men marry way up the food chain

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when things like that happen.

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Absolutely.

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Which is awesome.

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So, one thing that I loved hearing, and I actually saw this is I think you mentioned

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you were in software development.

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You, I think are scrum master.

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My wife's a scrum master's, done

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Yep.

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I'm an industrial and systems engineer from Georgia Tech, so kinda

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Yeah.

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Mm-hmm.

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leadership teams with strategy and all this kinda stuff.

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one of the things that I have found Will, and I'll say it and let you comment, is

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that often nonprofit and church world.

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doesn't accept some of the systems, process and structures that

Speaker: 00:39:51

do work well in, we'll call it Babylon or whatever business world.

Speaker: 00:39:55

Yeah.

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so give me some pros and cons.

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Some good, the bad, maybe the ugly of that background.

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You have, fortunately you were running this ministry, I believe.

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It wasn't like you were trying

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Yeah,

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into something

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no.

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if you plug into something else, buddy, you're the devil.

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I'm telling you.

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Oh, yeah, yeah.

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No, no, no.

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So talk a little bit about that 'cause we've got people listening in that they

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want to take their business skills and

Speaker: 00:40:18

Totally.

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ministry

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Yep.

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think some ministry people want it.

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Yeah, I mean, my sense is that there's a dynamic tension, in any org, but it really

Speaker: 00:40:27

comes out in this kind of way, right?

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Where imagine two banks of a river, okay?

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On one side you have all heart, right?

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I'm just here to love on the people, right?

Speaker: 00:40:38

That is an important, it's a whole side of the river, right?

Speaker: 00:40:41

We need that bank.

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And on the other side is the systems and the vision of what this thing

Speaker: 00:40:47

could be if it were performing at an efficient level, right?

Speaker: 00:40:51

And I think if you walk too far in one direction or the other.

Speaker: 00:40:55

You're no longer in the river.

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The river is the org.

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You know, and it needs that dynamic tension.

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And I think sometimes people who get into ministry, they, they apply a

Speaker: 00:41:08

pastoral lens to everything such that hard conversations get harder, you know?

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and actually having key performance indicators feels like a weapon

Speaker: 00:41:18

rather than an invitation for growth, you know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:41:22

Whereas in, in the, you know, in the business world, you're like,

Speaker: 00:41:27

okay, well how did you, do you know, like, you had an event.

Speaker: 00:41:31

How many people attended?

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Oh man, we only got 30.

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Oh really?

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You only got 30?

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I thought the goal was 75.

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Yeah, it was, but I guess we just didn't hit it.

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Like that would in the church, we would go all day going,

Speaker: 00:41:44

okay, cool, cool, cool, cool.

Speaker: 00:41:45

You know, in the business world, we go, okay, so where did it break down?

Speaker: 00:41:49

How many invitations?

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Was it the messaging?

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Was it the platform you were on?

Speaker: 00:41:54

What, what was the conversion rate per click through?

Speaker: 00:41:57

You know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:41:57

Like we would know all that stuff.

Speaker: 00:41:59

and so for like corner to corner, we have a wait list right now of

Speaker: 00:42:02

3,462 people for this program.

Speaker: 00:42:07

we're, our goal is to launch 10,000 of these entrepreneurs in 10 years.

Speaker: 00:42:12

You know, like, and we, we have heart centered, like we wanna move with neighbor

Speaker: 00:42:17

at the speed of relationship, and we want to do it with this view of excellence and

Speaker: 00:42:23

excellence that doesn't crush neighbor.

Speaker: 00:42:26

Right?

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There's the dynamic, that we, I mean, we talk about this nonstop.

Speaker: 00:42:32

What's interesting is I to bible school in my early to mid fifties, hung out

Speaker: 00:42:37

with a lot of Christians, and I do wanna say this, I am a Christian, I

Speaker: 00:42:40

love Christians, even though some of the things I say may be harsh against them.

Speaker: 00:42:44

So I wanna, I wanna give that

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No, no, no.

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but I'll

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Yeah.

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I have found it is easier to bring heart into those highly efficient

Speaker: 00:42:54

and effective business systems than it is to bring those business

Speaker: 00:42:57

systems into that heart structure.

Speaker: 00:42:59

Oh, absolutely.

Speaker: 00:43:00

Yeah.

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I mean, as a pastor's kid, as someone who went to seminary,

Speaker: 00:43:04

I've been an intern at a church.

Speaker: 00:43:06

I've worked with a lot of churches.

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I mean, I have moments, without naming names, you know, where I'll

Speaker: 00:43:12

have, people are like, man, we so wanna partner with corner to quarter.

Speaker: 00:43:15

We're so excited.

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And I'll say, awesome.

Speaker: 00:43:18

Here's an outline of the first two events we can do.

Speaker: 00:43:21

How many, you know, what's the recruitment plan?

Speaker: 00:43:23

How do we execute this?

Speaker: 00:43:25

And three weeks later, somebody's like, Hey man, I just don't think

Speaker: 00:43:28

we can pull it off right now.

Speaker: 00:43:30

Or whatever.

Speaker: 00:43:30

You know?

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And you're like.

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Okay.

Speaker: 00:43:33

that's sad, you know?

Speaker: 00:43:34

and we're still gonna go and figure it out, you know?

Speaker: 00:43:38

So the cool thing Will is I'm pretty confident that that first podcast

Speaker: 00:43:44

that I listened to was shortly around when Corner to Corner was.

Speaker: 00:43:49

I mean, some of these numbers you gave are in that tone of man, we're rocking.

Speaker: 00:43:53

Things are awesome.

Speaker: 00:43:55

yeah.

Speaker: 00:43:55

Somewhere along the way, some things have kind of, come at you.

Speaker: 00:43:59

you mentioned the sledgehammer of love or something like that, that the

Speaker: 00:44:03

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:44:03

what I've seen in my life.

Speaker: 00:44:05

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:44:05

we all know we could do it incrementally and over time and

Speaker: 00:44:08

things like that, but usually

Speaker: 00:44:10

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:44:11

it comes with a catalytic event or a series of events.

Speaker: 00:44:14

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:44:15

Give us a little background on the family and some of the other things that happened

Speaker: 00:44:19

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:44:19

first podcast episode that I listened to

Speaker: 00:44:22

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:44:23

in the book, and this will kinda lead us into the last few minutes.

Speaker: 00:44:26

We've got to talk about the book.

Speaker: 00:44:29

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:44:29

So what happened essentially was on the outside, like in my work life,

Speaker: 00:44:34

things were like, you know, roughly up into the right, not, you know, in a

Speaker: 00:44:38

perfect line, but directionally correct.

Speaker: 00:44:41

but internally at home, you know, both our kids are through domestic adoption.

Speaker: 00:44:45

My wife and I were so blessed to grow our family that way.

Speaker: 00:44:49

but when my, my son started on the path of diagnoses and, and disability and all

Speaker: 00:44:55

that, I applied everything I knew how to do, which was do more work and solve this.

Speaker: 00:45:01

And there was no, this doesn't work that way.

Speaker: 00:45:04

You know, there's no way for a KPI on this, you know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:45:08

I, it was like an internal emotional suffering that's hard to quite name.

Speaker: 00:45:12

Right.

Speaker: 00:45:13

And in the face of that, my wife, experienced acute

Speaker: 00:45:17

clinical depression, right?

Speaker: 00:45:18

She was diagnosed with, something called complex PTSD, both from

Speaker: 00:45:22

kind of some childhood trauma stuff as well as, our daily experience.

Speaker: 00:45:27

and that meant that there were days where it was hard for her

Speaker: 00:45:29

to get outta bed, you know?

Speaker: 00:45:31

I should say I've got full permission from her to share here.

Speaker: 00:45:34

and so I was trying to solve for my son and solve for my wife, right?

Speaker: 00:45:39

And it was not working.

Speaker: 00:45:41

my wife was like, Hey, she found this amazing trauma, therapy place that really

Speaker: 00:45:46

helped her, like a retreat center, right?

Speaker: 00:45:48

Like an intensive retreat where they take away your phone and no one can use

Speaker: 00:45:51

their last names, kind of stuff, right?

Speaker: 00:45:53

And she was like, you need to go.

Speaker: 00:45:55

And I was like, but aren't we theorized enough as a family?

Speaker: 00:45:59

Right?

Speaker: 00:45:59

Like, never a good sign, by the way, if you're inventing words

Speaker: 00:46:02

to debate your spouse, right?

Speaker: 00:46:04

and my wife's an Enneagram eight, if you know that world to challenge your role.

Speaker: 00:46:08

and she, she's like, no, no, no, you need to go.

Speaker: 00:46:11

And so I went, and day one I was there.

Speaker: 00:46:13

Very much so with a chip on my shoulder, right?

Speaker: 00:46:15

Like, I'm here to get tools to help fix my wife.

Speaker: 00:46:18

Just so arrogant, right?

Speaker: 00:46:21

By the end of day two, I was cracked, open, weeping, and knew

Speaker: 00:46:26

that I was there for me, right?

Speaker: 00:46:29

And what that place started to do for me was give me the tools to compassionately

Speaker: 00:46:34

connect with myself, right?

Speaker: 00:46:37

And kind of get under the hood of my own heart, but I was coming home.

Speaker: 00:46:43

my context was about to get hard again.

Speaker: 00:46:46

And so I asked the question, can I turn my own life into a joy lab?

Speaker: 00:46:52

I got a notebook and I would write out, here's the experiment for today.

Speaker: 00:46:57

This is what joy would feel like.

Speaker: 00:47:00

And it led to really practical things like, my son with his sleeping

Speaker: 00:47:04

challenges, he was sleeping better by this point, but most of his days he

Speaker: 00:47:08

would wake up about five or five 30,

Speaker: 00:47:11

And I was like, okay, if I don't want to wake up to like, you know, he would

Speaker: 00:47:16

always wake up yelling Daddy, right?

Speaker: 00:47:19

And like, you, you want to wake up with a cortisol level, you know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:47:23

Like a high cortisol stress hormone.

Speaker: 00:47:25

That's the way to do it, right?

Speaker: 00:47:27

And so I was like, no, no.

Speaker: 00:47:28

If I'm gonna enter the day differently and have agency in this, I'm gonna

Speaker: 00:47:32

set my alarm clock for an hour before that, which means I need to go to bed.

Speaker: 00:47:37

Really early and Oh yeah, I need to move a coffee maker into the bedroom so

Speaker: 00:47:41

that I don't wake him up in the kitchen.

Speaker: 00:47:43

Right?

Speaker: 00:47:44

And I built out the place and the space to then get still right?

Speaker: 00:47:50

And then I started experimenting.

Speaker: 00:47:52

What would this daily joy look like?

Speaker: 00:47:54

And from that, experience, I wrote the book No Elevator to Everest, which

Speaker: 00:47:59

the whole idea is, I think so many of us are waiting for our context

Speaker: 00:48:04

to change, to get better, right?

Speaker: 00:48:06

Like, I'll be better when X happens in my life, when I get the job I

Speaker: 00:48:10

really want, or when my spouse loves me the way I hope they do, right?

Speaker: 00:48:16

Or I get the money right, like whatever it is.

Speaker: 00:48:19

and it is a, a way to set your entire life up for failure, right?

Speaker: 00:48:25

And so, like, then the challenge becomes, is there a way for me.

Speaker: 00:48:29

To not live perfectly, but more and more every day to live in this sense of

Speaker: 00:48:34

abiding joy no matter what my context is.

Speaker: 00:48:38

And so the book is like the stories and some of the concepts and then practical

Speaker: 00:48:43

practices rather for so that you can try these things on and then kind of invent

Speaker: 00:48:49

your own, to say, oh wait, actually I'm gonna actually step into Joy now.

Speaker: 00:48:54

Not, not that fantastical someday.

Speaker: 00:48:57

'cause someday is no day, y'all.

Speaker: 00:49:00

I love that word, joy.

Speaker: 00:49:01

My, we're, we're here in Colorado Springs.

Speaker: 00:49:04

I'm kind of, for those on the video, I'm looking up the hill.

Speaker: 00:49:06

'cause our RV's parked in the alley behind 'em.

Speaker: 00:49:08

So we've got our five-year-old and 3-year-old granddaughters

Speaker: 00:49:11

just almost within reach.

Speaker: 00:49:12

And they

Speaker: 00:49:13

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:49:13

here with us last night.

Speaker: 00:49:14

And five-year-old this morning was talking about joy.

Speaker: 00:49:20

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:49:21

she crawled in bed with us and she goes, yeah, we're supposed

Speaker: 00:49:24

to bring joy, aren't we?

Speaker: 00:49:24

I said, yeah, we're supposed to bring joy

Speaker: 00:49:26

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:49:26

and stuff like that.

Speaker: 00:49:27

But, but there's, I, I wanna, I wanna emphasize in reading

Speaker: 00:49:32

through the book or I scanned it.

Speaker: 00:49:35

didn't read it in depth, but I scanned the whole thing.

Speaker: 00:49:38

I lost count of how many televisions and windshields broken.

Speaker: 00:49:46

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:49:47

And let me follow up with one thing.

Speaker: 00:49:48

'cause I wanna, I want to emphasize, you know, a lot of people say, oh yeah, we've

Speaker: 00:49:52

kind of got it rough too and all that.

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and you know what, we're not, we're not here to compare.

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That's not like

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Mm-hmm.

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a game we're playing.

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But beginning of chapter six it says, you know, maybe I should

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just wrap my car around a tree.

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You and the kids would be better off.

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Oddly enough, I had brief leading thoughts and that is not the way

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I'm wired to think about my life

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Mm-hmm.

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when we were going through bankruptcy and all

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Mm-hmm.

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Mm-hmm.

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was thinking if I just swerve to the right and hit that

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Yep.

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Mm.

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And

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Mm-hmm.

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talk a

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Talk a little bit.

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how low it was and then I want us to get into a few of the techniques and

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the practices that you came up because I mean, this, this, we're talking

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about a rough situation here, right?

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Yeah.

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I mean, so to paint the picture from the book, you just read that line, that was a

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text message that I received from my wife.

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Right.

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and so there were days where I would come home, I'd go home at lunch

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from work or whatever to check on her and not know, like, would she

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be okay, that kind of intensity.

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and then with my son, he has multiple diagnoses.

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you know, autism, a global cognitive disability over the last two years.

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he was diagnosed with a rare genetic muscular disease.

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so like, just the journey continues, right?

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And there would be times where he would be so dysregulated as you mentioned,

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Tim, that he kicked my windshield so hard while we're driving down the

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highway that, spider cracks across it, and we, I mean, I can't tell you how

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many holes we have in the walls, right?

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so to say that my daily life is really intense is to be pretty mild, you know?

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and for the longest time it was just dominating me.

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It like controlled all of my experience.

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You know, and I mean the context, I don't mean my son, right?

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Like my son is amazing and I love him, and he's a kid who

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feels joy, huge and sadness huge.

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And you know, everything's very big for him.

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and it's not his fault, right?

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Like there's not a blame situation here.

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And so what I realized is, for me, and I think it's a challenge to

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all of us, is the people in our life are not problems to solve, but

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they're people to know and enjoy.

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So what would it look like to step in to, to full presence in the midst of that?

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You know, to ride out the, the intense moments and then be there to hold

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them after, you know, and, and with my wife specifically, like for the

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longest time I was trying to fix her depression, which by the way, that's

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not how depression works, right?

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You want a recipe for failure, um, every husband in America, like, go

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up to your wife and be like, I'm gonna fix your depression, right?

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instead what we got to was a place of, of me saying, Hey, I can't

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climb in there with you, it's yours.

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but I can be here right on the edge of it.

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I'm not going anywhere.

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I can hold this space with you and you tell me what would be supportive.

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I'm not running away, but it's not mine to solve.

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Right.

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and holding that dynamic tension in our relationship.

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Yeah.

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So one, one thing that I, this goes back to an earlier conversation,

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will, and this will help us land this

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Mm-hmm.

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me.

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Yeah,

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give us a few of those basics.

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We started with one of them that I

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yeah,

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Give us a few of the

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yeah.

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then we'll talk about where people can find the book.

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Yeah.

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So I would say first, like my view is we have everything we need right now.

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Right.

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like from a biblical standpoint, we would say we're image bearers, right?

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Like the creator of the universe created us.

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That's a pretty good thing we got going for us.

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right.

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and we have the abiding Holy Spirit.

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Like in the John Chapter 14.

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Jesus says, I'm sending you the spirit to be with you forever, who will be in you?

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Right?

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But the reality is, if most of us only learn how to do work out here, we

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are missing what's happening in here.

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We're missing that connection with the abiding spirit.

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Right?

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so the practical techniques, right, was I needed to carve

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out enough space like stillness.

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Where I'm not doing, but rather I'm being, and I'm not being with the

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lens of self condemnation, but one with compassion and curiosity, right?

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I think most of us avoid going inward because we hate going inward because we,

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all we do is punish ourselves, right?

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Like you pizza, look what you did again, right?

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Like all of us have that voice.

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And so practical step was for me, I needed time in the morning before

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I engaged with my son, my wife, my work where I got curious and still.

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And so this is a practice in the book that we call the emotional trailhead.

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and just like a trail into a forest, right?

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It starts with a trail head says, Hey, here's the name of this trail.

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This is where it's going.

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you know, and, and often it's like three miles in, there's a waterfall, right?

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But you actually have to walk that out to get to that revelation

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of seeing that waterfall, right?

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And most of us wake up in the morning, and none of us are neutral, right?

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We don't wake up neutral.

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We wake up totally flooded by all sorts of hopes, fears, anxieties.

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I can't believe she said that to me before bed, right?

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Like, whatever it is, we wake up that way and then we just try to go about life.

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And so the practice is to get still for about 10 minutes.

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Grab your favorite drink with caffeine Mine.

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It's a cup of coffee right by the bed.

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I get still, and I think of my emotions as the, the landscape, right?

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And I go, what am I feeling the biggest right now?

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Oh, and it might be, oh, you know what I'm feeling fear, huh?

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Curious.

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I wonder what's causing me to feel fear, and let's take it to money.

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You go, oh man, I actually thought my tax position at the end of this

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year would be different than it was.

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Right?

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It's probably some listeners who can, relate to that particular fear, right?

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I go, oh, huh, yeah, that feels really uncomfortable.

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What story am I telling myself, oh, I am telling myself that I'm

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an idiot for making that mistake.

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Hmm, man, why am I telling myself that?

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Oh, you know what?

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Well, I grew up in a family that said I better perform and in order to be okay or

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in order to get love, is that what the god of the universe is saying to me right now?

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No.

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No.

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The God of the universe is saying, Hey, do you hear the party?

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The band is warming up just like the invitation to the prodigal son.

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Right?

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The party is started in the party's for you.

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I love you.

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Right?

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That's what the spirit is saying to us all the time, right?

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But as we stay with that trailhead of curiosity, we end

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up going, I mean, 10 minutes.

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And you go, oh man, I am believing the lie that this tax thing is the

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biggest thing going in my life.

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Whew, Lord, would you help me to release this fear and

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step into the day differently?

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And man, it's 10 minutes.

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And you know, at first it might feel hard or awkward, or you might

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even have a hard time naming your emotions, but you work that out

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for a couple weeks in a row, right?

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And I promise you, you will be a different human.

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You know, the cool thing is, we're sitting here telling

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people to be still and breathe.

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Yeah,

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this is advanced stuff, right?

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I mean, come on.

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Just be still and breathe.

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Come on.

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Will.

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Where can people find you?

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And the book, I'm sure Amazon and stuff like that.

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I've got a copy of it here.

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Do that.

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And I'm,

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yeah,

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you say one more thing before we wrap up here, but

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yeah,

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they connect with you?

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yeah.

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So, on Instagram it's Will Joy acuff, all one word, no underscores.

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and then you can go to no elevator to everest.com.

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you can sign up there for my substack and get like a free kind

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of guide on some of the practices.

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And of course, Amazon's huge guys, I'm all for supporting local bookstores, but

Speaker: 00:58:22

also buy it on Amazon and leave a review.

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that's how people are finding out about the book.

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Excellent.

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Any other quick just Holy Spirit led encouragement for someone who

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might going through struggles?

Speaker: 00:58:34

anything else Will, before we wrap up and finish?

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Yeah, I would just, anybody who feels utterly stuck right, right now, I would

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just encourage them to tell somebody that they love, that they feel that way,

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and ask that person to pray with them.

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Start there sometimes when we are totally stuck.

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That's the best thing we can do, is be honest with someone who loves us.

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Hmm.

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That's good.

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will Acuff, thank you so much.

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The book is No Elevator to Everest Shift from Survive to Thrive

Speaker: 00:59:07

through Spirit-led Self-Awareness.

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I'll put a copy up here for those watching on YouTube.

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Yeah.

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I enjoyed this conversation.

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Thank you.

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Thank you so much, Tim.

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This is, man, it's tapped into a lot of the themes that we have been looking at

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here at Seek Go Create for some time and Will's story and all that he's doing.

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Just really emphasize the business and ministry merging together

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and then just still and quiet.

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It's been beautiful.

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We are here at Seek Go Create.

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We've got new episodes every Monday.

Speaker: 00:59:34

I appreciate you joining us here and we will see everyone next week.