We Play Full Out with Bart and Sunny

You Can't "Someday" Your Way to the Life You Want

• Bart and Sunny Miller • Season 1 • Episode 78

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What if you’re not living the life you chose - just the one you’ve tolerated?
In this episode, we share a powerful and heartbreaking story from our friend Richie Norton that shook us to our core and changed the way we live. It’s a story about sudden loss, deep love, and the haunting question no one prepares you to answer: what do you do after life breaks you open? But more than that, it’s a mirror for anyone who’s been putting off their dreams, numbing out with busyness, or quietly drifting down a path they never meant to take.

We unpack why so many of us trade aliveness for safety—and how the biggest failure isn’t falling… it’s never playing the game at all. If you’ve been waiting for “the right time” to chase the thing that’s been whispering in your soul, this is your wake-up call. Because the opportunity to live your one extraordinary life? It doesn’t come twice.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to. We Play Full Out with Bart and Sunny Miller. Take it away, Sunny.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to start with a true story today. It's about a friend of ours named Richie Norton, and he is an author, he's a speaker and he lives in Hawaii. Ooh Right, so he tells this story.

Speaker 2:

So so well, I'm going to do the best I can with it, but he lives in Hawaii and his wife's younger brother came to live with them and he lived with them, I would say, for about five years, and one day they went to bed and when they woke up he had passed away in the middle of the night and he was only 21 years old Crazy. And there were no health issues, no, anything like it was completely unexpected. So then, fast forward. About two years later they found out they were expecting another baby. They had three boys at the time, so this was their fourth boy and they were so excited and they decided to honor his wife's brother by naming their baby.

Speaker 2:

Gavin, that was the brother's name, so little Gavin was born. Of course, it's an exciting, exciting time, but only like 10 weeks later they found themselves in the hospital with this little baby and the doctors determined that he had pertussis, which is also whooping cough, and they were told one.

Speaker 2:

One day when they went to visit him they were told that they better stay the night because he likely wasn't going to make it through the night.

Speaker 2:

And I think it was a bit of a shock to them, like I think they probably kind of knew where things were at, but they weren't expecting that to happen so soon. And so they stayed the night and they looked at their little baby and they knew that he was not going to survive the night. So they took like all the tubes off of him and Richie's wife just held this little guy and Richie just sat by like with his hand on his chest, just kind of waiting to feel his little heart beating. And you know, they spoke just words of really profound love to him. They sang him a lullaby and sure enough his little heart stopped. And that's pretty impactful first of all. But then Richie goes on to talk about something that I had never thought about before, and that is when something like that happens how do you just leave the room Like you're sitting there with your child, no longer living, been rocking this sweet little baby?

Speaker 2:

How do you actually just stand up and go? Do you remember what happened?

Speaker 1:

yeah I'm not sure yeah, so there was an amazing nurse there and she saw this and, uh, as an amazing human she was. She asked if she could just hold the baby and rock the baby for a few minutes and they both looked at her and said that would be great.

Speaker 2:

And so she stepped up, sat in the chair, held the little baby and rocked it as they walked out of the door and what a sweet act of kindness for her to do that, because it gave them, obviously, like, the permission to move forward and to go ahead, and to actually leave the room. I try to put myself in people's shoes and it's very difficult, but to sit and think like how hard would that be already and what a blessing that she gave them, but also still so difficult.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So Richie found himself um a little while later I think it only been a couple weeks. Him and his wife attended a speech that was being given by one of their friends and it was nearby to their home in hawaii. So they went to listen to her speak. And when she was done speaking, she came and she was talking to them and she looked right at richie's wife and she said so what have you learned?

Speaker 2:

And I think the way richie tells it is he was very taken aback by, like, this direct line of questioning. It's like whoa, like here I'm got through all this painful stuff, still going through it, and somebody's asking me what I learned from that. And he didn't know. He said his wife, you know, said something eloquent and beautiful I guess she's an amazing lady. But he went home and it like just really stuck with him Like questions sometimes do in the back of your mind, probably the ones that need answered, right. And so he just sat and he thought about it and a few months passed and finally, like the answer hit him and that was, you know, between the death of his brother-in-law that was so unexpected and his little baby same name. It's start to live. Live, to start like live right now. And he named that philosophy of life, gavin's law, after the two of them. What do you think about that?

Speaker 1:

Oh well, I mean big shout out to Richie. He's an amazing human and he, he learned the lesson. He didn't just teach the lesson, but he learned the lesson, he lives the lesson. And I think that's the most profound thing we can do in life is there are lessons that come across us but we say we learned them. But actions always speak louder than words and Richie's actions truly show that he stepped into that power and he's wrote several books since then and has still been, like we would say, playing full out in everything he does. And every time you see Richie, there's a big smile, there's a big hug there is Go follow Richie, he'll be happy.

Speaker 1:

You know, I think it's awesome to learn those life lessons and I think it's really cool that he not only learned them, but he implemented them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think I heard a statement not too long ago like we're all wounded in some shape or form, like everybody who has lived a life or continues to live life is wounded, but there's a difference between having a wound and a wound having you. And we can get so trapped in that wound having us and I think the tricky part about it is one of my mentors says a wound is a door, which means we've got to walk through the door.

Speaker 2:

We talk about firemen. Sometimes they've got to run to the danger. We have to go inward, where it hurts, so that the wound can actually heal, but also so we can alchemize it for our own transformation and growth. Otherwise it just sits in festers and the wound has us and we start to live life and we start to identify with that wound instead of growing from it. Right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and if you study wounds, there's some really cool analogies from that alone of how they have to heal and why they have to go in and heal on the inside all the way out, versus, you know, the other way around. So I think there's our bodies teach us a lot of things and sometimes we don't recognize all the lessons that we can actually learn from our body and what they are teaching us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so to further, along with Gavin's law in this philosophy is that we find so many times we think we need to be smarter, we think we need to have more money. We think we need to be smarter, we think we need to have more money, we think we need to be more or become more before we can start doing the thing that we want to do. Right, but then if you fast forward five years or 10 years or 20 years, we still think we need more money, we need to be smarter, we need to be more, you know, to do all the things that we've got to do. So the life lesson is to start now.

Speaker 2:

You know, I think we've all heard that saying someday almost always turns into never. How many people kind of live life from this standpoint of when I retire or when my kids leave the house or whatever it might be.

Speaker 2:

Then I'm going to be able to explore what I want to do. I'm going to go see the world. I'm going to like have life by the tail, only to get there and health issues. The partner has health issues. Maybe there's been a divorce, maybe there's been a death and it's like things never turn out, maybe the way we think they're going to, which is why we've got to grab hold of it while we can and claim that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we've got to take action in the moment, and so many times that's the thing I think we live for is we live for the future, no-transcript. And then all of a sudden we get more of that and we get more of that, and I think that's the thing that is so empowering when we do it. And there's so many reasons. I mean, I think as humans, we love to find reasons and we love to logically talk ourselves out of it. We worked with an amazing gentleman named Gabe Roberts and Gabe really does some really cool work and in one of the things he teaches you is is that your psyche, right In your psyche, when you ask a question, the first thing that pops in your mind is going to be the right answer. But every time you're going to have something else that's going to try to switch that answer. It's going to try to get you to do something else. It's going to try to to go into those feelings.

Speaker 1:

And I've thought about that a lot in my life, because when you talk to a lot of people, they'll give you the right answer and then instantly they'll just backpedal, backpedal, and then they do all these different things to really try to convince you but really themselves that what they're doing is the right thing, when reality is, they knew the very first time. And then, when that ping goes away and we don't act upon it, it's telling our body, it's telling our psyche that that's okay and we always I mean, I say this a lot the number one person you lie to is yourself. I mean that's the number one guy. And you look in the mirror and you do all the lying and then you turn around and say, you know, and frustrated, but at the end of the day, that's what we're here to master is to be able to master, being able to have that download, take action on that download regardless of the consequence, and move forward.

Speaker 2:

So good. I love that, and I think the thing that happens with life is like we get so busy and we have this aspect of us where, if we're not stepping into anything, it gets quieter and quieter and quieter, but it's still like does something to us on the inside right well, it's called feelings buried alive.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah so we're showing up, we're checking the boxes, we're doing what we think needs done, but somehow there's like a little switch that's been flipped. And I like to think about the train stations, the junctions. You've got a train coming through and it's just a little switch that's been flipped. And I like to think about the train stations, the junctions. You've got a train coming through and it's just a little tiny piece of iron that flips the tracks and the train is going in a completely different direction, completely different destination and journey.

Speaker 2:

And I think that can happen so easily to where we're derailed and we don't even realize it because we're going about our day, we're getting stuff done, we're doingailed, and we don't even realize it because we're going about our day, we're getting stuff done, we're doing the best we can, we've got laundry, we've got to-do lists, we've got meetings, we've got obligations. Well, somewhere along the way, this little flip is switched on the life that we, you know, maybe actually want. We don't even realize that we're going in the wrong direction until we end up far away from where we want it to be.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, so true.

Speaker 2:

And it's easy to do A lot of analogies on the airplanes.

Speaker 1:

All this just micro, little tiny things, and all of a sudden but that's life is we have these choices, we have all these things, and you know we're in control. And so therefore, well, we think we're in control, so therefore, we, we make those things happen.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, hope for the best and I love the discussion that we had the other day in the car. We were talking about timelines.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because it's fascinating when you think about the timeline of your life and you think well, I'm always in the same timeline, not true? Yeah, every single decision you make throughout your day puts you on a different timeline.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it affects your timeline, for sure.

Speaker 2:

You know, if we decided to go play pickleball tonight, that's a completely different timeline than if we didn't you know, every single decision starts to like create this crazy web of like our lives and our timeline. So, being intentional and conscious about what we're doing and what we're trying to create like, I can see how it could get lost so easily if you're not doing that.

Speaker 1:

I could see how it could get lost so easily if you're not doing that 100%.

Speaker 2:

So, aside from maybe not pursuing or, I guess you know, maybe not tending to the marriage we want to attend to, or becoming what we want to be, there's also big dreams. There's also big goals, places we want to visit, books, we want to write, you know, maybe something we want to speak to or step into, and we don't do it a lot of times. I think on that aspect might not be because we're so busy, but because we're afraid.

Speaker 1:

Fear.

Speaker 2:

There's a lot of fear of stepping into things. It's almost like when you're playing small. We feel like there's a big payoff and that is not failing and not appearing foolish when we try something. Yeah, it's actually not the safe way to live. It's actually failing greatly if we don't even try right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think it's uh, it's like, you know, not only what we're not doing is we're not taking our gifts to the world, so we're not just failing ourselves where we could be failing millions of people. Think about some of the most amazing people in your life. What if they hadn't have stepped into that power? What if they hadn't have wrote that book? What if they hadn't wrote that song? What if they? You know we could go on. But that lays inside you and thank goodness we've got enough people out there that do step into the power and say I'm not going to let this dream die inside me. I'm going to take action today Because you know, those are the ones that are. They become heroes, are the ones that do that stuff, and some of us we step into it and we still fail, but at least we freaking tried, and I think that's the most important part.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. I was just thinking of another author that I listened to and he's written many, many books. And somebody came up to him and is like, oh well, it must be really easy for you to write books. He's like why would you say that? He's like it's not easy, it's just the thing that I'm willing to give my energy towards because that's what I'm called to. And you know he's an 80 year old gentleman. He'll work all day in his sessions at work that he does with other people and still comes home and writes it's awesome.

Speaker 1:

How is that inspiring or not so inspiring?

Speaker 2:

Well, back to kind of this life thing. You know, it was really poignant for me I guess is a good word when the kids started leaving the house. Because in my mind as a mom, like you're in this crazy phase, like the kids are always there. They're, you know, awesome kids, but they have to be fed. Laundry has to be done, messes have to be cleaned up, you know to be done, messes have to be cleaned up.

Speaker 2:

You know, getting at each other once in a while, like the house is a little bit chaotic, but in the back of my mind it's like I'm always going to have this time with them to go, you know, on a picnic or on an adventure. I'm not saying we didn't ever do anything with them, but in the back of my mind I felt like there was a lot of grand adventures for us still in store. And, man, when they started leaving the house, I realized my window had been closed and it was just a so powerful to me because in my, in my head, I thought I'd always have that time and then I didn't. I think that's kind of this theme of like start now, get it on the calendar, make it happen, don't delay.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2:

Um any more thoughts. While I'm looking at my notes here, you seem like you're kind of quiet today. No, I'm just listening. I think it's so good and I think it's.

Speaker 1:

You know what you're saying is just right on point. But at the end of the day, once again, you know you got it, you've got to get it on the calendar and like, if you wait for tomorrow, it will be tomorrow. And you know, if you look at, I think the older I get, the faster time goes, or I'm just in a different dimension, I don't know which, but like time seems to just go so quickly. So you know, you've got to take every day and you've got to, you've got to go out there. It's like I kind of look at it, at like the seasons. You know, when summer comes and it's hot outside, man iced, I don't care how hot it is, I want to be out there, because I know in the winter that I'm going to wish I was out in that sun one more day, and so every day I just get myself out there and I'm like I'm so grateful for this wonderful day. But I think we got to look at every day that way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and not to get too crazy here, but sometimes, again, we don't slow down to think about the life we want to live because we're so busy in the life we are in. And recently at our event I pulled out a number we have like 28,000 days to our life roughly. That's if we die of old age. But how many of us actually sit down and architect the life that we want to architect? Instead we just go right. And you brought up a podcast the other day that basically said something about AI and bio warfare.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, it was by a gentleman that actually created AI and he is. He went to work for Google. Don't quote me on this. If you want to watch it, it's on the, uh, the diary of the CEO. I can't remember the gentleman's name, but you'll, you'll find it.

Speaker 1:

And, uh, he had a son that needed some disorders and for him to be able to live his full out, he decided he would go to work for Google and they offered him an enormous amount of money to do so and he said they were really, really nice to him, but he worked for him for 10 years, but he didn't even engage with Google until he was in his, I want to say, 65 years old and retired at 75 years old from Google. Now, think about that, at 65 years old, this man is still at the top of his game, where Google wants them and wants him for what his brain's capacity was. And he, you know, and here he is on this podcast, at 75 years old and still going, strong and talking and, you know, teaching about what is going on in the world today, from what he started to what now could be possibilities of his existing life yeah, that's incredible anyways.

Speaker 2:

But he was saying that bio warfare and ai and all the things are like basically put a death sentence on us, or something he said lots of profound things.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so he was talking about how you know that a chemist can, like anybody sitting at home, can get these concoctions, these different things, because, ai, you know, and it used to be a lot on google, you could look things up I mean it's not new.

Speaker 1:

I mean reddit used to have things I mean it's just getting more readily available of how you can figure out massive equations, things like that, like you can do scientific things that you would never, ever think about. I mean he talked about like this type of bomb and something that was very similar and yet, as the human, we both look at them and say they do the same thing. But when you throw it in ai, it says, oh no, they don't do the same thing. This one actually activates at this exact point. This one activates at this exact point. This one, how this one is going to actually do an explosion. That's how this one does an explosion. This one's how I mean, but they don't look at it.

Speaker 1:

All is the same, where in our minds we just analyze and go, god, they're pretty much the same. You know, it's just a. I just has so much more touch points to be able to touch on that. When we let's say we look at this and I say you know that's an apple, and then all of a sudden I put a I think it's a sphere, for example, in front of it and it reflects the light, and then all of a sudden AI looks at it and says that's an apple and you say no, that's not an apple. The apple is here. You know, it's just an image of an apple and it has a whole different way of analyzing that whole process that even our human brains can't comprehend. And I mean, it's just, I guess I don't know where we're going, but it's fascinating.

Speaker 2:

I know where we're going, all those kinds of things. So he brought up so many things in like you sit back and you listen to that. How quickly things advance, how much more fingertips are figuring these things out. Maybe those little nuances that we couldn't have figured out before are so powerful and it feels like things can get scary quickly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for sure I mean, but what we were talking about in the car a little bit is like we don't know our expiration date anyway. So it's like we look at these external circumstances and sometimes they can get us to move and to take action, to be like, no, I'm finally going to live my life or you know, heaven forbid somebody has a health issue and only have a limited amount of time before they're going to die.

Speaker 2:

Well, all of a sudden, they're going to explore things, they're going to do things, they're going to like, create memories and things that they wouldn't have had. They not had that. It's like we don't know.

Speaker 1:

So I think what you're really bringing up is find a way to motivate yourself, get yourself going take action today because, at the end of the day, if you don't, you will regret it, end of story. So you can't predict anything. So take action today. Get off your butt. Sign up for whatever it is. Get into whatever you need to be. The come the better. You go see the thing you never seen before. Sign up for the rope when you decided to run the race. You want to run, but get after it.

Speaker 2:

It's mostly design the life that you want to design. Amen Architect your life is what we are doing with our we play full out life mastery program, absolutely Not just to dream big, although we highly encourage it If it's like if your bar's there raise it 10 more Amen let's go. Quit playing small. Design it. Sit down and write the story that you want to write. Yeah, because if you don't know what you're looking for, you're not going to find it.

Speaker 1:

Well, and I like to say I mean, that's it, let's, let's get your fairy tale put together, your North star, and then at the end of the day, at your funeral, have somebody read your fairy tale That'd be amazing no reason it can't be done.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and, and the thing is like, what we're doing in our program is we're going across 11 gateways or categories, so a lot of people think well, I just want to make money, but then the relationships aren't great, or this isn't great, or that's not great. It's all you know. The wheel's not round, it's very crooked, and what we're passionate about is no, let's take a deep dive into all of it. Let's create the life that you want to create in every aspect, from relationship, health, wealth, joy, even sex, purpose, parenting, intellect, like all the things, like why not go big on the one? Life that you have to live.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's why we call it. We play full out, right, and we want you to really. You know, we are passionate about not only activating our lives at that high performance and knowing our North star, but we want others to join us in the mission Like we, you know, we don't know everything, nor are we going to know everything, but the bigger group we have that wants to play full out, the more fun we feel like we can have community doing these things. Can you imagine going to Burning man with no people there? But you would, it be the same.

Speaker 1:

It's just, you know, like, you still have to have an organizer, you still have to have somebody put it on, you still have to, you know, and all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, aren't you grateful they do? It may not be a deal, you way, you want it, or it may be something there, there's all these things, but at the end of the day, we want to create our Burning man, which is this. It's like let's go, let's get our tribe who wants to play full out, get in the program, come architect. Come architect your life with us, let's architect and let's go. Let's travel, let's do the thing, you know, whatever it is.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. I think a good question to ask yourself is is this the life I choose or is it the life I've tolerated?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because we're not here just to show up and check the boxes and call it a life. Amen how fun is that.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Right, let's go Okay. So obviously, like we talked about a little bit, if you would love to come be a part of our tribe, we would love, love, love to have you. So, you can send me an email It'll be in the description notes and get on the phone with us. Let's just talk about it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, what are you out? Yeah, you might find the dream, you. You might find the dream, you might find the life, you might find everything or you may not find anything.

Speaker 2:

The people we're big about people 100%.

Speaker 1:

We are all about our tribe and living our tribe and having a tribe that genuinely cares and no judgment. Like we want to be able to be there and understand and live.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and just a side note, because you said that I think that is a really powerful aspect of what we do and it's like we're not here to tell you how to write your story.

Speaker 1:

Amen, no, absolutely not. We're going to show you what we do, how we go about it, but it's you that writes your story.

Speaker 2:

And that's the tricky thing about life in general is, and why self-help people or gurus or even tactics and strategies don't always work, is because there is no one size fits all.

Speaker 1:

Amen.

Speaker 2:

What is the ideal and perfect and amazing life for you? May not be for me Exactly. Which is why it takes time. Well, not even have to take time, but you've got to be intentional about thinking it through so that you can know what you want.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Right Yep.

Speaker 2:

Okay, life updates.

Speaker 1:

Life updates.

Speaker 2:

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there, and I had a great father's day celebrated bart, have I told you I've never slept so well because sonny gave me a massage.

Speaker 1:

It was amazing full body massage.

Speaker 2:

Thank you very much, um, and also bart wanted to go get a hot dog at costco for father's day.

Speaker 1:

Don't judge me.

Speaker 2:

I said no judgment but I also made mistakes that night. So there's that.

Speaker 1:

There was that Happy.

Speaker 2:

Father's Day. Grateful for you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, I appreciate that yeah.

Speaker 2:

You roped a little yeah.

Speaker 1:

Went roping last night, had some fun, had a lot of fun.

Speaker 2:

Played some pickleball as a family, Went out and had some fun there. My dad was in town so I had breakfast with him. Might have already talked about that. One thing I want to mention is we go and we play pickleball at a friend's house about once a week.

Speaker 2:

He's an 80-year-old man with a pacemaker, he's got an amazing story. He was a lifeguard at Baywatch, like original. An amazing story. He was a lifeguard at Baywatch, like original. But what he says all the time is if something is really really good like you get a really good hit or if something is just like we're out on a beautiful summer evening and we're eating pizza and having some drinks or something, he's always like that's Cadillac. Or he'll walk up to you and say you're Cadillac, so we like to say that now around our house, that's Cadillac. So anybody who's listening to us, who's watching us or who's reading our newsletter, you're Cadillac.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, let's go, you Cadillacs.

Speaker 2:

That's all I've got, you got any more.

Speaker 1:

No, I don't think so. I just I'm super excited that Sunny took the time today and put all this together and as we introduce this and as we keep going out with materials, we hope you enjoy that, because this really is our mission. Our life mission, our North Star is to, you know, be disruptors, to absolutely grab our tribe and to live life in its fullest with we Play in Full Out. So with that, we'll wrap it up with. This segment is brought to you by I Do Epic, thank you.

People on this episode

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Bart Miller

Host
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Sunny Miller

Host