Rediscovering a Jesus-Centered Life with Ryan George

Have you ever felt the sting of spiritual hurt or the soothing balm of healing within the walls of a church? Joining us today is Ryan George, whose book "Hurt and Healed by the Church" chronicles a tumultuous yet hopeful journey through faith, pain, and redemption. In this episode Ryan shares how to  redefine the essence of a Jesus-centered life in spite of past spiritual hurts.  Ryan explains his past within the restrictive confines of the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement and how he came to understand the simplicity and beauty of Christ's teachings.

The path toward healing from spiritual trauma is seldom straight, but it's rich with lessons on grace and the power of community.

If your spirit thirsts for a faith journey that's as adventurous as it is genuine, tune in to learn more from Ryan George.

Order his book "Hurt and Healed by the Church: Redemption and Reconstruction after Spiritual Abuse"
Connect with Ryan:
booksbyryan.com

https://www.instagram.com/ryplane/

https://www.facebook.com/ryan.george/

https://www.threads.net/@ryplane  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryangeorge/

Order Stephanie's new book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential

Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
Follow us on Instagram @stephanie_nelson_cm
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

I'd like to welcome Ryan George to the Pivotal People podcast. I didn't know Ryan before I received his book. I received his book a few weeks ago. We're going to talk about that today. It's called Hurt and Healed by the Church and I read the whole book. It's a long book and I told Ryan and this is true I had a hard time putting it down. It makes you think.

Speaker 1: 0:48

It makes you feel and then I felt like, oh my gosh, we were twins separated at birth. I'm a little older because we have all the same people, we listen to the same voices in our lives. So before we recorded this, we have the Bob Goff connection. Ryan has kind of been coached by Bob Goff and encouraged by Bob Goff and that's why I'm here and also Andy Stanley. So, and turns out, I don't think we live that far apart. Are you in Virginia or North Georgia?

Speaker 2: 1:18

I'm in Virginia.

Speaker 1: 1:19

You're in Virginia. Okay, sorry, I'm in Georgia, but we're both South of the Mason-Dixon line.

Speaker 2: 1:24

That's right, that's right. Say and Dixon line.

Speaker 1: 1:25

That's right. That's right. Say that, so welcome.

Speaker 2: 1:27

And you have the best aquarium on the East Coast.

Speaker 1: 1:29

Well, so close. You know I tell people that all the time, but I hate to make them jealous and I'll just start this out by saying Ryan does a whole lot of things, a whole lot of work, a whole lot of ministry, he's an author, he's a podcaster, he's an Enneagram 7. And if you know what that means, you know this is going to be a fun conversation.

Speaker 2: 1:56

So welcome Ryan, tell us a little bit about what you do, what you love to do, yeah, so I don't think it's an accident that for an Enneagram 7, that there are seven continents. I've been to all seven in both polar circles. I like going out on the wings of airplanes. I've surfed in the Arctic. I've camped in Antarctica.

Speaker 1: 2:15

I love things that are cold and icy and different. I go on vacation very different places than most people do. Wow, I don't even like a hotel room by the ice machine.

Speaker 2: 2:19

You are really adventurous.

Speaker 2: 2:21

Yeah. So I get a bunch of airfare for free through my work every year, and if you're willing to stay in a tent or a hostel, you can see a lot of the world. I've been to 30 countries I think close to it. I've got to go to church in five different continents, and so what I've got to experience is the world that wasn't presented to me as a kid, and one of the things I do before I travel is I ask God hey, will you show me why I want to go to this place and will you show me what it is that you want to do in me when I get there? And I've yet to have him not answer that, no matter where I've gone, whether it's the Faroe Islands, which are remote islands off of Iceland, or the Arctic Circle or wherever Last year, I was in Slovenia and half of my plans got rained out and I had the most beautiful spiritual encounter with him, and so I go.

Speaker 2: 3:07

Oh, I'm going to claim this promise that if you seek me, you will find me. Jesus said that if you knock and you ask and you seek, you'll find me, and I have, and so, thankfully, what I have found is that Jesus is very different than what I grew up with. I have found him in friendships that I never imagined I could happen I could have, in a church and faith environment. I've been married now for 23 years to my wife, crystal, who's the missions director at our church. She's getting ready to go to Ukraine to be on the front lines over there, and I have a very bold and courageous daughter who's studying to be a social worker, and so I'm surrounded by people with compassion and adventurous, bold spirit, and it's very contagious.

Speaker 1: 3:45

I love that. And your book is divided into three parts. The first part you talk about your upbringing in the church, in your faith tradition. Your father was actually the pastor, but we're going to talk about that because I wasn't familiar with the faith tradition in your book, so it was eye-opening to me and I think it will be eye-opening for other people to hear what that experience was. And then the second piece is talking about propaganda in general, propaganda in general from various churches or society and all of us can relate to that to any degree of it and how to really discern. How to really discern. And then your last part was what I call the really hopeful part.

Speaker 1: 4:33

It's like how do we follow Jesus? You know, let's forget denominations, let's forget labels, let's forget names. Let's just read the red letters, let's understand what he's saying and let's just keep looking to him.

Speaker 1: 4:49

And you simplify it so much and I found that so encouraging and so hopeful because so many times your book is called Hurt and Healed by the Church, and statistics will show you that young people today are not attending church to the degree that they may have 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. And I've talked to some of my you know nieces and nephews who are disillusioned by the church. What is the church? You know in their mind and you know I want to say gosh. But just look at Jesus. Just look at Jesus. Let's start there. You know how do we discern, but you looked at it and this is your story and this is what fascinates me. You didn't throw the baby away with the bathwater.

Speaker 1: 5:35

You didn't say I am not those people. The problem with churches is they're filled with people, right? Those imperfect people? I'm one of them might have misrepresented it to you, but not on purpose. It's only because of their experience and their learning. So one of our I have to say this quickly one of our favorite people that Ryan and I share I've already mentioned is Bob Goff. Bob Goff is one of the most inspirational Jesus followers I've ever met.

Speaker 1: 6:05

Not only because he writes about it, but because I've seen it in action, when he didn't know I was watching. I've experienced it myself in ways that you just can't even believe. A person as busy as him would think of little people like he does. And I can remember talking to him and he's like you know, I don't go to church. Bob worships every day.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Bob brings people together and we worship together in all kinds of environments, both informal and formal. He kind of showed me you know, we are the church, we're together, we're the church. So, having said that, I promised him I wasn't going to talk, and here I am talking.

Speaker 2: 6:45

You're good, it's your podcast.

Speaker 1: 6:47

Well, I know, but could you share your upbringing? Yeah, so the shorthand.

Speaker 2: 6:53

I mean, if you've seen the documentary shiny happy people, that was pretty adjacent to what I grew up in to to tell you how conservative religiously I was. The word evangelical for me, which in culture now is something very it, has a lot of pejorative on the right side of the spectrum. I don't mean correct, I mean not like political right versus political left, but evangelical was considered liberal for us. Places like Bob Jones University were considered liberal for us. High control religion, the IFB movement, the I stands for independent, and they pride themselves on no accountability. That lack of accountability tends to draw predators and abusers into the ministry because there is no check and balance on their power. There's not an elder board, there's not no, but they're not accountable to anybody in a denomination, in their own church, outside of their church, and so you can imagine the people who are attracted to that situation, and it's rampant.

Speaker 2: 7:51

I have so many stories. Close friends, people I've gone on vacation with you, go to other churches, people who went to my dad's church, obviously. And so what happens is each of these pastors makes up their own religion within the religion. Right, like each church, has its own standards that you must abide by or else you're not going to heaven. My dad crawled up on top of me yelling inches off the end of my nose that I was going to hell, and I went to four church services a week. I served in his church. I tied my paychecks to his church Like I did everything I knew how to do right. And so what happens is these it tends to attract very angry speakers. It tends to attract people who are very legalistic, very superst speakers. It tends to attract people who are very legalistic, very superstitious.

Speaker 2: 8:35

You'll find that a lot of the pastors in this movement have deep father wounds because of how they see God right.

Speaker 2: 8:37

They see him as angry, always waiting to knock you down, never affirming you and showing you love and pursuing your heart, and so that was normative for me. I grew up in a faith where I was scared of the God that I served, and I served out of a hope that he wouldn't get angry Right, and so it wasn't until I got out of that that I realized how many things were wrong, how many things didn't align with the words and actions of Jesus, until I got into healthy, safe faith environments in a church and outside of a church. One of the things my counselor says is when we're wounded in relationship, those wounds can only be healed in relationship, and what I'm finding is my deepest wounds of the church, while I can get them healed in non-faith spaces. I see a counselor every week. There's other secular authors and podcasters and whoever that I listen to, but the wounds of my early church experience are being healed in healthy faith environments now.

Speaker 1: 9:33

I looked at your reading list at the back of your book. I think we share this. I love to read. I love to read the kinds of books you love to read, so I went with. I am impressed by how many you've read and I'm using it as my guide Because I think we can learn a lot from wise voices.

Speaker 1: 9:53

If we can discern who those wise voices are, and they can really help. I think we've talked already about both. Ryan and I experienced something when we read Bob Goff's first book, loved Us. I read it four years ago and it started a whole new journey in my life, in kind of in how I view and understand my faith and how to live. Try, you know, trying to be caught doing something kind when you don't think anyone's paying attention. That would be the ideal, but I went with a yellow highlighter through your three pages of good books and I've only read nine of them.

Speaker 1: 10:31

I've read many of the authors that you list, but I haven't read those particular books. So people buying Ryan's book is good, just to have this really great book.

Speaker 2: 10:41

People buying Ryan's book is good just to have this really great book. Well, and if you don't so I try not to create any artificial barriers to the content you can actually get the list of books on my website for free. So, because if you're an audio listener, I don't read all those titles, I do people a service there of putting them on my website. But yeah, I've been shaped and those aren't all the books I read. Those are just the ones that influenced this specific part of my journey.

Speaker 1: 11:06

Wow, a guy who gives away a free reading list instead of pushing books. So okay, let's talk about first IFB, that's Independent Fundamental Baptist, but it doesn't really have to be. I think people listening might be saying it might not have been the same denomination, but within any denomination, let's just say within any denomination, you have a wide spectrum of understanding, right? No two believers have the exact same understanding right Now. We see in the mirror dimly, then face to face, I always say we don't have to understand it all, but, as Andy Stanley said, if we can all agree, if we have the shared value, the shared belief that Jesus is the Son of God, we can all agree on that.

Speaker 1: 11:53

And he calls that the primary issue. And the secondary issues I'm not even going to list them. There are so many secondary issues in the church and society, let's not to list them. There are so many secondary issues in the church and society, let's not even list them. I want to look at that North Star of we can agree that Jesus is the Son of God. So we are fellow Christians and let's look at that similarity instead of all of the differences to divide each other.

Speaker 2: 12:18

Yeah, I don't even agree with my pastors and they know that. Like, I had a 45-minute conversation with one of my pastors after my book came out and he's like, hey, this chapter we don't agree with, but you know we support what you're doing right, Like we see the Jesus in you. I don't agree theologically a hundred percent with my wife, who is very well read spiritual director. She counsels women all the time and so, yeah, we don't have to agree on a lot of the stuff around the periphery. If we focus on the main thing and when we fall in love with Jesus, a lot of that stuff doesn't matter as much anymore.

Speaker 1: 12:52

Anyway, that's right. Okay, so you had your experience. What age did you shift? What age did you say this isn't age?

Speaker 2: 13:00

did you shift? At what age did you say this isn't yeah. So I would have been 28, 29 years old. There were small cracks that happened before that, probably as early as 25, maybe 24.

Speaker 2: 13:10

So when I started writing my first book at the age of 24, I thought I knew everything right. So I was going to write a book to tell the world what they should believe. And what I found was, as I tried to write that book, that when I would go into scripture to try to support what I believed, I couldn't find it. And my wife was like, well, of course you can't find it, it's not in there. Like, what you're trying to tell people is not the heart of Jesus. And she was very kind about that, don't get me wrong.

Speaker 2: 13:31

But and then I got into a church of other adventurers.

Speaker 2: 13:34

So I have a pastor who's a wilderness guide, a pastor who's an ice climber and a whitewater paddler, a pastor who flies experimental aircraft, one who used to race motorcycles. I'm surrounded by people who are doing bold physical adventures and relational adventures right. They're having difficult conversations, they're going and meeting with people in their pain, and so what became normative for me was leaning into discomfort, because what I learned as an adrenaline junkie is, the more scared I am, the more reward chemicals I get from that. And so I took that, what I know to be true from hanging out on the wings of an airplane or jumping off a building or whatever. I applied that to my faith and leaned into go okay, some of this stuff might be uncomfortable, whether it's the truth or the application or whatever it is the implications of what this will mean in my life if I live this out. But what I've learned is the more I lean into that discomfort and anxiety that oh, this is going to change things, the more reward there is on the back end of it.

Speaker 1: 14:30

Yeah, I can't relate to the adrenaline junkie thing, but I certainly found it fascinating to read your description of it.

Speaker 2: 14:38

Oh good, All right.

Speaker 1: 14:40

I just did this Enneagram thing and it said I was like big on safety. That was like the number one safety and security so you and I might be. I'm going to be inside the plane worrying about you, know how the oxygen mask works, and you're going to be on the wing All right, I will tell you this we both have in common we're both scared of heights, probably. Yeah, no, those aren't good either. No.

Speaker 2: 15:01

I jumped because I'm scared of heights, right Like I. The first time I jumped off a building, I jumped off the 63rd story of a building in New Zealand and my brother said you look like you were constipated. I was like, yes, that's how scared I was. My body was that stiff 63 stories.

Speaker 1: 15:15

Oh my gosh. Okay, let's get back. So, as I delved into your book to use, you know, church words, people call this deconstructing your faith. So you're deconstructing your faith because you're starting to write a book about that very faith, the doctrine, doctrinal issues of that faith. You're starting to write a book and you're finding that you can't validate some of those things. Can you be specific? Like people listening are like what are you talking about? Like people listening might not know what we're, what are the practices or beliefs of a really fundamental church?

Speaker 2: 15:52

Oh, it can be summed up in superstition, because each church will make up whatever it is, but it's I have to do this to keep my dad happy, right? Which was real in my relationship with my own father, my biological father. It was like I have to do this thing with God, so I have to attend church every Sunday, or I have to only read this Bible, or I have to wear these clothes, or I have to even how many times a week. So I was going to church eight times a week as part of that faith practice, and if we don't, then we weren't living up to God's standard, which means, you know, we were in danger of hell, which is just there's. This, all of our Christianity is a high wire act, and so different pastors around the country. And again, like what you said, it's not dependent on a denomination or even a certain theology. It's just when someone tells you that this is what you have to do for God to love you. You don't have to do anything for God to love you, right. Have to do for God to love you. You don't have to do anything for God to love you, right. It's not performance-based. There's nothing you could do that would be as sacrificial as what Jesus did for us, right, and that's the standard.

Speaker 2: 16:49

And so what I have learned over time is to just be comfortable that my dad loves me, and part of that process was getting into therapy. Part of that process was becoming a dad. I didn't want to become a dad. I was scared I would be like my dad. Abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse is generations deep in my family, like multiple, multiple generations, and I was scared that I might continue that tradition. And so I had a vasectomy all three versions of it, actually to make sure I wouldn't get my wife pregnant.

Speaker 2: 17:15

And then God said I'm going to send you a kid in the most untraditional way that your adoption judge says this is the most abnormal case I have ever seen, which is true. And falling in love with this girl, choosing to be a dad, changed how I viewed the heart of the father, right, and see how much he pursued me in that my daughter didn't have to do things to make me love her or love her more, right? I mean, I would love it if she wore a Raven's jersey, but if she doesn't, I love that kid just as much, right? And so it doesn't matter what the theology was in the book. I go through some of it, but it's just that idea that I have to do things to make God happy.

Speaker 1: 17:49

So the whole difference of performance-based Christianity or faith or grace, grace-based faith, yeah, so the whole idea of the freedom of really understanding grace, and isn't that what I view? The whole journey of Christianity, the whole faith journey of becoming spiritually mature, is really just the degree to which we can accept God's grace. Is this really real? Is this and the whole idea of Jesus can't't love you anymore and he can't love you any less? That's right, it is fully baked, so, um, how freeing that is and say that and you can't.

Speaker 1: 18:31

I don't know, do you ever there's? You're never done learning that? You're never done. Learning more of that? You're never done thinking okay, as we get, we get older. How can I extend this kind of grace to the people in my life so I don't have to tell it to them? I can live it. You know, andy Stanley, living out loud, don't give your son a bunch of lectures about God's theology. Just give him grace. You know what's wrong with mom. She's acting a lot different. That's where it leads me is to say it's not about how much knowledge I have of Bible verses.

Speaker 1: 19:08

It's you know, look at Bob Goff. It's about putting it into action, putting love into action. And, as Bob would say, don't try to be like me. I am trying to be like Jesus, just try to be like Jesus. So now, okay, tell us about your church now and your faith experience. This is what we call reconstruction. You started to have this experience outside of the church with your pastors, who were adventure friends, which I love. That it's not church, is not a building Church is not a building.

Speaker 1: 19:37

It's a community of believers. So then, how did you seek out a new church? What happened?

Speaker 2: 19:43

When we moved to Virginia. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. When we moved here we'd had a hard church experience out in Indiana and I had basically forced my wife to attend a church that she was not comfortable with. So when we moved to Virginia, I said I tell you what we'll go to a church that makes you comfortable, and then you know we'll make up for that mistake. Well, we went to a Spanish speaking church, because my wife grew up in Bolivia. Problem is, I don't speak Spanish very well, and after a few years I was really struggling to connect spiritually and socially. And so she said well, you know, we meet later in the day. It's a Latin church, so why don't you find a church that meets early in the morning and create your own faith experience? And I did that. And after a month she came to the church that I was attending and now she's on staff there.

Speaker 2: 20:19

We've been attending for 18 years. I've been on the same serving team. I work in the parking lot ministry and I've been in there since this August will be 18 years there as well, and so, but the every faith environment I went into in our church and then in, you know, meetings in town. We'd meet in restaurants or whatever, different people of faith. They were almost always in circles and people were allowed to say the hard things. One of the values that my mentors have instilled in me is give people the gift of going second. So whoever was leading that table would say the hard thing about their own faith journey, about the pain they were feeling, about even moments when they distrusted that God was good and being real with that. Let us know, oh, we're allowed to talk about. When I'm having a hard time with who God is, with what faith looks like, with church hurt, with what's going on in politics and Christianity, whatever. And so, because one of my pastors was a wilderness guide, he was used to taking people on an adventure and saying, okay, you just did something really hard. What's something back home that now you know, yes, it's hard, but it's doable. And so then we apply that to the faith space. So, yeah, it is really hard to live out this one aspect of Jesus this week.

Speaker 2: 21:23

So this past Sunday, one of my friends got up in front of our whole church and challenged us and he said, hey, what can you do this week to be utterly content, to bring contentment into your heart and he gave some options and he's like but you guys figured out the tables and we all were going around. So this week is, how do I intentionally pursue being content right, that practical level? And so, as I've leaned into that and invited other people into it, people have confessed the things they're struggling with, their doubts, their sins, their temptations, their insecurities, whatever it is, their fears. And so, because it's an equal circle and we treat everybody as equal holders of the image of God, we learn from each other, we feel safe from each other and so we can explore and lean into those things and sometimes we go, oh no, that's not it and back out and try a different take or whatever. But our heart, feeling safe, allows us to go deep, right. It's kind of like.

Speaker 2: 22:13

So for me, some of the stuff I do requires a safety, harness right. And I feel safe to do those things when I know that the harness is going to hold right. And so in these communal meetings, when people feel safe, their heart's going to be held and they know that no one's going to think less of them for admitting what's really going on inside of them, then they can go on a faith or relational adventure. They can do the risky thing because they know they're going to be safe. And so there's so many parallels between the adventure side of my life and the faith side of my life that it's opened up for me a lot of biblical truth about, yeah, jesus called us to some really scary things. They're really hard to love your enemies or to pray for them, right, it's really hard to love uncomfortable people, but I know that there's reward waiting on the other side of that hard assignment.

Speaker 1: 22:59

Wow, I'm just sitting here thinking okay. So, ryan, when you talk about the circle and you talk about people feeling safe and being able to be authentic and I know that word is overused, but it makes me think of my mantra is relationships move at the speed of trust.

Speaker 2: 23:16

Oh yes.

Speaker 1: 23:17

And when I was a small group leader of a group of women, because our church is, you know, just for people, the whole circle thing.

Speaker 1: 23:24

You go to church and you're in rows. And if you're at a really big church, you're in rows and you go every Sunday and you hear the pastor, but it's hard to get to know other people. Church you're in rows and you go every Sunday and you hear the pastor, but it's hard to get to know other people. So at a really big church like ours, the leadership encourages us so much to join a small group because circles are better than rows and a small group might be anywhere from six to 10 people and the whole idea is that you can feel safe here, and the number one way to be safe I was a small group leader that had training was you have to make trust the most important value of this group. And let me define that. It's like a group of women get together and our trust goes so far as that not only does anything that's said in the room, does not leave the room and we're all married and you don't even tell your husband.

Speaker 2: 24:12

Right.

Speaker 1: 24:13

Now this is important Because you know if that woman meets your husband socially and now she's uncomfortable because he knows this personal thing. But, generally speaking, people freely share things with their spouse, although I saw a thing on Facebook that that was hilarious. It said it's always safe to tell your husband your secrets, because he's really not even listening, but let's assume he is. So the point is, is that that that single agreement we had led to the most soul filling group of friends I've ever had?

Speaker 2: 24:47

Awesome.

Speaker 1: 24:48

And I. Now I carry that. Relationships move at the speed of trust into any relationship, any new neighbor or new friend, and they tell me something. Oh, stephanie, I don't know why I told you that I always say you don't I?

Speaker 1: 25:02

this is the one thing I want to be good at, I want to be good at keeping your confidence, and I wish I had learned that a lot sooner, because truly so. Now what you're talking about is being able to admit. You know Bob Goff quotes this all the time and Matthew, whatever, I'm not good at numbers, but you know, lord, I believe. But help my unbelief.

Speaker 1: 25:23

Let's just be honest. This is a big concept we're talking about. We have little brains to say that. I have 1000% belief in this amazing you know eternal life and complete forgiveness and complete mercy and complete grace and complete love. Oh yeah, that's easy. I got to get my head around that every single morning, every single morning. I need to refresh your course on that and it's nice to have a group of believers who you can admit any of your questions to, any of your doubts.

Speaker 2: 25:58

And I would extend that not just Lord, I believe help my unbelief is Lord I forgive. Help my lack of forgiveness. Lord, I want to be kind but help my lack of kindness. Lord, help me be generous but forgive my lack of generosity. Kindness Lord, help me be generous but forgive my lack of generosity. Right, like that model is something I've prayed often, you know. As you know, I have trauma in my background, serious, hard things. God, I want to let go of my fists. I want to open my hands. Help my lack of open hands. Right that we can pray that prayer in multiple different facets of our life.

Speaker 1: 26:28

What a good point. I love that, See. This is why I love this podcast. I learn so much from smart people and I appreciate it Well careful now.

Speaker 2: 26:37

I don't know about that, oh no, but we can learn from each other regardless.

Speaker 1: 26:42

This is I don't know. I mean, this book is really good. I'm going to say it again Everyone has to get it hurt and healed by the church. Ryan, where do we find you? Oh, he has a really cool website, explorience. Do you get that? Explorienceorg? You do so many things. What are the best ways for people to get in touch with you and to follow up on this? This is your third book. You have two other books too.

Speaker 2: 27:07

Yeah, and the last one's called Scared to Life, and they go together, right. It's kind of like watching Martha Stewart or Julia Child back in the day and they show you the finished product and then they show you how to make it and they put it in the oven. So my last book shows you what it looks like after you've reconstructed your faith, right. So I wrote that one first as proof of concept like you can live this life, right. And then I wrote this is the journey that I took to get there. But you can follow me on Instagram. That's the best place I'm at Ryplane R-Y-P-L-A-N-E. People have a hard time spelling Explorant, so you can find the link at my Instagram handle there.

Speaker 1: 27:48

But all my books and how to order them and links to my blogs and all that is at booksbyryancom. And I always like to ask what is something you're excited about right now? What are you looking forward to next? What's coming up, little or big?

Speaker 2: 27:58

Oh, I've got several, but I'm going motocross riding with Bob Goff in the desert in August. We're spending four days in Southern Utah. I'm super stoked. I ride a motorcycle, it's my daily driver but I don't have a lot of desert experience and so I do off-road here. We've got dirt roads up here in the mountains where I live, but nothing like what we're going to be doing in Southern Utah. So I'm super stoked to be camping with him in August.

Speaker 1: 28:19

I saw that email and I thought oh gosh, that is so not my trip.

Speaker 2: 28:22

So yeah, you have to surrender your phone for four days. You don't get any outside contact they. They provide all your food. You don't bring anything, you just show up with your clothes and you ride for four days.

Speaker 1: 28:35

I'll tell you what. I went to an event a Bob Goff event that did not have cell service or internet service and no one could use their phones except for cameras, and I've never had better interaction with people than you don't realize how many times you just look down at it or how many times the person you're with just might look down at it, how that interrupts our connection.

Speaker 2: 28:59

I tell you. So the other side of it is really fascinating is it reveals who we are. So when I went to Antarctica, there's no cell service in Antarctica, there's no cell service on your way to there. So you're gone, we're away from land for, I think, 13, 14 days. And what was interesting is the people who are going to Antarctica for fun, like we weren't researchers, we weren't military or anything like that. They're a little off, they're not right Like I can say that as someone who went down there, like we're not normal people who spend the money to go to Antarctica.

Speaker 2: 29:25

I didn't even know you could go there, ryan. All right, oh, you can't. Well, it depends on your budget. You can fly there now if you're willing to spend 20,000 a day. I don't have that kind of laying around.

Speaker 2: 29:33

So I did a much cheaper version of that trip and we camped in the snow and we hung out with the icebergs, we paddled and stuff, but what we found was we couldn't look up anybody on the ship. So the only thing we knew about them is what we asked about them over dinner or while we were snowshoeing or while we were camping or whatever. And what I learned was the people on my ship were incredibly humble. Because when I got back to civilization, you know, I looked everybody up on Facebook and Instagram and I found out I was with a hedge fund manager, I was with real estate developer, I was with the guy who used to be in charge of all of Fox entertainment. I was on the ship with. They were on higher decks, you know. I was down below with the staff, but I found out how humble they were because I would have led with that information, right.

Speaker 1: 30:17

Interesting.

Speaker 2: 30:18

And so, and 14 days without it again, only using it for your photography, really breaks the cycle, and when you come home it doesn't take long to jump back in. But man, it's such a transition, going from two weeks with not being able to use the phone at all and not being able to use the internet Like we, you know and and then to reenter into regular life.

Speaker 1: 30:39

Wow, it makes me think I should try to do that. But then I immediately think well then, how would I get ahold of my friend to go for a walk? I don't know.

Speaker 2: 30:47

Yeah, Let me tell you it was worth it. It was worth it.

Speaker 1: 30:50

Well, I hope you have a great time on your motocross ride. I'm sure I'm going to see stuff on Instagram about it. I am not going to have FOMO, but I'm going to be really happy for you that you're enjoying it.

Speaker 2: 31:00

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 31:02

It's so great to meet you and. I hope you can come back on. We barely scratched the surface, but I wish you the best of luck with this book and I know it's going to help.