Let's Chat with Will & Tony
Let's Chat with Will & Tony
SEG 1 of 4 - Values & Traditions - Unraveling Time-Worn Traditions: Embracing Change and Deepening Connections in Life's Journey
Ever found yourself chuckling over a family habit that's as old as the hills, yet no one knows why it started? That's where Tony Peck and I start our banter, peeling back the layers of time-worn traditions to see if they're seasoning our lives or just old habits needing to be tossed out like last week's leftovers. We swap tales like the classic rump roast yarn and the Timex watch saga to highlight the sometimes comical, often limiting effects of clinging to the past. And when I recount my eye-opening escapade in Mexico, it's a reminder that life's vibrancy is found in the new pages we dare to turn.
This episode isn't just about the laughs, though. Tony and I get real about the threads that tie us together - relationships. We dissect the art of stress management and why self-awareness isn't just a buzzword but a lifeline to deeper connections. Navigating through these conversations, we ask the hard questions about which pearls of ancient wisdom still shine today and which are better left buried. So, join us on this thought-provoking ride as we toss out the outdated maps and chart a course towards a life that's not just lived but fully savored.
Get out of your rut and into your groove.
Speaker 2:Let's chat with Will and Tony on News Talk 107.9. Now here's Will Kesley and Tony Peck.
Speaker 1:Well, welcome to the show, mr Tony Peck. How's it going? Nice to see you, brother Will Kesley, thank you. Thank you for calling me brother, that's right. Tony is my brother, that's right. We just had different mothers, that's right. We're brothers in spirit.
Speaker 2:I think anybody that goes camping together, shadden.
Speaker 1:He goes to camping together. That makes brotherhood out of him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's kind of like being a foxhole. That's right, maybe not as tight as a foxhole.
Speaker 1:But it's similar, something about that. Anyways, welcome to let's Chat with Will and Tony. This is where we talk about things that matter and we try to ditch what doesn't. That's right. Get rid of the stuff that's anchoring your life down. Isn't it funny how in life, tony, we pick up these paradigms? Yeah Right, because culture said it, because my grandma did it, you know. Remember the old rump roast? Yeah, I love that story.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:The story. He asked why did he cut the ends of the rump roast off? And nobody could seem to understand why he cut the end of the rump roast off.
Speaker 2:They finally get the grandma and they say hey, grandma.
Speaker 1:They're going to be.
Speaker 2:cut the rump roast off. She's like well, my pan was too small, it wouldn't fit in the oven.
Speaker 1:Six generations of cutting up ends of the rump roast off. We see the same thing with like, even like a bicycle. You know it was designed after a saddle, the seat. Yeah, seats, they're very uncomfortable, but that's a saddle and that's how we do it. You know the story of Timex Well watches. The Swiss used to have the patent on the watch, right yeah, the watch. Timex came out with the quartz watch, a battery operated watch basically, and the big Swiss guys who had access to this, this patent and stuff, laughed it out of their boardroom. Who would want a battery watch?
Speaker 2:It's not a timepiece.
Speaker 1:So much so they didn't even patent the thing. Texas Instrument picks it up Now. They own 90% of the watch market.
Speaker 2:Of course, now it's like owned by.
Speaker 1:Apple. Yeah yeah, apple watches, apple watches. But isn't that funny how we get into paradigms. Yeah, the point of that is, as we start our day talking about things that matter and things that don't, we have to sometimes relook at our paradigms things we think are true that aren't, but they're really not we just have always done them, so therefore, that must be the way we always do them.
Speaker 2:Having the open mind in my mind is the key to wisdom and that ever, ever learning. You know it was interesting. I was down in Mexico last week.
Speaker 1:Yes, had a great time. We're going to talk about that here in a minute. Yeah, we will, but I'm going to just do it now.
Speaker 2:Well, we can, but this is a different story. We'll talk about some other stuff from Mexico, but I'm down there and I'm standing inside the cenote. If you've never been, in a little hole in the ground water.
Speaker 1:They're amazing.
Speaker 2:But I'm standing down the swimming in the cenote and I'm standing by this guy and he looks at me and he's, he's older gentlemen, and then you know I'm not young pup, but we're standing there getting ready to go on this rope swing into a cenote into a cenote.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And he looks at me and he's like I don't know, I'm too old for this. And I said don't worry, the only time you get old is when you stop learning and stop doing. That's the only time you're old, that's right. That means I'm a young pup. There you go, Right. So. And he laughed at that and we're like haha. But I think it's true. You know, the day you decide you've learned everything and you're not going to progress anymore, that's the day you got old.
Speaker 1:But how many times in life do we see people like well, this is how it is, and I'm old in my ways, and that's how my grandma did it, and that's how my daddy did it and therefore, that's how it's going to be. We still do it, don't we?
Speaker 2:I think you're stuck in your paradigm.
Speaker 1:Even parenting. Now we parent because, well, our parent did it and that's how you do it. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's correct, just how it was.
Speaker 2:Well, and it also doesn't mean it's incorrect, correct, right. You could be either side of that fence. The ability is to look at something objectively from multiple angles and then decide the veracity of it, whether or not it's something good. You'll remember the show we did back in the holidays on the traditions yeah, holiday traditions. Holiday traditions and social norms and all that stuff. Yeah, and then we talked about the same principle.
Speaker 1:The social paradigm was you have to celebrate Christmas this way or you're not a good person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and once we started kicking that around and looking at it from different angles, we were like wait a second, what's the real goal? The real goal of the holidays is to bring families together and connect.
Speaker 1:And if that tradition?
Speaker 2:is standing in the way of that. Stop it. Stop the tradition. It doesn't help you.
Speaker 1:Right, if everybody stresses you out so much that you hate the tradition, then stop doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, stop doing it. And the same thing for a lot of things in our lives, where we go through our lives having this one vision of correctness in our brain and what I say is go, pepper that, look at it from different angles, decide whether and you may come to the opinion that, hey, this is something really good and I'm going to hold on to it, right, and now Value it. Yeah, now you value it even more. Or you may get to it and you look at it and go huh. So this is also just cutting the end off.
Speaker 1:The rep rose for no reason. This is also about adaptability. Yeah, and adaptability. Unfortunately, we get into all kinds of social norms, cultural norms, paradigms, etc. And that's what makes it difficult, because it's always been this way, so that's how it's going to be, or it's always been this way. I'm not going to do it that way. Yeah, you become very rigid in your thinking. There is a lot of wisdom in being flexible with our new learning and being okay with it. Now, with that being said, we also be very, very careful. Remember, a couple of weeks ago, you talked about the broken window theory yeah.
Speaker 2:Broken window theory yeah.
Speaker 1:So broken, so broken window theories.
Speaker 2:Okay, so broken window theory. There's a group of what do you call them Sociologists yeah, they're studying human behavior, studying human behavior. There you go. Anyway, they took, they took two cars. They put one car down the projects and they put one car up in Palo Alto high end neighborhood and they observed the two cars. Well, the car down the projects, you know, almost instantaneously got stripped down and completely vandalized. The car up in Palo Alto, nothing was touched. It sat there for weeks untouched until the researcher went and smashed one window and made it broken. It broke the one window within just a few days of smashing the window. The car sat there for weeks untouched.
Speaker 2:Few days from smashing the window, the car was stripped down and vandalized very similar fashion to the projects and they started talking about this as the broken window theory, which is when the people would walk by and see the broken window. They believe that nobody cared about this car. It's okay to beat up because this isn't anybody's car. So if there's one broken window, I can smash another window, and if there's two broken windows, clearly nobody cares, so I can key it Right. And next thing, you know, the social norm becomes hey, this is a okay thing to just beat up and destroy and right.
Speaker 1:So when we talk about, when we're talking about the idea of paradigms and shifting and being adaptable, there's a danger to it as well, which is maybe we're going to create a broken window scenario in our lives and say, well, let's water down our standard, that's right, let's water down our expectation, because that's the way it is now and we need to culturally adapt to this new social norm. It's dangerous because it also can come with the idea that we just watered down and made it both a broken window theory. Now everybody is more broken than they were before and we see a lot of that. So, as we talk about paradigms, we talk about relationships, we talk about things we do and marriage make it. Well, be careful of the cultural shift that lowers a standard because it's a breaking society. We call it public virtue you do what's right because it's the right thing to do. Don't fall for the social norm that says, oh well, now life is supposed to be like this. For example, well, everybody's cheating on their wife so I might cheat on my wife.
Speaker 1:Why not? That's the norm. I mean, everybody's living, everybody's getting divorced now. So everybody, everybody, careful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's different from what we're talking about of challenging your paradigm. Yes, because you're now challenging all sorts of norms, right, and you're the fabric of society. So it's interesting. I was down in Mexico, yep, right, and so we were staying at this. You know one of the nice resorts down there and I found it fascinating as I was driving up to the resort I'm driving through this jungle road and I noticed that there was just piles of trash all the long way, the highways, everywhere. It was just clearly the norm for many people.
Speaker 1:The broken window. Was there trash here or was there trash?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's trash on the road. I might I'll just throw another bottle out there. There's thousands of bottles.
Speaker 1:Which challenge is what we call public virtue. Yeah, Because you know you shouldn't be littering, but everybody else is so.
Speaker 2:So are we gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. Well then we get to the resort and you cross this magical gate and from that moment on, the slightest fleck of a piece of trash hit the ground and it was picked up in seconds by somebody on the staff.
Speaker 1:And. But you saw people who had leave that resort go down the street and start throwing their trash out. Yeah, it was the craziest thing, Because 100 feet before they wouldn't throw it out, but now it's okay.
Speaker 2:Now it's on the highway and it's okay. And it was fascinating to see the two social norms is inside the resort. It was this pristine standard and me, being a visitor of the resort, I felt the pristine standard.
Speaker 1:So if I had lived up to it as well.
Speaker 2:I would throw my trash away.
Speaker 1:Right, you lived up to it as well.
Speaker 2:I lived up to it because, man, this is the norm of this, and it made for a very wonderful vacation for everybody in the resort, because it was always clean, it was always tidy and everybody could enjoy it right.
Speaker 1:When we come back. I want to talk a little bit about why you went on your vacation.
Speaker 2:Oh, all right, I have a hunch.
Speaker 1:I have a hunch. It has something to do with something we've talked about here. We want to talk a little bit about relationships with dealing with stress, dealing with watering down our social norms and or changing our paradigms to some old ways, to maybe some better ways, which is what I want to look at. Right, but yeah, be careful, because you don't want to make them the opposite Just because you changed doesn't make it better. Yeah, it's going to be down to what's great, ditch what's not. That's right. So we want to talk about things that are great and start ditching some things that just don't work there you go.
Speaker 1:And this has to do with stress. Self-awareness, that's right. Communication, Communication. Lots of little things we want to challenge today on. Let's Chat with Will and Tony If you'd like to be on the show 607-414-CHAT and if we can't pick up the phone, you can always leave us your question and or you can text us on that same number.
Speaker 2:Text us the same number, yeah.
Speaker 1:Or email us at let's Chat with Will and Tony At gmailcom. We'll be back as we talk about more about what we're going to ditch so we can get a little better at life. I love it. Let's chat with Will and Tony. News talk 107-9. Hey.