The Unconditionals: Five Timeless Values to Live Without Limits. With Andy Crocker

The Unconditionals:
Five Timeless Values to Live Without Limits.
With Andy Crocker & Samia Bano

Want a clear, inspiring roadmap for living a meaningful, purposeful life?

Listen now to this interview with Andy Crocker, #Aerospace Executive and #author of "The Unconditionals: Five Timeless Values to Live Without Limits and Ignite Your Superpower".

Andy introduces five #corevalues —love, gratitude, integrity, accountability, and endeavor—as essential for #personalfulfillment and #growth.

Combining #timelesswisdom, scientific findings, and inspiring real-life examples, Andy illustrates how embracing these values unconditionally can #transformyourlife. More than a collection of quick fixes, Andy guides you to overcome self-limiting beliefs, cultivate resilience, and achieve your #fullpotential.

Connect with Andy now at: https://prbythebook.com/experts/andy-crocker/

Learn more about his books at: https://andycrockerbooks.com/

To Book your Free HAPPINESS 101 EXPLORATION CALL with Samia, click: https://my.timetrade.com/book/JX9XJ

#UnconditionalValues #UnconditionalLove #HumanGrowth #PersonalGrowthJourney #SpiritualGrowth #SelfWorth #InnerHealing #ValuesBasedLiving #ConsciousLiving #MindfulLeadership #EmotionalIntelligence #IntegrityMatters #GratitudePractice #AccountabilityMatters #PurposeDrivenLife #SelfAwarenessJourney #HealingThroughGrowth #SharedHumanity #LivingWithIntention #MeaningfulLife #timelessvalues #igniteyourpotential

Here's the audio version of this episode:

Transcript Automatically Generated

SAMIA: Hello, Salaam, Shalom, Namaste, Sat Sri Akal, Aloha, Holah, Ciao, Bonjour, Buna, Privet, Mabuhay, and Dzień Dobry! It's so good to be with you again, and I know you'll be really, really excited and happy that you have joined us today because we have such a cool guest with us, and that is Andy Crocker, who is an Aerospace Executive and an author of The Unconditionals. I think that is so cool. Welcome, Andy.

ANDY: Thank you very much.

SAMIA:Andy, please tell us more about who you are and what you do.

ANDY: Well, first, thanks so much for having me on. I'm really excited to be on. Yes, I'm an Aerospace Executive, have been in Aerospace for 30 years.

I have worked mainly in, well, my whole career in the space part of the business. So not in the aircraft or helicopters, but always in the space part of the business. Mainly working with NASA on civil space, but also some commercial space and defense.

And so that's been an exciting career. And then most recently, I worked on a project called the Human Landing System, which was an opportunity to design the next lunar lander that will take people to the moon. And I led a team that was in competition for that activity.

And we didn't win that competition, but it was a fantastic opportunity coming out of that competition and, you know, sort of stepping back from this holy grail type of competition or type of program that I was a part of, really forced me to question, what do I want to do next? And that led me to a number of things, but it sort of ended up with me writing this book, The Unconditionals, which is not focused on engineering at all. It's very much focused on what I think matters, the values that matter and what helps us, all of us, whatever position we're in, to be the best people we can be and to live a fulfilled life and one with connection and positive impact on the world.

SAMIA: Yeah, I love that. I love that. You know, one thing that your story highlights for me is, you know, no matter how well somebody is doing, there's always room for us to grow and improve.

And as we work on growing to that next level of growth, whatever it is for us, you know, all of these challenges can come up that we might have thought, oh, I learned to deal with it. Like, I know, like, for example, when it comes to an issue like confidence, now you're like, oh, I'm a very confident person until you hit that new challenge that it's like, oh my God, no. All those limiting beliefs come right back, or so it seems, and then you're like finding yourself struggling all over again. Oh, gosh.

ANDY: Yeah, that's absolutely true. One thing that I wrote about in the book is exactly that point, that I considered myself a confident person, had self-confidence growing up for a number of reasons, but I realized, especially as a teenager and a young adult, that that's not the same thing as having a sense of self-worth. Self-confidence is one thing, but having a sense of self-worth and self-esteem is different, is something that requires self-love.

And that's above and beyond, that's a foundational activity or foundational sense that isn't connected necessarily to self-confidence. And so, that's something I had to learn, that self-appreciation and self-love is critical, even if you feel like you're a confident person.

SAMIA: Tell me a little bit more about this. So, what's the distinction between self-confidence and this deeper kind of self-love that you found we really need to have? Hey, thanks for tuning in to this episode.

ANDY: Right. Self-confidence, I think, is a belief that you can accomplish things. A belief that whatever comes along, we will find a way to get through it or to take it on with energy and optimism towards having success.

Whereas self-love, and I'll step back and say, in the book, in The Unconditionals, I talk about unconditional love being the foundation of all of the values that we have. And in the five values that I talk about, unconditional love is first because I believe it's the foundational force in the universe. It's what connects us to each other, to God, to the world, and what we often forget is that in order for us to fully love other people, we have to love ourselves.

And so I talk about love and define it as a combination of respect, and kindness, and compassion, and sort of putting all of those together. Love is really caring for others and wanting the best for others, no matter who they are. But that if you look at yourself and think about self-love, that means that requires self-respect, and self-kindness, and self-compassion.

And all of those things are really wrapped up in a belief that we're enough. Who we are today is enough for anything that comes along, for anyone, for any situation. So that beginning with self-love and a belief that we're enough is then what we build on to have love for other people because they are enough.

They are the same as we are. They're made of the same things we are. No matter who they are, where they come from, they're the same as we are.

And therefore, they deserve the same respect and kindness and compassion that we have for ourselves. And so, that self-love and then on top of that love for everyone else is the foundation for all the values, I think.

Well, first of all, I agree with you. And, you know, it's so, in some ways, amazing to me now that I have this shared perspective with you.

SAMIA: Right.

ANDY: To realize that it's still not the common understanding and the common reality for folks. I was watching this video yesterday that it's still on my mind. And it's basically it was like a debate that was happening between this.

I mean, it was like one of those videos where people with opposite beliefs were trying to communicate, better understand each other's perspectives and stuff. And on the one side, there was this like fairly liberal progressive kind of guy, and on the other hand, self-identified, conservative.

I mean, I mean, that was his primary identifier initially. He was like, I'm conservative, I'm Christian, and that's how I identify myself. But once the two of them started talking, you know, like, there were other labels that came into play, but that's not important

The point was that at some point, you know, they were like talking, and this conservative Christian person who identified himself as such, he was like, he was like, no, I don't believe that even you, the person I'm debating with, has the right to be here. You should go back to wherever you came from. The person he was debating was a person of color, and he was a first-generation immigrant, and so forth.

And, you know, he was like, no, this is, and he actually said, he was like, so this person, not only was he self-identifying as Christian and conservative, but he was a white man, and he was like, I'm Native American, not because he was like, Native American, like indigenous Native American, but he was like, because my family has been here since the 1500s, so this is my land, and I get to decide, and my people get to decide what this land looks like, you know, and that's my right as a Native American, you know? And so it was, and so, I mean, there's this like, definitely lack of unconditional love, and there's definitely this lack of not seeing other people as valuable as you are. And it was just like really just, I mean, it's not that I don't know that people have these ideas, but there was just something about hearing this man say it out loud and in a context where he knows he's like on video and he's recorded hundreds, maybe thousands, who knows, maybe even millions of people are going to watch this.

And he is just, you know, so I mean, he really believed what he was saying, right? You know, and that's sort of like the thing that really just kind of, you know, it's hit me that no, he really believes, right? He's saying, you know, right?

SAMIA: Yeah, yeah, it can be shocking. Absolutely. I'll just say, you know, my opinion for what it's worth, that that's not consistent with the Christianity that I believe in.

And one of the things that I really was impacted by as I put the book together, but also really decided to make it a significant part of the book is that the values of love and gratitude and integrity and accountability and endeavor, those are apolitical, you know, non-religious universal values. Those go beyond religion. And thinking about it another way, they're part of religion.

They, you know, I point out very clearly that Christianity and Islam and Judaism and Confucianism and Taoism, all of these different perspectives and world views and religions have in common these values and unconditional love is critical to all of them in terms of the very fundamental teachings of all of these religions. So when they get skewed by people who want to state a case that they think is favorable for them, which is a very conditional approach, it's distorting the truth of Christianity and Islam and other religions, that the fundamental truth that love is central to all of those. So it's disappointing, and yeah, it definitely comes across as shocking when someone just ignores those fundamental beliefs that they say they have.

And that's why I think striving for unconditional love is so important, because it doesn't depend on who someone else is, or where they're from, or what they believe. We love them because they're human. We love them because, you know, they're alive, and that's all.

ANDY: That's all that's necessary. And so we don't have to make a choice about should I love them or not. No, we do because they're human.

And I think that theoretically is easier, but of course it gets overcome by all the things that happen in the world.

SAMIA: Yeah, you know, so my question for you, Andy, is because this is something that I was like after watching this video, one of the questions that kept coming to me for myself also was, how did I come to the realization?

And you know, this is this point of holding this value for unconditional love, because it's not, it seems like it's not something we can take for granted, that it's just something people will experience and believe and have. And I know, like for me, I can actually look back at my own history and I can see, I didn't always believe in the value of unconditional love either. It's just like, what changed for me, but well, right now we're talking about you.

So the question is, what happened for you that allowed you to see and realize that we are actually all connected and so forth and that we need to have this unconditional love?

ANDY: Right. I think a couple of things led me to that. One is, just by nature, I'm a person who likes to understand how things work.

It's not just from a mechanical or technical perspective as an engineer, but also how do things work in the world? How do we work? How do our minds work and how do we work socially, and how do cultures work?

I'm really fascinated with all of those things. Then another part of that is both in college and since then, I've really tried to learn more about other cultures, other religions, you know, I've traveled a lot, but also tried to learn about other people and other beliefs. And those have really, one, led me to understand that those beliefs and cultures are so dependent on where someone is born, where they're raised, how they're raised, the people that are around them.

And that just because they have those beliefs that are different from mine doesn't mean that they're wrong. It just means that they're different. But fundamentally, what I really have come to understand, and it seems like it's just a no-brainer that we all should think this, but we don't, is that we're all the same.

We're all humans, and we all have, you know, the same types of cells that make up our bodies and the same types of brains that, you know, work generally the same ways. Our cultures have just evolved differently based on where we've lived and the influences of things around us. And so I think for me, it's been over time just coming to that understanding that it doesn't make sense that another person is wrong just because they were born in a different culture, right?

They just have a different perspective because that's what they were taught, just like I was taught the perspective that I have. And so I think that's where I came from. And the more I think about unconditional love as the thing that really matters for bringing us together and connecting all of us, that is what I really believe is necessary for us to be able to get by personally as individuals, but also in a community and in the world, in a more, not just a more loving way, but a more effective way and in a way that I think will help us all be better off.

SAMIA: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, personally, I have a huge value for living in diverse communities.

I have moved around a bit with my family over the course of my life. And most of the times I've lived in spaces that are diverse in different ways. And it's just, just been such a helpful aspect.

For example, if for no other reason, even if I'm just being selfish, it's been really helpful for me because it's given me choices about how I get to live my life. That I would never even have had a sense that I had those choices if I had not been exposed to the diversity that I, of cultures and lifestyles and so forth that I got exposed to. Just because we moved around over the course of my life.

You know, and it's, and it's been, and you know, like when you have the ability to choose, it's like so, it's so, not only like freeing in some ways, but like for me, it has been a central, central aspect of how I've been able to help myself heal from major trauma that I've experienced. It's like you, you know, it's like when you live in, all you know is one way of life. It's like in that context, I mean, there's, people are trying to help you, the best they know.

But what if it's not enough for you to get the help you need? Like for me, it turned out I was dealing with a trauma of being a survivor of child sexual abuse. And like my parents were doing their best to support me and help me and, you know, like my other friends and family members.

But they didn't know any better themselves. They did everything they could. They didn't know any better.

It wasn't until we moved and we came into a new space. Well, like for me, one of the critical moves was our move to America where I got access to therapy and learning about, you know, just a very different way of also relating to how I live my religion and spirituality. It's like for me, the way that I used to live my religion and spirituality was, it turned out was one of the things that was really limiting my healing because it was, like I had a very dogmatic approach.

I was like, there's good, there's bad, there's right, there's wrong. So I had a very back and wide perspective on that. And that very limited perspective was really holding me back from having more self-love, from being able to have that unconditional love for myself, because I had so many conditions on what would make me a good person and therefore worthy of being loved.

ANDY: Right. Absolutely. Yeah.

SAMIA: Yeah. And that's amazing. Just having lived through that experience, I totally agree that getting to an environment that allows you to see other perspectives and understand that in certain circumstances, there are other ways to find therapy, to find help, to find understanding.

And it's so important to be able to get out of our own heads and out of our own culture sometimes, to be able to experience those other opportunities. And that is fundamental, I think, to having the kinds of connections that we need, is being aware of and open to other perspectives and accepting that, you know, others are coming from their own situations, but they're still human. They're still fundamentally the same as we are.

And therefore, they deserve love just like we do.

I wish we could... A part of me just wants to keep talking about this love, but I know there's other amazing values that you love to talk about in the context of your experience. What's the next most renderful value?

ANDY: Yeah. Gratitude is the second one in the book. And I really thought hard about what...

Love for me was kind of the non-negotiable foundational number one. I really do think it's the foundation for everything. But gratitude, I really came to believe, is the second most important, or at least the second sort of foundational value, because it is the most direct path to happiness.

Because unconditional gratitude means that we accept what we have, and we appreciate and are grateful for what we have. It doesn't mean we don't want more, or it doesn't mean we don't try to get more or better for ourselves or for our families, but it means we don't look down on ourselves or on others because we don't have what others have. We appreciate what we have right now, and we make the most of what we have right now.

And that, I think, leads to a peace and a contentedness and a happiness that is unique and really goes with gratitude. One of the stories I write about in the book that really has helped me understand gratitude is my own mother's death. My mom passed away unexpectedly.

It wasn't something that we had known about. And she passed away. And it was devastating.

We didn't have any reasons why it happened. And it didn't matter what we did or how we did it. We could never find reasons.

And so, obviously, the immediate feeling is grief, deep grief and questioning and sometimes anger, although I think for me, it wasn't anger so much as just confusion and grief. And what really helped me get past that was an understanding or a realization that I had a fantastic mother and had decades of time with her where she taught me important lessons and I had opportunities to spend time with her. And even though it was very short, she did meet my children and have a small impact on them.

But I know she will have an impact on them through me and that gratitude, that appreciation for all the good that I got from my relationship with her has helped me get past the grief. It doesn't mean that it ended the grief. The grief is still there, but the first thing I can think about now is the gratitude and the appreciation for what I did have when she was with me.

SAMIA: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I'm sorry for your loss, you know, but you're so right about gratitude being the fastest spot to happiness.

And this is such a beautiful example of that.

I mean, we all experience loss in our lives and it's it's you know, it makes me actually like to think about, you know, it's like, oh, I loved this person that I had and now they're gone. So of course, I feel grief. But it's sort of like also like makes us think a little bit about what is it?

What are the different ways in which love manifests and that we can truly love someone? And to miss the person is certainly an expression of our love.

But to also be grateful for the time that we had with them when we had that is another expression, beautiful expression of our love and...

The thing that I think is really important about gratitude is that it is a feeling that is in the present. When we have grief, that is a feeling that lives in the past. And when we have worry, that's a feeling that is in the present, is in the future.

But gratitude in appreciating what we have now is a present feeling. And it lets us experience that love that maybe we had before for a person who isn't around anymore. But we can experience that love again now, in the present.

And that I think is what separates gratitude from the other reactions to the negative things that happen to us. It allows us to appreciate in the present and experience that love in the present.

ANDY: Yeah. And it's always, I mean, again, it's part of the process of healing from our sense of loss also. It's not like you were saying, you don't immediately necessarily feel the gratitude as the first thing.

However, as you continue to process your grief and learn to sort of deal with it, in some ways, you know, like in our culture, now I'm thinking about the Indian, Pakistani, Muslim cultures that I'm a part of. Like one thing that we are taught is that really, if you truly love somebody that has passed away, one of the best ways you can honor their memory is to sort of allow yourself to let go of the grief over time and focus on the gratitude and the good memories of your time together because, you know, your loved one wouldn't want you to stay in the grief.

SAMIA: Right.

ANDY: And what they would, if you loved them, they loved you for sure. You know, what they would want for you is for you to be happy and for you to grow, continue to grow and live your life, you know, in the very best ways. And so if you can think about, you know, what you've learned from this person and, you know, apply those lessons in your life to help you live a better life, that is a much more, in some ways, wise and meaningful way to honor them and honor their memory than to stay attached to the grief aspect.

Because in some ways, actually, like when you focus on the loss that you're experiencing, in some ways, the focus is on you. It's like, I have lost. With the approach, the gratitude approach, actually, you're focusing more on them in some ways, because you're like, what did I learn with them?

My good times with them? And how can I apply that and keep that alive in my life now? So it's actually, in some ways, an even wiser, deeper way to, you know, maintain that.

SAMIA: Very true.

ANDY: Yeah, very true. Absolutely.

SAMIA: Cool, cool, cool. And, you know, I want to tell you, like, when you talk about gratitude, you say it, I was like, spoken just like a happiness expert, Andy.

Right. Absolutely. Yeah, it's very true.

ANDY: And again, I think love and then gratitude are so important to build on for the other values. I think if we can at least work on those first two, then it helps us so much more in being able to achieve the other values that we have. And for me, you know, integrity and accountability and endeavor really build on love and gratitude because love is foundational.

It's, you know, that connectedness with the world. And then gratitude is that ability to appreciate what we have today, be present, and experience the good things that are going on in our lives.

SAMIA: Yeah, so tell me more about the integrity piece. Why is that so important? And how does that flow for you from the love and gratitude?

ANDY: Right. Integrity is certainly one that I think anybody, if you ask what were their values, you know, so many people would say, Oh, integrity is one of my values. But as I was working on the book, one of the things that I really came to understand is that integrity is really about wholeness.

It's about being a complete person in how we think and speak and act. There are several aspects to integrity, honesty, obviously, trustworthiness, but also consistency in how we behave and authenticity in being the same person in public as we are in private. And then, of course, fairness and loyalty are all critical.

But the concept of integrity and really the word integrity means whole. It, you know, is the same as the... Comes from the same root as the word integer for mathematics, but it essentially means whole.

And I hadn't really thought about it until I worked on the book that integrity is about having a wholeness of character so that we are consistently and authentically the same person. And unconditional integrity then means when we decide that we are a person with integrity, we will approach every situation no matter what it is, and no matter what we might get out of it, or what reaction may come from it, we will approach every situation with integrity the same way. And that creates a wholeness of character that is, creates a centeredness and a peacefulness within us, but also helps other people believe in us, trust us, want to be with us, because they see that wholeness about us.

SAMIA: Yeah. Yeah. It makes me realize what you were just sharing, that for us to have integrity, we would first actually have to be clear on who we are, what our values are, so that we can then be consistent.

ANDY: Yes. Upholding them.

SAMIA: Very true.

ANDY: If our values are of love and gratitude and practicing love and gratitude unconditionally, that's amazing. Like an amazing thing to strive for, like consistently. And what a beautiful character.

I do think, you're right. I think that integrity kind of holds the other values together, because as you said, integrity is in itself a way of being true to our values, right? I mean, we want to be true to the value of integrity, but at the same time, integrity is being true to our values.

So it does kind of hold together all of the values. And remind us that it's critical for us to consistently operate and align ourselves with the values that we have.

SAMIA: Yeah. And there's something else about, you know, the idea of understanding integrity as an aspect of wholeness that is so profound, because it's like, I think for me, that understanding connects back to also the idea of love, because you know, like when we talk about love as an understanding of how we are connected, there, you know, there's something about wholeness and that understanding of love, right? That they're all parts of a whole, and therefore we are all connected to each other.

And so there's a, there's something to, you know, when the whole is in harmony, whatever the whole is, that, I mean, when you experience harmony in the whole, it makes you happy. And, you know, you, you experience peace. You know, you, you can feel centered and grounded and calm and all of that good stuff, you know.

And so, it's like integrity as wholeness. I mean, like for me, it makes a lot of sense and it connects so directly with our experience of love that way.

ANDY: Yeah, it does. Yeah, that unconditional desire or desire to be unconditional in having integrity and having honesty and having fairness and courage to act with morality is freeing. It's something that allows us to, it gives us freedom in order to go about tackling whatever challenges we have because we have confidence that we are a person with integrity and we're going to act with integrity no matter what the situation is.

So, it gives us a confidence and a centeredness that lets us move forward with confidence, and then we build on that with accountability and endeavor, the additional values.

SAMIA: Yeah. Okay. Tell me, oh, my mind's going in a few different directions in terms of how we're...

ANDY: Sure.

SAMIA: Okay, tell me a little bit more about the accountability value now, then.

ANDY: Yeah, accountability is really connected very closely with integrity. And I think a lot of this, when we think about accountability, integrity kind of gets wrapped into that in our minds. They are connected.

But what's different is accountability is really owning whatever responsibilities we have. I sort of put in the book, I put it simply as own it. Whatever it is that we have as a duty or as an obligation, a commitment, whatever we've signed ourselves up for, either just by being born into a family or taking on a job or whatever it is, we own it.

And that means whatever the outcome is, we accept it and we behave the same way no matter what that outcome may be. So if it's positive, we can take credit for that. But we also share the credit with anyone that had some influence on that positive outcome.

If it's a negative outcome, we take the blame for it. And we say, hey, I'm willing to accept that because I'm going to try again. And I'm going to behave the same way I did the last time and accept the outcome.

But because I've learned from it and have grown from it, I expect the outcome will be more positive this time. So accountability is moving past the natural inclination for us to deflect responsibility or the natural entitlement that a lot of us feel about, hey, I should be able to have something just because I'm a good person or because I'm an American or because I, you know, live this way. Accountability or unconditional accountability is no, you act to own whatever your duties are, whatever your responsibilities are, and you take what comes of those and then you build on that to become better and better.

SAMIA: Yeah, I like it. I like it. You know, it makes you also think back to what we were talking about with gratitude that, you know, like no matter what happens, you want to be like accepting of what it is and focus on the positive aspects of what whatever the situation is.

And so it's sort of like the way you're talking about accountability is sort of like reflecting back or so not reflecting back, but sort of like taking that gratitude attitude, that value for unconditional gratitude and applying it to this context of taking responsibility, of owning, whatever may be far experiencing.

ANDY: Exactly. Yeah, exactly right. And there's so much in each of these values.

It's so important to recognize that we're never going to be perfect. No matter how hard we try to live by these unconditional values, we're never going to always get them right. So we have to accept that we're going to fall short.

And also accept that falling short is then an opportunity to learn and grow. And that, I think, consistent understanding and reminder of the need to accept whatever happens. There's a gratitude for the good and the bad.

But acceptance of that and realization that, okay, now we have an opportunity to go back and do it again, or take a different path, whatever it takes to continue to have the accountability for ourselves, but then continue to try to grow as well.

SAMIA: Yeah. You know, one of the beautiful things about having unconditional gratitude and practicing unconditional accountability paired with unconditional gratitude and unconditional love for that matter is, actually, this was a realization that I came to relatively recently, just in the last year or two. You know, every year, part of the Muslim tradition is that one month of the year, we engage in fasting.

And during this month, like every day from dawn to sunset, we give up food, we give up water. But more importantly, we're meant to be on our very best behavior, so any bad habits that you have, you know, you work on sort of letting go of those and so forth. And, you know, one of the challenges is to make one approach, I would say, that a lot of us take is that every year, we'll try to identify one something to focus on that we want to really improve or learn more about, etc.

And so, actually, last year, when I went through the fasting process, I mean, there's just been, you know, so much craziness in the world. I mean, literal wars and genocide and this and that going on. And it really made me want to understand the concepts and ideas of mercy and forgiveness more deeply.

And, I mean, it's not like I've never thought about that experience. I was like, what more am I missing? Where can I go deeper, both in my own experience and my practice of forgiveness and mercy?

Because, I mean, I was just dealing with so much negativity and these urges to be judgmental and be like, you wrong, you bad.

ANDY: Yeah.

SAMIA: That kind of thing, and it's like, oh, gosh. So, and one of the very... And I swear, it's like, when you ask for guidance, you know, and you focus your attention on something, you know, the pathways of learning and those opportunities to learn and just come to you.

And, you know, I realized, you know, that... I don't know, it's just amazing to me, but for some reason, I'm like, now, what, 42, 43 years old? And in my entire life of, you know, like being a Muslim, no, for some reason, no one ever empathized to me that there is this...

I mean, whenever I thought of forgive, the concept of forgiveness as a Muslim, it just made me think about guilt, that there's something I've done wrong, I'm guilty, and therefore I need to ask for forgiveness. Right. You know, I didn't like the idea of feeling guilty.

Didn't want to feel guilty, didn't want to feel blamed and shamed. And so I used to kind of run away from even wanting to acknowledge that I needed forgiveness. And so like the prayers, we have like so many prayers that are about seeking forgiveness.

And those were my least favorite prayers.

ANDY: Right.

SAMIA: I'm living a good life. I think I'm doing my best. I don't want to be blamed, shamed, judged, and by others are to do that to myself and stuff.

But the realization I had in the last year when we were fasting is no, actually, it doesn't, forgiveness, seeking forgiveness doesn't have to be about that. It's really about accountability in the way you were talking about. And it's about experiencing that accountability with that lens of unconditional love and gratitude.

ANDY: Right.

SAMIA: And the light that switched on for me in a way that had never switched on before is that, is that, you know, God loves me unconditionally already.

ANDY: Right.

SAMIA: And so that makes it entirely possible for me to actually experience forgiveness.

ANDY: Right. This kind of, you know, love and gratitude, feeling and take accountability and do it from a place of hope and even joy.

SAMIA: Right.

ANDY: You know, and so in the last year or so, it's become like my favorite thing to pray for forgiveness now. It's like every day, you know, now the traditions that we have, like there's one teaching that says, pray for forgiveness at least 100 times a day. Now it's my favorite thing to do.

SAMIA: That's awesome. Yeah, I love that perspective. That's really great.

Yay. Okay, so I think we have one, at least one more value to dig deeper into. And you mentioned that previously.

Tell me more about that.

ANDY: Right. And an endeavor is the value that I struggled the most with for a couple of reasons. One is, I think there's a lot to it.

And I ended up packing a lot into it in the book. So, so that, you know, there's there's a lot in it. And I also struggled with, is it really a core value?

And I finally decided it is because we live in the world. And in the world, we have to act. We have to do.
We have to strive. Whatever it is we're doing, it doesn't have to be career based, but we're always faced with things to do. And so living in the world requires that we endeavor.

And so I decided that having endeavor with all the things that go in it was really necessary as a critical value. In endeavor, I've got 10 different aspects and I won't go through all of them, but the basic parts of it begins with purpose. We have a purpose for anything that we take on.

There's a purpose. And that's a big driver in terms of how successfully we begin the endeavor. And then you go through several parts of it.

But at the end, a critical piece is perseverance, that we're going to run into obstacles. We're never going to always have it easy with endeavors. So we're going to run into obstacles.

And learning how to persevere is critical. And then the last piece, and really the reason that we endeavor, or the reason that we should endeavor, is to grow. So growth is the last piece that I talk about in endeavor.

So endeavor really, I think, it's doing. So in many cases, it's, you know, getting the things done that we need to survive. But the reason that we endeavor is to grow personally.

And that growth then feeds back into the other values of gratitude and integrity and especially accountability. But growth is really what, it's really the object of endeavor. And so that's what I talk about in the book.

SAMIA: Oh, I love that understanding of endeavor as growth being the objective of it. Because you know, it's like, for example, if you go back to the idea of unconditional love, as the foundation of all other values and everything, and we acknowledge that we all have limits in, for example, who we are currently able to love unconditionally. And for ourselves, we have struggles to sometimes love ourselves unconditionally.

And so, if you're not growing, then we cannot increase in our capacity to love more, to love better, or to practice more gratitude, when we may struggle to practice gratitude or practice more integrity, when we may struggle to be consistent, or when we struggle to hold ourselves accountable. And so it's like the endeavor to growth actually is so important, but also like allowing us to live more fully on all the other values. And really, truly, like I was just talking with somebody the other day, I was actually doing an interview for this podcast, Andy, and I was talking to somebody who's a spiritual, spiritual, I forget his exact title.

But anyway, one of the things you were talking about is purpose, like purpose of life and how we can understand it from a spiritual perspective. And he actually was like, yeah, it's actually about growth as well. So he, in his spiritual outlook and perspective that he holds, it's like, no, you know, spiritually speaking, we come to this world and these bodies with actually that mission of growing.

You have to learn and you have to grow.

ANDY: Yes, I totally agree. That's a great perspective. And I have the same perspective about, if not the purpose, certainly one of the purposes of spirituality.

But I think it is central to spirituality to grow closer to God. And growing closer to God includes getting closer to other people and trying to help bring the world together. I think all of those things are connected.

So growth is absolutely critical. I think for me, if you're not growing, whether it's spiritual or mental or even emotional, it's not really unconditional. You're putting limits on what you're willing to do, how much you're willing to put into your life or whatever it is.

And so that limit means that it's not unconditional. And so I think unconditional endeavor, which feeds back to the other values, requires that we grow or at least we try to grow.

SAMIA: Yeah. Yeah, it makes me think of the saying also, if you're not growing, you're dying.

ANDY: Right. Right. Yeah.

SAMIA:I mean, having been in the business world, you know, 30 years, sometimes that one is a struggle because it, you know, drives people to work harder and push and push and push. But I do think from a personal perspective, we have to be trying to grow, knowing that we're not always going to be successful. We're going to have back steps.

But we need to have in mind that growth is the goal, personal growth, again, spiritually, mentally, emotional should be what we're striving for. Yeah.

ANDY: You know what you just said about the example of how this idea of growth can manifest in the business world just made me think about that we need to like think a little deeply about what growth really means. Because the kind of growth that people can be chasing after in the business world, certainly, and other contexts. I mean, that can really take you in unhealthy places and it can really make you…

Like, this is something that I've always been really concerned about as a business person myself, that I don't pursue growth of my business in a way that's going to harm the environment, that's going to harm other people. Because, like, for me, that perspective comes from seeing growth within the context or of... Not within the con...

SAMIA: Yeah, within the context, but also growth not like as an isolated value, but a value to be lived in conjunction with these other values of love and gratitude and so forth. Because if you just pursue growth, I mean, like, that's how we are, like, I mean, at a very physical level, like, our bodies end up developing cancer because the cells are, in our bodies, are like just growing. They're growing, growing, growing in there.

And in that, they're with or without regard for how the growth of those cells is impacting the rest of the body, the rest of the body systems. No, those cancerous cells, they're just growing, growing, growing, growing. And all they care about is growing, growing, growing, growing.

And so then we end up with cancer. I mean, it's a literal disease. It's a literal sickness.

And it literally killed us after some time.

ANDY: Right. That's a great analogy. I really love that because I think what you're saying, it lines up so well with what I tried to say in The Unconditionals, which is we have to align ourselves with our values.

We choose what our values are. And then we align ourselves with our values and then try to unconditionally behave in alignment with those values. And that includes growth.

So as you're saying, if we're growing in a way that is trying to achieve metrics like more money, more fame, more titles, whatever it is, those metrics are not aligned with our values. And so that growth leads to bad results very often. Sometimes it may be short-term results that we think are good, but in the long run, they're not going to lead to the results that are healthy for us.

And so the analogy to the body is a great one. And if we're not aligned, if the cells grow and they're not growing in alignment with the purpose of that organ or the purpose of the cells that they're around, and they're just growing for the sake of growth, then it's going to lead to a bad outcome. So we have to make sure that we're always aligned with our values.

And those values really make up who we are, who we want to be and who we are. And so growth needs to be growing in alignment with those values and growing towards who we want to be long-term. Yeah.

SAMIA: Gosh, Andy, I will keep talking to you for hours and hours, and I read all your other thoughts and questions that I want to pursue. And I looked at the time and I was like, no! Right.

ANDY: I agree.

SAMIA: Gosh. Do you have any last thoughts for right now?

Well, I've loved the conversation. Great questions and really love the direction that we went with all of these things. It's really powerful, I think, in connecting our two backgrounds and how these values really matter, you know, no matter who you are.

ANDY: I'd love to say to listeners, if they want to learn more about me and my background, but especially find out more about the book, just go to andycrockerbooks.com and you'll find whatever you're looking for there. And the book is available in all the formats, audio book and e-book and so forth. So please go check it out.

SAMIA: Yes, it's a great book. I actually got a copy of your book and I'm so glad I got it. You are a wonderful author and like share so much wisdom.

I really, really appreciate not only you're having written the book but having shared it with me and having come on our show to share something of what you talk about in the book with our audience. And yes, please, everyone who is listening, please make sure you check the show notes because we will be dropping Andy's links in there so you can connect with him. Check out the book also.

And yeah, until we connect next time, I just wish you lots and lots of peace and joy.

ANDY: Thank you.