Cultivating a Home from Within to Create the Home We Seek Without

Episode Transcript

Liz Moorehead (00:05.226)
Welcome back to Beyond Your Default. I'm your host, Liz Moorhead, and as always, I am joined by the one and only George B. Thomas. How the heck are you this morning, bud?

George B. Thomas (00:14.224)
I am doing good, Liz. I'm glad I'm the one and only. I couldn't imagine the planet with two of me. I'm sure that my wife would probably double tap on that as well. Like, yeah, no, one's enough.

Liz Moorehead (00:27.222)
enough. Well, I mean, I think the same thing could be said about could you imagine if there were two of both of us running around? That would be a mess. That would be a mess.

George B. Thomas (00:27.88)
Hehehehe

George B. Thomas (00:33.06)
Yeah, no, no. It's maybe chaos went into.

Liz Moorehead (00:38.83)
Oh my gosh. Well, let's dig right into what we're talking about this morning, because before you and I hopped on, it's interesting given what we were going to talk about today. You and I have been running around, we've been traveling, we've been, you know, seeing people doing a bunch of different things. And it really wraps around this concept of home. You know, I was thinking about it last night when I

I went to Philadelphia over the weekend with some friends for a belated birthday celebration. And I've been living up here in New Haven, Connecticut now for about four or five months. And if you're a long time listener, first time caller of the show, you know that I'm not originally from New Haven, Connecticut, recently went through a divorce. But last night was the first night I texted my friend who I had met up with in Philadelphia to say, by the way, I'm home.

George B. Thomas (01:36.192)
I made it home. Mmm.

Liz Moorehead (01:38.834)
And when I looked back through some of my text messages going back and forth between when I would travel from New Haven to Maryland and back again, I noticed that was the first time I had used that word. It was the first time I had said, I'm home, instead of I'm back, I made it safe, or back safe and sound, yada, yada. And it really got me thinking about, wow, how fortuitously timed given what we're talking about, which is this concept of home.

what it means to have a home, but how cultivating a home from within is really the secret sauce to create the home we often seek without.

George B. Thomas (02:14.94)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (02:21.08)
Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's so interesting to me, Liz, because, um, by the way, I'm just gonna put a little caveat out there this week. Uh, this topic, um, is gonna be a little bit difficult for me because I, I had to kind of bring up some things that I hadn't really thought about in a long time.

I actually reached out to my mom and asked her some specific questions, you know, so I could bring them to the podcast and to the community and really just try to uncover one of what I think I didn't know until we started to do the research for this episode is one of the things that makes me different.

maybe special, maybe not, we said this last week, by the way, about the topic that we talked about, but this might be, again, one of the core tenets, the foundational blocks that actually once tipped correlates to a lot of the other things that we have talked about and will talk about in the future. And...

And so what's interesting about this is it's home is a simple word, but it's a very complex topic. And what's funny is immediately, like I put out on Facebook and Twitter too, like when I say the word home, what do you...

think of immediately. And we got everything from like spaces and places to like people and family to like memories. Brian Kramer even put in memories in there on Facebook. And what's interesting is

George B. Thomas (04:11.576)
While part of this conversation, I believe, is going to be kind of this subtle but essential difference between house and home and like building and bricks and mortar and like a feeling and like people in our lives versus a structure that we live in. We'll talk about like what one is versus the other, but I also really want to be able to dive into like... But

But what if you could be at home anywhere? Like what if you took home with you? And here's what's funny is, as I'm talking through this, like one of the exit strategies of my wife and I are to be able to live in an RV and travel wherever we wanna travel. That's very easy for me because I feel like I've had an RV inside of me.

Home inside of me that I've been traveling with for a real long time Anyway, we'll get into that like I just want people to like get a cup of coffee Get a sweet tea whatever beverage like sit down headphones

Liz Moorehead (05:22.798)
Sweet tea really that hurts my Yankee sensibilities when you say sweet tea. It hurts me to my core

George B. Thomas (05:27.4)
I know, but listen, as a southerner, get that sweet tea, get that coffee. Sit down, clear, clear. Yeah, clear your calendar, clear all the noise, because I really do feel like this one's going to get real interesting.

Liz Moorehead (05:33.11)
and for my Yankees out there.

Liz Moorehead (05:41.866)
And for my Yankees out there, go grab a cup of coffee that is as black as our souls and as unrelenting as the coal that lives where our hearts should live because we're just awful. Yeah, no kidding. No, I-

George B. Thomas (05:54.804)
That's funny. I feel like if there's somebody that is listening that connects to that, I'm glad you're here because we're getting you to head towards a life of beyond your default darkness and colds is not what I correlate to like the listeners.

Liz Moorehead (06:11.422)
It is 27 degrees here in Connecticut, and I will admit, I am going to have a nice black cup of coffee as soon as this is over. And I can hear one of our clients right now going, Liz, you haven't had your first cup of coffee yet? No. And that may lead to a feistier episode than usual. But let's dig right in. You know, you started bringing up something very fascinating here, which is what is it that we're actually seeking when we are saying, I want a home. I want to feel like I'm at home.

George B. Thomas (06:19.386)
again.

Liz Moorehead (06:40.318)
I actually went through something recently that made me really challenge myself to think about what it is that I'm really looking for. So as I mentioned, obviously, you know, yesterday was the first time I ever said, hey, I'm home. And after uprooting my entire life over the past six months, you know, my life this time last year looked drastically different. On paper I had the perfect house, perfect husband, perfect job.

Perfect, perfect, perfect. Everything was on paper, the perfect home. But as you know, because you've been a steadfast friend through this process, it was exceedingly empty. And so then when I moved out on my own, even though that place had been exceedingly empty, it was still a known entity. And then I started feeling, I was really struggling a lot over the summer. And I remember I kept saying over and over again, I just wanna feel like I have a home.

and I was doing a short term rental and da da. And then I realized over the weekend, what I was really seeking was a sense of belonging. Where I belong somewhere. And I see you slapping your chest, George. I see that resonating with you. Where does your mind go with that?

George B. Thomas (07:57.188)
Yeah, it's funny when you were saying, I just want a home. My brain was literally going to this. I just want to belong, right? And that's the thing, like, there's this...

Liz Moorehead (08:05.675)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (08:10.112)
internal switch that gets flipped where this is where I belong, therefore I call this home. And then the other piece of this is there's a time frame in which it takes and some people never actually get there, where they don't feel like it's home, they don't call it home because they never feel like they belong. And that's a very interesting piece of this to me. But like, it's funny because

And again, we're gonna dig into this, but like, why don't you have that feeling initially? Why do, or does it take time? How can you understand what that is and then inject that into your life when you do have to make a physical move that now mentally,

you're able to like get there faster and believe that you belong. There's some underlying things that you have to believe about your path and the places that it takes you for you to actually easily engage in this belonging mindset and then equaling home easier. Um,

Anyway, so I'm here to say, yes, a lot of when we call it home, it's because somebody or something has happened or said that our brain clicks and like, oh, well, that's why I'm here. I belong here.

Liz Moorehead (09:51.158)
George, why don't you talk to me a little bit about your relationship with the concept of home? Yeah, you already alluded to this a little bit earlier. Now let's put it's time for Johnny on the spot. Let's go. Talk to us about it.

George B. Thomas (09:56.464)
Ha! Yeah.

George B. Thomas (10:02.648)
Yeah, I have a strong, strange relationship with home. And I understand that it is based off of how I grew up. And so again.

I'm not proud necessarily of any of the things that are about to come out of my mouth Heck I didn't have any control over Many of the things that are gonna come out of my mouth over this next piece here But I reached out to my mom because I was curious. I knew it was a lot I knew it was a lot of times, but I reached out to my mom which by the way They've been listening to the podcast so this was no big surprise that I was doing like research on

as a youth and I was like hey mom I need you to calculate something for me and I and I literally texted her I need to know how many times we moved before we landed in Cardwell Montana because by the way Cardwell Montana was like a definite changing point in my life

where we met some neighbors. I started to go to church with them, like Sunday morning, Wednesday night, Sunday night. This was just like from what would be the earlier chaos of George B. Thomas' life to like a moment in time was Cardwell, Montana. And so I was like, when did we land there and how many times had we moved? And she texted me back and...

We had moved 18 times by the time I was 15. And here's the funny thing.

Liz Moorehead (11:41.986)
You know, you sent that to me via text message yesterday, and I'm like, what? Ha ha ha.

George B. Thomas (11:46.52)
Yeah, we had moved 18 times by the age of me being 15. And I know in her calculations, she probably didn't calculate in there the two times that I went and tried to live with my dad, right? Because again, God knew that I needed two dads, two moms. And so really, if you count those in about 20 times before the age of 15, I had moved and had to call a place home.

When you have to call a new place home, especially in this scenario that we're talking about, we're talking about new school, we're talking about new friends, we're talking about closing relationships, we're talking about like upheavals of everything you own and just everything you know. And out of that, when I started to reflect on this, I had an oh crap moment.

because I have this thing called itchy feet syndrome, meaning when I'm at a certain location for a certain length of time, I'm ready to like skirt down the road. And the longest I had ever lived anywhere and called it home was when I actually met Kelly and we lived in Uniontown, Ohio, and like outside of Canton, Ohio, and between two homes like 15 years.

in one place, two places, two places in 15 years. And that's the longest. When she said, hey, what do you think about moving down to North Carolina? She got north out and I said, yes. I didn't even know. I knew where she was because we were traveling down to see our son. But I was like, yes, let's go. And so my whole life I've had itchy feet where I just wanna move to the next thing. I also was like, oh my gosh, this is why I embrace and have the chameleon effect. Meaning I can go into any situation and in a...

authentic way become who I need to become in that situation because between 0 and 15 I had to do that 18 if not more times in my life just to survive and And it's funny because I asked my wife again talk to my mom talk to my wife

George B. Thomas (13:59.456)
About this thing of home and about this idea of moving 18 times in the first 15 years of my life And my wife said something very interesting She goes that's why it's so easy for you to bring people in and cut people out of your life That's your default state. You've had to do that like forever

Liz Moorehead (14:16.595)
Mm-hmm.

George B. Thomas (14:19.528)
And again, not proud of any of these things, but when I start to think about what makes me me, what makes me tick, how I think about home and why I've had to basically create a home within myself to be able to survive in all the places I've been on Earth. It's something that most of us, I don't have to think about because, like she said, my wife

Listen, I went to Lake High School the entire time. I had the same friends the entire time, like the same community, the entire. And I, I don't feel like I was robbed or anything, but I didn't have that. And so unpacking like the survival mechanism and the understanding of things like belonging and other words that we'll dig into, I think are going to be core tenants.

For when you are living a life beyond your default, and all of a sudden that makes you go to places that you never thought you would go, how can you have the safety, the security, the belonging, the love that you feel when you're at a physical home no matter where you go?

Liz Moorehead (15:42.59)
You said something interesting there about, and it ties back to what it is that we're talking about today, right? Which is this idea of you were able to cultivate a sense of belonging, of home, of I am where I'm supposed to be from within. What does that actually look like in practice? Because that's something that, I'll be honest, it sounds great in theory, but as someone who has had a similar kind of nomadic upbringing, I didn't.

I certainly didn't hit the volume of moves, but for instance, when I was 14 years old, due to my mother suffering in an unfortunate mental health event, I was sent to go live with my dad. And it had been a challenge being brought up by her, but it was still my home, it was still where I belonged. And then all of a sudden, at 14 years old, at this really formative time in my life,

I'm moving in with my dad, I'm going to a new school, I have a new, like, I didn't even have anything from my old bedroom, like everything was just left and everything was new. And I just remember this feeling of like a foreign visitor in a foreign land, right?

And it's something that I've gotten a little bit more comfortable with as I've moved around, as I've gotten older. I have similar, I have a similar itchy foot syndrome. I get a little bit antsy in the pansy when I'm in a single spot for too long. But I think, you know, as humans, we're hardwired to cultivate and find a sense of belonging without because we're tribal creatures. Like that is, that is caveman instinct through and through. We, we want to.

We want to stay in the tribe, we want to belong to the tribe. So what does it look like to have your tribe be something from within that is not something externally defined?

George B. Thomas (17:40.068)
Well, so here's the thing. It's not that you don't necessarily have a tribe, but you have different tribes. I'll dive into that in a little bit later because I want to connect some dots. Um, so Liz, you know, but I want to let the listeners know, cause I think this is a crucial part and it was a kind of funny haha for me as I was going through this process of research and unpacking the brain for, for this episode.

I belong to a group of men we meet on Tuesdays. It's called Evolve. And one of the things that we have to do, and it's other men who are trying to be better, do better, live a better life, high achievers, if you will.

And one of the things we have to do is we have to come up with what they call our inner badass. Okay, and it's the name that we want to go through and what we would... How would this person act in this scenario? And Liz, you know, but listeners, you need to know that my inner badass name is Sergeant Shine. And Sergeant Shine is because, one, I was in the military and I have picked up some very great...

resources, ways of living based on the military. And I believe in a lot of things that they teach us as young men and women on how to just progress through life and survive. But shine is because I've always felt like I'm supposed to shine my light unto the world.

Which again goes from the spiritual side of who I am as a human. So you've got kind of this militant and spiritual thing That is coming together. And so Sergeant Shine. Now to your question Liz, what does this look like? There's a really dope quote And it says home isn't where you're from. It's where you find light when all grows dark

George B. Thomas (19:53.444)
And that's Pierce Brown. He's an American author. And I'm gonna go ahead and say it again. Home isn't where you're from. It's where you find light when all grows dark. So when you ask me, what does it look like if the home is internal? It's like the old saying, we'll leave the lights on for ya, right? Who was that, Don Modell or something? I don't remember the guy, but it was like a motor. We'll leave the lights on for ya. And so,

Liz Moorehead (20:15.671)
Mm-hmm.

George B. Thomas (20:20.46)
When I think about home internal, it's this light, it's this burning flame, it's this warmth, if you will, that I always make sure that I'm protecting and tending to. And when I say this warmth, what I want everybody to realize that I'm talking about here is this kind of level of familiarity. This, um...

this belonging or sense of belonging, this feeling loved, right? So when we think about familiarity, belonging, and love or being lovable, these are three key things that many times many humans have to look for externally from their tribe, from their family.

from their friends. And when you can culture a self-belief, a self-love, a self-acceptance internally, this flame, this light, that no matter where you are, you know who you are. Self-understanding, right? Self-awareness.

Um, familiarity to yourself, no matter what position you get put in, um, belonging, understanding your journey took you there for a reason. Now you just need to figure out why, but you don't feel lost. You feel like you belong and loved or lovable or loving on others. And so there's like, imagine if you will, an internal like fire pit that I'm stoking and tending to those things. And.

Again, it all comes out of a kind of safety mechanism from the childhood and the life that I've lived, but it has grown itself to be a superpower in the acceptance of whatever comes my way in life. I have what we usually attach to the physical sense of this.

George B. Thomas (22:30.424)
Right? Which is a feeling. If you did a word cloud of the word home, it would be like safety, security, love, belonging, joy, happiness. Right? There's nothing wrong with having all of that right here, right inside you. Like it's packed there, ready to travel, ready to roll. And when you're living a life beyond your default and you have this visual of climbing the mountain.

You can't stop to go back home to pick up those things that are essential to you to make your journey. You have to have them inside. They have to be with you, which is again, why kind of jokingly said, I feel like I have an RV inside of me that is just ready to roll. Home is right here, no matter where here is.

Liz Moorehead (23:20.494)
Let's dig a little bit more into definitions here, because I'm a big fan of getting very clear on what it is that we're talking about. Now, we've danced around this a little bit, but let's get a little bit more explicit. Talk to me about how you define house versus home. Because I think you've been sitting here talking about like...

There are all these external things that we look for as leading indicators that we're home, but that's not really what it's about. So talk to me about that. What's the difference for you?

George B. Thomas (23:50.872)
Yeah, so when I think about a house, it's very easy. It's a building, a location, a street, a city, a state, a country, depending on who you are. Like...

That, when I think of house, it's very much something, it's a teepee, a wigwam, a clay hut, an igloo. That's a house, right? It could be $100,000, it could be 2.5 million, a tornado could come, and poof, it's gone. Okay, it is something that is here but will not last forever, house. Home, by the way.

Liz Moorehead (24:12.778)
And then, go.

George B. Thomas (24:32.168)
tornado could come, do absolutely nothing. As long as you're alive. Let's just put that out there. But like when I think about home.

Right? And it goes into the realm of feelings. It goes into the realm of family. It goes into the realm of other groups of humans that we decide to be part of. Communities, church, online, offline, whatever it is. You know, the Boy Scouts, you know, Archers of America. I don't know, whatever like community that you decide to put yourself into. It's stored memories.

And more importantly, I think is it's a state of mind. It's a state of mind that you allow yourself to live in. And again, if we think about that, the state of mind of light. In what potentially could be a life or world of darkness that you sometimes find yourself in.

The state of mind, when we say that, words that we've used of belonging. The state of mind of being loved or lovable, right? The state of mind that hopefully more times than not leads into the positives versus the negatives. Now, sometimes we get into this conversation and we start to mention family and groups of humans.

And that's actually the part of the home that sometimes creates the darkness that we have to actually have the light to fight. Which is terrible to understand that sometimes that's where we are, but...

George B. Thomas (26:09.32)
Positivity is obviously gratitude, joy, happiness. Like when I think of home in this state of mind, safety, security, oh my God, security. Like most people, and here's the thing.

Deathly afraid of public speaking. I am not. I will step on stage in front of 500, 5,000, 50,000 people because I have this state of mind of security, right? Which attaches to this idea of internal home. I have this state of mind of safety.

I have the state of mind of belonging. So I feel safe and secure and I belong on stage in front of 50,000 people. Let's rock and roll. Let's change some lives, right? So like, and all of these things tie back to this feeling of or understanding of this internal home or this internal set of metrics or matrix.

that is created around this idea of home.

Liz Moorehead (27:26.466)
What does this mean though for when you're living a life beyond your default? What is internalizing it actually look like? Because you know, I'll be honest, I cheated. I looked ahead and I found one little point that you made that I thought that was absolutely fascinating is that when we think about the internalization of anything that we talk about and we're going to get to it here in a moment of internalization of what it means for living a life beyond your default when it comes to your home. But internalizing can have two different contexts, right?

There's the physicality of it, our body, but then there's our soul, our spirit, all of these different things and how those pieces work together. So again, I'll ask, when we talk about internalizing this, what the heck does that even mean when it talks about living a life beyond your default?

George B. Thomas (28:13.604)
Yeah, so we talked about house and home, right? A house, easily destroyed, home not. Now I want you to think about yourself for a second. Your body is easily destroyed, we all die. Your spirit is not, right? So your spirit can literally be where you park these home items that we're talking about, this state of mind, if you will. And...

For me, it's funny because when you kind of think about this body, okay, easily destroyed spirit, mind, heart, the place that I want to put the most energy in to build this life of, you know, beyond your default, I start to think about how do we create this in a way that people can actually grab a hold of and understand. And I'm going to give you the punch line.

And then I'm gonna go back and talk through something that I believe that will help folks. What I'm trying to achieve, and by the way, we say this on every episode, Liz, but I'm still a work in progress. You're still a work in progress. But what I'm trying to achieve is harmony of mind energy.

Liz Moorehead (29:25.234)
Yep, we both are.

George B. Thomas (29:35.112)
Okay, spirit energy, the flow, if you will. And yes, by the way, harmony of mind energy is home if you take the letters of the, but I literally want this energy, this harmony, this, the state of minds to just flow and be able to be absorbed, be able to be used in the way that it needs to be used in life. And so, if I break down,

and go out of the esoterical kind of stuff that I've been talking about. And I just give somebody a matrix that they can think about. And the way that I think about this is we're going to talk about home in four words. We're going to talk about home in this word of happiness. We're going to talk about home in this word of originality.

We're going to talk about home in this word of mastery, and we're going to talk about the word home in the word of evolution. Okay?

So happiness, joy, positivity, right? Happiness is literally an emotion of joy, gladness, satisfaction and wellbeing. I wanna lean more on that satisfaction and wellbeing. Are you satisfied with yourself? Are you satisfied with your situation? Are you satisfied with the humans that you have around you? Do you feel like you're doing things that give you a place, a mindset, a physicality of wellbeing?

Do you live in a default state of joy and gladness based on the fact that you even have the opportunity to be a human on this planet and do the things that you get a chance to do? Hopefully, the answer to that is yes. If not, then we have to work on this word that is happiness. Now, here's the thing.

George B. Thomas (31:37.28)
Many people have a skewed, crazy ass relationship with the word happiness. Like I'll never forget, I was in a meeting and we asked somebody, what makes you happy? And the response made me sad because the response was, I don't know. So if you don't know what makes you happy, if you're not on a journey to understand your happiness and actually be able to lean into.

joy, gladness, satisfaction, and wellbeing in your life. Step one to making yourself feel like you're at home anywhere with anybody. Originality, okay? Actually, Liz, I'm gonna ask, do you wanna unpack my brain after each one of these words or do you feel it would be best served for me just to flow through each of these?

Liz Moorehead (32:32.138)
I'd like you to flow through each of them because I want to see how they all hang together.

George B. Thomas (32:36.736)
Okay, beautiful. So originality, the ability to think independently and creatively. Liz, I want to go back to your tribe comment that we all want to be parts of tribes. Many times we want to be parts of tribes because it's safe and it's easy. And many times we want to be part of a tribe because we know that other people will do the thinking.

and other people will do the doing, and we can just kinda come along for the ride. But if you're gonna be able to unlock that happiness, if you're gonna be able to unlock the mastery that I'm gonna talk about in a minute, you have to be able to think independently, and you have to be able to think creatively. And let me tell you how independent...

you feel when you move over 18 times in the first 15 years of your life. Let me tell you how creative you have to get when you're trying to build new friends almost every year of your life. Right. And so again, this idea of, and I hate the marketing space, we ruin everything, but we talk about authenticity, be authentic.

Liz Moorehead (33:36.138)
a little bit.

George B. Thomas (33:57.512)
Like originality is the word that I'm gonna use moving forward like be your original self be who you were created to freaking be and lean into the independent thinking that your brain will generate in the creative ways That you'll think about and say those things to teach people along the way. Okay, so happiness originality mastery Mastery is the

comprehension or knowledge or skill in a subject or accomplishment. When you start to master something, there is something that happens inside of you that until it happens, you don't realize. It's like taking a four-cylinder engine out of a car and putting in a V8 with a turbocharger. Like,

The relationship that other humans will have with you, the way they'll talk to you, the questions they'll have for you, the respect that you get when you become a master of your craft, the opportunities that arrive at your doorstep when you are the sensei of a thing is ridiculous. And so,

When you're the master, it's very easy to just understand that you belong. Because you have your student, you students, you have your schools. Like, it's just a place where you can emotionally sit and be you. And understand that you're enough in just who you are.

because you're a master of this thing. Listen, I've gone through this multiple times of becoming a master at HubSpot, right? A master of podcasting, a master of video, a master of like communication.

George B. Thomas (36:03.888)
Honestly, one of the things that I love is I feel I'm a master at loving or providing love and grace and empathy and like Unlocking a master of unlocking the catalyst moments in people's lives. All right, so mastery right very important happiness originality mastery and then this idea of evolution the gradual development Let me say that for the people in the back seat

Because everybody wants to go viral. Everybody wants to be like the best thems in two weeks in one diet plan. Like the gradual development of something, especially from a simple to more complex form. I've talked about this on the other episodes of the podcast. This is literally the software updates that you're giving your brain.

Liz Moorehead (36:39.659)
Mm-mm.

George B. Thomas (36:58.704)
This is literally the, I'm gonna go for a walk every morning and every evening. This is literally the, I'm gonna take the time to do meditation or prayer, or this is the conversation of why do you end up having morning habits, daily habits? Why are you building goals? Why are you trying to create this thing that is greater? Why are you journeying up the mountain? Because you're evolving.

into a more complex being that can do more things, make more impact, create circumstances, tell stories that impact those around you. And so when you take in this idea of journeying with happiness,

being your original self, having mastery in multiple areas of your life, and knowing that you're evolving into something different. You're always growing. Liz, anybody that knows me for any length of time knows I've always said, one percent better each and every day. That is the evolution of anybody. One percent better each and every day. So again.

If you want to build a home inside of you, if you want to focus on how do we live a life that is a harmony of mind and energy, we're focused on happiness, originality, mastery, and the journey of evolution to who we can become.

Liz Moorehead (38:35.906)
So what is home really to you?

George B. Thomas (38:45.52)
For me, I think it is a sense of safety. And everything that I've discussed is the fences and the gates, the irrigation and the shelter. Like...

Listen, I could move today. I could start a new job. I totally different career. And I believe with the fences gates irrigation structure that I have internally. I'd be okay. I wouldn't just survive. And when I say I'd be okay, I realize I would be moving into the next phase of whatever thriving in that scenario looks like.

Not just making it by, but taking it by storm. But there is a deep rooted worry in me that many humans are walking this planet and they simply don't ever have this feeling of safety. They don't have

Liz Moorehead (39:57.782)
Safe from what? We've said safety a number of times. When you say safety, what are we safe from?

George B. Thomas (40:07.544)
think just, oh man, so I could go in so many directions with this, but let me just take it to this point. The world is a crazy place and there are a lot of things being thrown at you. And so when I say safe or safety, it's being able to not be shifted by the sands of culture, not being shifted by...

worldly views, if you will. Not being shifted the fact that your dad wants you to be a doctor or your mom wants you to be an artist. Safety in understanding that it's your life to live, that you are the captain, the master of your destination. So just in this idea of like keeping you as a

as a whole ass human as you would say, Liz, right? Instead of these particles of how the world and everybody else thinks you should be. When I say safety though, I also mean at a different level, like...

Liz Moorehead (41:08.887)
Mm-hmm.

George B. Thomas (41:29.728)
Okay, so if you look at our world right now, it runs rampant with depression and anxiety and just people not feeling like they're right or they're worthy or they're like, there's just a lot of it.

And fortunes have been made on this planet because of that understanding that fundamentally humans just have issues. And I'm not saying those issues are wrong. I'm not saying that sometimes the issues are even right. What I'm saying is...

are we having? And I can say that, like, in my life, I've had times where I have battled with some things. And it's because I didn't have my security system in place. People would come and steal my joy. People would come and take me out of my house. People would like life. Life would come and punch me in the face.

And so when I say safe, I mean from others, I mean from the planet, I mean spiritually. It's like I look at this as if my home is internal, I can build my own security system, it's gonna keep me in a better place and headed in a better direction than...

I would otherwise be.

Liz Moorehead (43:31.478)
What would you say to those who are listening right now who might be thinking to themselves, man, I wish I could feel that spark from within already. I wish I could find it. Because right now, when I take a look around where I am physically, spiritually, however you wanna quantify or qualify it, I can't shake this feeling of I don't belong here.

What would you tell them?

George B. Thomas (44:03.036)
Yeah, it's funny. So I'm gonna unpack a couple things here.

George B. Thomas (44:11.228)
It's funny that you mentioned a spark because I literally use the reference of like a fire pit or a the light, right? That's burning or shining. Um, when you think of the spark.

Liz Moorehead (44:17.687)
Okay.

George B. Thomas (44:25.04)
to have the spark you have to have the right elements right you have to have the starter the wood so like the first thing I would say is if you want to get that spark are you doing everything you can to have the things that you need in your life in place for you to actually create that spark and then turn it into a fire but there's a couple things I'm gonna go a quote and I'm actually gonna bring in a scripture here and then I'll kind of give you my final thoughts on your question.

George B. Thomas (44:56.432)
The quote that I want to hit upon is Maya Angelou, by the way. Love Maya Angelou. So many... Oprah and Maya, I'm not sure. Like, it's neck and neck, ladies and gentlemen. They're coming into the final turn. No, just both amazing. Amazing. And by the way, I love quotes. I just love historical knowledge from other humans that we can inject in our lives. If you're... If like, you don't read a quote a day...

Like change that first of all. That has probably nothing to do with what we're talking about today. But if you don't read a quote a day and just pack it in your brain and actually give yourself like 10, five, three minutes to think about what that quote means to you and how you could leverage it moving forward in your life. Anyway, she said, I long as does every human being to be at home wherever I find myself.

It's exactly what we've been talking today. How do you build that home inside of you? How do you have that internal safety, security, like belonging, feeling like you're lovable, all of these things, right? So I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself, my angel. Proverbs 24. Love me some Proverbs, by the way. It's like...

Confucius and Proverbs like and cookies Chinese anyway Proverbs 24 3 4 a house is built by wisdom and It is established by understanding by knowledge The rooms are filled with every precious and beautiful treasure

The part that I want to lean onto that, and I would give to the listeners, is how much time are you filling your rooms with precious and beautiful treasure? What are you inputting into your brain?

George B. Thomas (47:02.352)
What are you inputting into your body? What are you inputting into your spirit? How are you being an interior decorator to the cranium that you've been provided to use to travel through this world? How much time are you leveraging the idea of filling every precious and beautiful treasure into these rooms?

that you are as a human.

So if you're living a life or you're in a place in life where you have this strange sense or you've ever heard yourself say, I don't belong here.

George B. Thomas (47:49.896)
then it's simple, you're on a journey for home. And when I say that, I say the real home, the stuff that we've been talking about, not a physical building, not a fleeting moment in time, not a few people that you happen to be born around or hang out with, but the real home, the internal home that you can take with you.

anywhere you go as long as you live that makes you be a person who is living a life beyond their default that makes you into this anomaly that doesn't have to weigh in or pay attention to external forces to equal internal greatness.

And to be honest with you, that's what I think I'm trying to help everybody do on this life beyond your default journey and podcast is I just want you to understand that you have the power, you have the ability there. We are trying to give you catalyst moments and listen and lessons so that you can have this internal feeling and power.

and ability, agility, if you will, to just be an amazing human.