Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. If life’s ever felt chaotic, like you are barely hanging on, you’re about to meet someone who can flip your perspective immediately. Ron Lynch is part inventor, part storyteller, part modern-day Renaissance man. He has launched over 70 brands, 300 products, generated billions in revenue, and still finds time to be a cook, gardener, husband of 35 years, father of three, moonshiner, and yes, a failed child actor. People call him the world’s most interesting man, but he’d tell you that he’s just a curious guy trying to learn and share as much as he can.

Today, he’ll reveal why building a range of skills is your best defense in a world being rewritten by AI and how to take back control of life when it knocks you sideways. We’re talking meaning, purpose, and the mindset shifts that can change everything. Trust me, by the end, you won’t see life the same way.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Ronald Lynch, it is good to see you, brother.

Ron Lynch: Good to see you, Hal. Thanks for having me.

Hal Elrod: Oh man, it’s a pleasure. Now, do you prefer Ron, Ronald, or Ronny, or something else?

Ron Lynch: Ron or Ronny’s pretty normal. I think you have to probably work at the DMV to call me Ronald.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, I like Ronny. Ronny’s actually really fun. That’s a fun name. Alright. So, you and I, we just spent 20 minutes talking, and we know we’ve known each other for years, so it’s not like we’re getting to know each other, but we just spent 20 minutes kind of talking about how we can add the most value for people listening. And one of the things that you talked about is that you believe people have way more control, far more control over their lives than they think they do. I’d love to just start there. Why do you believe that that’s true?

Ron Lynch: Well, because I think it’s an absolutely indistinguishable fact, so I’ll do it real quickly. Can you picture a blue rabbit?

Hal Elrod: Already done.

Ron Lynch: Okay. Can you touch your nose?

Hal Elrod: Yeah. Done.

Ron Lynch: You’re in control of now, and you’re always living in now. So, if you’re in control of now and your actions and your thoughts of what you picture and how you behave in the now, you’re absolutely in control way more than you think you are, even in bad circumstances.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I love that, and it’s a reminder for me because, recently, I’ve gone through just overwhelm. So many things in my business and life, just like things coming at me that I’ve been feeling overwhelmed, borderline burnt out, and that’s actually the reminder that I’ve given myself recently, is like I might not be in control of what happened yesterday, of course, right? Can’t go back in time. I might not be in control this moment over, right? Nothing I’m going to do while I’m talking to you will change my bank account balance. And I say me as representing everyone listening. But I do get to choose my experience of every moment, as you talked about, right?

I can either be stressed and overwhelmed based on challenging circumstances in my life, or I can be at peace, in a state of love, joy, gratitude, optimism, and abundance, while I deal with the exact same challenging circumstances that many people are blaming on their inner turmoil, if you will. One of the things that you talk about, which I think really leads itself or lends itself to this idea that we do have control over our lives, you call this the Da Vinci model, and we were talking about it before we started recording, and you talked about how it really counters people’s fear of AI. So, unpack this. What is the da Vinci model and how does it counter people’s fear of AI?

Ron Lynch: Okay. It’s when most people think of da Vinci, they think of probably a couple of things, like the Mona Lisa, perhaps, or the Last Supper. They think of these paintings or da Vinci Man. They typically think of a visual because that’s an easy thing. But da Vinci was an expert in a number of areas of life. So, he was an anatomy expert. He, in his yard, took apart bodies of animals and people. He was an expert at understanding the materials of sculpture and the materials of wood and canvas, and paint, construction, all of these different things. So, he understood a wing from an animal then he could build a wing out of canvas and wood. He could understand how light came through a window and hit a blanket sitting on a chair and create a painting that was just of the light, not of the blanket, but you would see a blanket.

So, the principle here is if you become relatively expert or interested in a number of different areas in life, you become useful. The fear of AI is the fear of the future. It’s anxiety, “What will happen?” When you say, “I’m going to have a couple of interests in life,” it actually doesn’t matter what happens because you’ll be useful. So, I give the very simple examples of everybody should learn how to cook a couple of meals really well, a really great breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You’re always useful to somebody at that point. You should learn how to do some sort of simple repair craft. Maybe you understand how to put together PVC plumbing just to reroute a sink, or you understand how to cut a joint for wood joinery, or pull a canvas over a painting, electrical repair.

These are things that a person could learn the basics of in two days with the internet and have, oh, a skill that they didn’t previously have, then develop an interest in maybe a knowledge base. There’s lots of ways to study as an EMT online. You could learn first aid rapidly. Those three things give you flexibility in usefulness. Now, that might sound, how do they apply to each other? Well, maybe something you learned in wood joinery helps you set a joint when someone breaks an arm that wasn’t covered in your EMT class, and you go, “Well, this is how it works in piping. Maybe it works the same here,” and you get the person through the emergency.

And I’ve built my career that way of learning these weird and odd things to where I’ve become expert at eight or nine different strange things in my, I’m nearly 60, but I am pretty useful to people. And I think that anybody can do that and focus their attention so your brain likes being elastic and making connections, learning new things, musical instrument. This learning makes the brain grow, and making the brain grow is useful. It keeps it happier, it keeps it occupied, it keeps it engaged, and it keeps your life interesting to other people.

Hal Elrod: I love that you said that and I will say that the connection of learning how to do joints and woodworking with being a paramedic, most people might go, “Well, I don’t think I’m going to be doing that at some point,” but I like that as an example, and I want to bring it down to earth, if you will, using you as the example. I know we have a lot of mutual friends, and anyone that talks about Ron Lynch, it’s words like brilliant, heart-centered, but also interesting. Like, I’ve heard you described by our friend Jesse Elder, our friends, Brianna, as the world’s most interesting man. And I’ve been to your house, where you are rebuilding a classic car, right? You just finished a screenplay for RFK or his documentary. You wrote that, directed that.

You’ve written six or seven books. You’re writing another book. You did the marketing infomercials for GoPro, right? Correct me if I’m wrong on any of these. I mean, you are so multi-talented. And so, here’s what, actually, I want to ask. So, it’s unpacking this concept a little bit more for people because I’m just putting myself in the shoe of someone listening or watching this, and I’m always thinking of the objections or the skepticism that someone might have. And it’s like, yeah, I don’t have time to take an EMT class. Like, I’m just trying to keep my head above water. I don’t have time to take an EMT class. I don’t have time. Like, I wake up, I go to work, maybe I do my Miracle Morning if I’m lucky, right? Go to work, come home, take care of the kids, or I just take, you know.

So, I’m just trying to think of how do we make this practical, and might AI even be an aid in helping somebody master a new skill or an ability? I’m thinking of that as well, but I’m just thinking, how does somebody, if they feel stretched for time and they already feel overwhelmed, how do they approach that in a practical way? Pick one thing that you think would be a useful skill, one thing, and try it on for a month, learn about it for a month. Right? Lean into it. Before you answer the question, I saw Mark Victor Hansen speak once, and he said, “The reason people don’t change their life is because they overwhelm themselves with what they think it will take to change their life.”

Meaning they look at where they are, and then they look at a hundred miles ahead of where they want to be, and they go, “I don’t know how to cross that chasm.” And he said, “Here’s the secret. Lean into the changes that you want to make. Just baby steps. Just lean into the new thing you want to learn.” So, with all of that, right, what might that look like for someone that wants to become more useful, more diverse in their skills, their knowledge, et cetera?

Ron Lynch: Absolutely. And with myself as a frame of reference, mind you, I said 60 years. You read off really lovely accolades about me, but that’s 60 years, and Tony Robbins has a great saying, “It’s very hard to change today, but if you look back over a decade, your life’s changed a lot incrementally.” So, this is incremental. So, people are busy, yet their phone will tell them how many hours they spend on social media a week. It’ll report back to you. So, I’m going to guess there’s probably two to three hours in a week that your phone has told you, and it might be telling you there’s more than two to three hours in a day. And if you’re watching this, you have time. You’re watching us on YouTube or wherever right now. So, you’ve got a little bit of time too, right?

So, first of all, make a commitment to yourself. And the commitment can be a micro commitment of three days. If I said I’m going to spend 30 minutes today, tomorrow, and the next day learning Spanish, basic Spanish, because I have a daughter-in-law coming into the family and she doesn’t speak any English. And I live in a community that’s Hispanic. I have lots of restaurants and people I do business with. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could talk to my neighbors and my family in their language, at least say a few things? So, do you think I could go to ChatGPT and say, “Give me some Spanish basics that I could use? Teach me Spanish in three hours, over three days, the very basic things that I could just get through a restaurant or a department store, or a greeting with a new person.”

Completely doable. Now, if you don’t do that, that’s just because you don’t want to. That means you’re not going to think about the blue rabbit or touch your nose. I can’t help you. But if you can say, “I’m going to commit to something very bite-sized,” that’s actually a skill that you would learn in three hours. Oh, then pick any language you like. “I want to learn how to say basic things in Italian in three days and three hours.” You will definitely be able to do that.

Hal Elrod: Let me ask you this. On that note, I want to keep unpacking this because I want us to talk about what’s most useful for people to learn right now, relative to the current state of the world relative to where we’re going, and I’ll give you a couple of examples. Like, my wife and I’ve talked to my son, and we’re like, “Hey, plumbing, being electrician, like these are your physical trades that are going to be needed until the robots can do it all,” which someday maybe, right? But it’s like, what are the things that you need to do? And another one, I have a friend, obviously, not a close friend. I’m blanking on his name. But he runs a company called Speaker Lab.

And I was listening to him talk, and he said, “Being a speaker,” which that’s my profession, “That’s an occupation that’s not going to be replaced by AI. Nobody’s going to want to sit in an audience and listen to a keynote that’s not from a human being.” I mean, maybe for novelty, right? But in terms of they’re going to want human beings with real life and human connection and their stories. So, learning how to be a speaker, and you’ve developed extraordinary communication skills through filmmaking and writing and being on marketing and all of that, so that for sure is a skill of yours. So, communication would be one skill.

If you can develop the ability to communicate in person from one human being to another, whether it’s on video or in person, that’s extremely valuable. So, what are some other, based on what you know or what you think, I mean, yeah, you’re brilliant. So, what are some ideas?

Ron Lynch: Well, I appreciate that, but I think communication is critical. And if you met me when I was 20, I couldn’t talk. I was shy. And I was fortunate enough to get into movies, and I had to get over my shyness for that. Fortunately, I was cast as people that were scared, and I was scared. So, communication, though, I think, is absolutely critical for anything. We’re going to thrive on human communication, and I don’t forecast the world down the road to be a world of robots. I actually think that human beings will realize that just like we’re saying, we’re in control. We’re in control of the world, and we’re going to actually reject that at some point. We’re going to go that the machines have their place, and the people have their place, and we’re going to want these trades.

Artisan trades like you described, whether it’s electricians or plumbers or carpenters, or putting a roof on, we’re going to start to have value for our neighbor’s trades. We’re going to go, “I want to live in a village and I want to purchase goods that I know my neighbor made, cheese, flower pots, clothing, footwear, and I want to spend more quality dollars on better built stuff that I bought from an artisan that I know than ordering it from the truck on Amazon and getting another Amazon tree in the form of a box at my porch.” So, I have hope for us culturally that we’ll figure that out.

We’re going through a transitory window, but the transitory window can’t go from we were agricultural in 1900 to we were industrial factory workers in 1940 to we worked in offices in 1995 to none of us do anything but sit at home and watch YouTube and consume things. Like, that’s not a survival of a species. And we know that. So, we’re not going to ultimately accept that, so I wouldn’t have fear of that. It’s this transitory period where everybody’s going, “How’s this going to shake out?” And so, you don’t have control over that, but you do have control whether you can learn how to play a guitar and sing, lower your stress with something like that, or start a craft that these are all very doable things.

And it’s what do I find appealing? What if we solved it somehow, and we went, “Oh, everybody’s getting a UBI,” this universal basic income you hear about. I don’t personally believe that, but let’s just say that was the case, that everybody was getting $100,000 a year to exist, and your insurance was covered. What would you do with your life to be valuable if you could pick? Now, people in trust fund families actually already live this way. We hear about, “Oh, these trust fund kids,” and we think of spoiled kids in Ferraris, but I know a lot of these people, and that’s not what they’re in. A lot of them have actual jobs in the world where they’re working at an endeavor or a charitable where they really care about other people and the result they’re delivering, but it’s always other-centered.

So, I would not go into anything going, “How much money could I make?” I would go into anything going, “How much service can I provide that’s useful?” That enraptures happiness, usefulness, and economy.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I think one of my favorite quotes and philosophies from Zig Ziglar, “You can have everything in life that you want if you help enough other people get what they want.” And I found that to be true. The more value you add, the more value you create, the more valuable you become, and so on. I want to shift gears. I want to ask you this question, and it is the question, what is something that you are aware of that people must be aware of and come to grips with fast?

Ron Lynch: Okay. It’s the number one thing that everybody avoids, and it’s actually an avoidance in our entire culture, and it’s death. The number one most important thing to realize is that you’re mortal, that it’s going to happen to you. When we talk to each other, say someone we know passes away, our instinctive first question is, what did they die from? What caused their death? We don’t go, “Oh my gosh, Jimmy’s dead. I love Jimmy so much. I’m going to miss him.” We have a mechanism in our head that wants to disqualify us, it’s our survival instinct of, “Was he skydiving? Was he on a motorcycle? Did he eat too much bacon?” We come up with a reason that went, “Oh, that happened to him because of that. Therefore, it won’t happen to me. I’m going to lower my safety anxiety. Now, my empathy can come out. I can have compassion about that person.”

Hal Elrod: Ah, but first it’s the survival instinct that comes out. Yeah.

Ron Lynch: Yeah. So, I think that’s the number one thing is go, “Hey, I’m on a clock here.” And when you realize you’re on a clock, you start to take the time more seriously, even the joy. I only have so many hours left in my life to be joyful. At my age, I think I’ve lived something like 21,000 or 22,000 days, and I’m forecast to live about 33,000. So, I’ve lived two-thirds of my life. Most of it is behind me, and I’ve got this stretch in front of me. Now, how am I going to spend it? How much do I really want to spend earning money? How much do I really want to spend making a difference? How much do I want to spend with my family? How much do I want to spend it recreationally and traveling?

And you have to figure out a way to make all of that work. And it doesn’t really matter what age you are. That’s a great thought to have right now is, “This is temporary. I’m on a clock, therefore, I have a responsibility to myself to take control of my life,” because nobody’s going to do it for you. No one’s going to hand you a to-do list and a pile of money and say, “Go get busy until you’re dead.” You have to come up with the to-do list and the money.

Hal Elrod: That’s right.

Ron Lynch: You really do.

Hal Elrod: Until we get UBI. Then just the to-do list.

Ron Lynch: I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, really.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. You’re a very spiritual and/or religious person. You’ve written books that are very spiritual, and you’re a very deep thinker. I think people are probably getting that perspective right now. I want to know, how does your view of faith fit into the da Vinci model that you talked about, into what we’re talking about of having control and agency over our lives? Is your view of faith, is it mysticism? Is it scientific? Is it a blend of both? Talk about that.

Ron Lynch: Sure. It’s a blend of all of it because we clearly live in a physical environment that’s governed by the laws of physics. We don’t even know what the laws of physics are thoroughly, but we know that they are. There’s something. We’re living in a material world. We also know there is enough about the material world mathematically that lines up that tells us there was probably a prime mover. There was something divine outside of this. You know my deck of cards example. Can I give that?

Hal Elrod: Yes, please.

Ron Lynch: If you take a deck of cards and you shuffle a deck of cards, you can see these are pretty old beat up. I grabbed them from the kitchen. And you shuffle them, you get an order there. And there’s 52 cards in a deck. What are the odds that I could mix those cards up and reshuffle them? How many times do I have to reshuffle them to get all 52 cards in the order I just showed you?

Hal Elrod: Maybe a million, 10 million. I don’t know.

Ron Lynch: Yeah, that’s generally what people think. The truth is the odds are one against as many atoms as there are in the universe. That it is actually mathematically impossible as far as we know to get 52 cards to line up twice. Yet you have massive string of DNA that’s unique that lined up to make Hal, as did everybody watching this conversation, which is a much longer string of chemicals of the alphabet than that deck of cards. And you got your deck of cards from your ancestors. So, you had two parents. They shuffled together. You had four grandparents. They shuffled together to make your parents. If you go back 10 generations, it’s something like 2,040 ancestors just 10 generations ago filtered down to your personal unique serial number.

And I’m an investor in a DNA company, so I can tell you your serial number is unique. The entire universe conspired to give you a unique serial number with a unique lifetime that’s imprinted this behavior, this experience you’re having. This recording is going against that. So, I don’t hold my religion over anybody else’s religion. I say that there are a lot of ways that we find God and I understand that there’s many dogmatic people that are very upset when they hear me say that. As a person, they know I’m of Christian faith, of Jewish heritage, and I have a lot of Islamic friends. I can show you places in the Christian Bible where the Jews live, the Muslims live. Even in that Bible in the future, their Koran ends the same way our Bible does. There’s a ton of overlap and the Christians. And I’ve had the experience of being in the Vedic culture with Hindus. So, I understand everybody has a place that they see a creator or science in their life. I accept that there’s people that go, “There’s a mathematical answer to this, and I’m the result of a long sloppy math experiment.” None of that matters to me other than the fact that you realize you are unique and you have value. Us discussing how that happens mystically and scientifically, that’s church to me.

That’s us going, “We know it’s greater than us.” We know that those three wise men in the Bible weren’t Jews, they weren’t Christians, and they were 600 years too early to be Muslims, yet they were told to go to Bethlehem by God. So, apparently, God talks to them all. He’s with all of us. Apparently, if he’s guiding them, he’s guiding us, right? So, I don’t think that the dogma of religion is as useful, and what is probably more useful to God is how we treat each other. Because ultimately, if you zoned in on all of the religions and even if you call Buddhism a philosophy, that’s great, but you take them all and you go, “How do you treat each other?” Forget the rules and forget the warfare and forget the dietary restrictions and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. “How do you treat each other?” is at the fundamental core of that, and I think that God’s present when you’re having that conversation.

Hal Elrod: Love your neighbors yourself, right?

Ron Lynch: The golden rule. It was a trick question that they asked Jesus to try to get him to pick a commandment, and he said, “Ah, golden rule.” He stepped outside of the question and said, “I want you to love each other. Could you do that?”

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I mean, it feels so fundamental, right? You mentioned the dogma. I’m a big fan of going beyond that and trying to go direct to the source through prayer and understanding and intuition and feeling, right? And I think that, I mean, if you ask anybody that has a family, especially if you’re a parent with kids, it’s like, “What’s the most important thing?” Like, your connection with your children is more important than arguably anything else in terms of, like, for me, that’s the intuitive answer that comes up. It’s like my kids, I’d do anything for them. Losing them, nothing would cause me more pain, nothing, than losing them. And if nothing…

Ron Lynch: There’s no greater loss.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. And if there is no greater loss than that love of another human, that must place it on the top of the importance list. Speaking of that, what do you believe, and this is another one of those big, deep questions, but what is our purpose here in life? What do you believe our purpose is in life?

Ron Lynch: Okay. Now, I’m going to have to give you a little bit of a theological answer to that.

Hal Elrod: Okay. All right.

Ron Lynch: And I think it’s useful. Actually, Tucker Max, our friend, pointed this out to me, and I don’t consider him to be a terribly religious person.

Hal Elrod: Definitely not.

Ron Lynch: He’s a really well-read person and a very brilliant person.

Hal Elrod: Yep.

Ron Lynch: Well, we’re having a conversation a couple of years ago, and he pointed to this verse that’s actually John 1:1, which is, “Before this was the word, and I’m the word, and the word was with me.” And I feel like that’s the most buried lead ever because if you analyze it, it says, before all of this happened was this book. And the book was with me. And the book is my story and my path and my rules and my… So, it’s a screenplay. As a filmmaker, I hear that and go, “So, God exists outside of time, and he wrote this book, and he handed the pieces out as people came along through the inspired word of scribing.” Anybody who writes or paints or does music will tell you.

Paul McCartney has said this. I heard Michael Jackson say it when he was alive. I heard Prince say it. I’ve heard writers say it. Spielberg, who I know, I’ve heard him say it. These movies, these songs don’t come from us. They come through us.

Hal Elrod: Yes, I believe that.

Ron Lynch: Just these scribes doing this. So, anybody who’s involved in any kind of art form or sport even understands it comes through you. It’s not of you. So, here he is with this book, and he’s written the entire story of mankind from beginning to end because he is outside of time, and you are in the book. You have a place in this story. So, what is your purpose? Is to be you. And hopefully, you come here as you and you have these experiences and you discover in amongst the physics and the material world and the job and the emotional struggles and earning money, you go, “I’m in a story and there’s somebody else who has their hand on the story. Are you there?”

And we identify, we have a maker. Again, I don’t care what religion you come from. You recognize you have a source, and you identify that source and start to speak to it and say, “I don’t really make good decisions in my life.” Could I invite you in to make some decisions on my behalf? Could you guide me? Could I have some guidance? And with that guidance comes peace, and the anxiety lowers as long as you follow the guide, and the guide will speak to you. So, ultimately, in the Jewish, Christian, Islamic faith, in those three, and possibly in the Vedic phase of Hinduism is, ultimately, you get to an afterlife full of people that were created in a movie that now recognize each other and have relationship, and there is a new kingdom where it is peaceful.

We do love each other. We’ve forgiven each other for our sins, forgiven ourselves for our sins and mistakes, and God was building a culture here. So, an interesting thought related to this death thought of we’re all going to die, probably the stranger thing that I’ll say is I believe we all die at the same time. Because if God exists outside of time and we exit time, then we’re in his presence, so we’ve left time. So, I think of the moment of death, you hear these stories of people, I just read a book on NDE, near-death experiences, which was fabulous. And you hear these stories of people, “Oh, they’re going towards a light.” Oh, and I see people that were before me in my life, my friends, my relatives, people who’ve passed on.

What if that moment is a continuing moment, and we all die at the same time? We’re all actually just arriving there. We’re out of the movie and we’re in the lobby. You never hear those people say, “I saw a light in front of me, and then I turned around and I saw my kids behind me.” But what if that’s the case? And I think that might be it, that the purpose of this is to become us, to become connected to each other, have this amazing intertwining story that covers all of humanity, because all the stories overlap. We are actually all one, and we respect and love each other, and we want to say, “Wow, everybody’s a public speaker now. I could spend forever in the afterlife listening to other stories.” Watching their movie. “Hey, let’s watch Hal’s reel. Let’s see how his life went.”

Hal Elrod: Yeah, that’s a beautiful perspective. And it’s interesting. I’ve done a podcast before about like our beliefs and whether or not it’s as important that they’re true or how they impact us and our existence, right? So, meaning the vision that you have for the afterlife is a beautiful vision, and I mean, I think I was smiling uncontrollably as you were sharing it. I had this overwhelming feeling of peace and joy and love, and that’s useful while we’re here. And that also reminds me of what you talked about where we opened this conversation up with, which is why do you believe people have far more control, far more agency over their lives and themselves. And you said, because think of a blue rabbit, picture a blue rabbit, right? Touch your nose, right?

Create your experience of the afterlife. And it’s essentially that, to me, it goes back to, it’s a question of what do you want your experience of this one life that you’ve been blessed to live on planet Earth? What do you want it to be? And then aligning your thoughts, your words, your actions, your beliefs with what it is that you want to experience in your life. I can’t control what that person says to me or does to me, but I can control whether I am offended by it, angry about it, judgmental, or I’m totally at peace and I feel love toward that person. And so, that’s where I’ve come full circle from the beginning of how do we have control over our lives is like, well, you get to choose your experience of this one life that we’re living.

Ron Lynch: I have an exercise that I think that is useful to your listeners, viewers might be compelled by. I teach a course and in the, I don’t know, through week three or four of the course, I have all of my students write their introduction from God. So, the idea is you die. It’s Friday night in heaven, it’s cocktail hour, and you’re one of the new people. And God’s going to get up in front of the room and he’s going to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, straight from Austin, Texas, in the hill country, we got this guy. He survived car accidents.” And write that. Write your introduction from God. And so, I get these really compelling paragraphs, pages, sometimes two pages that like people, “This is what this life was about.”

So, they write a meaningful story about what their life was about from the perspective of conclusion. And what they do not expect is I read all of them and then the next week I make them go out and buy a frame and frame it and hang it on the wall in their kitchen so that they have to look at it every day, and so does their family. Because now they’ve set some expectations of who they’re going to be and how they’re going to conduct their life. And I said, “Go back and rewrite that once a year.” But that’s making a commitment to yourself of what your life’s going to be. And when you confront yourself with your own truths, you kind of have to walk it.

Hal Elrod: Sure. Yeah. Are you familiar with Matthew Kelly?

Ron Lynch: Mm-hmm.

Hal Elrod: Author?

Ron Lynch: Yeah.

Hal Elrod: So, Matthew, I met him at a Cutco conference he spoke at many years ago. And he wrote a book called The Rhythm of Life, which was very influential for me. And similar to how you described the purpose of life to be you, he just called it the best version of you. Like, the purpose of your life is to become the best version of yourself. And every day that you wake up, you get to make choices, and every choice either moves you closer to the best version of yourself or to a lesser version of yourself. But I think it’s beautiful, the more we can simplify life and our beliefs, and in a way that allows us to do that, to be who we were meant to be, to become the best version of ourselves, I think, is so useful.

I want to leave it open-ended here for you to close us out. Again, you have a lot of wisdom, and you’re one of my favorite people, for those that don’t follow you online. And by the way, I usually read your stuff on Facebook. Is that the best place to, if somebody wants to… In fact, I’ll just ask the question right now. If they want to follow you, soak up your wisdom, keep learning from you because you are always providing timely content, right? It’s like during COVID, you were putting things out that I’m like, “Oh wow,” I not just feel better after reading that. I think clearer. I feel like my perspective has been shifted and heightened.

In fact, the reason I literally text you is I read one of your Facebook posts, as I always do, and I was like, “Why have I not had Ron on the podcast? Like, he’s one of the most brilliant, one of my favorite people to listen to the way that you think and the way that you talk.” So, if somebody wants to continue that, what is the best place for them to do that? And then I’m going to just let you leave us with whatever you think would be valuable for us to noodle on after the podcast is over.

Ron Lynch: Sure. So, yeah, I’m easy to find on Facebook under my name, Ron Lynch. And then I do have a website where I have some books that I’ve written and things that might be of interest, if you like that, and more to come. And that’s at RonnyLynch.com. R-O-N-N-Y.

Hal Elrod: Ronny Lynch?

Ron Lynch: Yeah, R-O-N-N-Y L-Y-N-C-H dot com. So, I have that website, and it’s got a number of different types of things to read. And there’s an email sign-up there. I send an email a quarter. I’m not a person that sends emails every day, so I don’t inundate people with that stuff. So, ask me your question again, but make it super simple for me.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. What do you want to leave people with? What’s a thought, a perspective? And it could be even repeating something that you already shared today and just reminding people of like, “Hey, this is what I think would be the most valuable thing for you to be thinking about for the rest of today, and beyond.”

Ron Lynch: It is this idea of emotional choice. I think that’s the thing. Now, happiness is elusive, and happiness happens in opposition to other things, right? We have sadness, we have happiness. We have a mundane life. We have a moment of we have a birthday party. It’s happy, whatever. You see somebody we haven’t seen in a while. So, happiness kind of floats in and floats out. It doesn’t seem like we can really get a grip on that, but joy is not the same. Joy is something we can opt into. You could put me in prison, and I would be the most joyful prisoner by choice. I can sit in a doctor’s office waiting after they’ve abused my time and still be joyful and still be kind to the people that are there.

And I think that when we go, first of all, we have joy accessible to us, and two, we’re running on software somehow. I think we’re these radios that think we’re the radio. You’re a signal that’s playing in this appliance that takes in a lot of sensory data. So, you tend to think you’re the appliance itself, but as you know, when you were in your accident, there are parts of your body you couldn’t feel for a period of time right there. We know people that have gone through IEDs and had a leg blown off, and they’re not the leg that’s missing. They’re not less people. They’re the signal.

So, if you are the signal and you can choose joy, then you always have connection to your creator, which means you always have connection to yourself and a higher power to get through and choose joy because it’s optional. And just opt into that even in the worst of circumstances. And you can be joyful at a funeral. You can be that weirdo that, “I love them so much,” is the right answer. So, I think that opting into joy whenever it’s actually bleak is one of the best skills. That’s like lighting a match in the darkness.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. Reminds me of Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, right, that he was in the Nazi concentration camp and realized the last of man’s freedom is to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances. And Ronny Lynch would choose joy, and I would hope to follow in your lead in any and all, even the most difficult circumstances, which a lot of people are in challenging circumstances right now. But you are in control of your life because you are in control of what you choose to experience in every moment or in as many moments as possible. And, Ron, I think that choosing joy as a fundamental state of consciousness, if you will, makes a lot of sense to me. So, thank you, brother. I love you. I appreciate you. I’m so grateful that we finally got to have this conversation.

Ron Lynch: Yeah. I’m honored to have been here. Thank you very much.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. And until next time, I will see you again. Hopefully, I’ll be at your place or you’ll be at my place for my next 4th of July party whenever our paths cross in person next. I look forward to that always.

Ron Lynch: I think I might have a…

Hal Elrod: Oh, what’d you say?

Ron Lynch: I think I might have a rooster for you.

Hal Elrod: Oh, I don’t. My wife does not like roosters. She will take hens. Roosters, you can ask her. Yeah. You can shoot her a text. Ask her if she wants a rooster, but it’s normally a no. Yeah. Our rooster, Ken, is a punk, man. He squares up. If we get too close to him, he squares up and he’ll come flying and pecking at you and, you know. Yeah. But maybe.

Ron Lynch: All right. Well, I look forward to seeing you in person soon. We’ll have another meeting.

Hal Elrod: All right. Goal achievers. I love you so much. Thank you for tuning in. His name, Ron Lynch, aka Ronny Lynch. Very few people would call him Ronald Lynch, but that’s an option. You can go to his website at RonnyLynch.com. That’s R-O-N-N-Y L-Y-N-C-H. And I’m telling you, opt into his newsletter, you’re going to get one a quarter. He’s not going to bombard you with stuff. Ron adds tremendous value, and that is one thing I can tell you, if you notice from today, is his words are carefully chosen and especially when they’re in writing. Like, he’s one of the most brilliant writers you’ll ever have the pleasure of reading, and he will improve your perspective and therefore, your life. I love you so much! And I will talk to you next week. Take care, everybody!

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