SNS 80 Interview with Ernest Prabhakar of 2transform.us
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 80.
[00:00:05] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:00:05] Hi everyone. This is Arnie provoker. This is your chance to invest in yourself. Invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world, but using your time, talent and treasures to live out your calling. This is a great chance to find the opportunity to become the Christian.
[00:00:22] You always want it to be, and to be inspired, to be the best version of yourself. Listen to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader.
[00:00:38] so some people tell you to follow your heart, but what I would tell you is. Follow your aorta. And the reason I use AR is one because of the bad joke, but also because it's an acronym aorta stands for ambition, openness risks, thankfulness and awareness.
[00:01:00] [00:01:00] Scott Maderer: [00:01:00] Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:01:05] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be. Then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
[00:01:32] And tonight Saturday night special. I interview Ernie Lockhart about his journey from physicist to spiritual entrepreneur. And what that means. I also ask Ernie to share how you reconcile science and religion, and Ernie also shares a great resource and a mindset that can really help you grow your impact.
[00:01:51] Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. [00:02:00] Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done.
[00:02:25] What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality. Cause the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type.
[00:02:43] But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com [00:03:00] slash launch. Ernie provoca is a ninth generation Christian and second generation immigrant from India.
[00:03:08] His ancestors converted from, into Islam in the early 17 hundreds at the Dawn of the Protestant missionary movement and his family immigrated to Chicago in 1967, a few months before he was born. He was raised and confirmed in the Lutheran church. Whereas parents continue to be active in lay ministry.
[00:03:26] Ernie holds a degree in physics from both Caltech and MIT though, for the last decade, he has worked as a product manager for a large technology company in Silicon Valley. And. Apple acquired that company in 1997. So Ernie was initially hired as a summer contractor because of his Unix background, but he Rose up to a senior Rhapsody product manager within six months.
[00:03:51] Actually because the rest of the department was laid off and he was instrumental in the launch of the max O S tin server, as well as [00:04:00] Darwin and various other projects until 2014. He continued to work on that and focus on open source web 2.0 grid computing, all these other geeky technologies in line with his scientific background.
[00:04:13] But he was also one of the key leaders of the Apple Christian fellowship, which sponsored speaker socials and other events to help believers at Apple bring their whole person into the marketplace. And Ernie works to show that both scientist's desire to elegantly represent eternal truth and the marketer's passion to communicate timely facts that engage the emotions and the will since then Ernie has pivoted and become what he calls a spiritual entrepreneur.
[00:04:40] He currently works in it at a smart car startup in Palo Alto, and he continues to dream of in innovative ways to spread the kingdom of God. He and his wife Santi live with their two children in Santa Clara, California. They attend Kingsway community church in San Jose, where Ernie serves as a junior elder.
[00:05:05] [00:05:00] Ernie. Welcome to the show.
[00:05:07] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:05:07] Hi Scott. Great to be here. Wonderful to meet you and your audience.
[00:05:11] Scott Maderer: [00:05:11] It is awesome to have you here. So as we just talked a little bit about in the introduction, you find yourself in an interesting place as a Christian. And as a physicist, I get some of the same questions.
[00:05:23] I, we've talked about. I have a degree in biochemistry. I have a degree in genetics, all this hard science background. And then I'm also a Christian. So how do you reconcile religion and science in your own mind and in your own life?
[00:05:37]Ernie Prbhakar: [00:05:37] Really appreciate this question because I have not practiced physics for, 25 years.
[00:05:42] But when I was a physicist studying at Caltech, I would get this question quite a lot. And it always confused me. And looking back, I realized why is that? I always view science and religion as tools. And they're complimentary tools with our own [00:06:00] aerobars and areas of clarity and areas of confusion, but it occurred to me that a lot of people treat science and religion as authority.
[00:06:09] And when you have a scientific authority and a religious authority that disagree with each other, Feels like science and religion are in conflict, especially if those leaders are somewhat insecure about their position and feel threatened by the other as has been the case at many various times in history.
[00:06:26] But from my perspective, I don't worship religion. I don't worship science. I worship Jesus and. Science and religion are traditions and tools that are incredibly useful and powerful and each have their own strengths and weaknesses. And so I've never really felt like there was any real conflict between the methodologies.
[00:06:46]The way I would describe it to my freshmen students when I was teaching lab class is the real difference is between good faith and bad faith. So what do a scientist good fake means? I believe this is true. So [00:07:00] let me create an experiment to test that and demonstrate that it's true as opposed to saying this is true.
[00:07:07] So you should not question it. That to me is bad faith and you can have good faith and bad faith in science or religion or in politics. And so that's just how I look at the world.
[00:07:18]Scott Maderer: [00:07:18] And I think, again, when this when we're talking about this is early in 2021 we've been living through COVID and politics and all of the overlap and all of the various.
[00:07:33] Debates about what is the truth and what is it, the truth. And who's lying and who's telling the truth. And I think it's the interesting, I like I've had this conversation before where I'm like, science is biased. Of course it's biased. It has people in it. Therefore there's bias.
[00:07:50] Differences. A lot of times science is, it is somewhat, self-correcting not perfectly self-correcting, it always takes time sometimes way longer than it should. [00:08:00] But at, over time it begins to bubble out and become somewhat self-correcting. And I think religion can be the same way and that, again, are there bad actors in religion?
[00:08:11] Yep because there's people, but over time they began to, bubble out truth and goodness too.
[00:08:22] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:08:22] Yeah. And that's the challenge is that ironically, the more robust the system. Often the less adaptive it is. And that's one of the reasons, especially since COVID, I've really been pursuing this concept of resilience or anti-fragility, and that you don't want to be fragile, but you don't want to be too strong and too certain either.
[00:08:43] And it's a, quite a personal and historic quest, try not to try to understand which things are worth holding on to, and which things you need to let go of because they're not working anymore.
[00:08:56]Scott Maderer: [00:08:56] And it's that idea of a tree that doesn't bend in the wind will break in a [00:09:00] storm where the tree that has some flexibility will last.
[00:09:03]Yeah. So you now talk about yourself. You mentioned you haven't been doing physics for a long time and the phrase that you use to describe yourself to me and in the intro is that of being a spiritual entrepreneur. That's one of those things where it invites the obvious question, what the heck is that?
[00:09:23] And why does it matter to people?
[00:09:25]Ernie Prbhakar: [00:09:25] It's funny in some ways that it comes out of this tension of between religion and science and my search for absolutes and my coming of age in the eighties and nineties and the way I described myself more generally, Is, I am a human systems designer or an anthro physicist.
[00:09:47] And that I use the tools and training I got from my physical education to understand human systems. And so I've studied disruption theory and I studied entrepreneurship and I was at Apple for 17 years [00:10:00] and it gave me a really rich understanding of. How things could be different than what they are and how things could be come different than what they are.
[00:10:08] And I realized in the story I tell is that when I joined Apple, it was six months from bankruptcy. And Steve jobs said, we're going to make a turnaround that they're going to write about in the business books. And we said, you asked her Steve, whatever reality distortion field, Turns out he was right.
[00:10:26] He knew something I did not. And I spent a long time studying him and studying what happened at Apple through that lens. And then it occurred to me, there are days and I such an almost literal now where the church seems about six months away from bankruptcy. And I said, we have some incredibly rich and powerful traditions, but some of those Wells are going dry.
[00:10:48] And we need to dig new ones. And so a spiritual entrepreneurship that the key aspect for me is that I tried to solve human problems. That involve values, not just [00:11:00] convenience, not just time, not just money, but truly about human problems that involve values. And I try to bring an entrepreneurial lens into it.
[00:11:06] And the reason for that is all of the existing systems we have. There's a great saying. All of our systems are perfectly designed to get the results they're currently getting. And if you want it to get a different result, you need a different system, which means you have to change. The assumptions you are operating in.
[00:11:25]The difficulty is people in theology have a really ugly word. For innovation beginning with the letter H . Yes, exactly. Yeah.
[00:11:34] Scott Maderer: [00:11:34] And depending on when you get, you have that word yelled at you, you may get a little warm around the collar during
[00:11:41] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:11:41] certain times. Yeah. And so this is, so for me, COVID has been great is that people have been distracted with lots of other things.
[00:11:47] And so there's a lot of chances to innovate and try new and different things. And so that's kinda what it means to be a chop. Hunter is trying to figure out. What does human beings actually need to live flourishing lives and how do [00:12:00] we design or inspire, or even build tools and prototypes and art to help people create and live in those kinds of systems.
[00:12:12] So I've worked with a bunch of different startups. I've worked with different churches and mission agencies, and that's my quest is to figure out how to Help human beings thrive in new ways as we enter the 21st century unprecedented opportunities and challenges.
[00:12:27]Scott Maderer: [00:12:27] Yeah. And that's it's interesting because I'll use it example out of my own life just because that's the easiest thing for me to do.
[00:12:35] But so I'm part of a networking organization known as BNI business network international. And when COVID hit the, what. The for 35 years, the history of BNI had been, you go to a weekly meeting in person, 35, 40 other people sit in the room, pass business, help each other, grow our business. And literally all of a sudden it's like we can't do this.
[00:12:59][00:13:00] And within a very short time, they created a new system. But I, every chapter got free online access set up a agenda for it, gave us tools, said, here's how you can do your, keep doing what you're doing online. And a lot of people don't enjoy it. A lot of people don't like it because there's challenges online.
[00:13:23] Amen. And however, I like to point out to people, there's challenges about the in-person meeting too. You seem to be forgetting was, I used to complain about that too. Now you're complaining about a lot, but what's interesting is even in the midst of COVID, even with everything that was going on, even with all the disruption, even with shutting down for almost a month, while they figured this out and got the new systems up and running.
[00:13:46] More business was passed within BNI in 2020 than any year previous. Wow. And it's now that's across the world. That's worldwide. So it's not, it obviously varies in different places. It's worse than [00:14:00] some and better than others, but that idea of taking disruption event. Have a robust organization pivot and it works.
[00:14:10] And yet I know other organizations that have completely shut down and struggled and that's not an accusation to them. That's not saying they didn't do anything right or wrong, but it's interesting how a disruptive event like that can create those sorts of challenges.
[00:14:24] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:14:24] Yeah. That's a great example.
[00:14:28] And I think that this is the one of these inflection points in the world. Like the internet, like the industrial revolution, where organizations that adapt and try to find new ways to do things better will out-compete those that try to return to the,
[00:14:46] Scott Maderer: [00:14:46] so another thing that you mentioned is you've described yourself. As becoming a Christian. And I really resonate with that because I've actually used those exact same [00:15:00] words to describe myself in that I don't think I'm fully formed yet. So can you unpack a little bit about what that means to you and why that's important to you and share a little bit about your journey, coming to faith as
[00:15:13] well?
[00:15:15] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:15:15] Yeah. So I grew up in a, in some ways the traditional Christian family, my family has been Christian for nine generations, actually all the way back to the beginnings of Protestant missions in India. And so I was baptized in a Methodist church with my parents soon after they arrived in the U S when I was born here.
[00:15:31] And then probably my first professional faith was at a Baptist youth camp at age eight. But very much, that was like a, yeah, I agree with this. It was an intellectual sort of a thing. And then it was only in my teens when I hit a real series of personal crises that I really felt a deep sense of despair.
[00:15:48] Was self-aware of going through junior high, which was extremely traumatic. And so I cried out to God. None of this makes any sense. If you can do something, please do. [00:16:00] And so that was a real sort of emotional cry out to God. But then every decade, since then, I feel like I'm discovering new layers of what it means to follow Jesus and who Jesus is discovering psychology in my twenties, I think about codependency and dysfunctional behavior and things like that.
[00:16:15]Dealing with some addictions in my thirties and really dealing with some deep pain and anger and Scott that I hadn't really confronted and coming to grips with who I am as a human being and in my forties really pressing into getting beyond my initial tradition and really interacting with people from different faiths, different denominations, different backgrounds, and really learned to appreciate that they knew things that I did not, and that I wouldn't necessarily want to change, my background or my heritage, because I think it has some key advantages.
[00:16:46] I also realized that how some distinct disadvantages and there's a lot to be learned from there. And what's interesting to me, as I've been going through a bunch of exercises during COVID with various friends and relatives, the thing that I've discovered is that [00:17:00] Jesus is actually more important than I thought he was.
[00:17:05]But not, but. But Jesus himself is important. My ideas about Jesus are much less. So it's a really interesting shift from the intellectual to the spiritual and the experiential and the relational, and just the practical little details of how I relate to myself, how I relate to my kids is what does it mean for me to see Jesus in those encounter experiences and interactions?
[00:17:28]
[00:17:28] Scott Maderer: [00:17:28] Oh and I think that, that personal relationship part Again, getting back to the first question of that religion versus science question. I think as a scientist it's very easy to think that we'll approach everything in a very rational intellectual way. And I don't know about you,
[00:17:45] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:17:45] but that lasts about three months in my marriage.
[00:17:52] Scott Maderer: [00:17:52] I didn't say we could do it. I just said,
[00:17:55] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:17:55] I really thought it would work
[00:17:59] Scott Maderer: [00:17:59] well, but I [00:18:00] think that's where that comes in is all of a sudden you discover that there's this whole other dimension that and the marriage example is actually a great one because it is that it is a personal relationship.
[00:18:11] And I don't think it's an either or either. I think it's a both. And in other words, I don't think there's anything wrong with intellectual. Pursuits and thinking about religion and Jesus and theology and all of these other things. But I also think you also have to recognize that there's a personal relationship part and they're both good.
[00:18:30] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:18:30] Yeah. We all like to think about it. Digital is a superstructure on the analog. So the digital world of information and knowledge and mathematics. And things like that is really important, but it's really just a thin skin over the rich polyp, which is the analog, the experiential, the emotional, the feeling, the visceral, and like it's really powerful.
[00:18:55] And if you have the right tools and the right insights, it can have a lot of leverage. But it's [00:19:00] not the real thing. The phrase they used to teach us was don't eat the menu.
[00:19:06]Scott Maderer: [00:19:06] Especially in certain fast food restaurants, it looks nothing like the real food. So maybe you'd be better off eating the menu. I don't know. I've been to a few restaurants where I've been better off eating the menu now that I think about it. So one of the questions I like to ask everybody is.
[00:19:26] About this stewardship. I, of course my brand inspired stewardship obviously stewardship is a lens through which I run a lot of things. But I've also discovered that's a term and a word that for a lot of different people means a lot of different things. So for you, can you define how that, what that word means to you and what has it played out in your life?
[00:19:47] Give us some examples of that.
[00:19:50] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:19:50] No, I'm going to say that for me. The phrase, the part of that phrase that really has hit me most powerfully is this idea of self stewardship [00:20:00] that I am not my own. And especially having been so incredibly privileged to have a job and a safe home during COVID and very much aware of those who don't.
[00:20:11]I find myself asking what does God have for me? I don't want to feel guilty or be steamed about it or embarrassed by it even, but I want to be responsible. And the sense of that, even my health, my psychology they're not just mine. Everything I do is deep impact on my wife, my children, my coworkers, my community, my country, my church.
[00:20:35] And so for me, stewardship is. He was starting from a place of identity of being loved by God, but I don't have to prove myself or earn anything or justify myself, but from there saying, okay, given that what gifts could I give to the world and how can I be a steward of all the resources and connections and educational opportunity that I have, and, bring glory to God, bring flourishing to humanity and, [00:21:00] make people's lives better for having interacted with me.
[00:21:05]Scott Maderer: [00:21:05] Is that something that you've always felt that way? Or is this something that you've come to over the years? I think
[00:21:11]Ernie Prbhakar: [00:21:11] I've always had a sense of, for lack of a better word, selfish, alienation. I think that was why I had my sort of emotional crisis in my teens is. And so at that point it was like, nothing that I've been told about myself or reality really seems to make much sense.
[00:21:29] So trying to live for myself is stupid. And when I've tried, it has been Diverting, but fruitless. And so it's been a general understanding that hopefully I'm getting better at the practice of is that the only there's wonderful Eric Barker talks about the three types of meaning in life.
[00:21:49] There's the meaning of pleasure or having fun. There's the value of growth or mastery recently and competence, [00:22:00] and then there's the value of meaning or love and service to others. And I think that for me actually all of them, no, I see through this lens of stewardship, is that.
[00:22:11]Obviously service to others, but also self development and self character growth is a form of stewardship. And even pleasure is a former stewardship. The things that we choose to enjoy are the things that we celebrate and elevate and the ways that we enjoy them they teach our body what we value.
[00:22:29] And so somebody, I see all of those things as different dimensions of stewardship. I've always used that word, but I've always had that consciousness. About reality.
[00:22:39]Scott Maderer: [00:22:39] And I would say with the pleasure part of the stewardship, where. Where your treasure is there.
[00:22:44] Your heart will be is a lot of times we think of it the other way around, where our heart is, that's where we'll put our treasure, but that's not actually what that says,
[00:22:56] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:22:56] but not with our dogs because we use pleasure, and food [00:23:00] to reward them to can we start behaviors? And so that's, I got a lot of therapy out of our dog trainer when she comes to visit us. Because the way she talks about putting the dogs and training of the dogs, there's so many applications to parenting, to self nurture, to discipleship.
[00:23:15]Scott Maderer: [00:23:15] Not saying that we're dogs, that's not what he said. Just to be clear before
[00:23:20] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:23:20] anyone gets upset. My dream is to someday become the person my dog
[00:23:24] Scott Maderer: [00:23:24] thinks I am. Yeah, I agree. I've also said if there is such a thing as reincarnation, I want to come back as a dog with a good owner. That's what I want to come back as.
[00:23:36]So you know you work a lot in this idea of system in engineering. We talked earlier about this the spiritual entrepreneurship and how this journey is that you've been working. On figuring out, how to make human systems better, how to make people's lives better. So using that as the lens, if somebody really wants to, what I call, make a dent in the [00:24:00] universe, make an impact on the world, whatever that is for them.
[00:24:03]What are some of the top principles or ideas or areas that you think they should be focusing on so that they can really learn to do this?
[00:24:11] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:24:11] I got a good one for you. So some people tell you. To follow your heart. And I think that's close, but what I would tell you is follow your aorta, which biology majors, that's the big artery that comes out of your heart that carries all the block.
[00:24:27] And the reason I use it is one cause of the bad joke, but also because it's an acronym. So this is something I developed a couple of years ago that just to describe my own dirty and I've been using with other people a artist stands for ambition. Openness risk, thankfulness and awareness. So the idea is that you start with your ambition and it doesn't really matter what the ambition is.
[00:24:53] And as long as something that you believe is good. And then, and that's important to just understand [00:25:00] from yourself what you actually believe is, but this is something I like the word passion in the sense that it's something worth suffering for. This is important enough to you and good enough of the world that you're willing to undergo pain to make it happen.
[00:25:12] Okay. So that's the ambition part, but the second thing is that what's really, yes, this is the thing I really care about. Then you have to practice openness. You have to be willing to listen to all the reasons why it wouldn't work. All the people who've done it before. All the obstacles that you don't overcome in order to make this a reality.
[00:25:29] And that's hard and it's hard. You have to really love this thing enough to be willing to endure most people. I know either they knew a thing or they run off half cocked and I've done them more than a few times myself. And then the third thing is then. Okay. Once you've actually heard all the difficulties, all the opportunities, all the best practices, all the worst practices, then you have to embrace risk.
[00:25:53]I like to define faith as wise risk in that if there is no risk, then there's really nothing of [00:26:00] value happening. But you want to actually do this after you've gone through all the openness after you could win eyes wide open, then you have to take the plunge and actually try something and make the risk.
[00:26:09] And then the fourth step is in some ways even harder, it is to be thankful because when you risk, you will often fail. Or even if you succeed that can almost be even more devastating because you fail to learn and to have the attitude of gratitude is essential to be able to learn from both success and failure.
[00:26:34]As I was a Kipling who said, meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters, just the same. In fact, one of the most powerful things that I realized was in terms of dealing with shame and that shame isn't in my experience and titled learning. When you feel badly about something you don't want to think about it, your brain refuses to learn, and that's why people tend to get stuck in various unhealthy loops different kinds.
[00:27:00] [00:26:59] And and it's not an easy thing, but developing a discipline of thankfulness and there's very spiritual things like forgiveness and so forth that are associated with that is essential to actually maximizing the learning from the risks you take. And then the last piece which isn't somebody at the beginning, but it's also the end is a greater awareness, is that as we've got through say, ah, now I understand much more about who I am about my strengths and my weaknesses and what I really want.
[00:27:27] And I also understand much better what the world needs and who is already doing a good job and where there are holes where nobody is doing anything that I might be able to make a difference in. And then you go back and you start the whole aorta practice all over again, as you with hopefully a deeper understanding you often fewer resources, but greater wisdom.
[00:27:47] And then you have to build your way back up. But. And the best advice I can give is, if you buy this theory is to try to do it as quickly and cheaply as possible. Do just very small risks with a fast [00:28:00] learning cycle. When I did my startup, it was three months and $30,000 and it was a glorious learning experience, but not a commercial success, but I'm still really glad that I managed to learn in three months and $32,000.
[00:28:12] What I have friends who took two years and $2 million to learn, yep. And the and that's, especially if you're younger or if you're currently unemployed for various reasons, your opportunity cost is low. So take risks and don't take foolish risks, take wise risk, but do the things that will really help you.
[00:28:30]You have to risk the thing that matters. A lot of the things people will do, they'll do all the safe, comfortable stuff first and put the risky stuff off to the air. You want to pull the risk forward and do the riskiest stuff soonest so that if you're wrong, you find out right away. And you don't waste a lot of time and learning how to dance with the risk.
[00:28:48] My friend, Seth Goden, Wednesday friend acquaintance, Seth Godin is a famous marketing guru, talks a lot about dancing with the fear and developing that habit of mine can be hugely exponentially [00:29:00] valuable in helping you to actually make the right dent at the right time.
[00:29:07] Scott Maderer: [00:29:07] And a couple of things came to mind, as you were talking about the first one is the quick and cheap and kind of experiment and iterate ideas.
[00:29:15] So the coaching group that I'm part of, one of the expressions that we actually use in our group is go sell some soap. And it actually comes out of a client story where there's a client, they had a job doing things. They weren't real happy with it, and they wanted to start something on their own and they threw out the idea of I make these home, this homemade soap, maybe I could sell it.
[00:29:40] And, first I need to come up with a website and then I need to do all of it, and basically they started spinning out the 2,742 things they needed to do before they could quote, start the business, and literally the coach looked at him and said, no, what you need to do is go sell some soap.
[00:29:58] It's [00:30:00] basically, wait, let's start over the process. Yeah. Whether than wait time and energy and wasted building. And at this point you don't even know if you're going to like it. You don't know if it's going to work, run the experiment instead. But that is a, it's an interesting thing that I don't think most of us as human beings want to do it that way.
[00:30:19] Ernie Prbhakar: [00:30:19] Yeah we, I think the I've often been accused of having ego to burn with my background. And in fact, I looked at it and says, yeah, actually the goal of a startup and I come from the startup community. It's basically to burn ego to by learning. Okay. And I've got to a point where I've actually burned all my ego and the completely depleted, which is it took some doing.
[00:30:40]But I think once you realize that is the discipline you're in, it's not about getting facts or gaining assets, it's really about burning ego to, by learning and facing your fears and your insecurities. And that's why for me, actually, I love sports entrepreneurship not even so much because of the money and the impact, but just because of the character [00:31:00] development.
[00:31:00] I mean for our generation, it's really the closest we have to going to war where you can really be faced with an existential crisis and really been forced to ask who you are and what do you really believe in? And.