Hi friends I am so grateful that you have accepted the invitation to join the Easier Ways community on Skool. It's been a learning experience for me, and I hope you have gleaned something valuable. That said, I am going to put the Skool community on pause while I create a book. The tentative title is "Easier Ways; Stories of Recovering the Joy of Living." If you have a story about your fresh start in life that has led to a new joy of living, I would love to explore the possibility of collaborating in the book's writing or recording a conversation for a podcast. And of course, I can always be reached on Facebook or you can email me at randyhyden@gmail.com Randy

Humility and honesty are two sides of the same coin, and here’s why: both require you to drop the façade and face reality as it is, not as you wish it to be. Humility isn’t about thinking less of yourself or pretending to be smaller than you are. It’s about stripping away the ego-driven nonsense that makes you inflate your accomplishments or ignore your flaws. It’s admitting, "Hey, I don’t have all the answers, and that’s okay." And honesty? It’s the same thing, just pointed outward. Honesty says, “Here’s the unvarnished truth, even if it’s uncomfortable.” It’s being real about who you are, what you want, and what you’ve screwed up along the way. When you’re honest with yourself, humility naturally follows because the truth has a way of cutting through all the ego-stroking B.S. The reason these two concepts are inseparable is simple: you can’t be truly honest without being humble, and you can’t be humble without being honest. If you’re too busy pretending you’ve got it all together, you’ll never admit the truth to yourself or anyone else. And if you’re too afraid to be honest, you’ll never see the value in stepping back and saying, “I could be wrong here.” At the end of the day, humility and honesty are what keep you grounded.

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Alright, so let’s talk about wonder and awe—two things we all used to have in spades as kids but somehow managed to lose somewhere along the way between taxes and scrolling through Twitter at 2 a.m. These days, wonder and awe are like those rare birds you only hear about in nature documentaries—beautiful, fleeting, and barely seen in the wild. And the thing is, without them, life starts feeling pretty damn flat. It’s like going through life in black and white when you know color exists. So, that’s the mission here: to help people recover that spark, that sense of “holy crap, life is amazing,” even if it’s a bit messed up most of the time. Because here’s the thing—wonder and awe aren’t just nice little add-ons. They’re fuel. They’re what make us feel alive, connected, and actually excited to get out of bed in the morning. Without them, you’re just grinding, going through the motions, thinking the next promotion or the next “perfect” relationship will give you that feeling. Spoiler alert: it won’t. Helping people recover wonder and awe means digging beneath the “what’s wrong with me?” questions and getting back to the “what’s actually right with life?” part of ourselves that we’ve ignored for way too long. It’s about learning how to see again—to notice the little things, the beauty in the ordinary, and the magic in what we already have. We’re talking about breaking out of the mental boxes we’ve put ourselves in, the labels and expectations, and all the noise that makes life feel so heavy. It’s about peeling all that back and finding a part of ourselves that can still look at the world and say, “Whoa.” Because when we see the world with that kind of curiosity and awe, suddenly everything starts to feel more possible.

Here’s the truth: being human is freaking hard. Now, that might sound obvious, but think about it—since we were kids, we’ve been sold this idea that if we just get enough money, love, or control over things, life will magically smooth out. But reality doesn't work that way. Eventually, life smacks us upside the head and reminds us that "hard" doesn’t even begin to cover it. Life can throw stuff at us that makes “hard” feel like a cute little understatement. We spend a lot of our time trying to escape it—distracting ourselves, numbing ourselves, setting impossible goals so we feel “worthy.” But when you dig down, most of that comes from one core thing: we don’t feel safe in who we are. We don’t trust that we’re enough just as we are. If you want to feel safer in your own skin, you’ve got to quit running from discomfort and learn to be okay with it. And no, I’m not talking about some toxic positivity nonsense. I’m talking about not fighting reality, not pretending things are better than they are. It’s about accepting the complexities of life and facing it without denial or sugar-coating. Think about it: life isn’t going to stop being unpredictable or difficult. We can’t change that. But what we can change is how we respond to it. That starts with letting go of the idea that you need to control or fix everything to feel secure. First, start by being honest about what you can and can’t control. Most of our anxiety comes from trying to control things that are out of our hands—what other people think, what might happen tomorrow, what the world looks like five years from now. But trying to manage all that is like trying to hold water in your hands. Instead, focus on the things you can control, like how you spend your time today, who you surround yourself with, and how you talk to yourself when things go sideways. Next, learn to sit with uncomfortable feelings rather than trying to dodge them. Think of it like building emotional muscle. When you’re afraid, sit with that fear. When you’re insecure, face it. Don’t try to avoid it; you’re just prolonging the struggle. Talk with someone trustworthy. The more you practice, the more you realize you can handle way more than you thought—and that’s what really builds confidence.