“The calling is bigger than just yourself, it’s more of a deep cause.” -Nate Peo
Deep and genuine conversations lead to great relationships. You never know how people can suddenly appear in your life for the sole purpose of telling you the right words at the right time to change your life. We can be that person to someone too. Tune in as Art and Nate Peo answers the why’s and how’s of becoming that great influence that you are born to be. They also talk about why you should not fear rejections, be grateful for your experiences both the good and the bad ones, and shift to a positive perspective. In this episode, Art also gives us bonus bits of his love life. Tune in if you’re curious about how he met his first wife. Never underestimate your influence on a person. If you can impact just one person in the world, that means seeing this whole world change.
.
Listen to the podcast here:
Highlights:
01:13 The All-In Journey
05:25 Just Do It! – How To Make A Good Start
13:00 Your Level Of Reach
18:00 Let Your Experiences Lead You
24:00 Change Of Perspectives Lead To Great Relationships
32:02 Don’t Fear Rejections
34:39 How Art Met His First Wife
42:38 A Journey To Meet Interesting Influences
Our journey involves meeting many different people along the way. Other than just passing them by, we could do more! Join in as @myexpectation and @therealnatepeo reveals how you can expand your level of influence! #masteryourexpectations… Click To Tweet
Resources:
Books
Quotes:
“The greater our expectations are, the greater our performance is.” Art Costello
“The calling is bigger than just yourself, it’s more of a deep cause.” -Nate Peo
“Your level of influence doesn’t have to be enormous… The numbers don’t matter. It’s more of the difference you’re making in people’s lives.” -Nate Peo
“Each one of us has something to teach this world that will change it. But people again are so fearful to say anything to anybody.” -Art Costello
“You are unique; your story is interesting and it’s going to influence some people.” -Nate Peo
“Everybody’s journey has value. It has lessons that we all can learn from it. And it gives us the sense of community that we’re far more alike than we are different.” -Art Costello
“Be open and change your outlook on who’s talking to you because you just never know.” Nate Peo
“If you’re trying to cram a message down somebody’s throat and they don’t want to hear it, it’s not going to go well.” -Nate Peo
“I believe that God has planted the seed of expectation in every one of us, it’s how we grow. It’s how we become who we are. And that’s why it’s so important.” -Art Costello
Meet Nate:
Nate Peo is a successful construction professional. He serves as the Purchasing and Construction Agent for a successful California-based real estate company. His career includes working as a Purchasing Manager, Project Engineer, all within the country’s most competitive market. He earned his MBA in Business Administration from Pepperdine and a BS in Construction Management from the University of Nebraska. On the side, he also hosts The All-In Podcast. The bravest thing about Nick is that he’s a proud dad, a loving husband, and a motivated fitness enthusiast.
Transcription:
Art Costello: Welcome to the Shower Epiphanies Podcast. Nate Peo was my guest today. Nate has been a successful construction professional. He’s a fellow podcaster. He is on a journey that I’m really, really loving and interested in, and he’s got a lot of great things to say about it. He serves as the Purchasing and Construction for a successful California-based real estate company. His career includes working as a purchasing manager, project engineer, all within the country’s most competitive market. He earned his M.B.A. in Business Administration from Pepperdine and a B.S. in Construction Management from the University of Nebraska. The bravest thing about Nick is that he’s a proud dad, loving husband, and a motivated fitness enthusiast. Nate, thank you to the show.
Nate Peo: Well, thank you for having me.
Art Costello: To let everybody know, we tried this one time before, a week before this battle went on with Zoom and we’re gonna try it again, and this is going to be great. Nate, can you start out by telling us your story, what, how your journey has gone?
Nate Peo: Yeah. So for me, I’ve been on this experiment these last few months. What happens if you push all the chips in, you go all in on pursuing the best version of you possible, or living up to what you believe your expectations are. And I’ve had a lot of success in my career, but I’ve also had this feeling that I didn’t do everything I possibly could because I’d let self doubt get my way. I would do things and then stop doing it because I would get uncomfortable. I think, Hey, maybe this doesn’t fall in line with my career goals. Maybe it’s too different. Maybe it’s too personal so I’d push it to the side. But then this idea would always pick back up that said, Hey, I want to do more with myself. I think I can be a bigger influence on people’s lives, but I have to get over this uncomfortable feeling with myself. So this year I decided like, Hey, I’m going to go all in. I’m going to do things that really pushed me outside of my comfort zone, which includes, for me, I feel like my gift is meeting as many people as I can and be an influence in their lives. So part of that was creating a podcast in a sense would help spread the message a little bit further and be able to reach people I might not normally be able to connect with. So I’ve had this idea in my head for a long, long time. Early in my career, I set out this goal of, Hey, I want to accomplish this. I want to have these personal milestones. I want to make a certain level of income and all these things. Also at the same time I heard this statement that said, Hey, you’ll probably overestimate what you can do in a year, and you’ll underestimate what you can do in five. And I viewed it from the current times pushing forward. And I had this idea like, Hey, I’m going to try and do all these things. And I was right. The first year I was frustrated that things weren’t accelerating as fast as they could. And it wasn’t really gaining the progress I was hoping for. And the goals kind of like fell along the wayside. They were there, but they weren’t really, really, really focused on. And now, 10 to 15 years later, I look back at those goals I had and I’ve just surpassed them by so much. So I’m looking back on that going, Hey, Wolf, if I know what I think I can accomplish in five years, I’m going to understate it, then why not make my current goals, my current object as my vision for my life really big, very grand with a lot of just really doing a lot more of me being more extra, just knowing that if I do that in five years, I’m going to exceed those expectations. So that’s the journey I’ve been on in the last six months, which is really a reflection back on the last 20 years of my career like where it’s brought me to.
Art Costello: And what I really love about this is that it’s much in line with my teachings about, the greater our expectations are, the greater our performances. We know it’s true with the athletes. The research I’ve done with working with athletes, we know that when they take small incremental expectations in their performance and they keep on trying to exceed those small expectations, their success just keeps rising on the steady level to leverage their peak performance. A lot of people ask me what happens when I get to that peak performance. How do I go beyond it when I think I’m at my peak performance? Well, you just answered your own question. Because when you get to your peak performance, you raise the bar and you keep moving forward. The thing that really interests me and I want people to understand is, you talked about stepping outside your comfort zone, that is the single biggest challenge that almost every human being has on the face of this earth, because they have that fear in them. That fear that somebody is going to say something about, somebody who’s going to do something. It’s always this idea in our heads that we’re just not good enough. Maybe we think we are good enough, but we just don’t believe we are good enough. How did you get beyond that point of, there’s a point in our lives where we just say, okay, I’m going to just do it, and I’m just going to make this happen. And take that step of faith that moves you into the place where you’re at right now, which I think is really, really very beautiful and commendable to you that you’re stepping into who you’re truly meant to be because that’s what happens when you get to that point.
Nate Peo: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of things that go into that. One is probably watching other people do it. And there’s a point in my career, there’s probably a few points in my career where I was in the same starting point as somebody that I gave up and they continued. And they were just little things, not like a massively huge undertaking stage. Some people that were just getting going when Instagram was first coming out. And when Facebook and LinkedIn had just come out, and there were actually social media coaches for a wine shop, me and my wife owned at the time. And they were like, Hey, do these things on Instagram, do these things on Facebook, do these things on YouTube and you’ll grow your business. And I didn’t feel comfortable, or smart enough, or good enough to be doing videos about the wine shop so I didn’t do it. And I would hold back from fear doing it. And that’s not why the wine shop wasn’t successful. But fast forward to today, those same people that started off like these beginner coaches, I don’t mean beginner, they were just starting with no expert experience, but they were just getting going. They were like just starting out, and they stuck with it. And one of these women, she owns a super successful B2B marketing agency that she founded off of just starting off to coach small businesses like ourselves. I look at that and I go, Hey, that person just stuck with it, and I didn’t stick with it. I may not have the same success as she did, but I definitely would have been in a better starting point if I had continued with it. So I looked back at that as a chance where like, Hey, I really doubted myself to continue going forward. So once I identified like, Hey, I’ve been getting in my own way a lot of times, I just need to commit to doing something everyday for a year. And just regardless of, if it feels good or it feels uncomfortable, just put it out there.
So since I’ve been on this mission to connect with as many people and see where these relationships go and build a podcast, it requires being more vulnerable, requires being more open, requires being more relatable to people online, especially people I don’t know in probably an area that I don’t feel an expert always at, which is self help, self growth, and encouraging others to be their best version of themselves. So then I start looking at, and this has recently come to me, a lot of times we look into ourselves and say, it’s us. It’s just our own discipline. But I find that anybody that’s done anything really, really big has always had a team of people with them. They’ve always had support. They just never really did it all on their own. They’ve always had some level of other people influencing them, pulling them up. So for me, it started being, okay, now I’ve identified that I need to get over myself and just do things. Now I need some accountability and I need to surround myself with people that are encouraging and supportive on this path together. Because if they’re doing it, I’m doing it. And if I’m doing it, they’re doing it. And there’s a bit of accountability, there hasn’t been anything like formally structured. Like if you do this, I’ll do this. But it’s combining ideas, sharing knowledge, friendship and interacting with people that are in the same mindset. And you’re like, Hey, if they’re doing it, I can do it. And then you find out that they think the same to you, Hey, if they’re doing it, I can do it. And this motivation builds up because a lot of times motivation is fleeting. We wake up in the morning like, Oh, I’m supposed to do something, I need to make a Facebook post, or I’m supposed to record somebody on a podcast, I don’t really feel like being chit chatty this morning, but you get up and you do it anyways. And then when it’s all over, you’re like, wow, that was so exciting talking to that person. I’m so glad I had that conversation because if I just sat at home and did nothing, I wouldn’t have felt that lifting energy up. And then maybe a few years from now, I look back on it. I go, Hey, I really wish I had done more. I said, no, many times when I should have been saying, yeah. So that’s this roundabout long answer like, how I started stepping out of my comfort zone? I think it is finding people that are getting encouraged to do the things you want to do, that you feel some accountability, you feel some dependence that you’re answering to somebody else, and that the calling is bigger than just yourself, but really more of a deep cause.
Art Costello: Yeah, it’s really great. I hear this from people a lot, people that are starting out and just building their reputation, their businesses and all this, it’s very common, you know? And I think back on my life, I just never had anybody that I could lean on and trust them, I had to create that all myself because I grew up in a different time and era. I mean, there’s a lot of years difference between you. I’m 72, going to be 73 in August. And I would imagine you’re probably late 30’s, somewhere in there.
Nate Peo: Actually, 44.
Art Costello: You look good. I think the timer has a lot to do with that because I did not grow up with any kind of computer systems or any kind of self-help. Actually when I was younger, I read Norman Vincent Peale, Emmet Fox, I don’t know if you know any of these people, but they’re probably the originators of the self help industry long before Tony Robbins and the people that are very successful today. Those were my influences, but for me, I had to figure out everything on my own and I’m really probably good at it, figuring out things on my own. And I think that that’s where I got the idea about our core expectations being the driver in us. Can you identify, and I’m not going to try to put you on the spot, can you identify some of your core expectations for yourself?
Nate Peo: Yeah, I guess I’ve felt in my soul for a lot of years that I was destined to do something bigger than myself. And for a lot of years, I didn’t know what that was. I thought, well, maybe if I chase this thing to greatness, and maybe my ideas of success or probably misled, maybe I thought like, Hey, if I do these things, I’ll have a really nice car, or a really big house, or a really, really, really big income. And my idea to make a big impact is really reaching millions and millions of people. And then when you start thinking about that, you go, man, how could I be something? Like he said, as big as Tony Robbins, how could I be somebody as big as Gary Vaynerchuk, or somebody that’s just famous in the space. And I started realizing over time that those people make impacts in a lot of people’s lives, but there’s a lot of people that make really, really deep lasting impacts just reaching two or three people at a very small level, and your level of reach, and your level of influence doesn’t have to be enormous. It can just be very, very close, very personal. And the numbers don’t matter. It’s more of the difference you’re making and making in people’s lives. And then it became less about what I was doing for myself and more what I could do for other people. For example, everytime I had a career goal, milestone objectives, you get it and you’re done. And you’re like, okay, well, what’s next? I kind of move on to the next thing. And that moment, when you think like, Hey, if I accomplish this goal, I’m going to feel fulfilled. I’ve got to reach the destination. I’m going to be so happy. And then you start realizing the destination, does it make me happy? It’s the journey. It’s the climb. It’s a struggle. But along the way, when I’m making other people connected to other people and helping them on their journey, that’s when I feel real fulfillment. And I think that truly, like all kind of camp together in the last few years recently, it was like, Hey, it’s not so much about helping myself, but what can I do to influence others, to help them be a better version of themselves, help them live up to their expectations of their own self. And if I can do that, then I’m more fulfilled. And my level of reach and impact is definitely a lot stronger because I’m really seeing direct results of influencing people. And I’m not putting this pressure on myself to be somebody that I’m not.
Art Costello: Yeah. I think that your core expectation is service to others. I think that that’s what you’ve learned, that service to others is a huge part of your inner strength and core expectations. Have you read the Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell?
Nate Peo: No, I have not.
Art Costello: You need to get the book and read it. It will really, really enlighten you to this Hero’s Journey that we are all on. And it’s very impactful. It’s Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell, and it is an outstanding read.
Nate Peo: I’m gonna check that out.
Art Costello: You will really, really enjoy it, because it is true. I call it the butterfly effect. If we can affect one person, and that person affects another person, it just keeps going and we changed the world.
Nate Peo: Yeah.
Art Costello: We really can change the world. One person at a time, one father at a time. And I believe we’re all put on earth to impact others. I believe that that’s why each and every one of us is here. Each one of us has something to teach this world that will change it. But people again are so fearful to say anything to anybody. They just bury it and they don’t do it. And they don’t become fulfilled. I started out when I was nine years old, and I was abandoned. Going to a Hilltop and trying to ask God what was going to become of me. And I heard a voice deep down inside, and then it just said: “Hey, you just need to be, and just do.” And it became the mantra for my life and I’ve done everything I’d wanted. I mean, I’ve worked in the entertainment field. I’ve worked in baseball. I played semi-pro baseball in California. I mean, I’ve just done everything that I’ve ever wanted. And it’s been a journey for me when I lost my wife in 2006 to ovarian cancer. And I fell apart. It wasn’t until I was 60 years old that I looked back on my life. And then I really realized taking all in, getting a degree in psychology back in 1968, 9. Living this life, and then having a journey in the construction industry myself until my wife passed away then losing all that, till I looked back and realized this was all my journey preparing for these years that I have now. And I tell people, here I am, I’m going to be 73 in August. I’ll never retire. I’ll never quit because I’m just energized by this knowledge that I have. That everything that I did in my past is giving me the ability now to help people.
Nate Peo: I think you hit the nail on the head there when all of our experiences lead us up to who we are and where we are. So if you think to yourself, why am I not an expert in this? Or I’m not an expert in that. Well, nobody else has your exact same set of circumstances and nobody else has these things, but people will relate to it. They may have things in common that you’re going to have a unique perspective on that that nobody else can give them. And it’s the right message for the right time that they need to hear. So I think you have to just be open minded that you are unique, that your story is interesting and that it’s going to influence some people. It may influence one person, it may include some million people, but it’s definitely something that’s going to be impactful at the right time and place. And the funny thing about that, a lot of times, we don’t even know that we made that impact in somebody’s life. I can think of high school teachers that I remember some lessons that they taught me, don’t remember their name, don’t remember what class I took with them, I just remembered this one saying that they said that’s kind of shaped me. And throughout my life, they have no idea that I still carry that memory with them, but they’ve made an impact. And I think people don’t realize that they have made impacts. People just don’t share, go and tell them and say, Hey, thank you. You really changed my life. But it’s really there.
Art Costello: I almost thought I had that opportunity at my 50th class reunion. Because elementary school, middle school and high school were brutal for me because I was considered an outsider. I was ostracized and all that. And one day I had a teacher, he was my social studies teacher, and I was in the seventh grade, I was athletic. I could always stand up for myself physically. It was the mental aspect of kids, not bullying, but just saying nasty mean things, just being kids sometimes. And I had been having a particularly rough day and Paul King, my social studies teacher came up behind my desk, he leaned over and whispered in my ear and said: “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay. You’re going to be great.” And do you know to this day, I just told you the story. I mean, it just had such an impact on me that it just reinforced what I had been learning as a nine-year-old, up on that Hill and hearing God talk through my inner being saying: “Hey, it’s going to be okay. You just have to do.” And in that exact time that he did that, it was so powerful to me. And I hope that people out there that are listening know when people whisper something in their ear, or they shouted in their ear, or they do something to you, or say something to you, you can look at it either as a benefit, or you can look at it from the negative standpoint that they’re after you. I think I’ve always chosen to be positive about things because I always knew, back to that thing, everything’s going to be okay.
Nate Peo: Yeah. It’s crazy how those things work out and they’re big moments in our lives, but we have to be open to the message and realize everything happened for a reason. And that message wasn’t there by accident. It was there to shape you and you take it, and you run with it, and it’s had a lasting impact through your life because that happened at such an early age. And that takes you down this path, which leads you to one thing to another, which led to another. And if you hadn’t had those circumstances happen, you never would have had the experiences that you did.
Art Costello: Exactly. I guess maybe that’s my next question for you. What were those events in your life that reinforced, I didn’t realize this till I was 60 years old that I had this. I knew that when I was working in the psychology area, I worked in a mental health facility, I knew I had a gift of being able to speak with people and having them open up to me. I always have had people be able to talk to me and open up to me. And I think people trust me, and they know my integrity that I’m not going to do anything to harm their reputation or anything. I hold things that people want inside of me that I’ve been told, but people have always opened up. But I didn’t realize till I was 60, that I could have an impact on other people through it. And I started writing the book Expectation Therapy and those kinds of things that I had. I don’t know what the word is when I lost my wife. It devastated me. I mean, we have been together 38 years and I never thought that I’d love again. And I learned that I can love again. And there were so many things that I learned about it, but I think the greatest thing that I learned is that I just need to do and be who I am, and let it out and share it.
Nate Peo: Yeah. I think there’s definitely something to be said about being open, being vulnerable, being relatable, because you don’t know who’s going to hear that message and say, that was what I needed to hear at the right time. Or even like for me, in networking and business, there’s people that sit on the other side of the table. I mean, as a buyer, I’m always approached by sales people and there’s always a wall up, a guard, and you’re like, Oh, this person’s trying to sell to me. And I don’t want to have to tell them, no, because most people it’s a no, because one we’re already buying what we need from somebody else that we do business with. We like it, we don’t need the product. So you’re always on guard. Also, he’s going to sell something to me, but once you relate to them in another aspect, and you have some of this story to show and you are open about that. I started talking recently about this idea with myself, that I had an inappropriate relationship with alcohol and I was drinking more than I really wanted to. I didn’t hit rock bottom. I wasn’t an alcoholic, but it’s holding me back from being the person I could be. And I started realizing that, and I started talking a little bit openly about that. And all of a sudden, people that I didn’t really know that well came out of the blue and said: “Hey, I’ve been in that same boat as you.” They had maybe a different story exactly how it related to me. But because I was open and vulnerable about it, they reached out and they said: “Hey, I feel you. I can relate to that.” And all of a sudden this vendor/buyer relationship becomes a friend or friend relationship, we’re starting to chat and we’re starting to talk about things other than business. So I can guarantee you, in two, or three, or five years, if there’s an opportunity to do business, it’s going to be a lot less transactional. It’s going to be more personal in nature. And I think that those relationships build those friendships by being relatable. And they’re not always about making a business deal, always a business transaction, but just, Hey, we never know who’s going to be the right person that comes into our life and makes a huge impact in this when you have these friendships, relatable conversations with people. Your chances of having something that takes us on a beneficial path, I think, are greatly increased. That was a weird way of explaining it.
Art Costello: No, I think it was perfect. I tell you, when you started talking about this, I started thinking about, I still have relationships to this day with people that I bought from our soul to when I was in the construction field. And what’s funny about it is now is some of those very same guys and women are coming back to me and asking for advice because they’ve lost a spouse and they know that I went through it. Or they’ve gone through a divorce and they know that I can help them through the transition through that. And it makes it much easier. You never know what relationships are gonna do. You never know where they’re going to take us, whether it be a sales relationship, or I’m famous for being on the subway in New York and just talking to people around. People hate to sit next to me on an airplane. By the time we get off the airplane and I’m going to know everything there is about you, and you’re going to know everything there is about me. You get two or three hours on an airplane and then you can learn a lot about people.
Nate Peo: But what’s funny about that is if you sat down next to be in an airplane, my opinion of you is based on how I perceived the events to be like, if I decide to go, Oh, my God, there’s this talkative person next to me that I just want to read my book, or put on my earphones, or ignore this person who keeps talking to me. So now I’m on guard and I’m annoyed. But if I just go, Hey, this is the time we’re on this short trip together, it’s a brief moment in time, and just go with the conversation. You’re the same person, but I have a different way of viewing it. And all of a sudden, instead of being on guard, and somebody is telling me the life story I could care less about, now I’m, Oh, wow. I didn’t know that about you. Oh, we have this in common. And Oh, just maybe that relationship turns into something that could be very, very meaningful. Maybe it’s one to one, like, Hey, I’ve met a good friend. We connect. Or maybe it’s like, Hey, I just tell you something off the cuff that I’m struggling with. You’re like, my best friend is the person you need to talk to, get connected to them. And it’s funny, we say that because you judge what’s going on next to you without even knowing it. A lot of times, you don’t know who’s riding the subway or who’s riding the airplane. You might think like, Oh, I’m flying in Southwest, and it’s the cheap flight, the value fight. But there’s probably a lot of people that you have no idea just how powerful of a person they are and how connected they are. They’re sitting right next to you, and they’re just very humble. And you just have no idea. You just kind of make it a snap judgment. So I think, yeah, just be open and change it. Change your outlook on who’s talking to you because you just never know.
Art Costello: I got a story for you. I was in the subway in New York with my new wife, we had been on our first anniversary to New York City trip. And we’re sitting on the subway, and this guy comes on and he sits down next to me.
And he just dressed real casual. In New York City at 8:00 in the morning, everybody’s in business shoots and everything. So he sits down next to me and I start my chatter, Hey, how are you doing? Where are you going today? And just trying to open the door. And we started talking, he said: “You’re from out of town?” And I said: “Yeah, we’re from Texas.” And we started talking and everything. I said: “What do you do? I work with expectations. I can help anybody with their expectations, how to manage them and modify them and all that. I work as an athlete. I work with people in transition. I worked with high school students.” He said: “Do you know who I am?” I said: “No. I don’t recognize your name.” He said: “I’m one of the biggest sports agents in New York. I represent some of the biggest Major League Baseball, NBA players and all that. I’ve got people that you can talk to, guys that could really use what you’ve told me about what you do with expectations.” And it turned into a great relationship. I’ve got really some great clients. Had I not done it? Had I not talked to him? We would have sat there just looking out into the walls of a subway station, going by and got off and went about our business. But that’s the thing with me that I think that one of the things that I need to point out is you need to be, you need to be able to evaluate when you’re talking to people. Because I would never want to interrupt somebody who doesn’t want me to talk to them. I’m always evaluating what their person’s body language is. What are they doing? How are they reacting to me? Whether I take the next step to push them. Because I have sat next to people on airplanes who just have said to me: “Listen, I think you’re a nice guy, but I don’t want to talk right now. I need this time to myself.” And I said: “I respect that. That’s okay.” But by the end of the flight and we’re getting ready to land, they’re saying, we start talking and they said: “Now I’ll talk to you.” We’ll talk to the baggage claim, or you never know. But you gotta respect people’s boundaries.
Nate Peo: Yeah. It’s about reading people’s body language, and what the receptive to, and building trust I think is important. And that’s all about how you react, and relate, and stuff like that in the conversations you’re having with people. If you’re trying to cram a message down somebody’s throat and they don’t want to hear it, it’s not going to go off.
Art Costello: Well, that’s the old used car salesman kind of thing. The used car people like, well, if you don’t buy it now, tomorrow, that car is going to be gone. Well, that’s the fear of loss. They’re trying to throw that fear of loss into you. So I think you’re right. You just have to evaluate people, and you have to trust your intuition, and you have to really trust in your faith that timing is everything.
Nate Peo: And I like that you have that approach to people, chatting with people that you don’t know sitting next to you. Because I think a lot of people, myself included, sometimes feels it’s hard to start up a conversation with somebody you don’t know. And then you think about like, is it going to come off weird? How do I start this? So then you don’t do anything. And then you go with, man, I wish I was more outgoing. I wish I could be like you that just does say it’s, but then you go, well, everybody’s in the same boat. Everybody’s a little bit nervous. The person sitting next to you may even be thinking the same thing. Like, Hey, I wouldn’t mind having a conversation, but I don’t know how to start it up. So I’m just gonna not do anything. But you miss out on opportunity. You miss out on life. I think you miss out on chances to just meet interesting people. And I think that’s some of the best experiences I’ve had in my life is when you’ve met interesting people that are doing cool things. You maybe wouldn’t have met each other under other circumstances.
Art Costello: Oh, absolutely. I believe that everybody’s journey is interesting. That’s why I love doing this podcast because I think that everybody’s journey has value. It has lessons that we all can learn from it. And it gives us the sense of community that we’re far more alike than we are different. We are far more alike than we are different. And that is the thing about human connection that is so important. And I’m going to encourage you, don’t be afraid to talk to people, the most they can say to you is, no. And no, doesn’t hurt my feelings because it was said to me so much in my younger years that it just didn’t.
I want to tell you a little story about how I met my first wife. I was working at Mercy Hospital in San Diego, and I had just gotten the job, and was going to an orientation class. I was walking to the orientation class with a friend of mine who was a nursing student at San Diego State who was going to get a job there also, who had gotten a job there. So we were walking together across this parking lot. And I looked across the parking lot and there were a whole bunch of young nurses. Because back in those days, the nurses wore white uniforms with these funny little hats on their heads and all that kind of stuff. And they were all walking towards this auditorium, and I said to my friend: “Holy macro, look at that blonde over there. I said, I’m going to marry her.” My friend said to me: “Art, you’re crazy. You are absolutely right working in mental health. You are nuts. That girl is never going to talk to you.” And I said: “Okay, watch.” So I went over and started talking to her, and she raised her hand up, and she showed me a rock on her finger. And she says: “I’m engaged. Don’t talk to me, blah, blah, blah.” And just blew me off. Well, over a period of time, mental health was on the bottom floor of the hospital. She worked on the eighth floor. While in the parking lot, you had to go on through the basement. So we would be in the elevator going up and down and I would see her, and she’d look at me and she’d just shake her head just like that. But she got to know me a little bit, and whenever I’d see her, I’d tell her, you know, I’m going to marry you. And she would just get mad. I mean, I’m engaged.
A year and a half, almost two years later, I’m at my apartment, my roommates out in the living room. I’m in the bathroom getting ready to go to work at mental health at night because I worked 3 to 11. And I’m in a shower cap because I had this long curly hair that I didn’t want to get wet before I work. And my roommate comes to the bathroom door and says: “Hey, art, there’s somebody at the door that wants to talk to you. And she’s kind of upset.” And I went through my head: “Who could that be? Who could that’d be.” So I put a towel around me, had the shower cap on, walked through the front door and here is Vicky standing at the door in tears. Because the girl that I had met going across that parking lot, she said to me: “Can you pick me up on my way to work?” And I said: “Absolutely, we’ll pick you up on the way to work.” I hadn’t forgotten her. I had seen her all the time and I still had these feelings for her. I thought she was gorgeous, and I knew enough about her. So we rode to work. Do you know, from that day forward till she died in my arms, 38 years later. Hadn’t I walked across that parking lot, I would have missed the best part of my life because she just changed me. And it was just amazing. Had I not done that, I would’ve never had the opportunity to have been married to a wonderfully beautiful woman for all these years who taught me so much about love, who taught me in depth that you can have beauty. And she gave me the greatest gift of being able to tell me that she was releasing me from my marriage now so I could go find somebody else to love because she felt so loved all of her life. What an honor. Had I not done that? Had I not moved across there and talked to her, none of it would have ever happened.
Nate Peo: Yeah. That’s powerful. It’s a very powerful example of just, we gotta get out of her own way and not worry about rejection and self doubt because how have you gotten in your own way, you may never have walked across the way and have that experience.
Art Costello: I would never have done it. Hadn’t I walked across there, and it wasn’t done as a joke or anything, it was done because when I looked across there and saw her, I saw this beautiful human being. And I just knew that there was something about her that I knew we needed to be together. And that was patient enough to hang loose for two and a half years. To show you how strange this was, what happened was that she caught her boyfriend or fiance cheating on her. And she came to me to talk about that. That’s why she leaned on me. And she said: “I never forgot you saying to me all those times, someday I will marry you.” I just never forgot that. So if you have something in your heart that you think you need to tell somebody, whether it’s, I love you, or I forgive you, or whatever it is, you need to say the words that you feel in your heart, because that is what really frees you. It gives you freedom, and we all have things that we can say we’re sorry for and ask forgiveness for. I mean, I’ve done it a million times. I mean, you hurt people’s feelings. If I hurt somebody’s feelings, I tell them I’m sorry, I hurt your feelings. I didn’t mean to do it. And it wasn’t intentional. And I have gone to people and said, I’m sorry, I hurt your feelings. And it was intentional. And it was stupid of me. You’ve got to admit, you’ve got to be in tune with yourself and have the expectation that no matter where the chips fall, everything is going to be all right by doing the right thing. It’s so paramount to who we are.
Nate Peo: That’s very, very true. I’m very moved by your story. I really am.
Art Costello: It’s just a way life is so intriguing, so precious, so beautiful when we just let it go, when we just let it be, when we live to the expectations that we have for ourselves. And I believe that God has planted the seed of expectation in every one of us, it’s how we grow. It’s how we become who we are. And that’s why it’s so important.
Nate Peo: For sure, for sure.
Art Costello: Yeah. Well, where do we go from here?
Nate Peo: I don’t know. This is your show.
Art Costello: We’re getting up at the time, but I want people to know how they can get a hold of you.
Nate Peo: Easiest place to find me is my website, natepeo.com, that’s N-A-T-E-P, as in Paul, E as an echo, O as an orange .com. And my podcast, my social media links are all on there. And you can find me there.
Art Costello: And everything will be in the show notes. My audience knows that the show notes are full of places to find you, good information, transcripts of the show and all that.
Nate Peo: This has been a great, great experience. It’s been a great conversation the second time, we got cut short the first.
Art Costello: Well, I knew that it would be great.
Nate Peo: Yeah.
Art Costello: My expectation was it was great. You’re a good human being and it comes through, and I’m going to encourage the audience to reach out and get a hold of you, and support you. I certainly will. I’m here for you. Help you any way I can, Nate.
Nate Peo: Alright.
Art Costello: You’re a great guy.
Nate Peo: Thank you. And that goes both ways. So if you need anything, please, please feel free to ask.
Art Costello: You never know what it’s going to do. We may be on stage together just talking about what we just talked about.
Nate Peo: Let’s do it.
Art Costello: Yeah. It would be great. Well, with that being said, we’ve eaten up about 50 minutes of showtime here, and it’s been great.
Nate Peo: Yeah, it has been.
Art Costello: Anything coming up that we can look forward to with you. Any programs, podcasts?
Nate Peo: Right now, I’m promoting my podcast. I’m doing 1 season of 26 episodes. I decided to just recently to do that and get that promoted, and hopefully people find a lot of value in it. And then be probably kicking off a second season towards the end of the year, doing some more recording. So just check out the podcast episodes and the guests I’ve have on, just looking to support them, and what they’re up to, and what they’re doing and trying to bring people on to have cool stories that are along the lines that we had, which is really about the relationships we build, and the people we come across, and how it influences our lives.
Art Costello: Awesome, Nate, really enjoyed it today. And I’m going to thank you. And we’re going to take a break from this and let Heather White take us out of the show.
Nate Peo: All right.
Art Costello: Thank you again. Thank you again, Nate.
————————————————————-
Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join the Shower Epiphanies Community today:
