This episode delves into the subtle traps of social comparisons, amplified by social media, and the ever-present human tendency to measure self-worth against others. As Jim and Angie discuss the disparity between appearances and reality, they pivot to draw wisdom from historical letters and figures, celebrating authentic lives like Jimmy Carter’s. Engaging in vivid storytelling, they emphasize finding strength and value in our perceived flaws.
welcome to the good news with angie austin now with the good news here’s angie hello there angie austin here with the good news along with jim stovall and jim’s really getting back into the gear in the new year hello there friends well it is great to be back with you here in 2026 and looking forward to exciting things Do you have a hard time remembering? Well, you’ve got so many people that help you, but remembering it’s 2026. For the first few weeks, I can’t get it right. I’ll start to write a check or something. Yes, I still do write some checks, and I’ll forget that it’s 2026.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, a little to that, although as a blind guy, I don’t do a lot of the writing or typing, so I don’t have to worry too much about it, but if you don’t watch me, I’ll end up saying it on the radio, so yeah, it’s a little weird when you get into that.
SPEAKER 06 :
And did you do anything fun or interesting?
SPEAKER 03 :
I know you take a big – Well, I ended up writing a book, or at least my share of a book, over the holidays. So it was kind of a weird deal. I hadn’t planned to, but it kind of happened that way. So what was the book about? Well, I started – a friend of mine who’s an economist and – A policy guy wrote a book on a new tax plan proposal that would, it’s called the 1% solution, and it would replace our income tax, federal income tax, with a transactional tax. You know, he’s a wonderful guy, brilliant man. I hope we adopt something like what he’s describing. But he writes like an economist. There’s about 11 people in North America that would understand what he had written and wanted to do. So I agreed to co-author it and make it a little more pedestrian for people. So I spent about half of my vacation doing that, and I’m glad. The book should be out in the next month or two, actually. That is so wild. Yeah. And then just a lot of family stuff and rest and relaxation and all that sort of thing. So great time.
SPEAKER 06 :
Sounds nice. We were down there near Venezuela, oddly enough. We were on a cruise. We were gone for a couple of weeks. We went to the ABC Islands off the coast of Venezuela. uh aruba uh bonair and curacao uh affiliated with the netherlands and uh i did notice there was a big uh the netherlands had a big ship down there which i guess they have all the time but it seemed to kind of be shadowing us and then something went down on christmas eve we weren’t aware of it until we got home that uh three boats uh they went after our country went after three boats down there so it’s like a lot you know A lot going on in the world, but not on the cruise ship apparently. So I booked this obviously long before things got tense there. But I have to say that it was just the investment in taking family trips and having family experiences is so invaluable. And it was funny because my daughter was like – You know, they got money from their grandparents and they all give them money and it’s a pretty good chunk of money. And then they’re like, well, we’re going to have presents in the cruise ship under like I brought a little mini tree. And I said, well, I don’t think so. I think this is kind of the present. And then my daughter, she’s going to sound so sad. She goes, oh, so you’re cheaping out this year. I said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The flights to Fort Lauderdale and staying in South Beach and then getting on a two week cruise and doing various, you know, renting golf carts on Bonaire and getting your snorkel equipment and, you know, all your cute clothes to wear on the trip. You are so right. I really am cheaping out this year.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it’s a perspective. It really, really is. And, you know, it’s amazing. And one of my colleagues took her young teenage daughter and son several years ago down to Mexico. And, you know, they were doing all the fun cruise stuff and everything. But she asked her driver, take me, you know, let’s take a couple hours and let’s go see a village like where you live. And, wow, you know, huts and dirt floors and, you know, wonderful people. But, you know, it was just an interesting perspective. Nothing like the cruise ship.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, you know, we did a little bit of that because we did – one day we rented golf carts and we got to see some things on Bonaire that included, you know, what they call the slave huts that are right by the area where they have the salt lakes. and what they would sleep in, and it was just like a cement lean-to kind of thing, but also just driving back into the neighborhoods. We rented a car when we were in Curacao, and then also when we were in Aruba, and just going on some of the roads, like for them to just drive on roads that are like a roller coaster and be like, this is the road that people live on? Yeah, this is how roads are maintained, and In some other countries where you feel like you need a four-wheel drive just to get to your front door. And of course, we rented some little economy car on the island. They have tiny little cars of a brand I’ve never even seen or driven before. And they’re definitely not made for these roads. So it’s like only my husband would four-wheel in the equivalent of a Ford Escort. But it’s what you had to do because of the roads. But yeah, it’s a good…
SPEAKER 03 :
eye-opener for the kids for sure i don’t want to take up all your time today we’re talking about your winner’s wisdom column titled a subtle trap what’s this about well it’s a little bit about what we were talking about it’s uh you know we can get caught up in comparing ourselves to other people and it can be well comparison has been uh defined as the bane of our existence it it creates uh Bad situations on both ends. If you compare yourself to people that are performing at a level beneath you, you may think you’re doing better than you are. Or if you compare yourself, as often happens with social media, to everybody else, you think everybody else is living the lifestyles of the rich and famous except you. The only people we should compare ourselves to is… Really, the higher, better self we should be. Twain said we’d spend a lot less time worrying about what people thought of us if we realized how seldom they actually do think of us. We’re trying to impress people that don’t care. It’s a difficult thing, and particularly now, it’s a bigger problem simply because social media has made it so convenient to do that.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, yes, yes. You know what’s interesting? I was watching my daughter. They’re on social media quite a bit, and anymore, social media is kind of becoming more irrelevant to me because – There’s so much AI that I can’t readily tell what’s real and what’s not, and so that’s too much for my brain to waste my time with, seeing something that’s like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe that happened. We have a lot of moose and elk in our area, and I saw one where a guy was on a motorcycle, and then the moose head-butted him, his motorcycle, and knocked him over, and I’m like, Wait a second. That’s not real. I would have heard about that because they acted like it was up in Estes Park. And I’m like, that did not happen. So it’s just like a waste of my time to be watching things that aren’t real. It’s like I have enough to filter in my brain with the real stuff, let alone making things up. And so I’m spending less time in it, but my daughter was logged into someone’s account, and it’s someone that’s going to be going to her school. And her school is a Christian school in a small town, and so it’s not like an overly wealthy student body, you know, really down-to-earth kids. And my kids are actually – considering I’ve done – we’ve provided so much for them – They’re pretty down to earth, and they don’t care about brands, and they’re not wearing Louis Vuitton, and they’re not wearing jewelry. They don’t have expensive cars. My son with his business is driving like a 25-year-old Chevy truck that’s rusted out on the bottom. We were offered $500 for a trade-in. So they’re not flashy kids. Anyway. And this girl that’s going to be on her team was posting things about Christmas and saying, oh, my goodness, I got this and this Louis Vuitton bag, and I got this Lululemon, and then this perfume. I’ve wanted this perfume ever since I went to Paris. And I was listening. I said, who’s that? She goes, oh, it’s someone that’s going to be a new teammate next year. And I said, wow, that’s going to be an interesting fit into this tiny Christian town in Tennessee. because that’s not the vibe of this town or the school, for that matter. But like Mark said, my husband, he said, if that was my kid, he goes, she would have her social media taken away. But then you wonder, are the parents flashy, too? Like, I just don’t understand this new culture of, Look at me. Look how much wealth I have. Look at my fancy purse. This is worth four thousand dollars. My sunglasses were 10. I just got back from Paris and I had to get this perfume. But you can’t just say I got this perfume. You have to say I have wanted this perfume since I last went to Paris. You know, I don’t understand the the braggery now.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it’s a false thing. I mean, you know, because of the financial work I do, I work with a lot of very, very wealthy families, business families, and they don’t do that.
SPEAKER 02 :
No.
SPEAKER 03 :
I mean, they would chastise their kids, and they try to give their kids, you know, real values in addition to the valuables. Right. You know, and it’s just a matter of what you’re used to. When I was a little kid, my best friend lived across the street, and we both lived in fairly modest, nice houses, but fairly modest. I mean, I grew up in a house that was 1,400 square feet, and it was, you know, a fairly modest middle-of-the-road house. And he, my friend, lived across the street in a similar house. Well, when it came time to go to middle school and high school, the dividing line was the street. And so he went to a working-class, blue-collar school, and he was one of the wealthier people in the school. I ended up going to the school where all the country club kids go. So, you know, he was top of the line, and I all of a sudden was, wow, what are all these things? And, you know, and neither one’s a reality. You know, neither one is a reality. And, you know, sometimes it’s working with the kids at the Stovall Center from well over 100 nations. I really learned, and I always tell American kids, 95% of the people that live on this planet would give everything they have to be your next-door neighbor. I don’t care where you live. I had a driver for years out in California, and he was immigrated from Somalia. And he said, people don’t understand. I mean, in America, rich people have plenty to eat and poor people have plenty to eat. And rich people have cars and poor people have cars. They’re just different. But he said, in Somalia, if you’re rich, you may have a car and something to eat, maybe. If you’re poor, you don’t have anything. I mean, you’re struggling to stay alive. And he said when he first came here and went through the immigration process and became a citizen and then started bringing his family over, he said, I sent them pictures of America. And I said, what did you send? He said, the first thing I sent was a grocery store with food all the time. And he said, they didn’t believe it. They did not believe that. And he said, I told them, it’s open around the clock, and it’s like this. And they didn’t believe it because they could not imagine that you could go in any time and get anything you wanted. Right. We just need to realize that the world we live in is not the world that you and I inhabit. We are on the upper crust of every 7 billion people on the planet, and it’s good to remember that.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know, the workers, we got to know a lot of the workers from the Philippines on the ship that we were on. And they work seven, I think it’s a seven or eight month tour. And the majority of the ones we talked to had children, some the same ages like our children are a little younger. And my daughter one night started to cry. And Alex, our waiter, I said she’s sad because she said she can’t imagine being away from her family that long. He said, oh, and he started to tear up too. He goes, I’ve been doing this for 23 years. And One of my kids is going to school to be an engineer, and then he went through the other kids, and he said, so I can provide opportunities for them by being gone eight months at a time. And in that eight months, they don’t get days off unless they get really great reviews. So that’s eight months straight with no scheduled days off. And then they work approximately, I think they said 11 to 12 hours a day. So seven days a week, 11, 12 hours a day. And their salary isn’t big. You know, the tips kind of help. But for the Philippines, if you look up like, you know, the average salary in the Philippines, what they’re making in these cruise ships, these are like really prized jobs. So he says 23 years like he’s not giving that up and they do it to provide for their family. So it was an eye opener for my kids to hear, you know, how hard they work. All right, Jim, we’re out of time. Jimstroval.com. Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you. Be well.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 04 :
Highlands Ranch is tuned to the mighty 670 KLT Denver.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey there, friend, Angie Austin, Dr. Cheryl Lentz with the good news. And we have a couple of really cool things to talk about today. She’s always reading a new book. So every time that I talk to her, I’m like, OK, what are you reading? What are we going to talk about? And so give give us your book and your topic and then I’ll tell you what I’m going to talk about.
SPEAKER 07 :
OK, it’s called Letters from Leaders. Personal advice for tomorrow’s leaders from the world’s most influential people. It was compiled by Henry Dorman in 2009. The year is important, so be conscious of that. But this is amazing. As I was telling you, we were looking at this, and these letters are written, some of them in their own handwriting. It’s a unique book. I’ve never seen that the letters flip out. as part of what the book chapter is, and it’s in their own handwriting. It’s like reading letters from the grave. It is just magical.
SPEAKER 06 :
I love it, too, how many people he was able to get. U.S. presidents, Muhammad Ali, Mikhail Gorbachev. They’ve got King Abdullah II of Jordan, the Dalai Lama. So just Donald Trump long before he was president. And but I I wanted you to pick one. We thought Jimmy Carter since he recently passed. So that would be a good one. So let’s take just a moment then to talk about what my topic is. a good wake up call for all those days when you don’t feel good enough. And there’s one letter written in about, you know, how they’re struggling, you know, getting, you know, managing their day, et cetera. And so we’re going to go over a good wake up call for those days when you don’t feel good enough. You just don’t really, you know, have your get up and go going. And so let’s start with Jimmy Carter. And again, the book is Letters from Leaders. All right. So what did Jimmy have to say in terms of advice for us?
SPEAKER 07 :
His title says, expand your hearts and minds. I would say that the main thing to remember is that no matter what you have as your primary commitment in life, try the ancillary things, the extra things that don’t interfere with your major commitment, but that enhance and expand it. These have a tendency to also expand your hearts and your minds to encompass other people, which adds a new dimension to life. So I would say try new things. Don’t restrict your lives. Don’t live encapsulated in a cocoon just with people like you who speak the same language or look the same or sing the same song or worship the same way, but constantly explore new ideas and new experiences. Wow.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, I like that because I believe that’s kind of what he did that made him so great when, you know, he was known so much for Habitat for Humanity, but his other good works. I mean, he became known for those the decades and decades after his presidency that, you know, they were kind of a lot of people were very lackluster about his presidency. But then him as a human, him as a doer, him as a do-gooder, him as a Christian became Like the good works he did were just unbelievable. I mean, right up until, you know, he was 100, just about he was doing all these things that really added to the quality of life for so many people who were struggling in life.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, and I think that was one of the segments that I heard watching his funeral is how authentic he was and maybe not the world’s best president, but certainly maybe the world’s best authentic human. Because he would pick up a hammer and him and Rosalind would get busy building homes. And he didn’t stand on business suits and secret service. It was if there was someone in need, he was standing there with a hammer in his head and did so much more to be able to contribute to humanity than simply resting on his laurels or using his title as a president. And I was very impressed with that.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, I followed a lot of what he did. But when he was going through that cancer treatment several years back for brain cancer, you know, something at his age no one ever thought he’d, you know, actually live through. And then I saw some CBS story on him continuing to lead his Bible study at his little church. I think it was a little church in Georgia. And he led a Bible study there. And it wasn’t like a mega church. He just had this little group of people that were in his Bible study. And, you know, and that’s real common, I think, in those Southern churches. I attended a service in the last few months at a Southern church in Tennessee where they’ll have groups meeting afterwards, you know, after the service or before the service, and they’ll do breakout kind of sessions. And then they’ll, you know, chat with each other, et cetera, which I think is really neat to build that camaraderie. And he continued during his treatment to, to still teach. And I’m thinking, I was just assuming that he was going to die, you know, because when you’re at that age and you’re in, you have that kind of serious cancer, but he lived several years after that. And here he was in the middle of treatment, still feeling that obligation to go and, you know, worship with his friends and lead the Bible study.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, and that’s what I think is because I, when I teach my leadership classes, I always show my students is like, don’t watch just what people say, watch with what they do and watch with what they do when no one’s watching. When Jimmy wasn’t in the public eye, he was still Jimmy Carter, the way he had always been and the way he was in his presidency and supposedly the way I didn’t know him personally, but from everyone else’s, he was just the real deal. What you saw is what you got. And he was just, like you said, leading right up into the end because that was his godly mission, if you will, and his purpose in there. And he never wavered from that, either he or Rosalind. And I’m like, being around those kind of people are just magic. And I find it even more impressive is the fact that even when he was defeated in The man that had defeated him in office, they became lifelong friends.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
And President Ford actually wrote the eulogy and died before Jimmy so that he couldn’t read it and somebody read it for him. The fact that he planned that is what got me going, who plans to give a eulogy? And they still read it years after President Ford died.
SPEAKER 05 :
Isn’t that wild?
SPEAKER 07 :
I think it was one of Ford’s. sons or somebody in the family that read it in, you know, in a memorial by his dad or by his uncle or his grandfather. I don’t remember. But so that he could still have that read at Jimmy Carter’s funeral. It was the intentional plan. And they planned his funeral 10 years ago. Who does that?
SPEAKER 06 :
Wow. That is so wild to me. All right. Well, I just ordered the book. And again, it’s letters from leaders, advice, personal advice for tomorrow’s leaders from the world’s most influential people. And Henry Dorman put that together. So we’ll continue to share some of these letters because I think it’s so cool. You know, Jim Stovall, my mentor, your buddy, author, he does a lot of these great quotes from great people. And he’s compiling, I believe, a second book of great quotes. And some of them we think we know or think were attributed to certain people that have gotten changed over the years. And some of them are really, you know, I mean, of course, we know like MLK and some of the other great leaders of the world that, you know, have very famous quotes.
SPEAKER 07 :
about Gandhi right now it’s one of those quotes and I’m not convinced that Gandhi was the only one that said it although I’m the know that that’s the one because I quote him all the time is be the change you want to see in the world and I always thought it was Gandhi who said it and they’re like sure a lot of other people have said it he’s the one that gets credit for it because he’s quoted so often so I don’t think that a lot of this is necessarily reinventing the wheel. A lot of people have said some of these things, but we simply attribute sound bites to certain people. I like Gandhi’s one. Whether who said it or he wasn’t the only one who said it, I still think it’s brilliant. Be the change you want to see in the world.
SPEAKER 06 :
Mother Teresa and Coach John Wooden, two very different people with very different careers, but some people just say great things all the time. John Wooden, he didn’t open his mouth without saying something great. Jim Stovall was actually friends with John. And so he, of course, has a lot of his quotes in there, but he’s so inspirational. I can’t imagine what a privilege it would have been to be one of his players because he was so beloved and so wise and just such a humble man for, you know, what? Remember, he’d always wear the hat, too.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, he always had a thing about how his players had to behave on and off the field.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes. And be on time and not curse and treat each other well.
SPEAKER 07 :
Exactly. And if they didn’t, he benched them. And it didn’t matter how good a player they were or how good they were. They needed him in there. You don’t follow the rules. It doesn’t matter how good you are. You can be replaced.
SPEAKER 06 :
But he would win with that, even with pulling one of his great players. And he was just teaching them not to just win but to be really great men. I’m sure he molded so many people. I mean, when you – these funerals of really great men like Paul – A coach, McCartney, that was a coach at University of Colorado Boulder, a lot of people spoke at his funeral because he just passed away. And he, Bill McCartney, he was a coach when I was there, and I actually dated one of the players all through college that was under him, one of his players. And they, you know, he… Faith was part of what he did. Faith, you know, they prayed together. And then he started, you know, promise keepers, which was huge with, I don’t know if it’s still huge, but with men and, you know, big events for men to, you know, raise. And so he was also known like Wooden, not just as a great coach, but a great man and a great man of God per se. So, yeah, I just.
SPEAKER 07 :
Isn’t it amazing how they don’t have to be mutually exclusive? And I know we often have trouble talking about great men without putting God behind it. Some people get funny about that. I’m like, our very first textbook was the Bible. They take the oath of office for the president as well as other things in universities and things. I’m like, isn’t it more amazing how closer we are to God than we all might think? I think it’s amazing.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right. We’re going to keep reading those letters from great men. I want to do the Muhammad Ali one as well, but I’m getting the book in the mail. So let’s do good wake up calls for those days when you don’t feel good enough. And this is a letter that was sent in to Mark and Angel, that website that I love. Okay. Quote. Life hasn’t been the easiest on me lately. I won’t go into all the details now, but the tough times I’ve been living through have left me with many cracks. And although I’ve still managed to be a reasonably successful person, on most days I struggle desperately with my self-confidence. I just don’t feel good enough. I feel flawed. I feel like my cracks have made me undesirable. So then Mark goes on to say, those are the opening lines of an email I received recently from a new reader of our blog. I’m sharing that excerpt today with permission because Angel and I have spoken to hundreds of other clients and readers and live event attendees over the past 15 years who struggle in a very similar way. In fact, almost all of us struggle with not feeling good enough at various points throughout our lives. And if you remember last week, you and I talked about how Mark had written some things for like a school newspaper and they rejected them. And then Mark and Angel decided to start their own blog. And that’s how they started this very successful blog and these speaking events and the books that they write. All of that was started from him not really feeling good enough. It says, we all have a few cracks. once upon a time there was an elderly woman who needed to walk down to the river every morning to fetch water for drinking cooking and cleaning she carried two buckets with her filled them up at the river bank and walked back with them to her little cottage home one of the buckets was newer perfectly sealed and held water flawlessly but the second bucket was older and contained a few thin cracks that would leak water onto the ground as she walked. By the time she arrived home, typically about a third of the water in the second bucket had leaked through its cracks. One day on the walk down to the river, the crack bucket, who had always felt like it wasn’t as good as the other bucket, said to the elderly woman. I want you to know that I’ve been leaking water every morning for the past several years. I’m so sorry being cracked and making your life more difficult. I understand if you need to replace me with a better bucket. The elderly woman smiled. Do you really think I haven’t known about your cracks this whole time, she asked. Look at all the beautiful flowers that grow on the path from my cottage to the river. I planted their seeds, but every morning it’s you who does the watering as we walk. Feeling good enough in life and work and business and our relationships has everything to do with how we personally judge the cracks in our own bucket. Because we all have cracks. But are they the cracks that wreck us? Are they the cracks that taint us, that ruin our experience or our desirability? Or do our cracks water a trail of flowers we haven’t even stopped to appreciate? Like, are our cracks… And she was talking about how her ADHD actually has benefits that gives her superpowers, like she’s really outgoing and friendly and she’ll walk up to people she doesn’t know and that her other friends are like, how do you make friends everywhere we go? And then she also has hyper focus because of her ADHD. So those are her crack of ADHD, which makes school so difficult. She was saying also those are the flowers that are watered along the way, all the new friends she makes.
SPEAKER 07 :
Absolutely. Isn’t it a matter of perspective? The bucket is half full, the bucket is half empty. It’s the same bucket with the same outcomes. How you evaluate it, hopefully not judge it, can be able to see what do you choose to see. Do you choose to see the flowers or do you choose to see the hole in the bucket?
SPEAKER 06 :
i’ve interviewed so many of these like leaders you know in the adhd community and i interviewed this one author and he also is a doctor physician and they did a documentary and they had a lot of famous people in the documentary who believed that their adhd really did give them superpowers per se and when they went through the list of people and their successes i mean there were a lot of them very famous people in olympic athletes etc So I really enjoyed seeing how their cracks had made them exceptional. You know, I’m like really creative people. All right. Dr. Cheryl Lentz dot com. Thank you, friend. You’re always so wonderful on the show.
SPEAKER 07 :
It’s a pleasure.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to the good news with Angie Austin on AM 670 KLTT.
