Hello, welcome to the Excel Stillmore podcast.

I am your host, Chris Emerson, and we are here to talk about tips and strategies that you can employ to deepen your faith, improve your relationships, and just get the most out of your life.

Thank you for joining. Let's get started.

Okay, so very first thing today to tell you is that I tried very hard not to record this episode.

I thought, nobody cares that I'm 40. Nobody wants to sit there for the first

10 minutes and listen to me talk about myself. But I just can't get away from this idea. I've been

using this phrase, hey, I'm 40 all year long. I did actually turn 40 last December. But my friends

and the people who spend a lot of time around me, they have

seen my two hands come up and me say with a snicker, hey, I'm 40, like 100 times since then,

and I want to explain what that's all about. It's not just about a birthday. It's about a change. It's

like that Tim McGraw song. He was turning 30 at the time, but he said, it's time to take a moment and celebrate my age, the ending of an era and the turning of a page.

And I just have to tell you, that's what it means for me. To say, hey, I'm 40 is a way of saying I have grown up in some things.

And there are truths that I've known for a really

long time that I've applied kind of sporadically. And I'm done with that. I'm 40. And this is represented

the most significant internal change in my life. Look, it doesn't mean that I'm perfect or get it

right all the time. I guess I'm saying some days I'm still 39. But

overall, I'm ready to carry this thing through. And really, since that began in December,

you'll note that the podcasts started in late January. These 40 episodes are really a cataloging

of the I Am 40 mantra. What it really means, the choices that I'm now making, the direction

that I'm setting, big ideas like it's not what I do, it's who I become. All of that fits under

the hey, I'm 40 ideology, and I want to talk to you about it. I'm here to tell you, you may be 16

years old and today could be your 40th birthday. That revelation,

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