Doctors Said He Had 24 Hours to Live

Kevin Delaney on Living Life Intentionally

He was once given 24 hours to live. Eighteen years later, Kevin Delaney is still using that moment as fuel, not fear and his story will make you rethink what “prime” really means in midlife.

Kevin and I go back to the Bay Area in the 1980s, long before he chased rock-and-roll dreams, worked in nonprofit ministry, and eventually rose through high tech to become a LinkedIn VP. But the turning point isn’t a promotion or a title. It’s a coma, a liver transplant, and the clarity that life is fragile and life is precious. We talk about how to stop shriveling in the daily grind, how to build a life with meaning even inside corporate work, and why relationships are the only real scoreboard.

Now “retired,” Kevin is focused on health span, not just lifespan. You’ll hear about his family’s hilarious and brilliant 50-before-50 list, the quest to see all 50 states, and the unexpected choice to buy John Steinbeck’s house and then finally read Steinbeck. We also get real about fear, aging, loss, and the simple mantra that cuts through excuses: now is life.

If you’ve been waiting for “someday” to travel, create, reconnect, or take the leap, let this be the nudge. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs encouragement, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts so more listeners can find these stories.
⸻
Guest Information
Kevin Delaney is a former technology executive, leadership strategist, and author who spent decades helping shape culture and leadership inside the high-tech world, including serving as Vice President of Learning and Development at LinkedIn. Earlier in his career, he spent six years with Young Life mentoring students and developing the relational leadership philosophy that would influence his work in business.

After surviving a life-threatening liver failure that left doctors giving him just 24 hours to live, Kevin began rethinking how he wanted to spend his time and energy. Today he writes and speaks about intentional living and meaningful second acts through his books A Life Worth Living, Cracking the Career Code, and Words to Wonder, as well as his Take Two newsletter.

Resources and Links
Website: KevinJohnDelaney.com - Books, Contact, Newsletter
Book: A Life Worth Living
Book: Cracking the Career Code
Book: Words To Wonder

Music used in this episode:
All music in this episode is licensed for use through Epidemic Sound.

⸻
IF YOU LIKE WHAT WE'RE DOING HERE AT THE MANGO TIMES, PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW BY...
✅ Send me a text and let me know what you think.
✅ Share this episode with a friend RIGHT NOW!
✅ PLEASE LEAVE ME A REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS HERE.
✅ Buy Me A Taco (LINK HERE)

Transcript

Welcome And The Midlife Theme

Fletch 0:02

Welcome to the Mango Times Podcast. Hey, it's Fletch and welcome back to the Mango Times Podcast. I'm here in the studio with all my favorite things. I have a cup of hot coffee from the roasters down the street at Caffetino Roasters here in Modesto. My pipe is lit with my favorite tobacco. And my faithful dog champ sitting here at my side. Hey, as you know, we're exploring midlife adventure this season on the Mango Times, and today's guest is going to show you exactly why your 40s and your 50s aren't the beginning of the end. They're actually your absolute prime. My guest today is my friend Kevin Delaney. Now listen to this. He was once given 24 hours to live. And the way that he's spent the 18 years since that wake-up call is an absolute masterclass in how to live as fully and bravely and beautifully as possible. Kevin and I go back to the mid-1980s in the Bay Area when he was my young life leader, and I was just a senior in high school. He was a few years ahead of me. Since then, his life has been a series of unexpected chapters, from pursuing rock and roll dreams right out of college to becoming a high-tech VP at LinkedIn. But it was a liver transplant and that near-death experience that taught him the most vital lesson. Life is fragile and life is precious. He's since retired from the corporate drone life to become a best-selling author and speaker. And on this episode, we're going to talk about a lot of things, including his quest to see all 50 states, why he bought John Steinbeck's house, and how to stop shriveling in the daily grind and start living with intention. Stick around because you are not going to want to miss this episode. Let's head into the studio for this conversation.

Kevin’s Wild Career Chapters

Fletch 2:00

Kevin, I want to welcome you to the Mango Times podcast. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Good to see you, Andy. So you and I go way back, mid-1980s in the Bay Area. You were my young life leader, and I was a senior in high school. Maybe a version of ourselves that probably had no idea where life would take us, you know, 40 35 years later, 40 years later. So when I look at your story, and we've kind of had some touch points over the year, it feels less like a straight line to me and more like a series of chapters. And I'd love if we could walk through a few of those. So could you give the audience just a brief version of your life's highlight reel?

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Absolutely. I was a my parents were born, married, raised in Ireland. So I grew up an Irish kid in America. I was the first person in my family to go to college, planned on going to law school. My immigrant parents were very happy. Then I broke their heart, letting them know that I was going to pursue my rock and roll dreams. That's not a good thing. I found out firsthand why they call them starving musicians. And at some point, I had to get a job. I'd been working with Young Life as a volunteer for years and ended up going on staff with Young Life for six years and working that nonprofit. And at some point, the nonprofit ran out of money. And so for me, it meant, what am I doing? Had been married, had a six-month-old kid, and I fell into the corporate world. A CEO asked me to be his head of HR and I asked the intelligent interview question, what is HR? And he said, you know, human resources. And I said, okay, what's that? Fortunately, it worked. And I thought it was a temporary thing while I figured out what I was going to be when I grew up, but ended up continuing to get opportunities in that space. And so I spent my career in every conceivable job in high tech. My last job, I was the VP of learning and development at LinkedIn. And five years ago, in the midst of COVID, I knew I was done. The day-to-day, 12 Zoom calls a day. I had this moment of if I died six months from now, I would be so frustrated that this is how I was spending my days. And so that's the career journey. I would say, kind of my epiphany part of life.

The 24 Hour Prognosis

SPEAKER_01 4:16

17 years, nine months, nine days ago, doctors met with my family. I was in a coma, said, You have 24 hours to live. And they threw the Hail Mary Pass, put me on an organ transplant list. And I got a liver transplant that saved my life. But that was a major turning point where I was always pretty intentional. I think from the time I was 22, I latched onto the Helen Keller quote, you know, life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. But coming out of the coma and the transplant and realizing how close I'd come to dying, I realized probably two things in a more acute degree. Life is fragile, which I don't think I had any appreciation for. And life is very precious. And so for me, from that moment on, I have been very intentional about how do I live, how do I make the very most of life. And I would say that's really what I'm about now. How do you live with meaning? How do you live with purpose? How do you live intentionally?

Fletch 5:13

So back then, let's go back to college age, Kevin. What were you chasing back then?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

I had no connections or concept of the business world. I remember my dad was a very buttoned-up guy. He laid his shirt out the night before, the tie on the chair the night before, his, you know, tech badge next to his pen. And I saw this very rigid, disciplined approach to the business world. And so all I knew was I did not want that. I didn't even know what that was, but I didn't want that. I was a pretty shy kid. But what was interesting when I went to Young Life as a kid, sort of opened my eyes to both people expressing, you know, real emotion, real feeling, adventure beyond anything I'd imagined, people building relationships at a depth I never imagined possible. And so I knew that's what I wanted. And so depth of relationship, realness, how do you have authentic uh relationships? That was the driver for me. And I never really figured out the, you know, I have a career aspiration to make money. I knew I needed money to live. But after I finished college, I had put myself through college painting houses. And I finished college and kept painting houses because it let me coach high school basketball and swimming and diving. It let me continue to volunteer for young life. It allowed me to do music. So career aspirations never entered the equation other than I know I need to make ends meet. Somebody challenged me, and it was a very important moment. A Young Life staff guy, I was still volunteering, and he met with me one day and he said, Why are you not on the young life staff? And I said, I don't know. And he said, No, no, no. This isn't a flippant question. I want you to go and think about it for a few days, and then I want an answer. And it was like, What? But it was that moment somebody said, You could do this for a living and make a big impact. And so then I would say impact and meaning became a significant pillar in everything I wanted to do from that point forward.

Finding Meaning Beyond Job Titles

Fletch 7:10

Okay. So that was going to lead me to a question to say, when did you feel most alive in this career arc? Was there a point or is was it just different points?

SPEAKER_01 7:22

When you're doing full-time work, you know, in in my case, in young life and a nonprofit, telling people about the gospel, it's alive, it is vibrant, it is really hard to shift into the corporate world and feel like there's anything that touches that level of significance and meaning. So for a while there was a little bit of crisis of this is stupid and meaningless. Yes, it pays money, but oh my gosh, that was so much more meaningful. It took me a while to figure out when you merged the two of need to make a living and how do you have meaning in a job that is corporate, so to speak, it came back to those same fundamentals. Relationships are the foundation of everything. And, you know, I left the corporate world five years ago. I was fortunate enough to retire early. And so in that process, when I look back on all the big projects, the acquisitions and the big deals we closed, it's all meaningless. The only thing that matters over the course of my career are the relationships that I developed, maintained, and continue to have. And I'd say that is the universal thread that goes through everything. It was just a little harder to discover in the corporate world.

Fletch 8:33

Those are exactly some of the things I was hoping to get to. Was there a season, though, in any of this, in any of those steps where you feel you stayed longer than you should have?

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Ah, good question. I think the good thing about life is it only comes one day at a time. If we think that there's a right plan, scripted outcome, I think we miss the delightful mess that shows up when the plot twists arrive. So I really don't. I feel like if anything, at the end of my corporate life, I was back in that moment. I really had started thinking about writing. I've always been a writer to some degree. And I ended up writing my first book while I was still in the corporate world, but I figured I would at some point put more time into writing books, and that became a pretty natural offshoot to close down the day-to-day corporate. And I just expected I would continue to write books. The unexpected piece of where I've been in the last five years is people that had heard me speak. I did a lot of public speaking engagements, generally about purpose and meaning, even though it was in the corporate world. I continue to get phone calls. And so, you know, well, I'm not doing anything else, so sure. And so uh ended up speaking a lot to a point where I thought, I feel like I have a job still, and I don't necessarily want to feel that. So I've been trying to find the right balance of say, no, enough where there's the freedom of enjoying day to day. But I've been writing and speaking and then ultimately started a newsletter because as you get to that point and you say, What do you do when you have the freedom to do anything or nothing? You realize the importance of significance and doing something meaningful, which is why I love your podcast, because you know, how do you have an adventure in midlife? How do you continue to say, I'm not done with life? Yeah. Too many people are done with life in their 40s, let alone 60s or 70s. And so part of the reason I write and why I write a newsletter, you know, it's called Take Two, Take Two Minutes to Remind Yourself, Refresh Yourself, to Live Intionally and with Meaning. It's mostly for me to remind myself on a weekly basis. Hey, go be intentional about making the most of life.

Fletch 10:52

Let me ask this question. You might have answered it, but would you say this pivot? So we're now going to kind of go into you as an author, would you say that pivot was sudden or had it been whispering at you for years, or did it just, was it just always there?

SPEAKER_01 11:06

It was whispering, but what I found early in my career, which I so appreciated, that first CEO who hired me in HR did not think of human resources as anything that the corporate world thought of it. His mentality was this is about people find them recruiting, fix them, help them work together more effectively, wrap it in a bow of communications, and that's HR. And he unleashed me to do it however I wanted. So everything I had learned in Young Life, doing Bible studies, doing small groups, I just applied to the corporate world about building deep relationships and being authentic. And I realized that you can craft your corporate world to not be the drone, but to bring meaning into it. So I always took great liberties to bring in the search for meaning and depth and realness. That being said, there is a point where I knew, okay, particularly with COVID, the amplification of every day is 10 to 12 Zoom meetings back to back. And when you're in a Zoom meeting, the natural flow of a bunch of people in a room kind of working off each other and jokes and everything. No, you have to be in your lane because people talking over in a Zoom meeting is very disruptive in the corporate world. And so you sit politely and then you but one by one go, and I thought, oh my God, my soul is shriveling. And so that was the whisper that really brought it home. I was having a ball. I had a great team. We were doing things at a wonderful scale. But I also knew that there's a different avenue to express meaning. And I've never left. I wrote in my book in the first book, A Life Worth Living. I feel very blessed that I got a wake-up call. And most people wouldn't think, you know, no, that horrific health crisis, not a good thing. But it gave me perspective that I look at as a gift that many people never get. And in a weird way, not in a morbid way, but I think about dying every single day. Because I that was the first question when I was cognizant enough after the coma light, okay, doctor, how long do I get to live? And they said, you know what? It's pretty new technology we don't know. So suggest you just get busy and make the most of it. Uh I took them at their word and I've been making the most of it since.

Fletch 13:20

You're alive today, and that's the answer. Well, do I have tomorrow? Well, again, I'm gonna go back to the first answer. You're alive today. Yes. Wow. Now is now is it. Now is life. Hey, let's take a break right here, and then I'm gonna come back and we're gonna dive into where you have pivoted. We'll be right back.

Quick Break And Review Ask

Fletch 13:41

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break in the interview. And while we're paused, if you've been enjoying the Mingo Times, would you take a minute and leave a review over on Apple Podcasts? It helps more than you know. It helps new listeners find these stories, and it lets me know that I'm heading in the right direction. So, you know what? You can go do it right now. I promise this conversation will be right here waiting when you get back. So go. Leave a review. I'll see you when you get back.

Health Span And Retired Living

Fletch 14:15

All right, so we're back. Let let me uh start here kind of on this new journey. Why don't you just explain what you're doing right now or where you are currently? You say retired, but but where are you in your quote-unquote career right now?

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yeah, from a career perspective, I'm not pursuing anything career. I'm pursuing life to the fullest. And I remember reading, I forget who it was, but it was a very poignant moment realizing we talk about lifespan, lifespan, lifespan, which is an irrelevant stat compared to health span, that too many people put off the great moments till later when I retire, or when I have enough money. And they wait to a point where their bodies will not let them do the things they want to do. And so I realized health span usually ends far sooner than your life. So my wife and I have been very intentional. We have been traveling a ton. We have a list of places that we are trying to see. When I was 49 years old, my kids gave me a fantastic weird gift. So I opened up this gift and there's uh an empty photo album in in wrapping paper. And I'm thinking, okay, thank you. And then there's a note in there, like, no, no, keep reading. And on it was a list of 50 things they wanted me to do before I turned 50, taking pictures of those adventures to fill the empty photo album. Now, great gift. It was the most intentional year of living I've ever had, but they were young enough to be naive. So, like one thing on the list see all 50 states, you know, meet the president of the United States, like big, big things. But the comedy of it is, while I haven't necessarily finished all of them, I am still working on that list and you know, take 50 states. My wife and I literally work our way through. We have four to go. Wow. We will literally say, Where have we not been? Let's book a trip. Last year we went to Oklahoma City.

Fletch 16:09

Okay, because I was gonna say, I have a friend drinking through all 50 states, microbreweries at every state. And the last four are in the dead center. He's like, because there's no reason to go there. North Dakota, is that what it was like Iowa, the Dakotas, and Kansas.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

It's beautiful, but one of the things I love, I discovered in our quest for the 50 states, North Dakota realizes they're like one of the least visited states in the Union. People get up to South Dakota, see Mount Rushmore, and then eh, that's enough. And in a marketing brilliance, North Dakota came up with this concept. Realizing that people are on a quest to see all 50 states, they came up with the saving the best for last campaign. That's crazy. You're on your 50 state quest, save us for last, come to Fargo, join the club, get the t-shirt, get the picture, saving the best for last. So that will be our 50th state, North Dakota, to save the best for last. But that was one thing on the 50 list. And so the intentionality of pursuing things, fantastic, to do things that a group of people decided you should experience means there's things on the list like what? Weird stuff. You know, we'd go out to Chinese food and I always ate with a knife and fork. I'm Irish. My parents grew up eating hamburgers and pizza with a knife and fork. So one of the things on the list, you know, we you need to learn to use chopsticks. We I ended up as a writer in passion. I found John Steinbeck's house was for sale down in Pacific Grove. And I was fascinated. I'd never even been to Pacific Grove in my whole life, even though it's an hour away from my house. I went down, looked at it, and decided to buy John Steinbeck's house. And it was going to be a renovation project, but more of this weird piece of history. Hey, John Steinbeck lived here. And my kids realized I'd never read a single John Steinbeck book. And they're like, Dad, I'm embarrassed. So on the list, read every John Steinbeck book, which was a great push to sort of expand and put life in context. And so that intentionality is what I'm about. I'm still working on the 50-50 list. I am traveling a lot. I'm still writing. I finished three books. My last book just came out six months ago called Words to Wonder, which is about living intentionally, day-to-day, kind of daily encouragement. So I'll keep writing. I will keep traveling while my body, I probably go hard for a few more years. We're, you know, getting ready to go to Paris and then we're going to Amsterdam. We were just in Dallas. Before that, we were in Maui. The years off to a banging start. I think Korea's coming and Warsaw's coming. And but travel is a good thing for a certain stage in life. And then after that, I don't know. But it's about meaning, it's about purpose. It's about people.

Writing Books And Building A Platform

Fletch 18:48

So would you say you've created a bit of a platform to do this, to have a voice in the world?

SPEAKER_01 18:53

I have in by accident. In the corporate world, I ended up doing a lot of speaking. So, for example, when I wrote my first book, it was supposed to be a corporate book, How do you succeed in your career? But every time I sat down, yeah, honestly, it was like, I don't care about the career stuff. What I'm thinking about is life. So I went where the passion was and then ended up writing a life worth living, which is about daring to live the life you've imagined. And what I found was there's a deep and profound hunger for purpose and meaning, period. And if it happens to be in your job or happens to be in life, I ended up delivering a one-hour kind of keynote talk on finding purpose in the corporate world like 500 times. So who knew? So that became a platform, which is why I ended up when I left getting phone calls to continue speaking. That's why I started my website and started the newsletter because people were asking, hey, do you write anything else on this? So the platform evolved. My website's just kevinjohndelaney.com.

Fletch 19:52

Who are you hoping that this serves? Who who are you picturing when you think about them coming to your website, reading your books, getting your newsletter?

SPEAKER_01 20:00

There was a quote by an author named Frederick Biekner. He's an interesting guy, but he had a quote that said, One life on this earth is all we get. And the obvious conclusion would seem to be at the very least, we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can. For me, when I think about it, I've met too many frustrated people who feel like they're going through the motions, who feel like they've lost the zip, if you will, in life. And so to me, my website, what I write in books, is an encouragement for people who know there is more to life, but aren't feeling it. And I think that's a large population of people, because I think, you know, the life can be a grind and it can be mundane and it can wear us down. But there is wonder all around if we train ourselves to look for it and to see the good. And it's all about the choice of what we choose to look at.

Fletch 20:55

I'm gonna ask it this way, too, then.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Kevin, what is this not? It's not self-help hype. I mean, people it sometimes goes into that comically. Like your podcast is about the midlife, midlife adventure. I love that language. Uh, on Amazon, there's a whole category, and my book ended up the first book of Life Worth Living. It's been a bestseller numerous times on midlife self-help. Comically, because that's not any audience I just wrote for people who want encouragement. But it's not anything, it's not a business. I'm not trying to make money. I'm not pursuing anything from a success metric standpoint. I've just met enough people that are disillusioned and disappointed with the life they're living. And, you know, I've been fortunate that life has been great. I feel like I have lived five lives and I feel very blessed. And I know that that is possible for people. And I want to encourage them in a world that can sometimes be devoid of encouragement.

Fletch 21:57

All right, we're gonna take a break here. When we come back, we're gonna talk about. Fear and wisdom. Let's take a break.

Fear Health And Trust

Fletch 22:05

Okay, I'm back in the studio with Kevin John Delaney. I hesitate to ask this question, Kevin, because I don't think it even applies. But did any of this, you know, transitioning from the corporate world into what you're doing now, is there any fear involved in this for you?

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Now, no. Along the way, absolutely. Like I'll go back. I was a very shy, introverted person. People in my professional life would be like, no way. But I have learned to be an introvert with extrovert skills. I can be on as much as I need to be in being in front of crowds. I would credit this to being young life. I gave, you know, how many club talks, thousands of them, to the worst audience ever, you know, prepubescent teenage boys trying to capture their attention. But it got me comfortable in front of any audience. So that was a blessing because I do believe, you know, speaking in front of people is something that is a universal skill. I think fear is also universal. And, you know, when I think about fear, it has changed over time. For some, it was, what if I fail? What if I look stupid? Those kind of fears. Then, you know, after the coma, it was, well, what if I die? And then, you know, it was, what if I don't get to see my kids grow up? And now, you know, if there's a fear that's ever present, it does center around the health issues because, you know, I'm immunosuppressed because of a transplant. So I'm susceptible to all the other stuff. And life, as you just probably noticed, there is a season where people begin to degenerate and old people get old, and then it's it's a hard ending. My dad died last year, and I guess in 2024. And, you know, that was real to watch and and hard. And you you feel that loss and you realize, huh? I'm only one generation behind that. I'm I'm entering that season, if you will. My wife, you know, her grandmother is 103 years old. My wife is, you know, 10 years younger than I am. She's eternally healthy. My fear at this point, literally, is we have an amazing life together. And my greatest fear is, you know, I die and leave her alone for 40 years. So that's a lifetime. But I realized quickly kind of the stoic philosophy why waste any energy on things outside your control? And that's one outside my control. So, you know, come back. Do I trust God with my health? Do I trust God that He can take care of my wife if I end up dying early? Yeah. But it's that's the fear in the front of my head. So new fears, but I think nobody ever escapes all fear.

What Kevin Wishes You Knew

Fletch 24:48

Let me let me ask this question now for this. Is this gonna be a gift to the audience? Looking back, what do you wish uh someone had told you at age 40?

SPEAKER_01 24:58

40 is your prime life. Forget the 20s, that's figuring things out. 30s is the stress of establishing yourself, deciding if you're having kids or not, establishing whether you're having a career, establishing what direction you're going. 40 is beginning to say, this is it. 40, 50, 50, 60. I think those 20 years are the prime of life. If you know it. And if you therefore go after it intentionally, stop waiting to do adventurous things because you are saving and packing in your 401k and we don't have the money. I think too many people wait and say, when I have money, when the kids are out of the house, when, when, when, we'll really go for it. Man, I'm telling you, if you're 40 right now and you've not gone for it, it's it's late. The sun is setting. Get out there. I don't care if you just live in a van down by the river for a week to have better stories to tell, but go do it. It's now is life.

Fletch 26:00

Before we wrap up this interview, there's one more thing. I'm always on the lookout for good stories, uh, especially the kind that involve courage, reinvention, midlife pivots, or just everyday killer adventure. If that's you or if that's someone you know, you can text me straight from the show notes. Or if it's easier, just head over to themangotimes.com and hit the let's connect button. I promise I'll do all the legwork because around here I believe a good story needs to be told. All right, let's head back into the studio for the rest of this interview.

Mango Times Fast Five

Fletch 26:38

I would like to take you down the Mango Times Fast Five questions. It's the first answer that comes to your mind. Don't think about it too much.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Okay.

Fletch 26:46

What's something you were completely confident about in your 20s that now makes you laugh?

SPEAKER_01 26:51

I don't think I was completely confident about anything in my 20s. The 20s were a decade of questions. And if anything, I'd say you don't need the answers. What was your favorite young life song? Probably humble thyself because it was beautiful singing from people who normally don't sing beautifully, boy, girls, harmonies, the whole thing.

Fletch 27:13

Your favorite state so far. Wow. I'm sorry, you can't say California.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Yes, I will give you two. My wife and I eloped in New York in Central Park, and it was incredible. Just the adventure of being in Central Park in November and 27 degrees and eloping. It was a magical experience. So New York has a special spot in my heart. The biggest surprise was Oklahoma. Like it had a depth of history. We saw the Oklahoma City thunder. We got some neat stuff at the game. The Oklahoma City bombing memorial is very powerful and more affecting than I ever expected. We found great ramen and Asian food in Oklahoma City. So it was shock and awe from a did not expect it. And I'll add that one of the other things on my 50-50 list, the kid said I should see every presidential library. And so when we go any place, we're like, is it is any anything nearby? And the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, I won't say it was near, but a few hours away. And so we drove to Independence, Missouri when we were out in Oklahoma. It's a great presidential library. So that trip I look at it is full of surprises. The you know, that was a better presidential library than I expected. Who knew? And then Oklahoma City went on and won the title last year. And it's like, who knew? We got to see him play.

Fletch 28:35

What are you still curious about at this stage of life?

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Everything. I'm immensely curious. I learn things to learn things. Every couple of years I learn a new instrument because I think it's a fantastic process that I think progress is imperative to the human condition. And nothing shows progress better than pick up an instrument you don't know how to play, be absolutely terrible, and then keep trying and be a little less terrible and a little less terrible. And in a pretty short period of time, you go from I'm abysmal to hey, it's kind of working. So, like curiosity shows up in those types of things, seeing places, learning instruments, learning to cook, trying things I've never tried before. That's one of the mantras of the Delaney family adventure. Go places we've never been, do things we've never done. And so uh I'm wildly curious still.

Fletch 29:23

And then lastly, be honest, this stage of life, what's something that still makes you feel like a rookie?

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Ooh. Nothing pops to mind which is very freeing. I think there is a moment where you realize, yeah, it doesn't matter, you know, what people think and all that stuff. And that takes a while to get there. I will say that there's still a piece of that that's weird that was an unexpected part of my journey as an author. You write stuff and I've spoken thousands of times and you get on big stages and never bothered me. To publish a book was one of the most vulnerable things ever because you're like, as soon as I let this go, it's like it's out there. It's like in a speech, if you do it, it's gone, and nobody remembers 10 minutes later. But a book, people come back to you like, what are you, what were you thinking? So I still find that a very vulnerable act. And so that could translate to rookie-ish feelings and you know, what do you do with all that kind of stuff? So I'd say that's the one where I still feel like lots to learn in in that capacity.

Fletch 30:26

So if my listeners would love to reach out to you or find you or learn more about you, read your books, where's the best place that they can find you?

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Website has information, kevinjohndelaney.com. You can sign up for my weekly take two newsletter, two minutes to refresh and reinvigorate about living life intentionally. Books are all on Amazon under Kevin John Delaney. So I have A Life Worth Living was my first book about daring to live the life you've imagined. The second book was called Cracking the Career Code, which is about how do you build a successful career without sacrificing your personal life. And the third book was Words to Wonder, which is a companion book to a life worth living. How do you take daily encouragement in living intentionally? So those are all on Amazon, but my website's the place that can point you to. It's my contact information, email, the articles I write, the newsletters I write, etc.

Fletch 31:15

Kevin, former young life leader uh friend, thank you so much for being on the Mango Times podcast with me today.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Andy, thanks so much. Great to be here and hope that every day in the now you are living life to the very fullest, my friend.

Final Nudge And Listener Actions

Fletch 31:33

As Kevin said on this podcast, now is life. Whether you're 40 or 70. And I hope this conversation was just the nudge you needed to stop waiting for your someday and start pursuing that dream that you've been shrinking. Kevin is living proof that even as he said, a delightful mess of a life can be filled with wonder and purpose if you know where to look. So if you want to continue and keep up with Kevin's journey or get a weekly two-minute refresh on living intentionally, head over to kevinjohndelaney.com. The link is in the show notes. You can sign up for his Take Two newsletter. You can also find his books like A Life Worth Living and Words to Wonder on Amazon. I'll put links there in the show notes as well. And if Kevin's story of midlife pivot and adventure resonated with you, please share this episode with a friend who needs some encouragement. And if you have a second, go leave a review over on Apple Podcasts. It really does help new listeners find the stories that I've been doing on this show. And in the meantime, thanks for listening to the Mango Times. Now hop on and let's get out there. Find your adventure and quietly make some noise. And then I was at a wedding sometime, it's a random wedding, and somebody's like, hey, are you Fletch? You write the Mango Times. I'm like, hmm, yeah, I guess I do.