142: Yes to Life by Victor Frankl

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1. 00:00:00 I'm really excited about today's book, Mike.
2. 00:00:01 Yeah.
3. 00:00:02 Yes.
4. 00:00:03 Having gone through man's search for meaning and how much that has impacted
5. 00:00:09 pretty much every discussion we've talked since then, I feel like today's book
6. 00:00:14 could be a really good one to get into.
7. 00:00:16 So can we skip through follow up really quick?
8. 00:00:19 Because I'm really super eancy today.
9. 00:00:23 I have no idea how this is going to go, but we'll go.
10. 00:00:26 Because this is not set up like a normal book for us.
11. 00:00:30 So we'll get there.
12. 00:00:31 That said, for follow up, we have five items here, two of them are yours, three of them
13. 00:00:38 in mine.
14. 00:00:38 Do you want to go first?
15. 00:00:39 You want me to go ahead?
16. 00:00:42 Okay.
17. 00:00:43 So the first one on my list is automate small things.
18. 00:00:46 And I started doing this, Mike.
19. 00:00:51 And although I'm really good at this sort of thing, I realized
20. 00:00:56 that I need to set a timer whenever I start doing these things.
21. 00:00:59 Because if Joe doesn't set a timer when he starts down the path of automating
22. 00:01:03 small things, do you know what happens?
23. 00:01:05 Joe spends lots of time automating.
24. 00:01:08 I spend like four days automating small things.
25. 00:01:10 And the next thing I know, I'm automating things that I've never actually tried to do.
26. 00:01:15 And that is not helpful.
27. 00:01:22 I was working through like automating some of my methods of posting like tweets and stuff
28. 00:01:27 because I have a process where I can post something to my website and then it tweets it
29. 00:01:32 for me, sends it to micro dot blog and mast it on and stuff.
30. 00:01:35 So it sends it to these different places automatically.
31. 00:01:37 And I was like going through a process of trying to automate the collection of
32. 00:01:42 photographs and compressing those and realized when I was about halfway through it that I've
33. 00:01:47 never actually tried to do that process at all.
34. 00:01:51 So why would I automate it?
35. 00:01:52 It happens.
36. 00:01:54 So all that to say, like that particular action item I did a lot of and need to stop at this
37. 00:02:03 point because it's not helpful.
38. 00:02:06 It is automation April.
39. 00:02:08 So I heard that.
40. 00:02:09 Yes.
41. 00:02:10 Super excited about that.
42. 00:02:12 So yes, I've been automating small things.
43. 00:02:15 That's that's one.
44. 00:02:17 Number two is establishing a true creative routine.
45. 00:02:23 This is something that I've like I've done some writing.
46. 00:02:25 We do our podcast.
47. 00:02:26 I do a number of things, the video work I did recently.
48. 00:02:30 And those are things that for me have always just been kind of haphazard and I've been
49. 00:02:37 working through the process of what does like a daily process look like for that?
50. 00:02:41 Like what is my ritual?
51. 00:02:42 What is my jumping off point whenever I get to work to start that sort of thing?
52. 00:02:48 So I'm getting there.
53. 00:02:50 I feel like it's taking some work to try to build that because my work schedule so
54. 00:02:54 unreliable, I guess, is the way to put it given it support.
55. 00:02:59 So there's that.
56. 00:03:01 So yes, I'm working on that one.
57. 00:03:03 It's getting there though.
58. 00:03:04 And then the last one here is I wanted to do some work on my personal brand online.
59. 00:03:12 And I have I have been like working my way down towards this.
60. 00:03:16 And I think at one point, I told you I wanted to talk through this with you.
61. 00:03:19 And I think I finally have something to like potentially send you and talk
62. 00:03:23 through this with you at some point.
63. 00:03:25 So I don't know when that will happen, but I think I want to work through that
64. 00:03:29 with you at some point because I I realized that I'm like cutting and cutting
65. 00:03:33 and cutting and cutting bookworms not going anywhere.
66. 00:03:35 Just need to point that out.
67. 00:03:39 But there's a lot of things that I think I need to narrow down.
68. 00:03:42 And I have lots of thoughts that I feel like I need somebody that's been around
69. 00:03:46 it as much or more than I have to temper it maybe a little bit before I'm going
70. 00:03:55 too crazy here.
71. 00:03:56 So yes, lots and lots of thoughts, but I'm excited about it.
72. 00:04:00 It should be good.
73. 00:04:01 Awesome.
74. 00:04:02 All right.
75. 00:04:03 That's me, Mike.
76. 00:04:04 We got.
77. 00:04:04 So I had one kind of similar to your establishing a creative routine.
78. 00:04:09 Identify when I am going to create.
79. 00:04:11 I have identified this time and it has not happened yet.
80. 00:04:15 Nice work.
81. 00:04:18 This has been a week and there have been lots of unexpected things that have
82. 00:04:26 happened for me personally.
83. 00:04:29 So I still feel this plan is solid.
84. 00:04:33 I just have not been able to execute on it yet.
85. 00:04:38 I'm taking that as a caution, potential red flag.
86. 00:04:42 But so I might have to find a different time here.
87. 00:04:46 But like I said, I think that this was just an outlier.
88. 00:04:50 But if it becomes a pattern, then we'll go back to the drawing board.
89. 00:04:54 But the basic idea is that I want to spend the early hours of my day
90. 00:05:01 writing specifically.
91. 00:05:03 Writing is at the core of everything that I'm going to be doing.
92. 00:05:07 And I mentioned the part time YouTuber Academy that I'm in right now.
93. 00:05:12 I also heard as part of that about this framework for idea generation,
94. 00:05:18 which was from somebody named Dickie Bush.
95. 00:05:23 And I started doing a search for who that is.
96. 00:05:27 And they're basically a digital writer who leads another digital course,
97. 00:05:33 cohort based course called ship 30 for 30.
98. 00:05:36 Are you familiar with this one?
99. 00:05:37 Yeah, I've heard of this one.
100. 00:05:38 Yeah.
101. 00:05:38 OK, so I signed up for that as well.
102. 00:05:42 Nice timing, dude.
103. 00:05:45 Yeah.
104. 00:05:45 So it ends actually or it begins the week that part time YouTuber Academy ends.
105. 00:05:53 So I have mentioned this in the newsletter, but I am going to go straight
106. 00:06:01 into that because I looked into it and watched a replay video of a webinar they
107. 00:06:06 did with Matt Ragland.
108. 00:06:07 And these guys just seem really sharp.
109. 00:06:09 Everything I've heard about this course is that it's really, really great.
110. 00:06:14 And this is the key, right?
111. 00:06:16 Is that I need to show up and write every day.
112. 00:06:18 Well, that's the whole purpose of this course is that you publish something
113. 00:06:22 every day for 30 days.
114. 00:06:23 So this is putting my feet to the fire and making me do that.
115. 00:06:29 And then I also feel like the format that they teach you is going to be
116. 00:06:31 effective for some of the YouTube stuff that I do.
117. 00:06:33 So I see a lot of overlap there.
118. 00:06:35 I'll put a link because I have when you sign up for it, they give you full
119. 00:06:40 disclosure and affiliate link.
120. 00:06:41 So if you are interested in joining the April cohort with me, you can use my
121. 00:06:47 link and then I get a little bit of a kickback.
122. 00:06:49 So that would be great if you want to help me offset the cost of that course too.
123. 00:06:54 Yeah.
124. 00:06:54 By the way, Bodie Quirk is going to be doing it with me.
125. 00:06:58 You know, Bodie.
126. 00:06:59 Oh, fun.
127. 00:07:00 Yeah.
128. 00:07:00 Yeah, he just went.
129. 00:07:01 He went indie here just recently, right?
130. 00:07:05 He did.
131. 00:07:06 Yeah.
132. 00:07:06 So I'm going to make a note here.
133. 00:07:08 I'm going to have no idea what the link is to his thing, but I'm going to find it.
134. 00:07:12 Put it in the notes for people who are listening to this.
135. 00:07:16 It's like a personal Bible study thing that he like coaches you through.
136. 00:07:20 I think if my memory is working correctly, I know his vision for it.
137. 00:07:24 He wants to have like a hundred different courses as part of it.
138. 00:07:27 But I don't know what the URL is off the top of my head.
139. 00:07:30 Right.
140. 00:07:30 Off the way that up.
141. 00:07:31 But yeah, I talked to him the other day and he kind of stumbled on the ship 30 for 30.
142. 00:07:38 Same time I did.
143. 00:07:39 And so when I shared that I was going through, he's like, dude, I'm in that too.
144. 00:07:41 So that'll be fun.
145. 00:07:43 You want to join me and Bodie?
146. 00:07:44 We'd love to have you.
147. 00:07:46 Sure.
148. 00:07:47 I feel like time on my side is not in favor of that.
149. 00:07:56 Yeah.
150. 00:07:56 Well, the part time YouTuber Academy has been significantly more work than I thought it was
151. 00:08:01 going to be.
152. 00:08:02 They estimate you need 10 hours a week to go through this stuff and then also publish
153. 00:08:08 your your one video a week.
154. 00:08:10 And I put in like 10 hours a week just watching and taking notes on the sessions that they have.
155. 00:08:18 So I have not been able to publish anything.
156. 00:08:22 I asked that question prior to signing up for it though.
157. 00:08:25 Like if I'm not able to publish these videos, is there still value in me doing this?
158. 00:08:29 So yeah, yeah, it's it's fine.
159. 00:08:30 You know, and I think there is.
160. 00:08:31 So that that's I've kind of resolved myself to the fact that I'm not doing it the way
161. 00:08:35 Ali would like me to do it.
162. 00:08:36 But the just information gathering, you know, I shared with you a picture of my, my new
163. 00:08:42 background set up, you know, so I'm all set up.
164. 00:08:44 I've got the systems.
165. 00:08:45 Now I just need the prompts, which is the other action item here.
166. 00:08:47 Create my prompt for the next day before I leave.
167. 00:08:49 I've got my prompt right here.
168. 00:08:53 It is the power of the pivot, but I have not been able to sit down and write about it yet.
169. 00:08:57 Nice.
170. 00:09:02 So yeah, a lot of these things are, I feel like they're going to come together soon for me,
171. 00:09:07 but haven't yet.
172. 00:09:09 So I guess I failed.
173. 00:09:10 Is the 10 hours thing a 10 hours on top of watching the course?
174. 00:09:16 Is that the intent of the number?
175. 00:09:18 No, they, they say it's supposed to be 10 hours total investment for this.
176. 00:09:23 It's a part time YouTuber Academy, but there's so much valuable information in it.
177. 00:09:28 Right.
178. 00:09:28 There's basically a two hour session by Ali Abdall every week.
179. 00:09:32 There is a two hour session by somebody from the team who at first, I almost like didn't
180. 00:09:40 even watch those because I signed up to hear from Ali Abdall, right?
181. 00:09:44 But those actually might be better than his sessions.
182. 00:09:47 They're really, really good.
183. 00:09:50 This publicly.
184. 00:09:52 I think he knows it.
185. 00:09:53 I think he knows it.
186. 00:09:54 He, because Ali teaches his system and it's really, really good.
187. 00:09:58 But the other sessions they are able to dive in deeper.
188. 00:10:03 So it's unpacking, like creating your niche is one of the sessions that Ali talks about.
189. 00:10:12 But the really valuable stuff for me is in the other session where they like deep dive into
190. 00:10:17 nicheing or nicheing, whatever, you know, so like it's just that that's resonated for me.
191. 00:10:23 And then the questions that are asked in those sessions, it feels like there's more of an
192. 00:10:28 opportunity to go a little bit deeper.
193. 00:10:30 Now everybody wants to get an answer from Ali Abdall.
194. 00:10:34 So he's got to crank through all these questions and usually they don't even get
195. 00:10:37 through them all in time, but the other one, they're, there's more space.
196. 00:10:41 So they're able to, able to go deeper with it.
197. 00:10:43 And then there's a guest session from like Mr. Who's the boss has done one.
198. 00:10:47 The one this week has been was Pat Flynn, but I didn't get a chance to watch that one yet.
199. 00:10:52 So those are all like two hour sessions.
200. 00:10:54 Then there's a Q and A session on Fridays and then there's additional sessions that
201. 00:10:58 like pop up here and there that you can attend.
202. 00:11:00 Like I attended the one that was like no more excuses.
203. 00:11:03 Like it's time to make your video and they just, the whole purpose of it is just to
204. 00:11:06 overcome any objections to, to you being able to publish.
205. 00:11:10 So you add all that stuff up and then I've got to like, okay, what was that?
206. 00:11:15 That was really good.
207. 00:11:15 So I got to back up the video and take my notes.
208. 00:11:18 You know, so all that adds up to I'm, I'm investing the time, but I haven't had any
209. 00:11:23 of the output yet.
210. 00:11:24 Right.
211. 00:11:25 But since Ali listens to bookworm, I will say super A plus on this course,
212. 00:11:30 totally worth the money.
213. 00:11:31 Really glad I signed up.
214. 00:11:32 I would not hesitate to recommend this to, to anybody.
215. 00:11:37 It's, it's really, really good.
216. 00:11:39 And it's interesting because YouTube is weird.
217. 00:11:43 Like there's an algorithm.
218. 00:11:44 And so I think people kind of have this thought that like, well, you just got to
219. 00:11:50 hack the algorithm and they're looking for those life hack type.
220. 00:11:53 If I do this, this and this, then it'll just blow up for me.
221. 00:11:55 And it's not that simple, but Ali does a really great job of explaining the
222. 00:12:00 principles in a way that's really, really practical.
223. 00:12:02 Like my background video, the YouTube, you can't see the whole thing here, but
224. 00:12:07 simple little thing he makes, off-handed comment.
225. 00:12:09 He's like, every YouTube background, she have three things, a bookshelf, a lamp,
226. 00:12:14 and a plant.
227. 00:12:15 I'm like, huh, okay, well, I've got the books.
228. 00:12:17 Yeah.
229. 00:12:19 So spent 75 bucks at the local hardware store, got these little like LED circle
230. 00:12:25 puck lights to put behind a, a plant I put on my bookshelf, put a lamp up in the
231. 00:12:29 corner.
232. 00:12:29 Makes a huge difference.
233. 00:12:31 So there's a bunch of little things like that that have just been like, aha
234. 00:12:35 moments for me and a lot of foundational stuff in terms of the, the system for
235. 00:12:42 creating the content.
236. 00:12:43 I just need things to calm down just a little bit so I can start making the stuff.
237. 00:12:50 Yeah.
238. 00:12:51 Yep.
239. 00:12:52 Super fun.
240. 00:12:53 Excited for you.
241. 00:12:54 Hope it works out.
242. 00:12:55 Oh, it'll work out.
243. 00:12:56 I'm committing right here before the next episode releases.
244. 00:13:04 So as we're recording this in three weeks, I will have published at least one
245. 00:13:12 YouTube video.
246. 00:13:13 That is not a sermon sketch note video.
247. 00:13:17 Okay.
248. 00:13:17 Good luck.
249. 00:13:18 I want to see it.
250. 00:13:20 All right.
251. 00:13:21 It's out there, public accountability.
252. 00:13:23 All right.
253. 00:13:24 Let's jump into today's book because, because, which is Yes to Life by Victor
254. 00:13:31 Frankel, this is not a, I'm going to sit down and write a book book.
255. 00:13:38 This is a series of, it's a three part series of lectures that Frankel gave.
256. 00:13:46 And I'm drawing a blank on where he gave these.
257. 00:13:49 Do you know?
258. 00:13:49 I do not.
259. 00:13:50 Okay.
260. 00:13:51 I'm drawing a blank on where it was.
261. 00:13:52 I know that's the whole backdrop of the book we're about to discuss.
262. 00:13:56 But to me, that detail wasn't that important.
263. 00:13:59 It's really not.
264. 00:14:00 And I only bring it up because that is the starting point of this particular book.
265. 00:14:08 And like, that's what starts the whole introduction, like this started off as
266. 00:14:11 lectures.
267. 00:14:12 And I think that it's, it's inconsequential, but that's what it is because of the
268. 00:14:18 way that it's presented.
269. 00:14:20 It's, and my suspicion is that he wrote this and then delivered it word for word.
270. 00:14:27 Our head pastor does that.
271. 00:14:28 He writes his sermons verbatim.
272. 00:14:31 And then he doesn't read them.
273. 00:14:33 He's done it that way for so long that it's hard.
274. 00:14:35 Like people, whenever I tell people that he writes some verbatim, they're like shocked.
275. 00:14:38 They thought he just operated off like a 10 point outline and that was it.
276. 00:14:41 And, but no, I suspect that Frankel wrote these verbatim and then delivered them
277. 00:14:46 like that.
278. 00:14:46 He strikes me as somebody that could do that very well.
279. 00:14:50 So that said, this is.
280. 00:14:54 Can I take us on a tangent here real quick?
281. 00:14:56 Just on that topic of scripting.
282. 00:14:58 Sure.
283. 00:14:59 So this actually came up in the part time YouTuber Academy course.
284. 00:15:04 Okay.
285. 00:15:05 And I have a better understanding of what you are saying now because in that guest
286. 00:15:09 session by Mr. Who's the boss, he talks about how he scripts all of his videos.
287. 00:15:14 And that seems kind of extreme at first, but I actually have scripted stuff for quite
288. 00:15:23 a while too.
289. 00:15:24 And so what happens when you script things is you've thought through it clearly in
290. 00:15:31 your own head and you understand how it connects.
291. 00:15:34 You're not worried about in the delivery if you are hitting every single word, but
292. 00:15:39 you have put the effort in ahead of time in the form of writing that you're able to
293. 00:15:44 just flow in that because you're familiar with the document that that you've written ahead of time.
294. 00:15:51 And I think that's, that's the way to do it.
295. 00:15:54 More people should give that a shot.
296. 00:15:55 Yeah.
297. 00:15:56 That's, it's an approach that I'm slowly working my way towards.
298. 00:16:00 I have for a long time said that scripting is not a thing I ever need to do because I just,
299. 00:16:05 I think very quickly on my feet generally.
300. 00:16:07 So it's not something that I've ever really needed to do.
301. 00:16:10 Like if you've seen any of the video courses I've done in the past, it's stuff that I
302. 00:16:17 maybe had a two or three point outline.
303. 00:16:19 I'm not kidding.
304. 00:16:22 Like two or three lines.
305. 00:16:24 That was it.
306. 00:16:24 And then I would go record for 10 minutes and then edit it down to like a four and a half
307. 00:16:28 minute video did it all the time.
308. 00:16:30 Like that's just how I will do that sort of thing when it's software and you're clicking
309. 00:16:35 through like that stuff.
310. 00:16:36 I kind of, I can do that very easily.
311. 00:16:38 But when it gets to trying to synthesize an idea or trying to make sure you cover certain
312. 00:16:45 things, like trying to script it out, I feel like is super helpful.
313. 00:16:49 And again, it doesn't matter if you cover it verbatim delivering in the delivery side of it.
314. 00:16:53 I think it has more to do with the thought process and thinking it through ahead of time
315. 00:16:56 like you're saying.
316. 00:16:57 Yeah.
317. 00:16:58 And when you do that, what happens is you're able to make things a lot more concise, which
318. 00:17:04 is really important when you are talking about YouTube specifically is you got to keep people's
319. 00:17:09 attention.
320. 00:17:09 And that doesn't really matter with Victor Frankl, except to say that is very much his
321. 00:17:14 style where every word matters.
322. 00:17:16 Every word has been carefully considered.
323. 00:17:18 And so there is no fluff in anything that he says.
324. 00:17:21 Right.
325. 00:17:22 Yes.
326. 00:17:23 And that's something that I feel like I need to do better at.
327. 00:17:27 So yes, there's that.
328. 00:17:29 All right.
329. 00:17:30 So this like I was trying to say earlier, this book is laid out.
330. 00:17:34 Sorry.
331. 00:17:35 Sorry.
332. 00:17:35 Didn't mean it that way.
333. 00:17:37 This is laid out a little different in that there's really not chapters.
334. 00:17:42 There are, but there aren't because it's lectures.
335. 00:17:45 That's this is partly why I bring it up because the layout of the book is significantly different.
336. 00:17:50 There's an introduction, which is by Daniel Goldman.
337. 00:17:53 Who wrote emotional intelligence that we covered here on the show.
338. 00:17:55 And he delivers the introduction here.
339. 00:17:59 And then there's the three lectures that we'll cover.
340. 00:18:03 And in a normal outline and in a normal bookworm episode, what we would do is work our way
341. 00:18:10 through either each chapter or pick out a few chapters that made sense to us.
342. 00:18:16 And I'm assuming you've looked through the outline at this point, Mike, this is not that
343. 00:18:21 way because those don't exist.
344. 00:18:23 Yeah.
345. 00:18:23 There's essentially the three parts or three chapters and it covers the entire
346. 00:18:27 hundred, some 107 pages of the book with those three parts.
347. 00:18:32 So there really isn't a way to break it down in that sense.
348. 00:18:37 So what I've done for today's layout and feel free to change this if you want, Mike.
349. 00:18:42 But I picked out like some quotes or main points from each of those
350. 00:18:48 and then tried to kind of summarize what the entire lecture is about to a degree.
351. 00:18:53 And then he helps do that at the very end as well.
352. 00:18:55 And I feel like that would be a good way to cover this because each of these quotes
353. 00:19:00 or these points are things that we could easily expand on and cover quite a bit of territory with.
354. 00:19:05 Makes sense?
355. 00:19:06 Yes.
356. 00:19:07 This will be an interesting episode because basically Victor
357. 00:19:13 Frankel has given us discussion topics, but we're really not going to debate the merits
358. 00:19:19 of what he has said because neither of us are qualified to do that.
359. 00:19:24 Not that we are anyways, but right.
360. 00:19:28 Right.
361. 00:19:28 Nor do I have any interest in being.
362. 00:19:31 But let's just jump in here.
363. 00:19:33 So in the introduction, and again, this is by Daniel Gorman.
364. 00:19:37 I don't want to spend too much time here unless there's something that really jumped out to you, Mike.
365. 00:19:41 But he basically lays out and summarizes a lot of these lectures for you.
366. 00:19:46 So it's not really a spoiler, but it's not far off of that.
367. 00:19:49 The only part in here that I wanted to point out is just where the title of the book comes
368. 00:19:55 from is laid out here.
369. 00:19:56 And and Victor Frankel does point this out a little bit in the book as well.
370. 00:20:01 But there was a camp where which held political prisoners.
371. 00:20:08 This was the Buchenwald, notorious Buchenwald was a part of them.
372. 00:20:12 Anyway, there was one of the first commanders of Buchenwald.
373. 00:20:17 If I'm pronouncing that correctly, it was built in 1937, but the he ordered that a camp song be written.
374. 00:20:24 And one portion of that song, I'll just read this to you.
375. 00:20:29 You don't want me to sing it to you.
376. 00:20:31 But these are some of the lyrics from that.
377. 00:20:33 You don't want that.
378. 00:20:35 Whatever our future may hold, we still want to say yes to life because one day, the time will come, then we will be free.
379. 00:20:44 Now, this was the song that was sung by the prisoners of this camp.
380. 00:20:49 And that phrase, yes to life is where Victor Frankel kind of sits his hat on, sits his hat on it and says, this is what is important.
381. 00:20:59 You're making the choice to say yes to life.
382. 00:21:02 So anyway, that's where the title of the book comes from.
383. 00:21:05 Yes, again, a tangent.
384. 00:21:06 I think a YouTube channel, Sound Guy sings is a great idea.
385. 00:21:11 So it's making it happen.
386. 00:21:13 I don't think that would go as far as you think it would.
387. 00:21:16 It would be opposite of what the expectation is just because I'm actually an anomaly.
388. 00:21:22 I've learned in that I cannot sing.
389. 00:21:26 But a very large number of sound people are also either musicians or singers.
390. 00:21:34 Thus, they have the ear to hear it.
391. 00:21:36 OK, so I've learned that I'm actually an oddball with that.
392. 00:21:41 So OK, I don't know what that is, but it would be very interesting to take people who are usually on one side of the soundboard and then just put them on the other side.
393. 00:21:49 Yep.
394. 00:21:51 But I'm not volunteering.
395. 00:21:52 So I need to ask you about this introduction.
396. 00:21:56 What do you think about the style and rating here for Daniel Gorman writing this?
397. 00:22:02 I was a bit taken aback by it and it didn't strike me as a Daniel Gorman writing for some reason.
398. 00:22:09 It was just very different than what I remember his writing style to be.
399. 00:22:13 And it made me wish he would rewrite emotional intelligence with the style.
400. 00:22:17 Yeah, so I kind of had the same thought.
401. 00:22:20 Not that emotional intelligence was bad.
402. 00:22:22 Very much like the subject matter, but I think the style, neither you are.
403. 00:22:27 I really cared for because I would say it seems a little we talked about how Victor
404. 00:22:34 Frankel is very concise.
405. 00:22:36 Every word has meaning Daniel Gorman's felt not like he was rambling, but there was a lot
406. 00:22:43 of extra words, like maybe like the kind of thing I'm not trying to project this on Daniel Gorman specifically, but people who are have a certain title or whatever they like to hear themselves talk.
407. 00:22:54 That's kind of the impression you get if you don't have any sort of context and you pick up emotional intelligence.
408. 00:22:59 But this introduction was great.
409. 00:23:02 I absolutely loved it.
410. 00:23:04 I saw Daniel Gorman on the top and I'm like, should I skip this?
411. 00:23:07 No, better read it.
412. 00:23:10 Really, really glad that I did.
413. 00:23:12 I feel like I am completely projecting at this point, but I feel like he was asked to write the introduction to a Victor Frankel book.
414. 00:23:22 And he's like, Oh my goodness, Victor Frankel, I better bring my A game and just knocked it out of the park.
415. 00:23:28 I feel like he did a great job setting the stage for this book.
416. 00:23:33 You mentioned the Yes to Life Origins, which is a really cool story, but I also like the stuff he talks about in here about Hitler's strategy.
417. 00:23:45 People will believe anything if it's repeated often enough and if disconfirming information is routinely denied, silenced or disputed with more lies.
418. 00:23:54 I mean, I see that as the playbook for a lot of political junk that's happening right now.
419. 00:24:01 Correct.
420. 00:24:02 And he talks about the importance of learning to recognize the big lie.
421. 00:24:06 You have to be able to understand the truth to defeat the propaganda.
422. 00:24:11 I mean, there's so many lessons from the time that Victor Frankel is talking about, which is not the subject of what he's going to write about in this book that Daniel Goldman does a great job, very succinctly highlighting, shining context on this.
423. 00:24:27 It's almost like this is the key stuff you need to understand from man search for meaning if you haven't read that book, but also it's not just a restating of that.
424. 00:24:36 It's additional details. It feels like new information, complimentary information.
425. 00:24:42 It's the best introduction to a book I have ever read.
426. 00:24:46 Yeah, I would echo that just because he, again, I don't want to say he's spoiling the rest of the book, but he's definitely summarizing where Frankel comes from and his past when it comes to these lectures.
427. 00:25:03 So he's just kind of helping you set the stage.
428. 00:25:05 And because he does that, whenever you jump into the actual content of these lectures in this book, it has you in a spot where you understand where we're coming from, and then you can understand where Frankel is going to take you from that point, which is the exact purpose of the introduction of a book.
429. 00:25:26 So let's make sure that everybody who writes an introduction.
430. 00:25:29 If you're listening to this and you're going to write the introduction to a book, go read this one.
431. 00:25:32 And then you'll understand how to do it.
432. 00:25:33 There you go.
433. 00:25:35 Please do that.
434. 00:25:36 So if we jump into the meat of this book, there's the three lectures, right?
435. 00:25:42 And the first two he's titled on the meaning and value of life, one and two.
436. 00:25:48 Those are the first two.
437. 00:25:49 The last one is experiment, some cruises.
438. 00:25:52 I think it was the way to pronounce that.
439. 00:25:53 And we'll get there.
440. 00:25:56 But this first one, it kind of revolves around hardship and death.
441. 00:26:01 There's quite a bit of conversation around suicide as well.
442. 00:26:06 So like that's all in there.
443. 00:26:09 And the question then becomes, well, obviously, what is the meaning of life?
444. 00:26:15 And he's laying out what the background of his time in concentration camps were concentration camp was.
445. 00:26:23 And he makes this point, he has this phrase in here towards the beginning of this first lecture where he says,
446. 00:26:31 a human being should never be a means to an end.
447. 00:26:34 And I read that underlined it, marked it up in the back of the book and
448. 00:26:39 kind of have processed that one quite a bit.
449. 00:26:43 And it's interesting how if you start to evaluate that phrase a little bit more
450. 00:26:49 and start to expand on what it could mean to use another human being for an end.
451. 00:26:58 And start evaluating how that could be played out, even in many, many small ways.
452. 00:27:02 That happens a lot.
453. 00:27:04 Like people do this a lot even today.
454. 00:27:08 And that's a bit alarming, to be honest with you.
455. 00:27:11 It's like that's that's not something that I want to say that I've ever done is use some other human being as a means to an end.
456. 00:27:17 And yet I'm fairly certain I've done that many times.
457. 00:27:22 Unwantingly.
458. 00:27:23 Yeah.
459. 00:27:25 Agreed. One of the phrases I jotted down was that most working people I've been degraded to be mere tools for economic life, which is the point that you're making.
460. 00:27:36 But the slightly different takeaway from me and my brain as I read this was that you are more than what you do.
461. 00:27:48 You're more than what you produce.
462. 00:27:51 Because I think that is one of the challenges with reading this book.
463. 00:27:55 Remember, he's speaking to a lot of people who had lived through the same thing that he's lived through.
464. 00:28:05 And we are disconnected from that.
465. 00:28:08 And that's challenging in from a bookworm perspective, because it's the big question is like, how does this pertain to my life?
466. 00:28:19 What are the lessons that we can we can take away from this?
467. 00:28:24 And I think the practical one right at the beginning here for everybody is disconnect your value or your identity, your personhood from what you do, whether that's at work or at home,
468. 00:28:45 recognizing that you have intrinsic value just because you are a person.
469. 00:28:49 And I guess for me personally, I tend to judge myself most harshly with this.
470. 00:28:56 If I don't have a great day, if I don't ship a thing, I tend to think like, well, what did I actually do?
471. 00:29:05 What value did I actually bring to the world?
472. 00:29:08 And there's probably a lot of creative people who feel that way.
473. 00:29:13 And I'm again, me sitting here in my office, struggling with perfectionism in terms of shipping stuff is totally different than him fighting for survival in a concentration camp.
474. 00:29:28 But that's how I connected those dots.
475. 00:29:31 Yeah, there's a lot of conversation around like the purpose of life here.
476. 00:29:38 Obviously, that's something we talked about a lot whenever we read Man Search for Meaning.
477. 00:29:42 You know, purpose, meaning, mission, drive, calling, whatever you want to term this as, there's something that we generally want to know why behind our existence in some form.
478. 00:29:56 And again, you can goals, whatever you want to call it.
479. 00:29:59 Why am I here and why am I living on this earth?
480. 00:30:05 Like that is a big question and I think we'll get to whether or not we should be asking that question here shortly.
481. 00:30:13 But this is something that comes up for just about everybody, I think, at some point in life.
482. 00:30:20 And when you think about the existence of living in a concentration camp and the horrific things that these people saw every day
483. 00:30:34 and had to experience, it's hard to fathom the concept of finding true purpose in life in that scenario, right?
484. 00:30:44 We have such easy lives in comparison that whenever we're struggling with, why am I even here?
485. 00:30:52 Why do I even try?
486. 00:30:53 Like these things, people say this stuff flippantly sometimes.
487. 00:30:56 And I can't say that it's ever really struck me as you're not thinking about it, right?
488. 00:31:02 Or your mind is in the wrong place, but that's definitely what's going on.
489. 00:31:06 And it's not a simple thing to overcome.
490. 00:31:10 And yet it is.
491. 00:31:11 So all that to say, like, I think there's just a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to asking this why behind why we're living.
492. 00:31:21 And some people misinterpret it and want to end their life.
493. 00:31:25 That's why he has this conversation of suicide and why do we even try to exist?
494. 00:31:30 Why not just end it?
495. 00:31:31 But then he goes through this whole process of explaining how that's pointless in itself, because you don't know when your circumstances are going to change.
496. 00:31:38 You don't know when something is going to be asked of you that then would give you that purpose and drive.
497. 00:31:44 So you don't know the answers to that.
498. 00:31:47 And if you think you know all the answers and that there's just absolutely no reason you could ever be useful to someone else or be able to help someone else ending your life is absolutely the wrong answer, because you never know when that's going to come up.
499. 00:32:00 Yeah, that's kind of getting into the next section.
500. 00:32:03 Let me back up just a little bit here on just finding your own meaning, because that is something that he says in this first section is that each person is responsible for the
501. 00:32:17 creation of meaning in their own life.
502. 00:32:20 And I think you and I would both agree with that.
503. 00:32:24 But the one that was a little bit not surprising, not jarring, but maybe go, hmm, was to ask, what does life expect of me?
504. 00:32:36 Because maybe this is the American rugged individualism showing, but we tend to think like, I can make my life whatever I want it to be.
505. 00:32:46 And I do think there's some truth to that.
506. 00:32:47 Self-determination is a very powerful thing.
507. 00:32:50 Personal responsibility.
508. 00:32:51 We've talked about that.
509. 00:32:52 But I think it's an interesting question and a very valid one to ask instead of like, what do I want out of life?
510. 00:33:00 What does life require of me?
511. 00:33:03 Because I think when you view it through that lens, you end up with a lot more selfless motives, which the further I get on my productivity journey.
512. 00:33:13 I realize that that's the stuff that matters anyways.
513. 00:33:18 Thinking back to, I think it was the second mountain by David Brooks.
514. 00:33:25 Climb that first mountain, you think, this is what my life's going to be about.
515. 00:33:28 I'm going to achieve this stuff, do these things.
516. 00:33:30 It's going to be great.
517. 00:33:31 You get to the top of the mountain and then you're like, is that it?
518. 00:33:34 And then you see, oh, actually that mountain over there, the second mountain, that's the one I should have been climbing the whole time.
519. 00:33:41 I feel like asking this question moves you closer to that second mountain.
520. 00:33:46 Yeah, this is the last point I had put in here.
521. 00:33:50 And I want to go back to the second one here because I kind of skipped it.
522. 00:33:53 But we don't need to ask, what is the meaning of life?
523. 00:33:58 Life asks us is the way that he puts that.
524. 00:34:02 So if we're asking, what's the meaning of life?
525. 00:34:06 Like the assumption actually there is that it's the same for all of us, which isn't true.
526. 00:34:11 And yet if we flip it, what is life asking of me?
527. 00:34:17 That's a lot more of an interesting question because then it leads you down.
528. 00:34:22 Like, what am I good at?
529. 00:34:23 What am I skilled at?
530. 00:34:24 And how can I use that to help other people?
531. 00:34:26 Like what is what is being asked of me that I can contribute?
532. 00:34:30 That's really where that starts to come into play.
533. 00:34:34 And when you flip it on its head like that, it really eliminates a lot of the
534. 00:34:41 self-pity stuff that tends to float around because it really doesn't give you an out.
535. 00:34:47 Really? Right?
536. 00:34:49 Like, I don't want to do all the hard work to use your example of building a YouTube channel.
537. 00:34:55 People want the tips and tricks.
538. 00:34:56 They want to do it quick.
539. 00:34:56 They want it to be easy.
540. 00:34:57 But hey, guess what?
541. 00:34:59 The key is consistency and creating quality and being helpful to other people.
542. 00:35:03 Right.
543. 00:35:04 And if you're able to help other people consistently, you just started
544. 00:35:10 to drive meaning in your life, like asking the question of how can I help other people?
545. 00:35:16 If you can see through your difficulties and through your hardships
546. 00:35:21 in order to find that answer, then you have found your meaning.
547. 00:35:27 If that's a thing that you need to ask.
548. 00:35:30 Hopefully that makes sense.
549. 00:35:31 Yes.
550. 00:35:34 I think also in terms of finding your own meaning, it's intrinsically tied to the value and meaning of others,
551. 00:35:43 which is kind of the point that you were getting to.
552. 00:35:48 But in this section specifically, it talks about how they were frequently told as they were getting.
553. 00:35:54 They're one meal of the day that you're not worth the soup, which they would be really excited
554. 00:36:01 when they got a chunk of potato.
555. 00:36:02 Right?
556. 00:36:03 So it's not much that is sustaining their lives at this point.
557. 00:36:09 And being told that this meal, if you can call it that, you're not even worth this.
558. 00:36:16 Like they're being told that all the time.
559. 00:36:18 And so you have to constantly be fighting against that.
560. 00:36:21 You have to constantly be telling yourself a different narrative.
561. 00:36:25 If all you do is absorb the same message over and over and over again,
562. 00:36:30 then that will trickle down and you will eventually start to believe that you have to answer that,
563. 00:36:37 which is why this is so important.
564. 00:36:39 Because it has to originate from inside of you have to know what you believe.
565. 00:36:43 You have to confess it.
566. 00:36:44 You have to have faith that this thing is more true than this other message that I'm I'm hearing.
567. 00:36:52 And I want to call out one thing too.
568. 00:36:55 If you are in the process of trying to determine what is your why in life,
569. 00:37:02 if you distort it somewhat away from including others in any capacity,
570. 00:37:09 and it's purely internal and your own individual experience that you're trying to find meaning within,
571. 00:37:16 it's very easy to end up going down this pleasure path of seeking, primarily,
572. 00:37:25 pleasure throughout life.
573. 00:37:27 Like when people talk about retirement, what's the vision that comes to your head?
574. 00:37:31 Like a lot of people it's I'm on the beach every weekend.
575. 00:37:35 I can sit back, sit my.
576. 00:37:38 Oh, I know exactly what this looks like because I just went visited my parents down in Florida.
577. 00:37:43 There you go.
578. 00:37:44 And the place that they stay is full of people who are retired and they just go down their snowbirds.
579. 00:37:50 Yep. They come from Canada, they come from the Midwest and they go down there and they just
580. 00:37:55 enjoy life for several months.
581. 00:37:58 And that I don't know.
582. 00:37:59 I mean, that's I don't want to say there's anything wrong with that.
583. 00:38:04 But Victor Frankl might say there is like why he would at least say there's more to life than that.
584. 00:38:09 That should not be the goal like to get to the end and just be comfortable.
585. 00:38:13 And I'm not saying that everybody who's down there, that's the way they they view it.
586. 00:38:19 But there definitely are some people who do view it that way.
587. 00:38:22 I had some conversations with people down there and it's like, well,
588. 00:38:26 this is literally your whole reason for living is you show up at the pool here every day and
589. 00:38:31 you complain about stuff and you go home and you sleep and you do it again tomorrow.
590. 00:38:36 Right.
591. 00:38:37 But you can also take this to the next step, right?
592. 00:38:41 So one of the quotes that's in the book, this is why I brought it up.
593. 00:38:44 Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning. Thus, the lack of pleasure cannot
594. 00:38:51 take away meaning from life, which he then says, which now seems obvious to us because they had
595. 00:38:57 just come out of the war, right? And when you start to extrapolate that to some of the ideals
596. 00:39:03 that we shoot for, if I'm not finding pleasure in what I'm doing right now, the assumption is that
597. 00:39:11 I no longer have the right purpose and the right drive, the right meaning in my own life.
598. 00:39:17 That is the assumption, right? So if I'm not finding joy in my work to use those terms,
599. 00:39:24 then I'm obviously in the wrong work. That's the assumption. And I think Victor Franco would say
600. 00:39:32 that's not true. It's more about how you approach it and that pleasure itself is not the purpose
601. 00:39:39 that you should be hunting for. You can always change your mindset. I couldn't help but think
602. 00:39:46 like there's this under arching tone of growth mindset in this book. I don't know if you noticed
603. 00:39:51 that or not, but it's like this undertone. He never brings it up because obviously that wasn't a
604. 00:39:55 thing when this was this lecture was given or written. But that whole mindset piece is in here
605. 00:40:05 and trying to change your mindset based on where you are despite pleasure or hardship in your
606. 00:40:11 current situation. That's the bigger goal here. I think that's what he's kind of driving towards
607. 00:40:17 with this. Agreed. Way to make it practical. I agree. Growth mindset is the core theme in like
608. 00:40:26 every book that we read. I don't know if that's just because we tend to select books based on our
609. 00:40:32 preferences and biases. And I refuse to read like the Mark Manson ones. But.
610. 00:40:37 I don't think those because I think you would mix them just purely based on the title.
611. 00:40:44 I would. I would. I have not vetoed anything. I've read the art of asking. I've read Zen in the
612. 00:40:49 art of motorcycle maintenance. I might draw the line there at Mark Manson though.
613. 00:40:54 But I haven't pushed you that far yet either. So yes, that I think kind of brings us to the end
614. 00:41:01 of the first lecture. Okay. On the meaning and value of life, which kind of revolves around
615. 00:41:07 hardship and death. The second lecture also called on the meaning in life part two revolves
616. 00:41:14 around physical and mental illness. And Blake thinks we should cover sapiens. And so around
617. 00:41:22 physical and mental illness. This is this is really interesting because he he explains how there is
618. 00:41:29 this mindset that if a person has no value to society. Or has no means of being cured from
619. 00:41:42 their mental or physical illness that allowing suicide or euthanasia killing them is okay. And
620. 00:41:54 he has a very strong guttural, I would say reaction to this in that he says, no, absolutely not.
621. 00:42:02 There is always meaning in saying that someone can never have purpose in life is absolutely false.
622. 00:42:10 Because your perspective can change. And that's all it takes to change whether or not there is
623. 00:42:17 meaning for that person. And as an explanation for this, like as a way to
624. 00:42:23 kind of help you understand this, there's a very simple question to ask yourself.
625. 00:42:27 Do you really want to erase your sad experiences from the past? So think about that. If you had a
626. 00:42:35 difficult, tragic, quote unquote bad emotional experience, and I say quote unquote because it
627. 00:42:40 has to do with perception of the experience. If you've had that, would you actually want to
628. 00:42:46 erase it from your history? If you could. And if you were to evaluate that, honestly and truthfully,
629. 00:42:54 my guess is your answer is probably no. Because the growth that you received from that far outweighs
630. 00:43:01 the difficulty that you experienced. Now that probably might be a stretch to say every scenario,
631. 00:43:07 because I know there are definitely very difficult situations that you absolutely want to
632. 00:43:12 remove, especially if it's very raw and recent. But if it's far removed and you're willing to
633. 00:43:18 see the growth from that, that's where the growth from that bad experience can come from.
634. 00:43:24 Sure. The fascinating part to me about this was not the suicide angle, which is how he starts it,
635. 00:43:33 is not throwing away your existence because you don't value it. But the section on
636. 00:43:41 making those choices about other people. And he kind of talks about he didn't use this term, but
637. 00:43:50 essentially like people in a coma, people who would be described as vegetables, maybe that they
638. 00:43:57 don't seem to be in their right mind. They don't seem to have their faculties. I was struck by
639. 00:44:04 the story that he told of somebody who was suffering from a disease. And then after several years,
640. 00:44:12 all of a sudden just came out of it and left the hospital. And he told that, do you remember
641. 00:44:19 what story that I'm talking about? vaguely. Yeah, he told some many of them that sometimes
642. 00:44:23 there are. And I don't think the specifics really matter. But basically he made it sound like all
643. 00:44:27 the doctors had essentially given up on this guy. And he remembered some of the things that they
644. 00:44:33 would be saying when he was in the room after the fact. And they were kind of ashamed of that.
645. 00:44:40 And he told a couple stories like that where situation looked impossible and the person came
646. 00:44:46 out of it. And it struck me that anytime you would make a decision about life or death for somebody,
647. 00:44:54 you are assuming that you have all of the information. You have all the knowledge about what the
648. 00:45:04 possible outcomes are. And I feel like with his stories, if you believe them at all, you walk away
649. 00:45:13 thinking, there is no way that I will never know all of the information. And I will never be qualified
650. 00:45:20 to make that type of decision. And I maybe it's because we've read stuff like liminal thinking,
651. 00:45:29 where I now understand how much I don't know. But I kind of have trouble wrapping my head around
652. 00:45:38 how at this point people can achieve that level of certainty. And I'm sure I did the same thing
653. 00:45:47 when I was younger, more naive. It's hard for me to look back and see things through that lens again.
654. 00:45:54 Now I want to, I want to empathize with people and try to understand where they're coming from.
655. 00:46:02 And you just don't realize yet how much there is to know. And you've got this one small sliver of it.
656. 00:46:12 But I will say that approach, that mindset has been probably one of the most valuable things
657. 00:46:22 that I've embraced in my entire life. I think it's a very key piece to being a lifelong learner.
658. 00:46:30 Because you can't effectively learn until you admit that you don't know it. And I'm
659. 00:46:36 kind of ashamed, I guess, when I look back at how much certainty I had when I
660. 00:46:42 held certain opinions or viewpoints. And don't want to do that again.
661. 00:46:48 Yeah, it's tough when you feel like you know everything about a certain topic.
662. 00:46:56 You know, I know a lot about, you know, AV equipment and technical, like how to send video signals
663. 00:47:04 from one place to another. But the more I get into it, the more I realize I don't know.
664. 00:47:09 Even though like I'm aware that I can do this better than the majority, but it's not something
665. 00:47:15 that I feel competent in, in its entirety by any means. And that's just one very small,
666. 00:47:23 quite inconsequential thing. If you take that and extrapolate it out into like managing relationships
667. 00:47:31 and managing your relationship with yourself and how you feel about your own like your own self-esteem,
668. 00:47:37 I have lots of ideas and have lots of opinions about how that all works. But I am far from somebody
669. 00:47:44 who could give you sound advice on that, I feel like. And it's primarily because the more I learned
670. 00:47:51 about it, the more I realized I don't know about it. That's the way this stuff works, right?
671. 00:47:55 So I think that so much of our human experience is reliant on some of our bad experiences,
672. 00:48:04 like those definitely have a bigger impact than our positives, I feel. And he does call that out.
673. 00:48:11 Like there's a quote here about illness. He says, "So illness does not have to lead to a loss of
674. 00:48:17 meaning, but more than that, sometimes it can even lead to a benefit." And this is very common,
675. 00:48:24 like whenever people have an experience with cancer or they've lost a limb, they've lost a leg,
676. 00:48:31 or all of these seemingly traumatic health situations, they seem to have, like people,
677. 00:48:38 a lot of times you hear the stories of people coming out of that, and their purpose in drive
678. 00:48:44 and life is crystal clear now. Like they have a strong drive to help other people
679. 00:48:49 in many, many, many ways. And that's hard to get your head around. Like you just went through this
680. 00:48:56 terrible experience, and now you are better at helping others than I am. And I've not had to go
681. 00:49:03 through that. Like that doesn't make sense. The logic just isn't there. And yet it's true.
682. 00:49:09 But what do you do about that? Like if you haven't had that experience, like you can still
683. 00:49:14 learn from what other people have gone through, and you can still choose, as Victor Frankel says,
684. 00:49:21 to say yes to life, and choose to help others, and have that meaning in life.
685. 00:49:27 Yes. A couple other things from this chapter, section, essay, whatever.
686. 00:49:36 Yeah, lecture.
687. 00:49:37 I like the phrase that you cannot earn love. I feel like that's a pretty basic human need.
688. 00:49:47 I'm not sure where it fits on like Maslow's hierarchy or anything like that. But I feel like
689. 00:49:51 that's something everybody wants, and understanding that there's nothing you can do in order to,
690. 00:49:58 I should be careful I say this. You can't, it's not a transaction though. You can't put in X and
691. 00:50:05 get Y back. It's not something that you can ever earn based off of production,
692. 00:50:15 you know, going all the way back to the beginning. Like you have value because of who you are,
693. 00:50:19 and the relationship not because of what you do. So that's something I need to ponder a little
694. 00:50:26 bit more. I feel like there's a pretty deep insight to be, to be mine there. It's a good reminder at
695. 00:50:32 the very least that like the relationships that I have in my life, I am a steward of my wife's love,
696. 00:50:41 of the love of my children. They don't owe that to me just because I'm a husband, father,
697. 00:50:48 whatever. So don't take that for granted basically is the takeaway for me.
698. 00:50:52 And then the other thing is that belief brings into being that which is believed.
699. 00:50:58 I like that phrase a lot. I think there's a lot to unpack there. I'm reminded of a book I read a
700. 00:51:08 long time ago by, I think it's James Allen as a man, Thinketh, which is based actually off of a
701. 00:51:14 Bible verse as a man, Thinketh. So is he, but I think there's a lot of truth to not just the
702. 00:51:25 power of positive thinking going back to like Norman Vincent Peale, but confession and your words,
703. 00:51:30 you know, that the words that you speak specifically, I think those frame your world.
704. 00:51:37 And I want to be a little bit more careful about what comes out of my mouth.
705. 00:51:44 Ultimately, I believe that's going to have a positive effect on the thoughts that I think,
706. 00:51:52 because I believe it's a cycle. But the filter first is be very, very careful about what I allow
707. 00:52:02 myself to explicitly say, not just to other people, because it's almost more powerful when
708. 00:52:10 I hear myself saying things than when I hear other people saying things. At this point,
709. 00:52:14 as someone were to tell me you're a loser, I'm able to shrug that off pretty easily. But if I'm
710. 00:52:21 calling myself a loser, you know, and that's an extreme scenario, but not for some people.
711. 00:52:27 Yes, some people tell themselves this all the time. And it's almost heartbreaking.
712. 00:52:32 That kind of goes back to Johnny Cuffs soundtracks, the repetitive sayings that you tell yourself
713. 00:52:41 all the time. It has a much bigger impact than you think it does. So I think that brings us to
714. 00:52:48 the last lecture here. Unless there's something else you wanted to cover with it, Mike.
715. 00:52:52 Nope, I'm good. The second one. So the last one is experimentum cruises. And this is about the fate
716. 00:52:59 of the concentration camp. And this is actually a lecture. He tells the story here at the beginning
717. 00:53:06 of how during one of their marches, I don't know, they were moving from one place to another. They're
718. 00:53:13 moving some of the prisoners from one place to another. And he started practicing a lecture
719. 00:53:20 during his time there. And this is the lecture he was practicing, the one that he gave as the
720. 00:53:28 third part here. And the whole thing was kind of odd to me that it's so meta when you start to
721. 00:53:37 break down what he's talking about, because he's giving a lecture. And in that lecture,
722. 00:53:44 he's explaining how he practiced this lecture at the concentration camp, which happens to be part
723. 00:53:52 of his process of giving himself meaning for his own life in the concentration camp. So it's like
724. 00:54:01 this cyclical thing. So it's so fascinating to me. Like it's almost, it's a psychological
725. 00:54:06 conundrum for me, because it's like, how does this actually work? Like you're totally messing
726. 00:54:11 with my head now. It's so interesting. But anyway, that starts it by talking in the third person,
727. 00:54:17 too. I know. And he's like, didn't know. He's like, there once was, you know, this situation.
728. 00:54:22 And there was this one prisoner. And on the inside of the prisoners, coat was stitched this number.
729. 00:54:29 And that number referenced a man named Victor Frankle, basically talking about himself in the
730. 00:54:35 third person. And then he kind of switches, which normally I'd be like, that's really weird. But
731. 00:54:40 the way that he did it was very, very effective, I thought. It was. And it was so effective. I was
732. 00:54:45 like, wait, did somebody else start writing this? Like, did he have somebody else do like the intro
733. 00:54:48 for this? But no, he was doing it for himself. It's like that Daniel Goldman back since, right?
734. 00:54:55 Right. It's like, where? What just happened? But it works really, really well. It's a good job,
735. 00:55:01 Victor. And, you know, as he's giving that introduction, you know, what he's explaining is what this
736. 00:55:09 lecture is that he was practicing in the camp was about the four psychological phases of prisoners
737. 00:55:15 whenever they came to the camp, which revolves from complete shock that they're even there to
738. 00:55:24 how do I die as fast as I possibly can to now that I'm in civilian life dealing with the guilt of
739. 00:55:31 surviving and such. So it's this whole spectrum of really complicated emotions and feelings.
740. 00:55:40 And I'm not really sure what to do with all of that, Mike, because it was just a lot of.
741. 00:55:47 I don't want to say it was a lot of shock to me. It was just a I never, I don't think I could
742. 00:55:53 have crystallized and thought through the things he's thinking through while he's in the camp.
743. 00:55:58 And the horrific things, of course, that he's witnessing and trying to help other people through.
744. 00:56:04 And yet he's as a psychologist processing how people are processing this experience,
745. 00:56:13 even after he is able to go home and what that experience is like, even to the point of people
746. 00:56:21 comparing whose experience was worse, which is just weird, right? Yeah.
747. 00:56:26 Wow. Here we are. But I'm not real sure what to do with this other than just wow,
748. 00:56:34 there's a lot to process here. Well, I will share that in Man Search for Meaning,
749. 00:56:38 the majority of the book is just the experiences that he went through and the emotion that you're
750. 00:56:47 left with as he's telling all those stories is just shock and horror. And then the end of that book,
751. 00:56:53 he kind of talks about the psychology of returning to normal life. But this is interesting because
752. 00:57:02 he's basically summarizing everything that happened and laying out the psychological journey
753. 00:57:08 in a very short period of time of what actually happened to those prisoners
754. 00:57:15 at the beginning of this section. And I want to just walk through this real quickly,
755. 00:57:22 because he says there's phases of psychological reaction in the concentration camp prisoners.
756. 00:57:26 And this is kind of the framework for the speech that prisoner number, whatever is giving.
757. 00:57:32 Right. Right. Number one, you have the time of the prisoners admission. And at that point,
758. 00:57:39 there's this admission shock. Everything's taken from you. And he says that everyone in this stage
759. 00:57:44 contemplates suicide, at least briefly. Within a few days, you become emotionally numbed.
760. 00:57:50 The goal becomes self preservation by disappearing into the mass. And after a while,
761. 00:57:54 you start to act like an animal, you have schizophrenia, your highs are really high,
762. 00:57:58 your lows are really low. Simple little things cause euphoria. And so you kind of lose all
763. 00:58:05 sense of balance. And then going on from that, he kind of makes a couple of other points,
764. 00:58:11 which I think this is really where the conversation happens maybe is the, he mentions,
765. 00:58:16 hope deferred makes the heart sick. So this is kind of him zooming out and talking about the
766. 00:58:21 experience as a whole. And I don't think you need to be a prisoner in a concentration camp for that
767. 00:58:32 to happen to you. Almost feel bad like comparing any situation to his because they're not the
768. 00:58:40 same thing at all. That being said, I feel like there are a lot of dreams that people
769. 00:58:48 give up on because they become conditioned to this is the way life is. Maybe this comes back to
770. 00:58:58 how you define meaning, but I feel like that's a vacuum until you do define your own meaning and
771. 00:59:05 what is the purpose of your life. If you never actually articulate that, then you just kind of
772. 00:59:16 are at the whims of what happens to you. And anytime you live life from the outside in,
773. 00:59:25 just speak for myself, my natural tendency is to focus on all of the negative stuff,
774. 00:59:33 all of the things that aren't going the way I want them to. And there's stupid little things
775. 00:59:40 sometimes, but they feel like a really big deal. And I feel like as soon as you have that
776. 00:59:49 why to live, which he references that a bunch of times, he mentions it in this section that the
777. 00:59:53 people who had a why to live were the ones who survived way back in the introduction,
778. 00:59:57 Daniel Goldman quotes Friedrich Nietzsche, who says, whoever has a why to live can bear almost any how.
779. 01:00:04 So I think the takeaway from all of this is find your why. Don't write it in stone. It can be
780. 01:00:13 changed. It can be modified. It can evolve. It can grow over time. But just having that meaning,
781. 01:00:21 having that purpose completely changes everything. I feel like this is a very slippery slope for
782. 01:00:30 every single person who hasn't figured that out for themselves yet. You may
783. 01:00:37 think that everything's going well. But at some point you're going to encounter a crisis.
784. 01:00:43 And it's not going to be as extreme as Victor Frankl's crisis. And that's kind of the whole
785. 01:00:50 point going back to the introduction again is like, if they could say yes to life in these
786. 01:00:54 situations, we really have no business saying anything except yes to life, because we've got it
787. 01:01:01 a whole lot better. But the patterns can still be the same. Maybe they're not as extreme, but
788. 01:01:08 I feel like it's really valuable to recognize how the human psyche can get you into a bad place
789. 01:01:18 if you're not paying attention to it. And so my big takeaway from this is like,
790. 01:01:23 he's telling the story of this is what I saw in the concentration camps. And then he's kind of like
791. 01:01:26 bringing it back to everybody else who wasn't there and telling us that we've got to learn
792. 01:01:33 to be happy that the human souls can be strengthened by experiencing a burden. So the fact that you're
793. 01:01:40 going through something that's not a declaration that your life has no meaning. Maybe that's the
794. 01:01:46 reason for your meaning. Like you got to reconcile all this, you got to connect all the dots for
795. 01:01:51 yourself. And then once you do that, like go forward, that's the message for everybody. That
796. 01:01:56 was his message at the end of man's search for meaning is, okay, you can't stay in the
797. 01:02:01 concentration camp. You can't continue to be upset about everything that happened. You're
798. 01:02:05 never going to be able to repay every single person who wronged you. So quit holding onto that
799. 01:02:10 stuff. You're free now. So act like it. Go forward. And maybe this is getting into
800. 01:02:18 style and rating now. I don't know. But like, that's the call to action for lack of a better term
801. 01:02:24 for every single one of us, I think, as we read this book, it's like, you've got this gift. Do
802. 01:02:31 something with it. Do something meaningful. Find your own meaning. You can't allow other people to
803. 01:02:38 determine what is valuable and what your life is worth and why you're here. I heard somebody say
804. 01:02:44 one time that when you let other people frame or when you let other people create your world,
805. 01:02:49 they'll always make it too small. And I feel like Victor Frankle would agree with that. And
806. 01:02:55 that's what I'm challenged to do is I wrap this up in this last chapter is to think bigger.
807. 01:03:02 Yeah. And one of the ways that he says this, and I'm summarizing, is to say yes, despite everything,
808. 01:03:10 you can have great hopelessness. But if you choose to say yes, you win, because you're holding onto
809. 01:03:21 that hope. And you're not letting excuses get in the way. How's that phrase goes? Like, the best,
810. 01:03:31 what is it? If you won an oak tree, the best time to plan it was 100 years ago,
811. 01:03:36 but the second best time to plan it is now, you get what I'm saying. That's not the exact
812. 01:03:42 wording for that. But if you want something great to happen in your life, the best time to start is
813. 01:03:47 now. And if you wait and make all the excuses, then you're essentially giving up. Whether you'd
814. 01:03:59 want to admit it or not, you're giving up on something, whether it's a very small piece of hope,
815. 01:04:03 or you're giving up on a dream, whatever it is, you're letting go of something you shouldn't be.
816. 01:04:10 You're letting go of some of who you are. And making, in some cases, you're blaming other people.
817. 01:04:17 That was one thing. And I don't want to get into this too much. But he talks about how
818. 01:04:22 a lot of times people would say, I didn't even know what was going on in the concentration camps.
819. 01:04:27 And it was a way to deflect responsibility. It was like, they maybe kind of knew,
820. 01:04:34 but chose not to do anything about it. Because if they claim they didn't know,
821. 01:04:38 then they weren't responsible for anything because they couldn't have done anything. Because,
822. 01:04:41 of course, they didn't know. People do this all the time now. Like, I didn't know what was going on.
823. 01:04:46 So then there's nothing I should have done, and then I can deflect that responsibility. We kind of
824. 01:04:52 do the same thing internally. At least I do. I don't even know what the blog that I want to be.
825. 01:05:01 And that's because I don't have the time because so and so took it from me, and I don't have the
826. 01:05:07 ability to devote the time to that. Well, that's me making excuses and deflecting that responsibility.
827. 01:05:12 That's me not accepting my part of that. I'm not accepting my own piece of that,
828. 01:05:20 basically. And I'm letting somebody else take it. So I'm not saying yes to it because I'm not
829. 01:05:25 devoting myself to that task. It's the same thing. Now, take your pick, whether it's exercise,
830. 01:05:31 time with your kids, all sorts of things. Devotion to your wife, your spouse, whatever that is.
831. 01:05:38 If you say yes and choose to make that decision, I think that's what Victor Franco would want us
832. 01:05:45 to accept. Yeah, let's talk about the letting go piece for a second, because I feel like
833. 01:05:53 that is important in terms of finding your own meaning. So if you, and maybe this is just related
834. 01:06:03 to goals and achievement, and so this is coming all the way back to the very beginning of this
835. 01:06:10 book about how you have value apart from what you actually do. But just for the sake of argument,
836. 01:06:17 let's say you have this identity that is associated with a certain situation, and then
837. 01:06:27 you are removed from that situation. Let's just based on my age, let's just talk about like a
838. 01:06:38 professional athlete, right? The window has closed on me being a professional athlete.
839. 01:06:42 So my identity in high school and college was an athlete. I played basketball, I played soccer,
840. 01:06:49 I played tennis. I was on the college tennis team. But at some point, I had to come to the
841. 01:06:55 realization that that was not going to be the thing for me moving forward. And so I had to
842. 01:07:04 let go of that and replace my identity with something else. For Victor Frankl's
843. 01:07:11 situation, because we read Man's Search for Meaning, I remember in the introduction to that
844. 01:07:15 book, he talked about how he was writing a book or some papers or something, he had actually kept
845. 01:07:24 that in his coat when he went to the concentration camps, and he had an opportunity to flee the
846. 01:07:29 country ahead of time, but he chose to stay, right? So he's put in the concentration camps and the
847. 01:07:35 best years of his life are taken from him. So how you navigate that, I feel is very important,
848. 01:07:45 because when you feel like you've lost something, you can tend to attach to that and feel sad about
849. 01:07:54 the thing that you no longer have. But when you do that, you miss the opportunity to move into
850. 01:08:02 something different, like Blake is saying, I could totally be a pro curler or an archery athlete.
851. 01:08:06 Right? That's exactly what I'm talking about. It's a shifting of focus. I'm not going to do that,
852. 01:08:11 because that's not the thing for me. But the opportunity is there and you will never see those
853. 01:08:17 opportunities until you are willing to release the previous thing. And I feel like that's something
854. 01:08:25 I've struggled with is I've identified this thing is really important to me, and I am associating
855. 01:08:33 my identity with this thing. And then whether I have to lay it down, or it gets taken from me,
856. 01:08:41 that transition, I feel like is very important. Yes. And that's where the whole saying yes piece
857. 01:08:49 comes in, I think saying no to some things to say yes to others. Now we're right back into
858. 01:08:54 so much of the productivity world, right? Yes. Choosing what to say yes to choosing what to say
859. 01:09:00 no to the whole effective mindset. But holding it all lightly. Yes. It's fine to go all in with
860. 01:09:09 something and do it to the very best of your ability. But being willing to change direction
861. 01:09:15 and do something else I feel like is a very important skill that everybody needs to develop.
862. 01:09:22 But it's important that last point you just made, it's important to realize that you can develop it.
863. 01:09:28 Now at this point, anybody who's hearing our voices at this moment, hello to those of you on
864. 01:09:33 the podcast, this is something that I'm guessing all of you know. You're listening to something for
865. 01:09:39 the hope of getting better or finding something that will help you get better. That's why people
866. 01:09:44 listen to bookworm, finding books that they should or shouldn't read. And this is basically
867. 01:09:50 everybody in our audiences stuck in the growth mindset world. So that's probably not new. But if
868. 01:09:58 you're happened to be one of those few who is in the fixed mindset world who's not thinking you can
869. 01:10:03 grow and get better and make these choices like it's all a change in your mindset. Like this is
870. 01:10:08 one of the overarching themes, I guess I'm kind of transitioning here. But one of the
871. 01:10:12 overarching themes that I saw out of this book is that our brains and the way that we think are
872. 01:10:18 way more powerful than we want to give ourselves credit for. Just a sheer shift in how we think
873. 01:10:25 about a given situation can dictate whether it's a fatalist view of our future or if we see that
874. 01:10:32 there is hope and great promise for the future. Even if the circumstances are identical for two
875. 01:10:39 different people with those two different mindsets. So that was just something I was very struck by.
876. 01:10:44 And I think the last time we read Victor Frankle, I had the same experience. Our brains can do
877. 01:10:52 very good things and very bad things with the exact same circumstances.
878. 01:10:56 Yeah, the brain is a very powerful, I was going to say organ, but it's more than that.
879. 01:11:04 It's really like that engine for your psyche and how you think about things is like the fuel that
880. 01:11:15 you put in it. And you really have to make sure that you're protecting your biological machinery.
881. 01:11:25 If you don't change the oil in your car's engine, it's going to seize. And it's harder to realize
882. 01:11:34 or to is harder to see evidence, physical evidence of that in terms of how somebody thinks about
883. 01:11:41 things, but I feel like the results are even more catastrophic. This is a really, really
884. 01:11:46 important topic. You really got to get this right. And that's also compounded difficulty wise,
885. 01:11:54 because you're never going to nail it. I feel like it's a journey and you just continue to try to
886. 01:12:00 get better at it. Over time, you try to make those 1% improvements. But the benefit of doing that
887. 01:12:09 is so critically important. And it's hard to verbalize because it's hard to see what you're
888. 01:12:19 missing out on. I read something recently, somebody said the most successful people that
889. 01:12:25 they know in their life tend to be the most positive. And I was like, that can't be true.
890. 01:12:30 That's got to be just like a small subset.
891. 01:12:33 All some some that somebody made up, right?
892. 01:12:34 Yeah, yeah, there's probably some negative jerks out there who are really successful.
893. 01:12:39 And so I started paying attention to the people that I knew in my life and asking myself,
894. 01:12:44 what's their mindset on things? And I realized like, he's right. They're all positive.
895. 01:12:52 They've all got their quirks and areas where they can do better, but we all do.
896. 01:12:58 And I feel like you don't want to get to the end of your life and realize that the thing that was
897. 01:13:06 holding you back was your own resentment about things that happened to you. That's
898. 01:13:13 what speaks to me about reading these types of books. But you got to just let it go.
899. 01:13:18 I think it's a good place to stop here. So that begs the question now, like,
900. 01:13:24 about action items from this. And as much time as I've spent like processing what to do with
901. 01:13:31 this information, it's really hard for me to nail down what an action item would be with a mindset
902. 01:13:38 for this one. Yeah. And like, as much as I want to say, like, this book led me to these 14 action
903. 01:13:46 items, I don't have anything written down for this. And like, that's just something that I kind of
904. 01:13:52 feel a little guilty about. But I don't. And it's something I think I'm okay with,
905. 01:13:58 just because I think that there's so much of this that like, I just need to process
906. 01:14:02 what I just read. And I've been hesitant. I've spent like, I've been done with this for about
907. 01:14:10 four days now. And I've been hesitant to start our next one. And the time that I would normally
908. 01:14:15 spend reading, I've either gone on walks or I've just sat and scared out the window or something
909. 01:14:20 because I'm just processing this thing. The Victor Frank will affect.
910. 01:14:23 It totally is. And I think I'm finally to a point where I'm close to being ready to just
911. 01:14:30 move on. But yeah, I don't think there's anything that I want to act on off of this in day to day
912. 01:14:36 life other than just mindset changes in little places, even that, even though I'm not real sure
913. 01:14:41 what that is, as much time as I've spent trying to figure out what that is. So that said,
914. 01:14:46 were you able to solve that problem? Or are you in the same boat?
915. 01:14:50 No, there are there are no action items for this. I don't think if I were to summarize an action
916. 01:14:57 item, it would be something that a former Marine Corps instructor told me one time,
917. 01:15:02 suck it up, buttercup. Because you can think about how bad you've got it. You really don't.
918. 01:15:07 And like I said, at some point in this episode, you have no right to say no when people who have
919. 01:15:15 had it way worse than you were able to say yes. It is your responsibility to make the most of the
920. 01:15:22 time that you have here on this earth. And I feel like I'm putting words in Victor Frankles'
921. 01:15:26 mouth right now, but I feel like that is accurate. That is what he would tell us. He would say it
922. 01:15:31 nicer. He would say it more articulate. But that's the challenge as you walk away from this is
923. 01:15:38 I got to do better. Yeah, I got to do better. For Victor, for everybody else, you know.
924. 01:15:45 Yeah, I absolutely find excuses everywhere I can. If there's an action item that revolves
925. 01:15:53 around that, but that's such a big territory, I don't even know what to do with that. But yes,
926. 01:15:59 say yes, basically that's the answer. That said, Stylen raiding, well, we're talking about Victor
927. 01:16:06 Frankle, which is one of those like, Man's Search Remaining is the book that we tend to use as a guide.
928. 01:16:14 If you've listened to Bookworm for more than two episodes, you know that Man's Search Remaining
929. 01:16:19 comes up regularly as a, does this book fit that territory? Like, is it in that realm? Because that
930. 01:16:27 was like a five point if it that was probably a six point, oh, like if we went above five, that's
931. 01:16:31 probably where it would land. So we use that as a gauge as to whether or not this book that we're
932. 01:16:36 currently in the middle of fits that territory. And Victor Frankle's style is one that's very
933. 01:16:43 engaging. This is a short book. It's about 107 pages, I believe, but that includes the introduction,
934. 01:16:49 which is, I think, 18 or so. And it's as deep as it is, it's easy to read. And he tells tons of
935. 01:16:58 stories that are terrifying and yet you can't put it down. And then he's also referring to his
936. 01:17:06 mental health practice as well, where he's telling stories of his patients there. And that's a whole
937. 01:17:12 side of Victor Frankle that I've just not been aware of, really, because we did, we hear about his
938. 01:17:18 time in the concentration camps, but you don't really hear about the stories of him as a doctor
939. 01:17:23 treating mental illness patients. So he does enlighten you on some of that through this.
940. 01:17:29 And all of that led me to like this dude, absolutely loved reading him and want to read
941. 01:17:37 everything he's ever written or produced. And that said, like because his book, Man's Search
942. 01:17:45 Remaining has put such that high bar, like, obviously, something like this is going to hit that bar.
943. 01:17:51 He absolutely nails this topic, I think, as Stephen has pointed out in the chat,
944. 01:17:57 if you've listened to us on Bookworm for any length of time, we tend to criticize at least
945. 01:18:02 something in a book like that. We usually find something that we don't care for or a topic
946. 01:18:09 or a point or a delivery method of some kind. There's usually something we point out that
947. 01:18:16 this is a really bad way of doing that. They really shouldn't have done. They should have
948. 01:18:20 structured this like there's always something, right? I don't think we had a single point
949. 01:18:25 here where we've even questioned something with this. So this is an easy 5.0. And I'm going to be
950. 01:18:33 shocked if you change that, Mike. But this one is one that's definitely up there. I absolutely
951. 01:18:41 would put it on par with Man's Search Remaining. Absolutely love having gone through this. I'm glad
952. 01:18:45 we have discovered this one. I didn't know it existed until recently. So definitely a 5.0.
953. 01:18:52 Please pick this up and read it. All right. No, when it comes to rating this book, my initial
954. 01:18:58 approach was a lot like those three different options that you see on a lot of websites in terms
955. 01:19:06 of pricing options. They will anchor you by saying this is the low option and this is the high option
956. 01:19:12 so that people land in the middle. And I found myself defaulting to that behavior with this because
957. 01:19:18 I don't feel this is on the same level as Man's Search Remaining. So I'm like, well, that's a 5.0.
958. 01:19:23 So it's got to be less than that. And then I'm like, no, no, it's 5.0.
959. 01:19:27 It's a really, really great book. It is very different than Man's Search Remaining. Very different
960. 01:19:35 tone, very different style. Still great message though. And I feel like Man's Search Remaining,
961. 01:19:44 that's one of those ones that every person on the planet needs to read at some point in their life.
962. 01:19:54 I wouldn't say this book falls into that category. I would say this is a must read for just about
963. 01:20:02 everybody in the bookworm audience, but recognize that you bookworms are weird nerds like us and
964. 01:20:08 not the average person. And we love you. So that's a good thing.
965. 01:20:12 I do really like this style. I agree with all the points that you shared about the stories from his
966. 01:20:19 patients. I love the introduction by Daniel Gorman. I love how he ends this and it's much more approachable.
967. 01:20:31 It's a much easier read than Man's Search Remaining. That one is a struggle just because of the
968. 01:20:36 horrific content that's in there. It's a struggle to get through. So this book did not have the same
969. 01:20:42 emotional impact. It did not wreck me the way that Man's Search Remaining did. But that's not
970. 01:20:48 a bad thing necessarily. So I agree, it's a 5.0. It's a great book and it's unfair to compare it to Man's
971. 01:20:56 Search Remaining. All right. Let's put it on the shelf as much as I don't want to.
972. 01:21:02 And your pick is up next, Mike. And what are we doing?
973. 01:21:06 We are doing the Messy Middle by Scott Belsky. This is a very long book. It's going to take a
974. 01:21:16 while to get through. Do you know who Scott Belsky is? I know the name and I feel like I should
975. 01:21:21 know who this is, but I can't place it. Who is he? He is probably has done a bunch of different
976. 01:21:27 things. But the thing that he was probably most well known for was the Behance network.
977. 01:21:32 Oh, right. Right, right, right. It was a creative with Adobe now. Yeah, it was a creative network
978. 01:21:38 that Adobe acquired when they were putting together their creative cloud stuff. So he's been
979. 01:21:43 successful that way. Right at the beginning of the book, he kind of talks about people focus on
980. 01:21:47 starts and they focus on finishes and anybody in the startup world will tell you like this is
981. 01:21:51 the struggle at the beginning and then eventually we did this thing and they skip over all the
982. 01:21:55 Messy Middle stuff. And so that's kind of what it's talking about. He's coming at it from a
983. 01:22:00 perspective of an entrepreneur looking through a table of contents. I have a feeling this is
984. 01:22:06 going to be pretty cool because there's going to be business application to this is going to be
985. 01:22:09 personal, creative application to this. And I'm about 20 pages into it so far. I do think it's
986. 01:22:17 going to actually go a little bit quicker because of the format of the book, the very short chapters
987. 01:22:21 that have like half the page on the left is the title and then a couple pages and then you can
988. 01:22:26 move on to the next thing broken down in several different sections. So it'll be an interesting
989. 01:22:30 format, interesting conversation probably. But this is one of those books that I've heard
990. 01:22:35 lots of creative people talk about. Oh, this is a phenomenal temple, you know,
991. 01:22:40 foundational book for my journey really helped me see things the right way. So that's what I'm
992. 01:22:48 I'm hoping to get out of it. Time will tell whether that is accurate. Sure. I don't know,
993. 01:22:53 I'm excited to go through it planning to start it tonight. So if I don't like it, it's your fault.
994. 01:22:57 I'm gonna blame you. Go ahead. What's after that? So after that is a 20th, right 20th anniversary
995. 01:23:08 book for steel like an artist. I think it's 10th anniversary. Is it 10? I couldn't
996. 01:23:13 remember. I have a 10 or 20th or another one. I can't remember either. Talks about it all the
997. 01:23:16 time. But steel like an artist by Austin Cleon and they have a special hardback version of it I
998. 01:23:24 think is what the specialty is here. And I figured Mike talks about this thing all the time
999. 01:23:29 and how this has been such a big thing for him. I've never read it. I would like to read it.
1000. 01:23:35 And I feel like you would be okay reading it again for the sake of bookworm. So I feel like we should
1001. 01:23:40 cover it once and for all. I agree. This is something that we have talked about a ton.
1002. 01:23:45 And so I was trying to decide between this one and the messy middle.
1003. 01:23:50 Floted the idea by Joe. You cool with I pick the messy middle because this is a really,
1004. 01:23:56 really big one and basically putting words in your mouth. You were like, yeah, as long as we
1005. 01:24:00 have a really short one after that. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. It's still like an artist fit the
1006. 01:24:06 bills. Like, okay, that'll work. We got a short one before we could do the messy middle and then
1007. 01:24:10 I need a short one afterwards. So it works out. Yep. Yep. But it does. That it does. How about
1008. 01:24:18 how we got book, Mike? What have you been reading outside of these? I actually don't have a
1009. 01:24:22 gap book this time around. Like you, this one challenged me even though what's not very long.
1010. 01:24:27 It took a while to get through it because you got to unpack what he said. It reminded me of, in college,
1011. 01:24:33 I had a religious studies class that went through a CS Lewis book. And again, it was like 100 pages,
1012. 01:24:41 but we would have an entire conversation off of like a single paragraph out of that book.
1013. 01:24:47 And that's definitely the same caliber of writing here with Victor Frankl. So didn't get a lot of
1014. 01:24:55 outside reading done. Did start the next book. I have a bunch of of gap books that I read on
1015. 01:25:02 vacation and I will upload all of those notes and things to the bookworm club. So I will have
1016. 01:25:11 something for next time, even though we've got a long one. But sure. Yeah, I'm kind of in the
1017. 01:25:16 same boat. Like I've been doing a lot of like outdoor work at our house. We're in that springish
1018. 01:25:22 time. So I'm trying to get a lot of stuff done there. So nothing there for the gap bookworm.
1019. 01:25:28 But I am very grateful for all of those of you who have tuned in to listen to us today,
1020. 01:25:33 live, especially, and dealing with some of our audio hijack fun before we started recording here.
1021. 01:25:40 So thank you to all of you who have joined us live. Always a pleasure to have you guys here.
1022. 01:25:46 And it's always a fun crew and the comments are always helpful. Like I think you've probably
1023. 01:25:50 heard us mention those a few times. So if you want to catch those and you want to join us live,
1024. 01:25:55 they're generally every other Friday at 12, 31 o'clock central time. And if you want to catch those,
1025. 01:26:02 just follow the bookworm FM Twitter account. And I always tweet those out whenever we've got
1026. 01:26:10 them scheduled and ready to go. So we'd love to have you on the bookworm live. But we're also very
1027. 01:26:13 grateful to those of you who are a part of our bookworm membership, club membership. And that's
1028. 01:26:18 just a simple $5 a month membership that gets you access to Mike's mind node files and some cool
1029. 01:26:27 wallpaper, cool place in the bookworm club forums, but also our undying gratitude to you
1030. 01:26:34 for helping us keep the keep the lights on, keep the show on the road, as they would say. And we're
1031. 01:26:41 grateful. We're very grateful to those of you who are willing to do that. So again, if you want to
1032. 01:26:45 join that go to bookworm.fm/membership. And that'll take you to all the right places to
1033. 01:26:51 create the account and get set up. So thank you to all of you who join.
1034. 01:26:54 Yes, thank you. And I will plug the YouTube channel and the live recordings. You mentioned
1035. 01:27:02 the audio hijack stuff. If you want to see me get flustered, go check out the video for this episode.
1036. 01:27:07 Mike was very fired up over his hardware earlier. I guess software would be the issue.
1037. 01:27:15 Yep. If you are reading along with us, pick up The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky. And we will
1038. 01:27:22 talk to you in a couple of weeks.