172: The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down by Haemin Sunim

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1. 00:00:00 So when does Obsidian University officially start?
2. 00:00:03 It officially starts June 12th.
3. 00:00:07 So that will be just a couple of days after this episode releases.
4. 00:00:13 But I wanted to give one last call out if anyone wants to join.
5. 00:00:19 I am really excited about this one.
6. 00:00:21 Also very nervous.
7. 00:00:23 The imposter syndrome is kicking in hard.
8. 00:00:26 But the life-themed cohort has gone really well.
9. 00:00:34 You probably don't even know this because you weren't there for the last one.
10. 00:00:37 But we added a bonus session because everyone wanted to come back and share their life theme
11. 00:00:40 after they worked on it.
12. 00:00:43 So we added a sixth call to that one.
13. 00:00:46 And I'm starting to do...
14. 00:00:47 That's tomorrow.
15. 00:00:48 Yep.
16. 00:00:49 Okay.
17. 00:00:50 Good to know.
18. 00:00:51 It is in circle but I hadn't told you that we added that.
19. 00:00:57 Yeah.
20. 00:00:58 Where I'm at in that is because I'm almost caught up.
21. 00:01:03 But I got to share the core values and then the life theme itself.
22. 00:01:06 And this actually plays into a little bit of follow up.
23. 00:01:08 I'll get to this in a little bit.
24. 00:01:09 But that's like all I'm catching up on that.
25. 00:01:13 So that's good to know.
26. 00:01:14 I will plan to be there and try to get caught up before then.
27. 00:01:18 Cool.
28. 00:01:19 But yeah, having done five soon to be six weeks of that cohort and just seeing the...
29. 00:01:25 Or hearing the feedback.
30. 00:01:26 I've started to do one-on-one calls with people also just to ask like, what could be better?
31. 00:01:32 Like, how would you improve this for next time sort of a thing?
32. 00:01:37 And the feedback has all been pretty positive.
33. 00:01:40 Obviously, there's some things that I can do a little bit better and I have ideas for
34. 00:01:44 making it even better next go around.
35. 00:01:46 But that has given me the confidence to say that I can do a pretty mean cohort.
36. 00:01:53 Good.
37. 00:01:54 And so I am looking forward to doing that with Obsidian in the next couple of weeks.
38. 00:02:01 So yeah, it starts June 12th.
39. 00:02:03 Goes for four weeks after that.
40. 00:02:05 And the cost is $247.
41. 00:02:08 The link will be in the show notes if anyone wants to join.
42. 00:02:10 But you can just go to ObsidianUniversity.com.
43. 00:02:14 And that will get you access to not just the...
44. 00:02:17 I guess there are going to be 12 different live calls.
45. 00:02:20 There will be eight different content sessions and four open office sessions where we can
46. 00:02:24 just nerd out about stuff and answer questions and inspire each other about better ways to
47. 00:02:28 use Obsidian.
48. 00:02:31 But then all of that stuff will be recorded and all that will exist inside of another circle
49. 00:02:36 community.
50. 00:02:39 Just because circle is the platform that I understand and it's the easiest way to deliver
51. 00:02:45 all this stuff, in my opinion, in a private way.
52. 00:02:50 People who pay can get access to it and also gives me some flexibility for adding some
53. 00:02:56 more stuff to that.
54. 00:02:58 Sitting University campus I'm calling it in the future.
55. 00:03:02 Nice.
56. 00:03:03 I'm super excited about this.
57. 00:03:04 You're going to knock it out of the park.
58. 00:03:06 I totally know you are.
59. 00:03:07 So thank you.
60. 00:03:09 Just having been through the life theme cohort, if you run it in any form whatsoever close
61. 00:03:13 to that, it's going to be gold.
62. 00:03:15 So yeah, you'll be good.
63. 00:03:17 Awesome.
64. 00:03:18 You're going to join us?
65. 00:03:19 Yes.
66. 00:03:20 I have my support.
67. 00:03:21 100%.
68. 00:03:22 I'm going to try to.
69. 00:03:23 Alrighty.
70. 00:03:24 It's my goal.
71. 00:03:25 I don't know if I'm going to be able to catch all of them because I know I've got some trips
72. 00:03:26 involved that are going to conflict with that that are already on the calendar.
73. 00:03:28 But my goal is to join it.
74. 00:03:29 Yeah, it'll be good.
75. 00:03:30 Cool.
76. 00:03:31 You've got to be there at least for the first one.
77. 00:03:33 So I can give you credit for convincing me to use Obsidian from Realm Research.
78. 00:03:37 Alright, good to know.
79. 00:03:39 I will be there to take the accolades.
80. 00:03:41 Gladly.
81. 00:03:42 Well, we better get into some of this other follow up because there's a bunch of it here.
82. 00:03:47 I've got two of them.
83. 00:03:48 I'm actually going to defer despite there being a long list of them.
84. 00:03:52 But it occurred to me.
85. 00:03:53 So the two that I'm referring to are come up with my own filtering questions.
86. 00:03:57 This is kind of like, how do you decide what it is you're going to take on and not take
87. 00:04:01 on.
88. 00:04:02 And it occurred to me that this actually is and can be a direct overlap with your life
89. 00:04:06 theme cohort.
90. 00:04:08 And as I've been working on like the core values piece and trying to document my own
91. 00:04:12 core values, it occurred to me that it's pretty simple to take that concept and tweak
92. 00:04:17 it to question form.
93. 00:04:20 And that's what I've been like working through.
94. 00:04:23 And to kind of coincide with that, it also interacts with the first one on the list, which
95. 00:04:27 was list 10 things for I know I'm being successful when.
96. 00:04:31 So I have a list of about I would say about 18 of these that I've been like whittling down.
97. 00:04:37 But those are all like intertwined with each other I'm finding.
98. 00:04:41 Like trying to get those questions, the 10 things and then the core values piece and
99. 00:04:45 trying to get all of those condensed to where I'm happy with them.
100. 00:04:49 Like I'm super close on that just not 100%.
101. 00:04:52 So I wrote them, I actually put them down in the action items thing for next time because
102. 00:04:56 I want to make sure that I get these 100% and can share those next time because they're
103. 00:05:02 just not in shareable form right now.
104. 00:05:04 But I don't want them to get lost because that happens to me at times.
105. 00:05:07 I was like, yeah, we'll follow up with that next time.
106. 00:05:09 And then when we're putting together the notes and we don't remember which ones we're going
107. 00:05:12 to carry over and then they're gone.
108. 00:05:13 And I want that to happen.
109. 00:05:15 So carrying these over Mike, don't let me don't let me miss it.
110. 00:05:20 So those are my best.
111. 00:05:22 The other two that are on my list are get consistent with the evening journaling, which
112. 00:05:27 I have been.
113. 00:05:29 Every night I've been sitting down with my trusty notebook and writing and just kind
114. 00:05:34 of writing about the day and a few other questions that I've got that I run through at night.
115. 00:05:40 That's super helpful.
116. 00:05:42 So glad that I'm doing that.
117. 00:05:44 The last one was no phone in bed.
118. 00:05:47 I should know this.
119. 00:05:48 This is like Joe, you should really not have this problem, but here we are.
120. 00:05:54 And I've been pretty good about it.
121. 00:05:56 I have slipped a couple times where I'm quick pulling up chess real quick to make a quick
122. 00:06:01 move before I roll over to go to sleep.
123. 00:06:03 I was like, wait, I'm not supposed to be doing this.
124. 00:06:05 I'll do it in the morning.
125. 00:06:07 So I have slipped a few times for sure.
126. 00:06:11 But overall, I've been pretty good.
127. 00:06:13 So there's that.
128. 00:06:15 How about you?
129. 00:06:18 You do have to ask, don't you?
130. 00:06:20 I do.
131. 00:06:21 This is partly why I'm a big part of why we do bookworm.
132. 00:06:26 Yeah.
133. 00:06:27 Well, I'm going to fail this one pretty significantly.
134. 00:06:35 Uh oh.
135. 00:06:37 Yeah.
136. 00:06:38 So I'm not sure if you heard recently, but quit my job.
137. 00:06:43 What?
138. 00:06:45 And I have been scrambling a bit, shall we say, to get some things up and running.
139. 00:06:53 It's not bad stuff.
140. 00:06:55 It's not like even unexpected stuff.
141. 00:06:59 It's just little things taking longer than I thought they were going to.
142. 00:07:03 Like I'm doing some business consulting, right?
143. 00:07:06 And I've got a couple of clients already, which is awesome.
144. 00:07:09 But I need a website before I go to Craft & Commerce next week.
145. 00:07:13 So oh yeah, I should build a website.
146. 00:07:16 Things like that where it's like this needs to get done.
147. 00:07:19 It wasn't part of the plan.
148. 00:07:21 And those things keep popping up.
149. 00:07:25 So I'll go through my action items here just so you can shame me with each one.
150. 00:07:29 Because that's what I do.
151. 00:07:31 Yeah.
152. 00:07:32 Uh let's tend things for I know I'm being successful when I have not done that.
153. 00:07:37 I've been thinking about this, but that does not count because uh I've been thinking about
154. 00:07:43 what do I want it to look like by the end of the year.
155. 00:07:47 Anytime you go through a major life transition, that's like a perfect time to reconsider all
156. 00:07:52 of your habits, routines, what's your ideal day going to look like.
157. 00:07:56 I mentioned last week in the life theme cohort.
158. 00:07:58 By the way, I changed my life theme.
159. 00:08:01 So like I'm thinking about this stuff and what it looks like, but I didn't make this
160. 00:08:06 list.
161. 00:08:07 I also did not come up with my own filtering questions.
162. 00:08:11 They had some on page 45 and the gap and the gain, but I did not modify those.
163. 00:08:17 I did not teach my family to call each other out when in the gap.
164. 00:08:20 I've thought about this several times and every time I think about it, it's late at
165. 00:08:24 night and I'm like, should I bring this up with Rachel?
166. 00:08:27 Now we'll talk about it tomorrow and then I forget.
167. 00:08:31 Yep.
168. 00:08:32 So I'll mark a couple of these to carry over to since you're going to do the same and uh
169. 00:08:37 may not have a bunch of action items from this book.
170. 00:08:39 Spoiler alert.
171. 00:08:42 No phone before bed.
172. 00:08:43 This one I've succeeded at, but not with the shift I was going to make, which was using
173. 00:08:48 the books for journaling and that's it.
174. 00:08:51 I've kind of dabbled with the books and I'm using it, but not as consistently or the way
175. 00:08:57 I had envisioned it.
176. 00:09:00 There's still a lot that's happening on the computer specifically and because I am working
177. 00:09:08 from home and there's always a bunch of things to do.
178. 00:09:10 I'm finding myself slipping into working into the evening.
179. 00:09:16 So this is part of like a larger not official bookworm action item, but really establishing
180. 00:09:22 my shutdown routine and this is what I'm going to work on today.
181. 00:09:26 When it hits this time, I am officially done and not allowing myself to go back into the
182. 00:09:32 office, the studio, whatever, you know, my home office.
183. 00:09:37 Getting consistent with gratitude journaling.
184. 00:09:39 I've done this a few times, but I wouldn't say it's consistent yet.
185. 00:09:43 So progress, but not there yet.
186. 00:09:46 And then the experience transformer, I did actually look for this online.
187. 00:09:49 I can't find this thing.
188. 00:09:50 The only thing I can find is something called an impact filter, which is sort of related
189. 00:09:56 but not exactly and just looking at it confirms what I thought last time that whatever strategic
190. 00:10:02 coach is going to create is way too complicated.
191. 00:10:06 So I'm officially going to walk away from this one.
192. 00:10:12 All right.
193. 00:10:14 So we had a lot of work to do for next time.
194. 00:10:17 That we do.
195. 00:10:19 And I am hoping there's not going to be a ton of action items from this book.
196. 00:10:24 We'll see by the time we get to the end.
197. 00:10:26 We'll see that that said, let's jump into today's book so that we don't have to revel
198. 00:10:32 in the lack of accomplishment we both have on our action items here.
199. 00:10:36 Baskin our failures.
200. 00:10:37 Yep.
201. 00:10:38 Let's just focus on the positives.
202. 00:10:41 Today's book is the things you can see only when you slow down by Heyman Sunam and Heyman
203. 00:10:47 Sunam is a Zen Buddhist and has education from UC Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton.
204. 00:10:56 The book has been printed in 30 languages, sold 4 million copies, 265 pages long.
205. 00:11:04 But you wouldn't really know that because if you glance through the thing, there's a
206. 00:11:07 lot of pictures, lots of like short, I don't want to say poems, but like these like almost
207. 00:11:15 proverbs like or Psalms.
208. 00:11:17 If you want to take a scriptural reference there, there's like a bank of those at the
209. 00:11:21 end of every chapter.
210. 00:11:23 It's just a very different format.
211. 00:11:25 It's 265 pages, but there's maybe what 100 pages or so of reading involved here.
212. 00:11:35 I don't think I'm saying that in a negative way.
213. 00:11:38 I don't mean it that way regardless.
214. 00:11:41 Lots of artwork.
215. 00:11:42 It was originally written in 2012, translated in 2017.
216. 00:11:46 I wrote all this stuff down because I'm always trying to find this stuff whenever I'm trying
217. 00:11:51 to talk about the book at the beginning.
218. 00:11:53 But yeah, that's what I know.
219. 00:11:54 The things you can see only when you slow down and my original intent for picking this
220. 00:11:57 up was just that it feels like life is crazy busy and I never really seem to know why or
221. 00:12:02 what's causing that.
222. 00:12:04 And I'm grateful for having picked this one up at this point just because if anything,
223. 00:12:12 it's an interesting book.
224. 00:12:14 But since this was my choice and sometimes I pick books that drive you a little bit crazy,
225. 00:12:20 what was your gut reaction when I told you we were going to read this book?
226. 00:12:24 Because I know this is one that keeps showing up on lists for me and it sounded like you
227. 00:12:27 had never heard of it before.
228. 00:12:29 So first impressions, Mike, what did you get?
229. 00:12:32 I had not heard of it before.
230. 00:12:35 My first impression was you joining the monastery?
231. 00:12:38 Yeah, totally.
232. 00:12:40 Yep, that's in a couple of weeks here.
233. 00:12:44 Yeah, I don't really know what I expected going into it because this was not my book.
234. 00:12:55 I am curious what you expected because I think what this was based on what you told me was
235. 00:13:03 not exactly what you expected.
236. 00:13:07 It is essentially a lot of life philosophy from a Buddhist monk.
237. 00:13:13 And there are some things in here definitely that are worthwhile to think about.
238. 00:13:20 I just don't.
239. 00:13:22 But it does have, I think, limited value for both you and I because there is a fundamental
240. 00:13:30 difference in our theology with the writers.
241. 00:13:34 Now that's fine.
242. 00:13:36 We need to embrace contrary opinions.
243. 00:13:40 Going back to liminal thinking by Dave Gray, we need to consider things and consider the
244. 00:13:46 fact that we may be wrong.
245. 00:13:49 I don't think though you were looking for something that was going to challenge your
246. 00:13:57 faith.
247. 00:13:59 And ultimately that's kind of the way it read to me.
248. 00:14:03 Because at a fundamental level he does kind of talk about at the end that there's a lot
249. 00:14:07 more in common here in the last chapter.
250. 00:14:09 I'm sure we'll dissect that more.
251. 00:14:11 But just felt a little bit like I can see what you're saying with that.
252. 00:14:20 And I agree with the larger principle, but you and I disagree with some very fundamental
253. 00:14:25 things.
254. 00:14:26 And I felt like I had that reaction to a lot of the things that were in this book.
255. 00:14:32 Yeah, when I originally chose this, it was partially because it kept showing up on lists.
256. 00:14:38 And some of the picture of what I had in my brain was like what I see when I go on walks
257. 00:14:46 on trails in the woods.
258. 00:14:48 It's a chance when I slow down and you just listen to the birds and the kids screaming
259. 00:14:55 in the background.
260. 00:14:58 And it's a joke.
261. 00:15:00 It's okay.
262. 00:15:01 I have to laugh at it, but there's that.
263. 00:15:03 But you're in a peaceful situation and you start to notice things, especially if you're
264. 00:15:11 walking a similar trail daily, which is what I do.
265. 00:15:15 And when you do that, you have a tendency to notice things that you maybe didn't notice
266. 00:15:19 the last 20 times you've walked that exact same path.
267. 00:15:24 So you'll start to see things like that tree has a branch that's now broken or, huh, interesting.
268. 00:15:33 There's a bird nest over there and there's little ones in it.
269. 00:15:35 And I've apparently not noticed them until now.
270. 00:15:38 So it's fun to see like the new life, the things as they change, like you can start to
271. 00:15:42 see those things, but it has a little bit of a different effect as you see it each time.
272. 00:15:47 That concept is what I had in my brain when I picked this up of you're able to slow yourself
273. 00:15:54 and then you can pay attention to the things around you that you wouldn't normally pay
274. 00:15:59 attention to.
275. 00:16:00 Like, what are those things that you would notice when you slow down?
276. 00:16:04 I was not expecting like life philosophy.
277. 00:16:08 Here's how rest should work.
278. 00:16:11 Here's how mindfulness happens.
279. 00:16:12 Here's what happens if you're too passionate about something like I was not expecting that
280. 00:16:17 at all.
281. 00:16:18 Like that was, yeah, far from my brain.
282. 00:16:21 I think if I had maybe done a little more looking at it, noticed some of the Buddhist
283. 00:16:27 leanings here.
284. 00:16:28 I don't know that that would have deterred me though, because I'm not sure I was reading
285. 00:16:32 through some of the like cursory introduction stuff this morning.
286. 00:16:39 Just wondering, what is it that led me to picking this thing up?
287. 00:16:41 I don't think I noticed anything in all of that that would have queued me into it being
288. 00:16:48 different than what I had originally expected.
289. 00:16:50 So there's that.
290. 00:16:53 Just kind of caught me off guard a little bit, I suppose.
291. 00:16:58 I don't think it really caught me off guard because I feel like a lot of the advice around
292. 00:17:07 mindfulness meditation is somewhat anchored in this Zen Buddhist spirituality, which
293. 00:17:16 isn't necessarily bad, but it also really makes me appreciate people like Chris Bailey
294. 00:17:22 with how to calm your mind, because he comes at it from a strictly scientific approach.
295. 00:17:30 What does the research say?
296. 00:17:33 What is happening physiologically in your body when you are focusing on your breath and things
297. 00:17:41 like that?
298. 00:17:42 How to calm your mind is way beyond just the mindfulness meditation practice.
299. 00:17:47 He's got a separate audible book, which is all about that, but how to train your mind.
300. 00:17:51 But again, it's like all the productivity benefits.
301. 00:17:56 Those are applicable across a large number of domains.
302. 00:17:59 Most of the stuff that I've come across though in terms of book recommendations for how to
303. 00:18:05 meditate and all that kind of stuff has the same tone as this one.
304. 00:18:11 This one isn't even that.
305. 00:18:12 It's not.
306. 00:18:13 Here's how you meditate more effectively or anything like that, which I don't think that's
307. 00:18:17 necessarily what you were going for.
308. 00:18:20 I guess that's kind of what I was thinking.
309. 00:18:23 This might be when I picked it up.
310. 00:18:25 Yeah, it's like a whole bunch of short one-liner type things.
311. 00:18:29 Well, there's a couple of stories at the beginning of each chapter.
312. 00:18:32 Then there's sub-sections in each chapter, which are again, there are personal stories
313. 00:18:38 that are added there.
314. 00:18:40 But then a lot of it is just like this tweet length, little pithy sayings.
315. 00:18:45 It almost was like Seth Godin for Zen Buddhist philosophy.
316. 00:18:55 And that's not necessarily bad, but it's not my cup of tea.
317. 00:19:00 Let's jump in here because if we dive into this prologue, I think that'll maybe shed a
318. 00:19:05 little bit of light on this as well.
319. 00:19:07 But at the very beginning, he's talking about how he's a Zen monk.
320. 00:19:12 At some point, he started sharing some of his thoughts and things on Facebook and Twitter.
321. 00:19:19 He got a lot of feedback on that that people really enjoyed it.
322. 00:19:24 And he liked getting that feedback.
323. 00:19:26 So then he wrote a book about it.
324. 00:19:29 That's kind of the process here.
325. 00:19:32 I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but I think it maybe informs
326. 00:19:36 a little bit of why he's using these short segments of sorts at the end of these chapters.
327. 00:19:44 I think that's maybe why he's doing that because it made me wonder if those aren't some of
328. 00:19:49 his posts.
329. 00:19:50 Like, did he just copy some of his Facebook posts and put them at the end of this?
330. 00:19:55 Maybe?
331. 00:19:56 I don't know.
332. 00:19:57 It's possible.
333. 00:19:58 I don't Facebook know, but it kind of made me wonder about that.
334. 00:20:03 But all it is is he's just kind of explaining his background, how he got to the book situation
335. 00:20:08 and of course has some of those sayings, paragraphs of sorts at the end of that.
336. 00:20:14 But yes.
337. 00:20:16 Does that seem odd to you at all that a monk, regardless of the religion, starts off on
338. 00:20:23 Facebook and then writes the book?
339. 00:20:27 Okay.
340. 00:20:28 Jump into chapter one, rest.
341. 00:20:30 Towards the beginning of this, he mentions how some people find it conflicting that his
342. 00:20:36 very full schedule, like he has a very full schedule, but yet he's a zinn monk, a Buddhist
343. 00:20:43 monk.
344. 00:20:44 And it's like, huh, how do those two go together?
345. 00:20:51 I mean, and he makes a comment that like if he wanted more rest, he could just say no
346. 00:20:55 to things, but he doesn't.
347. 00:20:58 So I don't know.
348. 00:20:59 Yes, I'm with you.
349. 00:21:01 It seems strange, but I also have a hard time.
350. 00:21:05 I have a hard time putting all those pieces together.
351. 00:21:08 It just didn't seem to add up to me.
352. 00:21:11 As you get through this first chapter of rest, I mean, there's some stuff that's like, wait
353. 00:21:16 a second, what are you talking about?
354. 00:21:18 This like right out of the gate, we're starting to get into worldview conflicting thoughts.
355. 00:21:23 Okay.
356. 00:21:24 All right.
357. 00:21:25 What did I get us into here?
358. 00:21:29 I'm not really trying to point out a contradiction.
359. 00:21:31 I just think it's kind of interesting because I don't know exactly why he decided to become
360. 00:21:37 a monk.
361. 00:21:38 And I have known a few people who have joined religious orders.
362. 00:21:45 And like, I'm sure that there are different reasons to join different orders, different
363. 00:21:51 objectives with all of them.
364. 00:21:53 So I'm not going to profess to know that this is the way that they all work, but it
365. 00:21:58 occurs to me that out of the people that I've known who have made that decision, at least
366. 00:22:02 partly it's been because they want to put themselves in a certain environment and take
367. 00:22:08 themselves out of this worldly environment.
368. 00:22:14 And by choosing to stay on Facebook, you're immediately going back there.
369. 00:22:20 Yes.
370. 00:22:21 I guess my first response to joining a religious order, but still being on Facebook is kind
371. 00:22:27 of like, well, you're sort of self sabotaging there, which again, is completely unfair because
372. 00:22:34 I don't know the real motives behind it.
373. 00:22:36 And ultimately, people on Facebook need to be reached too.
374. 00:22:41 But I just have myself a strong visceral negative reaction to Facebook anyways.
375. 00:22:53 And everyone has their thing, right?
376. 00:22:55 It's kind of become popular to trash Twitter, but that's still the one that I enjoy.
377. 00:23:02 So to each their own, but it just was a little bit weird.
378. 00:23:07 It's like, wait, huh, that's interesting.
379. 00:23:11 Yeah.
380. 00:23:12 And I know like right here at the beginning in the rest chapter, he gets into this like
381. 00:23:19 not disconnect, but a connection between your mind and what the universe is and how your
382. 00:23:26 entire universe is what your mind can see and comprehend.
383. 00:23:31 And like that's similar to what we're talking about here because if you like, we don't necessarily
384. 00:23:37 understand everything that a Zen Buddhist monk does and what their life looks like.
385. 00:23:44 I don't have any experience with that at all.
386. 00:23:47 So my universe, according to his language, my universe would tell me that those types
387. 00:23:53 of activities don't exist because I don't have any perception of those.
388. 00:23:58 So in my universe, it doesn't exist.
389. 00:24:01 The problem I have is that it does exist.
390. 00:24:03 I'm just not aware of it.
391. 00:24:05 And there's a lot of things that do exist and do happen whether my mind will acknowledge
392. 00:24:11 it or not.
393. 00:24:13 Like I can't change that.
394. 00:24:15 But I can't say that having read his section on that, like his explanation of that particular
395. 00:24:20 idea, like what you do for breakfast doesn't even happen because I'm not aware of it.
396. 00:24:28 Like that's the way I would take that.
397. 00:24:31 Maybe that's a gross exaggeration of what he's referring to, but that was my perception
398. 00:24:36 of what he was intending or maybe not attending.
399. 00:24:39 That was just the way it came across to me.
400. 00:24:42 So I had a very hard time connecting the dots on this, which is not good because this is
401. 00:24:45 where we're starting in the book.
402. 00:24:47 Like this is page one and two that we're talking about.
403. 00:24:50 It's like, okay, now what do I do?
404. 00:24:52 This is like the foundation.
405. 00:24:54 The rest of the book is going to build on.
406. 00:24:55 So now how am I supposed to put the rest of the dots together?
407. 00:24:59 So I got very nervous at this point.
408. 00:25:03 So maybe I completely missed something.
409. 00:25:05 If you're trying to connect dots, you are in for a battle.
410. 00:25:14 Looking back at my notes from this book, there is no through line to any of this stuff.
411. 00:25:21 It's a bunch of random tidbits that are organized into roughly eight different topics.
412. 00:25:31 And I don't know if they all started off as some sort of social media post or not.
413. 00:25:37 It kind of feels like a lot of this stuff was.
414. 00:25:40 And there's a few things in here that I jotted down that I think are pretty cool.
415. 00:25:47 Nothing is intrinsically good or bad.
416. 00:25:49 It's always relative.
417. 00:25:50 That kind of hearkens back to what we learned with the gap in the gain and the whole idea
418. 00:25:55 behind transforming your experiences.
419. 00:25:57 You can take a negative thing and glean some positive from it just by your attitude and
420. 00:26:02 your perspective on the thing, choosing not to stay there and be resentful that this thing
421. 00:26:07 happened.
422. 00:26:08 It's not the outside world.
423. 00:26:10 That's a whirlwind.
424. 00:26:11 It's our mind.
425. 00:26:13 That was kind of challenging.
426. 00:26:14 I mentioned I'm in the middle of it with figuring out a couple different business things.
427. 00:26:21 And when I read that, it's like, wow, so all this stuff, all this pressure, busyness that
428. 00:26:28 I'm feeling, that's all internal.
429. 00:26:30 It doesn't have to be that way.
430. 00:26:32 I think I kind of failed that test these last couple of weeks.
431. 00:26:38 All right.
432. 00:26:39 Yeah.
433. 00:26:40 So I don't know, but looking at the things that I jotted down to my original point in
434. 00:26:45 response to you, there's no real connection between these things other than the loose
435. 00:26:51 grouping of rest.
436. 00:26:54 One of the things I jotted down was that too many choices make people unhappy.
437. 00:26:59 Those who work nonstop work without joy.
438. 00:27:02 I don't know.
439. 00:27:04 I mean, any of these things in isolation is kind of like, well, let's stop and think about
440. 00:27:07 that.
441. 00:27:08 But to be honest, there's not a whole lot in here that I was like, okay, this is a major
442. 00:27:13 thing and I can't wait to talk about this with Joe.
443. 00:27:17 Yeah.
444. 00:27:18 I will say, like in this first section, like outside of this hole, your mind is the universe.
445. 00:27:23 The thing I don't understand.
446. 00:27:27 There are a couple of points here that I wrote down that I think are very valid.
447. 00:27:32 One of those was humor opens closed hearts.
448. 00:27:36 And he's kind of getting there through, if you take the time to rest, you can do that
449. 00:27:43 in a social situation and if you're able to find some reason to laugh, it's a way of opening
450. 00:27:52 up your heart to the world, even if you're in a very rough situation.
451. 00:27:58 Like that, I totally, I'm with you 100%.
452. 00:28:01 It's something I do on a small scale when I know I've got people who are mourning that
453. 00:28:07 I'm around or tense situations where people are nervous.
454. 00:28:12 Like I'll sometimes try to make some smaller, weird joke of some sort just to try to break
455. 00:28:18 ice.
456. 00:28:19 Like I'll do that at times.
457. 00:28:20 But there was another one that, and this was my interpretation of what he has down, but
458. 00:28:26 it's like when you have a situation that you need or a decision that you need to make,
459. 00:28:32 take the time required to process it before you act.
460. 00:28:37 And it does come out a little bit later, but like don't process things angry.
461. 00:28:42 We've talked about this.
462. 00:28:43 I don't know how many times on the show is like if you're mad, angry, upset, that's the
463. 00:28:47 last time you need to be making decisions and just acting on things.
464. 00:28:50 Just take deep breath, walk away, come back to it later.
465. 00:28:54 Like you're going to be significantly better in the long run.
466. 00:28:57 But yes, this is at least some redemption in the first chapter.
467. 00:29:03 I will say that.
468. 00:29:04 Yeah, I don't think I have a whole lot else to say about the first one.
469. 00:29:10 You want to go to the second one?
470. 00:29:12 Yeah, so let's jump into mindfulness.
471. 00:29:15 The second chapter here.
472. 00:29:17 There's one mindfulness.
473. 00:29:19 That's exactly what we've talked about before, being mindful of the things going on right
474. 00:29:23 now.
475. 00:29:24 But there was a, and this is a little bit of the strong emotion thing and piece that
476. 00:29:29 it comes up.
477. 00:29:30 He had an analogy here that I actually really, really liked.
478. 00:29:32 This was the fish tank thing, which I had never heard of this.
479. 00:29:37 But just imagine that you've got muddy water in a fish tank.
480. 00:29:43 When you've got muddy water in a fish tank, equate that to like a difficult nasty situation
481. 00:29:49 that just happened.
482. 00:29:51 The worst thing you can do is act on it right away.
483. 00:29:57 Because think about that, if you've got mud in the water and you start like trying to
484. 00:30:00 push that mud down to the bottom.
485. 00:30:02 What happens?
486. 00:30:03 It just stirs it up even more and it gets even muddier.
487. 00:30:06 So it makes the situation worse.
488. 00:30:09 But if you take the time to step away from it and give it the space that silt and stuff
489. 00:30:15 can sink to the bottom and it can start to give you clarity in the water.
490. 00:30:20 It's like, I'd never really thought about the whole muddy fish tank thing, but I really
491. 00:30:23 like that.
492. 00:30:24 I'm probably going to steal that analogy in some form.
493. 00:30:26 But I really like that one.
494. 00:30:28 And that, that to me makes a lot of sense when I've got difficult decisions to make
495. 00:30:32 or difficult situations to deal with.
496. 00:30:35 Stick to your head, muddy fish tank.
497. 00:30:37 Okay.
498. 00:30:38 All right.
499. 00:30:39 Settle down.
500. 00:30:40 It'll be okay.
501. 00:30:41 Yeah, I like that story too and that mental picture.
502. 00:30:49 But I also feel like this is the kind of thing that I expected from this book.
503. 00:30:58 And this is the kind of thing that it sounds cool, but for whatever reason doesn't really
504. 00:31:05 get me excited.
505. 00:31:08 I don't know what it is.
506. 00:31:09 Maybe there's something wrong with me.
507. 00:31:13 I'll take the blame for this one.
508. 00:31:16 I mean, that story, I understand the point, which is basically if you put mud in the water,
509. 00:31:24 you can't push it down, you just got to wait and let it settle.
510. 00:31:29 So it's a effective metaphor, but also like after the initial, oh yeah, that's kind of
511. 00:31:34 a cool story.
512. 00:31:35 I find myself being like, okay, on to the next thing.
513. 00:31:39 Maybe that means that my fish tank is muddy and I'm still trying to push it down.
514. 00:31:45 I'm sure that's what he would probably tell me if we were having a conversation.
515. 00:31:51 Something about that approach that just doesn't jive with me and I got to do more reflection
516. 00:31:58 and figure out why is it that I'm not a big fan of that?
517. 00:32:03 Maybe it's because it makes me uncomfortable because I really need to spend some time thinking
518. 00:32:08 through it, but I don't know.
519. 00:32:10 I'd like to think that I'm okay doing uncomfortable things.
520. 00:32:14 I mean, I did just quit my job.
521. 00:32:18 I'm not saying that I don't have room to grow, especially personally.
522. 00:32:27 I'm not doing a very good job of explaining this, but I'm trying to put into words this
523. 00:32:32 general disengagement I have with this material and this tone and I really don't understand
524. 00:32:43 why.
525. 00:32:44 I would say from my stance where I'm sitting, if I'm getting excited over an analogy for
526. 00:32:52 something that I feel like is pretty obvious, just because it gives me a different way of
527. 00:32:59 talking about it.
528. 00:33:00 Number one, that's a nugget that I got from a book, so it's probably worth reading because
529. 00:33:06 at some point, one nugget out of a book makes the book worth it.
530. 00:33:10 It doesn't have to be completely life changing.
531. 00:33:12 I just want one thing out of the book and then it was worth it.
532. 00:33:15 There is that component, but also if it's something just like an analogy about a fish
533. 00:33:20 tank and dealing with difficult situations, it's kind of a lame thing that if that's the
534. 00:33:27 piece that I'm super excited about because that tells me that the rest of it is probably
535. 00:33:31 lackluster and just kind of what you would expect.
536. 00:33:36 There is that as well.
537. 00:33:37 At the same time, here's maybe, again, this is me, the amount of the book that is him
538. 00:33:48 writing about the topic and then explaining it is actually very short, which then means
539. 00:33:54 that probably half or more of each chapter is spent with these like short, pithy statements,
540. 00:34:00 two sentence, one liners, one paragraph things that are completely disconnected from each
541. 00:34:04 other.
542. 00:34:05 There is no through line in those at all.
543. 00:34:07 They are completely separate.
544. 00:34:08 They are social media posts, if you will.
545. 00:34:12 That's not what we sign up for when we read books.
546. 00:34:15 I'm not expecting to cruise through somebody's Twitter feed when I buy a book.
547. 00:34:21 That's the opposite of what I'm after.
548. 00:34:24 So, I don't want the short stuff.
549. 00:34:26 I want a long explanation of something.
550. 00:34:29 That's why I bought the book.
551. 00:34:32 So it's a little frustrating to me to have more than half the chapter with these short
552. 00:34:36 social media posts type segments.
553. 00:34:38 So that's a little frustrating.
554. 00:34:41 Maybe that's some of what you're noticing, but those were some of my thoughts on it.
555. 00:34:47 I don't know.
556. 00:34:48 I mean, let's just take that idea of the fish tank, right?
557. 00:34:52 You could expound that into a larger thing.
558. 00:34:54 I don't think it's just that this, it's a small little story.
559. 00:34:58 I mean, we literally just read a book, The Gap and the Game, which was a simple idea.
560. 00:35:02 Yeah.
561. 00:35:03 Expanded to fill a book.
562. 00:35:05 So why do I get all excited about that one, but find myself resisting this one?
563. 00:35:13 That's the thing there.
564. 00:35:15 And the only thing that I can really put my finger on is that a lot of these types of
565. 00:35:25 stories that are in this book, and I'm not going to ascribe this specifically to the Zen
566. 00:35:34 Buddhist mindset.
567. 00:35:35 I'm just going to say from this author in this book, it seems like there is a bit of a,
568. 00:35:46 pride's not the right word, but kind of like patting yourself on the back for going deep
569. 00:35:52 enough.
570. 00:35:53 And I kind of feel like when it comes to this sort of stuff, especially with emotions, because
571. 00:35:56 that's what this is all about.
572. 00:35:58 The main point here is that the harder we try to suppress negative emotions, the more we
573. 00:36:01 turn them up.
574. 00:36:03 Okay, well, I'm ready to admit that my emotions aren't always right.
575. 00:36:11 So let's move on from that, you know, and it kind of feels like he's like, no, no, you
576. 00:36:18 just got to go deeper.
577. 00:36:19 You just got to go deeper.
578. 00:36:22 And I find that a little uncomfortable.
579. 00:36:25 And again, maybe that means I should, but my first reaction upon reading this is like,
580. 00:36:32 okay, I see where you're coming from.
581. 00:36:35 And yeah, we don't want to suppress negative emotions.
582. 00:36:39 We're not going to try to pretend that stuff doesn't get there, but we did just read the
583. 00:36:42 gap in the game.
584. 00:36:43 We're not going to stay there.
585. 00:36:44 And I'm not going to sit there and say, Oh, I feel so bad.
586. 00:36:47 I feel so bad.
587. 00:36:48 Why do I feel so bad?
588. 00:36:50 And I'm wallowing that till I get deep enough.
589. 00:36:52 Oh, this is the root of it.
590. 00:36:53 Like, I feel it's kind of contradictory to the book that we just read.
591. 00:36:59 And that I'm more in the camp of, okay, I recognize this thing, but I'm not going to
592. 00:37:05 just sit here and let it define me either.
593. 00:37:08 And that's not exactly what he's saying.
594. 00:37:10 So like, this is really difficult to verbalize because I'm putting words in people's mouths
595. 00:37:16 on both sides here, but it feels like these are competing ideas and I'm having a hard
596. 00:37:24 time reconciling them.
597. 00:37:26 All I know is that this, let's just sit and be one with the world and figure out and feel
598. 00:37:33 what really is like that is not me.
599. 00:37:37 Well, contrast that with the next chapter, which is passion, right?
600. 00:37:43 Basically strong emotions.
601. 00:37:44 So going from the place of having negative emotions and just trying to sit in it and
602. 00:37:51 be aware of it, right, to overwhelming positive emotions.
603. 00:37:57 And he tells the story of when he first started teaching, he was giving his students too much
604. 00:38:01 to do and he was treating it as if that was the only class that they had.
605. 00:38:06 So he was overwhelming them with homework and extra things.
606. 00:38:08 So like, yeah, absolutely, you need to back off, dude.
607. 00:38:11 But it was because it was his first class, his first time as a professor, super eager,
608. 00:38:15 super excited.
609. 00:38:17 Remember that eagerness a little bit is what he's getting at here.
610. 00:38:20 It's like that I get, but I can't say that like over excitement is what I expected when
611. 00:38:27 I see passion as the title.
612. 00:38:31 So like that immediately through a disconnect.
613. 00:38:33 So then I had a hard time connecting the rest of the chapter to it because I just didn't
614. 00:38:37 I didn't follow it because like he tells that story.
615. 00:38:42 He talks about you need to learn to control overflowing eagerness.
616. 00:38:46 And then he had a quote that I was like, wait, what?
617. 00:38:50 Being right isn't nearly as important as being happy together.
618. 00:38:54 And I just wanted to say no, sometimes being right is absolutely the right thing.
619. 00:39:03 So I don't know.
620. 00:39:07 I didn't know what to do with that.
621. 00:39:08 And I also didn't know how that connected with passion.
622. 00:39:12 So I just had a hard time with this one.
623. 00:39:14 I wrote completely disconnected thoughts down and I'm not sure what they really came from.
624. 00:39:20 Well, I mean, that is the totality of my notes for this book to be honest.
625. 00:39:26 So with with passion specifically, and again, if you were to talk to him, you'd probably
626. 00:39:32 say passion is not necessarily bad.
627. 00:39:34 But a lot of the things that I jotted down here are warnings against unbridled passion.
628. 00:39:41 You mentioned that page 78, no matter how effective the medicine may be, if you demand
629. 00:39:45 that someone take it, it can taste like poison.
630. 00:39:48 So that's kind of he was talking about that with the teaching example that you mentioned
631. 00:39:54 and realizing that he can't just be excited about the topic.
632. 00:39:58 He's got to basically put it out there and then it's up to his students to engage with
633. 00:40:02 it.
634. 00:40:03 And when he stops trying to force it upon them, that's when they actually engaged with it
635. 00:40:07 and liked it and it changed their lives.
636. 00:40:11 So that is kind of like dial back the passion.
637. 00:40:15 Sometimes our zeal can get in the way of being effective and getting results.
638. 00:40:18 The most dangerous people are those who have passion but lack wisdom.
639. 00:40:22 People won't be convinced until they are heard and respected.
640. 00:40:25 So the common theme here is always like, just chill.
641. 00:40:32 So I tend to think I am a fairly passionate person.
642. 00:40:40 And I don't know if I just jotted down all the things that were sort of like the warnings
643. 00:40:48 against that because of my personality or if that really is the tone of this chapter,
644. 00:40:54 but at least based off of my notes, that's the message that I heard.
645. 00:41:00 And again, not a big fan of that.
646. 00:41:04 Tell me how I can channel it effectively.
647. 00:41:09 And it's okay to share a few warnings here and there, but it feels like that's what the
648. 00:41:12 majority of this stuff is.
649. 00:41:14 And it's not even warnings like make sure that you are careful.
650. 00:41:19 It seems like he goes out of his way to be very careful about some of the ways that he
651. 00:41:23 phrases things.
652. 00:41:25 It's almost like by telling a story or using a subject himself or somebody else that's
653. 00:41:31 not connected, it's less not forceful, but maybe condemning in the listener's ear.
654. 00:41:41 Like they're not hearing judgment.
655. 00:41:44 If they are, it's because they're putting themselves in that picture.
656. 00:41:47 Maybe that's like an intentional choice.
657. 00:41:50 But again, like I don't really like that.
658. 00:41:54 My personality, myself personally, I would prefer to, and I would be willing to pay good
659. 00:42:02 money for a coach who is going to tell me, hey, this is what you're doing wrong.
660. 00:42:09 Now knock it off and do this instead.
661. 00:42:11 And it's like that's so anti the tone he's trying to take with this book.
662. 00:42:15 It's hard for me to relate to.
663. 00:42:18 But again, that's personality.
664. 00:42:20 So I'll give the benefit of it out there.
665. 00:42:24 If you go on to the next chapter, relationships, this is where I started to put together a
666. 00:42:29 theme and it'll carry over into the next chapter too for sure.
667. 00:42:34 Relationships at the beginning of this, he talks about how he was on a trip with someone
668. 00:42:39 he had met and became good friends with.
669. 00:42:42 And they were really good friends, but by a few days in, they were just sick and tired
670. 00:42:47 of each other.
671. 00:42:48 And they just wanted to get away and he kind of sensed it.
672. 00:42:51 So they went off and did their own thing.
673. 00:42:53 And then after some time away, they felt great and came back together.
674. 00:42:56 The part that struck me about this is just that with the passion piece, he's talking
675. 00:43:03 about the problem he created as a professor with the mindfulness piece he was talking
676. 00:43:10 about, you know, sitting with negative emotions to understand where they're coming from and
677. 00:43:15 being mindful of where those come from.
678. 00:43:19 And then jump back to where we're at now on this relationship, he was talking about the
679. 00:43:23 negative thing of being around people too much.
680. 00:43:26 And this is where it struck me that like he's, he's mentioning the negative side of each
681. 00:43:31 of these things at the beginning of these chapters, which is the opposite of what I
682. 00:43:35 would have expected from a monk in this situation.
683. 00:43:40 So I think this is where I started to say, okay, why are we focusing on the negative
684. 00:43:45 side of this at the beginning of these?
685. 00:43:49 I don't really understand why that's the focal point when I felt like this was again,
686. 00:43:56 come back to the beginning of where I started.
687. 00:43:57 The things you can see only when you slow down, like to me, that immediately has like
688. 00:44:02 a positive connotation.
689. 00:44:04 There's things that I should be able to notice if I slow down, right?
690. 00:44:08 And I don't know that anybody would say it's a bad thing to notice things if you slow
691. 00:44:13 down, but he's pointing out these negative components of each of these topics as we dive
692. 00:44:18 into them.
693. 00:44:20 So I feel like there's a, at least in my simpleton brain, there's a direct conflict
694. 00:44:26 here between what I'm finding in each of these chapters and what my expectation was.
695. 00:44:31 So maybe that's me sitting in the gap and not sitting in the gain.
696. 00:44:37 I don't know what that is, but that's what I started to notice here.
697. 00:44:43 Regardless of all that, he has some good points in here on this.
698. 00:44:47 Good conversation requires honesty.
699. 00:44:50 Otherwise people get bored in conversation and just want it to end.
700. 00:44:56 So I mean, it's something that I feel like has some good points there.
701. 00:45:01 You know, he's got another one here.
702. 00:45:02 Forgive others for your own sake, not necessarily for theirs, just so you can let things go.
703. 00:45:09 But again, he's focusing on the negative side of something.
704. 00:45:11 This can cause a lot of problems for you if you don't let it go.
705. 00:45:14 So I don't know.
706. 00:45:15 I just struggled with it once I connected those dots.
707. 00:45:18 Yeah.
708. 00:45:20 The thing that challenged me from this chapter was right at the beginning, and there's not
709. 00:45:25 an action I'm associated with this, but there is some thinking to be done here on how much
710. 00:45:30 do we invest in good relationships?
711. 00:45:35 I don't know.
712. 00:45:36 Like this chapter out of all of the chapters, I felt like his message finally got through
713. 00:45:40 to me.
714. 00:45:41 And it was more so, hey, you should really spend some time thinking about this rather
715. 00:45:46 than all of the short little tactical one liners.
716. 00:45:51 I don't know why that is, but yeah, maybe because this is the area I need to grow the
717. 00:46:00 most in.
718. 00:46:01 I don't know.
719. 00:46:02 Yep.
720. 00:46:03 That's right.
721. 00:46:04 Right there.
722. 00:46:05 Nailed it.
723. 00:46:06 I am introverted and my idea of a good time on a Friday night is sitting at home with a
724. 00:46:13 book, but I don't know.
725. 00:46:16 I also feel like I've internalized this message.
726. 00:46:19 It's been a recurring topic, if not action item on bookworm over the years of recognizing
727. 00:46:25 the importance of relationships.
728. 00:46:27 But the big thing I walk out of this chapter with is just a renewed desire to audit my
729. 00:46:36 relationships, I guess, and invest in them a little bit more intentionally.
730. 00:46:42 Yeah, I've got a lot going on right now and I completely biffed all my action items from
731. 00:46:47 this time, but this still feels important to me.
732. 00:46:52 Not necessarily I want to do something about it, but I want to make sure that I'm not missing
733. 00:46:58 it if that makes sense.
734. 00:47:00 Yep.
735. 00:47:01 Well, let's move on to the next one because I don't really understand this one, which
736. 00:47:07 is love.
737. 00:47:08 It's the next chapter.
738. 00:47:10 And by not understanding it, I don't mean I don't understand love, though my wife might
739. 00:47:14 disagree with that.
740. 00:47:17 But I did feel like this one, again, he starts off with a negative story of how he was on
741. 00:47:23 a trip on a trip studying somewhere.
742. 00:47:26 I don't remember what the this is a weird one.
743. 00:47:29 It is a weird one, but he was talking about where was he at?
744. 00:47:34 He was in.
745. 00:47:35 I thought somebody came to where he was as a kid.
746. 00:47:40 That's what it was.
747. 00:47:42 And he fell in love with this gal.
748. 00:47:45 Yep.
749. 00:47:46 And she mentioned that she was going home in two weeks and he was sick because he had
750. 00:47:52 become so enamored with her.
751. 00:47:55 And then he doesn't tell her about how he feels about her.
752. 00:48:00 She goes back to the United States and then somehow contacted him about three years later
753. 00:48:07 to let him know that she was getting married and invited him to the wedding and he didn't
754. 00:48:12 go.
755. 00:48:13 Then at one point they connect later and her then husband greeted him warmly and it was
756. 00:48:20 like this painful thing that he just dealt with and I don't know if he ever told her.
757. 00:48:24 I mean, he has now in the book.
758. 00:48:28 So again, we're talking about the negative side of something.
759. 00:48:35 You didn't stand up and say something.
760. 00:48:38 Maybe that's a Western idea thing that he didn't grow up with.
761. 00:48:45 I don't know.
762. 00:48:46 I don't know what the situation is here, but I don't know why I'm hearing this story.
763. 00:48:49 And I'm not sure how it applies to the rest of the book because I got so confused at this
764. 00:48:57 point that I just didn't know what to do with it.
765. 00:49:01 I just really didn't.
766. 00:49:03 Maybe you have a connecting point here, but I didn't really understand how it fit.
767. 00:49:07 No, this one I only jettled down a couple of things.
768. 00:49:10 This was the chapter I had the least amount of notes from.
769. 00:49:13 Well, tied for the last chapter on spirituality.
770. 00:49:19 I think a couple of things that kind of stood out to me.
771. 00:49:23 The heart is slower than the mind.
772. 00:49:26 I mentioned at the beginning one of the worst feelings is to believe that you don't matter
773. 00:49:31 and no action item associated with that.
774. 00:49:34 Rather than again, I want to think about how do I make sure that people that I interact
775. 00:49:41 with don't feel that way.
776. 00:49:44 Specifically, I can think of times in my life when I have felt like I don't matter stupid
777. 00:49:51 little things like I'm talking to somebody and they're not paying attention.
778. 00:49:56 I'm in the middle of saying something and they just blurt out something totally unrelated
779. 00:50:01 because they're switching topics like they're not even hearing what I'm saying.
780. 00:50:05 It becomes obvious in that moment and I hate that.
781. 00:50:09 But yeah, I did not get any love advice from this chapter either.
782. 00:50:16 I certainly did not.
783. 00:50:17 Though maybe I should have.
784. 00:50:19 I don't know.
785. 00:50:21 I think maybe you and I are not the target market, at least for this chapter.
786. 00:50:28 True.
787. 00:50:30 There's a lot of those little pieces of advice, not necessarily the stories.
788. 00:50:36 The stories are pretty generalizable, I feel.
789. 00:50:38 But a lot of the advice that little snippets that are in here are written towards somebody
790. 00:50:46 who is, I feel like transitioning between high school age, college age, entering the
791. 00:50:52 workforce, new adult, basically.
792. 00:50:57 And so it's kind of like I wish I would have known these things when I was this age, is
793. 00:51:03 the approach that he's taking with some of this stuff.
794. 00:51:05 But what that does is it makes people who are not in that stage of life and firmly committed
795. 00:51:14 to at least some of the choices that they've made.
796. 00:51:16 It's kind of like, well, that one's not for me.
797. 00:51:20 The next chapter is life because we haven't been talking about life yet.
798. 00:51:26 And this one, he starts off with a story about how he walks around New York City and sometimes
799. 00:51:30 people ask him if he knows Kung Fu.
800. 00:51:34 And it's usually the kids who ask him that, but it's because he's walking around in a
801. 00:51:39 white robe and looks like a monk.
802. 00:51:42 And kids think that guys who wear robes like that are going to no martial arts.
803. 00:51:49 So that's where he starts.
804. 00:51:52 But adults always want to know, are you super calm, super happy, supers in, all the things,
805. 00:51:59 which is my stereotype, obviously, because this is the negative thing always being brought
806. 00:52:04 up.
807. 00:52:05 Though this one's not really a negative, it doesn't really pitch it as a negative thing.
808. 00:52:10 So kudos to him on that.
809. 00:52:13 But he does get into just happiness in general.
810. 00:52:15 But again, I'm not really sure where he's headed here, other than just take the experiences
811. 00:52:24 that happen and try to view them in a positive light and don't let things get to you.
812. 00:52:29 That's really the moral of the story, I think.
813. 00:52:32 But I'm not, again, 100%.
814. 00:52:35 Well, I'm not sure I can give you any solid direction on the meaning of life, but the chapter
815. 00:52:47 or the time we have on this earth.
816. 00:52:51 But some things I jotted down in here that I really liked.
817. 00:52:55 I think this might be the one that I jotted the most notes from.
818. 00:53:00 I like on page 180 where he says the biggest obstacle to learning is pretending to know
819. 00:53:05 even when you don't.
820. 00:53:07 That is one of the better articulations of this feeling that I have felt and actually
821. 00:53:13 brought up in conversation a couple of times in the last couple of weeks about how the more
822. 00:53:18 I know, the less I think I know.
823. 00:53:22 But I never really viewed it as like, if I think I know things, that being an obstacle
824. 00:53:28 to learning things.
825. 00:53:30 But I like that framing that makes a lot of sense.
826. 00:53:35 Talks about how where you live shapes you.
827. 00:53:38 I didn't like that part partly because I forget, I don't think it was the last book,
828. 00:53:43 but maybe the one before that.
829. 00:53:45 Some recent book told us that we needed to move to where the other people like us were.
830. 00:53:51 If we wanted to, oh, it was the pathless path maybe about surrounding yourself with those
831. 00:53:59 kind of people that you wanted to be.
832. 00:54:03 I don't remember.
833. 00:54:04 But anyways, I've been rebelling against that idea for a while because I live in the middle
834. 00:54:09 of Wisconsin.
835. 00:54:11 This isn't where the techy startup stuff is, but those are my people.
836. 00:54:16 Does that mean I have to move to San Francisco?
837. 00:54:19 I hope not.
838. 00:54:21 But I do think that there is some truth to this, where you live does actually shape you.
839. 00:54:28 There's another phrase here, the more you know, the more you think you don't, the more
840. 00:54:31 you don't know, the more you think you do.
841. 00:54:34 What I was talking about earlier, but it was interesting to me the way that was phrased,
842. 00:54:39 there's this reverse bias that kicks in.
843. 00:54:44 It's like if you encounter somebody who thinks they have no idea what they're doing, they're
844. 00:54:48 probably pretty smart.
845. 00:54:50 They're running into someone who thinks they got it all figured out, probably an idiot.
846. 00:54:55 It's not exactly how he was saying, but that's kind of how I heard it.
847. 00:54:58 The connotation.
848. 00:54:59 Yep.
849. 00:55:00 Yep.
850. 00:55:01 Knowledge wants to talk, wisdom wants to listen.
851. 00:55:03 I like that phrase a lot.
852. 00:55:04 And then the other one that I really liked was that life is like jazz.
853. 00:55:07 Much of it is improvised.
854. 00:55:10 I guess I like that because I feel like I'm doing a lot of improvising lately with the
855. 00:55:17 career change and it's uncomfortable for my personality to not know how everything is
856. 00:55:27 going to play out.
857. 00:55:29 I can't plan it all out.
858. 00:55:33 That's probably good for me, but I would like it all to be neatly ordered and follow the
859. 00:55:40 instructions, please.
860. 00:55:42 The instructions.
861. 00:55:44 Where are those?
862. 00:55:47 I don't know.
863. 00:55:48 I was thinking of the Lego movie.
864. 00:55:51 Emmet, you know at the beginning where everyone just follow the instructions.
865. 00:55:56 That's my personality.
866. 00:55:57 So I guess that phrase is kind of confirmation, I guess, for the stage of life I find myself
867. 00:56:02 in.
868. 00:56:03 And I take comfort in that, realizing that this is the way it's supposed to be and everything
869. 00:56:07 is going to be okay.
870. 00:56:09 He does have, there's a section in here on this life chapter that I did.
871. 00:56:14 I'd forgotten it was in this particular piece.
872. 00:56:16 But he's got like these three liberating insights that he says that a spring day as he was turning
873. 00:56:22 30, he looked into his mind and realized three things.
874. 00:56:26 That seems really.
875. 00:56:27 I don't like those at all.
876. 00:56:29 You know what that reminded me of?
877. 00:56:32 Is it Ecclesiastes?
878. 00:56:34 You know Solomon's like, there are six things, Lord to test.
879. 00:56:38 No, seven that are in abomination.
880. 00:56:40 Yes.
881. 00:56:41 And it's like all these lists.
882. 00:56:43 That's what that reminded me of.
883. 00:56:44 And I was like, I've never liked these.
884. 00:56:47 Anyway, he had these three liberating insights.
885. 00:56:53 And despite his phrasing for how he gets to them, I think these three are pretty solid
886. 00:56:59 actually.
887. 00:57:00 The first of which is that people aren't as interested in you as you think they are,
888. 00:57:05 which again, which I talked about before, not a grand idea that's completely revolutionary.
889. 00:57:13 Yeah, everyone has to like you.
890. 00:57:15 Also true.
891. 00:57:18 Number three, most things we end up doing for ourselves as much as we think we're doing
892. 00:57:25 things for other people.
893. 00:57:26 We generally are doing them for ourselves.
894. 00:57:29 That one probably, but has a little more leeway, I would think.
895. 00:57:35 But it's like, at least these are borderline actionable.
896. 00:57:40 But at the same time, again, this is not fully connected to the original idea that you need
897. 00:57:50 to slow down.
898. 00:57:51 So I kind of get it and I kind of don't at the same time.
899. 00:57:54 Regardless, out of context, I like those three.
900. 00:57:58 Yeah, I don't disagree with the content from those, just the framing of those lists.
901. 00:58:07 I really don't like.
902. 00:58:09 I hope I don't do that.
903. 00:58:11 I probably do.
904. 00:58:13 He talks about how when there's something you don't like about someone else, it's usually
905. 00:58:16 because there's something about yourself that you don't like, that you see in the book.
906. 00:58:19 Yeah, I don't like how true that is though.
907. 00:58:22 Yep.
908. 00:58:23 All right, let's talk about the future, which is the last, no, second to last chapter before
909. 00:58:28 the epilogue.
910. 00:58:30 The future, he starts off with, there's a section here.
911. 00:58:34 One word of encouragement can change the future.
912. 00:58:37 And he talks about a school teacher of his that had a word of encouragement that he was
913. 00:58:43 going to be a leader and a role model to his student, his fellow students.
914. 00:58:49 And it completely changed his trajectory.
915. 00:58:51 And he even says that he doesn't think he would be as influential today were it not
916. 00:58:56 for her.
917. 00:58:58 This feels like a very grandiose exaggeration to me.
918. 00:59:04 And I think that's just, it's the result of being on edge and questioning so many things
919. 00:59:10 because there's so many things are like on the brink of me not trusting the book entirely.
920. 00:59:17 So I think because of that, it made me think, are you sure it was that big a deal?
921. 00:59:21 Like it just made me not certain.
922. 00:59:24 Regardless, the idea is solid.
923. 00:59:27 Like encouraging, especially young people can have a tremendous impact on their future.
924. 00:59:34 And if you ever want to see a kid get completely dedicated to accomplishing something, just
925. 00:59:39 tell them you think that they're awesome and that they can totally succeed at something.
926. 00:59:43 And they just thrive at least every time I've been able to see that happen, it's been phenomenal.
927. 00:59:50 So encourage children for sure.
928. 00:59:53 But it works with adults too.
929. 00:59:57 Yeah, I jotted down a phrase here.
930. 01:00:02 One word of encouragement said with kindness and hope could change a person's future.
931. 01:00:07 And I really did like the story that he shared with this one where he was actually over at
932. 01:00:12 his friend's house and his friend's mom was a teacher.
933. 01:00:16 And he didn't like her as a teacher.
934. 01:00:18 And so he wanted to make sure he was out of his friend's house before she came home.
935. 01:00:23 And then lost track of time because they were playing with some new toys.
936. 01:00:27 And what he realized was that outside of the classroom, she was a really kind person.
937. 01:00:34 And she said something to him that kind of shaped his future.
938. 01:00:39 To be honest though, I want to do that obviously for other people, but I want to be careful
939. 01:00:46 about how I do that.
940. 01:00:47 I couldn't help but think of mindset by Carol Dweck at this section because the example
941. 01:00:54 that he shared, she had a very specific, you're going to do this sort of a thing.
942. 01:01:01 And that's cool that he was inspired and he actually did it.
943. 01:01:04 But I feel like Carol Dweck talks about the danger of doing that and how you can set your
944. 01:01:09 kids up specifically for failure.
945. 01:01:12 I mean, not if it's somebody else's kid that makes it any better necessarily.
946. 01:01:17 But you feel it more I think with your own kids for sure.
947. 01:01:22 I want to be careful not to get them to the point where they feel they have to succeed
948. 01:01:30 or they're going to disappoint.
949. 01:01:35 And obviously that's a perspective that is kind of missing from this section.
950. 01:01:43 But I do like the idea of speaking into people's future and I do believe that there are a
951. 01:01:48 lot of people past me included who just needed someone to believe in them and say, you have
952. 01:01:54 what it takes, give it a shot.
953. 01:01:57 So I want to be that for other people, I want to enable other people.
954. 01:02:05 And I don't know exactly how to do that obviously.
955. 01:02:09 But inspired to do it from this chapter, a couple other like random ideas that are powerful
956. 01:02:16 in this too about enjoying the process of learning something new.
957. 01:02:21 I feel like that's what we do with bookworm.
958. 01:02:23 We read these books.
959. 01:02:24 And for whatever reason, there's a certain group of people that I encounter in real life
960. 01:02:29 that have really hard time believing that I enjoy reading these nonfiction books.
961. 01:02:38 Yes.
962. 01:02:39 I'm glad I'm not the only one that experiences that because whenever I say something about
963. 01:02:42 reading productivity, self-help business, nonfiction books, the response is one of two
964. 01:02:48 things.
965. 01:02:49 It's usually, huh, that's interesting.
966. 01:02:51 And why?
967. 01:02:52 Why would you do that?
968. 01:02:54 Yeah, I feel like if I encounter someone in real life and find out that they really enjoy
969. 01:03:01 reading and we start, oh, well, what do you really, what do you like reading?
970. 01:03:05 What's the last book that you read that you really enjoyed?
971. 01:03:09 They will almost always pick something from fiction.
972. 01:03:11 I will obviously always pick something from nonfiction and immediately there's this disconnect.
973. 01:03:18 And it's like, you get real excited and then, oh, you're not like me.
974. 01:03:22 Yep.
975. 01:03:23 Yep.
976. 01:03:24 We recently hired a new pastor on staff for our youth pastor and I was in his office
977. 01:03:28 setting up his computer and he had a bunch of books on the wall.
978. 01:03:33 So of course I'm looking through books while I'm waiting for him to change his password.
979. 01:03:36 It's like, you read a lot.
980. 01:03:38 It's like, yeah, I read a book every couple of weeks.
981. 01:03:40 It's like, oh, who's your favorite author?
982. 01:03:42 What's your favorite title?
983. 01:03:43 It's like, it's not, not in the same realm.
984. 01:03:47 Like I already know this, Darren.
985. 01:03:49 Like it's just not like seeing what's on your wall.
986. 01:03:52 It's like, this isn't, we're not going to be on the same page.
987. 01:03:54 I can already tell you that.
988. 01:03:56 Yep.
989. 01:03:58 Uh, but that is why, um, I feel that I am like that is I have learned to enjoy the process
990. 01:04:09 of learning something new.
991. 01:04:11 And it's not learning something new.
992. 01:04:14 I feel like with the stuff that we do for bookworm is different than most people would probably
993. 01:04:20 approach learning something new because we alternate picking the books and we don't have
994. 01:04:25 a hundred percent say on which ones we're going to do.
995. 01:04:28 And even if when we do, you know, the general advice would be if you don't enjoy a book,
996. 01:04:33 don't finish it, but we have to, because we said we were going to do it and we're going
997. 01:04:36 to talk about it.
998. 01:04:38 So I think there are some books that we've just had to muscle through.
999. 01:04:43 And I've had to learn to just find the nuggets and brew on those, even if I don't really
1000. 01:04:50 enjoy the overall message or tone of the book, I can always find something to make it a worthwhile
1001. 01:04:57 investment of my time.
1002. 01:04:59 Whereas I feel like a lot of people would pick up a book and if it's not resonating,
1003. 01:05:03 they'd just be like, ah, I'm not going to finish reading that one.
1004. 01:05:07 And that's probably a very valid approach, probably the right approach for a lot of
1005. 01:05:11 people.
1006. 01:05:13 But there is something to be said about having to stick with the books and finish the hard
1007. 01:05:18 things and do it in a way where it's not a drudgery.
1008. 01:05:26 So I guess when I'm learning new things, I'm looking for anything that might be interesting.
1009. 01:05:33 And that opens me up to a lot of new ideas.
1010. 01:05:35 Whereas I think maybe the default approach would be I want to figure out how to do this
1011. 01:05:43 specific thing.
1012. 01:05:44 And so I will go pick a book, which is going to help me solve this particular problem.
1013. 01:05:48 And again, very valid reason to pick up a book, but I'm thankful for having to muscle
1014. 01:05:54 through the bad ones.
1015. 01:05:56 I feel like that has made me a better reader and a better learner over low these many years.
1016. 01:06:03 It's good to know I'll keep picking bad books for you then.
1017. 01:06:08 That's not what I meant.
1018. 01:06:09 I've picked bad books too.
1019. 01:06:11 You never really know what you're getting into when you buy something off of Amazon.
1020. 01:06:15 Wait, that means you can't judge a book by its cover.
1021. 01:06:17 Okay, good to know.
1022. 01:06:18 But I'm.
1023. 01:06:19 All right.
1024. 01:06:20 Well, let's talk about spirituality because.
1025. 01:06:25 Do we have to?
1026. 01:06:26 We have to.
1027. 01:06:27 This is the last chapter of the book before the epilogue and he starts it with a section
1028. 01:06:34 called long lost cousins.
1029. 01:06:36 And really the only way I can explain that is that he had a chance to go to a different
1030. 01:06:41 mon.
1031. 01:06:42 Was it a monastery?
1032. 01:06:43 I think it was a monastery.
1033. 01:06:46 I think it was a monastery, but it was not of the same religion.
1034. 01:06:50 It was a Christian monastery, but I don't.
1035. 01:06:54 A mechanical Christian monastic community is the way he explained it.
1036. 01:06:58 Yeah, I know nothing about that specifically, but basically they treated him really, really
1037. 01:07:03 well and they developed a bond with the people that were there and yeah, that's the way it
1038. 01:07:08 should be.
1039. 01:07:09 Correct.
1040. 01:07:10 Yeah.
1041. 01:07:11 And it was something that struck him and basically he's saying that sometimes you're
1042. 01:07:19 going to run across other people who have different views than you, but you're close
1043. 01:07:24 enough that you can have a kindred spirit and connect with them and build relationships
1044. 01:07:30 with them.
1045. 01:07:31 Not necessarily like you're not necessarily going to get into debates with them.
1046. 01:07:36 You're not necessarily going to agree with them 100%, but you're within the same territory.
1047. 01:07:42 So I kind of get that.
1048. 01:07:45 I'm not entirely certain why it needs to be called spirituality.
1049. 01:07:52 When he's talking about that, because that was the only, I believe that was the only
1050. 01:07:54 section here.
1051. 01:07:56 I'm double checking.
1052. 01:07:57 Yeah.
1053. 01:07:58 That was the only thing he had here.
1054. 01:08:00 Oh, no, wait, there was a different one.
1055. 01:08:02 Two spiritual paths and one family.
1056. 01:08:04 Yeah, he's talking about how two different people can have two different viewpoints.
1057. 01:08:08 Mm-hmm.
1058. 01:08:09 Basically, just get along.
1059. 01:08:11 That's the thing.
1060. 01:08:12 Right.
1061. 01:08:13 Kind of struck.
1062. 01:08:14 Well, spirituality, if someone disagrees with you, you don't have to argue about it.
1063. 01:08:20 You don't have to debate about it.
1064. 01:08:21 You don't have to try to convince the other person, just get along.
1065. 01:08:24 That was the error I got from it, which I would sorely disagree with, that premise.
1066. 01:08:30 But I'm also not entirely certain that that's what he's trying to get across either.
1067. 01:08:34 I don't know.
1068. 01:08:35 Maybe you have a better view on it, Mike.
1069. 01:08:38 Not really, but I feel like this maybe is mislabeled.
1070. 01:08:41 So it's a spirituality.
1071. 01:08:42 But really what he's talking about, at least the notes that I jotted down is religion.
1072. 01:08:47 I know that some of the anecdotal stuff in there is more general spiritual stuff.
1073. 01:08:54 But the stories, yeah.
1074. 01:08:58 And then even some of the things that I jotted down, like, you reap what you sow.
1075. 01:09:03 You don't receive more love from God by asking for it.
1076. 01:09:06 Those are his words.
1077. 01:09:08 Those are not mine.
1078. 01:09:11 I'm internalizing what he's saying.
1079. 01:09:13 This is like what's in the book.
1080. 01:09:15 The holier a person is, the more they describe themselves as a sinner.
1081. 01:09:19 Religious conflicts can be blamed not on the founders, but on the followers.
1082. 01:09:23 That's an interesting idea.
1083. 01:09:25 And maybe that's worth discussion.
1084. 01:09:27 I think I agree with that.
1085. 01:09:29 He says, you know, if I forget the people he mentioned, Gandhi, Jesus and Mohammed were
1086. 01:09:38 to sit down, they wouldn't be fighting.
1087. 01:09:42 They would be able to get along.
1088. 01:09:44 But the followers can't.
1089. 01:09:47 I think there is some truth to that.
1090. 01:09:50 But I also firmly disagree with the notion that they're all the same.
1091. 01:09:58 I got to be careful here because I think everyone who follows any religion would say
1092. 01:10:05 that, that they don't believe that they are all the same.
1093. 01:10:11 Otherwise, like, why did you land on the one that you chose?
1094. 01:10:15 Now, obviously with our Christian theology, we have very specific beliefs, which, as I
1095. 01:10:21 mentioned at the beginning, are kind of contradictory to some of the tone and the message throughout
1096. 01:10:28 this entire book.
1097. 01:10:29 It's not just this last chapter on spirituality here that I am feeling the truth.
1098. 01:10:35 This tension.
1099. 01:10:38 But I don't know.
1100. 01:10:41 In my opinion, there are two paths to talking about this stuff.
1101. 01:10:48 For me, that are acceptable.
1102. 01:10:51 One is I will not talk about certain things, certain places.
1103. 01:10:58 You know, you don't argue online, that sort of thing.
1104. 01:11:03 And there are some of the topics in the books that we cover for Bookworm, for example, where
1105. 01:11:09 I might bring up my experience and share some personal story.
1106. 01:11:13 But I'm not going to interject my faith into the topic and say, "This is what everybody
1107. 01:11:20 must do because that is not right."
1108. 01:11:25 But then if we're going to chat after church on Sunday and some productivity topic comes
1109. 01:11:33 up, it'll have a very different tone because of the context and the environment of that
1110. 01:11:42 conversation.
1111. 01:11:44 So either, you know, this is a religious conversation and we've all got this shared understanding
1112. 01:11:51 of, well, this is the, from my experience, it would be the Bible.
1113. 01:11:57 Okay, we're going to base our conversation off of this or we're going to not have that
1114. 01:12:03 shared understanding in which case the conversation is going to sound very different.
1115. 01:12:07 And this one is kind of like in the middle where it's like, "Well, we can talk about
1116. 01:12:12 this stuff over here, but they're basically all the same."
1117. 01:12:15 So what that is is it's trying to force the narrowing of these two things I feel, but
1118. 01:12:21 in a way that is not confrontational in any way, shape, or form.
1119. 01:12:27 And I don't know how you do that well.
1120. 01:12:32 I almost wish like he would just preach at me, "This is why you should be a Zen Buddhist
1121. 01:12:37 monk like me," or cut this chapter out completely.
1122. 01:12:41 Yes.
1123. 01:12:43 Or reframe it not something along spirituality and religion, but like you were talking about
1124. 01:12:50 being a decent human's persons.
1125. 01:12:54 That's something I say at my house all the time, my kids are fighting.
1126. 01:12:56 He's like, "Hey, can we be decent human's persons?"
1127. 01:13:00 I like it.
1128. 01:13:01 And they're like, "Yeah."
1129. 01:13:06 Because they inherently know like what they're doing and the way that they're acting is
1130. 01:13:11 annoying and frustrating to somebody else.
1131. 01:13:14 And this isn't the place to push to get your way.
1132. 01:13:18 Yes.
1133. 01:13:19 Right?
1134. 01:13:20 You are not more important than another person, so stop acting like it.
1135. 01:13:23 Yep.
1136. 01:13:24 Yep.
1137. 01:13:25 Exactly.
1138. 01:13:26 I just didn't care for that.
1139. 01:13:28 I didn't even write anything down on this chapter.
1140. 01:13:30 I don't even understand other than like you were saying, "We're all one and the same," which
1141. 01:13:36 we're not.
1142. 01:13:37 So that brings us to the epilogue, which I didn't even write the title for it down in my notes.
1143. 01:13:46 It was what?
1144. 01:13:47 Two pages?
1145. 01:13:48 Two pages long, I think.
1146. 01:13:50 Basically, he's talking about your original face as he calls it, pay attention to what's
1147. 01:13:58 going on.
1148. 01:14:00 My takeaway from it was just that this is a call to be mindful of what's happening.
1149. 01:14:06 Blow your roll, basically.
1150. 01:14:09 Settle down, pay attention, be a decent human being, decent humans persons.
1151. 01:14:16 There you go.
1152. 01:14:18 That's what it says, not verbatim.
1153. 01:14:21 This is, I feel like, where you finally got what you thought you were going to get at
1154. 01:14:25 the beginning of the book.
1155. 01:14:26 Correct.
1156. 01:14:27 Yes.
1157. 01:14:28 He puts a piece in the puzzle, but it doesn't go to the same puzzle.
1158. 01:14:37 That's the trick.
1159. 01:14:38 It goes into the puzzle that I thought I was getting, but it doesn't go into the puzzle
1160. 01:14:41 he gave me.
1161. 01:14:44 Well, yes and no.
1162. 01:14:49 I think it depends on your perspective.
1163. 01:14:51 I'm willing to concede that if you come from a different background, a different belief
1164. 01:14:57 system, there probably are.
1165. 01:14:58 There probably is a way that the stuff ties together more firmly, but it didn't for me
1166. 01:15:07 and sounds like it didn't for you.
1167. 01:15:10 This epilogue here, this two page section where he talks about how wisdom isn't something
1168. 01:15:16 we acquire.
1169. 01:15:17 It's something that arises naturally as we slow down and notice what is already there.
1170. 01:15:22 That's a really powerful idea.
1171. 01:15:24 The big message here is slow down, the friend, the silent observer, just look at things.
1172. 01:15:32 But I can envision a very different book titled, "The Things You Can See," only when you slow
1173. 01:15:39 down that extrapolates that idea in a much different way than the eight chapters that
1174. 01:15:45 we got.
1175. 01:15:46 I would rather read that book.
1176. 01:15:51 But that, again, is just me.
1177. 01:15:53 I'm sure that there are people who this approach really resonates with.
1178. 01:15:58 You said when you picked it, there's a lot of really great reviews of this book on Amazon.
1179. 01:16:07 Maybe we're just cut from a different cloth.
1180. 01:16:10 We know that one, but there's that.
1181. 01:16:14 Let's do some action items because this is going to be super exciting.
1182. 01:16:20 I have one from this book, which is, "No Distractions at Breakfast."
1183. 01:16:27 This is based on the title of the book and the expectation I had for the book.
1184. 01:16:33 It is not based on anything that I found inside of the book.
1185. 01:16:37 This is just me knowing that over breakfast, I have a tendency to have a book in my hand
1186. 01:16:43 while I'm meeting at breakfast.
1187. 01:16:45 My family starts doing their scurry, scurry thing to make their own breakfast if they're
1188. 01:16:49 up and out of bed yet.
1189. 01:16:52 I would rather be in the moment there with them and pay attention to them and have conversations
1190. 01:16:58 with them than be off in my own little world.
1191. 01:17:03 That's my choice.
1192. 01:17:06 That's not because of anything in the book itself.
1193. 01:17:08 It's just based on my expectations of the book.
1194. 01:17:11 I've got the other two that I'm carrying over as well, but that's the only one that's
1195. 01:17:14 from this book.
1196. 01:17:15 How about you, Mike?
1197. 01:17:17 How many do you have from this one?
1198. 01:17:19 I do not have a single action item from this book.
1199. 01:17:26 Argument could be made that there were a couple of things I brought up that I should create
1200. 01:17:32 action items around.
1201. 01:17:35 I feel like it gave me some context for things that I want to kind of noodle on, but there's
1202. 01:17:43 nothing specific that I felt by the next time I want to have resolved this.
1203. 01:17:52 This whole book kind of read to me interesting, nice to know information, but kind of felt
1204. 01:18:02 like it was written for somebody else.
1205. 01:18:04 Yep.
1206. 01:18:05 All right.
1207. 01:18:06 Let's do some style and reading.
1208. 01:18:10 Style wise, it's a little disjointed for me.
1209. 01:18:16 When he got to where he was telling his stories, the stories are well written and the stories
1210. 01:18:21 I can engage with pretty easily.
1211. 01:18:24 Had a hard time connecting the story to the idea in a way that I resonated with.
1212. 01:18:32 Then you get to the short segmented pieces at the end.
1213. 01:18:36 I get where, and maybe this is it, maybe this is like a skimmer book.
1214. 01:18:41 This is not a sit down or read a book.
1215. 01:18:44 Maybe this is a, you're supposed to skim over some of these and take them with, do that
1216. 01:18:52 over a period of time and then sit with it in silence and process it.
1217. 01:18:58 Maybe that's what I'm supposed to do with it.
1218. 01:19:00 He does say at the very beginning in the prologue that you need to not rush through this and
1219. 01:19:04 read it like a novel, but you need to read it bit by bit.
1220. 01:19:08 But we've had just shy of three weeks since we last recorded.
1221. 01:19:13 I didn't read this all in like single shots.
1222. 01:19:15 I'm going to read four chapters and be done for the day.
1223. 01:19:18 I did read half a chapter a day just because I could and we had the time to do that.
1224. 01:19:24 He told me to slow down when I read it.
1225. 01:19:26 So I did.
1226. 01:19:27 I still didn't.
1227. 01:19:29 I still didn't see it.
1228. 01:19:31 So I struggled with the format, his choice of structure there.
1229. 01:19:37 I struggled with some of his points and not understanding them.
1230. 01:19:41 I struggled with just pure belief system conflicts.
1231. 01:19:46 Struggled with a lot of things.
1232. 01:19:48 That said, there are some fun little tidbits in here.
1233. 01:19:51 I mean, it's, it's one of those like, did I get a single tidbit out of it that was worth
1234. 01:19:54 reading it?
1235. 01:19:55 Yeah, I figured out how to explain mud in a fish tank.
1236. 01:19:58 Like that, that I'm good with.
1237. 01:19:59 Like, if that's the only thing I get from it, it's probably worth it.
1238. 01:20:04 But when it comes to rating this, like, I'm going to put it at 3.0.
1239. 01:20:11 I just don't see it above that.
1240. 01:20:13 I don't see it as something I'm really going to.
1241. 01:20:16 I don't think I'm recommending this to anybody.
1242. 01:20:19 If you want a fun read to just kind of argue with a little bit, I know some people pick
1243. 01:20:24 up books just because they want an argument.
1244. 01:20:27 Sure.
1245. 01:20:28 This is your book.
1246. 01:20:29 I'll give you a little bit more of it.
1247. 01:20:30 If you're in, if you're in the same belief systems as Mike and I, you want something
1248. 01:20:35 to argue with, here you go.
1249. 01:20:36 You can pick it up and try to pick it apart.
1250. 01:20:40 If you are interested in some of these philosophical viewpoints, yeah, it's probably a book for
1251. 01:20:47 you, but I don't think generally speaking, I'm going to recommend this.
1252. 01:20:50 But that's where I land.
1253. 01:20:52 How about you, Mike?
1254. 01:20:55 Do you remember before smartphones, people would keep magazines and other reading materials
1255. 01:21:05 in their bathrooms?
1256. 01:21:06 Oh, yeah.
1257. 01:21:07 In fact, I had the magazine racks by the toilet.
1258. 01:21:09 That was a thing.
1259. 01:21:10 Yeah.
1260. 01:21:11 The house that we live in, when we bought it, it had one of those in the master bathroom.
1261. 01:21:19 And I remember as a kid, the stuff that would be in there would be like readers digest type
1262. 01:21:27 stuff where you could get through a article, page or two, in one sitting.
1263. 01:21:34 Yep.
1264. 01:21:35 I feel like that is the perfect place for a book list.
1265. 01:21:40 All right.
1266. 01:21:44 In the bathroom while you're sitting on the toilet.
1267. 01:21:47 Okay.
1268. 01:21:48 Well, not necessarily that, but the very short little, I want to get inspired by something
1269. 01:21:56 quick, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time going deep on something.
1270. 01:22:03 That's what this reads like to be.
1271. 01:22:05 It's almost like a devotional sort of a thing.
1272. 01:22:11 That's not how we read it, obviously.
1273. 01:22:14 So I'm tending to think that maybe this book just doesn't fit bookworm.
1274. 01:22:23 I think that is a very real possibility that being said, and as I shared throughout this,
1275. 01:22:32 I didn't really care for it.
1276. 01:22:35 From the very beginning, it was a forced read for me.
1277. 01:22:40 There were little things and little tidbits that were kind of insightful, but as I said,
1278. 01:22:45 there's just had trouble connecting with this one in any way, shape or form.
1279. 01:22:53 It is an easy read and the writing style is interesting, even if the content and the
1280. 01:23:01 tone really wasn't something that I cared for.
1281. 01:23:05 Yeah, Blake is right.
1282. 01:23:06 There is something to be said about challenging your thoughts or facing things that you don't
1283. 01:23:10 necessarily resonate with.
1284. 01:23:12 But it also wasn't going to satisfy me if I was going to take that approach either, because
1285. 01:23:19 if I'm going to wrestle with something that I don't agree with, I want to know about it.
1286. 01:23:25 I want to dive deep on it.
1287. 01:23:26 I want to understand where it's coming from, and you can't get that a few sentences at
1288. 01:23:30 a time, disconnected tidbits at a time.
1289. 01:23:35 I don't know.
1290. 01:23:36 There's a lot of things I just didn't really care for with this book, but I do think that
1291. 01:23:39 the right person in the right context would probably enjoy it a lot.
1292. 01:23:44 It's very colorful.
1293. 01:23:46 That's one thing I think we maybe mentioned at the beginning, but didn't talk a whole
1294. 01:23:50 lot about as we went through here, but it's more a piece of art than it is a collection
1295. 01:23:59 of insights.
1296. 01:24:00 I don't know.
1297. 01:24:01 Like a lot of the books that we read tend to be deep dives on a particular topic, and
1298. 01:24:09 we're going to learn about said topic.
1299. 01:24:14 The style, the visual aspect of the book is almost neglected, and the focus is solely
1300. 01:24:26 on the ideas or the words themselves.
1301. 01:24:29 I'm not necessarily saying that's the better approach, but I think it is for bookworm.
1302. 01:24:37 I do think that it just really doesn't quite fit.
1303. 01:24:42 I will meet you at the 3.0, and I don't think I will be recommending this one to anyone
1304. 01:24:51 either, but that doesn't mean that I have negative feelings about it.
1305. 01:24:58 I feel like there wasn't enough here for me really to disagree strongly with it.
1306. 01:25:04 It felt very surface level, and I wish even if it would have taken a stronger stance of
1307. 01:25:15 this is the Zen Buddhist approach, and this is the right one you should listen to me.
1308. 01:25:21 I don't know.
1309. 01:25:22 Maybe that is in itself a contradiction with Zen Buddhism.
1310. 01:25:27 I feel like strong convictions lightly held.
1311. 01:25:32 I would prefer to engage in dialogue with someone who is trying to really convince me
1312. 01:25:38 of something rather than just pointing something out.
1313. 01:25:41 I'm like, "Okay, now do with that what you will."
1314. 01:25:45 Ultimately I'll do that anyways, but that sort of hands off approach.
1315. 01:25:53 I think the net result is that the emotion and the passion about what the author is saying
1316. 01:26:04 is somewhat lost.
1317. 01:26:07 I have no doubt that if you had a conversation in real life, it would not be that way because
1318. 01:26:14 you'd be able to look into the author's eyes and you'd be able to see their body language,
1319. 01:26:18 you could see how much they really care about some of this stuff.
1320. 01:26:24 You don't necessarily need to hype yourself up and be overly excited.
1321. 01:26:29 I think there's a lot of people who do that to a phony level, and that I don't like either,
1322. 01:26:35 but I get done with this and I'm like, "Be excited about something."
1323. 01:26:40 "Just show me all the bad stuff."
1324. 01:26:45 All right, let's put it on the shelf, Mike.
1325. 01:26:48 What's next?
1326. 01:26:50 Next is decoding greatness from Ron Friedman.
1327. 01:26:55 This is a recommendation from the Bookworm Club.
1328. 01:26:59 I have not started this one, but I have kind of paged through it.
1329. 01:27:03 This looks like a refreshing change from this book.
1330. 01:27:09 This is better that way.
1331. 01:27:12 It sounds good.
1332. 01:27:14 After that, in October of last year, Annie Duke, which we read of one of her other books,
1333. 01:27:23 Thinking in Bets, she came out with a new one called Quit, the power of knowing when
1334. 01:27:27 to walk away.
1335. 01:27:30 I was trying to figure out what book to pick before we started, and it was one you had
1336. 01:27:33 mentioned that you'd bought recently, and I know I had a friend recommend it to me via
1337. 01:27:37 text as well.
1338. 01:27:38 It's like, "Hey, you should pick this up."
1339. 01:27:41 We're going to pick this up.
1340. 01:27:44 We can read it together because that's how Bookworm works.
1341. 01:27:48 Deal.
1342. 01:27:49 Cool.
1343. 01:27:50 Done.
1344. 01:27:51 Awesome.
1345. 01:27:52 We're not going to quit that one, but we will read quit.
1346. 01:27:55 Gap books?
1347. 01:27:56 What do you got, Mike?
1348. 01:27:57 I've got a new one by Seth Godin that came just the other day called the song of significance,
1349. 01:28:05 and I don't know anything about this other than it's Seth Godin, so I'm sure it's going
1350. 01:28:09 to be amazing.
1351. 01:28:11 Cool.
1352. 01:28:12 What about you?
1353. 01:28:13 I'm still working my way through Tribe of Mentors.
1354. 01:28:17 Tim Ferriss' book.
1355. 01:28:18 So I told you it was going to keep popping up.
1356. 01:28:22 Yes, it will.
1357. 01:28:23 So I'll have to do a few more of the bios.
1358. 01:28:26 Super fun.
1359. 01:28:28 Always fun, but another thing that's super fun is when people join the Bookworm Club,
1360. 01:28:34 I'm full of these awesome segues today.
1361. 01:28:37 So, yes, if you join the Bookworm Club, we'll think you're awesome.
1362. 01:28:41 Even if you just listen to Bookworm.
1363. 01:28:43 But if you join the club, club.bookworm.fm, it is a circle community, and you can make
1364. 01:28:48 recommendations in there.
1365. 01:28:50 You can chat about the episodes when they come up.
1366. 01:28:53 Chat about the books.
1367. 01:28:54 Tell us how we got the ratings all wrong.
1368. 01:28:56 And the other amazing thing you can do is you can join the pro membership.
1369. 01:29:01 You can do that very easily by going to bookworm.fm/pro or bookworm.fm/membership.
1370. 01:29:07 I think those both work.
1371. 01:29:08 Pro is easier to type, though.
1372. 01:29:11 But you can join the Bookworm Pro membership, and that gets you access to all of Mike's
1373. 01:29:17 mind node files, extra goodies.
1374. 01:29:20 We talk about this all the time.
1375. 01:29:21 But ultimately, we think you're amazing when you do that.
1376. 01:29:24 So thank you to those of you who have done that.
1377. 01:29:26 You get access to some ad-free episodes, the bootleg episodes, which that of this one
1378. 01:29:31 will be up very shortly when we're done recording here, because it gets all the pre and post
1379. 01:29:35 conversation outside the episode itself, which is always super entertaining and sometimes
1380. 01:29:40 boring and sometimes really weird.
1381. 01:29:43 But that's the way it works.
1382. 01:29:44 So yes, thanks to those of you who are members who are in that pro membership.
1383. 01:29:48 And if you haven't joined, be sure to do so at bookworm.fm/pro.
1384. 01:29:51 All right.
1385. 01:29:53 And if you are reading along with us, pick up Decoding Greatness by Ron Friedman.
1386. 01:29:59 And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.