178: The Good Life by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz

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3. 00:00:13 Hey, this is Mike and unfortunately this episode of Bookworm is going to be a little bit different.
4. 00:00:19 Joe has had some things change at work which have made recording Bookworm at the moment impossible.
5. 00:00:29 So I am going to step in for the time being, record this show solo and we're going to try to figure out a way to keep the podcast going.
6. 00:00:39 Frankly, I have no idea what that is going to look like right now.
7. 00:00:44 I don't really want to do solo episodes of Bookworm, although I know that a lot of you listened to the show to get our thoughts about books before deciding to read them for yourselves.
8. 00:00:55 So maybe there are people who are interested in my take on these books.
9. 00:01:00 But one of the things that I've always really loved about Bookworm has been the conversation that Joe and I have had as a result of this podcast.
10. 00:01:09 I feel like I get a lot out of reading through the books and then discussing them with Joe specifically, but somebody else needs to be involved, I think, in order for me to continue doing this show.
11. 00:01:24 I don't know if that means that I have a panel, something like the incomparable where I put out the book and then the people who are really excited about it get on a call and we talk about it for a while or if I find another co-host or if I do guest interviews, really all the options are on the table.
12. 00:01:41 And I'm just sharing this because I want to be transparent and let you know that we don't have it all figured out yet.
13. 00:01:47 But we are doing everything that we can to keep Bookworm going. So lots of details to be figured out.
14. 00:01:54 Please just keep paying attention to Bookworm.fm and we'll share more details as we have them.
15. 00:02:01 With that being said, I'm going to do my best to follow the format for this episode, but I'm going to be doing it solo.
16. 00:02:09 So typically we start an episode with follow up on the action items, none of the action items really make a whole lot of sense to be discussing here other than the what is going to happen to Bookworm in the future.
17. 00:02:22 And like I said, I really don't know what that's going to look like.
18. 00:02:25 I will share personal announcement here.
19. 00:02:29 I'm getting ready to launch the next version of my Obsidian University cohort.
20. 00:02:34 So if you do want to support me, you can go to ObsidianUniversity.com.
21. 00:02:39 I'll be doing a webinar shortly on Obsidian.
22. 00:02:41 That's going to be at live. ObsidianUniversity.com.
23. 00:02:45 So you can go sign up for that free webinar if you would like more details coming shortly on what that cohort is going to look like.
24. 00:02:54 Okay.
25. 00:02:56 So today's book is unfortunately one that Joe had picked.
26. 00:03:00 I was really looking forward to talking through this with him. It's called The Good Life by Robert Waldinger and Mark Schultz.
27. 00:03:05 This is a book that it shares a whole bunch of lessons from one of the world's longest scientific studies of happiness.
28. 00:03:15 That's one of the things that I really like about this book.
29. 00:03:18 It is a longer book.
30. 00:03:19 It's about 280 pages in print format, but I really do like the fact that they've been doing this study for a very long time.
31. 00:03:29 So actually, let's just get into the content of the book here.
32. 00:03:31 This episode is probably going to be quite a bit shorter than the normal episode,
33. 00:03:34 but I'm going to follow the same format.
34. 00:03:36 I'll start because there are 10 different chapters and a conclusion here in this book.
35. 00:03:41 I'm going to take this chapter by chapter.
36. 00:03:43 So chapter one, what makes a good life.
37. 00:03:47 This is where the author talks about how we tend to compare our inside to everybody else's outside.
38. 00:03:53 And Joe and I have talked about this a lot with social media. Social media tends to just share the highlights.
39. 00:03:59 And then when you look at somebody else's highlights and you compare it to your own situation, it can be very discouraging.
40. 00:04:05 Now, another thing they talk about in this first chapter is that the good life is complicated for everyone.
41. 00:04:10 And what that means is that there's no simple formula for this.
42. 00:04:13 We have to figure this out for ourselves. We have to pick and choose the right things, find the right mix.
43. 00:04:19 Right, but based off of this study, which was actually done at Harvard,
44. 00:04:23 it was a study of adult development that had started in 1938.
45. 00:04:27 There's 724 original participants and over 1,300 of their descendants have also participated in this study.
46. 00:04:33 So this makes it the longest in depth longitudinal study of human life ever done.
47. 00:04:39 And the big takeaway from this study is that one thing matters more than anything else
48. 00:04:46 and determining what is a good life and how to be happy and things like that.
49. 00:04:50 And that is the quality of your relationships.
50. 00:04:54 So that's actually a decent spot to go into the second chapter.
51. 00:04:58 The second chapter is why relationships matter.
52. 00:05:02 And this is starting to get into all of the science behind this.
53. 00:05:07 Some of this we've heard before, some of this is new.
54. 00:05:11 For example, one of the statistics they mentioned in this chapter is that for those making more than $75,000 per year,
55. 00:05:17 more money is not necessarily correlated to more happiness.
56. 00:05:21 There's something else that determines how happy we are and that is relationships.
57. 00:05:25 One of the key things that stood out to me from this chapter is that the more we compare ourselves to other people,
58. 00:05:31 the less happy we are.
59. 00:05:33 So we want to avoid the comparison trap whenever possible.
60. 00:05:37 And as humans, we're really bad at effective forecasting.
61. 00:05:41 So that is predicting what will make us happy in both long and short term.
62. 00:05:46 So our brains are basically kind of wired against us.
63. 00:05:50 They often mislead us in our quest for the good life.
64. 00:05:54 Also, it's important to recognize that the good life may be essential concern for individuals,
65. 00:06:00 but it's not something that we think about a lot in terms of most modern societies.
66. 00:06:07 It's not really talked about at a more, like I said, it would be micro level.
67. 00:06:14 So it's something that we should spend time thinking about, but recognize that our happiness and our pursuit of the good life
68. 00:06:23 is going to be important to us, but it's not probably going to be as important to other people.
69. 00:06:27 All right, chapter number three, relationships on the winding road.
70. 00:06:32 This talks about how other people and relationships can be challenging, but also those challenges,
71. 00:06:39 those actually enrich us.
72. 00:06:42 They force us to not stay the same.
73. 00:06:45 One of the things they talk about in this chapter is that a good life requires growth and change.
74. 00:06:49 You have to make yourself uncomfortable.
75. 00:06:52 It's one of the things that I've appreciated about the Bookworm podcast,
76. 00:06:55 some of these books that we read, I don't want to read them.
77. 00:06:59 And then once I read them and I talked to Joe about them, then I find that they really did have an impact on me and my life.
78. 00:07:08 One thing that is from the chapter though, that is pointed out, even though we have no idea how things are going to play out,
79. 00:07:16 we're really bad at predicting things.
80. 00:07:18 And so the net result is that a lot of times things are unexpected.
81. 00:07:21 The fact that things are not going to go according to plan, that is actually expected.
82. 00:07:26 So they say it this way, the unexpected is perfectly ordinary.
83. 00:07:30 They say we can't outrun the chaos of life, but the more that we nurture positive relationships,
84. 00:07:34 the better our chances of navigating it.
85. 00:07:36 You need people by your side who are going to help you through the difficult times.
86. 00:07:42 Then in chapter four, social fitness, this is where they've got a graph and I actually like this chapter a lot.
87. 00:07:49 They talk about how the mind and the body are connected and how for older people, loneliness actually hurts twice as much.
88. 00:07:55 As obesity, one of the stats they share is that chronic loneliness increased the chance of death in a given year by 26% in the study that they did.
89. 00:08:05 And that 40% of 16 to 24 year olds feel lonely often or very often.
90. 00:08:11 So we're not real good at protecting the things that are really important a lot of times.
91. 00:08:18 And that is one of my action items from this. There's this grid where they have on the Y axis,
92. 00:08:27 from depleting, which is the low end up to energizing, which is the high end.
93. 00:08:32 And then on the X axis, that's the frequency of interactions with people in your social universe.
94. 00:08:37 On the right is frequent, on the left is infrequent.
95. 00:08:40 And they talk about plotting the important relationships in your life on this grid.
96. 00:08:45 I intend to do this. This was one of my action items.
97. 00:08:48 And then once you have plotted those people on that grid, you draw an arrow to where you would like them to be.
98. 00:08:54 It's reminded me of another action item that I had from a bookworm book where I rated the quality of the relationships of the interactions that I had with the people that I interacted with on a regular basis.
99. 00:09:06 And basically rated them from minus, minus, to plus, plus, plus.
100. 00:09:10 Based on when I talk to them, do I feel like they are adding life to me or taking life from me?
101. 00:09:15 That's another way of saying energizing versus depleting.
102. 00:09:18 So this is a different version of that action item, but I like this a lot because also not just recognizing, well, this is the way things are, but also thinking about how can I move this in the direction that I want it to go.
103. 00:09:29 Okay, they also talk about keystones of relationships, things like safety and security, learning and growth, emotional closeness, and confiding, identity affirmation and shared experiences, romantic intimacy,
104. 00:09:39 help both information and practical and then fun and relaxation.
105. 00:09:43 And they share some suggestions for energizing relationships, one of which was the power of generosity.
106. 00:09:49 I like this a lot.
107. 00:09:51 I've been thinking about this lately, how I want to be more generous with my time specifically to people who need it.
108. 00:09:59 A couple of other things they mentioned are learning new dance steps and radical curiosity.
109. 00:10:04 Basically, don't be so wrapped up in your own little world.
110. 00:10:08 It's challenging to me, but that is something that I want to take away from this is try to put the emphasis on other people.
111. 00:10:13 I mentioned that my wife and I have this thing where we want to, even if we don't have a million bucks, make people feel like a million bucks whenever we are around them.
112. 00:10:21 Right, because our strongest feelings emerge from our connections to other people.
113. 00:10:25 And I want to do a better job of protecting those connections.
114. 00:10:30 Chapter five is attention to relationships.
115. 00:10:34 There's a lot here about relationships, obviously.
116. 00:10:38 But this one right here, a couple things from this, almost all the participants in the study were concerned about how they'd spent their time by the time they got to the end of their life.
117. 00:10:47 Right, so the reason for this is just our perspective.
118. 00:10:51 We tend to think that right now, in this moment, we are in a time famine.
119. 00:10:55 We don't have enough time.
120. 00:10:57 However, in the future, some things are going to click into place and at that point, we're going to have a time surplus.
121. 00:11:02 So we keep kicking the can down the road and then once you take a look, you know, years into the future, and that's the really cool part about the study, is it lasted a really, really long time.
122. 00:11:12 So we see the same patterns over and over and over again.
123. 00:11:15 People believe this.
124. 00:11:16 Well, this is only a temporary thing.
125. 00:11:18 It's only going to be a couple of months and then it's a couple of years and then it's a couple of decades and then they look up and they're like, where did the time go?
126. 00:11:23 Right, so it's inspiring to me not to get some time.
127. 00:11:26 Not to get so caught up in the day to day and not keep pushing things off.
128. 00:11:30 Well, someday this is going to work.
129. 00:11:33 Really what you've got is right now.
130. 00:11:36 So figure out what's the best thing to do with the time that you've got.
131. 00:11:40 We talk about how distraction is often actually just overstimulation.
132. 00:11:44 We're trying to do too much.
133. 00:11:46 We're trying to run from thing to thing.
134. 00:11:48 And that has an impact on us.
135. 00:11:51 They suggest taking a tech holiday, which I really like, that idea.
136. 00:11:56 In fact, as I'm recording this next week, my wife and I will be going away for an overnight into a getaway house.
137. 00:12:07 It's like this little tiny house on a trailer and she's coming with me this time and it's in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the woods.
138. 00:12:14 And there's not really any cell reception.
139. 00:12:16 There's no Wi-Fi and things like that. They've got this box that you're supposed to put your phone in when you get there and then you grab it when you leave.
140. 00:12:23 But there's a lot of benefits to disconnecting like that.
141. 00:12:27 We don't realize a lot of the times how connected we are, how much we rely on those connections and that stimuli.
142. 00:12:35 But those things, when we constantly are feeding ourselves with those dopamine hits, we end up not noticing a lot of things.
143. 00:12:42 And that's one of the questions that they posited. And one of the things I really want to think about is what's here that I'm not noticing.
144. 00:12:49 Next chapter, chapter 6 is facing the music.
145. 00:12:52 This is where they have this model for reacting to situations.
146. 00:12:58 And the situation that they kind of talked about was a family situation where this mom was stressed out about her relationship with her kid.
147. 00:13:05 And there's her sister there who's always just kind of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
148. 00:13:09 And instead of flying off the handle, damaging the relationship, following this model, the call it wiser.
149. 00:13:16 And wiser stands for watch, interpret, select, engage, and reflect.
150. 00:13:21 And the reason for this model, the basis for this is that when we're facing trouble, we have two choices.
151. 00:13:27 We can turn towards it or we can turn away from it.
152. 00:13:29 Well, if you're going to turn towards it, you want some sort of strategy.
153. 00:13:32 You want something to help you weather that thing.
154. 00:13:36 And so that's where the wiser model, I feel like, can really be helpful.
155. 00:13:40 And it's important that we have something to work through this stuff because many of the hardest times in our lives are also caused because of the relationships that we have with other people.
156. 00:13:49 But that doesn't mean we should avoid them.
157. 00:13:51 We don't want to avoid the waves completely. In fact, they share in here a quote from someone who said that you can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
158. 00:14:00 So that's really the goal here is when we have to go through something difficult, when we have to do something that hurts.
159. 00:14:08 We are able to get through it because we recognize that with the pain comes the pleasure and the good things also.
160. 00:14:15 The world we live in is the world that we create, they say here.
161. 00:14:19 So sometimes it doesn't feel like it in the moment. Sometimes you suck it up and do the hard thing.
162. 00:14:24 But ultimately, if you are able to do that, that also makes the good times that much better.
163. 00:14:30 The next chapter, chapter seven is the person beside you.
164. 00:14:34 And this is really about your relationship with your significant other.
165. 00:14:37 They talk about the origin of the word intimacy here.
166. 00:14:40 And that's from the Latin "intamare". I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right.
167. 00:14:44 But basically it means to make known.
168. 00:14:47 So intimacy is not just related to sexual relations. It's really being able to share everything about who you are.
169. 00:14:57 All your cares, all your concerns, all of the things that you like and dislike.
170. 00:15:02 And we all have our own attachment style for how we connect to that person, that significant other that we need.
171. 00:15:12 Those different attachment styles are going to look different for different people.
172. 00:15:18 Physical contact with someone we care about reduces the amount of pain that we feel they mentioned.
173. 00:15:22 That's really important. And that's another reason why COVID-19 was so damaging.
174. 00:15:30 Because there was an abrupt end to a lot of that for a lot of people.
175. 00:15:35 If you didn't have a significant other, for example, every opportunity you had for physical contact
176. 00:15:41 was basically cut off.
177. 00:15:43 So then you just left to deal with the full brunt of whatever pain you're having to go through.
178. 00:15:49 But that really is a mitigating factor.
179. 00:15:52 They also talked about how emotions drive relationships.
180. 00:15:55 And that noticing those emotions is really important.
181. 00:15:58 Again, not that we are going to eliminate all of the bad emotions and never feel any of those things.
182. 00:16:05 But we are going to work our way through them.
183. 00:16:10 They also talk about how disagreements are opportunities to revitalize relationships.
184. 00:16:14 I like this a lot by revealing important truths beneath the surface.
185. 00:16:19 So I'm a recovering people, please. I tend not to want to deal with conflict, but sometimes conflict is inevitable.
186. 00:16:27 And what this is basically saying is that when you get to conflict, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
187. 00:16:35 You can sort of redeem the conflict in one way or another.
188. 00:16:40 You can make it a productive conflict.
189. 00:16:44 You can get to the root of the issue and you can deal with the issues that are actually there.
190. 00:16:50 And then also, just because you have a good relationship with your significant other or somebody important to you right now,
191. 00:16:55 that doesn't mean that it's going to be like that forever.
192. 00:16:57 Even the best relationships are susceptible to decay.
193. 00:17:00 So things are either growing or they are dying.
194. 00:17:03 And it's a good challenge and reminder for me to continue to cultivate the important relationships in my life,
195. 00:17:09 not just to leave them and assume that they're going to be fine.
196. 00:17:13 One action item I had from this chapter was to listen without commenting.
197. 00:17:19 This is hard for me, especially right now when I feel like I've got too much going on.
198. 00:17:24 And I'm trying to do a whole bunch of things.
199. 00:17:27 I'm trying to make it work as an independent creator.
200. 00:17:30 All that kind of stuff feels like, "Oh, I got to do whatever I can.
201. 00:17:34 There's always one more thing to be done. Nothing's happening fast enough."
202. 00:17:38 So those conversations, my natural instinct is to, "Okay, well here's the problem.
203. 00:17:43 Let's just deal with this, solve it, move on to the next thing because there's a huge line of other problems that I need to solve."
204. 00:17:49 But that's not the right approach.
205. 00:17:51 Sometimes listening is the right thing.
206. 00:17:52 I don't need to provide a solution all the time.
207. 00:17:55 Chapter 8 is Family Matters. And here they talk about how many of us tend to keep heirlooms from our families,
208. 00:18:01 and families can help you overcome rough circumstances.
209. 00:18:03 Those heirlooms, those are really just momentos of a time that was really formative when we really relied on our families.
210. 00:18:12 We don't realize how important these are a lot of times, and I'm challenged not to take mine for granted.
211. 00:18:19 They also talk about how we generally get better at managing our emotions as we get older.
212. 00:18:23 I feel like I have experienced that myself. I've grown quite a bit even in the last five to ten years.
213. 00:18:29 I don't fly off the handle quite as easily. I don't get as angry as often.
214. 00:18:34 And I'd like to think that's because I'm starting to get a little bit better at managing some of these emotions.
215. 00:18:42 But it's a constant struggle. It's a constant journey, right?
216. 00:18:45 Because your feelings are going to tell you one thing, but that's not necessarily the truth.
217. 00:18:50 So you've got to sort out what the right thing to do is, and it's not always easy.
218. 00:18:55 Also, childhood is not the only time when the experiences that we have are formative.
219. 00:19:01 Really any experience you can have can be formative, and you can actually transform some of those experiences just by having that perspective.
220. 00:19:09 One of the action items I had jotted down from this chapter was I want to try to catch people acting well.
221. 00:19:15 So they talked about this kind of inverse of trying to catch somebody misbehaving and causing reason for discipline or correction.
222. 00:19:25 That's typically what, I don't know, just speaking from a kid's perspective.
223. 00:19:30 Maybe that's what it seems like. You're trying to see what you can get away with, and mom and dad are always correcting, right?
224. 00:19:37 So instead of looking for those opportunities to intervene when somebody's doing something wrong,
225. 00:19:41 recognize the opportunities to intervene when somebody's doing something right, call that out instead.
226. 00:19:46 I need to do a better job of this. I tend to focus on the problems and try to solve them.
227. 00:19:52 But sometimes I just got to notice what's actually working, right? And praise people for doing what's right.
228. 00:19:59 Another thing to talk about here is that family relationships are often defined by their regular contact.
229. 00:20:05 And that really makes me think about how important things like family meals are, and just spending regular time with family.
230. 00:20:15 I'm kind of in the season right now with work where I'm trying to scramble to get a bunch of things rolling, right?
231. 00:20:21 So it's easy to put off those things because there's work that needs to be done.
232. 00:20:26 But I want to be very careful about doing that, not do that consistently.
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250. 00:22:44 Chapter 9 is a good life at work. This one is interesting to me because they shared a whole bunch of statistics about basically how people feel generally unfulfilled at their work.
251. 00:22:54 And there is a quote by William Arthur Ward that I really like here.
252. 00:22:58 He says, "Judge each day, not by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant."
253. 00:23:02 So if you're looking at what did I get out of today or what was the benefit of today, what happened today, we can focus on the outcome, what actually was produced during this day.
254. 00:23:12 So one of the reasons I like the daily questions journaling that we read about in triggers, it focuses on my effort, the intentions, and not the outcomes.
255. 00:23:22 And I think that's really important. It's focusing on the seeds that I'm planting. And then if I do that consistently enough, the harvest is going to take care of itself.
256. 00:23:30 They talk about how rough workdays can lead to changes in our nightly interactions, and they broke it down into two different categories specifically what they noticed throughout all of the data from the study is that women typically work with the seed.
257. 00:23:41 That women typically were angrier and men typically were true emotionally.
258. 00:23:45 And if I'm honest, I can see myself falling into this trap where I withdraw emotionally because I'm overwhelmed by all the things that I need to do.
259. 00:23:53 I need to be careful with that.
260. 00:23:55 Also, the blame tends to be put on your partner.
261. 00:23:59 So a lot of these rough nightly interactions, they were initiated by something negative that happened at work.
262. 00:24:07 It doesn't just stay at work as much as we try to compartmentalize. There is no work life balance. It's just your life.
263. 00:24:12 The things that happen at work do affect what happens at home later on in the day.
264. 00:24:19 So don't project that stuff onto my spouse. This is the important thing here.
265. 00:24:25 One of the relationships that they talk about that's really valuable, and one of the things that I want to do a better job with is this mentor to mentee relationship.
266. 00:24:36 I do regular discipleship with my pastor and I have coaches that I work with for different things.
267. 00:24:41 But honestly, I could do a better job of finding out people who are willing to speak into me and then also speaking into other people.
268. 00:24:51 I do have a discipleship group at church that we meet every week roughly.
269. 00:24:56 And we go through this material and I'm able to speak into people's lives.
270. 00:25:01 I also function sometimes as the, not sometimes, but I'm an elder at our church.
271. 00:25:06 So occasionally there will be opportunities for me to minister through that role.
272. 00:25:11 But I feel like there's probably more regular basis where more regular times where I can function as a mentor to somebody.
273. 00:25:18 Maybe I can help them avoid some of the pitfalls and some of the traps and making some of the mistakes that I made.
274. 00:25:26 Also, it's important to recognize in this chapter that work too is life, right?
275. 00:25:31 So as I mentioned before, no distinction here between work, life balance, work is life, and a question to myself, how do I feel about the stresses of my workday?
276. 00:25:40 I've been thinking about this a lot.
277. 00:25:42 Obviously starting a new business is pretty stressful.
278. 00:25:46 And yeah, I'm not super excited about the effect that that is having on me.
279. 00:25:52 Let me just put it that way.
280. 00:25:53 It doesn't mean I'm ready to give up or anything.
281. 00:25:56 But I do recognize that I can't operate like this forever because really what's more important to me even than the work that I do, even though that is very fulfilling and I get a lot of benefit and purpose and meaning and motivation from that is the relationships in my family specifically, my kids, my wife.
282. 00:26:20 And I think it's okay to take your eye off of one area for a little while and focus on another kind of akin to like the personal retreat and the 12 week year model.
283. 00:26:33 But I don't want to do that too long.
284. 00:26:35 And so I'm kind of at the point now where I'm thinking about, okay, so what does the next couple of months look like as I'm recording this?
285. 00:26:46 It's just about September and October.
286. 00:26:50 So about a month from now is when I would do my next personal retreat.
287. 00:26:54 And I've got a lot of things that I need to think over.
288. 00:26:59 What are the things that I'm going to start doing, stop doing and keep doing.
289. 00:27:04 And I'm not going to assume that the current configuration is the right configuration, but I just need to spend some time wrestling through some of that stuff.
290. 00:27:13 The next chapter, chapter 10, all friends have benefits.
291. 00:27:17 Basically, if you have friendships in your life, there are benefits associated with those.
292. 00:27:24 And one of the questions that they talk about at the beginning and really what I've been thinking about is who are your friends that would drop everything just to be there for you.
293. 00:27:31 I have a couple names that come to mind.
294. 00:27:34 There's not a lot.
295. 00:27:36 And that's a little bit alarming to me, and it's making me rethink some of my relationships.
296. 00:27:44 Now, ultimately, this is not what was me.
297. 00:27:46 I don't have any good friends.
298. 00:27:48 Really, the goal here is if I want to have those types of friends in my life, I need to be that type of friend to somebody else.
299. 00:27:54 So I'm not looking for sympathy with this.
300. 00:27:56 I'm really asking myself, where can I take a step up and where can I sow those seeds?
301. 00:28:02 There's lots of benefits that they talk about with having friendships.
302. 00:28:05 Obviously, in this chapter, they talk about how having friends keeps you healthy and how friendship almost acts like this armor against PTSD, which I never really thought about it from that perspective, but that makes a lot of sense to me.
303. 00:28:18 They also talk about how women are more likely than men to keep up friendships and that women tend to have more face-to-face friendships, while men tend to have more side-by-side friendships.
304. 00:28:28 What does that mean?
305. 00:28:29 It means that for men, and then the stories that they shared in the book in particular, men view a good friendship as someone who is going to be there for them and is going to fight alongside them no matter what they're going through.
306. 00:28:43 Whereas women face-to-face, they're engaging with that person and really the value is in the interaction itself, whereas men, the value is in knowing that someone has my back, basically.
307. 00:28:58 That's a generalization, sure, but I feel like it's important to note the difference there in those types of relationships.
308. 00:29:07 Also, they talk about how a relationship doesn't have to be precious to be valuable. That was my wording, but basically, we think after reading this book specifically, you can get to this last chapter and you can think, "Well, I really got to have these core relationships that are just awesome, and then I'm getting the value out of these friendships."
309. 00:29:25 What they're saying is, "You may not have a dozen really great friends who would be there for you if you got arrested in a foreign country that would fly down their bill, you out," sort of a thing.
310. 00:29:37 But that's okay. You can still benefit from those relationships, and that small moments can actually provide a big uplift in our mood.
311. 00:29:44 That has got me thinking about all the opportunities that I have, even in my regular day-to-day to capitalize on those small moments, and be a good friend for other people, and also recognize them people who are doing that for me.
312. 00:29:56 Also, it's natural to change our friendships as we go through life transitions, so just because someone was a good friend in high school or college doesn't mean that they have to be a good friend after that.
313. 00:30:09 They might be one of those acquaintances that you can continue to talk to, but maybe you don't have the depth of the relationship that you once had, and that's okay.
314. 00:30:19 The important thing I think is that you find someone else to fill that role.
315. 00:30:24 Okay, the last chapter, the conclusion. It's never too late to be happy.
316. 00:30:30 This is a very effective conclusion to this book, I feel like. They talk about how anyone can make a positive turn in their life.
317. 00:30:36 I've actually used that phrase since I read this book. I like that a lot.
318. 00:30:41 They also challenge you to take time to reflect and recognize that you do matter.
319. 00:30:46 So your life is valuable. You do have a purpose and you do have something to contribute, and it's never too late to have a positive impact on someone's life.
320. 00:30:55 They talk about how the relationship aspect of a good life is becoming more regular or prevalent in the school system specifically.
321. 00:31:05 They talk about social emotional learning, which was something I was really eager to talk to Joe about because that's part of my background with the family business,
322. 00:31:12 is social emotional learning assessment and skill building.
323. 00:31:16 I think this is a really underdeveloped, underappreciated skill.
324. 00:31:20 And related to that, another action item that I have here is to call or text someone.
325. 00:31:25 I didn't put a regularity with this. Initially, I was thinking daily.
326. 00:31:31 But I think even if I did this weekly, the point here is that I want to go out of my way to make a small positive impact on somebody's life on a regular basis.
327. 00:31:43 And then lastly, the good life is not a destination, so it's not something that we get to.
328. 00:31:49 And we feel like there, I've solved it now.
329. 00:31:53 And now I just have to maintain it. It is a process.
330. 00:31:57 It is the act of going through our day-to-day life.
331. 00:32:04 All right, so action items for this book.
332. 00:32:07 The first one that I had was to plot the important relationships in my life on that grid that I mentioned and draw the arrows to where I would like them to be.
333. 00:32:16 The next one comes from chapter seven, "Listen Without Commenting."
334. 00:32:21 And I don't know that I'll be able to check that off as there.
335. 00:32:24 I did this because this is not a one-time thing, but this is an attitude that I want to develop.
336. 00:32:28 I also want to from chapter eight try to catch people acting well instead of just catching them messing up.
337. 00:32:34 And then in the conclusion, I had an action item to call or text someone on a regular basis, offer an encouragement, try to make a positive impact in someone's day.
338. 00:32:44 I feel like these are all in true Mike Schmidt style, very conceptual action items.
339. 00:32:50 I don't know that there's other than the first one with the grid, something specific that's going to happen out of these.
340. 00:32:58 Now for style and rating, this book is interesting.
341. 00:33:01 I'm not quite sure what I want to rate this, and that's not a surprise to anyone who has listened to the bookworm for any length of time.
342. 00:33:09 But as I mentioned, one of the big things that helps me determine what I actually think about these books is having the conversation.
343. 00:33:15 So just talking out loud is not the same thing as bouncing this off of one of your close friends.
344. 00:33:21 I'm sure Joe would have provided me a bunch of extra context, which would help me see this in a different light.
345. 00:33:27 But the one thing I really do like about this is the basis for the book.
346. 00:33:32 I really like the Harvard study, and this is not a one time study from 1938.
347. 00:33:37 This is an ongoing study. This is one that continues to be run.
348. 00:33:42 And so I feel like that adds a lot of credibility to all of the things that they are saying.
349. 00:33:49 More so even than just we based this off of a study because this is an ongoing study and so the information is still accurate.
350. 00:33:56 It's not a snapshot in time, and this is what we proved at one point, but is that still relevant?
351. 00:34:01 I think it absolutely is still relevant because the study is ongoing and they're continuing to update it and they're continuing to draw different conclusions from it.
352. 00:34:09 It's a really long book. It's 280 pages, even though it's only 10 chapters.
353. 00:34:16 It is also kind of academic, sort of like the last book that we went through, which was based off of a Yale class.
354. 00:34:25 So this is not exactly how I would approach this, but I also think I like this better than the last book that we read.
355. 00:34:35 I feel like this has more actionable takeaways for me, obviously since the four action items that are associated with it.
356. 00:34:43 I do think it's a really cool book, and it is a little bit different because there are a lot of stories from this,
357. 00:34:51 but they are actual stories of the participants in the study.
358. 00:34:56 So that means that it's not a personal story and this was my experience.
359. 00:35:02 There is a little bit of that to Robert and Marker.
360. 00:35:05 They aren't the same age and there's kind of a mentor-mentee relationship there as well,
361. 00:35:09 and they talk about some of the intricacies of that relationship throughout the book and it provides some cool context for a lot of the things that they are saying.
362. 00:35:20 But it's also not I'm cherry-picking this story by this famous person because it supports the point that I want to make.
363. 00:35:28 It's actually looking at the data and then this is what the data is saying in aggregate, but then using the stories just kind of re-emphasizes it in a different way.
364. 00:35:38 It makes it a little more personal.
365. 00:35:41 So I think the format of this book is just incredible.
366. 00:35:46 I think if you are looking for a book on this topic, what is a good life?
367. 00:35:52 This is absolutely the one to get.
368. 00:35:55 Now, I do think they lean very heavily on the relationships part of this and with good reason.
369. 00:36:04 I mean, that's the big takeaway from all the data that they've collected since 1938,
370. 00:36:08 but I feel like there are more things that we could explore in terms of what makes a good life beyond those relationships.
371. 00:36:17 And all of the chapters are basically framed through that relationship bias.
372. 00:36:22 Now, I don't know, maybe I'm digging a little bit too deep with this, but I do feel like there probably was some other space to be explored here.
373. 00:36:33 However, I am very glad that I read this. I'm very glad that Joe picked this book.
374. 00:36:39 I really do wish we had a chance to have an actual conversation about it, but I am going to rate this book five stars.
375. 00:36:50 That's partly because in the last episode I mentioned, I want to get to, I want to start rating them in full stars.
376. 00:36:57 So one, two, three, four, five as opposed to the half stars.
377. 00:37:01 I'm not sure if this compares directly to man's search for meaning or something like that,
378. 00:37:08 but I do think it is a really, really good book.
379. 00:37:11 And for anyone who is reading books because they want to become a better person,
380. 00:37:17 which I think is most of you in the bookworm audience, the reason that we read books is because we want to get better.
381. 00:37:25 We want to improve our lives in some way, shape, or form.
382. 00:37:30 Now, relationships is a little bit outside of my comfort zone because there's other people involved.
383. 00:37:36 It's not just up to me. I can't apply my own personal disciplines and preferences all the time when other people are involved.
384. 00:37:47 But that's also, that's the difficult part, but that's also the beautiful part.
385. 00:37:52 I don't fault them for focusing completely on the relationships, to be honest.
386. 00:37:56 I feel like if this is the one thing that you are able to absolutely nail,
387. 00:38:00 this is the thing that makes the biggest difference, moves the needle the most in your life.
388. 00:38:05 Lately, I've been thinking about the relationships in my life and I realize I sometimes have a tendency to take them for granted.
389. 00:38:14 So this book was a great wake-up call for me, a great reminder that really the reason for all the productivity stuff in the first place is the people.
390. 00:38:25 So I definitely recommend that you pick this one up.
391. 00:38:30 Thank you to Mark for recommending this.
392. 00:38:35 The next book on the schedule is the Emith Revisited.
393. 00:38:41 This was one that I picked and you've made it this far.
394. 00:38:45 You heard the beginning already where I mentioned.
395. 00:38:47 I don't know what is going to happen with the future of Bookworm.
396. 00:38:51 If I can get a co-host or a guest even to come talk to me about the Emith Revisited.
397. 00:39:00 I may do that, but maybe the podcast will be rebooted.
398. 00:39:06 I don't know.
399. 00:39:08 I will say again, I am committed to doing everything that I can, to keeping this going.
400. 00:39:13 I've already talked to Joe and he feels really bad about the situation, but just the point.
401. 00:39:20 That he's at in his life.
402. 00:39:23 This is not something that unfortunately fits currently.
403. 00:39:28 Hopefully that changes in the near future.
404. 00:39:31 But until then, I'm going to do my best to figure this out.
405. 00:39:36 I feel like I also need to say at this point that I very much appreciate everyone who has supported the podcast over the years.
406. 00:39:47 Thank you to everyone who has listened to the podcast, whether you are new to the podcast or you've been with us since episode one.
407. 00:39:57 Really appreciate and don't take for granted the opportunity to speak into your life.
408. 00:40:06 I've shared before how podcasts are an important medium for me because when I didn't have people around me to talk about these things too,
409. 00:40:15 I was able to listen to podcasts and felt like I had a seat at the table with some of my internet heroes.
410. 00:40:22 And I think there is something very personal about the podcast medium that makes it very special.
411. 00:40:30 So every couple of weeks giving us an hour and a half of your time roughly to listen to Joe and I talk about books.
412. 00:40:39 That's not a small investment and thank you for spending your precious time listening to us talk about books.
413. 00:40:50 Thank you specifically to the Bookworm Club Premium members.
414. 00:40:54 It really means a lot that you have decided to support the podcast by chipping in monetarily.
415. 00:41:00 I don't know what's going to happen with the Bookworm Club as of right now.
416. 00:41:07 I don't feel right asking people to continue to pay to support a podcast that may look very different than what you originally signed up for.
417. 00:41:20 We got a lot of things that we need to figure out here.
418. 00:41:25 But I really do and I'm speaking for Joe here as well.
419. 00:41:29 It means a lot that people have been willing to actually pay us money to keep this thing going for 178 episodes now.
420. 00:41:38 So hopefully there will be 178 more, but we need to figure some things out.
421. 00:41:45 As of right now though the plan is to cover the E-Meth Revisited.
422. 00:41:49 So if you're reading along with me, please pick that one up and hopefully we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.