201: Right Thing, Right Now by Ryan Holiday

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1. 00:00:00 So follow up from last time, we talked about AI, and you had challenged me to figure out
2. 00:00:09 what I am going to delegate to AI.
3. 00:00:13 And I feel like I'm making progress here, but I still don't have a ton of clarity on
4. 00:00:19 what exactly this is going to look like.
5. 00:00:22 I will share that I have found this tool.
6. 00:00:27 We talked about this in the Pro Show last time, but this spiral.computer app that I mentioned,
7. 00:00:33 I continue to use that and continue to be impressed by the results that it gives me.
8. 00:00:38 The trick is that I can drop in my newsletter text and ask for multiple outputs of like a
9. 00:00:43 Twitter thread.
10. 00:00:45 And then I always have to clean it up a little bit before I publish it, but it definitely
11. 00:00:50 gives me a jump start on that kind of stuff.
12. 00:00:54 And I've been looking for other tangential ways to do that sort of thing.
13. 00:00:58 One of the tools that I use to publish to Twitter and now to threads and LinkedIn and
14. 00:01:06 Instagram is hypefury.
15. 00:01:09 And they have a tool that actually can pull in from your YouTube channel, the videos that
16. 00:01:14 you've created and turned those into threads.
17. 00:01:17 I haven't done a whole lot with that because I tend to write about things in the newsletter
18. 00:01:22 before I make the YouTube videos, but this has really got me thinking about how I can
19. 00:01:27 repurpose the content that I'm already writing that I'm already making.
20. 00:01:31 And obviously it's not just copy paste, put a bunch of different places, but I think that's
21. 00:01:36 really the spot that AI is working for me is in the, I'm not going to say like creating
22. 00:01:45 the content, but once I have a start on creating the content, getting it available to share
23. 00:01:51 in multiple formats, multiple places, because I recognize that there are people who subscribe
24. 00:01:58 my newsletter, there are people who subscribe to the YouTube channel, people who follow
25. 00:02:01 me on whatever social media network.
26. 00:02:04 Those people tend not to be the same.
27. 00:02:07 As much as I would like to point everything back to the newsletter, I noticed that there's
28. 00:02:10 quite a few people who will follow me over here, but not over there.
29. 00:02:13 And I don't know, I guess I was a little bit surprised by that.
30. 00:02:17 So I'm going to continue to try to move in this direction.
31. 00:02:19 Like I'm doing the work, I'm writing these newsletters on these topics.
32. 00:02:23 I know like the core things I want to say, now how do I package that in a way that it's
33. 00:02:27 appropriate for these other places that people may want to encounter the stuff that I'm making?
34. 00:02:33 But still got quite a bit of work to do here.
35. 00:02:36 Not to go too deep down this rabbit hole, but like don't you find that hard to manage
36. 00:02:41 and hard to balance and like where do you get most of your people, like lead generation?
37. 00:02:47 Like where does most of that come from?
38. 00:02:50 Any single source or is it just a mix of all of them put together?
39. 00:02:54 Yeah, well for me, it's definitely a specific source and that has been the starter vault
40. 00:03:00 that I put together and I promote at the end of the YouTube videos.
41. 00:03:05 Although lately I've been pointing people to the newsletter itself as opposed to the
42. 00:03:09 starter vault when the topic is appropriate.
43. 00:03:12 I think it's important to have a right call to action at the end of video based on the
44. 00:03:17 content in the video.
45. 00:03:18 You can't just tag tag on, "Hey, before you go, you should check out this other thing."
46. 00:03:23 Like people are smarter than that.
47. 00:03:25 So I try to keep that in mind when I'm putting together the videos.
48. 00:03:28 Like I'm working on a video right now, hopefully it will be open time this episode goes out
49. 00:03:33 on how I do Bible study in obsidian and I'm putting together all of these resources for
50. 00:03:38 people for the different ways that you might want to do it starting from just the King James
51. 00:03:42 version of the Bible and the verses as note format plus then there's one which has all
52. 00:03:48 the Greek and Hebrew lexicon stuff tag plus then there's one that has all my personal
53. 00:03:51 tags and my topical Bibles and packaging that all up in a, I have to create that page.
54. 00:03:57 I have to create those resources.
55. 00:03:58 I have to zip everything up, make sure it all works, create all the systems but I feel
56. 00:04:02 like that's better for that video than just, "Hey, I make some other stuff on obsidian."
57. 00:04:08 So it definitely be easier but I think that the appropriate calls to action tend to be
58. 00:04:13 a lot better and then I think when people join your list from that they have a better
59. 00:04:18 first impression of who you are and what you make too.
60. 00:04:21 Yeah, that makes sense.
61. 00:04:23 But yeah, most of it's been YouTube.
62. 00:04:25 I've been trying to branch that out a bit whenever we publish one of these episodes.
63. 00:04:30 I frequently mention my mind map file at some point in the episode, not intentionally but
64. 00:04:35 just kind of comes up.
65. 00:04:37 I make those available for download because I share those also in my newsletter every
66. 00:04:41 week.
67. 00:04:42 So typically before the episode goes out I'll put together a landing page.
68. 00:04:45 If you want to download the notes for this book and I'll stick that in the show notes
69. 00:04:49 for the episode and then people can download that and they'll get future book notes because
70. 00:04:55 they're part of the newsletter.
71. 00:04:58 But I get from the co-intelligence one I think I got to the next day, it's not huge.
72. 00:05:04 It's a couple here, a couple there but you have enough of those things out there and
73. 00:05:07 then it does kind of add up over time.
74. 00:05:10 I'm up over 5,700 email subscribers which last September I think it was at like 1,700.
75. 00:05:15 So that's quite a bit of growth.
76. 00:05:18 I'm happy with that.
77. 00:05:19 Yeah, that's awesome.
78. 00:05:20 Good for you.
79. 00:05:21 All right, so I'm up on follow up.
80. 00:05:23 So my first one was to plan how to teach more intentionally with AI.
81. 00:05:26 I'm still thinking about this.
82. 00:05:29 I'm teaching a lot of classes in the fall.
83. 00:05:30 So I need to be smart about the way I do this and this has kind of evolved.
84. 00:05:37 I went to a conference between the last time we recorded it now and this is kind of evolving
85. 00:05:42 into less about me planning on how to teach with AI and more I'm thinking about is there
86. 00:05:48 a faculty development opportunity to help other faculty think about AI and how to integrate
87. 00:05:53 it and that into their classes and how to integrate it in well.
88. 00:05:58 And I think there is an opportunity there.
89. 00:05:59 The real question is do I want to take that on?
90. 00:06:01 Do I want to take on the fact and do I think anybody would actually show up to it because
91. 00:06:06 if you don't time that well people just don't care and they don't have time and their schedule
92. 00:06:13 is too busy.
93. 00:06:14 So that one's morphing into less about me and my personal classes.
94. 00:06:19 Like I'll still integrate it into my personal classes but it's more about that faculty development
95. 00:06:23 side of things.
96. 00:06:24 And then the next one was keep working on developing more in-depth prompts.
97. 00:06:28 So I want to continually like every time I interact with one of the machine learning
98. 00:06:35 tools I want to think about like is this prompt in-depth enough?
99. 00:06:38 Is this prompt describing exactly what I want it to do?
100. 00:06:42 And I was driving to work or driving to school today to record the show.
101. 00:06:47 And I was listening to our episode and I remembered even then like oh there's so many more ways
102. 00:06:55 that we can prompt these things than you normally think about and you can guide the prompts
103. 00:07:00 and you can tell it exactly what you want it to give you or what you want it to exclude.
104. 00:07:04 So that's going to be something that's just going to keep going on and on and on.
105. 00:07:09 As I every time I interact with one basically I'm going to be thinking about is this prompt
106. 00:07:13 in-depth is the best way I can word it.
107. 00:07:16 Describe, does it have a good enough description?
108. 00:07:19 Does it give enough examples?
109. 00:07:20 I think that's I'm going to keep working on those.
110. 00:07:22 So no like clear yay takeaway from them but the action items definitely helped me to think
111. 00:07:30 more critically about the co-intelligence book.
112. 00:07:33 Cool.
113. 00:07:34 I need to actually follow up with that because I did something specific based on our discussion
114. 00:07:39 of those prompts that I forgot to mention.
115. 00:07:43 So I'm building this done for you Obsidian Vault which has all of my workflows.
116. 00:07:49 So task management, journaling, all that kind of stuff.
117. 00:07:53 As part of that I'm going to include, I've got 50 of them so far but I want to include
118. 00:07:57 at least a hundred of my book notes files.
119. 00:08:00 So it's got a page which is a data view query that shows the book, it shows the author,
120. 00:08:04 it shows the rating.
121. 00:08:06 You can change the ratings one to five stars based on your own ratings of the books but
122. 00:08:10 then the contents of the note actually have the mind map, the markdown notes themselves,
123. 00:08:16 all of the quotes and things which are fueling the quote book which is again already set
124. 00:08:20 up for you and then a three sentence summary up at the top.
125. 00:08:23 Now those three sentence summaries as I typically what I do when I bring notes over is I look
126. 00:08:30 through everything that I've captured and I condense it down into three sentences about
127. 00:08:35 what are the big ideas from this particular book.
128. 00:08:38 However when I was working on adding all of these I noticed I had a whole bunch of holes
129. 00:08:43 and I was like I can't, no, I can't go through that many book notes and create these so like
130. 00:08:49 maybe AI can help me with this.
131. 00:08:52 So what I did is I took some time but I crafted this prompt that gave me a starting point
132. 00:08:57 for the big ideas and then basically I refined it after that but that was a huge mental savings.
133. 00:09:05 Every time I thought about just even doing one of them I'm like oh that's so hard.
134. 00:09:10 I can't even.
135. 00:09:11 So I'll share the prompt that I used which I think is kind of interesting.
136. 00:09:16 So the first thing I wrote was you're my trusted friend who I look to for book recommendations.
137. 00:09:20 I want you to give me three sentence summaries of various books using my personal writing
138. 00:09:24 style.
139. 00:09:25 Please look at the example and describe my writing style to me.
140. 00:09:27 After that I want you to ask me for a book title and provide me a three sentence summary
141. 00:09:30 that matches the style of the example.
142. 00:09:32 We'll repeat this for about a hundred books.
143. 00:09:34 Do you understand if yes asked me for the example?
144. 00:09:36 Okay and then it says I understand your request.
145. 00:09:39 You please provide me with the example you mentioned so I can understand your personal
146. 00:09:41 writing style better.
147. 00:09:42 And then I gave them the one that I had written from Atomic Habits by James Clear which is
148. 00:09:47 goals aren't enough to get you where you want to go.
149. 00:09:48 You must have a system in place that you can get you there.
150. 00:09:51 Number two very small changes in your daily actions are habits aligned with the identity
151. 00:09:54 of the person you want to become compound to significant results over time.
152. 00:09:57 Number three there are four steps to the habit cycle not three that you can leverage to make
153. 00:10:00 it easier to take the desired action or avoid the undesired action consistently.
154. 00:10:05 Okay so then from the example provided here's a summary of your writing style.
155. 00:10:09 It says I'm clear and direct.
156. 00:10:10 I'm detailed, practical and actionable advice.
157. 00:10:12 Now let's proceed to summarizing a book.
158. 00:10:14 This is where things get interesting because I asked for tiny habits by BJ Fogg and it gave
159. 00:10:20 me four disciplines of execution by Chris Mateszny, Sean Covey and Jim Healing.
160. 00:10:26 And the results that I got back were very, they weren't quite what I was looking for.
161. 00:10:30 So after a while I'm like let's try that one again.
162. 00:10:35 And then I'd like these points to be a little bit more direct and instructional.
163. 00:10:38 Let's try it again so it revises it again.
164. 00:10:40 That's better but let's be a little bit more descriptive.
165. 00:10:43 Okay so then it tries again and then after a while you know of going back and forth actually
166. 00:10:47 make it a little less instructive or prescriptive.
167. 00:10:49 Just describe the key ideas from the book without instruction on what to do with them.
168. 00:10:52 You know it took a while to get here.
169. 00:10:54 Now don't say the author's name, the book title or the book in these summaries.
170. 00:10:57 Just summarize the ideas.
171. 00:10:59 Okay so it keeps trying and then don't use verbs like delves to describe what happens
172. 00:11:03 in the book.
173. 00:11:04 Just describe the ideas.
174. 00:11:05 Pick something a little more concrete than the third point which just tells me that there's
175. 00:11:08 historical examples.
176. 00:11:09 Where's the big idea?
177. 00:11:11 And then by the time I get it down I'm like okay let's use this going forward.
178. 00:11:17 And then again like it's giving me maybe 80% of what I need.
179. 00:11:20 I have to tweak every single one of them but it gives me a starting point based on the
180. 00:11:27 contents of the books that are available.
181. 00:11:31 And I've also noticed that RayCast has added a feature where you can upload PDFs and images
182. 00:11:36 to the AI as well.
183. 00:11:38 So I could theoretically take like here's my notes and PDF format from this now condense
184. 00:11:42 this into three sentences but I haven't tried that yet.
185. 00:11:46 So I had two questions or maybe a comment or question.
186. 00:11:49 The first one was are you using RayCast to do this?
187. 00:11:51 So is all that in RayCast?
188. 00:11:53 It's all in RayCast yeah.
189. 00:11:54 And it will retain these things it's learning quote unquote learning.
190. 00:12:00 It will retain that.
191. 00:12:01 Well you can have this two different types of AI in multiple types of AI inside of RayCast
192. 00:12:07 because you do images too.
193. 00:12:08 But basically you can have like the one off requests and then if you hit command J I
194. 00:12:12 think it is you see all of the chats.
195. 00:12:15 So you can actually look reference those older chats and continue those conversations in
196. 00:12:21 a list in the left sidebar.
197. 00:12:24 Okay.
198. 00:12:25 Well and the second thing was more of a comment.
199. 00:12:27 Okay so even if the 80% is getting you over the hurdle of doing it that's worth it right.
200. 00:12:33 Because like before you said like oh man it's just too monumental like I don't even
201. 00:12:36 want to start like brain is you know but if it just says like oh well I'm not starting
202. 00:12:41 you know the tool is starting for me and then I'm just tweaking the tool like exactly.
203. 00:12:46 I mean and the difference the difference is that prior to reading co-intelligence I would
204. 00:12:50 have given up because I'm like it's not getting me where I wanted to go.
205. 00:12:53 Yeah you know but I stuck with it and eventually I got there.
206. 00:12:57 That's great.
207. 00:12:58 Yeah that's a great example.
208. 00:12:59 It's a great example.
209. 00:13:00 Alright well ready to talk about today's book.
210. 00:13:03 I am ready to talk about today's book.
211. 00:13:05 Alright so today's book is Right Thing Right Now by Ryan Holiday.
212. 00:13:11 This is the third book in the Stoic Values series.
213. 00:13:17 And I think I've read every Ryan Holiday book at this point with the exception of the marketing
214. 00:13:23 book that I just heard a couple people talking about and I think I need to go back and read
215. 00:13:28 that one.
216. 00:13:29 Trust me I'm lying.
217. 00:13:30 Are you familiar with that book?
218. 00:13:32 He wrote it when he was like 20 didn't he?
219. 00:13:33 I mean he was like super young.
220. 00:13:35 Yeah and I don't really know the premise of it but I was listening to do you know who
221. 00:13:42 Barrett Brooks is?
222. 00:13:43 I don't.
223. 00:13:44 Okay so Barrett Brooks is the former CoO of ConvertKit.
224. 00:13:52 And I met him at the Craft and Commerce Conference.
225. 00:13:55 I had actually met him previously too through Sean Blunk and he's a really smart guy.
226. 00:14:03 Really got a brain for systems and went to his talk and it was really really good.
227. 00:14:08 Anyways he's got a podcast that he started not too long ago called Good Work.
228. 00:14:15 And the most recent episode that I listened to had an interview between him and Nathan
229. 00:14:19 Berry basically sharing like all the things that they learned in their three and a half
230. 00:14:23 years of working together on ConvertKit and growing it from three million to thirty million
231. 00:14:27 a year.
232. 00:14:28 Like I said he's since moved on ConvertKit continues to grow but Barrett is a super smart
233. 00:14:34 guy.
234. 00:14:35 So they were talking in this podcast episode and they just briefly mentioned you know the
235. 00:14:40 stuff that Ryan Holiday had talked about and that Trust me I'm lying book still holds
236. 00:14:44 up today.
237. 00:14:45 I was like huh I need to get that one.
238. 00:14:48 Yeah.
239. 00:14:49 So when that's going to slide in as a gap book or something I don't think it's really bookworm
240. 00:14:54 material but all of the other Ryan Holiday books are.
241. 00:14:57 Exactly.
242. 00:14:58 Exactly.
243. 00:14:59 I have not read the other two.
244. 00:15:02 I know of them and I've listened to you talk about at least one of them.
245. 00:15:06 Which one would it be?
246. 00:15:07 Courage is calling?
247. 00:15:08 It was at the latest one.
248. 00:15:09 To be honest I don't even know.
249. 00:15:11 Yeah I can't remember but.
250. 00:15:13 Courage is calling and discipline is destiny.
251. 00:15:15 I think courage is calling was first.
252. 00:15:18 And I liked that one a lot.
253. 00:15:21 Discipline is destiny.
254. 00:15:22 I think I didn't like that one quite as much.
255. 00:15:27 And the backdrop for this book is that this is another book in the Stoic Values series
256. 00:15:34 but it's been quite a while since the previous one had been released.
257. 00:15:39 And I think part of that was tied to this idea because Ryan Holiday I heard share this
258. 00:15:45 that he thought this one would sell the worst out of all of the books in that series.
259. 00:15:52 When he pitched it to the publisher he's like hey just so you know this is the one that
260. 00:15:55 people aren't going to like as much.
261. 00:15:58 And this one I've seen him post on social platforms was like the quickest one to the
262. 00:16:04 bestsellers list.
263. 00:16:05 Oh really.
264. 00:16:06 Kind of interesting.
265. 00:16:08 But I think that's just because of the topic that this one tackles which is justice in
266. 00:16:14 an unjust world.
267. 00:16:15 It's kind of the subtitle here.
268. 00:16:17 Follows the same format as the previous Stoic Values books.
269. 00:16:22 So there's an introduction.
270. 00:16:24 Well first of all it talks about the four virtues.
271. 00:16:25 Then there's an introduction.
272. 00:16:27 Then there are three parts.
273. 00:16:29 Part one is the me.
274. 00:16:30 That's personal.
275. 00:16:31 Part two is the we which is social political.
276. 00:16:33 Part three is the all is one.
277. 00:16:35 And then the last part is a short afterward kind of about his own personal journey in
278. 00:16:40 how Stoicism has benefited him.
279. 00:16:42 So I thought for the format of this book we would probably just tackle the different
280. 00:16:46 parts and call out some of the things little chapters because there are lots of little
281. 00:16:52 chapters.
282. 00:16:53 They're all for the most part three or four pages long.
283. 00:16:55 It tells a lot of stories.
284. 00:16:58 And I tried to capture a couple of things from each one of those chapters in my map file
285. 00:17:02 here just stuff that that stood out to me.
286. 00:17:05 But I think that there's too much to try and grok like all of the stories that he told
287. 00:17:09 and they're kind of told in these bite sized snippets anyways.
288. 00:17:13 So I think we'll probably just go through these sections and grab a couple each that
289. 00:17:17 we particularly liked.
290. 00:17:19 How's that sound?
291. 00:17:20 Sounds good.
292. 00:17:21 The one thing I want to add is he'll start each part with like a main story or a main
293. 00:17:26 like historical narrative.
294. 00:17:27 And then he'll try to refer back to that through like the tiny little chapters that
295. 00:17:33 he has through.
296. 00:17:34 And when we say there's a lot of chapters, what Mike, there's probably like 10 or 15
297. 00:17:40 within each part.
298. 00:17:41 I mean I'd say like there's a lot in there.
299. 00:17:45 So that's the thread that like holds it together.
300. 00:17:47 So for instance the first one in part one was Truman.
301. 00:17:52 If I'm remembering correctly.
302. 00:17:54 Yeah.
303. 00:17:55 So Harry has Truman, right?
304. 00:17:56 Like that's the major thread that runs through part one.
305. 00:17:58 But he'll do that for kind of each of the different parts to tie it all together.
306. 00:18:03 Yeah.
307. 00:18:04 And I think part two, if I'm not mistaken, was Martin Luther King Jr.
308. 00:18:10 And then the part three was Gandhi.
309. 00:18:12 But that doesn't mean that he's not referencing those stories of other places.
310. 00:18:17 Like you said, he does tie these together.
311. 00:18:18 And it's not just the stories in the first section that he ties together.
312. 00:18:22 He is an expert storyteller and he weaves together a whole bunch of stories of a whole
313. 00:18:27 bunch of historical figures from people in modern history, like American history all
314. 00:18:34 the way back to the lives of the Stoics, which is no surprise since he's got so much
315. 00:18:41 Stoic stuff.
316. 00:18:42 You know, it's kind of interesting.
317. 00:18:43 I think at this point Ryan Holiday is probably the Stoic guy.
318. 00:18:47 Like that's what he's known for.
319. 00:18:49 And I don't think that's the stuff that I really like from him though.
320. 00:18:56 A little bit concerned maybe for the future of Ryan Holiday's book and my fandom of it.
321. 00:19:03 But I did enjoy this book.
322. 00:19:05 So and you've read more on him.
323. 00:19:07 Trust me, we're going to get to the book.
324. 00:19:09 So, but you've read more on him than I have.
325. 00:19:13 This one felt a lot like mastery.
326. 00:19:15 Right?
327. 00:19:16 I know.
328. 00:19:17 So the feel of it and he worked with Robert Greene on 48 Laws of Power.
329. 00:19:23 So it's like, is this like his other ones?
330. 00:19:27 Like is this a very similar style to his other books?
331. 00:19:32 For the most part.
332. 00:19:33 So I think the one that he wrote before the Stoic virtues series was, I remember right,
333. 00:19:42 stillness is the key.
334. 00:19:45 And I really did enjoy that book, but that one very much had the three part formula and
335. 00:19:52 he told lots of little stories, the ones before that, which ego as the enemy was, was, is
336. 00:19:57 the one that I actually have not read.
337. 00:20:00 But then there was the obstacle is the way.
338. 00:20:03 Okay.
339. 00:20:04 Man, that was like one of the first books that we covered for, for bookworm.
340. 00:20:07 So I had to go back into the archives.
341. 00:20:10 That one I liked a lot.
342. 00:20:12 This one is like, so his writing style, I wouldn't say it's completely different or
343. 00:20:17 anything, but it's definitely evolved and you can see that.
344. 00:20:20 Evolved.
345. 00:20:21 All right, good.
346. 00:20:22 Let's go ahead and get into it then.
347. 00:20:25 All right.
348. 00:20:26 So the first section, this maybe isn't going to be very long, but we should call out the
349. 00:20:32 four virtues section.
350. 00:20:34 And probably this is the same in every single one of these books.
351. 00:20:37 So maybe I've even repeated this previously.
352. 00:20:41 But essentially there are four virtues, four Stoic virtues, and they're tied to the story
353. 00:20:46 of Hercules, the legend goes that Hercules stood it across roads.
354. 00:20:50 There were two goddesses there.
355. 00:20:52 One offered him a life of ease.
356. 00:20:54 He could have everything that he wanted.
357. 00:20:56 Another one offered him a life of virtue and this is going to be a hard life, but this
358. 00:21:00 is the, this type of life will produce the character of a God.
359. 00:21:07 And so he took the, the hard road and the four virtues that are tied to that are courage,
360. 00:21:14 temperance, justice, and wisdom.
361. 00:21:16 So spoiler alert, the next book in the series is going to be about wisdom.
362. 00:21:22 That one actually I'm very excited for.
363. 00:21:24 I'm interested to see his, his take on, on that.
364. 00:21:28 But the virtues essentially are designed to act as a comp, as a compass and virtue is
365. 00:21:33 something that we actually do.
366. 00:21:34 It's not just something that we believe.
367. 00:21:35 So my pastor is saying that the word you believe is the word that you actually do.
368. 00:21:39 And I really think that that's true.
369. 00:21:40 It goes beyond just Bible study, but you can read these books and collect all the
370. 00:21:44 these ideas, capture all these notes.
371. 00:21:47 Oh, that was so good.
372. 00:21:48 His life changing.
373. 00:21:49 Well, what are you doing different as a result?
374. 00:21:50 If it's nothing, then what was the point?
375. 00:21:53 Yeah.
376. 00:21:54 So I would say I didn't know the story of Hercules.
377. 00:21:57 This is a, I like the idea of thinking about the soic virtues.
378. 00:22:02 I don't agree completely with all of them that they're like the end all be all.
379. 00:22:06 And I'm not saying he would say that they're the end all be all, but I agree that they're
380. 00:22:10 all, they're all important.
381. 00:22:11 He to bounce into the, to enter a little bit.
382. 00:22:14 He says that justice is the most important of the virtues, which I think that's funny
383. 00:22:18 because he, he told his publisher, this book's probably not going to sell the best, but this
384. 00:22:22 is the most important of the, of the topics from, from all of those.
385. 00:22:26 And I want to reflect on that, you know, like, do I think or Mike, I'll, I'll pose this
386. 00:22:31 question to you, you know, on the spot.
387. 00:22:33 What do you think courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, like what do you think in your mind
388. 00:22:37 is the, is the most important of those virtues?
389. 00:22:40 Well, I don't know.
390. 00:22:42 But if I had to take a stab at it, I would probably guess that wisdom is the most important
391. 00:22:46 followed by justice.
392. 00:22:47 So kind of like a reverse order here.
393. 00:22:50 I don't know that that is accurate necessarily, but that's my first impression.
394. 00:22:54 Yeah.
395. 00:22:55 I would have said the same thing.
396. 00:22:57 Like I think, you know, but the lay my cards on the table, I think that's because, you
397. 00:23:02 know, for a biblical standpoint, I think, you know, biblical wisdom, you know, leads
398. 00:23:06 to righteousness and leads to, to all these other things.
399. 00:23:08 So, so it's like, I think that's why I would say wisdom is the, is the most important for
400. 00:23:12 me as well.
401. 00:23:13 So thank you for entertaining my on the spot on the spot.
402. 00:23:16 Which one of these is the most important?
403. 00:23:17 Well, I think you would probably agree.
404. 00:23:19 Cause I mean, the title of this book, the right thing right now.
405. 00:23:23 So doing the right thing at the right time, essentially, how do you even know what the
406. 00:23:25 right thing is?
407. 00:23:28 There has to be some sort of wisdom applied here.
408. 00:23:30 And I think he kind of alludes to that in the contents of the book, but doesn't go hard
409. 00:23:35 on that because there's a whole not the book coming about that particular topic.
410. 00:23:39 Yeah.
411. 00:23:40 Yep.
412. 00:23:41 Yep.
413. 00:23:42 And he had a lot to say about this one too.
414. 00:23:43 So, you know, it's not like he was struggling for things to say.
415. 00:23:45 Yeah.
416. 00:23:46 If you like, they are getting longer.
417. 00:23:47 This one was like 340 pages.
418. 00:23:50 So maybe the next level will be 400.
419. 00:23:53 I don't know.
420. 00:23:55 All right.
421. 00:23:56 So after that, there is a short introduction, which there's just a couple of things I jotted
422. 00:24:02 down here.
423. 00:24:05 He pointed out that there is no virtue to counterbalance justice.
424. 00:24:12 Justice is what it is.
425. 00:24:15 He also says that until we stop debating, we can't start doing and that justice is holding
426. 00:24:20 the line.
427. 00:24:21 So what line is that the line between right and wrong?
428. 00:24:26 And again, that's kind of why I feel like wisdom is the foundational part of this, which
429. 00:24:31 will get to at some point.
430. 00:24:34 But yeah.
431. 00:24:35 Anything else you want to say about the introduction?
432. 00:24:38 Yeah.
433. 00:24:39 So I have a, I pulled a quote out of here.
434. 00:24:41 The presence of injustice instantly renders any act of virtue.
435. 00:24:44 And then he says courage, discipline, wisdom, any skill, any achievement, worthless or worse.
436. 00:24:48 Right.
437. 00:24:49 So it's like, if we're doing something that is unjust, even if it's courageous, you know,
438. 00:24:56 so oh, wow, look how, look how courageous they were.
439. 00:25:00 But it was unjust.
440. 00:25:01 Look how disciplined they were, but it was unjust.
441. 00:25:04 Look how, you know, and this is the one I don't understand.
442. 00:25:07 Like I'm trying to wrap my head around.
443. 00:25:08 Look how wise they were, but it was unjust.
444. 00:25:10 And in my mind, those two, those two things like, you know, they contradict each other.
445. 00:25:14 I'm doing a wise thing.
446. 00:25:15 It's going to be a just thing, but maybe I just haven't processed on this enough.
447. 00:25:19 But I like the made the major point here is like, if we're doing a courageous, disciplined
448. 00:25:25 thing, but it's not the right thing.
449. 00:25:29 Yeah.
450. 00:25:30 And we're going to render that worthless and we're going to render that as like a bad overall
451. 00:25:35 thing that was done.
452. 00:25:37 And we, I think we see this all the time, right?
453. 00:25:38 We see this where somebody's held up on this pedestal and they're put up on this pedestal
454. 00:25:43 where, oh my gosh, look at, look at how much, you know, they dedicated their life to that
455. 00:25:48 thing.
456. 00:25:49 Look how much they were disciplined in doing that and waking up every day, but it was the
457. 00:25:54 wrong thing for them, their family, society, whatever it might be.
458. 00:25:59 And it's like, you know, like the sub, the sub thing is like interesting, but then the
459. 00:26:03 major thing just cuts it away, like it cuts the foundation off of it.
460. 00:26:06 So I thought you made a really good point there that we really have to be doing the right
461. 00:26:10 things for, for everything else to matter.
462. 00:26:12 Yeah.
463. 00:26:13 And the right thing, I feel like can be different on the different levels that he's talking
464. 00:26:19 about in this particular book, which just makes it more complicated and confusing maybe.
465. 00:26:26 And I think one of the things that he doesn't address and I can kind of understand why he
466. 00:26:32 doesn't address is what does the right thing mean?
467. 00:26:36 So the right thing for me and the right thing for you and the right thing for any of the
468. 00:26:41 listeners, like we could debate that all the time, like over and over and over again.
469. 00:26:45 I mean, and we do, you know, these are ethical discussions and discussions of morality and
470. 00:26:52 it's like, well, okay, in this situation, what is the right thing to do?
471. 00:26:56 And I don't think you and I should go into that right now because that's a whole tangent
472. 00:26:59 topic.
473. 00:27:01 But like that is a, that's a challenge, right?
474. 00:27:04 Like, I think he hits, he hits some of them that are more universal, I would say, like
475. 00:27:09 he hits the ones that are more agreed upon and it's, you don't really have a very super
476. 00:27:14 strong argument on it, but there are some other ones where it's, you know, you can, you see
477. 00:27:18 people do it all the time where they're debating what the quote unquote right or just thing
478. 00:27:23 is and why that's the case and why it's not.
479. 00:27:26 And I think that is a, that's another book, but I think that book's been written a bunch
480. 00:27:32 of a bunch of times.
481. 00:27:33 Yeah.
482. 00:27:34 Like these are, these are the books that tend to have the word ethics in the, in the title.
483. 00:27:36 So.
484. 00:27:37 Yeah.
485. 00:27:38 Well, that's actually a great place to get into the first section.
486. 00:27:41 So let's go there.
487. 00:27:43 The first part is the me personal and kind of what you were alluding to is the last,
488. 00:27:51 is covered again in the last chapter of this section, which is right thing right now.
489. 00:27:55 A couple of things that I jotted down here are the right time for the right thing is
490. 00:28:00 always right now.
491. 00:28:02 You do have to figure out what the right thing is.
492. 00:28:06 And I think I would argue the right thing being the thing that is in line with your values.
493. 00:28:15 Values can be shaped a lot of different ways.
494. 00:28:19 I think what he's trying to do in this book is essentially get people to think about the
495. 00:28:24 different layers.
496. 00:28:25 So if you look at someone who thinks they're doing the right thing, because they're just
497. 00:28:30 looking at it from, this is going to benefit me, then getting them to consider, well, what
498. 00:28:35 about everybody else that's on the team?
499. 00:28:37 Or even further, part three is all about what about all of humanity?
500. 00:28:41 What about everyone else on this planet?
501. 00:28:43 Have you thought about how this decision actually impacts those people?
502. 00:28:46 And I think that's the big win for most people.
503. 00:28:50 The human brain, I don't think is naturally wired to think about others that way.
504. 00:28:57 We need the reminder.
505. 00:28:59 There are times when we do, you know, I've heard it said that love is the desire to benefit
506. 00:29:02 the other at the expense of self.
507. 00:29:04 So when you love someone, that's cool.
508. 00:29:07 That's easy to do.
509. 00:29:09 I care about them as an individual, so I'll sacrifice something for myself personally.
510. 00:29:14 Seems like the right thing to do.
511. 00:29:15 But then you're supposed to love your enemies.
512. 00:29:17 So now, like, but I don't want to.
513. 00:29:21 Like, where are the, where's the balance there?
514. 00:29:24 And you're right.
515. 00:29:25 He doesn't give you clear cut.
516. 00:29:28 This is how I would define this, but that's because I think you have to struggle with this
517. 00:29:32 yourself and it has to be personal.
518. 00:29:35 But one thing that I think once you do that, that is important and he calls out in this
519. 00:29:39 last chapter of this first part, is that discipline is often a battle against procrastination.
520. 00:29:45 So I think just speaking for myself, a lot of times I can feel like I know what the right
521. 00:29:50 thing to do is and he's encouraging us that if you know what the right thing to do is,
522. 00:29:54 then right now is the time, the right time to do it.
523. 00:29:57 Okay.
524. 00:29:58 So don't delay those things.
525. 00:29:59 And how often am I guilty of that?
526. 00:30:02 And to cure it defined as procrastination kind of hurts a little bit because I'm supposed
527. 00:30:07 to be this productivity guy.
528. 00:30:09 Yep.
529. 00:30:10 That's fine.
530. 00:30:12 But if I'm honest, you know, then this is, this is a struggle sometimes.
531. 00:30:17 Yeah.
532. 00:30:18 I, tying into what you said, the chapter right before that is the choose the North Star.
533. 00:30:22 Yep.
534. 00:30:23 And I really, I really like how that leads into the right thing right now because it's like,
535. 00:30:29 whatever your North Star is going to be.
536. 00:30:31 You know, that's the kind of, that's where you're setting the what, what is right?
537. 00:30:34 Like what is the, what am I going to consider right in different contexts?
538. 00:30:38 And one of the nuances I think that comes here is like, there isn't necessarily, I don't
539. 00:30:44 think there's necessarily one North Star.
540. 00:30:46 Like I think there's an overarching North Star, like I'm shooting towards this, but I
541. 00:30:49 think there are North Stars in the different areas of my life.
542. 00:30:53 And when I'm thinking about the right thing right now, it's in the context of, of that
543. 00:30:57 thing that I'm doing, some of them will be more overarching and they'll encompass a
544. 00:31:00 couple of different buckets of my life, but others will be more specific to a certain
545. 00:31:04 bucket of my life.
546. 00:31:05 So I think really where from out of this first part is really thinking about like, what's
547. 00:31:12 that North Star?
548. 00:31:13 What are those values?
549. 00:31:15 What is that thing I'm going to reach for or pursue or, you know, hold above from a goal?
550. 00:31:21 Goal is the wrong word, but you know what I mean?
551. 00:31:22 Like from a striving toward standpoint, like what am I, what am I going to do?
552. 00:31:27 I think the other things in this part are good like smaller pieces.
553. 00:31:33 You know, it's like, oh, tell the truth, take responsibility, you know, be an open book,
554. 00:31:39 be decent, be do your job.
555. 00:31:40 Like, I think these are good and these are all good practices, but those last two parts
556. 00:31:44 are really the take home, you know, the meat of part one is like, if we can set our values,
557. 00:31:51 figure out what that North Star is and then do that thing and do it daily, shoot for that
558. 00:31:56 thing and shoot for it daily.
559. 00:31:58 And then the part I think where I know you're a big fan of this with personal retreats and
560. 00:32:03 with reflections and that can we really reflect back on it?
561. 00:32:07 He doesn't hit this much, but can we reflect back on it?
562. 00:32:08 Can we take a time when we say, okay, this is a time when I actually did the right thing
563. 00:32:13 and went towards that North Star, here's a time where I shirk responsibility and I didn't
564. 00:32:18 or I procrastinated or I was off the mark.
565. 00:32:21 And what can I learn from that?
566. 00:32:23 And I think that would be a good, more actionable side of, can I really identify those things?
567. 00:32:28 And then all the other stuff I think just builds on that.
568. 00:32:31 Yeah, well, I think you're right that a lot of the stuff that I make is kind of tied to
569. 00:32:38 values based productivity, maybe for lack of a better term here.
570. 00:32:46 So I did really like the discussion of the North Star.
571. 00:32:50 I like the term he used, plea anexia, which is a self serving life, what the Greeks believe
572. 00:32:58 to be the worst kind of life.
573. 00:33:00 So I think there's lots of little things that he drops in here and there like that, which
574. 00:33:06 are just additional pieces to the puzzle for me and they help me see it a little bit more
575. 00:33:12 clearly.
576. 00:33:13 But essentially what he's advocating for is what you were just describing and what I
577. 00:33:17 try to do with the personal retreats, you know, identify your vision and your values,
578. 00:33:22 do your best to live those out.
579. 00:33:24 And then every three months, the whole purpose behind the personal retreat process is you
580. 00:33:29 need a mechanism to help you come back and get your bearings again.
581. 00:33:33 He says that in this section.
582. 00:33:34 One of the things that jotted down in the mind map, we will lose our bearings, but we
583. 00:33:37 need to get it back.
584. 00:33:38 So how do you actually do that?
585. 00:33:40 You have to take all this stuff into consideration.
586. 00:33:42 And so that's part of the part of the process for me.
587. 00:33:44 I consider the life.
588. 00:33:45 And I consider the values.
589. 00:33:47 I take stock of where things are at.
590. 00:33:49 Am I moving in the right direction?
591. 00:33:50 What should I start stopping, keep doing?
592. 00:33:52 And you don't have to follow my format, obviously, but Ryan Holiday is essentially advocating for
593. 00:33:57 the same sort of thing.
594. 00:33:58 And I think it really is that simple.
595. 00:34:01 Decide what's really important.
596. 00:34:03 Try to live your life in accordance with those values.
597. 00:34:05 And then every once in a while, ask yourself, how the heck am I doing?
598. 00:34:09 Make adjustments where necessary.
599. 00:34:11 But I do want to mention, because you shared a couple of the titles of the different chapters.
600. 00:34:16 And if you just take those at surface value, you can be like, Oh, well, I already know
601. 00:34:19 that already.
602. 00:34:20 I don't need to read this.
603. 00:34:21 You haven't heard it the way that Ryan Holiday is going to be describing it because there
604. 00:34:26 are a lot of these things.
605. 00:34:27 I'm looking at the mind map.
606. 00:34:28 A lot of these things like, yeah, I understand the principle behind taking responsibility.
607. 00:34:34 But I jotted down there before we can take responsibility for another life, we need to
608. 00:34:38 take responsibility for our own.
609. 00:34:40 Now that is kind of like I've heard the story about when you're getting on the airplane,
610. 00:34:44 they tell you put your own oxygen mask on first before you assist your kids.
611. 00:34:48 Because if you're no, if you pass out, then you're no good to anybody.
612. 00:34:53 But Ryan Holiday has a way of saying this.
613. 00:34:55 It's like, you know, this is the fundamental thing.
614. 00:34:57 I'm not going to wrap it up in a cute little analogy that's going to sound good and a sound
615. 00:35:01 bite, but just bam, here it is.
616. 00:35:04 You need to wrestle with this.
617. 00:35:06 And so he asks, you know, a quite another question he asked from that section.
618. 00:35:09 Am I someone who does a great job or am I someone who does the minimum?
619. 00:35:12 Because taking responsibility isn't just, well, I did the thing.
620. 00:35:16 There you go.
621. 00:35:17 What are you upset about?
622. 00:35:18 Did you give it your best effort?
623. 00:35:21 He's the kind of guy I feel like we would be pretty good friends because he, you can
624. 00:35:28 tell by the way that he writes, he doesn't have a high tolerance for people who aren't
625. 00:35:33 going to do things with excellence.
626. 00:35:37 And I definitely get annoyed by that myself.
627. 00:35:39 Like, come on.
628. 00:35:41 This is the best you can do.
629. 00:35:43 The very next chapter actually is be your own referee.
630. 00:35:47 You know, I shouldn't have to say this isn't good enough.
631. 00:35:52 You should be able to tell and like something should be going off inside of you.
632. 00:35:56 Like I can't share this because it's not the best that I can do.
633. 00:36:00 He says in that section, one of the things, just as another example, something that really
634. 00:36:03 just kind of jumped off the page to me, without honor, victory is meaningless.
635. 00:36:07 Well, what does that mean?
636. 00:36:09 It means that like, I'm trying to build this, this creator business, right?
637. 00:36:14 And I've been working hard for a long time.
638. 00:36:16 We talked in the, was it the pro show or maybe just the first section about the things that
639. 00:36:20 I've been trying to do to grow my email list and sell different products and things like
640. 00:36:24 that.
641. 00:36:26 Everyone in that situation wants it to happen faster.
642. 00:36:30 But I guess the way I think about this is my goal has been 10,000 email subscribers.
643. 00:36:37 But if I could just pay somebody, couple grand tomorrow and they dump a bunch of names on
644. 00:36:42 my list, that that's kind of the meaningless victory in my opinion.
645. 00:36:47 Well, it's like, it's like buying an Instagram account that already has a hundred thousand
646. 00:36:51 followers, right?
647. 00:36:52 Like, I mean, I remember when that was a big thing going around, it's like, oh, we sell
648. 00:36:55 Instagram accounts that have these many followers, but who are they?
649. 00:36:58 Like, and they're not connected at all, you know?
650. 00:37:01 Exactly.
651. 00:37:02 The obstacle is the way.
652. 00:37:05 The publishing good stuff every week so that people don't want to unsubscribe from the
653. 00:37:11 newsletter.
654. 00:37:12 That's the slog, but it's also the thing that makes the victory worthwhile once I eventually
655. 00:37:18 get there.
656. 00:37:19 So I just love the style that Ryan Holiday writes, like the way that he writes.
657. 00:37:24 And as he's going through these things, which are basically doing the right thing for yourself.
658. 00:37:31 And it's not all just, you know, without context to other people.
659. 00:37:34 He says in realize your potential, for example, that you're not here for yourself and to who
660. 00:37:39 much is given, much is expected.
661. 00:37:41 But just considering, you know, what is right by me, you know, the way that he writes it,
662. 00:37:47 I instantly can fill in the blanks with all of these different examples of what this looks
663. 00:37:51 like for me.
664. 00:37:52 And oh, you know what, I should really tweak this a little bit.
665. 00:37:55 That's a good reminder.
666. 00:37:56 You know, I really need to double down on this.
667. 00:37:58 Interestingly, I don't have a ton of action items from this particular book, but there's
668. 00:38:02 lots of good encouragement here, which I think is just sort of course correcting vision adjustment
669. 00:38:11 at this point in the book for me.
670. 00:38:12 Yeah.
671. 00:38:13 I would say a couple of things came out for me during part one is one, he's incredibly
672. 00:38:18 well read, incredibly well researched and communicates and summarizes and like ties
673. 00:38:26 ideas together very, very well.
674. 00:38:27 So that was, that was good.
675. 00:38:29 The other one would be like, these are just really good.
676. 00:38:32 You said course correction, you know, did you say course correction is a, is a last thing
677. 00:38:36 you said?
678. 00:38:37 Yeah.
679. 00:38:38 But it's like, these are really good reminders to where even if you go back to it and you
680. 00:38:41 just look through the different chapter titles, you know, we have our mind maps, but like
681. 00:38:46 even if somebody doesn't do what we do and take these crazy mind map, no, no things,
682. 00:38:50 you need to go back and just look at the chapter, you can pretty quickly go, okay,
683. 00:38:55 I'm doing a okay job there.
684. 00:38:57 Like I'm, I'm struggling on that one, you know, like I'm doing a okay job there.
685. 00:39:00 I'm struggling on that one.
686. 00:39:01 And it's a way to, to course correct.
687. 00:39:03 And then you can dive into the one that, that you actually care about or the one that
688. 00:39:07 you're, you need to focus on more.
689. 00:39:10 And I think, I think that was a, that was a good one overall, like I said, I don't have
690. 00:39:15 like a ton of like things that really, really jump out of me.
691. 00:39:19 It's like, oh my gosh, that was life changing.
692. 00:39:21 But at the same time I'm reading through this going, yeah, that's a good point.
693. 00:39:24 Yeah, that's a good point.
694. 00:39:25 Like, yeah, that's a good point.
695. 00:39:26 You know, like, and I get the number of times I did that was, was kind of fun.
696. 00:39:30 It was, it was fun in a book.
697. 00:39:32 Yeah.
698. 00:39:33 One other example, there's a chapter in here called be an open book, which really challenged
699. 00:39:38 me, he mentions that being a leader means you have chosen to be a public figure.
700. 00:39:42 Well, I'm not a, I wouldn't call myself a public figure, but the truth is that I do
701. 00:39:48 have leadership positions in different places.
702. 00:39:50 I'm an elder at my church.
703. 00:39:52 I co-host on this podcast, like my life is public in, in some way, shape or form.
704. 00:39:59 And I've learned over the years that that just comes with the territory.
705. 00:40:03 And essentially what he's admonishing us to do in this section, he says, try not to
706. 00:40:08 do anything that requires walls or curtains.
707. 00:40:10 If you're inclined to hide it, you probably shouldn't do it.
708. 00:40:12 And you could read that and be like, well, wait a minute.
709. 00:40:15 So I don't get to have any privacy.
710. 00:40:18 Like that's not what he's saying, but he's sort of saying it.
711. 00:40:21 He's saying it in a way that you could very easily get offended with this and be like,
712. 00:40:26 no, no, no, I'm not going to do it that way.
713. 00:40:28 And turn them out for the rest of the book.
714. 00:40:30 Or you could be like, you know what, maybe he's right.
715. 00:40:33 And so like, that's one of the, one of the spots.
716. 00:40:35 You know what?
717. 00:40:36 Maybe he's right.
718. 00:40:37 He's like, I need to do a little better job of living above reproach for lack of a better
719. 00:40:42 term.
720. 00:40:43 Like I got to be really careful about the things that I say and the things that I do because
721. 00:40:46 someone somewhere, I mean, all parents know this.
722. 00:40:49 Your kids are watching you all the time and they're going to, they're going to replicate
723. 00:40:53 what you do more than what you say.
724. 00:40:56 And you can hide behind, well, I didn't mean it that way and they should think the best
725. 00:40:59 about me.
726. 00:41:00 Or you could take responsibility and be like, you know what, I shouldn't have said it that
727. 00:41:03 way.
728. 00:41:04 Or I shouldn't have said that.
729. 00:41:05 You don't even need to say it that way.
730. 00:41:06 Like you don't have a justification.
731. 00:41:08 Just accept the fact that as a leader, you're under a microscope.
732. 00:41:12 It is what it is.
733. 00:41:14 And the quickest way to get buy in from everybody that you're trying to lead is to say, you
734. 00:41:19 know what, my fault, I'm sorry, I'll do better next time.
735. 00:41:23 Yeah.
736. 00:41:24 And I say the same section there.
737. 00:41:26 He quotes Joseph Polter.
738. 00:41:28 There's not a vice, which does not live by secrecy, right?
739. 00:41:30 And it's the whole like, you know, a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square
740. 00:41:34 kind of thing.
741. 00:41:35 That doesn't mean that everything that you do in private or in secret is a vice, but
742. 00:41:39 that means that like, vices, you're going to try to like hide those from people and
743. 00:41:43 you're going to try to be secret about those, you know, so there's that.
744. 00:41:46 And then he talked about the city on a hill, right?
745. 00:41:48 You hear the quote about, you know, city on a hill, city on a hill, blah, blah, blah.
746. 00:41:51 Everyone looks at, okay, I think that's where most people stop.
747. 00:41:55 He says, be the city on the hill that everyone looks at and respects and like in season goes,
748. 00:42:01 oh, yeah, that's, you know, that's good.
749. 00:42:03 That's just.
750. 00:42:04 I liked, I liked those two, those two quotes out of there as well.
751. 00:42:08 So.
752. 00:42:09 Nice.
753. 00:42:10 Ready to go on to the next section?
754. 00:42:12 I am.
755. 00:42:13 All right.
756. 00:42:14 So the next section, part two is the we, the social political.
757. 00:42:21 And this is really just like the people that are on your team for lack of a better term.
758. 00:42:27 You know, we're talking about ourselves in part one, part three, we're talking about
759. 00:42:30 everybody part two is kind of like the people that we would surround ourselves with.
760. 00:42:36 And again, lots of different chapters here.
761. 00:42:39 And I want to start with the one on start small.
762. 00:42:45 So one of the stories that he tells here is about Mother Teresa.
763. 00:42:52 And she has, he has this quote from Mother Teresa, which I think is amazing that if I
764. 00:42:58 look at the mass, I will never act.
765. 00:43:00 If I look at the one, I will.
766. 00:43:04 And he's basically encouraging us in this chapter to take the first step.
767. 00:43:08 No changes possible without that first tiny step.
768. 00:43:10 He says, and says that as humans, we tend to think big picture before we think little
769. 00:43:16 picture and I'm definitely guilty of this myself.
770. 00:43:19 But essentially like this is something that I've known already.
771. 00:43:23 It's a good reminder and it's something that I probably need to action on more.
772. 00:43:27 But just do what you can do where you are with what you have.
773. 00:43:32 One of my favorite Bible verses is Zachariah.
774. 00:43:35 I think it's 410, which says, do not despise these small beginnings.
775. 00:43:41 The Lord rejoices to see the work begin.
776. 00:43:44 And you could take that like you don't have to have a Christian belief system in order
777. 00:43:48 to apply that principle.
778. 00:43:49 It's essentially what Ryan Holiday is talking about here.
779. 00:43:51 In fact, you know, he incorporates a lot of different stories from a lot of different
780. 00:43:55 religions.
781. 00:43:56 He does.
782. 00:43:57 He uses a lot of Bible verses and a lot of Bible stories.
783. 00:44:00 And he frames them in ways which you could argue with theologically, but that's not
784. 00:44:03 the purpose of this book.
785. 00:44:05 He's just kind of, this is what Jesus did.
786. 00:44:07 You're like, yeah, you're right.
787. 00:44:10 I get it.
788. 00:44:12 Yeah.
789. 00:44:13 Yeah.
790. 00:44:14 I think the one that stood out to me on this one was see how the other half lives.
791. 00:44:16 And I know that this is the one that really will, I guess, pull with the heartstrings,
792. 00:44:23 but for me where it's like, it's so easy to get caught up in my routine, my daily where
793. 00:44:29 it's like, this is just what we do.
794. 00:44:30 And this is how I do things.
795. 00:44:32 And this is how my family does things.
796. 00:44:33 And this is, and this is, and this is, and this is, and then, you know, you get shocked
797. 00:44:38 out of that and you get into a situation, a context or an environment, a culture or something
798. 00:44:43 like that.
799. 00:44:44 And you're like, oh my goodness, like this is nothing like my every day, right?
800. 00:44:48 This is completely different.
801. 00:44:50 So an example of this would be you're going to a different part of town, right?
802. 00:44:54 So Denver's huge.
803. 00:44:55 You know, you go to a different part of town and you're like, wow, this part of Denver
804. 00:44:58 is very, very different than the part of Denver I live in.
805. 00:45:01 Or you go overseas, right?
806. 00:45:03 Like, and you see like a different kind of a culture and you see the way they operate.
807. 00:45:08 And I think like the thing that gets me about this, I mean, he's going to tie it into injustice
808. 00:45:14 and justice and, you know, kind of how the other half lives, whether it's just or unjust.
809. 00:45:18 But like, I think there's a bigger idea here that's just like, we need more experiences.
810. 00:45:23 We need more diverse experiences to see what's happening in the world, how it's happening
811. 00:45:29 in the world and get out of our own little, you know, focused bubble.
812. 00:45:35 I think this ties into something that's in part three, which is like expand the circle.
813. 00:45:39 Because if we don't see these things, how can we expand the circle?
814. 00:45:42 If we don't, if we don't interact with these things, like this was definitely one of the
815. 00:45:46 chapters that jumped out to me.
816. 00:45:49 And he quotes in here, "We should seek out experiences that show us what other people
817. 00:45:53 experience daily and whether they're really close to us or whether they're like close
818. 00:45:57 meaning like their life is like ours or whether their life is significantly different."
819. 00:46:02 I think the more of those experiences we get, you know, the more well-rounded we'll be and
820. 00:46:07 the more we'll be able to be just broadly.
821. 00:46:09 100%.
822. 00:46:10 So, another section I liked in here was growing a coaching tree.
823. 00:46:17 Do you know who Greg Popovich is?
824. 00:46:19 Are you a basketball fan?
825. 00:46:20 I do.
826. 00:46:21 I'm not a basketball fan.
827. 00:46:22 I'm not very a basketball fan, but it's hard to not know who Greg Popovich is.
828. 00:46:25 So, in the United States.
829. 00:46:27 I did not realize, so that's the story that he's telling here.
830. 00:46:32 Greg Popovich, I believe he's still the coach of the San Antonio Spurs.
831. 00:46:35 He's getting older now.
832. 00:46:38 And essentially the point that they're making is that a lot of the head coaches that are
833. 00:46:43 in the NBA today can be traced back to they were on Greg Popovich's staff.
834. 00:46:50 And I've seen a couple different places where he's given specific people like Tim Duncan
835. 00:46:54 and for blanking on the woman's name that he mentions Becky who became a WNBA coach.
836. 00:47:04 But they got their shot essentially underneath Greg Popovich.
837. 00:47:07 And I remember watching the game where I'm feeling really bad that I forgot her name,
838. 00:47:15 but she was the first woman to coach a game in the NBA because she was high on the assistant
839. 00:47:22 ladder and he intentionally gets himself thrown out of a game so that she can have the experience.
840. 00:47:27 You know, like Becky Hammond.
841. 00:47:29 Becky Hammond, thank you.
842. 00:47:31 I didn't know it.
843. 00:47:32 You did a great job getting Becky Hammond.
844. 00:47:35 She's a Las Vegas aces coach.
845. 00:47:37 Yeah.
846. 00:47:38 So now she's a coach for the WNBA.
847. 00:47:40 But he's constantly putting people in positions where they can do things.
848. 00:47:47 Essentially, he's opening doors for people.
849. 00:47:49 And I forget the percentage, but there's a very high percentage of all the coaches in
850. 00:47:53 the NBA that got their start under Greg Popovich.
851. 00:47:55 And that's interesting because that's a very different side of him than you see when you
852. 00:48:00 watch games on TV.
853. 00:48:03 He's kind of famous for when they do the interview, the coaches between like the first and second
854. 00:48:08 quarter or the third and fourth quarter, depending on the home coach or the away coach.
855. 00:48:12 You know, this is a different slot.
856. 00:48:14 And he's kind of famous for being really, really short with those reporters.
857. 00:48:18 And like you can tell when they're doing a Spurs game, they get all nervous because
858. 00:48:22 they don't want to ask a question in a dumb way that's going to set them off because he'll
859. 00:48:26 just be like, that's stupid and walk away.
860. 00:48:30 Yeah.
861. 00:48:31 You know.
862. 00:48:32 And so that's like the public persona of Greg Popovich, but obviously all of his players
863. 00:48:37 really enjoy playing for him.
864. 00:48:38 He's been with the Spurs for a really long time.
865. 00:48:40 So he's got like a pretty crazy legacy there.
866. 00:48:44 But it was kind of cool to hear how much he goes out of his way.
867. 00:48:49 It's a very different side of him that you don't see on TV.
868. 00:48:51 Like the people that are with him, he does his best to propel them to like beyond where
869. 00:48:58 he would go, which is essentially what you want to do as a parent.
870. 00:49:01 You want your kids to go further and do more than you've been able to do.
871. 00:49:05 And it's one thing to say that in the position that he has like, oh yeah, I want, you know,
872. 00:49:09 whoever comes after me to be better.
873. 00:49:11 But it's a very another thing.
874. 00:49:13 It's a totally another thing to actually apply that.
875. 00:49:16 Like actually live that out by your actions.
876. 00:49:19 And he's done it consistently for a really long time because the proof is that all of
877. 00:49:24 these people can be traced back to, oh yeah, I got my start under Greg Popovich.
878. 00:49:29 It encourages me, you know, I'm not in a position like he is and I can't open those
879. 00:49:33 kinds of doors for people, but I can do what I can where I am.
880. 00:49:36 So look for those opportunities, I guess is the takeaway there.
881. 00:49:40 Well, and I think this is cool because that's an example, but I think if you looked and
882. 00:49:46 you don't have to look very hard, you can see this example in music.
883. 00:49:50 You can see this example in teaching.
884. 00:49:52 You can see this example in business where it's like the tree goes up and it will make
885. 00:49:59 it to like a person or two.
886. 00:50:01 And then all of these successful people come out of having worked with that person or two
887. 00:50:05 or, you know, they worked at this company or they all started, you know, and they were
888. 00:50:10 all like middle managers at this one company and then they all spawned off and like started
889. 00:50:15 their own things and they were all successful, but they can all trace it back to, you know,
890. 00:50:18 the leadership or the training that they got there.
891. 00:50:20 So I think there's a lot of different situations where you can see the evidence of this and
892. 00:50:26 this is probably the area where, I don't know if it's the teacher in me or what it is,
893. 00:50:30 this is the area where it's like, I want to do this.
894. 00:50:32 Like it's like, I want to figure out a way to be the rock that launches.
895. 00:50:40 That's probably the wrong metaphor, but you know what I mean?
896. 00:50:41 Like to be like that thing that launches all these other successful people, that actually
897. 00:50:46 sounds way more exciting to me than me being the ideal successful people is, but to be
898. 00:50:51 able to look down and be like, yeah, like they did a good job.
899. 00:50:54 They did a good job.
900. 00:50:55 And I had a small piece in that.
901. 00:50:56 Like I had a really small piece in them and then being successful.
902. 00:51:00 I want to tie two together as I talk about the next one.
903. 00:51:02 And I think you have to tie them together or else it gets tricky real fast.
904. 00:51:06 So develop competence and then make good trouble.
905. 00:51:10 And the reason why I tie these two together is because I really like the idea of make
906. 00:51:14 good trouble.
907. 00:51:15 I think we are, we as a society are too afraid to push back, to make trouble, to be confrontational,
908. 00:51:24 but in a good way.
909. 00:51:26 So like there are the people who do it and you're like, yes, you're doing it wrong.
910. 00:51:29 Like that is not the way you want to do this.
911. 00:51:31 You're actually going to get into trouble.
912. 00:51:33 And then there's the people who do it well and they come at it from a, they're causing
913. 00:51:37 trouble again, but they're right.
914. 00:51:40 And like we all kind of need that and we all needed to hear that and change will happen
915. 00:51:44 out of that.
916. 00:51:45 And one more of what he's talking about here is he's talking about those people who yes,
917. 00:51:48 they're causing quote unquote trouble, but they're doing it in the right way for a good
918. 00:51:52 cause for the right reason.
919. 00:51:54 Now I think an important piece of this is the develop competence because I think if you
920. 00:51:58 don't develop the competence first, it's really hard to make good trouble.
921. 00:52:02 You make trouble, but you don't make good trouble.
922. 00:52:04 And it's because you don't know the right ways to make trouble.
923. 00:52:08 Like you end up making trouble in ways that are, that miss the point or that are doing
924. 00:52:15 the wrong thing.
925. 00:52:16 So you know, competence is basically like you're incredibly skilled at your thing.
926. 00:52:22 Like you are the expert, the leader, the people that everyone looks to, if they want to know
927. 00:52:28 how to do the job right or get things done or they would go to you to get things done.
928. 00:52:31 So it's like if you were that person and then you come into the meeting and you're like,
929. 00:52:35 listen, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to stoke this fire.
930. 00:52:38 Like I'm going to, I'm going to poke and figure out, I'm going to poke the bear, if you will,
931. 00:52:42 right?
932. 00:52:43 And everybody looks at it and they're like, well, if he's doing it or she's doing it,
933. 00:52:47 maybe there's something there and, and like it just gives you a different perspective on
934. 00:52:50 it.
935. 00:52:51 So I like these two pieces tied together, holiday didn't tie them together, but, but my brain
936. 00:52:54 wanted to tie those two pieces together.
937. 00:52:57 Yeah.
938. 00:52:58 I think you're right.
939. 00:53:00 One other thing from this section that I liked was the section on creating alliances.
940. 00:53:06 And the story that he tells here is of Harvey Milk, who I believe was a governor or some
941. 00:53:14 person in, in local politics in California.
942. 00:53:19 Yeah.
943. 00:53:20 All I know is politicians.
944. 00:53:22 So former member of San Francisco board of supervisors, I'm looking them up right now.
945. 00:53:27 I'm cheating.
946. 00:53:28 That's okay.
947. 00:53:30 The thing that is important for the story here is that he was a open homosexual at a time
948. 00:53:37 when that was not accepted.
949. 00:53:40 And essentially the way that he got his message out was that he created these alliances with
950. 00:53:47 other people who vehemently disagreed with him on certain things, but they were able to
951. 00:53:52 find common ground.
952. 00:53:54 And this story is impactful to me because I don't think that I could picture myself in
953. 00:54:03 some of those stories, I guess, just like very much different opinions about certain
954. 00:54:08 things.
955. 00:54:09 But essentially what he was able to do was to add new and diverse voices as allies.
956. 00:54:14 And then eventually those things allowed those alliances that he had made allowed him
957. 00:54:20 to achieve certain things based on causes that he was supporting.
958. 00:54:27 And I call this out because we're fairly open about our Christian faith and our perspective
959. 00:54:33 on things in the podcast.
960. 00:54:36 I see a lot of people around me not wanting to embrace different points of view and create
961. 00:54:44 allies of people who think differently than them.
962. 00:54:47 And it convicts me, like I don't want to be like that.
963. 00:54:51 I don't want to surround myself in my own little bubble.
964. 00:54:55 Going back to liminal thinking again, the bubble of belief.
965. 00:54:59 People who look, sound, talk, act, exactly like I do.
966. 00:55:05 And then there you go, this is reality, it's not.
967. 00:55:10 And I think that by creating these alliances, by looking for people who are, I want to say
968. 00:55:20 intentionally different, like finding people who are in different phases of life, who believe
969. 00:55:25 different things than I do and trying to understand their perspective, not from the, not with
970. 00:55:32 the intention of, well, maybe I need to change some of my convictions.
971. 00:55:37 So sometimes that happens, the church that we're at, I said at one point, that's the
972. 00:55:42 last church I will ever set foot in through a set of circumstances.
973. 00:55:45 That's where I am now an elder.
974. 00:55:47 Like I changed my mind about things.
975. 00:55:50 And that's, I think that's, that's good.
976. 00:55:52 We should be looking to not just collect new information, but we need to be constantly
977. 00:55:58 asking ourselves, like, where am I, where am I not understanding things fully?
978. 00:56:03 But that's not even the point of the chapter here.
979. 00:56:05 The point of the chapter here is you're different than me.
980. 00:56:09 You live somewhere else.
981. 00:56:10 You believe something else.
982. 00:56:13 That doesn't mean that we shouldn't connect.
983. 00:56:16 In fact, it probably is an argument that we should connect because the big takeaway from
984. 00:56:21 these stories is that people saw Harvey Milk on the surface of this is what he stands for.
985. 00:56:26 And they're like, oh, I hate that guy.
986. 00:56:29 But then when they got to know him, they ended up being on his side for different things.
987. 00:56:34 You know, that one of the examples they share is the Teamsters Union for like the truck
988. 00:56:39 drivers.
989. 00:56:40 You know, that was an important alliance.
990. 00:56:41 And they were able to find common ground there.
991. 00:56:44 And I just, so this is my, I think my one action item from this whole book.
992. 00:56:49 There are lots of things that even from what we talked about today where you could say,
993. 00:56:52 well, that's kind of an action item.
994. 00:56:53 That's kind of an action item.
995. 00:56:54 This is the one that felt significant enough that I needed to codify as an actual action
996. 00:56:59 item was.
997. 00:57:00 And it's one of those ones that you'll never be able to say, did I do this or not constantly
998. 00:57:05 be on the lookout for new allies?
999. 00:57:07 Yeah.
1000. 00:57:08 Okay.
1001. 00:57:09 And not, who can I get on my side?
1002. 00:57:10 But just like, who can I make connections with?
1003. 00:57:12 Because you don't know where these relationships are going to go.
1004. 00:57:15 And you don't know when these connections are going to be valuable in the future.
1005. 00:57:19 But if we're really trying to do the right thing at the right time, we should constantly
1006. 00:57:23 be trying to understand what the, where the other side is, is coming from.
1007. 00:57:28 And again, that doesn't mean just because they say this thing, like, oh, well, now, you
1008. 00:57:33 know, obviously, because we're mentioned it multiple times on this, this podcast, I may
1009. 00:57:38 as well just go all the way down the rabbit hole, right?
1010. 00:57:41 We consider the, as Christians, we consider the Bible to be the, the code of conduct that
1011. 00:57:45 we live by, right?
1012. 00:57:46 And a lot of this stuff that Ryan Holiday is talking about, replace stoic virtues with
1013. 00:57:50 specific Bible verses and you've got the exact same thing.
1014. 00:57:54 But you could say, well, that's, you know, I'm not trying to conform, you know, what I
1015. 00:57:59 believe about the Bible based on these other data points and other people's experiences.
1016. 00:58:05 That's not what I'm, what I'm saying.
1017. 00:58:06 But what I'm saying is by connecting with other people and understanding other contexts,
1018. 00:58:12 it gives me better understanding of the, the convictions that I'm holding a lot of times.
1019. 00:58:18 And again, I'm not afraid to say, you know, strong, strong convictions, lightly held.
1020. 00:58:22 I was wrong about this.
1021. 00:58:23 It's happened multiple times.
1022. 00:58:25 I could make the list of all the things that Mike was wrong about, but I see so much benefit
1023. 00:58:30 that comes from looking beyond the me and the we.
1024. 00:58:36 So this is kind of like, for me, the, the point where we're probably transitioning into
1025. 00:58:41 part three after this, all the other people that you typically don't see, all the other
1026. 00:58:46 people that it's inconvenient to think about them a lot of the times.
1027. 00:58:51 Like those are the people that Jesus went after.
1028. 00:58:54 That's who I should be focusing on.
1029. 00:58:56 Yeah.
1030. 00:58:57 I mean, I think where, where this gets mixed up a little bit in my mind is people think
1031. 00:59:03 allies is best friends.
1032. 00:59:04 And I don't think that you know, like that doesn't have to be the case.
1033. 00:59:08 Allies are two people that find common ground around something.
1034. 00:59:12 It doesn't have to be around everything, but it's around something.
1035. 00:59:15 It's like, oh, okay.
1036. 00:59:16 In this context, you and I, and where this gets really meaningful for me, and where I think
1037. 00:59:22 everything you said is spot on is where this gets really meaningful for me is, okay, we
1038. 00:59:26 said earlier in this book doesn't talk a lot about what the right thing is.
1039. 00:59:30 Well, when I'm interacting with different people and then we make a partnership or an
1040. 00:59:35 act like we become allies on this topic, well, on the things we disagree with, we have the
1041. 00:59:41 ability now to talk about what the right thing is around what we disagree with.
1042. 00:59:44 And that doesn't mean your perspective is going to change.
1043. 00:59:48 That doesn't mean my perspective is going to change necessarily.
1044. 00:59:50 We may walk out of that saying, nope, we both feel more strongly than we, than we did before
1045. 00:59:55 about our position, but like there also is the other case where we might change our mind
1046. 01:00:00 and be like, oh, I actually see the other side of that argument right now and how that
1047. 01:00:04 works.
1048. 01:00:05 And I think if you take it from the perspective of allies doesn't mean we agree on everything
1049. 01:00:10 and we have to be best friends, allies means we're open to the idea that there might be
1050. 01:00:15 common ground somewhere.
1051. 01:00:17 And if that common ground somewhere benefits people, benefits society, benefits the mission
1052. 01:00:25 that we're trying to accomplish with whatever we're trying to accomplish.
1053. 01:00:28 I mean, that's a, that's a positive.
1054. 01:00:30 So yeah, I, I'm glad you brought up the allies one because I don't think I would have an
1055. 01:00:34 eye and I like that a lot.
1056. 01:00:41 The, the thing just to put a period on the, the sentence for this topic, I think is what
1057. 01:00:43 you were saying and kind of what I really want to just drive home is that when you're
1058. 01:00:48 talking about creating these alliances with people who believe differently than you, you
1059. 01:00:54 have to have the conversations.
1060. 01:00:57 You aren't afraid to talk about the things that you disagree with.
1061. 01:01:02 And you're not going to get violent and come to blows.
1062. 01:01:06 Although there's plenty of historical examples of how that happened.
1063. 01:01:09 He even shared the story like the guy that wasn't a lion, wasn't an alliance with Harvey
1064. 01:01:13 Milk ended up shooting him in the head and murdering him.
1065. 01:01:17 Like that's, that's not the goal.
1066. 01:01:20 But the, the thing that the takeaway for myself and everyone listening to this, I think, is
1067. 01:01:27 that you can't just sweep all that stuff under the rug.
1068. 01:01:30 It's an important part of humanity and who we are.
1069. 01:01:34 And we should be able to have adult conversation about it without people flying off the handle.
1070. 01:01:41 I feel like that's missing a lot.
1071. 01:01:43 It's like, oh, well, that's private.
1072. 01:01:44 You just keep that to yourself.
1073. 01:01:45 Yeah.
1074. 01:01:46 Right.
1075. 01:01:47 And then there are all these people who just push it a little bit further.
1076. 01:01:49 Well, yeah, that's private, but I can't believe people think this.
1077. 01:01:52 And so they'll share that on social media and they'll get a whole bunch of people like,
1078. 01:01:55 yeah, how dare that guy, you know?
1079. 01:01:58 Yep.
1080. 01:01:59 And we'll create this tribalism because we won't talk to people.
1081. 01:02:02 It's stupid.
1082. 01:02:03 I agree.
1083. 01:02:04 I agree.
1084. 01:02:05 Yes, I agree completely.
1085. 01:02:06 All right.
1086. 01:02:07 Exit soapbox.
1087. 01:02:08 Should we go on to part three?
1088. 01:02:09 Yes.
1089. 01:02:10 The all, the all, the all.
1090. 01:02:12 All right.
1091. 01:02:13 So part three is the all and this is, as says in the, the title thinking about kind
1092. 01:02:19 of humanity in, in general, everyone on the, the planet.
1093. 01:02:23 So as I mentioned before, this is the previous section, we're going from talking about,
1094. 01:02:29 talking about people that are on our team to everybody who's not on our team.
1095. 01:02:32 That's really what, what this is, this is about.
1096. 01:02:35 And lots of different things here that I could call out.
1097. 01:02:39 I guess, well, let's start here.
1098. 01:02:41 So we actually covered a book previously, not you and I, but before you join the podcast
1099. 01:02:45 Corey, we covered a book called The Second Mountain by David Brooks.
1100. 01:02:50 And he refers to that in the second chapter of this, this section, Climb Your Second
1101. 01:02:56 Mountain.
1102. 01:02:57 And that book is really impactful for me.
1103. 01:02:59 I'm not sure you know anything about this book.
1104. 01:03:02 I, not, I don't remember much.
1105. 01:03:04 So go for it.
1106. 01:03:05 Okay.
1107. 01:03:06 So if I were to paraphrase the entire book and Ryan Holiday does a great job of it here,
1108. 01:03:12 that we typically spend the first part of our lives very ambitious, trying to achieve things.
1109. 01:03:18 We climb this mountain, we get to the top, and then we feel depressed and we're like,
1110. 01:03:23 is that it?
1111. 01:03:24 And then we look around and we see, oh, there's a second mountain over there.
1112. 01:03:28 And that's the one I should have been climbing the entire time.
1113. 01:03:31 Okay.
1114. 01:03:32 And that second mountain is always about someone else.
1115. 01:03:37 So the first one is like, I'm going to do this for me.
1116. 01:03:39 I'm going to become great.
1117. 01:03:41 And then the second one is really, I'm going to help other people become great.
1118. 01:03:45 I'm going to champion a cause.
1119. 01:03:46 I'm going to help other people.
1120. 01:03:47 I'm going to pay it forward.
1121. 01:03:48 You know, all of the rest of the themes that he talks about in this particular section.
1122. 01:03:54 So I think that second mountain idea is really powerful.
1123. 01:03:57 And again, I do really recommend that book.
1124. 01:04:01 As it pertains to this book, it really doesn't matter what that second mountain is.
1125. 01:04:05 It just has to be about more than your personal well-being.
1126. 01:04:09 And then kind of coupled with that, I think he mentions that as we get older, ambition
1127. 01:04:13 starts to burn away.
1128. 01:04:15 And I guess I'm old enough where I'm starting to experience this where I don't really care
1129. 01:04:23 so much about what sort of success I'm able to achieve.
1130. 01:04:28 Yeah, I've got the goal of 10,000 email subscribers and I want to be able to provide for my family
1131. 01:04:33 and all that kind of stuff.
1132. 01:04:34 But really the thing that keeps me going, the thing that really gives me energy is when
1133. 01:04:42 I am able to help somebody else.
1134. 01:04:44 So the very best case scenario here is that I can make a good living helping other people
1135. 01:04:49 do things that they want to do.
1136. 01:04:51 And I'm still trying to figure out how exactly to do that best.
1137. 01:04:57 But we're getting there.
1138. 01:04:58 I'm making progress.
1139. 01:05:00 And I think this is worth calling out to all listeners of the Bookworm Podcast, whether
1140. 01:05:06 you are, you know, in high school listening to this because you like the books that we're
1141. 01:05:12 reading or you're a seasoned veteran who thinks that your season of life has passed, it hasn't.
1142. 01:05:18 And whether you are 17 or 77, this is something that we should all be keeping in mind.
1143. 01:05:25 This part three was actually my least favorite section of the book.
1144. 01:05:30 It wasn't that it was bad.
1145. 01:05:31 It was just a, it felt, I don't know, it felt more ethereal as the word that's coming to
1146. 01:05:38 my head.
1147. 01:05:39 But I don't know what, if I know what, if I know what I mean by that.
1148. 01:05:41 But it was more like out there.
1149. 01:05:43 So if you talk about, you know, give them hope, be an angel, forgive, make amends.
1150. 01:05:47 Like the ideas were just more abstract or more like kind of out there.
1151. 01:05:53 I also had very little background knowledge on Gandhi.
1152. 01:05:59 So that was interesting to me.
1153. 01:06:01 Like I was learning about, you know, Gandhi, it was almost like a mini bio of Gandhi, which
1154. 01:06:07 was very interesting to me.
1155. 01:06:08 Like one of my major takeaways was Gandhi's seven blunders of humanity.
1156. 01:06:13 So wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without
1157. 01:06:18 without morality, science without humanity, religion without sacrifice and politics without
1158. 01:06:22 principle.
1159. 01:06:23 I thought those were really interesting and like I would love to, I need to go read, that's
1160. 01:06:27 maybe an action item for me.
1161. 01:06:29 Did he write on those?
1162. 01:06:30 Like, does Gandhi have like a, a tome that like talks about those seven, seven blunders?
1163. 01:06:35 I'd be shocked if he didn't.
1164. 01:06:36 But I thought, I thought that was an interesting part of it.
1165. 01:06:40 Another, another one that I, I liked because I resonate with this principle so strongly
1166. 01:06:45 that like, you know, he was preaching to the choir, stop asking for the third thing.
1167. 01:06:50 So the third thing is like the extra recognition, the extra gratitude.
1168. 01:06:55 Like I did the right thing.
1169. 01:06:56 Now somebody tell me how awesome I am, right?
1170. 01:06:59 Like that thing.
1171. 01:07:00 And he makes the statement here.
1172. 01:07:02 This is where you talk about like how he doesn't really sugarcoat.
1173. 01:07:04 He kind of just says it how it is, which I really like about holidays.
1174. 01:07:07 Like you did what you were supposed to do.
1175. 01:07:11 Just move on.
1176. 01:07:12 Like keep going.
1177. 01:07:13 Right.
1178. 01:07:14 And it's like the doing is the reward.
1179. 01:07:15 Like these are the quotes that he has.
1180. 01:07:16 Like he makes these like one off kind of statements in the, in the book.
1181. 01:07:19 And I was like, yes, like I completely agree.
1182. 01:07:23 And maybe I'm jaded by this because I've worked with a group of people or because I
1183. 01:07:26 work with younger, younger students who always want to be told like how, how good what they
1184. 01:07:31 did is, right?
1185. 01:07:32 And it's like, and I get that we all need to be told at some point, you're doing a good
1186. 01:07:36 job.
1187. 01:07:37 Keep it up.
1188. 01:07:38 You're doing a good job.
1189. 01:07:39 Keep it up.
1190. 01:07:40 But like I think I've seen the extreme of that where it's like, Hey, that tiny little
1191. 01:07:43 thing you did, man, you put your name on the top right hand corner of that paper.
1192. 01:07:47 You really killed it.
1193. 01:07:48 You really killed it there.
1194. 01:07:49 And it's like, no, that's just what you do.
1195. 01:07:51 Right?
1196. 01:07:52 You put the name on the, on the file or on the paper.
1197. 01:07:55 But like that was my big one is like stop asking for that third thing in terms of just
1198. 01:08:02 do the right thing and do it right now.
1199. 01:08:04 Just do the right thing and do it right now and just keep moving.
1200. 01:08:06 Yeah.
1201. 01:08:07 In terms of impact, I've heard it said that it's amazing what we could accomplish if we
1202. 01:08:13 didn't care about logos or egos.
1203. 01:08:15 That's sort of tied to this.
1204. 01:08:18 But there's also a quote that he shared, which is awesome, better to do right and go unrewarded
1205. 01:08:23 than to do wrong and go unpunished.
1206. 01:08:25 Oh, yeah.
1207. 01:08:26 Yeah.
1208. 01:08:27 Which I really like that as well.
1209. 01:08:30 The other one that really I guess kind of stood out to me from this section was that
1210. 01:08:36 love wins, which again, you could be like, oh yeah, I've heard that message before.
1211. 01:08:41 But there was a question that he asked here, which kind of challenged me.
1212. 01:08:47 So I remember the original Grinch movie growing up.
1213. 01:08:54 Do you remember that one?
1214. 01:08:55 Oh, yeah.
1215. 01:08:56 Okay.
1216. 01:08:57 So the part in that movie at the beginning where it's like the visual is permanently imprinted
1217. 01:09:04 on my brain about how his heart is two sizes, too small.
1218. 01:09:09 Yes.
1219. 01:09:10 Okay.
1220. 01:09:11 I know exactly what you're talking about.
1221. 01:09:12 Go ahead.
1222. 01:09:13 Okay.
1223. 01:09:14 So the question Ryan Holiday asks and immediately evoked that image was, is your heart growing
1224. 01:09:19 or shrinking?
1225. 01:09:21 Okay.
1226. 01:09:22 Because I think it's difficult and this is sort of tied to the creating alliances.
1227. 01:09:27 And like making your world bigger, right?
1228. 01:09:31 That's what a growing heart does.
1229. 01:09:33 But a shrinking heart is let's batten down the hatches.
1230. 01:09:37 Let's really put up the walls and protect what we have.
1231. 01:09:41 Don't let anybody get in who might disrupt this.
1232. 01:09:46 And that the visual of your heart either growing or shrinking, because I think the principal
1233. 01:09:52 here, which he didn't explicitly say this, but I think I would argue that nothing is
1234. 01:09:57 static.
1235. 01:09:58 It doesn't just stay the same.
1236. 01:10:00 At least what he's talking about here in terms of growing or shrinking.
1237. 01:10:04 It's not that actual physical size of your heart, but just how you feel like, is there
1238. 01:10:10 room in your life for more people besides yourself?
1239. 01:10:15 And that's a challenging question.
1240. 01:10:18 Oh, yeah.
1241. 01:10:19 Because you can't just be like, oh, yeah, yeah, I believe that.
1242. 01:10:22 And of course, I will seek out people with diverse backgrounds and opinions and give them
1243. 01:10:30 a seat at the table and listen to what they have to say.
1244. 01:10:33 That's one thing to say that it's another thing to do that.
1245. 01:10:36 And then you got to put your life under the microscope and you got to say, have I actually
1246. 01:10:41 done that?
1247. 01:10:42 Or have I done it as much as I should?
1248. 01:10:44 Sometimes you haven't done it because you haven't had the opportunity.
1249. 01:10:48 But look for those opportunities then.
1250. 01:10:50 That's kind of where I'm at with this is like look for those opportunities and embrace those
1251. 01:10:54 opportunities and don't just, well, I'm busy right now and I'll come back to that later.
1252. 01:10:59 Going all the way back to the right thing right now, the procrastination being the thing
1253. 01:11:03 that keeps us from doing the right thing.
1254. 01:11:07 I don't have an action item associated with this necessarily, but it was a pretty effective
1255. 01:11:12 way to end the book.
1256. 01:11:14 And I say end the book because the very last chapter in this section comes right after
1257. 01:11:17 that and that's the whole idea of paying it forward and all of us bear a great debt to
1258. 01:11:21 those who sacrificed it yesterday so that we could have better today's.
1259. 01:11:25 We can't just be takers in this life.
1260. 01:11:28 It's a really powerful way to end a discussion about justice in my opinion.
1261. 01:11:35 It's not fully the end because there's the afterword, but the end of this section anyways.
1262. 01:11:39 I think I hope Ryan got to write the title.
1263. 01:11:43 I hope it wasn't part of the editorial process where somebody else came up with it.
1264. 01:11:48 I really hope because I think it's perfect, right?
1265. 01:11:51 The right thing right now and the fact that you could pop it in and he does it a few different
1266. 01:11:56 times throughout the book where he pops it in right now and I'm like, "Dad, go on it.
1267. 01:12:00 That is a really good title."
1268. 01:12:03 Because he does it in such a good way throughout the different parts of the book.
1269. 01:12:07 So I really hope he was the brainchild behind the title.
1270. 01:12:12 Yeah, me too.
1271. 01:12:14 All right.
1272. 01:12:15 Should we talk about the afterword?
1273. 01:12:17 Yeah.
1274. 01:12:18 Okay.
1275. 01:12:19 So the afterword, I don't think that there's a whole lot I need to say about this, but
1276. 01:12:22 it was interesting.
1277. 01:12:24 I think he couldn't have written this afterward with for sure the first book and maybe the
1278. 01:12:30 second book, but at this point he's been practicing Stosism and talking about it long enough
1279. 01:12:35 that it was interesting to hear about this is kind of the way I was prior and this is
1280. 01:12:40 how it's helped me.
1281. 01:12:43 And to be clear, I'm not sure I'm 100% on board with the idea of Stosism.
1282. 01:12:50 I think there are elements of it that I like.
1283. 01:12:53 He mentions in this last section all the different things that he's written about and
1284. 01:12:58 the things that he does about Stosism.
1285. 01:12:59 He mentions the stoic coins, which I actually have one on my desk right here.
1286. 01:13:04 Oh, do you really?
1287. 01:13:05 I wouldn't look them up.
1288. 01:13:06 So that's funny that you have one.
1289. 01:13:07 Okay.
1290. 01:13:08 What you have is a morphe, not merely to bear what is necessary, but to love it.
1291. 01:13:13 So essentially it's the love of fate.
1292. 01:13:16 And kind of as it pertains to the things that he's talking about in this book, you
1293. 01:13:20 know, these things are happening.
1294. 01:13:22 You could get upset that this is happening to you and this is completely unfair and I
1295. 01:13:26 shouldn't have to do this or you could just be, yeah, this is the way that it is.
1296. 01:13:30 May as well make the most out of it.
1297. 01:13:33 And this experience is going to make me a better person in the process.
1298. 01:13:37 And I feel like it's missed opportunity if you're just upset about, oh, this thing is
1299. 01:13:41 unfair and I shouldn't be have, I shouldn't have to go through this.
1300. 01:13:45 I feel like you might get through that and you miss out on the virtue that could have
1301. 01:13:51 been built in your life when you just resented the whole time.
1302. 01:13:54 So I don't know.
1303. 01:13:55 I have it on my desk as like a reminder like, Hey, there's a difficult season that you're
1304. 01:13:58 in.
1305. 01:13:59 You can be upset that this is the difficult season is here or you could be just to embrace
1306. 01:14:03 it and become a better person as a result.
1307. 01:14:07 So I do, I do think that there's, there's value in some of this stuff, but like anything,
1308. 01:14:12 like my approach to reading, you kind of have to test it out for yourself, take what works
1309. 01:14:17 and spit out the sticks.
1310. 01:14:19 He talks about in this section how time and experience should make us more generous and
1311. 01:14:24 less threatened.
1312. 01:14:25 No one throws you a parade when you're doing the right thing.
1313. 01:14:29 He asks a question, are you being a good steward, which that's the thing that got me into doing
1314. 01:14:34 what I'm doing anyways.
1315. 01:14:35 Like I was reading these books and I was teaching a Bible college class on personal management
1316. 01:14:42 and reading Matthew 25, the parable of the town, which is all about biblical stewardship.
1317. 01:14:47 Like, man, this is a big deal.
1318. 01:14:48 Like, we need to be good stewards of what we have been entrusted to and for a long time
1319. 01:14:54 that that has fueled my life theme at this point.
1320. 01:14:57 It's gone through different revisions, but I'm a multiplier.
1321. 01:14:59 I help people multiply their time and talent and leave a bigger dent in the universe.
1322. 01:15:04 So that's very personal to me.
1323. 01:15:08 And then one other like off-handed comment that he made is that men are struggling.
1324. 01:15:13 It seems like with the culture, the higher percentages of women are able to succeed in
1325. 01:15:19 these different scenarios where historically, that hasn't been the case.
1326. 01:15:23 That men in particular tend to be struggling with their role in society.
1327. 01:15:30 And I think there's a much larger rabbit hole to go down there.
1328. 01:15:34 I don't want to go down that today, but I will mention that I bought a book at a used
1329. 01:15:38 book story that I came across that looked interesting by Lewis House.
1330. 01:15:41 Are you familiar with Lewis House?
1331. 01:15:43 Not off the top of my head.
1332. 01:15:45 So Lewis House has an interesting story.
1333. 01:15:47 One of those guys who is living out of friends, sofa, hit rock bottom, and then built himself
1334. 01:15:54 back up.
1335. 01:15:55 He's an ex-football player, runs a very successful podcast and brand called The School of Greatness.
1336. 01:16:01 School of Greatness.
1337. 01:16:02 I actually have seen this before.
1338. 01:16:03 Yeah.
1339. 01:16:04 So he's written another book though, something about the masculinity crisis, something along
1340. 01:16:11 those lines, which I have.
1341. 01:16:12 I bought the book because it looked interesting and I haven't picked it up yet.
1342. 01:16:16 So I don't know exactly what's in there.
1343. 01:16:19 But I think Ryan Holiday is onto something there.
1344. 01:16:24 And I want to dig a little bit deeper into that.
1345. 01:16:30 Maybe that book will make an appearance at some point in the bookworm schedule.
1346. 01:16:33 I haven't decided yet.
1347. 01:16:35 Gotcha.
1348. 01:16:36 So my big takeaway from the afterward, well, let me say what I agree with you first.
1349. 01:16:43 I definitely don't have any issues with the Stoic series, like with the four virtues and
1350. 01:16:49 those type of things.
1351. 01:16:50 But that's because I think they're founded in greater truths, right?
1352. 01:16:54 That my belief system has these greater truths embedded in them.
1353. 01:16:59 So I think they're good.
1354. 01:17:04 So the Stoic series is fine with me.
1355. 01:17:09 I think the thing that my biggest takeaway from the afterward is he talks about this idea
1356. 01:17:13 that people typically start earlier in their life.
1357. 01:17:17 They're more concerned with the all and then they get more conservative as they age.
1358. 01:17:22 And he said, what if it was different?
1359. 01:17:23 What if it was the other way around?
1360. 01:17:25 What if we were more conservative when we're young and then we get more concerned with
1361. 01:17:29 the all later in life?
1362. 01:17:31 And I thought this was a really thought provoking way to think about justice and to think about,
1363. 01:17:37 okay.
1364. 01:17:38 If we are more conservative young and therefore we're working on kind of ourselves and developing
1365. 01:17:45 the virtues and we're working on figuring out a lot of these things for the me and the
1366. 01:17:50 we, how much more powerful will we be to impact the all when we get wisdom and when we get
1367. 01:17:58 older in life and we have more courage and risk is a little bit different because maybe
1368. 01:18:03 we've established ourselves and we're able to do these other things.
1369. 01:18:06 And it's like there's pros and cons to each of these.
1370. 01:18:08 I can fully see the pros and cons to each of these.
1371. 01:18:10 But the fact that he threw it out there as like a thought experiment, I thought, man,
1372. 01:18:14 that's a really interesting way that I've not thought about because you always think
1373. 01:18:18 about a more rebellious is in the right word, but I'll take more risk.
1374. 01:18:23 There you go.
1375. 01:18:24 I'll take more risk at a young age and then I get more conservative as I get older or
1376. 01:18:26 I think more about like just retirement and winding down kind of a thing as I get older.
1377. 01:18:33 What if it was the other way around?
1378. 01:18:34 What if I got more adventurous and more about society and more about the all as I got older
1379. 01:18:39 and I was like, oh, that's a really, really cool way to think about that.
1380. 01:18:42 Yeah.
1381. 01:18:43 And that was actually spurred by a offhanded comment that his dad made at like a dinner
1382. 01:18:48 one time about how just politically people tend to be more liberal when they're younger,
1383. 01:18:53 more conservative when they're older.
1384. 01:18:54 Ryan's like, huh, why is that?
1385. 01:18:56 That shouldn't be the case.
1386. 01:18:57 And I think I agree with that too.
1387. 01:18:59 Yeah.
1388. 01:19:00 All right.
1389. 01:19:02 Well, let's talk about action items.
1390. 01:19:05 Okay.
1391. 01:19:06 You want me to start?
1392. 01:19:07 Oh, yeah, go ahead.
1393. 01:19:08 Okay.
1394. 01:19:09 So I had a couple.
1395. 01:19:11 So the first thing is I want to plan new things into my reflections and my personal retreat.
1396. 01:19:18 So the first thing I want to plan in is are you thinking about what you've or whether
1397. 01:19:22 you've done the right thing and whether you followed your North Star?
1398. 01:19:25 So it's that thing I talked about at the beginning when we were talking about part one.
1399. 01:19:28 I want to actually try to do that.
1400. 01:19:30 So I go, okay, let's analyze the last week, two weeks, month, whatever, however long it
1401. 01:19:35 is and say, did I do the right thing in these situations and these scenarios?
1402. 01:19:40 And if not, why didn't I do the right thing?
1403. 01:19:42 What could I have done to do the right thing?
1404. 01:19:44 Where is it off?
1405. 01:19:45 And then how do I do better next time?
1406. 01:19:47 So I think that's my first action item is to think about those things more actively in
1407. 01:19:51 my reflections.
1408. 01:19:53 The second one is I do want to look up Gandhi seven blunders of humanity and see if there's
1409. 01:19:58 any bit anything written on that, whether or not that's packaged in a series of short
1410. 01:20:03 papers or whether it's packaged in an actual book or a text of some sort and take a look
1411. 01:20:09 at that because I think those would be interesting to unpack.
1412. 01:20:13 How about you?
1413. 01:20:14 All right.
1414. 01:20:15 Well, I just have the one official action item which is to constantly be on the lookout
1415. 01:20:18 for new allies.
1416. 01:20:20 Although I think the impact of having read this book will manifest in multiple other ways.
1417. 01:20:29 I don't know exactly how or when that's the hard thing with picking action items from
1418. 01:20:34 a Ryan Holiday book, in my opinion.
1419. 01:20:37 But I do think this book was pretty impactful.
1420. 01:20:41 So I guess we're getting into style and rating now.
1421. 01:20:43 I may as well just just go there.
1422. 01:20:46 I really like this book.
1423. 01:20:49 I have had mixed reviews on the Stoic virtue series.
1424. 01:20:55 I really enjoyed Courage is Calling.
1425. 01:20:59 I didn't enjoy Discipliniz Destiny quite as much.
1426. 01:21:03 But with this one, we're back, baby.
1427. 01:21:07 Maybe it's just the subject and justice is a thing that is important to me.
1428. 01:21:13 So like the whole concept and the whole book about it seemed like the right thing at the
1429. 01:21:18 right time for me.
1430. 01:21:20 I remember my parents describing me at one point as being, they were talking to somebody
1431. 01:21:29 else.
1432. 01:21:30 They didn't know that I heard I think, but they were describing me as being very self
1433. 01:21:33 righteous.
1434. 01:21:34 And the reason is that I tend to see things as right and wrong.
1435. 01:21:39 There is not a whole lot of gray area in my brain.
1436. 01:21:43 This is the right thing to do.
1437. 01:21:45 So just do it.
1438. 01:21:47 So in a lot of ways, he's preaching to the choir here.
1439. 01:21:51 This is the message that I want to hear.
1440. 01:21:53 But again, it's interesting because he doesn't just say this is where I draw all the lines.
1441. 01:21:58 And he shares a lot of examples where you can tell, we've got some different belief
1442. 01:22:02 systems, but that doesn't mean that I can't learn from the principles that he's talking
1443. 01:22:07 about in this book.
1444. 01:22:09 It may manifest a little bit different in my life.
1445. 01:22:12 I weigh the Jesus examples more than the Buddha examples, but that's just me personally.
1446. 01:22:21 And I actually appreciate the fact that he grabs a whole bunch of reference points outside
1447. 01:22:27 of the stoic philosophers, which is kind of his thing.
1448. 01:22:32 It would be very easy to do that, I think.
1449. 01:22:34 And he does talk about the stoic philosophers.
1450. 01:22:35 He talks about Marcus Aurelius, but he doesn't go nearly as hard on it as someone who is
1451. 01:22:41 steeped in stoicism could.
1452. 01:22:43 I see an alternate scenario where he's like, oh, stoicism is the thing that completely
1453. 01:22:47 changed my life.
1454. 01:22:48 Stoicism is all based on the philosophy of these old guys.
1455. 01:22:51 So really, let's just talk about the old guys.
1456. 01:22:53 And if people do that, I'm gone.
1457. 01:22:56 I'm not interested in that at all.
1458. 01:22:59 But because he sprinkles it in with a whole bunch of other things and a whole bunch of
1459. 01:23:03 other examples and a whole bunch of really awesome stories, which again are woven together
1460. 01:23:07 throughout this book, kind of like a tapestry.
1461. 01:23:10 One of the stories we didn't talk about was the guy, I think his name was Cato.
1462. 01:23:15 He was a prisoner in Carthage and he goes back to Rome because they wanted to do this
1463. 01:23:19 prisoner swap and he gets there and he's like, no, don't do it.
1464. 01:23:21 Just go, you're going to win, so keep up the fight.
1465. 01:23:26 And instead of staying with his family, he goes back and then later on, he finishes the
1466. 01:23:31 story about how when he got back, he was tortured and killed.
1467. 01:23:35 Like, why would you go back?
1468. 01:23:36 And his family is all sad because he's going to, he's like, I have to do it.
1469. 01:23:40 It's the right thing to do.
1470. 01:23:41 They let me go so I could deliver this message.
1471. 01:23:45 And then he goes back and he faces certain death.
1472. 01:23:48 Stories like that are inspiring to me.
1473. 01:23:50 Not that I want to be in that situation.
1474. 01:23:52 But whenever I hear those stories of people who are giving their lives for a cause, it's
1475. 01:23:56 bigger than their own.
1476. 01:23:58 I always admire the resolve that they have and the courage that they have to do the right
1477. 01:24:04 thing.
1478. 01:24:05 And you always kind of ask yourself, could I do that if I was in that situation?
1479. 01:24:08 You'd like to think that you could and you make daily decisions.
1480. 01:24:13 The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.
1481. 01:24:17 So you could do the things daily that you believe are going to create the character that
1482. 01:24:21 you may need to call on when you're in that situation.
1483. 01:24:24 But you never really know until you're there.
1484. 01:24:27 So part of this, you know, read all these stories about people who are making all these
1485. 01:24:31 sacrificial choices.
1486. 01:24:32 And sometimes it's just like, that's stupid.
1487. 01:24:34 Why would they do that?
1488. 01:24:35 Don't they know that they're going to be worse off?
1489. 01:24:38 Those of that, but they can see bigger.
1490. 01:24:39 They've got a bigger vision and they understand how the world is going to be better because
1491. 01:24:43 they are going to do those sorts of things.
1492. 01:24:46 So this book is full of all those stories.
1493. 01:24:48 You mentioned like the make good trouble.
1494. 01:24:50 That's actually a story that I had heard about previously from a different stoic virtue
1495. 01:24:53 series.
1496. 01:24:54 I think maybe it was the courage is calling book.
1497. 01:24:55 He talks more about that John Lewis example.
1498. 01:24:57 So they're not all original, but a lot of them are.
1499. 01:25:01 And a lot of them are told even that John Lewis one in ways that are new.
1500. 01:25:06 It's not just rehashing things that he's said previously.
1501. 01:25:11 You can tell a lot of work went into this book in particular.
1502. 01:25:15 I think because we shared at the beginning, he didn't think it was going to do that well.
1503. 01:25:19 He spent a little bit of extra time with it.
1504. 01:25:22 And I think there's a lot of polish here that that shows.
1505. 01:25:25 And I definitely would recommend this one to, I would say everyone.
1506. 01:25:31 It's not even just the bookworm audience.
1507. 01:25:33 This is one where if I have any inclination that you're interested in doing more of what
1508. 01:25:40 matters, like this is one of the first books that I'm going to recommend for you.
1509. 01:25:44 It's kind of weird to say like, well, this one stands out above all the other stoic virtue
1510. 01:25:48 ones, but it really does in my opinion so far.
1511. 01:25:50 So I think this one is an easy five stars.
1512. 01:25:54 Yeah, I'll get my rating first.
1513. 01:25:56 I agree.
1514. 01:25:57 I think it's an easy five stars.
1515. 01:25:58 I hope when the wisdom one comes out that the wisdom and justice one can be paired together
1516. 01:26:07 and it's a two book set that you just recommend to people left and right.
1517. 01:26:10 It's like, oh, well, I just want to think about making an impact on the world.
1518. 01:26:15 I want to think about the way I'm living my life or I want to think about this.
1519. 01:26:18 It's like, boom, okay, here are these two books.
1520. 01:26:20 Just go take them in peruse and you're going to get good stuff out of them.
1521. 01:26:25 I mean, I was a big fan of the way he weaved things together.
1522. 01:26:32 The stories he told were actually relevant.
1523. 01:26:35 The people that were referenced were relevant and like he doesn't, like you said, he doesn't
1524. 01:26:42 sugarcoat anything.
1525. 01:26:43 He doesn't like try to, you know, he says the good and the bad.
1526. 01:26:45 He doesn't say like, oh, they were perfect or they weren't or anything like that.
1527. 01:26:50 It's like, here's here's the what they are and here's how it ties to the point I'm trying
1528. 01:26:53 to make.
1529. 01:26:54 Overall, I mean, I easily read through this one and walked away going, yeah, like that
1530. 01:26:59 was a good one.
1531. 01:27:00 This is one that I would actually listen to again while I'm running just because there's
1532. 01:27:06 good stuff in there and like stewing on some of these concepts or hearing it the second
1533. 01:27:11 time I think would be valuable for me as I go through.
1534. 01:27:16 The one knock, you know, if I have to, I don't have to, but it's like, there's one knock is
1535. 01:27:21 the intro to each part.
1536. 01:27:24 I didn't always see the tie into that right away.
1537. 01:27:30 Like it should be a little bit longer to get that intro.
1538. 01:27:33 So it's like these would be if you're looking at the table of context right now, they're
1539. 01:27:38 titled to stand before Kings, you to you from falling hands, we throw the torch and then
1540. 01:27:46 to to so love the world.
1541. 01:27:49 Like I didn't always see the tie in for the content within those until maybe later on
1542. 01:27:55 when he tied a couple other pieces back in.
1543. 01:27:57 And it's like, I understand what he was doing.
1544. 01:27:58 He was doing a set in the stage and he was kind of getting us thinking about this new
1545. 01:28:01 part of the book.
1546. 01:28:03 But those would be, I mean, that would be the only one and that's a very, very little,
1547. 01:28:07 like very small kind of blemish on what overall was a fantastic book.
1548. 01:28:13 So easily a five star book, easily one that I would recommend other people to just think
1549. 01:28:19 about justice and think about doing the right thing and doing it right now.
1550. 01:28:23 Yeah.
1551. 01:28:24 And I feel like if everyone in the world bought this book and read it, even if they arrived
1552. 01:28:31 at completely different conclusions of what that looked like, the whole idea of acting
1553. 01:28:39 justly, it would have a significant impact in making the world a better place.
1554. 01:28:45 Yes, I agree.
1555. 01:28:46 All right.
1556. 01:28:48 Let's put right thing right now on the shelf.
1557. 01:28:50 What's next, Corey?
1558. 01:28:51 All right.
1559. 01:28:52 So our next book is a book called uncommon greatness by Mark Miller.
1560. 01:28:59 And I learned about this book.
1561. 01:29:03 He was a former vice president.
1562. 01:29:06 Mark Miller is a former vice president of high performance leadership at Chick-fil-A.
1563. 01:29:11 It's a leadership book.
1564. 01:29:12 So five fundamentals to transform your leadership.
1565. 01:29:16 And I just thought that it would be a fun book to kind of get us an idea of a different
1566. 01:29:22 perspective on leadership.
1567. 01:29:23 So fairly new.
1568. 01:29:25 He has a leadership consulting company.
1569. 01:29:28 He's a best-selling author of a book called culture rules.
1570. 01:29:31 So there's a little bit of face value credibility there.
1571. 01:29:36 And I just thought another book on leadership from this perspective would be really interesting.
1572. 01:29:41 So cool.
1573. 01:29:42 Yeah, I'm looking forward to this one.
1574. 01:29:45 After that, I have picked a book called hidden genius by Paulina Miranova-Pompliano.
1575. 01:29:53 And you're probably thinking, what is this book?
1576. 01:29:55 Who is that?
1577. 01:29:56 I've never heard of this.
1578. 01:29:57 And that was me.
1579. 01:29:59 Prior to listening to a Barrett Brooks good work episode where he interviewed her.
1580. 01:30:05 When I got the book, I realized that the blurb on the front cover is by James Clear.
1581. 01:30:09 I just saw that.
1582. 01:30:11 Yeah, he says, "A goldmine of actionable ideas and useful advice from top performers in all
1583. 01:30:15 fields."
1584. 01:30:16 And if you look at the back, the people who have recommended this, you've got Morgan
1585. 01:30:20 Howl'sl, I guess the rest of it, I saw some other names on the Amazon listing that I recognized.
1586. 01:30:27 People whose opinions I respect, books I enjoyed.
1587. 01:30:30 So the interview was really good.
1588. 01:30:32 I will grab a link to that episode and I'll share it in the notes for people who want to
1589. 01:30:36 check that out.
1590. 01:30:38 But as she was talking about her book, essentially in that podcast, I got interested in it and
1591. 01:30:44 I bought it and I was looking through all the books that are on my bookshelf that we have
1592. 01:30:50 not read yet.
1593. 01:30:51 And I was like, this one looks interesting.
1594. 01:30:55 I saw the James Clear blurb.
1595. 01:30:57 I'm like, this seems like the perfect book for Bookworm.
1596. 01:30:59 Let's give it a shot.
1597. 01:31:02 Wonderful.
1598. 01:31:03 All right.
1599. 01:31:04 And then I do have a gap book and actually before I get book, I have to go back and make
1600. 01:31:07 a correction because I mentioned the Lewis Howl's book and I misstated the name.
1601. 01:31:11 It's the Mask of Masculinity.
1602. 01:31:13 That's the book that I picked up.
1603. 01:31:15 So links to everything we talked about is in the show notes as always.
1604. 01:31:20 So it'll be right there.
1605. 01:31:21 But that makes me happy because I looked that up real quick and I was like, I couldn't
1606. 01:31:24 find it.
1607. 01:31:25 And I was like, that's weird.
1608. 01:31:26 Like, how can I not find that too?
1609. 01:31:27 Sorry about that.
1610. 01:31:28 No, thanks for clarification.
1611. 01:31:30 Real time feedback from myself.
1612. 01:31:34 I've got a gap book that I want to try to read.
1613. 01:31:36 However, I'm getting ready to leave for London.
1614. 01:31:39 I'll be at the relay 10th anniversary show.
1615. 01:31:42 So if you're there, come say hi.
1616. 01:31:44 There's a book that comes out as we record this tomorrow though by a guy named Bob Dotto.
1617. 01:31:49 It's called A System for Writing.
1618. 01:31:51 And I have not pre-bought this yet because it's only available on Kindle for pre-purchase.
1619. 01:31:59 But I have been told, because I've had some back and forth with Bob Dotto, that the paperback
1620. 01:32:03 version will be available when it releases tomorrow.
1621. 01:32:05 And it's basically about Zetlakastin, but Bob is actually someone who speaks intelligently
1622. 01:32:10 about that in this space right now.
1623. 01:32:14 So typically Zetlakastin, you hear about people who idolize Nicholas Lumens and he did all
1624. 01:32:19 these papers and they're these academic people who construct these way too complicated obsidian
1625. 01:32:26 type systems.
1626. 01:32:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1627. 01:32:28 I feel like Bob actually does something with it.
1628. 01:32:30 So I'm looking forward to reading this book.
1629. 01:32:34 You got any gap books?
1630. 01:32:35 Yeah, so I'm working on one that I've been working on for, I don't know, probably four
1631. 01:32:41 months now or something like that.
1632. 01:32:43 But it's, oh my gosh, I'm totally blanking on it.
1633. 01:32:48 It's a work and worship book.
1634. 01:32:49 Oh my gosh, why am I blanking on the name of this book right now?
1635. 01:32:53 Like I'm just-
1636. 01:32:54 New rule, you can't pick a gap book if you don't know what it is.
1637. 01:32:56 Well, I feel so silly that I can't remember the name of this book right now.
1638. 01:33:02 Every good endeavor.
1639. 01:33:03 Oh my goodness, why did it take me so long to get to every good endeavor?
1640. 01:33:05 But I've been, I've been working on it off and on as I read it.
1641. 01:33:08 And then the other one, I've actually kind of got two, it's called The Christian Technology.
1642. 01:33:15 It's a small book that was written based by a guy who developed a chapel series for one
1643. 01:33:23 of the seminaries out in California.
1644. 01:33:25 And then everybody was like, hey, this is really good.
1645. 01:33:28 Like your series was really great.
1646. 01:33:29 Can you turn it into a book?
1647. 01:33:31 So I would call it more of a booklet.
1648. 01:33:33 Like it's a little mini book, but I've been working through those two things and kind
1649. 01:33:37 of popping back and forth as I can find time for those.
1650. 01:33:41 So it's been good.
1651. 01:33:43 It's part of my work as with faculty with the faculty job.
1652. 01:33:47 So that's why I'm wearing those.
1653. 01:33:49 Awesome.
1654. 01:33:50 Well, thanks for listening and a special thanks to the Bookworm Pro members.
1655. 01:33:57 If you want to support the show, you can do that by going to patreon.com/bookwormfm.
1656. 01:34:02 Seven bucks a month gets you access to a couple of perks, a 4k Bookworm wallpaper, a bootleg
1657. 01:34:09 feed that gets uploaded usually the same day as we record this, usually about a couple
1658. 01:34:15 of weeks before it goes live, a profeed which has a separate section and is an ad-free extended
1659. 01:34:21 version of the show.
1660. 01:34:22 Today in the pro version, we talked about running gear.
1661. 01:34:27 And if you are willing to support the show, it really means a lot to both Corey and myself.
1662. 01:34:35 You may have noticed we don't have a ton of ads.
1663. 01:34:36 So this is really the way to keep the show running.
1664. 01:34:41 And if you want to support our work, then you can go to patreon.com/bookwormfm.
1665. 01:34:48 And if you're reading along with us, pick up on Common Greatness by Mark Miller and we'll
1666. 01:34:52 talk to you in a couple of weeks.