31: The Power of a Positive No by William Ury

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1. 00:00:00 I hate that thing when I open up the quick, what do they call it when you command tab?
2. 00:00:05 What's it called?
3. 00:00:06 I know, I just, I'm blinking on it right now.
4. 00:00:09 Yeah, whenever I hit that and I have my mouse.
5. 00:00:12 App switcher.
6. 00:00:13 There you go.
7. 00:00:14 Whenever I'm in the app switcher, I hate it whenever I'm doing that, but my hand is
8. 00:00:17 on the mouse and I accidentally move the mouse and then it automatically selects whatever
9. 00:00:22 the cursor is over.
10. 00:00:24 And then I end up in some random application I didn't want to be in.
11. 00:00:28 I do that more than I care to admit.
12. 00:00:30 Have you ever had it where you start moving the mouse and then it'll start moving to the
13. 00:00:34 right and then you let go of the mouse and it just keeps going?
14. 00:00:38 No, I have not had that.
15. 00:00:40 Yeah, I use a couple different applications that kind of modify that a little bit.
16. 00:00:45 One of them is I've used which, I don't think I have it active at the moment actually, but
17. 00:00:50 it allows you to go instead of just to a specific app, a specific window.
18. 00:00:55 So if you have a bunch of Safari windows open, for example, you can choose the one that you
19. 00:00:59 want to open.
20. 00:01:00 Nice.
21. 00:01:01 So it's kind of nice, but it does funky things with the app switcher and occasionally it
22. 00:01:06 will get stuck in this carousel loop where I can just scroll from left to right and then
23. 00:01:11 go back to the right and scroll again and just keep going.
24. 00:01:14 It's like it's taken over your computer and you can no longer control the thing that you're
25. 00:01:19 supposed to control.
26. 00:01:21 Exactly.
27. 00:01:22 Kind of freaky when you think about it.
28. 00:01:24 That's true.
29. 00:01:25 It's true.
30. 00:01:28 So I'm looking at our list of follow up here and someone sent in, this is a Roger who sent
31. 00:01:35 in a quote via contact form, I believe, on the Bookworm site.
32. 00:01:41 I know this Roger.
33. 00:01:43 You do know this Roger?
34. 00:01:44 Yeah, Roger is a member of the dojo and he's posted essentially like a 12 week year thing
35. 00:01:49 where he wants to be held accountable for writing poetry and his poetry is really good.
36. 00:01:55 I'll try to find a link so we can share it in the show notes and give Roger a shout out.
37. 00:02:01 Nice.
38. 00:02:02 Nice.
39. 00:02:03 Well, I was not familiar with Roger.
40. 00:02:05 So Roger sent in this quote by Mortimer Adler, which I thought was very fitting and I wanted
41. 00:02:11 to share it here.
42. 00:02:12 So here we go.
43. 00:02:13 So Mortimer Adler, in the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can
44. 00:02:18 get through, but rather how many can get through to you, which I thought was very fitting since
45. 00:02:24 that seems to be our intent with Bookworm is not so much about how many books we go through
46. 00:02:29 but getting something out of them.
47. 00:02:31 So there you go.
48. 00:02:32 I liked that one.
49. 00:02:33 It was a good quote.
50. 00:02:34 Thanks, Roger.
51. 00:02:35 Very profound Mortimer/Rodger.
52. 00:02:37 Roger did the hard work of digging it up.
53. 00:02:42 Mortimer did the harder work of figuring it out.
54. 00:02:45 I totally agree with this quote though and I really like it.
55. 00:02:49 I was interesting.
56. 00:02:50 I was listening to your latest Whims at Work and you and Drew were talking about reading
57. 00:02:55 books and I found it interesting the way that Drew reads books where he's got the apple.
58. 00:03:02 You can tell me if I'm messing this up because I was listening to it in the car on the way
59. 00:03:06 you're actually.
60. 00:03:07 Right.
61. 00:03:08 But it sounds like Drew actually has apple notes open and then has kindle kind of on
62. 00:03:11 a slide over.
63. 00:03:13 So he'll read and then he'll go to notes and then he'll take the notes and apple notes
64. 00:03:20 and kind of slide the book over when he's reading it and slide it off when he needs to
65. 00:03:23 get out of the way so you can actually interact with apple notes.
66. 00:03:26 I think that's a really cool idea.
67. 00:03:28 I also like for the life of me cannot get on board with the whole digital books thing.
68. 00:03:34 I've used the overdrive app that he talks about.
69. 00:03:37 Yeah, that's kind of a sticking point for us on that show.
70. 00:03:40 Yeah, it's decent.
71. 00:03:41 And I had the same revelation like, oh my gosh, there are all these awesome ebooks that you
72. 00:03:45 can get with your library card.
73. 00:03:47 That's amazing.
74. 00:03:48 Yeah.
75. 00:03:49 And then also like the whole checking them out thing does seem weird.
76. 00:03:52 And I have like a huge collection of digital books that I never read because I don't know,
77. 00:03:58 Drew is a better person than I because whenever I sit down with a knife ad, it's not long
78. 00:04:05 before I end up in a social media app.
79. 00:04:07 I cannot with a digital device say, okay, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to do this
80. 00:04:12 unless I've got some sort of support system on the Mac that isn't like a physical barrier
81. 00:04:18 where it's like blocking me from those things, but I run the app timing and it gives me a
82. 00:04:23 report.
83. 00:04:24 So I know that if I'm slacking off, I'm going to get a report the next morning.
84. 00:04:29 It says, hey, you were only 50% productive yesterday and I'm going to feel bad about
85. 00:04:33 that.
86. 00:04:34 And I don't like that feeling.
87. 00:04:35 So I try to avoid that.
88. 00:04:36 It's nice.
89. 00:04:37 Yeah, I don't know.
90. 00:04:38 Like Drew's got the whole e-reader thing figured out.
91. 00:04:41 I think he has a little more self discipline than I do because I could not.
92. 00:04:45 I can't do that.
93. 00:04:46 I need to make sure like even when I sit down to read, I make sure my phone, I set it down
94. 00:04:51 on the couch as I'm walking to the other side of the couch such that I can read so that my
95. 00:04:56 phone is not within arm's length.
96. 00:04:58 I have to do that.
97. 00:05:01 Yeah.
98. 00:05:02 And I mean, it's kind of interesting because I used to be a big digital book person.
99. 00:05:07 Like I said, but I found that never read those books.
100. 00:05:09 I was probably one of the first people to embrace digital books.
101. 00:05:13 I remember that Oyster app that he was talking about.
102. 00:05:15 It was awesome.
103. 00:05:16 And then I remember seeing like when Kindle Unlimited was announced, my initial thought
104. 00:05:20 was this sounds amazing.
105. 00:05:23 They're probably going to have a bunch of junky books in there and it's not going to
106. 00:05:25 be anything close to Oyster, but no one's going to understand that.
107. 00:05:29 And Oyster is going to go to business within six months.
108. 00:05:31 That's basically what happened.
109. 00:05:33 That's exactly what happened.
110. 00:05:35 But I've gone like completely the other way where I'm now as much of a book snob.
111. 00:05:38 I feel as I am a coffee snob where like I don't even just get like the physical books.
112. 00:05:42 I get the hardcover books whenever possible.
113. 00:05:45 Nice.
114. 00:05:46 Because I like stacking up all those hard covers on my bookshelf.
115. 00:05:49 Well, I'm with you on the paper book thing.
116. 00:05:54 That's something that I know it helps me in a lot of different ways.
117. 00:05:57 But I like seeing the physical books because then I can look back at these are the ones
118. 00:06:03 I've gone through.
119. 00:06:05 And I do, especially whenever I'm putting a book away after I've finished reading it,
120. 00:06:10 I have a habit of looking through the ones that are the other ones that are on that shelf.
121. 00:06:15 And I keep finished books and yet to read books separate on my bookshelf.
122. 00:06:22 So I can always see the ones that I have completed.
123. 00:06:24 And I like to look through that shelf to see here are the ones I've gone through.
124. 00:06:29 And it's not uncommon for me to see one of those pick it up and thumb through it just
125. 00:06:33 out of curiosity.
126. 00:06:34 And I don't think I would ever do that with a digital library.
127. 00:06:39 I don't think I would, as I complete a book, I wouldn't look through the list of books
128. 00:06:45 that are there.
129. 00:06:46 Not to mention it'd be a lot harder to do that all at one shot.
130. 00:06:50 But I just don't see myself ever doing that.
131. 00:06:53 Right.
132. 00:06:54 So on the topic of analog versus digital, why don't you tell us about your new email machine?
133. 00:06:59 My new email machine.
134. 00:07:01 That's one way to look at it, I suppose.
135. 00:07:03 So if you're in the latest whims at work, you've heard about my new computer.
136. 00:07:10 And for the listeners, if you want to know that whole story as to why I have a new computer
137. 00:07:13 and all that, you can go check out that episode.
138. 00:07:16 I'm not going to repeat all of that here because it's kind of a long story.
139. 00:07:20 But I have a new MacBook Pro, of course, Space Grey, but it's one of the new new new new
140. 00:07:29 new ones.
141. 00:07:30 So it's what, three weeks old, four weeks old maybe as of when they released it.
142. 00:07:34 Yeah, it's better than mine.
143. 00:07:36 Yeah, it's pretty sweet.
144. 00:07:39 And it makes my life much nicer in the world of what I do on my Mac.
145. 00:07:44 So I'm excited about said Mac.
146. 00:07:47 Yeah, it's looking at the specs that you got here.
147. 00:07:50 It's fairly identical to mine.
148. 00:07:52 I'm a little bit surprised also that you went with the 13 inch just because the 13
149. 00:07:56 inch does not have a dedicated video card, which I know from past experience, I had the
150. 00:08:02 same thought.
151. 00:08:03 I love the 13 inch.
152. 00:08:04 I'm going to stick with 13 inch because of the portability.
153. 00:08:06 And then hit the wall where I was bashing my head against it because it couldn't export
154. 00:08:11 videos and it was basically taxed to the limit.
155. 00:08:16 So you have to let us know how that works maybe about six months, I guess.
156. 00:08:21 Well, I debated the 15, but it's just too big for I move around and travel enough that
157. 00:08:28 it's just too much to try to do that.
158. 00:08:30 I'm not going to have multiple machines for things like that.
159. 00:08:33 I have run some video through it and I can tell you it's significantly faster than the
160. 00:08:40 one I had previously.
161. 00:08:42 And I think that has more to do with the 16 giga ram that I have on it.
162. 00:08:48 I think that's mostly what it is, but I'm with you.
163. 00:08:53 I know that the dedicated video card would have made it even faster, but the way that
164. 00:08:58 my workflows are are set up.
165. 00:09:00 I don't get too caught up in in the need for that because if I'm if I'm cranking out
166. 00:09:06 like a 10 minute video, which is a longer video for me, like even doing that, it only
167. 00:09:12 takes it like 30 minutes to crank it out.
168. 00:09:15 So I can easily work on the next one.
169. 00:09:18 If I've got that and by the time I've got the next one ready to go, that one's done.
170. 00:09:21 So it doesn't really change anything and it just it essentially takes me from needing
171. 00:09:26 to wait on it to not waiting on it.
172. 00:09:28 And that's a big deal in my workflows.
173. 00:09:32 Fair enough.
174. 00:09:33 That's what I also also touch ID on the Mac.
175. 00:09:38 Oh, yeah.
176. 00:09:39 Yeah, it's awesome.
177. 00:09:41 I like touch ID.
178. 00:09:42 I could care less about the touch bar.
179. 00:09:45 Really?
180. 00:09:46 See love touch bar.
181. 00:09:47 You heard that episode.
182. 00:09:48 I love touch bar.
183. 00:09:49 I did.
184. 00:09:50 Yeah.
185. 00:09:51 And I was kind of surprised honestly because the touch bar, the issue I have with it is
186. 00:09:54 that it's supposed to be context aware and switch with the apps that you're using, but
187. 00:10:00 the the fact that it changes means that the buttons aren't always in the same place.
188. 00:10:07 And so I find it very difficult to establish any sort of like muscle memory that you would
189. 00:10:12 with traditional keyboard shortcuts using the the controls that are on the touch bar itself.
190. 00:10:19 And I find that I end up just bumping it by accident more often than not.
191. 00:10:24 Now see, this is where I think some of my developer habits come in because that muscle memory
192. 00:10:30 on the touch bar translates perfectly.
193. 00:10:34 And I think that's because so many of the applications I use.
194. 00:10:37 I treat touch bar as like another keyboard shortcut.
195. 00:10:42 And that essentially means that I have context aware keyboard shortcuts and they may be the
196. 00:10:49 same shortcut, but they do different things in different applications.
197. 00:10:52 So I'm already used to that process.
198. 00:10:55 And whenever it gets to the touch bar, like even using Apple mail, I know where the archive
199. 00:11:01 and delete buttons are.
200. 00:11:02 And even though they are right next to each other on the touch bar, I don't think I've
201. 00:11:06 missed once on hitting the right one.
202. 00:11:10 So and I'm not even looking at it anymore.
203. 00:11:12 So yeah, I could see what you're getting at.
204. 00:11:15 I think for me, I'm so sensitive in how I move and use input devices on my Mac that
205. 00:11:21 it just doesn't matter.
206. 00:11:22 Well, if it's working for you, more power to you, but I don't understand.
207. 00:11:29 I guess you can show me in a couple of days.
208. 00:11:32 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
209. 00:11:33 I'll show it to you.
210. 00:11:34 It's pretty slick, I think, but that's maybe that's just because I've customized it in
211. 00:11:39 a couple of small ways to make that possible.
212. 00:11:41 Like I've seen a few people that think I'm crazy because I use I put the lock button right
213. 00:11:46 next to the touch ID sensor.
214. 00:11:49 And that essentially means that as I'm hitting the delete button, if I go too high, I will
215. 00:11:54 accidentally lock the computer, which happens, but not very frequently.
216. 00:11:59 But whenever that does happen, it's very easy to slide over, push the touch ID button
217. 00:12:04 to kick it back on and then automatically logs in.
218. 00:12:06 So it's like this one second whoops.
219. 00:12:09 It's probably way quicker than hitting the Siri button and then having it sit there and
220. 00:12:13 try to process what you're saying, even when you're not saying anything and then say,
221. 00:12:16 Oh, right.
222. 00:12:17 I didn't get that.
223. 00:12:18 Here's what you can say.
224. 00:12:19 I don't like it to quit.
225. 00:12:20 Yeah, I don't use Siri on the Mac.
226. 00:12:24 I don't know why it just seems weird to me.
227. 00:12:27 I figure if I'm going to do that, I'm going to use my phone.
228. 00:12:30 You can only see the phrase.
229. 00:12:32 Your file and it's so style in so many times.
230. 00:12:34 There you go.
231. 00:12:36 All right.
232. 00:12:37 Talk about your new journal and meditation.
233. 00:12:40 Yeah.
234. 00:12:41 Actually, one other thing I want to point out here regarding the Mac book and the touch
235. 00:12:44 bar.
236. 00:12:46 Are you do you use better touch tool at all?
237. 00:12:48 I don't.
238. 00:12:49 Okay.
239. 00:12:50 Check out better touch tool because they actually have the ability to program these,
240. 00:12:53 essentially, the keyboard might show type shortcuts, but you can, instead of having it
241. 00:12:58 assigned to a swipe gesture or a keyboard combination, you can actually create workflow
242. 00:13:03 buttons for your touch bar.
243. 00:13:06 Interesting.
244. 00:13:07 Now, see, I can maybe see.
245. 00:13:08 Maybe.
246. 00:13:09 Maybe.
247. 00:13:10 Yeah.
248. 00:13:11 I can maybe see getting behind that.
249. 00:13:12 I have not gone the route of better touch tool in the past.
250. 00:13:15 It's something I'm very aware of and have considered a number of times, but I've never
251. 00:13:19 gotten into it.
252. 00:13:21 I've also never gotten into keyboard maestro at all because it's very easy for me to get
253. 00:13:28 me to just use Automator to create services and write my own scripts for that and assign
254. 00:13:32 them keyboard shortcuts.
255. 00:13:33 So I don't.
256. 00:13:34 I suppose if you know scripting, then Automator's got just about everything that you would
257. 00:13:39 possibly need.
258. 00:13:40 Right.
259. 00:13:41 Right.
260. 00:13:42 And I had done a two part, I think two part series for screencast online on Mac automation.
261. 00:13:48 And it was right after the new Mac book pros had come out and I had one with a touch bar.
262. 00:13:52 And so I'd saw something about better touch tool being able to use like the touch bar
263. 00:13:55 shortcut.
264. 00:13:56 And it's kind of an example of that if you go into screencasts online, but I've only
265. 00:14:01 scratched the surface of it.
266. 00:14:02 But it seems like if you're really going to use a touch bar to customize your workflow,
267. 00:14:07 which is kind of the potential there, then better touch tools.
268. 00:14:11 Definitely worth a look.
269. 00:14:12 Yeah.
270. 00:14:13 I'll take a look.
271. 00:14:14 I know promises.
272. 00:14:16 I tend to dial things in.
273. 00:14:19 And then once I know how they work, I tend to leave them because I can become more efficient
274. 00:14:23 with them that way.
275. 00:14:24 So makes sense.
276. 00:14:25 I'm not much of a fiddler anymore, it seems.
277. 00:14:28 All right.
278. 00:14:30 So my new journal, let me grab a link here because this is going to be a little bit difficult
279. 00:14:37 to explain.
280. 00:14:41 So after we recorded the 12 week year episode for theoretical accountability here, other
281. 00:14:48 podcasts.
282. 00:14:49 All right.
283. 00:14:50 Because you joined us.
284. 00:14:51 Yeah, I was kind of in the middle of my 12 week year planning and I had done the planning,
285. 00:14:59 but it was still looking for a system that help it stick and help me follow through with
286. 00:15:04 it every single day.
287. 00:15:06 And then randomly I saw this and maybe was even an Instagram ad, which was odd, but I
288. 00:15:14 gave it a look and I ordered it and it's awesome.
289. 00:15:17 So now I need to find Chrome and I'll paste this here for you.
290. 00:15:21 This is called the self journal.
291. 00:15:25 And what it is, is it is essentially a moleskin type journal, which has a bunch of stuff built
292. 00:15:32 into it.
293. 00:15:33 Like the pages are designed to help you implement successfully a 12 week year.
294. 00:15:38 They don't call it 12 week year.
295. 00:15:39 It's not branded 12 week year.
296. 00:15:40 In fact, they say like a 13 week period or something like that.
297. 00:15:44 But it follows that same timeframe.
298. 00:15:46 Yeah, it's the same concept.
299. 00:15:48 And so what you do at the beginning of the journal is there's these different sections.
300. 00:15:52 So there's a section where you identify your three goals and then the three things that
301. 00:15:58 you need to do underneath each of those goals.
302. 00:16:01 There's a page for every week.
303. 00:16:02 So you can go back weekly and evaluate your week.
304. 00:16:05 And then there are the daily pages where it's got space where you can plan out your
305. 00:16:11 day.
306. 00:16:12 So there's like a six to nine, I think on the left and then on the right, there's like
307. 00:16:15 places to add notes.
308. 00:16:17 So it's kind of like a calendar, but then there's also space for like morning gratitude, evening
309. 00:16:22 gratitude, what are the things that would make today a win, there's space to write your
310. 00:16:26 goal so that you see it every single day.
311. 00:16:29 And it's just something that is designed to help the 12 week year approach actually stick.
312. 00:16:35 Now I've only been doing this since the beginning of this week.
313. 00:16:38 So three days.
314. 00:16:40 But maybe not enough to know.
315. 00:16:44 Definitely not enough to say that yes, this is the thing, but I'm super excited about
316. 00:16:48 what I am seeing with this because this is part of like a whole bunch of things that
317. 00:16:52 have been happening that have all kind of aligned together.
318. 00:16:55 Okay.
319. 00:16:56 So I also mentioned, I think on theoretical accountability, the book 10% Happier by Dan
320. 00:17:01 Harris, which is actually my gap book for today.
321. 00:17:05 So maybe we'll talk about this a little bit later.
322. 00:17:07 But that is Dan Harris of NBC Nightline who had a panic attack on the air and then decided
323. 00:17:13 to try meditation.
324. 00:17:16 And it's basically it's not even like a prescriptive type book where like a lot of the books that
325. 00:17:22 we read for for book remarks, more like a biography.
326. 00:17:25 It's more just his story about how he thought meditation was crazy and then he ended up
327. 00:17:29 going to this 10 day silent retreat and he's like, why the heck am I here?
328. 00:17:33 And then the breakthroughs that he had and all that type of stuff.
329. 00:17:36 But he's a really, really good writer and the story is awesome.
330. 00:17:40 And it's just very easy to track with it in the way that he writes.
331. 00:17:44 I felt like he was speaking directly to me in a lot of the situations.
332. 00:17:48 Like there's a lot of a lot of very similar situations I felt like or a lot of similar
333. 00:17:53 emotions, at least the way that he was describing them.
334. 00:17:56 And so like I've known for a while, we've talked about on this podcast that meditation
335. 00:18:01 is something that would be beneficial for me.
336. 00:18:03 And after reading that book, going through the 12 like your stuff, I actually have one
337. 00:18:08 of my 12 week your goals is to establish a meditation habit.
338. 00:18:13 And so having the the the self journal as a place where I'm tracking those habits and
339. 00:18:20 being forced to go back to that journal multiple times per day because there's the morning
340. 00:18:24 gratitude and the evening gratitude is making this stuff stick.
341. 00:18:30 And again, very small sample size.
342. 00:18:32 I know that.
343. 00:18:33 But I can also tell you that my wife and I were talking just last night actually about
344. 00:18:38 the changes that she's seen in me since I started doing this because what the meditation
345. 00:18:43 practice does and I think that there's a couple pieces here.
346. 00:18:47 It's the meditation in the morning because I do it in the morning.
347. 00:18:50 And it's also coupled with the gratitude that's part of this self journal.
348. 00:18:56 That just like completely changes how I approach my day.
349. 00:19:01 I can't even describe exactly what the change is.
350. 00:19:04 But I can tell you that whenever I encounter something, I'm able to understand like in the
351. 00:19:11 book that the 10% happier book he talks about how meditation is essentially mindfulness
352. 00:19:16 and recognizing that this thing is happening.
353. 00:19:18 But you don't have to get upset about it.
354. 00:19:19 You don't have to get super excited about it.
355. 00:19:21 You can just be grateful that this thing is happening.
356. 00:19:23 You can observe it and then you can move on to the next thing.
357. 00:19:24 You can always be fully present.
358. 00:19:27 I think is how how he put it.
359. 00:19:28 That's kind of a buzzword in the productivity space.
360. 00:19:31 But hopefully that makes sense.
361. 00:19:34 And I've noticed that.
362. 00:19:35 I've noticed that where like I can just appreciate what is happening without stressing about
363. 00:19:42 all the things that I know I have to do today, even though nothing else has changed from
364. 00:19:46 a task management perspective.
365. 00:19:49 It's literally just I'm getting up a little bit earlier.
366. 00:19:52 I'm writing down this gratitude in this best self journal.
367. 00:19:57 And I am meditating for five minutes before I start my day.
368. 00:20:00 And it's made an incredible difference.
369. 00:20:03 So there will probably be another meditation book on the horizon.
370. 00:20:07 It'll make you go with me.
371. 00:20:09 How long have you been doing this meditation thing?
372. 00:20:12 Because if you're seeing that much of a benefit in how long of a time?
373. 00:20:17 Just a couple of days.
374. 00:20:18 I started it this week.
375. 00:20:19 So I don't know, three days, four days.
376. 00:20:22 Wow.
377. 00:20:23 That is the...
378. 00:20:24 But it's the...
379. 00:20:25 It's the difference in that sort of time.
380. 00:20:26 Consistency though.
381. 00:20:27 Yeah, I'm not like Dan Harris mentions in a podcast that he's got a 10% happier podcast
382. 00:20:36 as well.
383. 00:20:37 There was an episode I listened to where they had Gary Vaynerchuk on and they were trying
384. 00:20:40 to get him to meditate, which was entertaining.
385. 00:20:42 But Gary Vee asked him like, "Well, how long do you meditate?"
386. 00:20:45 And he's like, "I meditate for two hours every day."
387. 00:20:47 And Gary Vee's like, "Oh, that would be great.
388. 00:20:49 I'd love to not have all this stuff to do."
389. 00:20:51 And Dan's like, "No, I got lots of stuff to do.
390. 00:20:52 That's why I have to meditate."
391. 00:20:54 Because if I don't meditate, I'm not in the proper mental space to handle these things
392. 00:20:58 the right way.
393. 00:20:59 They take longer, I mess up, I've got to do it over.
394. 00:21:02 And that was just kind of like a bombshell to Gary Vee.
395. 00:21:07 But I've noticed that on a micro level.
396. 00:21:10 I'm not going away on a 10-day silent retreat.
397. 00:21:12 I'm not doing this for hours a day, but I can tell you that from doing it consistently,
398. 00:21:18 even for a very small time period, it has made a huge difference.
399. 00:21:22 Interesting.
400. 00:21:23 Yeah.
401. 00:21:24 I've gone down that path before and after a few days, even after a couple weeks of doing
402. 00:21:30 it every single day, still didn't see even what you're seeing in two days.
403. 00:21:35 So that's why I'm kind of like, "Wow."
404. 00:21:37 Because it didn't get anywhere close to that for me.
405. 00:21:39 Yes, see, I've done that before too.
406. 00:21:41 I've tried it, quote unquote, before too.
407. 00:21:44 And it's not worked.
408. 00:21:45 And so as I'm thinking about what is different this time, I think it's a couple of things.
409. 00:21:49 Number one, I read that 10% happy book.
410. 00:21:51 And even though it's a lot of just the story behind it, Dan Harris is a really good job
411. 00:21:56 of explaining the things that he's learned along the way.
412. 00:21:59 And so it's an entertaining read that gives you, I think, a pretty good idea of what meditation
413. 00:22:03 should be or mindfulness should be without the prescriptive, very traditional Eastern
414. 00:22:09 philosophy type stuff.
415. 00:22:11 And that's what most people think of if they're not familiar with meditation, is like the
416. 00:22:14 Eastern religion, the Buddhism, stuff like that.
417. 00:22:18 And there is, I don't know how to describe this, the practice of meditation couples nicely
418. 00:22:25 with that belief system, I guess.
419. 00:22:28 But that doesn't mean that you can't use the practice of meditation.
420. 00:22:30 Like for me, it's explicitly a Christian belief system.
421. 00:22:35 You can, they're not mutually exclusive.
422. 00:22:38 You don't have to pick one or the other.
423. 00:22:40 And I think that it's not necessarily, I don't know.
424. 00:22:46 I guess it's kind of unfortunate that it's been coupled so closely with Buddhism because
425. 00:22:50 I think that's alienating to a lot of people like myself who are just kind of like, oh,
426. 00:22:55 I don't want to go into meditation because that's taboo or whatever.
427. 00:23:00 There's a stigma associated with that, which whether you believe it to be right or wrong,
428. 00:23:04 like you kind of want to distance yourself from it if you don't really understand it.
429. 00:23:08 But the practice of meditation, if you're able to isolate it, I think, is a lot of value.
430. 00:23:12 And in that episode with Gary V, he talks about the reason that he's on there is he thinks
431. 00:23:17 that this is the next big health breakthrough that in the future everybody's going to be
432. 00:23:22 meditating because there's all this research that's being done right now that shows that
433. 00:23:26 it helps you in all these different areas.
434. 00:23:29 So he thinks that essentially there's a lot of money to be made in meditation in the future.
435. 00:23:36 But.
436. 00:23:37 Interesting.
437. 00:23:38 Okay, well, I am looking forward to the book that you're potentially proposing somewhere
438. 00:23:45 in the future on this.
439. 00:23:47 I will jump into it wholeheartedly with you and read through.
440. 00:23:52 But I will remain as skeptic because I've tried it multiple times.
441. 00:23:55 So you need to keep this going so you can continue to tell me that it's helpful.
442. 00:24:00 Fair enough.
443. 00:24:01 And the other thing I think that makes this work for me is that I've made this part of
444. 00:24:05 my 12 week year and again, like that journal helps me because I've written it all down
445. 00:24:09 now.
446. 00:24:10 It's pen and paper like I can't change it.
447. 00:24:13 I could obviously like cross it off and write something else if I wanted to.
448. 00:24:15 But I've said that in the next 90 days I'm going to give this my best shot.
449. 00:24:19 And so if I say two weeks from now that, oh, this isn't really a work in, I'm just going
450. 00:24:23 to give up on this like I've sabotaged my 12 week year.
451. 00:24:27 So I think that that creates a little bit.
452. 00:24:30 It makes it a little bit more sticky as well.
453. 00:24:33 Makes sense.
454. 00:24:34 All right.
455. 00:24:35 How's the conflict in every meeting going?
456. 00:24:39 This is interesting.
457. 00:24:40 Okay.
458. 00:24:41 So my wife listened to the five dysfunctions of a team.
459. 00:24:43 She really liked that episode.
460. 00:24:45 She she could tolerate Josh.
461. 00:24:49 She loved Josh's perspective on that book.
462. 00:24:52 So that was that was pretty cool.
463. 00:24:54 She said that was really interesting.
464. 00:24:57 The dynamic with all three of us.
465. 00:24:59 So that was that was a fun episode to record.
466. 00:25:03 It was like it's a fun episode to listen to at least according to my wife.
467. 00:25:06 Yeah.
468. 00:25:07 And that's one of those things.
469. 00:25:08 We are on it.
470. 00:25:09 So you can't get a true feel for how people will see it.
471. 00:25:14 And I eat the number of times that I wish I could see how someone else views this podcast.
472. 00:25:20 I so value that perspective because I can't get it.
473. 00:25:25 Right.
474. 00:25:26 Absolutely.
475. 00:25:27 But coming back to the conflict in every meeting thing.
476. 00:25:30 So my wife is on board with this and she understands the the principal.
477. 00:25:35 And so we've kind of applied that to our family meetings where she actually brought it up
478. 00:25:40 last time.
479. 00:25:41 She's like, okay, so where's the conflict here?
480. 00:25:43 Like, what are we actually resolving?
481. 00:25:46 I actually brought it up last night even in we've got an outreach team that we had up
482. 00:25:51 at our church.
483. 00:25:52 And so there's a eight people that we work with on this on this team.
484. 00:25:55 Well, awesome.
485. 00:25:56 And six others.
486. 00:25:58 And I actually mentioned that like I was casting the vision essentially for how we want the
487. 00:26:02 team to work.
488. 00:26:03 And I brought up the fact that like we want this to be the place where we can have discussion.
489. 00:26:07 We don't want just a list of agenda items like this is communication.
490. 00:26:10 We want to tell you we want there to be actual communication.
491. 00:26:13 We want your input.
492. 00:26:15 We want way in before there's buy in.
493. 00:26:17 And if you have any issues or any concerns about anything like we want to have honest
494. 00:26:21 and open discussion about it here.
495. 00:26:23 And I actually use the phrase we want conflict in every meeting.
496. 00:26:27 So I'm trying to I'm trying to spread this slowly.
497. 00:26:31 But one thing that I have noticed with this is I have to be careful about how I bring the
498. 00:26:36 conflict because there are some teams that I am involved with where they don't have this
499. 00:26:45 mindset at all.
500. 00:26:47 And if I try to bring conflict, it can appear to come across as a personal attack I've discovered.
501. 00:26:54 And it's that sounds like you've been burnt a couple times.
502. 00:26:58 Not necessarily.
503. 00:27:00 But I was having a meeting and then somebody brought up like I said something in the meeting
504. 00:27:05 essentially just to kind of correct a problem that I had had seen or an observation that
505. 00:27:10 I made and like okay if we really want this to be successful this is what we all should
506. 00:27:13 do.
507. 00:27:14 And afterwards somebody comes to me and is like hey you were talking about me and this
508. 00:27:16 guy right and I'm like oh no sorry I didn't even think about that because my mind it's
509. 00:27:21 weird.
510. 00:27:22 I don't want to I don't want to make it sound like I've arrived or anything like that.
511. 00:27:26 But like my approach to meetings is completely different than how other people approach meetings
512. 00:27:31 I am recognizing.
513. 00:27:33 And so my interpretation of the events in the meetings is completely different from other
514. 00:27:38 people's interpretation of the events.
515. 00:27:40 So that's kind of the revelation I've had is I need to be careful and consider all the
516. 00:27:45 possible ways that this could be interpreted until I guess the teams that I'm on get to
517. 00:27:53 that same point where we've battled through all of those five different levels or all
518. 00:27:59 the those five different dysfunctions and we can have that honest and open conversation
519. 00:28:02 that's obviously the goal.
520. 00:28:04 But I can't just show up and be like I conflict.
521. 00:28:07 Yeah.
522. 00:28:08 That's like an end well.
523. 00:28:09 Right.
524. 00:28:10 Right.
525. 00:28:11 So many of the meetings I get into there with clients and it's typically because I don't
526. 00:28:16 really have to I don't have to work to create the conflict not create it but to to work
527. 00:28:22 through a conflict because typically whenever I'm on a call or in meeting over video or
528. 00:28:28 something like that which is always interesting when you get other cultures involved.
529. 00:28:31 But whenever I'm in those they have a problem that I'm there to solve.
530. 00:28:38 If you really boil it down there is a conflict or something that we're trying to work through
531. 00:28:42 as it is because they want something they want a new website they want features added
532. 00:28:47 to an existing platform like there is something that doesn't work and they want it fixed.
533. 00:28:52 So they are bringing the conflict which makes my life a lot easier.
534. 00:28:56 But it also gets very tricky like I alluded to a little bit ago is whenever you throw
535. 00:29:00 in another culture or a different a different way of doing meetings it just complicates things
536. 00:29:06 and makes it very tricky.
537. 00:29:10 Yeah I can I can totally see that I haven't had to necessarily deal with that I don't
538. 00:29:15 believe but yeah so conflict every meeting is.
539. 00:29:19 I don't know that you would ever I don't think you would need to know or see that.
540. 00:29:26 Does that make sense because I think with your with what you do you're doing maybe some
541. 00:29:31 one-on-one stuff but you have a set number of teams that you're involved with and you
542. 00:29:36 tend to build longer term relationships with those whereas in my scenario it's very easy
543. 00:29:41 for me to be meeting with a different team every single week.
544. 00:29:45 Yeah that's that's true that that is definitely true.
545. 00:29:50 So conflict every meeting is still a work in progress but I feel like we're we're getting
546. 00:29:54 there.
547. 00:29:55 Yeah yeah cool.
548. 00:29:58 Well on that note let's transition into today's book because talking about conflict there's
549. 00:30:02 always going to be the the time when you need to say no and that brings us into today's
550. 00:30:08 book which is my pick of the power of a positive no by William Murray and this is one that I
551. 00:30:15 feel is it floats around the productivity world quite a bit it seems and it's it's extremely
552. 00:30:23 helpful you know that William Murray has had a handful of books that came out before this
553. 00:30:30 and this is a way because he's the author of getting to yes and he realized in the process
554. 00:30:37 of writing that and going through with people after the fact that there's also the side of
555. 00:30:42 saying no not just yes so this is kind of the counter to that which is very helpful because
556. 00:30:49 we all need to say no and we need to say no more often I definitely needed this.
557. 00:30:55 So I'm curious why specifically did you pick this book.
558. 00:31:01 I pick this yeah I there's a little bit of an ulterior well not ulterior but alternative
559. 00:31:08 motive maybe in that I am a recovering people pleaser and I love solving problems and it
560. 00:31:15 doesn't matter if they're mine or someone else and the trouble with that is whenever
561. 00:31:22 someone has a problem and I'm aware of it my instinct is to go fix and although that's
562. 00:31:29 a very good instinct to have in a lot of scenarios especially the world that I've decided to
563. 00:31:35 work in it's very easy to become overwhelmed and that's something that I'm working through
564. 00:31:42 right now with some of the goals that I've got on my 12 week year with Josh on theoretical
565. 00:31:47 I'm working through some of that with him is I've just got a lot going on and I'm trying
566. 00:31:51 to fine tune that into where I should be learning where to say no so as I so that I
567. 00:31:55 know where to say yes.
568. 00:31:57 Gotcha yeah that that makes sense I think that going into this this book I wasn't exactly
569. 00:32:05 what I anticipated I really enjoyed it we'll get into the specifics here but I can definitely
570. 00:32:12 see this being the type of title that would jump out to you if you're feeling overwhelmed
571. 00:32:19 by everything that you've said yes to but I also feel like the information that they
572. 00:32:26 provided here is not necessarily stuff that is going to fix your problem overnight which
573. 00:32:33 is I guess not implicitly yeah exactly exactly it's not implicitly said in the title but it's
574. 00:32:41 the kind of thing that like you see the title and you're like oh this this I need right
575. 00:32:47 it wasn't it wasn't exactly that it was really good information but it was more more general
576. 00:32:51 stuff that I thought then just like okay this is what I need to do right now to fix everything
577. 00:32:55 that's wrong in my life yeah I would agree it was very different than what I was expecting
578. 00:33:00 I I was expecting I guess a little bit more of here's how to say no and here's what that
579. 00:33:07 will create for you like that's kind of what I was expecting and that's kind of in there
580. 00:33:13 but it it the more I went through it the more I realized this is about the process of saying
581. 00:33:19 no and the nuances that can come in the process of saying no is that fair yeah that's a very
582. 00:33:26 good description I totally agree and honestly this was kind of a hard one to outline for
583. 00:33:32 bookworm in fact just a couple minutes ago I was moving stuff around on the outline and
584. 00:33:36 I didn't even add anything to what you put here because I didn't know what to add because
585. 00:33:41 it's broken down in a kind of interesting interesting way there's essentially like nine
586. 00:33:48 chapters in the in the beginning part of it where they're broken down into different sections
587. 00:33:52 like prepare where the three things under there are uncover your yes and power your
588. 00:33:57 no respect your way to yes then there's the deliver where you express your yes to start
589. 00:34:01 your no proposal yes and we'll get into the formula here in a little bit and then follow
590. 00:34:05 through where you stay true to your yes you underscore your no and then you negotiate
591. 00:34:10 to yes but the the real value of this book to me was a lot of the the little things that
592. 00:34:17 were kind of hidden in there this William definitely likes lists so I teased out like
593. 00:34:25 I've got a mind node file and one of the the separate branches that I have is for these
594. 00:34:28 three benefits of a positive no which was I felt like not super prominent in the book
595. 00:34:35 but is also one of the most valuable pieces of it and so real quickly the three benefits
596. 00:34:41 of a positive no according to the book you can create what you want you can protect what
597. 00:34:46 you value and you can change what no longer works and I think what's really appealing to
598. 00:34:51 me about this is that the three benefits of a positive no what they do is they allow you
599. 00:34:58 to control the narrative they allow you to control your own story and you're in you're
600. 00:35:04 in control of the outcome so you get to decide what you want you get to decide what you value
601. 00:35:10 you get to change the things that no longer work but in order to do that you need to be
602. 00:35:17 able to say no and I think I agree with you with the the constant list making and it always
603. 00:35:24 kills me whenever people start doing a list and then do a list within the list because
604. 00:35:29 I I have a tendency to want to and maybe this is just me and my own issues but I have a
605. 00:35:36 tendency to want to memorize these things whenever there's a list of things because I
606. 00:35:40 feel like I should be able to retain that and it's a good framework so I should know
607. 00:35:45 how it works like take take getting things done for example that whole five step process
608. 00:35:50 like I can quote that to you but that that's what I tend to want to do with these and when
609. 00:35:56 they are a number of lists and lists within lists of lists of lists and on it goes it
610. 00:36:03 it's impossible for me to memorize all those and I get frustrated by it whereas the the
611. 00:36:07 base framework that he poses the yes no yes now that I know I will never forget but I
612. 00:36:16 always want to memorize all these things yeah and it's really difficult for for me I
613. 00:36:22 guess because I've switched the way that I take notes for for these books and I've been
614. 00:36:27 just been using a mine node file and so I've got a mind map of all these different things
615. 00:36:32 and it's great for getting information down because I can real quickly identify these
616. 00:36:37 are the quotes is the discussion points these are the action items but if I get something
617. 00:36:41 that I feel is really important I can just create a new a new note off of the the main
618. 00:36:47 branch like I've got a picture of the book in the middle so I could just create a new
619. 00:36:51 major note if there's something that really jumps out to me like those three benefits
620. 00:36:54 of a positive no but when it comes time to create an actual outline I've got all these
621. 00:37:00 different pieces and like you like you said it's it's hard to it my brain doesn't like
622. 00:37:04 having these all over the place it's like these need to be in order yes and I have essentially
623. 00:37:11 based on my my node file here no idea what that order actually is anymore yeah I tend
624. 00:37:18 to and we need to do like we should just get this on the on the calendar after this episode
625. 00:37:25 is how we read books and just do a bonus episode we just need to do this but I have
626. 00:37:30 a tendency to want I want to summarize a book like that's one thing that I've learned
627. 00:37:37 I'm really good at is boiling things down to a single or a couple points that's one of
628. 00:37:42 my strong suits and I always want to do that with a book and when there's a lot of separate
629. 00:37:50 points which is cut and a lot of sub points that are very powerful like what you're saying
630. 00:37:55 the three benefits of a positive no like that's something I don't even remember seeing that
631. 00:37:59 in here and yeah yet it was extremely impactful for you like those types of things I want
632. 00:38:06 to be able to tease out but when there's lists and lists and lists and you've got all these
633. 00:38:11 different outlines within the outlines it's really hard to do that because you just don't
634. 00:38:16 know where the central point is sometimes yeah I'd not I totally agree and that's kind
635. 00:38:21 of the going back to the very beginning when you shared the quote by Mortimer Adler sent
636. 00:38:26 in by Roger Bustle that that quote like that encapsulates my approach to to books like
637. 00:38:34 if all I got out of the power of a positive no was that one section on the three benefits
638. 00:38:38 of a positive no that's still worth it and that was literally I think three pages out
639. 00:38:44 of the book it was towards the end if I remember right I can't I didn't write down exactly
640. 00:38:49 where where I got it from but I want to give myself the freedom to have those revelation
641. 00:38:57 points and not be so concerned about having to make sure that I encapsulate like the the
642. 00:39:05 rough outline of what the author has actually said in the book if that makes sense it does
643. 00:39:11 it's that that honestly to me is is pretty stressful like to be able to it's almost like
644. 00:39:17 approaching it as a test where it's like we're going to measure how much of this you comprehend
645. 00:39:20 based on the quality of your outline and I would prefer to have the freedom and it's
646. 00:39:25 actually very liberating to have the freedom to just say okay I'm going to read this and
647. 00:39:29 whatever jumps out at me jumps out at me I'm not going to try and recreate the the outline
648. 00:39:34 that the author used when they wrote this in the first place now one of the benefits
649. 00:39:38 that you and I have that most people don't have is if we want to review a book like say
650. 00:39:44 I wanted to go back and see what I think about the power of a positive no in say six
651. 00:39:48 months I can come back to bookworm and listen to the episode that we recorded about it and
652. 00:39:55 get my fresh take on it again so that's something that I can do and you can do but most cannot
653. 00:40:00 so I think that's helpful because we're kind of creating our own little archive but making
654. 00:40:05 a public yeah no I think that's actually really cool because just the other day I was talking
655. 00:40:10 to somebody in there asking me like what did you think about the checklist manifesto like
656. 00:40:16 I liked it a lot wasn't what I was expecting like oh what do you mean like well I thought
657. 00:40:20 it's going to be like straight up productivity advice but there's a lot of medical terminology
658. 00:40:23 in there but I still really enjoyed it and then I was thinking about it you know as I
659. 00:40:27 was talking to him on slack and I'm like hey actually if you want the long version of
660. 00:40:31 my thoughts there you go so it was pretty cool yeah it's kind of nice to be able to
661. 00:40:40 send a link to somebody say hey when you when on your next commute in listen to this if you
662. 00:40:44 want my full thoughts on this go for this yeah exactly alright so we talked about the
663. 00:40:51 three benefits of a positive no the next one that I put on here and this is kind of a
664. 00:40:54 weird order I guess but it makes sense in my brain so I'll oh okay I can jump around
665. 00:41:01 okay cool so the three benefits of the positive no and then he talks about tension which is
666. 00:41:08 caused from this internal struggle that we have between exercising the power that we
667. 00:41:14 have available to us and tending to the relationship of the the other person and that's where the
668. 00:41:19 positive no idea comes in because there's essentially three different traditional responses whenever
669. 00:41:27 somebody asks you to do something you can accommodate attack or avoid so accommodate
670. 00:41:33 is when you say yes when you really want to say no attack is when you just flat out say
671. 00:41:39 no you say no poorly you snap at the person you hurt the relationship in essence I've
672. 00:41:44 definitely been guilty of this in the past and then the third one is avoid this one drives
673. 00:41:50 me crazy I hate it when people do this I asked them to do something and they just never get
674. 00:41:53 back to you they say nothing at all and I would like just tell me no it's okay just say you
675. 00:42:00 can't do it I do like I've been running a 99 designs thing here lately and I tend to ask
676. 00:42:08 for things that I know are on the edge of what you can and can't do with the design and I
677. 00:42:13 keep asking them like if this is going to take it too far and it's not going to look okay just
678. 00:42:16 tell me it's not smart and no one there will ever tell me no like come on push me yeah 99
679. 00:42:24 designs is a an interesting interesting example because that whole model I feel is based on
680. 00:42:31 having to say yes where you say yes you submit your design and you don't even guarantee that
681. 00:42:38 you get paid for it because the client you in this case is going to pick the one that they like the
682. 00:42:42 best so you're incentivized to do more work put more time in and then in the end you may not get
683. 00:42:48 anything for it anyway it's yeah what I have learned is if I want to take a design really far I
684. 00:42:53 need to select like the base layout that I like the best and the designer who can respond quickly and
685. 00:43:00 if I find someone who is in that and those two are combined I tend to carry them and then they're
686. 00:43:07 more than willing to spend more time on it later as opposed to upfront because they have more of
687. 00:43:13 that guarantee that they're actually going to get paid for it so if you're running a 99 designs
688. 00:43:18 thing do that don't get too caught up in the first round another resource by the way since we're
689. 00:43:25 speaking about design I saw this this thing I've not I've not signed up for this but I'm very intrigued
690. 00:43:32 but it is called design pickle have you heard of this I have not what is this this is $370 a month
691. 00:43:41 and you get unlimited design so I don't know exactly how that works I don't know how quickly
692. 00:43:45 they turn them around or how good the designs are but essentially it's like an on-demand creative
693. 00:43:51 agency so for somebody like like you who needs a design every once in a while for this thing it's
694. 00:43:57 a lot less expensive and a lot lower risk than actually like hiring a graphic designer for example
695. 00:44:03 for your your company to crank out these designs or even paying per job if you're going to have
696. 00:44:09 multiple jobs you know if you're if you have to make designs over and over and over again whether
697. 00:44:14 it be icons for a web interface or whatever having somebody essentially that you can just
698. 00:44:18 send stuff to and then they've got a team and they'll crank it out and get you the assets that you
699. 00:44:22 need that's kind of cool actually that is interesting I just pulled this up to look through it I could
700. 00:44:28 see like if I wanted to like if I had a website of sorts that was much bigger that I was trying to
701. 00:44:36 always like always doing like custom ads or custom graphics that were regular I could see that being
702. 00:44:43 a big deal because I'm hiring an actual designer huh interesting yeah because I've not had good
703. 00:44:50 good experiences with 99 designs and obviously the other option would be like Fiverr and those
704. 00:44:56 you're gonna get garbage guaranteed so I think if you're I mean but 99 designs I think there's like
705. 00:45:04 it's a hundred bucks or something right if you once you pick the one that you like it's $300
706. 00:45:09 to kick it off okay yeah so it's pretty expensive I mean for a month if you had multiple designs
707. 00:45:14 that you wanted to do then design pickles sounds like a pretty good option I don't believe there's
708. 00:45:18 a contract required with that it's I think it's just month to month interesting yeah 370 a month
709. 00:45:24 per user interesting yeah no I've had good luck with 99 designs in the past and that might be because
710. 00:45:32 I'm fairly it also helps that my wife who I've been affectionately calling Wonder Woman lately
711. 00:45:41 is very design oriented so I tend to talk these things through with her and that helps me get better
712. 00:45:49 designs out of it because I can give the feedback from a designer's with a designer's terminology I
713. 00:45:54 guess so that helps me quite a bit on that and I've had some really good luck doing that yeah that
714. 00:46:00 that would definitely be a good good asset to have maybe that was the the failure point for me
715. 00:46:06 yeah anyway there you go there's our there's our little goat trail on design yeah so that that
716. 00:46:13 actually like again brought it up because I think it's an example of the accommodate response and
717. 00:46:19 one of the reasons why I personally don't like client work because once you sign the contract
718. 00:46:25 you got to do it it's hard to say no I'm not going to do this and let's do this instead and sometimes
719. 00:46:32 you know you you can do that if it's stipulated in the contract like I'm going to do this and then
720. 00:46:38 the client obviously project creep they want something above and beyond that to have to say
721. 00:46:43 well we can do that but it's going to cost additional funds like that conversation alone I don't like
722. 00:46:48 having but even just the scope of the contract I don't like the the open-ended open to interpretation
723. 00:46:54 definition of what is actually going to get done when you create something so great definitely not
724. 00:47:00 for me but the formula for a positive no is a combination of two of these so accommodate
725. 00:47:07 where you say yes when you want to say no attack say no poorly or avoid say nothing at all the
726. 00:47:11 formula for a positive no is a combination of accommodate and attack which I think was a really
727. 00:47:18 cool way of framing this putting those three different types of responses first helped me really
728. 00:47:23 understand this yes no yes formula for a positive no which you alluded to earlier and because it's
729. 00:47:30 not going to come across in audio format the formula is yes with an exclamation point no with a period
730. 00:47:36 and then yes with a question mark so I guess it would be yes no yes well done there
731. 00:47:44 and the if you were to break this down the first yes this is saying yes to yourself and this is the
732. 00:47:53 thing that has really clicked for me with this 12-week year session and again like not been doing
733. 00:47:59 it very long I'm also coming off of a week up north where I did not even have internet access we had
734. 00:48:04 no cell phone coverage like it was great I was completely disconnected so check with me next I
735. 00:48:09 love you I love you follow that up with it was great it was I like being connected I like technology
736. 00:48:16 but I also like to get away from it once in a while and so the the 4th of July we go to this
737. 00:48:20 house on the lake and for whatever reason like it's it's in the woods and in this particular house
738. 00:48:24 like you cannot get cell phone coverage there you go out the front door 10 feet and you get LTE
739. 00:48:31 but in the house there's nothing there's no Wi-Fi whatever it's a nice house but it's just you have
740. 00:48:35 metal walls and blocks all signals they do have a there's a big log cabin and it's got a metal roof
741. 00:48:40 so I'm sure that's that's part of it ah there you go that'll do it but it's it's really nice and
742. 00:48:49 coming back to civilization I guess back into the the normal swing of things embracing this 12
743. 00:48:57 week year model with this this journal what it has allowed me to do and given me the support and
744. 00:49:04 the mental scaffolding to help me stick with is to say yes to myself this sounds so simple I get
745. 00:49:11 that you're listening to this and you're like Mike you teach about morning rituals like how how is
746. 00:49:15 this revelation to you I can't explain it but the morning rituals that I have always had in the past
747. 00:49:22 have not had the impact that this one has had so I don't know if it's just the right combinations
748. 00:49:29 of things or like I said I've got this journal now which I really enjoy so it's helping me stay on
749. 00:49:34 the stay on the right path but saying yes to yourself at the beginning of the day especially
750. 00:49:41 super super important and I think that that is kind of coming across in this formula like there's a
751. 00:49:46 reason that you say yes to yourself first if you don't you know this is the whole concept of budgeting
752. 00:49:52 if you don't pay yourself first you're you're not going to you're not going to pay yourself that
753. 00:49:58 they say that uh you know Dave Ramsey give every dollar a job well the order that you give those
754. 00:50:02 dollars a job is important if you don't save for the kids college fund at the beginning or save for
755. 00:50:07 your retirement at the beginning before you pay all of your bills then what you will find at the end
756. 00:50:13 is that you've you've run out of dollars you've went ahead and bought a shiny new macbook and now
757. 00:50:18 you've done this is why you save for the things so that when you're in my scenario you don't have
758. 00:50:25 to worry about it right but that's what allows you to do that you know is is when you when you save
759. 00:50:33 for the macbook and you set that money aside and you don't spend it on overpriced coffee like me
760. 00:50:37 then you can uh you can you can say if you say yes to to that thing initially then what it does is
761. 00:50:45 it gives you it gives you the freedom and your your dollars in essence are stretched further like
762. 00:50:49 you don't waste them on unfrivelous things I think the same thing can be said about your energy in
763. 00:50:53 terms of the power of a positive no where if you are saying yes to yourself first that is a very
764. 00:51:00 key piece and it really opens the door for the second part of this where you do say no do you
765. 00:51:06 agree disagree yeah I think so because it it really frames your own mind because if i'm going to share
766. 00:51:16 a no with someone I I need to know that there is something you're saying yes to so for every no
767. 00:51:22 there's a yes and for every yes there's a no like it goes back and forth every time you say yes to
768. 00:51:28 one thing you're declining to do a different thing so you have to affirm here's what I'm saying yes
769. 00:51:35 to before you can deliver that no once you get through the process of affirming yourself that's when
770. 00:51:42 you're essentially saying yes to yourself and you got the balance between the two so once you get
771. 00:51:47 through that when you're talking to the person you're saying no that's when you deliver the no and
772. 00:51:53 part of the reason it has the period on it is because it needs to be a period like it's not a
773. 00:51:57 question mark no it's it's this is the no so continue right yeah exactly and that leads into the last
774. 00:52:07 part of it which is the yes of the question mark where you're saying no to the specific thing that
775. 00:52:13 somebody is asking but you're proposing another solution which is kind of meeting in the middle
776. 00:52:22 in essence you're protecting your interests but you're also accommodating to a certain degree
777. 00:52:29 the interests of the other person it's the balance between having the authority to say no I'm not
778. 00:52:34 going to do this and also tending to the relationship yes because whenever you're posing that question
779. 00:52:43 at the end you're essentially giving a path forward as opposed to just saying if you just stop on the
780. 00:52:51 no it really puts things in their tracks and it doesn't doesn't offer the relationship anyway to
781. 00:52:57 move forward you're just kind of putting it up making everything running to a brick wall and
782. 00:53:02 that's not what you want to do like you're essentially trying to find a way to to resolve the issue
783. 00:53:06 whatever that issue is so you always need to think through like what is the path forward and what is
784. 00:53:12 it that we want to to do in order to move that situation forward yeah yeah yeah I really
785. 00:53:21 like the way that you define that as like the path forward essentially and what's interesting
786. 00:53:27 about this and the next point on the outline is this whole idea about the core beliefs because
787. 00:53:33 if you don't have your your core beliefs or I would call them core values what that does is that
788. 00:53:39 provides the framework for you to say your first yes okay this is who we are this is what we do
789. 00:53:46 and so in that context it's a lot easier to say yes or no to things because we can compartmentalize
790. 00:53:51 the the ask essentially as being in line with our core beliefs or not being in line with our core
791. 00:53:58 beliefs if it's not in line with our core beliefs then we say no and if it is in line with our core
792. 00:54:03 beliefs then that can actually dictate a yes even when sometimes we want to say no so one of the
793. 00:54:08 examples that he shares is the Tylenol recall and I don't remember this event specifically like I
794. 00:54:15 remember hearing about it but essentially the Tylenol was faced with a an employee that had
795. 00:54:22 decided they hated the company whatever and they had essentially poisoned the the pills and they
796. 00:54:29 sent these out and it was a small batch but Tylenol recalled everything because they didn't want
797. 00:54:35 anybody to get sick and they made this decision and according to the book they mentioned that
798. 00:54:40 they made this decision according to the Tylenol credo which is we believe our first responsibilities
799. 00:54:44 to the doctors nurses and patients to mothers and fathers and all those who use our products and
800. 00:54:47 services so they viewed the decision should we recall all of the Tylenol that was made in in the
801. 00:54:54 last whatever time period which would cost millions of dollars should we do that or not it was a no
802. 00:55:00 brainer because their core belief was we want every single person that uses our products we want
803. 00:55:06 their lives to be to be better and our responsibility is to them first not to our stockholders not to
804. 00:55:13 the bottom line of the profitability of the company now contrast that with the Samsung Galaxy Note
805. 00:55:21 Seven DeBond. I was thinking the exact same scenario yeah and this just gets my blood boiling
806. 00:55:30 every time I think about this okay I understand that you can have production issues okay so
807. 00:55:36 Samsung Galaxy Note Sevens they rolled them out and they exploded and they said no it's not
808. 00:55:43 our problem there's really nothing here so they continued to explode finally they admitted there
809. 00:55:48 is a problem we'll recall these it's just a small batch of batteries we'll fix these phones
810. 00:55:52 they fixed it they continued to explode they recalled all the phones they replaced all the
811. 00:55:58 batteries they continued to explode so finally they're they're getting all of this negative press
812. 00:56:05 you go to the airport still to this day they will say if you have a Galaxy Note Seven do not get
813. 00:56:10 on this point okay right because there's even places where you can exchange them now if I
814. 00:56:15 understand in certain airports like if you have one of the old ones you can like put it in
815. 00:56:19 this machine and it does all the stuff to move your data over and you get it back I think that's
816. 00:56:25 where these things work but there's like this kiosk where you can swap them out
817. 00:56:28 yeah exactly so it's it's well known at this point that these are not safe devices that they
818. 00:56:37 need to be gotten rid of right like we can all agree on that no I think so no we can't because
819. 00:56:43 just the other day I'm going to paste this link in uh in Zencaster they announced that they are
820. 00:56:50 reselling the reclaimed Galaxy Note Seven's as the Galaxy Note Fan Edition are you kidding me
821. 00:56:57 I mean if you're not driven by profits then then what are you driven by I mean the phone is
822. 00:57:04 literally exploding next to people's heads and you continue to sell this after I don't I can't
823. 00:57:11 even count how many times that they've gotten negative press for this at one point they had
824. 00:57:16 all of the reclaimed batteries in a warehouse and the warehouse exploded like guys seriously do you
825. 00:57:25 want this is going to follow them for years I mean this could literally be a thing that
826. 00:57:29 this is the type of thing I'm not saying this is actually going to happen to Samsung but this
827. 00:57:33 is the type of thing that could put a company like this out of business if you don't handle
828. 00:57:36 this thing the right way and I feel that they have mismanaged this every single step along the way
829. 00:57:41 well have they officially issued a recall that was the thing that got me as they they would
830. 00:57:47 replace them but they never officially issued a recall if I remember right I think they were
831. 00:57:53 recalled but I know they rolled out a software update which bricked the phones they essentially
832. 00:57:57 made the batteries completely unusable and so even if my understanding again I'm not a Samsung
833. 00:58:03 fan to begin with but this is just for all of the Samsung versus Apple stuff like can you
834. 00:58:11 can you imagine Apple mismanaging like if this had happened to the iPhone like Apple wouldn't be
835. 00:58:19 around anymore that people like to kill Apple because they added a feature they took away a
836. 00:58:25 feature or they took away the headphone jack like that's a much more minor thing than your phone
837. 00:58:30 blowing up and somebody's here and that's happened like not once not twice not three times like it
838. 00:58:35 happened over and over and over and over again and Samsung has repeatedly said like well we don't
839. 00:58:40 really care about the health of our our customers we're going to continue to roll these phones out
840. 00:58:43 because this costs us a lot of money I mean that's not explicitly what they're saying but it's what
841. 00:58:47 they're saying by their actions right they they chose to say you know to bring us all back they chose
842. 00:58:54 to say yes to profits and said no to safety of their customers so again they're saying yes and no
843. 00:59:02 respectively to different things but in this case it's done in a way that is not delivered well
844. 00:59:07 or people strongly disagree with like you want your profits versus the safety of my head
845. 00:59:14 Oh yeah and uh and I think that the reason that I point this out because I think it's
846. 00:59:22 it's interesting and I don't know this for sure but I am going to project that
847. 00:59:25 if you were to look at Samsung's uh mission statement or whatever because every company's got one
848. 00:59:32 it's probably not profit above all okay that doesn't really read very well it's also likely
849. 00:59:39 not reviewed regularly exactly this Tylenol Krito somebody in some meeting said this is our
850. 00:59:48 Krito do we believe in this if so this is the obvious decision that obviously didn't happen
851. 00:59:54 with Samsung and again I did not look up the Samsung mission statement but even if their mission
852. 01:00:01 statement is you know we exist to make everybody's lives better through technology and we put the
853. 01:00:05 safety and the health of our customers and suppliers above everything else like that's great that you've
854. 01:00:11 said that but if it doesn't if it doesn't really guide your decisions if it doesn't frame your yes
855. 01:00:16 no yes then what good is it and I've mentioned that we've got core values for our family but this is
856. 01:00:25 kind of a reminder for me that like we have to keep reviewing those things we have to keep saying
857. 01:00:30 those things so that our kids understand that so that they actually make their decisions framed
858. 01:00:36 off of this the fact that we have them printed and on the wall is not good enough I looked it up so
859. 01:00:42 Samsung's mission slash vision statement which if you go to the page for this it's it looks like
860. 01:00:51 a blank page I should I'm gonna link to this but you go to what is it Samsung.com/US/about-
861. 01:01:00 Samsung/corporate-profile/vision-mission.html like they don't want you to find this apparently
862. 01:01:08 you go to that page there's like a menu bar on the left going up and down and a menu across the top
863. 01:01:14 and a sub menu underneath of that and then there's this big white white spot and there's also a
864. 01:01:18 menu at the bottom so they got menus everywhere and a white white space in the middle you scroll down
865. 01:01:23 and you can get vision 2020 which is as stated in its new motto Samsung electronics vision for the
866. 01:01:29 new decade is inspire the world create the future there you go whatever that means yeah so
867. 01:01:38 from a productivity perspective I would say that that's actually not a good mission statement
868. 01:01:43 because it's not very specific but again I'm not running a multi-billion dollar company so
869. 01:01:50 it is what it is but from what I've understood of of there's a really good book called scaling up
870. 01:01:56 by Vern Harnish I believe it's the new version of the Rockefeller habits and this is a framework
871. 01:02:02 that we use with Asian efficiency and it's it's phenomenal I absolutely love it there's a bunch
872. 01:02:06 of worksheets and things where essentially you can kind of do your quarterly planning
873. 01:02:09 and you walk through and you identify these are your core values you identify these are your
874. 01:02:15 targets you can very clearly articulate if we have a really good quarter this is what it looks
875. 01:02:19 like if we don't do so well this is what it looks like and you have these different ranges
876. 01:02:23 so you can you can really measure stuff very easily and you tie it all back to your brand promise
877. 01:02:30 and your core values and something very vague like what you found on the the Samsung page if
878. 01:02:39 there's no other description about it it's hard to attach to that and I think that the value comes
879. 01:02:47 from when everybody in the company and this is kind of following a scaling up model like what
880. 01:02:51 you want is you want a small company where you really buy into this mission everybody's super
881. 01:02:56 passionate about it and it shows and then that spreads as the company grows and that's where
882. 01:03:01 the whole scaling up idea comes but you don't lose the the vision and if all you had was was a you
883. 01:03:08 know six words in your your vision there's no other context there I think it's really easy to lose
884. 01:03:13 that yeah I should say there is more context there but it's it's corporate speak like they're
885. 01:03:21 talking about exactly three key strengths new technology innovative products creative solutions
886. 01:03:27 like it's all words without saying anything so yeah and and then here you go as part of this vision
887. 01:03:36 Samsung has mapped out a specific plan of reaching four hundred billion dollars in revenue and
888. 01:03:40 becoming one of the world's top five brands by 2020 okay so dollars are a part of this apparently
889. 01:03:47 there you go then they're acting according to their their core their core beliefs and can't
890. 01:03:52 get fault them for that it is what it is you know that's fine I don't agree but somebody somewhere
891. 01:03:58 does so different strokes for different folks that kind of leads into the next point here though
892. 01:04:05 where and again this is I guess just my personal mindset so the whole idea of
893. 01:04:13 Samsung's corporate motto like their their vision being driven by profit is kind of appalling to me
894. 01:04:19 but uh there's a quote in here that I teased out which I really really like to say you give
895. 01:04:24 respect because of who you are not because of who they are so in the Samsung example in the
896. 01:04:31 Tylenol example I think that that's that's two different versions of how this specifically played
897. 01:04:37 out and I can totally see how I have embraced the wrong mindset with this in the past so a lot of
898. 01:04:44 people think like you have to earn respect but this was one of the big takeaways for me was that
899. 01:04:51 no you give respect based on your character not on the character of the person that you are
900. 01:04:58 interacting with if that makes sense I've always thought of respect is like there's two different
901. 01:05:04 kinds of respect one is I respect you because you are human like there are basic human
902. 01:05:09 needs and things like you should respect a person because they are a person and then there's the
903. 01:05:16 level of respect that's you know the I guess the the stereotype would be soldiers having respect
904. 01:05:24 for their commander like there's that level of respect as well and the the former of those two
905. 01:05:31 is one that everyone deserves the latter of those two is the one that's earned that's how I think
906. 01:05:37 of it I don't know if that's the right way to think of it but it's at least how I separate those two
907. 01:05:42 yeah I think that makes sense uh for me one of my action items was show respect to others before
908. 01:05:49 responding so my definition of respect which I don't have word for word but it's basically
909. 01:05:59 show respect regardless of the person who is asking you to do the thing I think this has been one of
910. 01:06:07 the things that has tripped me up in the past is the I've responded attacking by saying no poorly
911. 01:06:13 and if you show respect to the other person you can't attack you can't say no poorly it forces you
912. 01:06:21 to to frame the no positively and so I guess for me when I when I think of this show respect to others
913. 01:06:31 before responding it's it's acknowledging who they are and what they are asking before just saying
914. 01:06:39 flippantly no I'm not going to do that sort of a thing yeah and that makes sense and I think this
915. 01:06:45 is where you're you're phrase of giving respect because of who you are as opposed to like not because
916. 01:06:51 of who they are that makes a lot of sense because if you're going to show respect when you're saying
917. 01:06:57 no to that other person it like take for example if I if someone else is going to tell me no
918. 01:07:03 this is the way I would want them to to do that because it doesn't come across as attacking it
919. 01:07:09 doesn't come across as something I have done per se it may be something I've done but that's not
920. 01:07:15 going to be their focus if they're using this this process but it's a way for them to affirm
921. 01:07:21 something that's important to them show respect to me to see to show that you know this is important
922. 01:07:27 enough to them that they need to say no to the thing I'm doing and then pose how to move forward
923. 01:07:33 from there so they have to show me respect in that way like that's just natural in that sense
924. 01:07:40 whenever it's posed that way because they're showing me why essentially and I'm you know this
925. 01:07:45 this is nothing I really resonate with because I'm a why person like if you're going to explain
926. 01:07:50 something is to me and you want me to do something if you can explain why I'm much better off in the
927. 01:07:56 long run so I think that's what you're getting at with the respect piece because it's something that
928. 01:08:01 is natural in the way that that yes no yes formula works exactly and as you're talking I'm thinking
929. 01:08:09 to myself that it all boils down to the golden rule you know we teach our kids like treat other
930. 01:08:14 people the way you want to be treated but it really is that simple if you if you really think about it
931. 01:08:20 we got a whole book here on you know treat others the way you want to be treated there you go yeah
932. 01:08:27 that probably wouldn't would become a New York Times bestseller though so not like this case I
933. 01:08:31 guess an international bestseller so true that but the the next point on this outline it kind of
934. 01:08:39 relates to this and that is that no is not a wall it is a living boundary which protects what is
935. 01:08:45 important so I think I've viewed no previously as a wall like I've talked about you got to put up
936. 01:08:53 boundaries you got to protect the things that are important to you if you want to spend time with
937. 01:08:58 your family then turn off your phone at dinner time so you don't get the the emails and the the
938. 01:09:03 text messages about stuff that's happening at the office or better yet leave it in a different room
939. 01:09:08 exactly but kind of what I've recognized from this book is that that approach is maybe necessary
940. 01:09:18 at the very beginning like if you find yourself in a situation where you're just constantly connected
941. 01:09:25 and something has to change immediately then you may have to say no I'm just not going to do that
942. 01:09:31 anymore but the better approach is showing respect to the other person and framing it positively
943. 01:09:39 which takes more time but the end result is a lot better if you show respect and you don't just say
944. 01:09:47 nope not could do that anymore but you actually do you say yes to yourself then you say no to the
945. 01:09:51 thing and then you propose a different solution like I said that does take more time but that
946. 01:09:57 living boundary then what that ends up looking like if I were to sketch this out you know I view
947. 01:10:03 like the the hard wall is just like a box and you you can draw the box there's four straight
948. 01:10:08 walls 90 degree angles and that that's uh that's okay but the better version of that is this
949. 01:10:18 this living boundary which ends up taking all these different shapes and it may actually look
950. 01:10:22 something like a like a human cell you know where it's it's got all of these different
951. 01:10:27 edges and rounded corners and whatever and that allows it to fit into different spaces and that
952. 01:10:32 allows you to encapsulate inside of there the things that are super important but also it allows you
953. 01:10:37 a lot more flexibility in terms of fitting in with all of the other desires and things that need to
954. 01:10:44 be done with all the other people that you work with all the other teams that you're involved in
955. 01:10:47 does that that makes sense I'm not sure I explained that very well um it's it's a bit tricky to get
956. 01:10:52 your head around I think because whenever you say no to someone when you say it's a living boundary
957. 01:11:00 you're essentially saying this is a place that we can't cross because of x y and z like I cannot
958. 01:11:07 go meet a friend of mine for dinner every night thursday night because he's going through a rough
959. 01:11:12 time I just can't do that because I've got family things that take priority over that and that's
960. 01:11:19 where the living boundary thing comes in I think because you have a core value you know or a core
961. 01:11:25 belief as we're using the term here like there's something important to me my family and what
962. 01:11:31 that family needs for me is that core belief and whenever there's another request that comes in I
963. 01:11:40 need to say no to show what that boundary is and where that wall is in that specific scenario
964. 01:11:45 but that where that line is may be different depending on the specific situation yeah
965. 01:11:52 is that encompassed I believe so so let's just use like the thursday night example so you could say
966. 01:11:58 your core belief is that family time is important and you've carved out the time on thursday night
967. 01:12:04 as your family night that's great like that's as a general rule you're not going to say yes to
968. 01:12:09 anything on thursday night because you've said yes to family time previously I guess what I was
969. 01:12:14 saying with the living boundary thing though is that the tendency for me in the past would be to
970. 01:12:19 every time that someone would ask me to do something then on a thursday night just say no okay don't
971. 01:12:24 propose an alternative just say no I don't do that okay you've established your limits but there's no
972. 01:12:31 invitation to reach the agreement and now in your specific example where you mentioned you got a
973. 01:12:37 friend who's going through a tough time or whatever the living boundary to me is keeping the conversation
974. 01:12:43 open saying no respect respectively and saying well as a general rule I can't do this on thursday's
975. 01:12:51 but I know that you know I've got to talk you off the ledge tonight and you're important to me so
976. 01:12:56 I'm going to make an exception just this once now obviously there is a danger there because once
977. 01:13:01 you make the exception once you've opened the door to that thing happening over and over and over
978. 01:13:06 again regardless of what it is and so it's really important to stay grounded in your yes the first
979. 01:13:14 yes the explanation point saying yes to yourself but I think that as long as you stay grounded and
980. 01:13:21 you are constantly evaluating based off of your core beliefs am I spending enough time with my kids
981. 01:13:27 for example or with my family then that gives you flexibility to where the week doesn't necessarily
982. 01:13:36 look the same every time you don't always have to do the family time on thursday night you just
983. 01:13:42 always have to make sure that you have the family time does that make sense yes yes that I think
984. 01:13:47 that's what I'm trying to get at is you can have differing circumstances in the same scenario
985. 01:13:55 I think yeah exactly so there will be there will be exceptions you can you can say as a general rule
986. 01:14:03 you know I get up at 6am I do my morning ritual and then I'm working at at 7 and plan out your
987. 01:14:09 entire day but what happens when you are sick or whatever you oversleep a little bit and now
988. 01:14:15 like is your whole day get thrown off no not necessarily you can adapt and you can overcome because
989. 01:14:20 I mean I had this I had literally had this happen this morning where I didn't sleep real well last
990. 01:14:26 night and I didn't wake up when I wanted to but I followed this formula still because regardless of
991. 01:14:33 even though I woke up like half hour 45 minutes later than I wanted to I still made sure that I
992. 01:14:38 handled my morning ritual before I did anything else and that meant that some work stuff that I
993. 01:14:45 had intended to get done before we recorded this didn't get done I'm gonna have to do that later
994. 01:14:50 in the day but that's okay I mean if you if you have if you're over committed and you've got a
995. 01:14:56 bunch of different things and your day is just packed and then like that 45 minutes that's enough
996. 01:15:01 to throw your entire day off that is a problem I recognize that some people have that that sort
997. 01:15:05 of schedule and some days my schedule is like that but that I think and you can correct me if I'm
998. 01:15:11 wrong that's the approach that is dangerous with this this book I think is you can kind of be like
999. 01:15:17 oh I'm in this situation I got to cut this stuff out this book is going to show me how and I'm not
1000. 01:15:21 gonna have to not gonna have to have those difficult conversations that's not necessarily the case
1001. 01:15:26 but what is a value in this book at least to me is the formula for kind of once you've once you've
1002. 01:15:34 got that margin established already it's the framework for keeping the thing going and making
1003. 01:15:40 sure that the boundaries are appropriate it's not some magic pill where you're gonna snap your
1004. 01:15:44 fingers after reading this book and all of a sudden your schedule's cleared up and you've got four
1005. 01:15:47 extra hours of free time every day but I would argue that what it does give you is actually much
1006. 01:15:52 more valuable than that yeah I could see how you could get into that I don't know that I took it
1007. 01:15:58 that way and then like I didn't see this as a golden bullet but at the same time I also have a
1008. 01:16:05 good base of knowing that there's not a single book that's going to solve a bunch of problems
1009. 01:16:11 so I don't tend to see books in that way but I know that some people do I'm just not one of them
1010. 01:16:17 so if you come at this book thinking it's going to solve some of like a lot of your problems
1011. 01:16:22 just know that you actually have to implement the things that are in it so it's not going to do
1012. 01:16:29 that just by reading it you actually have to get to work sorry sorry to burst the bubble there for
1013. 01:16:34 anybody who thought that yeah I guess maybe a better way to describe um to describe it would be
1014. 01:16:41 the tendency can be looking at the title to think like oh this book is going to help me say no better
1015. 01:16:49 but actually what it does is it helps you say yes better so yeah the actual act of saying no you
1016. 01:16:57 still have to figure out like they give you the formula for a positive no but that the hump there
1017. 01:17:03 I think is being able to say no period especially for a people pleaser yeah and that's that would
1018. 01:17:09 be the the direction I almost took it mentally was because the power of a positive no you could say
1019. 01:17:16 well this is a way for me to say yes and still get the no across without having to say no like
1020. 01:17:22 that's that's what I would love for it to be but and it would be very easy to get to that conclusion
1021. 01:17:28 if you're a yes person whenever you see the title of this but again you have to be very
1022. 01:17:34 very firm with that no in the middle of the yeses yep definitely I completely agree
1023. 01:17:42 but the way that he describes plan B in this book is interesting and I think it really encapsulates
1024. 01:17:48 what the whole book is about he describes plan B as an alternate means of success not a worst case
1025. 01:17:52 scenario which when I picked up the book that's that's kind of what I expected was like the power
1026. 01:17:59 of positive no this was a way to clear the things that I was committed to but really what it does
1027. 01:18:04 is it allows you to shift your commitments a little bit more in in favor of the direction of
1028. 01:18:11 this is something that I want as opposed to accommodating what other people want at least in my opinion
1029. 01:18:15 yeah and this is where he gets into some of that curve of acceptance I know you've got that down
1030. 01:18:21 here because there are different levels at which people will accept your no and you have to be
1031. 01:18:28 willing at any point in time to resort to your plan B assuming that you've taken the time to
1032. 01:18:35 determine what that plan B is and that's something that you need to do because it's freeing to know
1033. 01:18:40 what you're going to default to if they don't accept your no like say you're in a business
1034. 01:18:45 negotiation and you need to say no to some of what they want in the middle of that negotiation
1035. 01:18:51 if you know what your fallback is if they don't agree to it you tend to have a lot more confidence
1036. 01:18:56 in how you're delivering it and that by itself can change the way that the conversation goes
1037. 01:19:02 but that curve of acceptance and I don't have it in front of me Mike but it essentially takes people
1038. 01:19:08 from from the process of hearing you out not accepting your no at all and then flowing through
1039. 01:19:17 the process of being angry with you over that being sad that you're saying no and then eventually
1040. 01:19:24 accepting that and and being willing to move forward from that I don't have in front of me maybe you
1041. 01:19:30 yeah it's it's avoidance leads to denial leads to anxiety leads to anger leads to bargaining leads
1042. 01:19:36 to sadness leads to acceptance and it's it's totally true like I can think of a specific situation in
1043. 01:19:43 my own life where this is playing out right now and the end result I know is going to be
1044. 01:19:50 better like we're going to find some happy medium where everybody wins but it can be difficult
1045. 01:20:00 getting to that point and that's where the power of positive to know there's a lot of value in this
1046. 01:20:05 is that either there's there's two parties obviously involved here there's you in the other party so
1047. 01:20:12 what can happen is one of three different things they can understand and respect your interests
1048. 01:20:20 and you cannot and if that's the case that's probably if you were to say ignorance is bliss this is
1049. 01:20:29 the one scenario where that might actually be true because maybe you've got a boss who is telling you
1050. 01:20:33 you got to go home at five o'clock every day like there are situations like that there is also
1051. 01:20:38 the flip side of that where you respect your own interests and opinions but the other person does
1052. 01:20:43 not and that is where the tendency can be to attack and say no poorly and this is getting back to
1053. 01:20:51 you give respect because of who you are not because of who they are you can say oh it's jerk they don't
1054. 01:20:55 even understand what they just asked for you know they don't deserve a thought out response I could
1055. 01:21:00 just say no you can but that's not that's not the best way to handle it either and that is where
1056. 01:21:07 the curve of acceptance comes in like if you especially for people that you interact with frequently
1057. 01:21:13 I believe you need to move people along this curve of acceptance slowly but the process is worth it
1058. 01:21:21 in the end because what you will end up with is the ideal scenario where you and the other party
1059. 01:21:26 both understand each other's needs wants opinions whatever and you figured out a way that you can
1060. 01:21:32 work together where everybody wins but it takes a lot of work to get to that point and that comes
1061. 01:21:39 back to tending to the relationship you know we talked about the tension of exercising power
1062. 01:21:44 because you're angry or whatever to to share that no just because you want to and show that yes you
1063. 01:21:51 can say no in that scenario it's probably really easy to do with kids but tending to the relationship
1064. 01:21:58 is taking people through that process that curve and I think if we stopped and thought about it we
1065. 01:22:05 could see how we're in the middle of that curve in a number of scenarios with our children so
1066. 01:22:10 because that's like the key thing that kids I feel teach you is how to say no and how to help
1067. 01:22:17 them learn through that process even though they're doing things you don't want them to do
1068. 01:22:22 yeah you know the entire time that I was reading this book and understanding meditation I was
1069. 01:22:31 thinking of the conversation that we had with Josh and he's talking about well what does it look
1070. 01:22:37 like with your kids and I'm recognizing that in a lot of ways I've been acting like a big kid
1071. 01:22:43 page 47 he says in this book this is one of the things that jumped out to me and maybe it's just
1072. 01:22:48 because I've quote-unquote discovered meditation and mindfulness or whatever but it says there are
1073. 01:22:55 no intrinsically negative emotions only negatively charged emotions which have the potential
1074. 01:22:59 to become positively charged so I've tried to take that approach in how I interact with my kids
1075. 01:23:07 especially with discipline now we are according to worldly standards I guess very strict
1076. 01:23:15 but still like I don't want there to be just the the power-based knows that's another action item
1077. 01:23:21 for me like I don't want I never want to say no you can't do that why because I said so you know
1078. 01:23:28 that's but when I think about it like all I can identify a lot of different times in the past
1079. 01:23:33 where I've taken that same approach not just with my kids but in how I've interacted with other
1080. 01:23:36 people the way that I've said no to things and recognizing being mindful of the fact that
1081. 01:23:43 maybe this emotion is negatively charged but why is it negatively charged that's what mindfulness
1082. 01:23:50 is all about is identifying the the root causes figuring out the the pain points and then solving
1083. 01:23:57 them but recognizing that this thing is happening let's not say that this thing is is awful and oh
1084. 01:24:04 whoa is me but let's just look at this objectively what's really going on here and when you do that
1085. 01:24:10 with with kids it's it's uh if you're able to achieve that that little bit of distance
1086. 01:24:15 it completely changes the dynamic of the discipline at that particular moment you know we've all
1087. 01:24:22 probably heard the the saying like don't discipline when you're you're angry but it's
1088. 01:24:27 surprisingly easy for that anger to seep into discipline especially when you have stereotypical
1089. 01:24:33 boys like I do who just sometimes are just not gonna not gonna listen you can say the same thing
1090. 01:24:40 six seven eight times they'll look look at you in the face and just in one year and out the other
1091. 01:24:46 uh and that's that's not their fault and it's frustrating it is frustrating exactly it's
1092. 01:24:53 it's a negatively charged emotion that I'm feeling at that particular time but the whole idea behind
1093. 01:24:58 discipline is not just punishment it's not okay you did this now you're gonna suffer the consequences
1094. 01:25:04 uh so I think that this is one instance in particular where the negatively charged emotion
1095. 01:25:09 has the potential to become a positively charged it can become a positive situation where they
1096. 01:25:13 are able to learn the correct way to do this thing or the reason why you know you have to look
1097. 01:25:19 the waitress in the eye when she asks you a question when we're out to eat you know that sort of thing
1098. 01:25:23 the tendency in the past has been to just get angry like what's what's wrong with you we talked
1099. 01:25:28 about this before why can't you why can't you answer look her in the face uh but yeah I think uh
1100. 01:25:35 I'm kind of had a a revelation of that where every single opportunity I guess to discipline can be
1101. 01:25:44 to transform a negative into a positive yes to all the things
1102. 01:25:51 a lot of good stuff there do you want to cover this goodwill account thing yeah there's not a whole
1103. 01:25:58 lot to talk about here but it sounded a lot like steven coveys emotional bank account
1104. 01:26:04 and uh it's just kind of interesting that this was brought up again and I really liked it when we
1105. 01:26:11 read it in the seven habits how they affected people I really like it here as well what he talks
1106. 01:26:16 about on page 229 with the goodwill account is that you have to build up goodwill in order to say no
1107. 01:26:23 and this is really important I think because that whole curve of acceptance what you want at the end
1108. 01:26:29 of that is not acceptance of mike's gonna be weird and do his own thing but acceptance of I really
1109. 01:26:36 respect mike in his like he's got a reason for doing this even if I don't completely understand
1110. 01:26:41 it right now I know that he's not gonna screw me over sort of a thing and this is another thing
1111. 01:26:49 that I think this was one of my action items when I talked about the steven coveys seven habits how
1112. 01:26:53 affected people and it's something that I don't have a like a takeaway specifically for this or an
1113. 01:26:57 action item for this but it's a it's a reminder and it's something that's kind of just like a mindset
1114. 01:27:01 I've tried to adopt is and it's kind of coupled with the showing respect to other people before
1115. 01:27:06 responding consistently putting into the goodwill account consistently making positive deposits
1116. 01:27:13 instead of negative withdrawals and I think that that opens up a whole lot of doors and opportunities
1117. 01:27:19 to say no and then reach a yes solution that benefits both parties if you ever listen to
1118. 01:27:25 the dave ramsi show he he talks about this on occasion whenever he gets a caller that calls in
1119. 01:27:32 and say they have a strained relationship with their parents but their parents are doing something
1120. 01:27:39 with finances that they feel is destructive and they need to stop and one of dave's questions or
1121. 01:27:47 you know he'll tell them can you just talk to them about this and he typically follows that up with
1122. 01:27:53 you can't go tell them no you can't go have these hard conversations if you haven't tried to build
1123. 01:27:59 into them in some way in a positive way to build some of that respect that we were talking about
1124. 01:28:04 earlier if you haven't built some of that history and built some of that trust you can't deliver a no
1125. 01:28:12 effectively because they're going to it like you were saying with your kids sometimes that'll just
1126. 01:28:17 go in one ear one out and out the other you know it's a little bit of a different situation but
1127. 01:28:20 it's the same concept that if you don't have a solid and in a lot of cases heartfelt relationship
1128. 01:28:28 with someone you you can't deliver that no without it causing pain in that relationship
1129. 01:28:36 yeah totally agree um Dave Ramsey is an interesting guy i didn't actually meet him but i saw him i
1130. 01:28:43 went to an entree leadership one day event down in chicago and uh yeah if you've ever gone through
1131. 01:28:49 financial peace university one of the things my wife and i always laughed about is like he runs
1132. 01:28:53 out on stage and he like jumps up and down he does like the fist bump thing does the same thing it's
1133. 01:28:58 got to be like 20 years later but he does the same exact thing is uh kind of a goober but i like his
1134. 01:29:04 uh i like his message cool cool you want to jump into action items let's do it you got a bunch here
1135. 01:29:10 i do now these are all somewhat related uh really if you were to boil this down what it what it looks
1136. 01:29:18 like is say no effectively say no correctly and not attack yeah i mentioned a couple of them already
1137. 01:29:27 so some of the specific things i want to show respect to others before responding i want to
1138. 01:29:33 not use power-based nose i do not want to say no without proposing a yes when i do propose a yes
1139. 01:29:42 i want to frame it positively and i also want to use the phrase i would prefer not to when saying no
1140. 01:29:50 this could backfire i realize but uh he mentions in the book some cultures and societies they say no
1141. 01:29:58 without actually saying no and this one in particular i felt like i might be able to get some mileage
1142. 01:30:05 out of this and it just using this might frame it a lot more nicely so that's one specific thing but
1143. 01:30:13 yeah all of that like i said it's kind of encapsulated by the idea of saying no effectively and then
1144. 01:30:18 eventually getting to yes the invitation to reach an agreement now the the part that could backfire
1145. 01:30:24 you're talking about the i would prefer not to phrase yeah because i can think of a couple people who
1146. 01:30:31 may just say well that's nice do it anyways uh yep because we haven't gotten to that point yet you
1147. 01:30:37 know i mentioned the three different ways that this could play out where we both are at the place
1148. 01:30:42 where if i say i don't want to do this like oh well i respect that i know you've got reasons and so
1149. 01:30:47 we'll do it a different way uh i kind of think that that could possibly happen in a couple different
1150. 01:30:53 situations but we'll see that's fair uh my action item is fairly similar
1151. 01:30:58 only instead of breaking it into five pieces i just kind of summarize the whole thing
1152. 01:31:02 which is basically use yes no yes every time a big decision needs a no and i guess that probably
1153. 01:31:09 translates into just be aware of this and how i'm saying no and use respect whenever i'm doing that
1154. 01:31:16 so i i'm kind of summarizing i'm looking at this list of action items between us there's absolutely
1155. 01:31:22 no way we'll hold each other accountable on this in a in a very good way other than just ask how's it
1156. 01:31:27 going but yeah exactly and that's one of the things that was kind of surprising to me about
1157. 01:31:33 about this book but like i said i actually think that this is this is a better this is better than
1158. 01:31:38 what i had originally anticipated because if you're thinking about this the lens of oh this book is
1159. 01:31:44 going to allow me to just cut things then you could hold people accountable to that you could say
1160. 01:31:48 what are the things that you said no to but really the net result of of saying no positively is that
1161. 01:31:54 you haven't said no a bunch more times but you said yes a bunch more times in a way that is actually
1162. 01:31:59 benefiting you yes uh author style i i have to say one thing and we haven't talked about this
1163. 01:32:09 in how it's written he's very good at using stories and i noticed that because there's a lot of cases
1164. 01:32:15 where he proposes a a concept and he tells a story about it and then he poses another concept and
1165. 01:32:20 tells a story about it makes it very engaging and it makes it a very easy book to read and at times
1166. 01:32:27 hard to put down uh but i really appreciated that um but at the same time it also feels like he's
1167. 01:32:34 repeating it has a little bit of that getting things done nests to it where he poses something
1168. 01:32:41 and then repeats it and goes over it in more detail later on it has a little bit of that flavor to it
1169. 01:32:46 but still a good read for sure so what would you rate it that don't i yeah uh i think i would put
1170. 01:32:55 this at a four a four oh it's one of those that has a lot of wisdom in it and is highly valuable i
1171. 01:33:04 i think i would highly recommend people read this there's it's i'm just kind of stuck on that whole
1172. 01:33:09 repeating thing a little bit and some of it's kind of hard to apply it's also not all exactly what
1173. 01:33:15 i was thinking i was getting into so because of that i'm i'm putting it at the four oh all right
1174. 01:33:21 you are a tough grater when it comes to it i know i am i'm gonna give it 4.5 because i thought it was
1175. 01:33:33 great the only thing that's keeping me from giving it five i guess is just trying to keep the fives a
1176. 01:33:39 little bit more exclusive it's not the same level of some of the other books that we've read where
1177. 01:33:47 it just completely blew me away but i was definitely very surprised by what i got out of this book
1178. 01:33:54 very pleasantly surprised by what i got out of this book and i thought it was a very easy and
1179. 01:33:59 approachable read it was a pretty entertaining read i would definitely recommend this to people
1180. 01:34:07 good deal so your choice is up next we what we have us going through mike i almost put 10
1181. 01:34:14 happier here but i mentioned previously the art of thinking clearly about roll of the belly
1182. 01:34:20 uh this is a book which is about cognitive biases there's about a hundred different chapters
1183. 01:34:26 each chapter is just like three pages and each chapter covers a different cognitive bias so i've
1184. 01:34:31 started this one really really interesting and i'm looking forward to the conversation about this one
1185. 01:34:37 that one will be fun uh following that one i've selected the legend of the monk and the merchant
1186. 01:34:43 by terry feilber uh this is on the list of the day of ramsey books so of course we need to go through
1187. 01:34:50 it nice how close are we to finishing all the day of ramsey books i think that's the last one
1188. 01:34:57 okay i think i need to go look at the list but i think that's the last one it feels like they just
1189. 01:35:03 keep coming doesn't it well i know we're making progress so i'm just i'm just curious how many are
1190. 01:35:08 actually in the set that he makes people read i think there's five and i feel like we've been
1191. 01:35:14 through about four so i think this is the last one gotcha i think uh so gap books sounds like you've
1192. 01:35:23 you're in the middle of ten percent happier i've actually finished this one but i'm putting it on
1193. 01:35:29 here as my official recommendation because this book is is awesome i actually read this whole book
1194. 01:35:36 in a day and a half i believe um it's just it's really it's a really entertaining
1195. 01:35:43 ah it's average size it's like 230 pages or something like that okay so it's not like one of these
1196. 01:35:50 allegories that's a hundred pages long nope uh but like i mentioned earlier Dan Harris is who's
1197. 01:35:57 the author his writing style is is awesome uh every single chapter has a very um provocative
1198. 01:36:07 title and then you read the first sentence and just he's he's the master at this where like
1199. 01:36:12 there's instantly a hook set and you're like oh i have to figure out what happens next yeah and so
1200. 01:36:16 you get to the end of a chapter and you're like oh i don't want to start the next chapter and you
1201. 01:36:19 read the first sentence you're like okay i'll read the next chapter but it's really really good
1202. 01:36:25 so if i read this don't read the first sentence okay got it uh my gap book is the subtle art of not
1203. 01:36:33 giving an f i guess by mark manson uh this is one that josh over on theoretical wants to go through
1204. 01:36:41 with me so i guess we're doing a bookworm esque episode at some point and that book is probably
1205. 01:36:46 one that doesn't fit the the listenership of bookworm real well so thus it's a gap book
1206. 01:36:54 so i'm intrigued by the the topic but you will probably not get me to read that one
1207. 01:36:59 well we'll see uh i have to admit i'm i'm a little nervous about this one but at the same time
1208. 01:37:08 knowing the the topic of it and because i haven't started it yet and that's what i'm going to start
1209. 01:37:14 this evening but uh the topic i'm intrigued by because i feel like it plays into the whole saying
1210. 01:37:22 no thing fairly well is my expectation i'll have to give you more on that later because i don't know
1211. 01:37:30 all right uh if you want to recommend a book for us to read you can do that by going to bookworm
1212. 01:37:40 dot fm slash list you can see all of the books that we've covered all the books that we're going to
1213. 01:37:45 cover and on the right sidebar there will be a button to recommend a book uh we would love to
1214. 01:37:51 get your recommendations we've covered several reader recommendations and i know we've got a
1215. 01:37:55 couple more planned so that's where you can go if you want to recommend a book and if you enjoy
1216. 01:38:01 the podcast would you mind leaving us an iTunes review that would help a lot uh mike has a mission
1217. 01:38:07 of de-seeding kcrw as the first listing on when you search for bookworm on the iTunes store
1218. 01:38:14 you can help us beat them but you need a little review just give us a quick rating
1219. 01:38:18 write something if you want that would help us a lot and if you want to ask questions you want to
1220. 01:38:24 take exception with something we've said you know pose another topic for a conversation in the
1221. 01:38:30 future you can do that over on productivity guild dot com that's where some of the conversations
1222. 01:38:35 about the bookworm shows occur all right so thanks for listening if you're reading along with us
1223. 01:38:42 the next book is the art of thinking clearly by rolf the belly and we will talk to you next time