91: The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman

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1. 00:00:00 I have decided, Mike, that I really, really, really like the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
2. 00:00:06 Yeah?
3. 00:00:07 Yes.
4. 00:00:08 This morning, I was editing videos because my life revolves around video right now.
5. 00:00:14 And I had two hours' worth of recorded video that I needed to encode with this machine.
6. 00:00:20 You want to take a crack at how long it took to do that two hours?
7. 00:00:25 About a hundred times less than it would have taken you on your previous computer?
8. 00:00:29 Yes, significantly.
9. 00:00:31 Now, there's a lot that goes into this, but it took 10 minutes to encode that two hours.
10. 00:00:37 Yeah, it's a screaming machine, for sure.
11. 00:00:39 I was beside myself.
12. 00:00:40 I thought that, you know, historically, that would have taken me about two hours to get
13. 00:00:46 the encoding completed.
14. 00:00:48 So to have it in 10 minutes is just astounding.
15. 00:00:52 I love this thing.
16. 00:00:53 Just love, love, love it.
17. 00:00:55 And it features a keyboard that actually works.
18. 00:00:58 Yes, it has an escape key.
19. 00:01:00 Right.
20. 00:01:01 I don't know if you know that or not, but it has an escape key that I'm quite thrilled
21. 00:01:03 about.
22. 00:01:04 I don't use it like you programmers do, but I know that probably makes you very happy.
23. 00:01:07 Oh, I'm thrilled.
24. 00:01:09 Absolutely thrilled.
25. 00:01:11 Probably way more than I should be.
26. 00:01:13 Faux show.
27. 00:01:15 Now, I want to jump in to follow up here, Mike, but you have to do it in a specific order
28. 00:01:21 per the outline.
29. 00:01:22 Okay.
30. 00:01:23 All right.
31. 00:01:24 I want you to do number three and then your choice of one and two back and forth, but
32. 00:01:29 number three has to come first.
33. 00:01:31 Okay.
34. 00:01:32 So the true follow up here is I'm my action item to create a stop doing list.
35. 00:01:38 I did not do this.
36. 00:01:41 In fact, I went kind of completely against this.
37. 00:01:47 The goal of this item was to stop doing things and different time, different place.
38. 00:01:57 I probably would have done that.
39. 00:02:00 We are in the middle of this self quarantine thing.
40. 00:02:04 Everybody's responding to this a little bit differently.
41. 00:02:06 My response apparently is to make things.
42. 00:02:09 Yep.
43. 00:02:10 So instead of choosing things to stop doing, I made two new things since we recorded last.
44. 00:02:19 The first one is a new course on the suite setup on the topic of time blocking, which
45. 00:02:23 was something that I floated by Sean not too long ago, said, Hey, what do you think about
46. 00:02:30 this idea?
47. 00:02:31 Because one of the things I love about working with Sean and the rest of the team at those
48. 00:02:35 we'd set up, but Sean specifically, he's the one who sets the tone for the company for
49. 00:02:39 the very beginning of this.
50. 00:02:40 He said that he doesn't want to be tone deaf to what's going on in the world.
51. 00:02:44 He wants to authentically help people, which is evidenced by giving away the time management
52. 00:02:50 course.
53. 00:02:52 That happened during my last sabbatical.
54. 00:02:55 So it was really cool to see that happen.
55. 00:02:56 That was really encouraging to me that I'm in the right place.
56. 00:03:01 These are my people.
57. 00:03:03 Sure.
58. 00:03:04 Yeah.
59. 00:03:05 So I want to follow the idea of the time blocking course that was based off of, you know, I've
60. 00:03:11 had several people who have reached out to me and asking for some help with this time
61. 00:03:15 blocking thing, which I tend to talk a lot about.
62. 00:03:18 And one person in particular, our buddy Josh asked me if I knew of any good resources.
63. 00:03:23 I'm like, you know, I really don't.
64. 00:03:25 Kel Newport's got some old blog posts from 2013, which talk about this, which were inspiring
65. 00:03:29 to me and I kind of synthesized my own system off of this.
66. 00:03:32 But I don't know of anything that I could just send people to.
67. 00:03:35 So I made something.
68. 00:03:36 Hey, that works with, with, and not just me, with a lot of help from Isaac and the rest
69. 00:03:43 of the team at the suite setup.
70. 00:03:45 So I want to, want to clarify that.
71. 00:03:46 But if you download the course, you'll hear my voice, you'll see my face.
72. 00:03:50 So, but it is definitely a team effort.
73. 00:03:52 But yeah, it's a short, it's really five videos on the basics of time blocking, some
74. 00:03:58 tips and tricks, how to do it.
75. 00:04:00 And then a video on how to do it in fantastical and a video on how to do it in good notes.
76. 00:04:05 So it's a fun course.
77. 00:04:06 I think it's a very timely course and it's a very affordable course at $29.
78. 00:04:11 Actually, right now as we record this, it's 23.
79. 00:04:14 I'm not sure if that price is still going to be, that launch price is still going to
80. 00:04:17 be available when, when this episode goes live.
81. 00:04:22 But even so, it's, it's not a huge investment.
82. 00:04:25 We did a webinar yesterday for it.
83. 00:04:27 If that is up by the time this publishes, I'll include a link to the replay.
84. 00:04:31 Fun course to do, it's talking head videos that I shot at home myself.
85. 00:04:35 First time I ever did that sort of thing.
86. 00:04:37 Nice.
87. 00:04:38 But it turned out pretty well.
88. 00:04:39 I'm not sure if you've looked at the contents of the course because I just sent it to you
89. 00:04:41 this morning.
90. 00:04:42 But I'm really happy with the way it turned out.
91. 00:04:45 Yeah, I haven't actually hit play on any of the videos yet, but I was queuing things
92. 00:04:48 up because I need more things to do.
93. 00:04:52 Yeah, right.
94. 00:04:53 I'm bored, need time fillers.
95. 00:04:56 Sure.
96. 00:04:58 But no, it looked like it was a really cool course.
97. 00:05:01 I'm excited to go through it because it's the exact thing that I need help with right
98. 00:05:05 now.
99. 00:05:06 I'm like, so I'm excited that you made something to help.
100. 00:05:09 Yeah, and that's the cool thing is, you know, that was the, that was the authentic reasoning
101. 00:05:15 behind creating it was, I don't know of anything like this out there.
102. 00:05:18 I wish that something like this existed.
103. 00:05:20 Let's make it and let's make it affordable because this is what people need right now.
104. 00:05:25 Right.
105. 00:05:26 So cool.
106. 00:05:27 Thing number one, thing number two is I launched another podcast with my wife and it is called
107. 00:05:35 the intentional family.
108. 00:05:38 It is something that we've been talking about for a long time.
109. 00:05:41 Kind of the inspiration for this is we have been doing this sort of stuff with our family
110. 00:05:48 for years where we have these different systems.
111. 00:05:49 I've talked about a lot of them on bookworms specifically, like the family core values and
112. 00:05:55 stuff like that.
113. 00:05:56 And every time that people come over and they see the stuff on our walls, like the pie charts
114. 00:06:01 and things like that, they see it and they're like, so what's the deal with that?
115. 00:06:05 You know, and then we explain it and they're like, oh, that's awesome.
116. 00:06:08 I want to steal that and we're like, go ahead.
117. 00:06:12 So we don't profess to have everything figured out, but we do know some things that work
118. 00:06:18 at least for us.
119. 00:06:19 So we wanted to share that on a larger scale, especially now, you know, that was kind of
120. 00:06:26 the thing that got this out the door was people were reaching out to us and asking for advice
121. 00:06:31 on, hey, I'm homeschooling now.
122. 00:06:33 What should I do?
123. 00:06:35 Or kind of time blocking was part of this too.
124. 00:06:38 Like, okay, now everything has changed.
125. 00:06:40 My family's home with me.
126. 00:06:41 I'm still trying to work remotely.
127. 00:06:42 Like how do I make this work?
128. 00:06:45 So we believe we've got something to share and we started a podcast, which is going to
129. 00:06:51 be real, the plan is every other week, although we have so many ideas we may for a while
130. 00:06:57 start doing it weekly.
131. 00:07:00 And they're going to be shorter, 30 minute episodes.
132. 00:07:03 So kind of the anti bookworm, if you will.
133. 00:07:06 Yeah.
134. 00:07:07 A little bit quicker than what we pull off.
135. 00:07:09 Yeah.
136. 00:07:10 And the reason for that, I think that when you're talking about stuff that you want to
137. 00:07:15 implement with multiple people, it's important that you keep it simple.
138. 00:07:19 Really, you can't make broad sweeping changes with your family.
139. 00:07:23 If you have multiple members that you're trying to coordinate, and I'll go in the same direction.
140. 00:07:27 So we want to give people little things that they can do, little adjustments.
141. 00:07:32 And so that's kind of a forced constraint for us not to go too deep on any single topic.
142. 00:07:37 And if we do stretch it out over multiple episodes that people have time to have time
143. 00:07:41 to think through the things and figure out how to apply it to their family situation.
144. 00:07:46 Sure.
145. 00:07:47 So that is at intentionalfamily.fm.
146. 00:07:48 That's also on Apple Podcast.
147. 00:07:50 I assume it's an overcast.
148. 00:07:51 Haven't looked for it there yet.
149. 00:07:53 But go subscribe if that sounds of interest to you.
150. 00:07:56 I already did.
151. 00:07:58 Thrilled the death.
152. 00:07:59 Thanks.
153. 00:08:00 I feel like this is something I have wanted to exist for a long time.
154. 00:08:03 There are a few like family oriented podcasts that I have attempted to listen to in the
155. 00:08:09 past that always struggle to because I feel like the co-hosts are not exactly, how do
156. 00:08:15 I say that?
157. 00:08:16 It's exactly easy to listen to.
158. 00:08:19 So I'm glad that you and Rachel are doing this.
159. 00:08:21 I'm really glad that Rachel is doing one.
160. 00:08:25 No.
161. 00:08:26 Yeah, exactly.
162. 00:08:27 So this is her baby.
163. 00:08:29 I introduced the first episode and I in the introduction, I said, you know, I am the co-host.
164. 00:08:34 Rachel is the host.
165. 00:08:36 And I'm doing this just because I have some podcast experience.
166. 00:08:38 But from here on out, you know, she's, she's run in the show.
167. 00:08:41 Sure.
168. 00:08:42 And that's because she has a lot to share.
169. 00:08:45 I do too, but I have other places that I can talk about stuff.
170. 00:08:49 Right.
171. 00:08:50 Right.
172. 00:08:51 And then yet to be released episode of Focus, as we record this anyways, talking to David
173. 00:08:55 about this, he said, glad I'm not the only one who doesn't have a single unpublished
174. 00:09:01 thought.
175. 00:09:02 Yeah.
176. 00:09:03 You know, that's, I'm quickly trending to that, that category.
177. 00:09:09 But this is, I don't know, people can hear me talk about stuff multiple places and you
178. 00:09:13 probably get sick of just another podcast about what Mike Schmitt says to say.
179. 00:09:18 But it turns out, you know, my wife is actually amazing and the secret to a lot of my success.
180. 00:09:22 So she's going to talk about it from her perspective.
181. 00:09:26 And more importantly, I think is the dynamic that we have in leading the family together.
182. 00:09:30 It's not a, it's not something that one person can do.
183. 00:09:34 It takes, it takes both, both people.
184. 00:09:38 And so again, not saying that we have it all figured out.
185. 00:09:41 A lot of people know a lot more about this than we do, but we want to share what we do
186. 00:09:45 know and hopefully help some people who are looking for some answers right now.
187. 00:09:51 Sure.
188. 00:09:52 I think this is the perfect time to be releasing something like this because there are so many
189. 00:09:57 people stuck with no one but their family.
190. 00:10:01 So it's good timing.
191. 00:10:03 Well done, Mike.
192. 00:10:04 Good job, Rachel.
193. 00:10:05 Really excited.
194. 00:10:06 Yeah, and the other thing about this that's interesting to me is that we don't know when
195. 00:10:12 things go back to normal, but the time that you have right now with your family doesn't
196. 00:10:17 have to be a negative thing.
197. 00:10:20 We had a family meeting day one and said, you know, this could be awesome or this could
198. 00:10:23 be really annoying.
199. 00:10:24 It's up to you guys in your perspective.
200. 00:10:25 Yeah, we can't do some of the stuff that we liked to do, but we can still have fun together.
201. 00:10:31 And we've been able to do that largely as a family right before we recorded here.
202. 00:10:35 We had a playing lightning out in the driveway with the entire family on the basketball hoop
203. 00:10:40 that you saw via FaceTime.
204. 00:10:42 Nice.
205. 00:10:43 You know, so little things like that really make a big difference.
206. 00:10:46 And I feel that if you are stuck home with your family, the things that you do now are
207. 00:10:51 going to echo years from now.
208. 00:10:53 The seeds that you plant right now will produce a harvest when you go when things go back
209. 00:10:59 to normal.
210. 00:11:00 And I think it's really important for a family specifically to recognize that you have an
211. 00:11:03 opportunity here.
212. 00:11:05 For sure.
213. 00:11:06 No, I think this is a good one.
214. 00:11:07 I haven't listened to the first one, but I have it and I am subscribed.
215. 00:11:11 So yes, I'm excited about this one.
216. 00:11:14 Good call, Rachel.
217. 00:11:15 If you're listening, good job.
218. 00:11:17 Excited.
219. 00:11:18 All right.
220. 00:11:19 Enough talking about me and my failed action item.
221. 00:11:22 I was going to say, this is kind of like the entirety of your follow up is I failed.
222. 00:11:29 But here's all the cool stuff I'm making because I failed.
223. 00:11:33 I failed gloriously.
224. 00:11:35 Oh, well done, Mike.
225. 00:11:39 Good job.
226. 00:11:40 Well, I have a single action item here, which is simply a question.
227. 00:11:46 How do I apply great thinking to my online business?
228. 00:11:50 And this is coming from good to great.
229. 00:11:53 And I'll be honest and admit that I did not spend one second thinking about this over
230. 00:12:00 the last two weeks.
231. 00:12:02 Apologies.
232. 00:12:03 I'm not even an attempt.
233. 00:12:04 I think it's a cool idea, but I don't have anything.
234. 00:12:11 Yeah, I am tempted to just say, let's forget all the action items until we're done with
235. 00:12:16 this thing along with all the gap books.
236. 00:12:19 But the action items do come out from reading the book, though.
237. 00:12:22 So I guess it's worth still talking about them, even if our success rate is going to
238. 00:12:27 go down significantly.
239. 00:12:29 Yep.
240. 00:12:30 Yep.
241. 00:12:31 I think it's continuing to go.
242. 00:12:32 At least for me, it's continuing to go down.
243. 00:12:34 I feel like my...
244. 00:12:35 I would be interested to see the success rate of action items from the time we started the
245. 00:12:42 Bookworm podcast to right now.
246. 00:12:44 I would venture to say that there's a much lower success rate now than there was at the
247. 00:12:49 beginning.
248. 00:12:50 That's my speculation.
249. 00:12:51 Oh, for sure.
250. 00:12:52 Well, I mean, right now, just because of where everybody finds themselves, it's going
251. 00:12:56 to be lower.
252. 00:12:57 In the webinar yesterday with Sean, I encouraged him to share this.
253. 00:13:01 And he talked about it, and I think it was really important for a lot of people to realize
254. 00:13:05 that there's maybe this unset expectation right now that you're working from home.
255. 00:13:11 You don't have your commute.
256. 00:13:12 You don't have all these other things, all these other distractions, if you will.
257. 00:13:16 So think about all the time that you have and how productive you can be.
258. 00:13:20 You're not going to be productive.
259. 00:13:21 I've seen a lot of articles being published lately about stop trying to be productive
260. 00:13:25 during all of this.
261. 00:13:27 And I think that's an important attitude to have.
262. 00:13:30 Sean shared in the webinar yesterday that on his best day, he's at about 75% effectiveness.
263. 00:13:35 And I'm glad that he shared that in the webinar because then I could share it here because
264. 00:13:38 I totally agree with that.
265. 00:13:39 He said on some days, it's more like 50, but on his best days, it's like 75.
266. 00:13:43 So you're not going to get as much done as you were getting done before, just because
267. 00:13:47 things are different.
268. 00:13:48 And there's a whole bunch of other factors that are weighing on you subconsciously, maybe
269. 00:13:52 even you don't even realize how emotionally drained you are from all of this stuff.
270. 00:13:56 So cut yourself a break, cut everybody that you work with a break.
271. 00:14:01 If they're not getting things done, not getting things to you in the way that they normally
272. 00:14:04 do, everybody's trying to figure this out on the fly.
273. 00:14:08 Yes, yes.
274. 00:14:09 And yes.
275. 00:14:10 I will say, I have more time, but it's all being used up by my Javi job.
276. 00:14:15 So there's that, which is why I've had a few people email me recently, "Joe, where's your
277. 00:14:21 newsletter been?
278. 00:14:22 Where's your blog post?"
279. 00:14:23 I'm like, "I don't have time.
280. 00:14:25 I just don't, thankfully, as of this weekend, coming into this next Monday, it drops off
281. 00:14:35 significantly for me because we finally started to hit a stride this week.
282. 00:14:40 So I feel like I'm in pretty good shape after this.
283. 00:14:43 So my goal is to write something in the following week.
284. 00:14:46 But this episode will have released by then, so it'll be kind of weird.
285. 00:14:49 Sorry, that would be strange.
286. 00:14:51 But that's where I land.
287. 00:14:53 I spent no time thinking about the question I was supposed to spend time thinking about.
288. 00:14:57 And I am not planning to do that confession.
289. 00:15:00 That's all right.
290. 00:15:01 We forgive you.
291. 00:15:02 All right.
292. 00:15:03 Let's jump into today's book, which is The Antidote by Oliver Berkman, Happiness for
293. 00:15:11 People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking.
294. 00:15:15 And I have to admit that as I was reading this, I feel like this is the antithesis to
295. 00:15:19 a lot of the books that we've read on Bookworm.
296. 00:15:21 It is, yep.
297. 00:15:22 I don't know if that's 100% accurate, but it feels like he is going through the process
298. 00:15:27 of picking apart a lot of the health, self-help theories one by one and showing why they are
299. 00:15:34 wrong and showing why you need to do the exact opposite.
300. 00:15:38 I think that's my story.
301. 00:15:39 Well, he's attempting to show why they're wrong.
302. 00:15:41 Yes, yes, yes, yes.
303. 00:15:42 That's a very good clarification to make.
304. 00:15:46 Thank you for that, Mike.
305. 00:15:47 Yeah.
306. 00:15:48 I think I just figured out what your opinion of the book is.
307. 00:15:52 But I struggle with this.
308. 00:15:55 So at a broad level, before we get into the specific contents, I feel like there's a lot
309. 00:16:02 to be mined from this book.
310. 00:16:05 But the way that it's written is trying to address a whole bunch of things in a short
311. 00:16:12 chapter, sprinkle in some personal stories.
312. 00:16:15 And as a result, there's not really a deep conversation around any one of these things.
313. 00:16:22 Just as an example, later on in the book, he talks about Carol Dweck and mindset, fixed
314. 00:16:28 versus growth mindset.
315. 00:16:30 He calls it fixed theory and incremental theory.
316. 00:16:33 But he quotes Carol Dweck specifically.
317. 00:16:37 And there's a whole book on that topic, which speaks to it much more clearly and has a lot
318. 00:16:43 more value, in my opinion, than the two-page section in here.
319. 00:16:49 And that's like one selective point that he's using to support the argument laid out at
320. 00:16:55 the very beginning of this chapter.
321. 00:16:57 And I feel like a lot of the stuff that he uses in here is that selective picking and
322. 00:17:05 choosing of things that will support his argument without looking at them in totality to see
323. 00:17:11 what they support and what they don't support.
324. 00:17:14 So if you read this at surface level, you kind of feel like these things tie together.
325. 00:17:19 But to me, because I've read enough of these books maybe, I feel like it's tied together
326. 00:17:24 very loosely.
327. 00:17:25 And if you look closely at any one of these, you start to see where things are falling
328. 00:17:31 apart at the seams in the patchwork of his arguments.
329. 00:17:35 Is that fair?
330. 00:17:36 Sure.
331. 00:17:37 Yeah.
332. 00:17:38 No, I think that's fair.
333. 00:17:39 I feel like there were a number of times he was making an argument.
334. 00:17:40 And I wondered, "Am I just falling into the mirror?"
335. 00:17:44 Into the positive thinking trap as he would refer to it?
336. 00:17:49 Or is he actually full of it?
337. 00:17:52 I kept asking that question to myself quite a bit.
338. 00:17:56 And that is not to say that I agree or disagree with anything.
339. 00:17:59 That's just based on how the book itself is put together.
340. 00:18:04 So maybe that should be more author style and rating.
341. 00:18:07 But I think it's important to call out here at the beginning because as we go through
342. 00:18:11 all of these things, these are very selective in how they are presented.
343. 00:18:17 So there is definitely a bias here starting with the very first story where he talks about
344. 00:18:22 being at the get motivated event and how he's standing next to this guy who is basically
345. 00:18:29 heckling from the outer rim, like way up in the nose bleeds and thinking that this is
346. 00:18:35 ridiculous.
347. 00:18:36 That's kind of the framework for the rest of the book.
348. 00:18:40 Because this whole industry is like this.
349. 00:18:43 And I don't think it's all like that.
350. 00:18:44 I think there are people that are like that.
351. 00:18:48 And I don't like those types of events either.
352. 00:18:50 I was offered the opportunity to go to a Tony Robbins event for free.
353. 00:18:54 And I'm like, "Nah, I don't really want to go."
354. 00:18:58 Even though I think that Tony Robbins does a lot of good.
355. 00:19:02 If you follow his life story at all and the money book specifically, someone showed up
356. 00:19:08 at his house on Thanksgiving Day when his parents couldn't afford a Thanksgiving dinner
357. 00:19:13 and they were arguing about it and someone delivered them a Thanksgiving dinner.
358. 00:19:18 And that made an impact on him.
359. 00:19:19 So he gave out, I forget the number, but it's thousands and thousands and thousands of
360. 00:19:24 Thanksgiving dinners from the proceeds that he made from that one book.
361. 00:19:28 So I think there's a lot to like about Tony Robbins, but the whole way that his events
362. 00:19:32 and just his whole platform is put together, I don't like that kind of stuff.
363. 00:19:38 Same thing for Gary Vaynerchuk, same thing for Grant Cardone, even though I really liked
364. 00:19:42 that book and the message behind it.
365. 00:19:44 You know, I'm able to disconnect the message from the messenger with a lot of this stuff.
366. 00:19:50 But I totally get it if other people have trouble doing that.
367. 00:19:53 What about the four hour work week?
368. 00:19:54 Tim Ferriss?
369. 00:19:55 There's a whole hour and a half rant on, I mean episode.
370. 00:20:00 What I think about the four hour work week.
371. 00:20:03 Okay.
372. 00:20:04 I just wondered if you'd be able to separate those two, that's all.
373. 00:20:09 Well that's a little bit different because I think the message there is, hey, this is
374. 00:20:15 easy and it's not easy.
375. 00:20:18 You can do it.
376. 00:20:19 I think that's different than saying, hey, you only have to work four hours a week, which
377. 00:20:23 isn't the message of that book if you dig into it, but the provocative title makes it
378. 00:20:28 seem like it is.
379. 00:20:29 And I guarantee Tim Ferriss did that on purpose.
380. 00:20:31 Oh, he totally did.
381. 00:20:33 Sorry, didn't mean to send you down that trail.
382. 00:20:35 All right, let's jump into the meat of the book.
383. 00:20:38 And I haven't put in every single chapter to work through it.
384. 00:20:42 I didn't even put the chapter titles in the outline for today because I feel like there's
385. 00:20:45 some very specific points that we should work through for this particular book.
386. 00:20:51 And the first of those is the beginning of the book goes through some of the overarching
387. 00:20:56 problems with the world of positive thinking.
388. 00:21:01 And he tells this from the story of going to this get motivated conference and how people
389. 00:21:05 were all about thinking positively and trying to neglect or put aside the negative thinking
390. 00:21:14 that you're prone to.
391. 00:21:16 Like don't do that, but think about how great you are and think about how awesome the future
392. 00:21:22 is going to be.
393. 00:21:23 Like that was the overarching theme of the conference.
394. 00:21:26 Never been to one of these.
395. 00:21:27 I actually had never heard of this get motivated conference, even though he claims it's like
396. 00:21:30 the biggest one, maybe that's, I don't know, something to do with time warp with when it
397. 00:21:35 was written versus now.
398. 00:21:37 But he totally should have gone to a Tony Robbins event and done the fire walk and talked
399. 00:21:41 about that.
400. 00:21:42 I kind of thought that because he does reference that later on.
401. 00:21:47 But the premise here is that, and this is the foundation that the rest of the book sits
402. 00:21:53 on, the premise is that the people who get into deep into positive thinking have a tendency
403. 00:22:03 to neglect or search for the negative thoughts in order to set them aside.
404. 00:22:11 And his whole premise here throughout the rest of it, and tell me if you agree with this
405. 00:22:17 Mike, is that by trying to hunt down the negatives and set them aside, you actually make yourself
406. 00:22:25 worse, worse off in the end, as opposed to better, which was your intention by doing
407. 00:22:31 the positive thinking and neglecting the negative thinking.
408. 00:22:34 Do you think it's a fair assessment?
409. 00:22:36 That is a fair assessment.
410. 00:22:37 And I agree with that.
411. 00:22:38 I mean, he talks about the problem of positive thinking being that you have to scan for those
412. 00:22:42 negative thoughts, but scanning will draw attention to the negative thoughts.
413. 00:22:46 So trying to get rid of everything negative is going to produce anxiety and security and
414. 00:22:49 sadness as you see all those things that are really there.
415. 00:22:52 So the effort that you spend trying to be happy can make you miserable.
416. 00:22:57 I agree with that 100%.
417. 00:22:59 But I also think that that doesn't mean you should completely stop trying to be happy
418. 00:23:06 or to discount everything that has a positive message to it.
419. 00:23:13 And that's my real issue with the way that the get motivated event is framed.
420. 00:23:18 Again, I understand all the issues with those types of things.
421. 00:23:22 I have never been to a Tony Robbins event, but I studied them.
422. 00:23:27 And I asked and interviewed people who have been to them, what's it like?
423. 00:23:32 And from what I understand, it's like a big positive pepper alley.
424. 00:23:38 And it goes against every fiber of my being, the way that they describe these events where
425. 00:23:43 he's up on stage and he's making everybody jump up and down and they have these dance
426. 00:23:48 contests with people and they're like, no, I don't want anything to do with that.
427. 00:23:52 But that doesn't mean that that doesn't work for some people.
428. 00:23:56 And then the other thing that really kind of raised a red flag in my head right away
429. 00:24:00 was this 18 month rule that he talks about.
430. 00:24:03 He says, the most likely person to buy a self-help book is someone who bought one in the last
431. 00:24:06 18 months.
432. 00:24:08 And when I read that part, I'm like, yep, guilty.
433. 00:24:10 That's totally me.
434. 00:24:11 And then he adds this little big one that evidently didn't solve all their problems.
435. 00:24:17 And I was like, you don't get it.
436. 00:24:19 I'm not buying these books because good to great or any of the books that we've read,
437. 00:24:25 even the ones that I've given five stars, I did not get that book to solve all my problems.
438. 00:24:32 I maybe got that book to solve a problem.
439. 00:24:35 And I think that's the difference that's worth calling out here at the very beginning is
440. 00:24:39 that trying too hard to be happy, trying to achieve perfection, especially believing that
441. 00:24:44 one event or one book is going to provide all of the answers, that is going to be something
442. 00:24:49 that is just going to be frustrating.
443. 00:24:51 But if you can look at your life and you can say, here's one thing that would make me happier.
444. 00:24:56 And I want to make this change because I want to be happier.
445. 00:24:59 That is totally fine.
446. 00:25:01 And that is very much in line with the growth mindset that he calls out later.
447. 00:25:04 Very much against the broad description of the positive thinking culture that he highlights
448. 00:25:12 in this first chapter.
449. 00:25:13 I think there's one and obviously you and I are going to argue with him because we have
450. 00:25:19 a tendency to support this positive thinking world.
451. 00:25:25 But I think there's one fundamental issue I have with his structure and his foundation.
452. 00:25:32 And that is he makes the assumption that people who focus on positive thinking are in actuality
453. 00:25:43 focusing on the negative thoughts and trying to root them from their brain.
454. 00:25:49 And I think that is fundamentally flawed because that is something that I do not do.
455. 00:25:55 And I don't see it that way at all.
456. 00:25:56 Yes, I try to think positively and look at the bright side of things.
457. 00:26:02 But I'm not naive.
458. 00:26:03 I'm not saying the negative stuff isn't there.
459. 00:26:07 Obviously with the health stuff I've dealt with, it's certainly not something I can just
460. 00:26:13 say, hey, I feel great.
461. 00:26:15 No, it doesn't work.
462. 00:26:18 I can't just say, yes, I'm better.
463. 00:26:20 And then all of a sudden be better.
464. 00:26:21 That works for some people.
465. 00:26:22 But in most cases, it doesn't work that way.
466. 00:26:27 And if you had taken that approach, you'd be miserable instead of on the verge of beating
467. 00:26:31 this thing.
468. 00:26:32 Definitely.
469. 00:26:33 So I don't buy his foundation, which is unfortunate because the rest of this book, he has a lot
470. 00:26:42 of good points.
471. 00:26:43 And I do have a couple of points here that I will act on as a result of reading this.
472. 00:26:48 I'm grateful for having read this.
473. 00:26:50 But I think his foundation is flawed, which of course is going to make me a skeptic for
474. 00:26:56 the rest of the book.
475. 00:26:57 Exactly.
476. 00:26:58 And I caught that within the first 10 pages and like, oh boy, here we go.
477. 00:27:04 This might have been better if the first chapter had been omitted and he just jumped
478. 00:27:08 into stoicism.
479. 00:27:09 Yeah, it might have.
480. 00:27:12 Yeah.
481. 00:27:13 The last thing I'll say about this first chapter, the note that I jotted down is that you shouldn't
482. 00:27:17 assume that any booker system is going to solve all of your problems.
483. 00:27:21 And this is where I think the stoic perspective is maybe a little bit different and we would
484. 00:27:27 have to interview Ryan Holiday to really know this for sure because he wrote the book The
485. 00:27:31 Obstacle is the Way.
486. 00:27:33 But I view this and I'm glad you brought up your health battles because from an outside
487. 00:27:39 perspective, you can tell me if this is wrong, it appears to me that you have just identified
488. 00:27:45 that this is the next hurdle I have to get over.
489. 00:27:48 So we're going to take care of this thing.
490. 00:27:51 And then there's another hurdle and we're going to take care of that thing.
491. 00:27:54 And then there's probably another hurdle that you didn't know about or didn't see coming.
492. 00:27:58 And then you take care of that thing and you just keep going.
493. 00:28:01 You don't assume that this one pill that I'm going to take is going to magically fix
494. 00:28:07 all of these things that would have caused you to be frustrated.
495. 00:28:11 And if you kept looking for those things, it might actually hurt you.
496. 00:28:13 Is that fair?
497. 00:28:14 Absolutely.
498. 00:28:15 100%.
499. 00:28:16 And obviously when you have health issues, you can't help but reflect on them when you
500. 00:28:21 read something like this.
501. 00:28:23 And I continued to see how the way I've approached my healing process, which by the way, I'm
502. 00:28:29 very close to the end of if I'm not like within sight of it right now.
503. 00:28:33 Anyway, I haven't said that publicly.
504. 00:28:36 There you go.
505. 00:28:37 So, you know, having that history, you know, as we go through these things, I guess I can
506. 00:28:41 use that as a recurring example because it hasn't been simple.
507. 00:28:46 This has been an almost two year long process, which I know there are people that do much
508. 00:28:50 longer healing processes than I've been through and some that are way worse.
509. 00:28:55 I'm not downplaying that.
510. 00:28:57 But at the same time, it hasn't been simple.
511. 00:29:00 And every time it seems like you'd get to one point, the next could be worse.
512. 00:29:05 It could be better.
513. 00:29:06 It could seem worse.
514. 00:29:07 Like you never know.
515. 00:29:08 You don't know what's coming up.
516. 00:29:09 But if I had gone through what he's calling this positive thinking, don't think bad thoughts,
517. 00:29:15 like, no, I was thinking quite a few times like, what happens if this kills me?
518. 00:29:20 Like I had those thoughts on a regular basis.
519. 00:29:23 So it's not something that you're going to just magically make go away because you're
520. 00:29:30 thinking a certain direction.
521. 00:29:33 So I wouldn't say that I'm at the level of Ryan Holiday and the Stoics, but we can jump
522. 00:29:42 into that because it's a chapter that he goes into immediately after explaining this whole
523. 00:29:49 cult of positive thinking.
524. 00:29:50 I don't remember if he used the actual term cult.
525. 00:29:53 Do you remember if he did that or not?
526. 00:29:54 Okay.
527. 00:29:55 I couldn't remember if I was cult of optimism, I think is how he defined it.
528. 00:29:58 Okay.
529. 00:29:59 Maybe that's where I got that.
530. 00:30:00 I felt like I was imposing something on him, but it felt familiar.
531. 00:30:04 I don't know.
532. 00:30:05 But he talks about stoicism.
533. 00:30:07 And if you don't know what stoicism is, I'm probably the wrong person to explain it
534. 00:30:10 to you.
535. 00:30:11 But the general gist, the way I understand it is that when things happen to you, you don't
536. 00:30:20 take a positive or negative stance on it.
537. 00:30:23 It is just a thing that has happened.
538. 00:30:25 It's not inherently good or bad.
539. 00:30:28 And it is your response to that thing that dictates your overarching reaction to it.
540. 00:30:35 So yes, if you're in a car accident, we would naturally say, oh, that's bad.
541. 00:30:41 That would be the question.
542. 00:30:43 It's like, well, you had a car accident.
543. 00:30:46 If someone got hurt, is that inherently bad?
544. 00:30:49 And some people would say yes.
545. 00:30:51 Some people will say no, it kind of depends on how you react to it.
546. 00:30:54 Sometimes when people have had an accident, it becomes the best thing that ever happened
547. 00:30:57 to them, which is always counterintuitive when you hear those stories.
548. 00:31:02 But it's your reaction to things that dictates whether it becomes a good or bad thing.
549. 00:31:07 That's at least my view of stoicism.
550. 00:31:08 Yeah, Mike, you can contradict me now if you'd like.
551. 00:31:11 That is generally correct.
552. 00:31:16 Stoicism has been something that has fascinated me for a while.
553. 00:31:19 I don't consider myself a stoic.
554. 00:31:22 But this in this section, he talks about that beliefs cause your distress.
555. 00:31:29 And that's a shared thought between stoicism and positive thinking.
556. 00:31:33 And I agree with that.
557. 00:31:35 And I think that everything I shared at the beginning about the intentional family and
558. 00:31:38 like what we're trying to do to redeem this time that we find ourselves in.
559. 00:31:42 This could be classified as stoic thinking because you have this event where you have
560. 00:31:49 to stay home, schools canceled, all the extracurriculars are canceled.
561. 00:31:53 And that is not great.
562. 00:31:56 But that doesn't mean that good can't come out of it.
563. 00:31:58 And that's what we did.
564. 00:31:59 We viewed it.
565. 00:32:00 Okay, this is what it is.
566. 00:32:02 So how do we redeem this time?
567. 00:32:03 How do we make the best of this time?
568. 00:32:06 How do we still do positive things during this time?
569. 00:32:09 That's where I think I start to break away from the stoic philosophy.
570. 00:32:13 Because he talks a lot in here about negative visualization, which I want to talk about.
571. 00:32:18 But I want to go back to the perspective of how do you view the current situation that
572. 00:32:22 we find ourselves in.
573. 00:32:24 Because this is something that I have been thinking a lot about.
574. 00:32:27 It is not a secret that I am a Christian and that my religious beliefs shape how I view
575. 00:32:34 the world.
576. 00:32:36 I think that when it comes to positive thinking and stoicism and the role of faith with this,
577. 00:32:46 you can accept a situation for the way that it is.
578. 00:32:50 And you can wish and believe that it was different and will be different.
579. 00:32:56 And that those aren't necessarily at odds with each other.
580. 00:33:01 So as I find myself wanting this thing to change and to be done and to go back to life
581. 00:33:10 as normal, there is a process of walking that out.
582. 00:33:16 And even for somebody who considers themselves a man or woman of faith in you, you pray and
583. 00:33:22 you believe that God hears your prayers and things are going to change, there is a process.
584. 00:33:28 You don't see it all the time right away.
585. 00:33:30 And that doesn't mean that you stop.
586. 00:33:32 You keep doing the things that you know to do.
587. 00:33:36 And then you kind of release the results.
588. 00:33:39 And that I think is very much in alignment with a lot of the stuff that's in this book
589. 00:33:44 is that you recognize what is going on.
590. 00:33:46 You're not making a value judgment about it.
591. 00:33:48 You're doing what you know you need to do regardless of whether you fall into positive
592. 00:33:53 negative, whatever.
593. 00:33:54 I almost feel like the subtitle of this book is kind of a distraction for the real value
594. 00:33:59 of the information that's in here almost because it forces you to pick a side.
595. 00:34:04 And I think that there's a lot of value in recognizing that you don't have control over
596. 00:34:09 everything that's going on.
597. 00:34:11 And that's okay.
598. 00:34:12 Just do what you know to do.
599. 00:34:14 And then like the way I would say it based on my belief system would be do your best and
600. 00:34:20 let God do the rest.
601. 00:34:22 Okay.
602. 00:34:23 But even if you don't believe in in God, there has to be an element of that.
603. 00:34:27 That's kind of what he's preaching.
604. 00:34:28 And I use the word preaching intentionally through the rest of this book is that you're
605. 00:34:33 not going to be able to control everything.
606. 00:34:35 So if you try to control everything, you're just going to get frustrated.
607. 00:34:37 You're going to get anxious.
608. 00:34:38 That's kind of the point of the whole first chapter.
609. 00:34:41 So Stoicism here where he's talking about don't disconnect your feelings from the actual
610. 00:34:46 event.
611. 00:34:47 Just recognize the event for what it is.
612. 00:34:49 I think that's a really interesting idea.
613. 00:34:52 And it's a hard one to follow through on.
614. 00:34:54 I think definitely your gut reaction is you get in a car accident.
615. 00:34:58 Oh my goodness.
616. 00:34:59 This is just terrible.
617. 00:35:01 This is this is a terrible thing to happen when I learned that I had Lyme disease.
618. 00:35:06 It was devastating when it first happened.
619. 00:35:09 But at this particular point in time, like I'm one of those weird people that would tell
620. 00:35:13 you that I'm grateful for having had Lyme disease at this point because it's taught me
621. 00:35:19 so much about good health.
622. 00:35:21 And I've learned how horribly I was living and helped me to develop a much better life
623. 00:35:28 style.
624. 00:35:29 So at this point, I'm grateful to have somehow contracted Lyme disease.
625. 00:35:33 I think it was through mosquitoes, but it's a whole nother scientific conversation to
626. 00:35:38 have non-ombochrome.
627. 00:35:40 But I feel like when it first came, like when that first happened when I first learned
628. 00:35:47 that I had Lyme disease, it was one that was very difficult to come to grips with and borderline
629. 00:35:54 sent me into a bit of a depression until figuring out what to do about it, talking to
630. 00:36:01 a couple doctors who specialize in alternative medicine and being willing to ask the questions
631. 00:36:07 around what's the right path forward for this and being willing to fight instead of
632. 00:36:14 just giving up and saying, whoops, well, I guess my life's over because some people
633. 00:36:18 do that.
634. 00:36:19 People who receive that diagnosis, borderline shut down entirely and don't even try.
635. 00:36:29 That is the opposite of what you're after.
636. 00:36:31 You need to take...
637. 00:36:34 I'm not one that studies stoicism.
638. 00:36:36 I don't know that I would call myself a stoic.
639. 00:36:38 I don't even know if I really want to call myself a stoic or go down that path.
640. 00:36:43 But seeing the benefits of just evaluating things as they are and then reacting to them,
641. 00:36:52 I don't think I would go that far.
642. 00:36:54 I think to your point, with the book, it's not sides.
643. 00:36:58 There is a medium.
644. 00:36:59 I forget what the name of that argument is.
645. 00:37:01 There's an argument that there's a title for it.
646. 00:37:04 Whenever someone makes it a choice between one thing and another, but there's actually
647. 00:37:08 a middle ground and they don't acknowledge that, there's a name for that, but I can't
648. 00:37:12 think of what it is.
649. 00:37:13 Stoicism, I feel, is the same way as what you're saying with this book.
650. 00:37:17 I don't feel that it has to be your all-in with stoicism or your not.
651. 00:37:22 I feel like there is a middle ground of being willing to acknowledge things and choosing
652. 00:37:28 your reaction to them, but I'm okay inherently saying something's good or bad to a certain
653. 00:37:33 degree.
654. 00:37:34 That's my tendency.
655. 00:37:35 Exactly.
656. 00:37:36 I'm okay with that.
657. 00:37:37 You have to be willing to say things are good or bad because there was something that you
658. 00:37:40 said, and I forget exactly the way that you said it, when something lands in front of
659. 00:37:45 you, you have the choice whether to accept or reject that.
660. 00:37:50 He talks about how later on specifically, we tend to reject any sort of thought on the
661. 00:37:56 topic of death.
662. 00:37:59 I want to separate that for a moment and just think about the concept of there's something
663. 00:38:05 that's presented to you and you have the ability to accept or reject that as truth.
664. 00:38:12 Everybody is going to make that decision based on their own model, what they consider to
665. 00:38:19 be true.
666. 00:38:21 But I think there is a lot of truth to the fact that you don't have to assume control
667. 00:38:30 of everything that every person or everything is going to try to put on you.
668. 00:38:36 You don't necessarily have to sign for the package.
669. 00:38:40 I have had people tell me over and over again that you are going to have what's the celiac
670. 00:38:51 disease where you're not going to be able to eat bread.
671. 00:38:54 I love bread.
672. 00:38:57 And so every time they try to tell me that or they try to get me tested, whatever, and
673. 00:39:01 they're trying to prove their theory, I'm like, nope, nope, I feel fine.
674. 00:39:05 I eat bread all the time.
675. 00:39:07 I don't want to project sickness onto myself because I know that when I start doing that,
676. 00:39:13 I will start to feel sick.
677. 00:39:15 And I know that there are people who do struggle with that and making that change really does
678. 00:39:21 improve the quality of their life.
679. 00:39:22 So I am not talking about ignoring what is there.
680. 00:39:26 And I think that's the distinction I'm trying to make here.
681. 00:39:28 Is there is a difference between pretending something isn't happening and saying, yep,
682. 00:39:34 okay, this is what it is.
683. 00:39:36 Now what's the best path forward from here?
684. 00:39:39 And choosing the correct way to respond in those different situations, by the way, is
685. 00:39:42 a little bit tricky.
686. 00:39:44 If somebody were to come and tell me, hey, you've got celiac disease, when I don't feel
687. 00:39:48 bad, I don't feel bad after I eat bread, that's very different than when somebody is
688. 00:39:55 telling you, hey, you've contracted Lyme disease and here are some things that you can do to
689. 00:40:00 mitigate and beat this thing.
690. 00:40:02 You're not going to bury your head in the sand and just say, nope, I don't have it.
691. 00:40:06 I refuse to accept Lyme disease because the whole time you are miserable, you have no
692. 00:40:10 energy, you have the aches and pains.
693. 00:40:13 Like, there are times when you do have to though, just block that stuff out of your mind,
694. 00:40:18 I think, and it's tricky to know the difference there.
695. 00:40:21 That is the thing that I struggle with where we are right now, is where is that line?
696. 00:40:27 And I'm constantly asking myself, how am I responding and am I responding appropriately?
697. 00:40:33 Because I don't want to walk in fear.
698. 00:40:35 I believe that spirit of fear, you can see that anytime you go to the store and just
699. 00:40:40 look at people's faces, they're terrified of catching this thing.
700. 00:40:44 And I feel like that negative energy that does attract some of this stuff.
701. 00:40:47 And I don't want to pass that along to my kids.
702. 00:40:50 So I'm going to be careful that I'm not living that way, but I'm also going to be wise and
703. 00:40:55 I'm not going to the store unless I have to.
704. 00:40:57 Right.
705. 00:40:58 Right.
706. 00:40:59 I told our girls because they were getting a little nervous because they'd seen other
707. 00:41:03 people take multiple steps back whenever they get close to us when we're walking on the
708. 00:41:09 street and they're trying to make sure that they're not getting too close by accident.
709. 00:41:14 Like, is it really that dangerous?
710. 00:41:15 And I was like, well, the absolute worst that could happen is you could die and then we
711. 00:41:20 go to heaven.
712. 00:41:21 So I'm not too concerned about it.
713. 00:41:25 Yeah.
714. 00:41:26 And that's where negative visualization comes in with this chapter.
715. 00:41:29 Yeah, absolutely.
716. 00:41:31 But it's a thing that frustrates other people whenever you say that.
717. 00:41:34 Well, I'm not too concerned about it at the same time.
718. 00:41:38 Like we were talking beforehand, it's my job to run a lot of the live streams.
719. 00:41:43 A lot, all of the live streams that our church does.
720. 00:41:46 So anything video related ends up going through me, I've become way more popular than I ever
721. 00:41:50 wanted to be.
722. 00:41:51 And as a result of that, I end up being in these scenarios where there's a lot of people
723. 00:41:56 in that building sometimes, you know, they're all being careful about not getting too close
724. 00:42:00 to each other and trying to make sure there's not too many people in one room at a time.
725. 00:42:03 Like they're careful about that, but you're still in the same building.
726. 00:42:08 And it's like, well, we're just going to sacrifice Joe for the sake of everybody else.
727. 00:42:12 It's OK.
728. 00:42:13 Sorry.
729. 00:42:14 I'll be fine.
730. 00:42:15 No, maybe that's just me being naive.
731. 00:42:17 But at the same time, I know if I do that, it allows, you know, at this point, close
732. 00:42:23 to a thousand or more than a thousand people to stay home and not go out.
733. 00:42:29 So it's a big deal for me to do that.
734. 00:42:32 So that's why I'm OK with it.
735. 00:42:34 But all right, stoicism, I like the concept.
736. 00:42:37 I think there's middle ground.
737. 00:42:38 I would like to go into it.
738. 00:42:40 Yes.
739. 00:42:41 Quick point on the negative visualization.
740. 00:42:43 This is something that I had heard about a while back.
741. 00:42:46 And I don't like the way that he described it here.
742. 00:42:48 But if you want a good explanation of this, check out the Tim Ferriss fear setting Ted
743. 00:42:53 talk where it's basically goal setting, but you're envisioning a worst case scenario.
744. 00:42:58 And again, this is the type of thing that doesn't really fit with the way that I think.
745. 00:43:04 But I see the value in it because the basic idea there is that if you picture the worst
746. 00:43:10 case event, it's not going to be as bad as that.
747. 00:43:14 Just like if you picture the best case event, it's probably not going to be as good as that,
748. 00:43:17 which can cause you to be disappointed.
749. 00:43:19 So the opposite end of that, the negative visualization is picture the worst thing that
750. 00:43:22 could happen.
751. 00:43:24 And then everything that would happen above that is just gravy.
752. 00:43:28 Sure.
753. 00:43:29 So confronting that worst case scenario, saps it of its anxiety inducing power, he says,
754. 00:43:34 which is really true.
755. 00:43:36 And you kind of did that, you know, when you're talking to your kids and you say, well,
756. 00:43:38 if we die, we're saying that it happens, this we go to heaven, you know, and you can
757. 00:43:43 apply that.
758. 00:43:44 It doesn't have to be death.
759. 00:43:45 That doesn't always have to be the worst case scenario.
760. 00:43:47 Although that is a topic in this book.
761. 00:43:49 So I think it's not, it's not off topic to, to think of it that way.
762. 00:43:55 Yeah, as far as like the negative visualization piece goes, that is where I started, I have
763. 00:44:02 one action item from this and it all involves journal prompts.
764. 00:44:05 I've been doing more journaling at night.
765. 00:44:07 I think our next book will encourage that to some degree, but I've been doing more of
766. 00:44:13 that and I've been slowly changing up some of the prompts that I use as part of that.
767. 00:44:19 And this is where one of them came from.
768. 00:44:20 It's like, okay, in the scenarios that I'm dealing with today, what's the worst that
769. 00:44:24 could happen?
770. 00:44:25 Like take the live streaming, for example, a lot of things can go wrong when it comes
771. 00:44:31 to live streaming.
772. 00:44:32 People think, oh, yeah, just turn it on.
773. 00:44:34 No, it is not that simple.
774. 00:44:37 It is quite complex if you're going to do a really well produced live stream.
775. 00:44:43 And the worst that could happen is it goes down, you know, we get kind of been out of
776. 00:44:48 shape and we're very particular with it.
777. 00:44:50 And I do a lot of backups and such, but the absolute worst that could happen is it goes
778. 00:44:55 down.
779. 00:44:56 We apologize.
780. 00:44:57 We try again.
781. 00:44:58 So it's okay.
782. 00:44:59 Yeah.
783. 00:45:00 And with the technical stuff specifically, I'm glad you brought that up because that's
784. 00:45:03 like the place that everyone could probably agree to take a stoic approach because when
785. 00:45:09 the stream goes down, it's not morally good or bad.
786. 00:45:13 It just is.
787. 00:45:14 And everybody knows that there is a technical cause that that thing is down.
788. 00:45:18 Yep.
789. 00:45:19 So you can just say, okay, the stream is down.
790. 00:45:22 What can I do about this?
791. 00:45:23 What's the best thing to do right now?
792. 00:45:26 As opposed to if you do attribute a moral judgment to that, then you're freaking out
793. 00:45:30 because, oh my gosh, this is the stream is down.
794. 00:45:33 This is terrible.
795. 00:45:34 All these people can't see it.
796. 00:45:35 Well, I can't even think of a positive scenario where you think it's good that the stream
797. 00:45:38 went down, but you get, you get my point, you know, that like, if you're able to detach
798. 00:45:43 the meaning, you can solve the problem a lot quicker.
799. 00:45:46 Absolutely.
800. 00:45:47 And I think, you know, some of, I've jokingly said that working in IT has helped me beat
801. 00:45:54 Lyme disease and a mold infection because it has shown me how things just go bad for
802. 00:46:00 no reason sometimes.
803. 00:46:01 Yeah.
804. 00:46:02 So it's just, you know, it's, it's not a good thing, you know, it went down.
805. 00:46:06 Okay.
806. 00:46:07 What can we do about it?
807. 00:46:08 These four things.
808. 00:46:09 Okay.
809. 00:46:10 Let's start at number one.
810. 00:46:11 Let's start working our way through them.
811. 00:46:12 That's kind of just become my approach to life.
812. 00:46:14 Maybe I'm still like, I don't know.
813. 00:46:16 I don't think of it that way.
814. 00:46:17 Well, it's interesting cause I think there's a lot of alignment actually between stoicism
815. 00:46:21 and Christianity.
816. 00:46:22 There's a verse that says the rain falls on the just and the unjust, you know, and I
817. 00:46:25 think that I call that out specifically because I think a lot of people think of Christians
818. 00:46:29 as just bearing their heads in the sand and just confessing the positive things the Bible
819. 00:46:33 says like this stuff is going to happen.
820. 00:46:34 So what are you going to do when it, when it happens?
821. 00:46:37 You're not going to get upset.
822. 00:46:38 Oh, this is terrible.
823. 00:46:39 The rain should not be falling on me right now.
824. 00:46:41 It's literally told you it's going to.
825. 00:46:44 And here we are.
826. 00:46:45 All right.
827. 00:46:46 Buddhism.
828. 00:46:47 You ready for Buddhism?
829. 00:46:49 I, I, I am not someone who understands Buddhism very well.
830. 00:46:54 Like I have a decent grasp on stoicism.
831. 00:46:57 Buddhism.
832. 00:46:58 I feel like I should, even though we just read, you know, Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance.
833. 00:47:04 I feel like there's some overlap there, but there's a couple things in this section.
834. 00:47:11 He talks about Buddhism and the primary piece of it that I got from him is this concept
835. 00:47:19 of non-attachment.
836. 00:47:21 And it's that in Buddhism, if I understand this correctly, there's a, a lot of, a lot
837. 00:47:28 of, an acknowledgement that we have a tendency to attach to expectations.
838. 00:47:33 And that becomes what lets us down because those expectations are not met.
839. 00:47:38 So an example of this would be, all right, we'll, we'll continue the Lyme disease health
840. 00:47:43 thing.
841. 00:47:44 If I hold the expectation that I should not have received this diagnosis of Lyme disease,
842. 00:47:55 like if I hold that expectation that that's not something that should have happened, I
843. 00:47:59 will become upset and my ego will be hurt as a result of that and it'll become a detrimental
844. 00:48:04 thing to me.
845. 00:48:06 So if I hold that expectation, I become attached to this concept of, I guess, security and
846. 00:48:11 stability, like if that's the thing that I'm attached to when bad things or things that
847. 00:48:17 threaten that happen, it's, it's a major problem.
848. 00:48:22 And he, as a result of understanding that, went and did a meditation retreat.
849. 00:48:28 Have you ever done one of these, Mike?
850. 00:48:29 I feel like this is something we've seen come up from time to time.
851. 00:48:31 They, like people in our books tend to do these from, you know, on occasion.
852. 00:48:35 I, I always like, whenever I read them, I'm like, huh, I wonder if I should do that sometime.
853. 00:48:39 And then I read the end of it and think, I really don't want to do that.
854. 00:48:43 Nope.
855. 00:48:44 So I have not and I will not.
856. 00:48:47 Sorry.
857. 00:48:50 But as a result of this meditation retreat, he became aware of one, the noise that goes
858. 00:48:58 on around us and this lack of calm that is around us.
859. 00:49:04 And all of that is due to this attachment on our expectation, like we're expecting certain
860. 00:49:11 things and we're attached to that.
861. 00:49:13 Do you feel like I covered this?
862. 00:49:15 Okay.
863. 00:49:16 I feel like I really struggled to understand this.
864. 00:49:17 I'm like trying to process what I read right now.
865. 00:49:20 Yeah.
866. 00:49:21 The thing is, I wish that he had not called this the Buddhist guide to not thinking positively
867. 00:49:26 because it's really talking about mindfulness meditation, which is not a spiritual practice.
868. 00:49:32 I feel like you can tie it to Buddhism, but you can also tie it to any other religion.
869. 00:49:38 Maybe not any other religion, but I think there's elements of this where mindfulness
870. 00:49:41 meditation is simply recognizing what your mind is focusing on and then letting it go.
871. 00:49:46 You're not attaching to it.
872. 00:49:48 And that's the mistake that a lot of people make when they start trying to meditate is
873. 00:49:52 they get frustrated with themselves.
874. 00:49:53 Oh, I shouldn't be thinking about what I need to do after this session.
875. 00:49:59 You just recognize that, oh, I was thinking about something else instead of my breath and
876. 00:50:03 you recenter, you refocus, you train your brain.
877. 00:50:07 I think that's essentially what he's saying here, but obviously he's tying it to Buddhism
878. 00:50:12 and the Buddhist story and stuff like that.
879. 00:50:15 One thing I want to go back just a little bit here because you were talking about the diagnosis
880. 00:50:20 of the Lyme disease.
881. 00:50:22 And I want to call out because I think this is really important and I'll stop talking
882. 00:50:28 about this after this.
883. 00:50:30 But when someone comes to give you a diagnosis, you have the opportunity to accept or reject
884. 00:50:36 that.
885. 00:50:37 And there are people who accept a diagnosis without actually anything being wrong in their
886. 00:50:43 body and they think they've got cancer, so they die of cancer, but then they go to
887. 00:50:47 room, they do the biopsy afterwards and they find out there's no cancer.
888. 00:50:51 And they've just convinced themselves mentally that they have cancer, so they end up dying.
889. 00:50:56 There are medical cases of that.
890. 00:50:59 And so I think that's an important distinction to make out.
891. 00:51:03 Don't just assume that because somebody said something that you sign for that package and
892. 00:51:09 you take that on.
893. 00:51:10 Now, if you do have something that you are dealing with, then these are the facts that
894. 00:51:20 I am faced with.
895. 00:51:21 This is the situation I find myself in.
896. 00:51:24 Then you figure out what you do from that point forward and for me, faith is always a
897. 00:51:30 piece of that.
898. 00:51:31 But I want to call that out because nothing and no one is infallible and just because
899. 00:51:39 somebody said something once, regardless of it's a doctor or a self-help guru or your
900. 00:51:45 shrink or whatever, don't just blanket accept everything that people say about you.
901. 00:51:51 Now back to the Buddhism thing, I don't know much about Buddhism.
902. 00:51:57 I am not fascinated in the least about the Buddha's story.
903. 00:52:03 And this chapter was really tough for me to get through, but I do think that the whole
904. 00:52:10 idea of mindfulness meditation is really powerful.
905. 00:52:13 And that's really what he's talking about here in terms of the benefits from this, where
906. 00:52:18 mindfulness meditation, he says meditation and he ties it to Buddhism.
907. 00:52:21 But I've seen the research report.
908. 00:52:23 It's mindfulness meditation that reduces pain and teaches you that it's temporary.
909. 00:52:28 It's not a Buddhist teaching.
910. 00:52:30 It's a mindfulness meditation practice that causes that.
911. 00:52:34 And I agree with the anti-precrastination advice, which is typically to get you to feel
912. 00:52:39 better about acting and how feeling like acting and acting are two very different things.
913. 00:52:45 Big point being that you don't need to wait until you feel like it or to actually do something.
914. 00:52:50 Professionals just do the work.
915. 00:52:52 Completely agree with all of that.
916. 00:52:54 Just wish it wasn't attached to an Eastern religion.
917. 00:52:56 I feel like that's going to alienate a bunch of people.
918. 00:52:59 Sure.
919. 00:53:00 One thing I want to point out about that is that there is a thing where people who have
920. 00:53:07 Lyme disease, it's pretty common if you're able to get past Lyme disease to pick up
921. 00:53:12 a mold infection, which is exactly what I did.
922. 00:53:15 And I didn't realize we were going to have like a health podcaster.
923. 00:53:20 With that, generally what happens is one of two things.
924. 00:53:24 When you come out of Lyme disease, you have a tendency to become aware of the things you
925. 00:53:29 should avoid from foods and smells, scents, that sort of thing.
926. 00:53:36 You learn what you shouldn't be around and things that can cause issues or flare-ups
927. 00:53:42 during the process of healing.
928. 00:53:45 When you come into the mold infection world, it's very easy.
929. 00:53:49 The most common thing that people do is immediately search their house for mold, assume that they
930. 00:53:53 have a mold infection in the house, try to clean it, move, they do all kinds of things
931. 00:53:57 and try in an attempt to remediate that and prevent the mold from existing in their house.
932. 00:54:03 When most people have learned how to deal with it and synthesize that and deal with
933. 00:54:07 the, like your body can deal with that mold, if you have a mold infection, your brain tells
934. 00:54:12 you you need to avoid it.
935. 00:54:13 When that's actually probably the last thing you should be doing because it's like the
936. 00:54:18 whole peanut allergy concept, the more you keep people away from it, the more likely
937. 00:54:21 they are to get the allergy.
938. 00:54:23 They're learning now if you slowly introduce it back, they can take people who are deathly
939. 00:54:29 allergic to peanuts and help them become tolerable of them.
940. 00:54:34 They may not be able to eat them constantly like everyone else, but at least won't kill
941. 00:54:38 them.
942. 00:54:39 It's the same thing.
943. 00:54:40 I bring this up because this is a thing that can become so bad that a lot, I shouldn't
944. 00:54:47 say a lot, some people develop what's called multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome, MCA
945. 00:54:53 and a primary way I've seen people fight that is with something called DNRS, dynamic neural
946. 00:54:59 retraining system.
947. 00:55:00 I'll explain that here in a second, but it's something that I kind of have used to beat
948. 00:55:05 the mold process.
949. 00:55:07 All of this is brought up because it all comes down to the way you think about things
950. 00:55:12 when you are exposed to them, which is a lot of what we're talking about with stoicism
951. 00:55:15 and Buddhism here.
952. 00:55:17 With DNRS, what you're doing is when you are exposed to things like say new paint, you
953. 00:55:25 teach yourself to think about it as it's fine.
954. 00:55:28 It's not something that's going to hurt me.
955. 00:55:30 As opposed to when you smell that immediately trying to get out of there because you're afraid
956. 00:55:35 it's going to cause a reaction, each of those responses is valid.
957. 00:55:40 One will help you learn to deal and process those things.
958. 00:55:45 The other, the latter of those two will end up causing you to get worse over time so much
959. 00:55:51 so that some people actually have to become homeless and live on boats because they can't
960. 00:55:54 be around anything in the air in modern society.
961. 00:55:59 You don't want to go down that road.
962. 00:56:00 All of that comes down to the way you think about things and the way you react to the
963. 00:56:06 surroundings that you're in.
964. 00:56:07 I have of course studied this significantly because I feel like this is part of my healing
965. 00:56:12 process.
966. 00:56:13 But it could have very easily gone the other way.
967. 00:56:16 Am I saying that Buddhism is exactly the answer you should go through?
968. 00:56:22 Absolutely not.
969. 00:56:23 I don't even think of mindfulness meditation as the answer to that.
970. 00:56:26 I think that's just one piece of the toolkit.
971. 00:56:29 But I'll stop rambling now.
972. 00:56:31 I feel like all of this can be extremely beneficial if you come at it from the right
973. 00:56:36 view.
974. 00:56:37 Yes, absolutely.
975. 00:56:39 But you do have to come at it from the right view and you do have to tease out the good
976. 00:56:44 stuff and spit out the sticks, which is really true about every single book that we read.
977. 00:56:49 Yep.
978. 00:56:50 It's typical.
979. 00:56:51 Okay, can we say no to goals?
980. 00:56:54 I want to say no to goals.
981. 00:56:56 Let's move on.
982. 00:56:57 Yes, just say no.
983. 00:56:58 Yeah, there's all a whole section in here about how goals are a bad thing.
984. 00:57:04 And I have to say, I was excited about this part.
985. 00:57:07 I feel like you were probably excited about this part.
986. 00:57:10 Indeed.
987. 00:57:12 This section starts with a story about the people who are trying to climb Mount Everest
988. 00:57:18 and there is a bunch of them that are climbing it at the same time.
989. 00:57:21 And they're all so obsessed with their goal that they all know that they have to reach
990. 00:57:26 a certain point by a certain time.
991. 00:57:29 Otherwise they have to turn around or they're going to die.
992. 00:57:32 And they get so obsessed with reaching the summit that they climb and they don't get there
993. 00:57:35 by the time.
994. 00:57:36 It's so close that they just keep going and they're watching this from afar and every
995. 00:57:41 single person is like, what are they doing?
996. 00:57:43 And sure enough, they all die because they're up there too late and they lose their way
997. 00:57:47 at night and they get stuck in a blizzard and then they die.
998. 00:57:52 This I feel like is a little bit sensational when it comes to setting goals because what
999. 00:57:59 it's saying is that when you see the summit, your attempts to break the rules agree with
1000. 00:58:03 that and on a good day, you get away with it, but on a bad day, you die.
1001. 00:58:07 I think I'm most of them on a bad day.
1002. 00:58:11 You're not going to die, but I understand the message here that you get so engrossed
1003. 00:58:16 with accomplishing the goal that you don't recognize the harm that it's doing.
1004. 00:58:20 Yes.
1005. 00:58:21 I don't like goals.
1006. 00:58:23 I've learned that whenever I set goals, it becomes the thing I don't achieve.
1007. 00:58:28 And you know, again, I set a goal at one point to see if I could beat Lyme disease by a
1008. 00:58:32 certain point.
1009. 00:58:33 I did that and then I blew past it.
1010. 00:58:36 That's now been about a year ago.
1011. 00:58:40 Here we are.
1012. 00:58:41 I just don't.
1013. 00:58:42 You know what?
1014. 00:58:43 We've railed on goals how many times, but I don't think that his thing is like whenever
1015. 00:58:49 you have the goal, you have a tendency to fixate on it and you'll set things aside and that
1016. 00:58:55 don't pertain to it.
1017. 00:58:56 And in the end, you end up making it harder to achieve the goal and it gets worse.
1018. 00:59:01 I don't like goals.
1019. 00:59:03 I like that he railed on him.
1020. 00:59:05 So here's the thing though.
1021. 00:59:07 You mentioned you set the goal to beat Lyme and the advice when people set goals is to
1022. 00:59:14 set smart goals, specific, measurable, all that junk.
1023. 00:59:19 You know, and then you have a specific date tied with it.
1024. 00:59:23 And I feel like it's the date being associated with it that causes a lot of the negative
1025. 00:59:29 ramifications with goals.
1026. 00:59:31 I think having the goal and having it be very detailed and knowing exactly what you're
1027. 00:59:37 supposed to do to move in the right direction, that's not a bad thing.
1028. 00:59:41 But if you set it and forget it and you have this date associated with it and the date
1029. 00:59:45 comes and goes, then yeah, you will find yourself frustrated that it didn't happen.
1030. 00:59:50 But what if you constantly adjusted the goal?
1031. 00:59:55 And if every single week you looked at the goal and you updated it with new information,
1032. 01:00:01 as you figured out that actually this direction that I was going when I set this thing isn't
1033. 01:00:05 the right thing to do anymore and now the next action is this.
1034. 01:00:08 And instead of achieving it by next week, it's going to be next year.
1035. 01:00:12 I think there would be a lot of value in taking that approach.
1036. 01:00:14 The problem with that approach is that is a ton of mental maintenance.
1037. 01:00:19 And I'm thinking about that specifically because the webinar yesterday with Sean on task management,
1038. 01:00:25 time blocking, things like that.
1039. 01:00:27 And people were asking about scheduling your tasks.
1040. 01:00:31 And I agree with that.
1041. 01:00:32 But my advice and Sean's advice too was don't even decide when you're going to do a task
1042. 01:00:36 until you decide these are the three things I'm going to do today and then you put them
1043. 01:00:39 on your calendar.
1044. 01:00:40 And people would say, well, what about all the other stuff my task managers?
1045. 01:00:43 Should I put dates and all that?
1046. 01:00:44 Absolutely not because by the end of the next day, it's all going to be wrong.
1047. 01:00:49 And I feel like that's the real issue with the goal.
1048. 01:00:51 The goal itself in the moment can probably produce a lot of good and motivation.
1049. 01:00:57 But then it's quickly out of date.
1050. 01:01:00 What do you think about about that?
1051. 01:01:02 Yes, because I have tried to do things similar to this and have even laid out.
1052. 01:01:10 Here are the things I'm going to do for the next two days.
1053. 01:01:14 Guess what?
1054. 01:01:15 It doesn't work.
1055. 01:01:16 It doesn't happen.
1056. 01:01:17 It's because by noon today is different.
1057. 01:01:23 And of course that's going to change tomorrow.
1058. 01:01:27 So it doesn't work at all.
1059. 01:01:29 It just doesn't.
1060. 01:01:30 So I am with you 100%.
1061. 01:01:33 I don't.
1062. 01:01:34 I mean, I'm cool with setting dates on specific things, like taking out the trash, like something
1063. 01:01:41 along those lines I'm cool with.
1064. 01:01:43 You know, maybe you have a task that can only be done on a certain day.
1065. 01:01:46 Like I'm cool with that.
1066. 01:01:48 But when it comes to trying to lay out like a week ahead of time and here are the things
1067. 01:01:52 I'm going to work on this week, even if I'm left in my own devices and working on my
1068. 01:01:56 own things, that doesn't work.
1069. 01:01:58 Yeah.
1070. 01:01:59 Because I'm one of these idea people and I just come up with things all the time and
1071. 01:02:03 it's like, oh, let's go try that.
1072. 01:02:04 And you know, oh, well, no, that's a bad idea.
1073. 01:02:06 I shouldn't be doing that one anymore.
1074. 01:02:07 So that changes the whole week.
1075. 01:02:10 It just doesn't work.
1076. 01:02:11 It doesn't.
1077. 01:02:12 Maybe that's just me.
1078. 01:02:13 It doesn't sound like it's just me.
1079. 01:02:14 I don't like doing it.
1080. 01:02:15 Can I stop doing it?
1081. 01:02:16 I'm going to stop doing it.
1082. 01:02:17 Yeah.
1083. 01:02:18 Well, see, I think the reason that people set goals, he says, is that they're attracted
1084. 01:02:23 to goals because they dislike uncertainty.
1085. 01:02:25 And I totally understand that I dislike uncertainty too.
1086. 01:02:28 I wish I knew exactly when life was going to return to normal, but I don't and it drives
1087. 01:02:33 me nuts.
1088. 01:02:34 So as I was, as I've been thinking about the topic of time blocking a lot lately, I'm
1089. 01:02:40 realizing that I can apply certainty to a certain degree to my day.
1090. 01:02:47 Again, that plan is going to be blown up.
1091. 01:02:49 I know that.
1092. 01:02:50 So it's not worth trying to plan more than one day in advance, but planning one day in
1093. 01:02:54 advance, that does give me enough certainty and intentionality that even my overactive
1094. 01:02:59 brain can focus on what it should be doing and get to work.
1095. 01:03:03 When I don't time block, that's when I get distracted and I get nervous.
1096. 01:03:09 And so in one sense, time blocking is setting a goal for how you're going to go through
1097. 01:03:14 your day.
1098. 01:03:15 It's just a very small chunk of time.
1099. 01:03:17 And I feel like that works for me.
1100. 01:03:20 But when you project way out, that's when things are going to go off the rails and they're
1101. 01:03:24 probably going to go off the rails spectacularly.
1102. 01:03:27 There's a story in here about the person who was training for a marathon.
1103. 01:03:30 They ran the marathon.
1104. 01:03:31 They put themselves, had to stay at home for several weeks.
1105. 01:03:34 I did that exact same thing.
1106. 01:03:36 Nice.
1107. 01:03:37 First time I ran my half marathon, I set the goal to run the half marathon.
1108. 01:03:42 And I even when I was doing the training was kind of bragging about the fact that like
1109. 01:03:45 I hated running and this was the ultimate test of mind over matter for me.
1110. 01:03:49 If I can do this, I can do anything.
1111. 01:03:51 I overtrained my patella tendon slipped off of my kneecap the week before the race.
1112. 01:03:57 I ran the race anyways, finished it and I remember crossing the finish line.
1113. 01:04:02 I knew that I'd hurt my knee.
1114. 01:04:04 I didn't think it was something super major like I'd torn anything, but I was in pain.
1115. 01:04:08 And I remember crossing the finish line, getting the medal, taking the picture and thinking
1116. 01:04:13 to myself, now what?
1117. 01:04:17 I accomplished my goal.
1118. 01:04:19 Now what do I do?
1119. 01:04:20 And it's like, oh, I hurt my knee.
1120. 01:04:23 This is going to affect me for the next several weeks.
1121. 01:04:25 I did.
1122. 01:04:26 I took like six weeks off and then didn't get any better.
1123. 01:04:29 So I had to do physical therapy.
1124. 01:04:30 That lasted, I think, another six weeks.
1125. 01:04:33 Then I started running again and I up my distance too fast, had to deal with plantar
1126. 01:04:37 fasciitis and again, had it take like six weeks off.
1127. 01:04:41 And then so I'd basically start from scratch when I started running again.
1128. 01:04:46 And that was about the time that I started reading atomic habits.
1129. 01:04:51 And the identity based habits clicked with me and I realized that I'd set this goal to
1130. 01:04:55 run this half marathon.
1131. 01:04:57 That was the wrong approach.
1132. 01:04:58 I needed to take the James Clear approach and instead identify myself as a runner.
1133. 01:05:03 The moment that I did that, it was a lot more fun when I would go for my runs.
1134. 01:05:07 It was not training in order to accomplish a goal.
1135. 01:05:10 It was doing something that I enjoyed because it was part of who I was.
1136. 01:05:15 And so that is the thing that I think goals are dangerous.
1137. 01:05:19 But again, if you take away the date, if I don't have to run a half marathon by a certain
1138. 01:05:23 time or a certain day, then maybe that changes how I approach that practice.
1139. 01:05:30 I don't know.
1140. 01:05:31 Maybe I never would have done it in the first place.
1141. 01:05:32 I'm not sure.
1142. 01:05:33 But I do think that you can do these things.
1143. 01:05:37 You can have these goals.
1144. 01:05:38 You just have to frame them the right way.
1145. 01:05:40 And unfortunately, the way that many people are trained to set their goals, that kind
1146. 01:05:45 of sets them up for failure.
1147. 01:05:46 Which is exactly what you should embrace.
1148. 01:05:48 Oh, nicely done.
1149. 01:05:50 Nicely done.
1150. 01:05:52 Nailed it.
1151. 01:05:53 Nailed it.
1152. 01:05:55 Next topic is embrace failure.
1153. 01:05:57 So and again, this is another thing we've talked about in the past.
1154. 01:06:01 Like don't be afraid to make mistakes.
1155. 01:06:04 And he starts this whole chapter off with a story about a museum.
1156. 01:06:08 I'm drawing a blank on the name of it now.
1157. 01:06:11 GFK, something like that.
1158. 01:06:13 I forget what it stands for.
1159. 01:06:15 But it's a museum of failed products, which sounded fascinating to me.
1160. 01:06:20 And I really wanted to go through it.
1161. 01:06:22 Yep.
1162. 01:06:23 Which is why corporate executives pay money to go through it.
1163. 01:06:25 Because they want to see what doesn't work and why.
1164. 01:06:30 So I was intrigued by that.
1165. 01:06:32 But at the same time, like I have a long list of my own failures.
1166. 01:06:36 I shouldn't say I have a list.
1167. 01:06:38 I know I have a lot of failures.
1168. 01:06:40 I haven't actually listed them though.
1169. 01:06:42 Maybe I should.
1170. 01:06:43 I don't want to do that.
1171. 01:06:45 Start a museum.
1172. 01:06:46 I know, right?
1173. 01:06:47 A museum.
1174. 01:06:48 Joe's failures.
1175. 01:06:49 And we've got analog Joe and now we have failed Joe.
1176. 01:06:53 So this is a thing that I don't want to do.
1177. 01:06:55 I'm not planning to do, but it would be interesting to see like of the things I've tried to do
1178. 01:07:00 in the past, the things I've failed at and just examine them.
1179. 01:07:04 What worked?
1180. 01:07:05 What didn't work?
1181. 01:07:06 I have a tendency to like, oh, that didn't work.
1182. 01:07:07 You know, cast it aside and move on.
1183. 01:07:08 And then not spend much time with it.
1184. 01:07:10 That's the opposite of what he's proposing here.
1185. 01:07:12 Yep.
1186. 01:07:13 So if you're embracing it, become aware of it.
1187. 01:07:16 Learn from it and move on.
1188. 01:07:17 There you go.
1189. 01:07:18 Yeah.
1190. 01:07:19 So this is where he talks about Carol Dwecken, her research and the point that he's making
1191. 01:07:24 in this chapter, the subtitle of this chapter is the case for embracing your errors.
1192. 01:07:32 And it very easily, I think, can get to the point where you are relishing those failures.
1193. 01:07:40 And I don't think that's healthy.
1194. 01:07:43 So he mentions Carol Dweck, the fixed theory versus the incremental theory or fixed mindset
1195. 01:07:47 versus growth mindset.
1196. 01:07:49 And having read mindset, I would argue that Carol Dweck's approach would not be try to
1197. 01:07:58 fail and then celebrate that you failed.
1198. 01:08:00 But when you fail, ask yourself why and recognize that you're able to try something else and
1199. 01:08:06 figure out a way that works.
1200. 01:08:08 If all you're doing is searching for how can I fail next, I don't necessarily think that
1201. 01:08:14 that leads to eventual success.
1202. 01:08:17 I think there's a difference there.
1203. 01:08:19 Do you agree?
1204. 01:08:20 Yeah.
1205. 01:08:21 I think so.
1206. 01:08:22 I mean, it's not guaranteed.
1207. 01:08:23 I think you're at least, you have to be willing to at least try.
1208. 01:08:25 I think that would be the point.
1209. 01:08:26 Yeah.
1210. 01:08:27 You have to be willing to try.
1211. 01:08:29 You have to give it your best shot and you have to believe that what you're trying could
1212. 01:08:32 possibly succeed.
1213. 01:08:35 What if you were actually successful?
1214. 01:08:38 I think that's a key part to mindset.
1215. 01:08:42 But I don't think that comes across in the two pages that he devotes to this.
1216. 01:08:46 And I feel like it's kind of tacked on as growth mindset is embracing your errors.
1217. 01:08:53 Not necessarily.
1218. 01:08:54 It's recognizing that the error occurred and figuring out what you can learn from this,
1219. 01:08:59 but it's not building a monument to that error and staying there forever.
1220. 01:09:05 I think that's an important difference.
1221. 01:09:08 It's worth calling out here because I kind of get the and maybe this is just sensationalized
1222. 01:09:13 because this is what he's trying to do by attacking the cult of optimism is to just rail
1223. 01:09:20 against all this stuff that other people are.
1224. 01:09:23 But like the traditional way that people are doing this and to provide like a very contradictory
1225. 01:09:29 approach to this, like maybe he's trying to be provocative with this stuff and he takes
1226. 01:09:34 it further than he would in conversation over coffee or something like that.
1227. 01:09:39 But I think that you got to recognize that you made a mistake.
1228. 01:09:44 Yes, but absolutely not do you build a any sort of monument to those those failures.
1229. 01:09:51 You recognize that this thing happened and this is the path to go from here.
1230. 01:09:56 Like this is the path forward, but then you leave.
1231. 01:10:00 You don't stay there.
1232. 01:10:01 And I think there is a temptation for a lot of people to stay there because they want
1233. 01:10:05 to be able to look back at that and say, check out this badge of honor, check out all these
1234. 01:10:09 things that I failed.
1235. 01:10:11 You know, the common quote Einstein or Edison had 10,000 steps to the light bulb, 9,999
1236. 01:10:19 things that didn't work.
1237. 01:10:21 But do you think he had a catalog of all of those items that he was like taking around
1238. 01:10:27 to parties and being like, Hey, everybody check this out.
1239. 01:10:29 Check out all these failures.
1240. 01:10:30 Like absolutely not.
1241. 01:10:32 And I feel like, especially with the internet connected age that we live in, that can be
1242. 01:10:37 the other extreme of this.
1243. 01:10:39 I don't think that's healthy.
1244. 01:10:42 And maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this, but his whole point here is that you
1245. 01:10:47 don't need to fear this failure.
1246. 01:10:49 You need to, you need to embrace this.
1247. 01:10:52 It's going to be everywhere.
1248. 01:10:53 90% of products fail and you need to be willing to persevere in the midst of those setbacks.
1249. 01:10:59 You need to be possessed enough charisma to convince other people to follow you.
1250. 01:11:02 You know, that's he talks about those are the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.
1251. 01:11:07 They're also the characteristics of unsuccessful entrepreneurs, but that doesn't mean that
1252. 01:11:10 they're bad.
1253. 01:11:12 And that's where like the survivor bias uses this as a thing to say like, the goals are
1254. 01:11:17 bad.
1255. 01:11:19 This I thought was interesting on the heels of the goals chapter.
1256. 01:11:22 I thought of this right away because I've been thinking about this.
1257. 01:11:24 I think even shared it on bookworm, how people interview sports teams that win the title.
1258. 01:11:31 And there's this bias towards goals because they say, yeah, man, at the beginning of the
1259. 01:11:36 year, we set a goal to win the Super Bowl and we worked hard every single day and we
1260. 01:11:40 won.
1261. 01:11:41 Well, what about the other 29 teams or in college, hundreds of other teams that had
1262. 01:11:45 the exact same goal that didn't achieve it?
1263. 01:11:49 You know, that doesn't mean that setting the goal was the thing that got them there,
1264. 01:11:54 but it also doesn't mean that setting the goal was a bad thing.
1265. 01:11:57 There's a difference between correlation and causation there.
1266. 01:12:00 Yes, 100% with you.
1267. 01:12:05 Good job, Mike.
1268. 01:12:06 Anything else you want to say about failure?
1269. 01:12:10 I can't say I've got anything else.
1270. 01:12:11 I want to talk about death.
1271. 01:12:13 All right.
1272. 01:12:14 Talk about the ultimate failure.
1273. 01:12:18 One of the last main chapters is discussing death and how we have a tendency to talk about
1274. 01:12:25 it quite a bit, but then we don't really think about it and we try to ignore it.
1275. 01:12:30 What I mean by that is we have a bunch of articles and people talk about things to do
1276. 01:12:35 before you die or this is my bucket list.
1277. 01:12:39 That's a bucket item.
1278. 01:12:40 We talk about that sort of thing, but do you actually stop long enough to think through
1279. 01:12:46 death and the end of your life?
1280. 01:12:49 It's something we just don't like to think about.
1281. 01:12:52 I would imagine that given that Mike and I are Christians, we probably think about it
1282. 01:12:59 more than normal.
1283. 01:13:02 Given society and our culture, I would imagine it's on your mind and my mind more than most
1284. 01:13:08 people.
1285. 01:13:10 I think that's fine.
1286. 01:13:12 I know as someone who runs sound for funerals on a regular basis, at least not lately, that's
1287. 01:13:20 maybe a bit of a positive with coronavirus.
1288. 01:13:23 But whenever I'm running sound for funerals, I'm around that a lot and it's something that
1289. 01:13:29 I'm forced to grapple with.
1290. 01:13:32 It's not a simple task to run the event of a funeral for a mom who passed away, who has
1291. 01:13:41 four kids that are under 10 years old.
1292. 01:13:44 That's not easy.
1293. 01:13:45 It's not easy to run sound or help with the tech side of the funeral of a seven-year-old
1294. 01:13:50 girl who has loving parents and a family who now miss her and she was the baby of the
1295. 01:13:55 family.
1296. 01:13:56 That's hard.
1297. 01:13:57 That's not simple.
1298. 01:13:59 It's something that will cause you to go home and cry for hours sometimes.
1299. 01:14:04 I feel like I've been forced to embrace and think about death quite a bit.
1300. 01:14:09 I get that with him and his in this book, he just wants it to be something that is on
1301. 01:14:15 your mind.
1302. 01:14:16 At least that was my perspective on it.
1303. 01:14:18 He just wants you to be willing to think through death not as something that should
1304. 01:14:23 be avoided or not discussed, but as something to come to grips with because it's the one
1305. 01:14:28 thing that unifies all of us that we can't all escape.
1306. 01:14:32 We will all die at some point.
1307. 01:14:34 So that's something that you have to come to grips with and be okay thinking about and
1308. 01:14:39 discussing.
1309. 01:14:40 Thus, discussing it.
1310. 01:14:41 See, I've done my part, Mike.
1311. 01:14:43 I'm done.
1312. 01:14:44 I can go home now.
1313. 01:14:46 This is the thing that when I read this chapter, instantly thought of the news that is surrounding
1314. 01:14:53 the coronavirus and the statistic that every news source everywhere is tracking is how
1315. 01:15:00 many people have gotten it and how many people have died.
1316. 01:15:03 And that is causing a lot of people to be very negative and to be very fearful.
1317. 01:15:11 When he was talking about mortality, celients, not people typically will actively work to
1318. 01:15:16 avoid thinking about death.
1319. 01:15:19 I totally get it.
1320. 01:15:21 For a lot of people, they're being forced to do that now and they don't like it.
1321. 01:15:27 For you and I specifically, yeah, you're right.
1322. 01:15:29 This is something that we probably think about more often than I think that right now that
1323. 01:15:34 is having positive effects.
1324. 01:15:36 So death, where is your victory?
1325. 01:15:37 Oh, death, where is your sting?
1326. 01:15:39 Right?
1327. 01:15:40 Because we die.
1328. 01:15:41 Oh, well, we go on to the next thing.
1329. 01:15:45 And that's not saying we're right.
1330. 01:15:47 You're wrong, whatever, but it's just a thought process that's the way we're wired internally
1331. 01:15:55 and it does help keep you more stable.
1332. 01:16:00 That was one observation I had just regarding this chapter and then where we find ourselves.
1333. 01:16:05 There is a little bit of the in this chapter, he does talk about the Mexican day of the
1334. 01:16:09 dead and like the parades and things that they would do for this.
1335. 01:16:14 Have you ever seen anything like this?
1336. 01:16:16 Yes, I have been aware of this for a few years now, but yeah.
1337. 01:16:20 Okay, well, I was at the Sean West Conference in Austin, Texas on the Mexican day of the
1338. 01:16:29 dead and there is a big Mexican population in Austin, Texas and they had the parade and
1339. 01:16:37 it went right past the conference venue while Sean was delivering the keynote.
1340. 01:16:43 Nice.
1341. 01:16:45 So I'm like, obviously you hear all this stuff.
1342. 01:16:48 So you go peek outside and people are walking through the streets with like the skeletons
1343. 01:16:52 on a string.
1344. 01:16:53 It's just weird.
1345. 01:16:54 Well, it's weird to me.
1346. 01:16:56 I shouldn't say it's weird because I'm sure like culturally, you know, we're just not
1347. 01:17:00 not used to that.
1348. 01:17:01 I thought when it happened that this is bizarre, I don't know why anybody would really want
1349. 01:17:07 to do this.
1350. 01:17:08 I do think that that is personally kind of maybe taking it a little too far.
1351. 01:17:12 I think death is worth embracing as a fact of life.
1352. 01:17:15 Don't deny that it's going to happen.
1353. 01:17:17 Now on the other side of this, are you familiar with Dan Sullivan?
1354. 01:17:20 strategic coach?
1355. 01:17:21 I know his name.
1356. 01:17:23 I couldn't tell you much about him though.
1357. 01:17:25 He's the guy who did the unique ability thing that I had sent you.
1358. 01:17:28 And so I like a lot of Dan Sullivan stuff.
1359. 01:17:32 However, he has a book which I will send you the link to.
1360. 01:17:41 Okay.
1361. 01:17:42 Actually, I'll put this in the live chat.
1362. 01:17:45 Yeah, so Dan Sullivan has this thing that he does.
1363. 01:17:49 It's called the lifetime extender.
1364. 01:17:50 It's basically a worksheet.
1365. 01:17:52 And this is an ebook called my plan for living to 156.
1366. 01:17:58 And the description says you have a number we all do once your brain locks onto your
1367. 01:18:01 imagined lifespan, your body accepts it as fact.
1368. 01:18:05 I think this is ridiculous.
1369. 01:18:08 So this is the other thing I thought of as I was going through this chapter is like the
1370. 01:18:11 exact opposite where people are projecting that they're going to live forever or even
1371. 01:18:18 further longer than anybody ever has.
1372. 01:18:22 I know that this is kind of prevalent now.
1373. 01:18:25 And like I said, I think this is kind of ridiculous.
1374. 01:18:28 But I feel like this is the other end of the spectrum and the healthy approach is somewhere
1375. 01:18:34 in the middle where you recognize that someday you will die.
1376. 01:18:39 And so you're not scared of it.
1377. 01:18:41 It's going to happen.
1378. 01:18:42 You're not looking forward to it either.
1379. 01:18:44 You're not trying to make it happen.
1380. 01:18:46 But if you were to take either one of those approaches, you're going to rob from the present.
1381. 01:18:52 You're not going to be able to make the most of the time that you have.
1382. 01:18:55 And I feel like regardless of your religious belief system, that's really your goal, your
1383. 01:18:58 job, your objective is to, there's that word goal.
1384. 01:19:02 But you get what I mean.
1385. 01:19:04 Like your mission while you are here, regardless of how you choose to define it, is to make
1386. 01:19:09 the most of the time that you've got for some people that maybe, you know, touches
1387. 01:19:13 many lives as you can for some people that may mean accumulate as much as you can.
1388. 01:19:18 I think you and I would probably have issues with some approaches over others.
1389. 01:19:22 But that's ultimately what everybody's trying to do.
1390. 01:19:26 And I think recognizing that there's a beginning and there's an end to your lifespan that's
1391. 01:19:32 inherent in a healthy approach to this.
1392. 01:19:34 You know, as a way to show like how this can come about in real life and like what this
1393. 01:19:40 can lead to, I have added it to one of the journal prompts that I've added as an action
1394. 01:19:47 item is what would happen if I died today?
1395. 01:19:51 Like that's that's one of the journal prompts.
1396. 01:19:53 Now that's not a question I really want to think about daily.
1397. 01:19:57 But it's something that I have found.
1398. 01:19:58 I've been trying to use that one the last probably four or five days.
1399. 01:20:02 And it's interesting how that changes the way I interact with my kids specifically because
1400. 01:20:08 I'm a lot more grateful for the day that I have with them when I'm considering what
1401. 01:20:16 would happen if I wasn't here tomorrow because I'm grateful to have that time to read Narnia
1402. 01:20:21 to them and play hide the squish mallow.
1403. 01:20:24 That's inside joke for Mike.
1404. 01:20:26 It's still a game.
1405. 01:20:27 It's totally still a game.
1406. 01:20:30 We should do like an Instagram live for that because it's just intense.
1407. 01:20:34 All right.
1408. 01:20:35 That was a joke.
1409. 01:20:36 I'm not actually doing that.
1410. 01:20:39 I don't even know how I would do that.
1411. 01:20:41 But my point is that considering my own mortality is a good thing because it shows me that I
1412. 01:20:51 need to be grateful for what I have now.
1413. 01:20:53 Now I could.
1414. 01:20:54 And a lot of people recommend that you do this have like a gratitude journal where you're
1415. 01:21:00 writing about the things you're grateful for.
1416. 01:21:03 But I've done that in the past and I don't want to poo poo that because I think there
1417. 01:21:08 are a lot of people that find that as a great thing and it works great for them.
1418. 01:21:11 That's awesome.
1419. 01:21:12 I have found that contemplating the opposite helps me become more grateful in the last
1420. 01:21:19 four or five days.
1421. 01:21:21 That considering the worst case scenario from my own stance has led me to become more invested
1422. 01:21:31 in the people around me as much as I can.
1423. 01:21:35 Anyway, given you know, self isolation.
1424. 01:21:38 But you get my point.
1425. 01:21:40 Like this is something that I have found extremely valuable and yet difficult to recommend to
1426. 01:21:46 other people because it just is morbid to recommend.
1427. 01:21:50 Here we are.
1428. 01:21:52 It's one of those topics that's kind of socially taboo and I think maybe it shouldn't be.
1429. 01:21:58 But also I get why it is.
1430. 01:22:02 Absolutely.
1431. 01:22:03 Yep.
1432. 01:22:04 Anything else you want to cover on the book before we do action items?
1433. 01:22:09 One thing at the end he talks about practicing the mental more which literally means remember
1434. 01:22:14 that you shall die and his recommended exercise I think is pretty cool.
1435. 01:22:20 I'm a 10 year 80 years old and then answer the questions.
1436. 01:22:21 I wish I had spent more time on and I wish I had spent less time on.
1437. 01:22:26 There is a book dedicated to this specific thing which is really good.
1438. 01:22:31 I've mentioned it before 30 lessons for living.
1439. 01:22:34 I forget who wrote it.
1440. 01:22:35 But it was somebody who had interviewed thousands of people in nursing homes.
1441. 01:22:39 And if you go into a nursing home usually that's a very negative atmosphere but there's
1442. 01:22:45 always a couple people there who are just different, they're happy, they're upbeat, they
1443. 01:22:50 are making the most out of their time in this life.
1444. 01:22:53 And so those are the types of people that he interviewed and he condensed every one
1445. 01:22:57 of their answers into these basically like 30 different points but things that he heard
1446. 01:23:02 over and over and over again.
1447. 01:23:04 And I think that is a really cool idea.
1448. 01:23:06 That book was really really good.
1449. 01:23:07 It was a really entertaining and really informative read.
1450. 01:23:10 If you're interested in this topic that would be the place that I would send people to look
1451. 01:23:14 for sure.
1452. 01:23:15 All right, I have one action item from this book and I've mentioned it a few times already
1453. 01:23:21 and that's journal prompts with trying to do more journaling lately because theoretically
1454. 01:23:28 we have more time now than we did before.
1455. 01:23:31 False.
1456. 01:23:32 I have been using a couple different prompts in that, you know, the one I just mentioned
1457. 01:23:38 what would happen if I was gone after today and another is what would happen if those
1458. 01:23:45 closest to me were gone tomorrow.
1459. 01:23:47 Like it's kind of a flip on it and you tend to answer those a little bit differently but
1460. 01:23:52 you get the concept like that's what I'm trying to just try to go through that on a
1461. 01:23:57 daily basis to keep those necessarily top of mind but just aware of those on a regular
1462. 01:24:02 basis because I have found at least in my short time doing those that they are helpful
1463. 01:24:09 in making me aware of the positives when I'm also aware of the negatives which I think
1464. 01:24:15 is likely the point of the whole book Mike.
1465. 01:24:18 Could be.
1466. 01:24:19 I don't think he actually says that.
1467. 01:24:20 There's so much emphasis on the negative but it's true.
1468. 01:24:24 I agree with you completely.
1469. 01:24:27 I actually have an action item to and see it comes from chapter six where he talks about
1470. 01:24:39 we didn't really get into this but the idea of the threats and how when people watch the
1471. 01:24:46 news it kind of normalizes things that you wouldn't normally think could happen to you
1472. 01:24:52 and then you start expecting that every time you get on the subway or get on a bus that
1473. 01:24:57 the person behind you has got a bomb in their shoes.
1474. 01:25:01 You see that stuff on the news and then you project it into your own situation.
1475. 01:25:05 I think that is totally happening right now with this coronavirus stuff.
1476. 01:25:10 My action item is to stop watching the news.
1477. 01:25:14 I shouldn't say stop watching the news.
1478. 01:25:15 Stop following the news.
1479. 01:25:18 I'm not going to do it completely because I do want to know what is going on but I have
1480. 01:25:22 found myself over the last several days airing on the side of paying too much attention to
1481. 01:25:27 the news and recognizing the emotional impact that it has on me.
1482. 01:25:33 I never feel good when I'm done.
1483. 01:25:36 Limiting that to maybe in the morning and then maybe in the evening and everything else,
1484. 01:25:41 just completely avoid it because that's the thing.
1485. 01:25:45 If I check it during lunch or whatever, that's the kind of thing that can sabotage the rest
1486. 01:25:50 of my day and zap my energy and my motivation and I want to avoid that.
1487. 01:25:56 That's fair.
1488. 01:25:58 I follow the news so well that I didn't even know that the CARES Act was a thing until
1489. 01:26:03 I think two weeks after it was initially opposed and someone said, "Hey, what are you
1490. 01:26:08 going to do with your care check?"
1491. 01:26:10 I was like, "What's a care check?
1492. 01:26:12 I don't know what that is."
1493. 01:26:14 To explain it all to me.
1494. 01:26:16 Oh, I didn't know this was a thing.
1495. 01:26:18 When did this come about two weeks ago, Joe?
1496. 01:26:21 Oh, apparently I'm good at keeping up with things.
1497. 01:26:25 Who knew?
1498. 01:26:26 Yeah, and that impacted your life negatively.
1499. 01:26:30 How?
1500. 01:26:31 It didn't.
1501. 01:26:32 Exactly.
1502. 01:26:33 Oh, okay.
1503. 01:26:34 Yeah, great.
1504. 01:26:35 Awesome.
1505. 01:26:36 Now, how do I get the right data rate on my live stream feed?
1506. 01:26:39 That's what I'm focused on.
1507. 01:26:42 Yeah.
1508. 01:26:43 All right, so let's step into style and rating.
1509. 01:26:46 I will say that for the most part, he's a pretty easy author to read.
1510. 01:26:51 He's good with stories.
1511. 01:26:52 A few times I was thinking the stories didn't have anything to do with what he was making
1512. 01:26:56 a point of and sometimes I felt like he was picking out stories that were there to complicate
1513. 01:27:00 matters or explain things that he didn't seem to have a good point overall.
1514. 01:27:06 That was especially in the Buddhism section.
1515. 01:27:08 I was like, "I have no idea what you're getting at here."
1516. 01:27:11 There's also a whole section on arguing between the difference between I and me.
1517. 01:27:16 I am so lost on what you're talking about.
1518. 01:27:22 That got difficult.
1519. 01:27:23 I understood all of his stories.
1520. 01:27:24 I loved the stories, but then it seemed like whenever he tried to tie them together, it
1521. 01:27:27 got a little difficult to follow.
1522. 01:27:30 I will say, overall, I'm glad to have read this.
1523. 01:27:35 I feel like this is...
1524. 01:27:37 I don't want to say it's a breath of fresh air.
1525. 01:27:38 It's not, but it's interesting to read something that's the opposite of what we normally would
1526. 01:27:45 read.
1527. 01:27:46 It's like, "You know, great thoughts."
1528. 01:27:47 It's a gust of contrary wind.
1529. 01:27:49 Sick goals.
1530. 01:27:50 He comes and is like, "No, don't do that."
1531. 01:27:54 It's like, "Okay, great.
1532. 01:27:55 Awesome.
1533. 01:27:56 It's good to get somebody on the other side of the fence, I think."
1534. 01:28:00 It does bring you down a little bit in that sense.
1535. 01:28:04 I think you've said a few times, Mike, that he sensationalized things.
1536. 01:28:10 I haven't figured out if I'm glad he did that or if I'm upset that he did that because
1537. 01:28:14 I feel like by him sensationalizing it, it gets the point across a little better.
1538. 01:28:20 You can get the sense of this is the point he's trying to make in each step, but at the
1539. 01:28:26 same time, I feel like it's exaggerated to the point of almost unbelievable.
1540. 01:28:32 I don't know if I should follow him or argue with him.
1541. 01:28:36 Maybe that's what he wants.
1542. 01:28:37 Malcolm Gladwell tends to do that.
1543. 01:28:39 I don't know if that's the path that he's going down here, but I can say I'm grateful
1544. 01:28:46 to have read this.
1545. 01:28:47 I don't know if I'm going to recommend this one.
1546. 01:28:49 I think it would have to be in very specific scenarios if I would say, "You should read
1547. 01:28:56 this," but that means I have to figure out how to read this.
1548. 01:29:02 I'm going to put it at 3.5.
1549. 01:29:07 That's where I'm going to put it.
1550. 01:29:08 I feel like there are some good tidbits out of here.
1551. 01:29:10 Obviously, I've got some action items out of it.
1552. 01:29:13 It's good to have gone through, but I have so many things I feel like I'm arguing with
1553. 01:29:18 that I just don't think it would be as helpful unless you have a lot of the history in the
1554. 01:29:24 books that we have read.
1555. 01:29:26 If you've read as many books as we have in the same genre, I feel like this would be
1556. 01:29:29 a good one just as something different.
1557. 01:29:34 It's not contributing to the echo chamber, but if you're still on the edge of getting
1558. 01:29:41 into reading more, I would stay away from this.
1559. 01:29:44 I don't think it would be as helpful.
1560. 01:29:46 That's just my opinion.
1561. 01:29:47 What are your thoughts, Mike?
1562. 01:29:49 I agree with you, and I think it's a bit of a shame because there is definitely room for
1563. 01:29:57 a book that says you don't have to go all Gary Vee and not to go as far the other way
1564. 01:30:06 as he did.
1565. 01:30:07 It's kind of like, here's what everybody's saying.
1566. 01:30:10 There's this uneasy feeling that I get when I follow these people.
1567. 01:30:15 I am just going to come up with the biggest sensationalist anti-message I can.
1568. 01:30:23 I'm thinking right now of New York Times article recently, which I agree with this, but the
1569. 01:30:29 reason that it's popular is because of the headline I guarantee you, it's like, "Stop
1570. 01:30:33 trying to be productive during the coronavirus."
1571. 01:30:36 The basic point is that you're not going to be as effective as you normally are because
1572. 01:30:40 we're all trying to figure out a new normal.
1573. 01:30:43 I agree with that, but that's not as enticing as, "Hey, productivity sucks."
1574. 01:30:50 It's not going to get as many clicks.
1575. 01:30:53 I feel like that's the approach that he took with this book.
1576. 01:30:56 I feel like that's a bit of a shame because I don't agree 100% with Gary Vee, Tony Robbins,
1577. 01:31:04 all those types of people.
1578. 01:31:05 I definitely don't agree 100% with the message in this book, but because he's so far the
1579. 01:31:11 other way, I feel like I have to pick one side of the fence that I lean more towards,
1580. 01:31:15 and I find myself going back to the stuff that I despised at the beginning with this
1581. 01:31:19 description of the Tony Robbins event.
1582. 01:31:21 And saying, "Oh, maybe there's elements of that which are good," because there are elements
1583. 01:31:25 of that that are good.
1584. 01:31:26 There's elements of this that are good too, but by taking such a strong sensational approach,
1585. 01:31:30 I feel like he's forcing you to pick a camp to be in.
1586. 01:31:34 I think there's definitely room in the middle for actually this is the way to do this, where
1587. 01:31:40 you sit in the middle and you take pieces of this and pieces of that and you combine
1588. 01:31:45 it, that's not going to probably sell as many copies.
1589. 01:31:48 So I get why, that's why you didn't take that approach.
1590. 01:31:53 But yeah, I agree with you that this isn't the type of thing that you would recommend,
1591. 01:31:58 because it's so far the other way that I would be worried if I recommended this to somebody
1592. 01:32:02 and they read it, they'd be like, "Oh, well, you agree with all of this stoicism stuff
1593. 01:32:07 and all of this thinking about death stuff?"
1594. 01:32:10 Some of it, yeah, but not the majority of it, not the way that he presents it, and I'm
1595. 01:32:15 not going to be there to defend myself.
1596. 01:32:18 I'm not going to tell you that, "Hey, you should read this."
1597. 01:32:23 That being said, there is some good stuff in here, picked out some good stuff.
1598. 01:32:27 I think there's elements of truth to a lot of this stuff, but you do have to dig in order
1599. 01:32:31 to get them.
1600. 01:32:33 His original point about how you try to find a system, you try to read a book, and it solves
1601. 01:32:39 all your problems, this isn't going to solve all your problems either.
1602. 01:32:42 This did the opposite of what it promised to do in the first chapter, I think, because
1603. 01:32:48 he was basically saying that this is what you've been trying, it's not going to work,
1604. 01:32:51 so you've got to go the other way.
1605. 01:32:52 I feel like I went the other way about reading this book, and I'm like, "Ugh, this just feels
1606. 01:32:56 weird.
1607. 01:32:57 I don't want to stay here either."
1608. 01:32:59 I'm going to put it at 3.0, because I do think, like I said, there's some good stuff
1609. 01:33:04 here.
1610. 01:33:05 I feel like any one of these chapters could have been an entire book, and there are entire
1611. 01:33:08 books written on this stuff.
1612. 01:33:11 I feel like reading this and thinking you understand stoicism, for example, is dangerous.
1613. 01:33:18 Same thing with Buddhism and goal setting and the multimori and any of these things.
1614. 01:33:25 I really find myself, the real issue I have with this book, I think, is just the fact that
1615. 01:33:30 it tries to combine a whole bunch of things, and it doesn't do it in a very fair way, I
1616. 01:33:37 think.
1617. 01:33:39 If you want a surface-level book that is contrary to all of the cult of optimism stuff, then
1618. 01:33:46 it's not a bad read.
1619. 01:33:48 All right.
1620. 01:33:49 You should know that the next book on the list actually have bought twice now.
1621. 01:33:54 Really?
1622. 01:33:55 Yeah, it was not intentional either.
1623. 01:33:57 All right.
1624. 01:33:59 You're welcome, writer Carol.
1625. 01:34:03 The next book is The Bullet Journal Method by writer Carol, who he's got a fast-ending
1626. 01:34:08 story.
1627. 01:34:09 He made the rounds and the podcasts when this was released.
1628. 01:34:12 He developed the Bullet Journal Method as a response to ADD, ADHD.
1629. 01:34:16 I forget specifically, but basically he was trying to find something that would work for
1630. 01:34:20 him.
1631. 01:34:21 He created this analog system that has kind of blown up now, and so we are going to be
1632. 01:34:26 talking about bullet journaling.
1633. 01:34:28 I'm really excited about this.
1634. 01:34:29 I find myself doing more and more with my paper and pen, especially now that I'm home
1635. 01:34:34 all the time, that just feels really good to slow down and do all my time blocking that
1636. 01:34:38 way.
1637. 01:34:40 I think this is going to be a fun one.
1638. 01:34:42 It warms my heart that you're excited about using pen and paper, Mike.
1639. 01:34:48 The story here is that I purchased this book and it was delivered.
1640. 01:34:57 The package just didn't seem right.
1641. 01:35:01 When I opened it, I discovered none other than little red-writing hood inside this package.
1642. 01:35:11 Not the same at all.
1643. 01:35:12 The distributor had sent me the wrong book.
1644. 01:35:14 It's not exactly the same.
1645. 01:35:16 It differs in chapter two.
1646. 01:35:20 It wasn't what I was after.
1647. 01:35:21 I contacted them.
1648. 01:35:22 They refunded me.
1649. 01:35:23 They told me it's not worth sending back.
1650. 01:35:24 The big bad wolf is Google.
1651. 01:35:25 I know, totally.
1652. 01:35:26 They told me it wasn't worth sending back.
1653. 01:35:28 The book was 75 cents or something.
1654. 01:35:31 It's not even worth shipping.
1655. 01:35:33 They keep it.
1656. 01:35:34 They refunded me.
1657. 01:35:36 I bought the book again and I picked it up.
1658. 01:35:40 I was ready to read it about three days ago.
1659. 01:35:42 I received it today.
1660. 01:35:45 I'm excited to go through it because I have been on the edge of bullet journaling for
1661. 01:35:49 a while.
1662. 01:35:50 My ADD has gotten a lot worse since all of my health stuff has gone on, which is weird
1663. 01:35:56 and apparently normal.
1664. 01:35:58 I don't know.
1665. 01:35:59 That's weird.
1666. 01:36:00 I learned that when you're starting to come off of a mold infection, like whenever you
1667. 01:36:04 treat that, if you have ADD, it can get worse.
1668. 01:36:06 It's so weird to me.
1669. 01:36:08 But anyway, I have to work through that.
1670. 01:36:12 All that to say, I just went on a rabbit trail.
1671. 01:36:14 The bullet journal method is next.
1672. 01:36:16 Following that, we have Nudge by Richard Teller.
1673. 01:36:19 Teller?
1674. 01:36:20 I don't know how I say it.
1675. 01:36:22 I'm going to say Teller.
1676. 01:36:23 I like Teller.
1677. 01:36:24 All right.
1678. 01:36:25 I forget the tagline on it.
1679. 01:36:26 I have totally spaced on what it's about, but Nudge is next.
1680. 01:36:29 All right.
1681. 01:36:30 And then the other one that we added after that, because it was a gapbook that I am just
1682. 01:36:34 having trouble reading, is Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.
1683. 01:36:39 So if you want to stock up in preparation for the next several episodes, those are the
1684. 01:36:43 next three books that we will be covering.
1685. 01:36:45 Awesome.
1686. 01:36:46 Got a gapbook this time?
1687. 01:36:47 No gapbooks.
1688. 01:36:48 You don't.
1689. 01:36:49 I do.
1690. 01:36:50 Really?
1691. 01:36:51 Okay.
1692. 01:36:52 I do.
1693. 01:36:53 I don't know how I did, but I did.
1694. 01:36:54 Well, I know how I did.
1695. 01:36:55 This the, I got to get it out here.
1696. 01:36:57 It's an illustrated book of bad arguments.
1697. 01:37:02 That's okay.
1698. 01:37:04 It's really entertaining.
1699. 01:37:05 It talks through, it sounds silly, but it talks through things like a straw man argument,
1700. 01:37:11 like that type of thing.
1701. 01:37:13 What is that and how do people use it?
1702. 01:37:16 Like whenever people are discussing something and making a point or arguing something, they
1703. 01:37:21 tend to force you to choose a camp one side or the other when there is a middle road,
1704. 01:37:27 like that sort of thing.
1705. 01:37:28 That's a bad argument in their definition.
1706. 01:37:31 It's fascinating.
1707. 01:37:32 Really interesting to go through.
1708. 01:37:34 I would recommend that one.
1709. 01:37:36 It's short.
1710. 01:37:37 There you go.
1711. 01:37:38 All right.
1712. 01:37:39 I have a gapbook.
1713. 01:37:40 Woo hoo.
1714. 01:37:41 Nice job.
1715. 01:37:42 Yes.
1716. 01:37:43 Absolutely.
1717. 01:37:44 Now, that all said, something we would absolutely love and I know a few people are doing it
1718. 01:37:49 now is if you would join us live for these shows, everybody's doing live stuff right
1719. 01:37:53 now.
1720. 01:37:54 If you want to become a member so that you can listen to these live and engage with
1721. 01:37:57 us on the chat while we're doing this, sometimes we alter things, what we're talking about,
1722. 01:38:02 depending on what people are saying in the chat box.
1723. 01:38:04 But if you want to do that, go to bookworm.fm/membership and you can sign up.
1724. 01:38:09 It's a $5 a month membership.
1725. 01:38:11 You get access to the private members area of the forums.
1726. 01:38:15 You can listen to us live.
1727. 01:38:16 You get a special bookworm wallpaper.
1728. 01:38:19 You get access to all of Mike's My Node PDFs.
1729. 01:38:23 You get access to some really cool stuff.
1730. 01:38:25 If you haven't done that already, you can join us bookworm.fm/membership.
1731. 01:38:30 All right.
1732. 01:38:31 Thanks, everybody, for listening.
1733. 01:38:34 Thanks to the Premium Club members for supporting the show.
1734. 01:38:37 If you're reading along, pick up the bullet journal method by writer Carol and we'll talk
1735. 01:38:41 to you in a couple of weeks.