Bookworm Transcripts

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Climmed any mountains lately, Mike.

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[chuckles]

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Just the mountain that is me.

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[laughs]

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Alright, before we climb mountains together, maybe we should catch up with what we've done since last time.

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And I suppose I can go first, just because, yeah.

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And some of the follow-up I've got from the last book that we covered

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involves taking morning and evening walks.

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And I've continued, I think I talked a little bit about

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my evening walks through the woods and such, and that's something that I have continued to do.

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Something I was not expecting that

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cropped up since we last had our chit chat

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was that my daughters wanted to join me for that,

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which, super cool, but at the same time, wait,

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some of the purpose of this was to get away and be alone,

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and they want to go with, which I'm certainly not saying no to,

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but does that defeat the purpose? Do I have to do it twice now?

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I don't know. So many questions that came up.

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I was not expecting that one to manifest itself,

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but about two-thirds of the time it's still just me,

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and then the other third of the time I have one or multiple children with me.

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So still a fun adventure.

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Have not started the morning one yet, but that one won't start until October,

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so we move into the house. So, great fun.

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That's the one where you can get away by yourself probably.

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Yes, the morning one, because for me that would be super early.

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It would probably be at like 6, 6, 15, something like that in the morning.

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So anyway, that's one. Another one was to journal in the morning

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and at night, but also once weekly.

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And I did start doing the morning journaling.

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I'm not as consistent on that one as I am at the evening journaling,

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and then I have done the weekly one once because of the timing of when we did this.

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So there's no way I can tell you that that's a regular thing.

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It was fascinating to me just to try to do what I normally do on a morning

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and evening daily journaling, but on a weekly basis.

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That just had a very different feel, but at the same time,

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it was strange because it had an error of the GTD weekly review coming into it,

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which I was not expecting nor aware of that connection until I sat down to do some writing.

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And that kind of turned me off to it when I realized that.

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But thankfully, I didn't realize it until after I had done it.

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So I don't know if it's going to stick just because there's a little bit of me that's like,

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"I don't know about that weekly thing quite yet."

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There's that.

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Cool.

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And then the last one I had was figuring out how to rotate environments.

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This comes from trying to use specific spaces to do work, like different types of work.

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And I have kind of my desk area here that I operate with that I do a lot of my work from,

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but with an assistant who's in this space very regularly throughout the week,

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it kind of makes it a challenge to do some of the more deep work scenario stuff.

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So working on a couple spaces that I can bounce to and from throughout this building to use for those,

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but I don't know that they're actually going to be locked down.

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It's probably going to be more of a, "This is a space I can go to win X, Y, and Z.

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Take my laptop and go over there and do it."

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It's probably going to be, I mean, you've been here in the building.

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Like, there's a lot of places you can go.

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The easy one to go in the balcony.

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Nobody looks up there.

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Great fun.

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Anyway, that's what I got.

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Nice.

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I got a couple things.

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Yeah, go for it.

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All right, the first one was to take my DNA test, which I did.

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I used the 23 and me health and ancestry kit that I got off of Amazon from Prime Day,

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I think, where it was like 50% off.

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So I did the test, which is kind of fascinating, the process that you go through in order to do that.

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They have this little tube that you're supposed to spit in.

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You got to spit up into a certain line.

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Not supposed to drink or eat anything for 30 minutes before.

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And then they have this little thing cap with a capsule of liquid in it.

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And when you close it, it forces the liquid open and it drips down into the tube.

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Then you take that whole part off, screw the cap on, send it back.

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And then they've got the tracking number, the number on the tube matched to the number of the box that they give you to send it back in.

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And then they have all these different steps inside of the app that you can use to follow the process.

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So mine is still waiting to be delivered, so I have nothing to report from this yet, but I've done it.

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And I'm hoping it'll give me some interesting insights, but I guess time will tell.

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Sure.

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Find out if you're German.

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Actually, funny story about that.

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So my grandpa pulled that out of nowhere.

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Well, Schmitz is a very German name.

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And I don't, I'd never dug into the ancestry side of this a whole lot, but my grandpa, I remember growing up, he would always justify his crankiness and his emotions.

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Like, oh, I'm just a stubborn German.

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Like he said that phrase over and over and over again.

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And I remember before he passed away, someone said, actually, we're from the other side of the border and actually you're Swiss.

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This whole identity was like broken.

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Nice.

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So, well, maybe find out some interesting stuff there.

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I don't know.

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Yeah, that would be fascinating.

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Like, oh, your whole life has been upside down.

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Yeah, I was probably like five or six at the time, but I distinctly remember somebody sharing that with him and he was like, what?

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No.

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Oh, you got to love it whenever people like ruin your whole life's thing right at the end of your life.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Next one for me was to list some collaborators.

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And these are really just people that I enjoy collaborating with or would like to collaborate with.

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And I did make this list.

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I have this as its own separate note inside of obsidian of just people I want to collaborate with.

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So I think it's going to kind of be like a running list and I'll add to it over time.

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Don't worry, Joe, you're on that list.

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Yes.

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But I'm not doing anything other than listing that people at this point.

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Doing this exercise, it has helped me kind of like one of the people that's on that list.

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I'll just share this is Nick Milo.

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And I did a lighthouse session with him recently.

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It's not on YouTube yet as we record this, but once it is public, I will share it.

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And I just really like that guy.

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I really like his perspective.

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I really enjoy every time I've had a chance to talk to him, the conversation has just been awesome.

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And I was making this list, put him on there and I'm like, I got to figure out another way to do something with Nick.

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So I don't know if that was like an unintended, unintended consequence of making this list,

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but I'm like motivated to try and find ways to collaborate with some of the people that are on there.

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Cool.

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And then the last one here is to create a weekly planning template.

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Also did this inside of obsidian, which took a little bit of finagling, but I'm really happy with the system I have for this.

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You want me to walk through this real quick?

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Sure.

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Why not?

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So obsidian has these plugins, core plugins and community plugins.

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And one of the core plugins is the daily notes.

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You're familiar with that one, right?

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Yep.

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Basically, you create a folder and then you create a new daily note and all those daily notes end up in that specific folder.

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You click the button, you go straight to that note for today.

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Okay.

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So there's a community plugin that goes with that called calendar.

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It is the most downloaded community plugin if you go look for those inside of obsidian.

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And what it does is on the right sidebar, it gives you the month view, you can click on the individual days,

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and then you can jump to those days inside of your daily notes.

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Pretty cool.

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There's an option with that calendar plugin to turn on week numbers.

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Okay.

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There's another plugin I think developed by the same person, which takes some additional functionality that was in the calendar plugin for those week numbers

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and moves it into a separate plugin because it's extending the daily notes idea for weekly notes.

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And you can also toggle on monthly notes.

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So what I did is I toggled on using this other plugin, which is called periodic notes, weekly notes.

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And now I have a separate folder for planning.

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That's where all my weekly plans are going to live.

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And I've done this once, but I'm hoping this sticks.

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I think it will.

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I can click now on the week number in the calendar and it will create using a template file that I created.

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It drops in the date format of year, year, year, year, space, dash, space, and then week space, the number based on the number from the calendar plugin.

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So it's pretty cool.

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I can do this on Friday of this week.

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And then it creates the note using the template for the week that I clicked on.

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So I can work ahead this way.

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Even though it's the template formatting is designed to take like the current formatting for the date time stamp.

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This allows me to create the plan without having to type anything for the next week.

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And then I've got, let me just pull up my template file here.

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And I'll walk through the pieces of this.

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At the top, a section for known events.

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What do I have to work around this week?

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And this is where I've got, that's a second level header, third level headers for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

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And then I just jot down the big events that have to happen on those specific days from looking at my calendar.

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And then I've got my top priorities.

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What do I want to accomplish this week?

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And I've got up to five things listed there.

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And then at the bottom, painting success.

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This week is successful if, and this is the one I'm not sure if it's going to stick, but basically helping me land on.

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Like the one thing that would make this week a win basically.

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And I'm pretty happy with this.

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I don't have enough experience with it to say, yeah, this is my process going forward, but I think it'll work.

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I've eliminated quite a bit of friction getting this template to work the way that I wanted it to.

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So that's what I did.

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Interesting. That whole process is one I've done for a while, actually.

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As weird as that is to say, I've had that calendar plugin in place.

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I've used weekly notes in some form or another actually for close to year and a half, even pre-absity and stuff.

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So it's been a thing I've done, but the whole templates have been created with text expander or Alfred for me.

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Like that's just how I've done those.

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I will say Obsidian makes it much easier to do that.

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So it's pretty simple to just click the button and there you go.

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Brings in the template.

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Mine has all sorts of bash scripts and stuff.

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I'm sure yours is probably possible to create from your phone.

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Mine just fails and doesn't know what to do.

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Yeah, mine is just text.

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There's no scripts running that's going to pull in.

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You know, this is the stuff I checked off an Omni Focus or anything like that.

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Cool, cool.

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Well, that's interesting.

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I hope that works out well.

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So you've done it for one week.

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Yep.

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I assume you're going to continue doing it.

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Have you done like the future ones as in you've used it for a week, but you have multiple of those notes created at this point or you just have the one note?

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I did not because we recorded last week Monday.

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Monday, yeah.

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So since we recorded, I implemented it this week earlier in the week.

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Sure.

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For next week, basically.

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And then the goal is every Friday as part of a shutdown routine, I am spending 15 minutes looking at this.

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That's the thing that's always been hard for me is like weekly review and I always think, "Oh, it's going to take forever."

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And I resist it.

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So I want to make it as frictionless as possible in order to get it stick.

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Sure.

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Yeah, no, it makes sense that it does.

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Sounds like you got a mountain you're climbing with it.

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That's for sure.

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On that note, we should jump into today's book.

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Gotta love the segues.

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The mountain is you by Brianna Weast.

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I looked this up.

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I don't normally look it up as far as how to pronounce author's names, but I did this time because I really wanted to get this one right.

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So Brianna Weast is how she pronounces it anyway.

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The mountain is you.

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Basically, what's the tagline on this?

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"Transforming self-sabotage into self-mastery."

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And I have to admit, I got more than I was expecting out of this.

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Like there was a lot more to this than was originally on my list of expectations.

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Like in my head, I was gonna get like, here's what self-sabotage is.

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Here's how we tend to do it.

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Here's what you do about it.

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But there's a lot more to it than that as you go through this.

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And we'll dive through a bunch of this.

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I have a fairly long list of things, at least for me, in the outline.

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But I think some of these are gonna be very quick.

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Could get long, but I think they will be fairly quick.

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So I certainly did not pull this out in the detail that I feel we normally do.

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Some of that is because what is it?

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Eight chapters in this entire book.

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Some of them are very long.

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Some of them are somewhat short.

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And it's very far from a three part book from what we would normally get.

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And it seems like it was put together, like from a structure stance,

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it feels like it was put together based on how she felt the process should go

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and had nothing to do with what is best to fit in a book.

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Like, hey, I can kind of appreciate that.

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So yes, very interesting.

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But the concept here is that the mountain is you.

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Like if you take that, you know, which is how she starts the book.

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If you take that, what she's referring to is that the mountain of self,

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I guess she would say self improvement, but like making yourself a better person.

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That is the mountain that you need to climb.

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So the mountain is improving yourself and having read the entire book,

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and I want your take on this, Mike, having read this whole book,

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I felt like I got an in depth manifesto for why the growth mindset is exactly

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what you should be doing.

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And that was kind of how this is put together.

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Like this is how you improve yourself.

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And yes, by the way, you can improve yourself.

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You're not just stuck the way you are.

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I kind of got this as like this is kind of an ode to the growth mindset.

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In a lot of ways, it's more detailed and in a lot of ways, it's more vague,

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of course, than that.

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But did you get that hint out of this?

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Have that feeling at all?

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Am I just crazy?

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It's okay to admit the latter.

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There's definitely flavors of growth mindset in here.

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There's a lot of emphasis on taking responsibility for your own life.

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One of the first things I jotted down is something that she said,

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"There's nothing holding you back in life more than yourself."

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However, I don't know.

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This book I have conflicting emotions about because I feel at different points

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in this book, she goes into what I will call shrink mode,

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where you feel like you're sitting on the couch and she's telling you exactly

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how to go through this difficult process of dealing with the demons

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that you maybe have been resisting for a long time.

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I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.

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I can see maybe some benefit to doing that.

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My initial reaction was, I don't really want to just stop everything

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and ask myself, "Where am I unsatisfied with my life?"

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Maybe that's a hint that I should.

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But I don't know.

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I kind of got to the end of this and felt like maybe I'm not the right person for this.

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Maybe there's a lot more trauma and pain in people's lives than I have experienced so far.

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Maybe I'm not the right person to be reading this.

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I'm not who she had in mind when she wrote it.

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Sure.

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Yeah, I would say that the book and the way she wrote this is definitely geared towards people

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who have dealt with, I don't want to say just traumatic things,

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but a lot of difficulties in childhood and early adulthood.

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It seems like that's definitely the group that this is geared towards.

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Knowing we're going to church, right?

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So we have a lot of folks that come to the church asking for help.

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I know that that's a very common thing for most people.

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And there are some exceptions where people have almost none in their background.

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And honestly, the folks who have almost none in their background either have one of two routes

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that they tend to take.

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Either one, they're very grateful for that, take advantage of it,

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and I don't want to say take advantage of it, but they're grateful for it and they're able to be content with that.

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And then the others have kind of this weird complex where, yes, they were brought up really well,

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had a great childhood, had a great early adulthood, and they almost feel guilty for that.

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And it's like they feel like they should have been rebellious so that they could have a better story.

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If that makes sense, it just doesn't add up.

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That's kind of how I felt reading this a little bit.

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Yeah.

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But I also want to add, you know, that I'm not projecting that I don't have issues.

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I just think that I've gone through them. So if I've worked through them, in my mind, I've checked the box

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and that thing that happened when I was growing up, like I don't deal with that anymore.

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Maybe that's a wrong assumption.

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You know, maybe if you've never gone through that process, this thing is the perfect for you.

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But if you have, am I supposed to just continue to hang on to those things so that I have something

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when I read something like this?

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Hold on a grudge, just so you have something that you can, you know, complain about and work through.

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Is our friend Josh says, "Let that stuff go."

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Yeah, exactly how he says it. But, yeah, I don't know.

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This is, I'm with you in the fact that I felt like I was conflicted by it.

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I had a lot of cases where it's like, "Yeah, you just spoke to my soul and I'm not one that has a super easy

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childhood growing up and haven't had the fairy tale story and such."

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But that's, it's also hasn't been terrible by any stretch of the imagination.

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So that all said, I know a lot of people, we had a guy in here two days ago that was in bad, bad shape

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and we did what we could help him.

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But he's been through a lot of the things that she refers to in the book and you could definitely see how

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these things would help someone like that.

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And it's one of those cases where there's the one side where I feel like there are pieces of this that are

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super helpful and she's really hitting home for me.

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And then the next four or five pages, like, all right, this is just too fruit for me.

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Like I just, no, this is all to change your mindset and you can be happy and have good feelings

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and love everybody.

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Like it has some of that feel to it, which has always felt very fake to me and unreal, which is like

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polar opposite of what I was feeling five pages prior.

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And I felt like I was back and forth on the mountain and valleys thing, if you will, through that process

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in reading the book.

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So I'm kind of conflicted about my opinions on it at the moment.

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So I'm hoping we can process those here today.

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That's my hope.

00:21:47

Sure.

00:21:48

Well, the first chapter here, the mountain is you.

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This is a good one and this is kind of laying the foundation.

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I think this is the one I liked the best because there's nothing specific here.

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This is kind of general stuff that she's talking about, you know, she's identifying, like I said,

00:22:06

that there's nothing holding you back more than you take responsibility for your own life.

00:22:10

Our abstract fear is usually representation of a legitimate fear.

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One of the things that she mentioned here, which I really like the idea of this is that there is a gap

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between where you are and where you want to be.

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Have I ever talked to you about the gap versus the gain?

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That sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't place it.

00:22:29

So maybe reiterate.

00:22:31

Okay.

00:22:32

So this is something I picked up from Dan Sullivan, the guy who did the unique ability stuff.

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And picture, if you will, like three dots from top to bottom.

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Okay.

00:22:44

And the dot in the middle is where you are at.

00:22:47

Okay.

00:22:48

And then the dot above that, that's where you think you should be.

00:22:52

Okay.

00:22:53

And that's what she's calling, you know, where you are, where you want to be.

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The problem with that and the differentiation there is like, you always start with this is where I want to be,

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but then you don't make progress as fast as you think you should and you get discouraged by that because you see then the distance between the dot in the middle where you are,

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the dot where you want to be where you think you should be.

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And that is known as the gap.

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Okay.

00:23:16

And that is really frustrating because you're like, man, what is holding me back?

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Why can I not do these things that I want to do?

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And I'm just waiting to do these things are important to me and I just suck at getting them done.

00:23:29

But the alternative is to look at where you are right now and compare that instead of to where you want to be to where you started.

00:23:39

And then you see from the habits that you've established and the things that you've done consistently, you've actually made quite a bit of progress.

00:23:48

And then you can look back at 126 episodes and say, wow, I guess I am a reader because I've read 126 different books.

00:23:57

That's a really basic example.

00:24:00

But you get the idea, you know, I had a guitar lesson this morning and it's easy for me to watch my teacher and see how fast he's going through these scales and these exercises.

00:24:10

And I'm like, man, I'm just terrible because I can't even go half as fast as that.

00:24:14

But when I look at where I'm at now to where I started, even in November of last year, I can see how much I have grown.

00:24:23

And that is exciting. That causes me to keep going. This kind of gets into the difference between goals and habits, in my opinion.

00:24:30

Sure.

00:24:31

But I agree with that idea of like that gap does in fact exist. She just leaves it right there. You know, the gap in the game says then you need to once you realize that that gap is there, shift your focus in order to keep going because that's ultimately going to lead to a higher quality of life.

00:24:52

A more fulfilling existence. You're going to have joy in your journey and you're not just going to be frustrated all the time.

00:24:58

Yeah, I can see how that makes sense.

00:25:01

It's very, like that's a very interesting way to lay it out, like comparing now to the past versus the future.

00:25:08

That's for sure. So let's jump into, I don't want to say the next part, next section, next chapter. There's a different area in the book where she starts explaining what self sabotage looks like.

00:25:21

There's a whole bunch of these. And she goes through each one, explains how it works and basically what do you do about it afterwards.

00:25:30

But they had three of those that I pointed out here that just struck a chord with me. Feel free to add to these.

00:25:38

Mike, the first of which was maybe a little too close to home for me, which was uprooting in that like sometimes things start to go well, but you feel guilty for them going to be there.

00:25:50

You feel guilty for them going well. So you stop and you go do something else and you move on to the next thing.

00:25:59

Or you think it's potentially going to have some success, but you're a little bit afraid of what's going to come as a result of the success unconsciously and put it on hold or cancel it, move away from it, etc.

00:26:12

That one kind of got to me because I feel like that's a thing that I do. I don't know if there's a fear underneath of that that's led to it.

00:26:22

I've always chalked it up to Joe can't focus in its ADD, but kind of made me wonder is like, okay, well, maybe is there something else going on there? I don't know.

00:26:33

It's a thing I'm still processing. My walks in the evenings have led me to consider uprooting as an issue and making me wonder is there something going on there? I don't know.

00:26:43

I need to reconsider that one a little more.

00:26:47

Well, this is interesting because this is coming from a chapter where she says that the actual chapter title is there's no such thing as self-sabotage.

00:26:57

And then she says, people do what they want. If you're hanging on to something, the trick is to figure out why.

00:27:03

And you mentioned the ADHD aspect of this. So how does that filter or figure into this equation?

00:27:11

But I think just the blanket statement she would make is without the consideration of a possible medical influence here is, well, if you're constantly uprooting, then ultimately that is tied to a desire internally.

00:27:30

And I'm not sure that you can map that 100%. But it's interesting and that's probably the approach we have to take for the rest of this discussion.

00:27:41

And I do think there is truth to this uprooting being one of the signs of being in self-sabotage that she lists in this chapter.

00:27:51

I'm not sure. I'm not sure I identified with this one, but I do think this is a thing.

00:28:02

I think that there are definitely people who are on some level scared of succeeding would be another way to describe this maybe.

00:28:15

And they talk about, I want to do this thing. I'm going to do it someday. Let's just use writing a book as an example.

00:28:25

But we go back to what we're comfortable with. She talks about in a lot of the other spots in this book.

00:28:33

So I think there is an element of truth here where you attach this idea, like, I'm going to write this book.

00:28:40

I'm going to make this thing and my life is going to be significantly different. And at some level, that's kind of scary.

00:28:48

Even if you predominantly think it's going to be better in a whole myriad of ways, probably not going to be as successful maybe as you think it's going to be.

00:28:58

That's where I get trouble here. And then perfectionism is the next one on the list. I definitely fall into this one.

00:29:06

I go, let's just make this thing absolutely perfect. And I've had to work against that over the years.

00:29:11

But again, I have worked through that, not that I've completely beat this thing, but I feel like I've made a ton of progress.

00:29:17

So should I feel bad about that, Brianna?

00:29:20

Yeah, I don't know. This is where it starts to get like, okay, one of the other ones that stood out to me was disorganization.

00:29:29

Because some people are disorganized partially because being organized, which they feel they're capable of, whether they realize it or not,

00:29:38

but disorganization is a cover up for if I'm organized, I have to fulfill an action that I'm uncomfortable with.

00:29:47

Because then you have everything put together and you can do a good job at it. But if I'm disorganized, I have an excuse for not doing it really well.

00:29:54

But if I get myself organized, then it should be really good and I'm afraid of that. That's the thing.

00:30:02

There's so much of this fear-based issue that's kind of underlying things with this.

00:30:09

So I don't typically think of myself as a disorganized person, but if you were to look at this desk right now, it is far from organized.

00:30:17

So I was just kind of, oh, it is. But it's one of those, like, I tend to just leave things out partially because I think I'm going to get back to it a little bit later.

00:30:26

So I'm not sure it's like a fear of anything. It's just a... I just didn't put it away. That's all it is.

00:30:34

Well, that one specifically, I think if you have a messy desk, I don't think that's a sign of some deep down internal trauma that you're trying to wrestle through.

00:30:49

I think there's something to be said for just having a whole bunch of stuff in your environment, especially if you're trying to design your environment to follow up from the conversation last time with Will Card doesn't work.

00:31:02

I mean, there's a whole... Drew Kaufman had a whole Twitter thread of the messy desks of brilliant creatives.

00:31:12

And I dug into that a little bit. There's some research behind having all of these things that are in your field of view and then kind of constantly being reminded of those things and divergent thinking based off of those notes, even if you don't see those things all the time,

00:31:31

like it's not registering with your brain. I am thinking about this thing right now. If it's in your field of view, going back to liminal thinking, like we take in all this information, but we can only focus on a certain aspect of it.

00:31:42

I'm not as convinced that that's a bad thing as I used to be, let's say.

00:31:48

Sure. I do think there is an element though of disorganization being like, "You have no idea what your day is going to look like and you have no idea what's going on."

00:31:56

Because she does say in chapter 7 and I agree with this that mentally strong people are planners. When you feel like you're in control, then you want to set your direction.

00:32:08

If you feel completely helpless and hopeless to change anything, then you're just trying to survive the storms of life that keep coming your way.

00:32:17

Yes. Which leads us into the last one I wanted to bring up here, which is being "busy".

00:32:26

That one I know is all over the place. You see it like, "How are you doing? Busy?" I hear that a lot. It's a thing that comes up very often.

00:32:39

It's one that I think a lot of us will talk about how busy we are. We've got a lot going on.

00:32:47

The world is busy. It makes me wonder, especially after reading her section on it, I wonder if a lot of people do that as a way of numbing.

00:33:00

Is this a thing that we tend to do? Because if I'm not busy, if I'm not overwhelmed with things to do, you have to notice and you have to pay attention and you have to be more intentional, or at least you can and will somewhat.

00:33:19

It seems like whenever people stop and they're not busy, we get uncomfortable because then you start to notice things.

00:33:30

This is the whole mindfulness concept. If you're not numbing yourself with inputs, commitments, and things you should be doing, you tend to pay attention to details that you didn't see before.

00:33:46

I had this conversation with my girls when all three of them went with me on a walk one evening. I was talking to them about why I go on this walk in the evenings.

00:33:57

One of the reasons I brought up was just being a good steward of what we have and paying attention to it such that we can take good care of what we have.

00:34:11

I know one of the ways that we did that on the farm was walking around equipment all every day, multiple times a day, whenever you got a break, you just walked around and looked at it, which always seemed kind of funny to me when I was little.

00:34:25

But it occurred to me that when you did that, if you did it that often, you got to where you knew what it normally looked like.

00:34:33

If you had a hydraulic line or something that was leaking, you would notice it right away because you were so used to seeing what it looked like when it was in good working condition.

00:34:44

It's the same thing that I'm doing at night somewhat. I'm noticing all the trees and all the plants and everything that's going on.

00:34:50

I can tell you when certain plants have started to bud out, what is happening? Are they stressed because of the drought? Did they suddenly boom whenever we got a little bit of a rain?

00:35:02

You can see all of that in quite a lot of detail. That doesn't happen if you're overwhelmed and still running full speed. You have to stop long enough to pay attention.

00:35:13

I wonder if that's some of the busyness issue. If we're sabotaging ourselves, if that's a thing, if you're sabotaging yourself by being overwhelmed as a way to have an excuse for not paying attention to things.

00:35:30

I don't know. Maybe it's a thing. Maybe it's not.

00:35:34

You just gave me an action item to walk around my house every day.

00:35:40

Makes a big difference. I know that.

00:35:44

I like that. Just being able to notice the things that are different that make a ton of sense.

00:35:51

I like what you're saying about the busyness piece. I think the mindfulness aspect of that busyness connects to it, but it doesn't necessarily prevent it.

00:36:07

You're right in that we do go to busyness in some ways as a coping mechanism.

00:36:15

It's how we self-medicate. We don't want to stop and think about the way things are. We just keep running from thing to thing.

00:36:23

I've been struggling with this lately though. I understand the idea of margin. I know it's really important.

00:36:32

I know when I don't have it, I get stressed out. I also think though that if I were just fighting to protect margin all the time, I would miss out on some of the most rewarding experiences that I have had in my life.

00:36:49

One of the things that comes to mind is coaching soccer. I'm helping coach my son's middle school soccer team. I have an eighth grader and a sixth grader and they're both playing soccer.

00:37:02

It's kind of a fun thing that we could do together. I think I talked about this last time. I had this limiting belief around coaching soccer that it wasn't even an option for me, even though I love soccer.

00:37:14

I played it in high school. My high school team was state champions actually. I'm pretty good at it. It's something that I love to do with my kids.

00:37:24

I just assumed they have practices multiple nights a week and I can't be there for everything. They don't even want me to try.

00:37:32

Rachel convinced me I should reach out to the coach and just see if there's room for me to help in any capacity, even if I can't be there half the time.

00:37:42

I said, "Okay, here's the deal. I can make Mondays. I can't ever make Thursdays. I can sometimes make Fridays. You still want me to help."

00:37:50

I was like, "Yeah, that would be awesome." Turns out that he's kind of doing it because there was a need for someone to coach. He doesn't know a ton.

00:38:03

I'm able to work with these middle school kids and it's the perfect spot for me because even though I don't really play anymore, I have a decent amount of skill still so I can show them things.

00:38:18

I can scrimmage with them and explain, "Here's what's going to happen." Then it happens and they're like, "Wow, you really know your stuff."

00:38:26

"I'm a little bit beyond them." I can help them see things that they can't see and develop as the skill, see how they can be applied and stuff like that.

00:38:38

It's like all the drills and things. It's not just boring. We're doing this in a vacuum. When am I going to use this because I can explain exactly how they're going to use this and then set up the situation in the scrimmage like, "See? This is where it comes in."

00:38:51

Seeing the light bulb go on for a lot of these kids is incredibly rewarding. I've been thinking about that lately.

00:39:00

If I was so focused on just like, "I need more margin in my schedule," I wouldn't have agreed to do this.

00:39:09

I'm really glad that I did. I'm trying to wrestle through this. I think the key for me is to close the feedback loop quickly.

00:39:21

Go ahead and try something like this. If it ends up not being the right thing, I'm stressed out because I don't have margin. Every three months is part of my personal retreat.

00:39:30

I'm asking myself, "What should I stop doing?" I'm constantly putting everything on the chopping block, looking at it objectively and picking something to stop doing so that I have the margin to try new things.

00:39:45

I think that's one way that I've landed on working with this.

00:39:49

She walks us through different types of self-sabotage and what to do about some specific ones.

00:39:58

Then she walks us through, after that, some of the triggers for that self-sabotage.

00:40:06

This is where I start to get a little, "What?"

00:40:11

This whole section is based on feelings. Maybe this is because I'm male. That might just be part of it. I don't know.

00:40:22

To me, this section was a little odd, but I still have a few here that I want to talk about because she's talking about how these feelings can be triggers.

00:40:34

Those are your guide for correcting or preventing this self-sabotage process.

00:40:43

Well, let's just jump into one or two of them here.

00:40:48

I think that'll maybe help out.

00:40:51

The first one I wrote down was regret.

00:40:54

This is where obviously you feel as though you made a bad decision.

00:41:00

You did something you wish you hadn't, didn't do something you wish you had in some form or another.

00:41:06

That feeling of regret shows its face and then you say yes to a commitment because you don't want to let something slide by.

00:41:20

Thus, you're perpetuating the being busy.

00:41:23

Now, could potentially say that Mike made that choice based on regret to coach soccer? I don't know.

00:41:31

Very unlikely in this particular case, but let's say that that was a thing that happened.

00:41:37

In her case, she would say that very likely to use that example, that maybe you regret making a decision and saying no to something in the past.

00:41:46

Thus, you said yes to this one and now you're being busy and sabotaging the margin that you've set up for your life.

00:41:54

That's all completely unfounded and completely not true.

00:41:58

I think that illustrates how that could work.

00:42:03

That's how that could go.

00:42:05

Again, that's not what happened here.

00:42:07

That's the issue I have with this.

00:42:17

As the motivation behind this, I feel like at some level, it's not a big deal.

00:42:23

Just have fun.

00:42:25

I think the part that gets hard here is identifying what is self-sabotage.

00:42:33

This is one of my problems, I guess, with this.

00:42:38

I know that I sabotage myself in a lot of ways.

00:42:42

I know that I do that.

00:42:44

But I also know that I can work through that and work my way around that.

00:42:53

The way that she has this positioned here, it's like these are unconscious feelings or unconscious decisions that you're making.

00:43:02

Which means that in order to work against them, you have to somehow bring them into your conscious thoughts.

00:43:09

That is not always an easy process.

00:43:13

She does have a four-step thing later that can help you through moving past some things.

00:43:20

I think there is a system in this, if you caught it.

00:43:25

It's very short, but there is a system in here.

00:43:29

This is one of the hard parts with this.

00:43:33

When it's an unconscious decision to sabotage yourself, how do you know what the trigger is?

00:43:40

When is it a triggering of a self-sabotaging action?

00:43:45

When is it just an acting on a feeling that you think could be good and making a wise decision?

00:43:53

I don't know.

00:43:54

That's where it starts to get messy here.

00:43:56

One of the things she said specifically about regret is that it tries to get you to live up to your own expectations.

00:44:04

I feel like it's easier to beat yourself up about not living up to your expectations

00:44:14

if you never clearly define them.

00:44:17

There are always things that you should be doing.

00:44:22

If you are taking the planner's mentality to this and you are being intentional about the things that you can do,

00:44:28

you are forced to select some things that you are not going to do.

00:44:33

When you already say, "I'm not going to do this," then it's a little bit harder to feel the regret from not doing it.

00:44:41

Maybe not. I don't know. Maybe that's just my personality that wants to make a decision.

00:44:45

"Okay, this is what we're doing.

00:44:46

I'm going to go back and revisit it after a while, but I'm not going to be questioning it the entire time that I'm working the plan."

00:44:55

I want to talk about the next one I wrote down is chronic fear.

00:44:59

Chronic fear is one of these triggers that could trigger self-sabotage.

00:45:03

I wrote this one down not because it resonated with me directly,

00:45:09

but because this is one that I feel like I see almost every single person that comes through our church doors who wants help in some form,

00:45:18

especially I'm going to specifically refer to people who want monetary help.

00:45:22

Finance needs in general.

00:45:26

Whenever people come in, there's usually something, they were in jail for some reason,

00:45:32

they got kicked out of their apartment for some reason, there's something going on with mom and dad,

00:45:38

there's an alcohol problem.

00:45:41

So many things it could be.

00:45:44

I see these regularly.

00:45:47

Almost every single time that person is in that habit, that issue, that situation,

00:45:56

because of chronic fear of some sort.

00:45:59

It's generally fear of a couple different things.

00:46:05

I would lump in succeeding and having a lot of money together.

00:46:10

People are afraid of that.

00:46:12

I think some of that is because there's such a portrayal of rich people or evil.

00:46:18

There's such a big push on that that people are actually a little bit afraid of having success,

00:46:24

which is so backwards in my mind.

00:46:27

But I see that fairly regularly.

00:46:30

That's a big one, people are afraid of the success that comes with it.

00:46:36

The flip side of that is they're also afraid of failing, so they don't start anything.

00:46:44

They don't stop smoking cigarettes because they're afraid they're going to fail,

00:46:48

so they never even try to stop smoking because they're afraid they're going to fail at stopping.

00:46:53

Do you realize that just doesn't add up?

00:47:00

Some people can't see past that.

00:47:03

That's the difficult part.

00:47:04

It's helping someone see that fear that they're working through.

00:47:08

That's where maybe this is a good thing to work through.

00:47:13

If you can see it in someone else, maybe if you see something in me, Mike,

00:47:17

you can point it out or if I see something in you, I can point it out.

00:47:19

And then it makes it easier to get it out of that unconscious action process.

00:47:24

All that to say, chronic fear, I feel like, is a big one that's out there.

00:47:28

I don't know if it's something that I personally deal with.

00:47:30

I don't know if it's something you deal with, but I know that it's something that's very prominent

00:47:34

that I see coming through our church doors fairly regularly.

00:47:38

I think you're right.

00:47:39

I'm not sure that I deal with this, but I do want to address the comment you made about how I could see this in you.

00:47:47

You could see this in me.

00:47:49

I agree that we don't see our own blind spots.

00:47:54

I have learned, however, people got to be in the right frame of mind

00:47:58

and allow you to point out their faults.

00:48:03

You cannot just go around being like, here's what you got to do to fix yourself.

00:48:08

Yep.

00:48:09

Which is difficult because even if you sit down and have a rational conversation with somebody

00:48:16

and use logic to get them to the point where, yes, I want to grow.

00:48:20

I want to make myself better.

00:48:22

Sometimes they still deep down.

00:48:26

They don't really want to.

00:48:29

Their head is saying, yes, their heart is still saying no, which I think is kind of what Brown is getting at in this book.

00:48:37

You got to dig deep enough to confront what is really there.

00:48:43

I think chronic fear is definitely a thing.

00:48:48

I almost, that one though specifically, I don't think I would ever feel comfortable telling somebody like,

00:48:56

okay, so this is what you're dealing with.

00:48:58

Maybe if you're a certified counselor, I mean, this is a, I'm assuming part of your job.

00:49:04

So you know how to identify this thing and bring it out, but the anger, sadness, guilt, embarrassment,

00:49:11

jealousy, resentment, regret, those I could, I could deal with.

00:49:15

You know, my small group at church, I could see us talking about some of that stuff.

00:49:19

Sure.

00:49:20

But I cannot envision a scenario where I'm like, okay, Joe, we've got to have a talk about your chronic fear.

00:49:26

I just don't see that ending well.

00:49:29

Sure.

00:49:30

Yeah.

00:49:31

That's a good point.

00:49:32

It really is.

00:49:33

I can think of a couple cases where I have talked to somebody about this.

00:49:38

It's just me, but it's in situations where I'm fulfilling kind of a mentor role.

00:49:47

And in one case, it was someone who was my age.

00:49:50

And in one case, it was someone who was definitely younger than me and who was trying to find their way in life,

00:49:57

I guess.

00:49:58

And in both cases, like, okay, you got to stop being afraid of this.

00:50:02

Like, I get that it's scary.

00:50:04

I get that it can be uncomfortable.

00:50:07

I get that it's not going to happen.

00:50:09