Bookworm Transcripts

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I finally move, Mike.

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Congratulations.

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So we can stop hopefully for a period rescheduling,

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putting things off, messing with things,

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fussing and fussing and fussing.

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That's my hope.

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Well, I'll do my best to accommodate you,

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but I am also hoping.

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(laughs)

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That is done.

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Yes, you and me both.

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You and me both.

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This has been a absolute mess scheduling-wise,

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'cause I've been maneuvering so many people

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in so many things for months now.

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And we moved in just a few days ago,

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and hopefully Joe can slow down a bit.

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I feel like I've been running ragged.

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Like I spent the last 45 minutes finishing off this book,

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because I had no time until today.

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And here we are.

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And I'm really, really, really hoping

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that we can be done with this crazy for a while.

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I am not, I know that people live the type of life

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that I just came out of perpetually,

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and that ain't me.

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Like I am not-

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No. (laughs)

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Not made for that.

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So yes, here's hoping we're completely done with that

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for a long time, so we can get a break.

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And I'm sure you would appreciate that as well.

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So.

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Yeah, well, moving is never an easy transition to make.

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I feel like as a casual observer from the outside,

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you've handled this one pretty well.

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You were in the apartment,

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so you weren't trying to get everything.

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Typically you buy a house, you sell your old one,

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you gotta get everything over there within 24 hours.

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It sounds like you at least had a little bit of,

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a little bit longer timeline,

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a little bit more margin in order to do some work

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on the new place before you moved in, stuff like that.

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So I'm sure it never went as seamlessly as you would hope,

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though, everything is more complicated

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once you get in the middle of a move.

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So the fact that you're on the other side of it now,

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congratulations, that's not a small accomplishment.

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It's intense, so I've slept well lately.

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(laughing)

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The last few nights, that's for sure.

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That is for sure.

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So anyway, Joe's moved, we can set that behind us for a while.

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I obviously have a lot of work to do yet on the house,

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but it's not gonna be breakneck pace anymore,

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and we can let the foot off the gas for a little while here.

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So anyway, all that to say, and I brought that up

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because we're gonna go back to some longer term follow-up.

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We've talked about for a while how I've wanted to do

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like these morning walks as part of a reflective period,

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just trying to clear my head, get out in nature,

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et cetera, et cetera.

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And I've been able to do that the last few days.

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And one of the things I hadn't planned on with that

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is that when we moved, it occurred to me,

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the first morning we were there that,

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oh yeah, we have a dog,

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which means that the dog needs to let out in the morning.

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Well, why don't I just take the dog with me

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when I go on these walks?

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So I ended up taking the dog,

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Jip is his name, took him with me.

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And that's been kind of a fun little addition

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to the morning walk thing,

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'cause he's, of course, diving off into the woods

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and trying to investigate every little thing

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he can possibly find.

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And it's somewhat of a distraction,

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but at the same time, it's kind of nice

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to have the companion there with me.

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So anyway, morning walks have become a thing

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and combine that with evening walks out in the woods.

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And it's, I'm a fan.

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I will just say that.

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It's something I would highly, highly recommend.

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Now, I also need to mention that I'm extremely spoiled

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in being able to just go out the back door and do this.

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I know that most people cannot do that, so there's that.

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- Nice.

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- I take my dog running every once in a while.

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Her name is Lucy.

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She's a giant golden doodle.

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She was supposed to be 45 pounds.

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I think she's 70.

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- Oh, wow.

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(laughs)

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- Whoa.

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- But she is super gentle, has never tried to jump up

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on the furniture, snag something off the table, whatever,

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but she loves going running with me.

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She sees me start to stretch and she comes

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and like lays on top of me.

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It's her way of like, "Hey, take me with you."

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- Yeah.

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- And then when I get up, head towards the door,

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she watches me intently and if I head over

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to the little bin where her leash is,

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she just starts running in circles, she gets so excited.

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- Yes, yes.

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- But I can confirm, walk/runs with dogs are better.

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- It's good to know.

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It's good to know.

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Gyps already got into the point after just a couple days.

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He's already like, he doesn't like get onto me

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whenever, like physically on me whenever I'm getting ready

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to go out.

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He doesn't stand between me and the door.

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That way I can't get to the door unless I either shoot him

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out of the way or let him out the door.

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So there's that.

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So anyway, so morning walks have become a thing.

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One of the pieces that I've had going on here is like,

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okay, how do I go about reconfiguring a daily routine?

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And if we combine that with some of last episodes,

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follow up of incorporating some of the extended mind

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aspects into a daily routine.

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I'm realizing that there's a few things happening here.

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And I haven't figured out how to formally share

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what this routine is shaping up into,

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but basically like I've done this morning walk thing

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for a few days now and we're trying to make sure

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that we're doing our evening dinner a little bit earlier

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than we have in the past because as soon as we're done,

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we'll clean up as a family and then I take the girls

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and we go for a walk outside in the woods

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through the yard and such.

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So that's kind of become a thing as well.

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And we've also been trying to encourage the girls

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to hunt things down and show them to us whenever they're out

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exploring and finding things, which has been kind of a cool

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like homeschool thing as well.

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So that whole daily routine incorporating the outside pieces

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is starting to come together.

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So I'm hoping over the next week or so we'll get to where

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we've got kind of a settled rhythm of what that routine

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is going to look like and how it's changed

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from apartment life and previous suburban life.

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So I don't know, it's becoming a thing

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that I am slowly formulating.

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So I'm trying to figure out how to actually formally share

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that outside of just trying to explain it here at Bookworm,

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but I don't know what the answer to that is quite yet.

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So anyway, daily routines.

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The last follow up piece I had here was I want to talk

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to Becky, my wife about Rose, our middle daughter.

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'Cause Rose doesn't always, she's not good about focusing

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on things during school and then just completely misses them

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because a distraction will keep her from being able to

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internalize what it is that she's being taught.

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And I think some of that has to do with her being requested

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to sit still.

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And we're working through like how do I keep her moving?

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Like physically moving while she's working on school.

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We've played with some ideas, like how do we give her

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some stuff and have her walk around the table?

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Like just walk circles around the table.

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Or you give her something to do and have her go upstairs

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to work on it as opposed to trying to sit in the same places

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all of her sisters as they're doing their stuff.

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So just trying to encourage like some of that physical

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movement and activity as she's working on school

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and just trying to incorporate that into all of her

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daily routine stuff with school as well.

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So there's that, we're getting there, but it's forever

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process with kids, right?

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So that is the truth.

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One step at a time.

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Anyway, that's what I had for follow up.

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How about you, Mr. Michael?

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I had two things for follow up.

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The first one was to meditate for reals.

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And I'm not gonna say this has stuck, but I have done this.

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Okay, which I feel like, I feel like you've said this before.

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I have.

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I have.

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Yep.

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At this point in time you've been here before.

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That is correct.

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Now we'll have to check in next time and see

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if I'm still doing it.

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But Annie talked about in the previous episode

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with the extended mind, that one really clicked for me.

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And the benefits have never felt more real than they do now.

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Whether that's enough to make me do it every day

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has yet to be, be seen.

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But it's working so far.

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The second one was to think on paper.

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I.

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This is the one I'm really interested in.

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Yeah, well I am thinking on paper.

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One example of this, I don't know if you consider this thinking,

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but I typically take the recordings,

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give them to Toby, he edits them, gives them back to me.

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I review them.

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And at that point, I write down the chapters

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and the links and everything.

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The other way that I do this when I record focus

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with David Sparks is we capture everything

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to share Google Doc live base camp is terrible for this.

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So not going to try to do that with this podcast.

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But I basically, as we record this,

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I am doing that on a blank page in my notebook.

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And I'm finding I am going to a blank page in the notebook

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to write things more frequently,

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whether it's just lists of things from a meeting

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or I want to think about this relationship

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between these different pieces.

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Like I'm doing this workshop,

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as we're recording this, it's tomorrow.

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So it will have already taken place by the time it publishes,

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but it's this five part creativity flywheel

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that I'm thinking about with the whole idea

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of idea development, management, where do ideas come from,

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input, output, et cetera.

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And I have this five step thing

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that I kind of brainstormed on on paper.

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So I'm doing this and I think it's sticking.

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On the inverse of this though,

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I just did a personal retreat.

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And I did that totally in obsidian and I absolutely love it.

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(laughing)

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- Nice.

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- Yeah, I have this wheel of life thing

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for my personal retreat process that I think I've shown you.

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And in the workbook,

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I used to just load it up on my iPad in good notes

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and color in the wheels from zero to 10,

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working their way out.

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But there's this radar chart

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using this charts view plugin where you can overlay

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two different radar charts on top of each other.

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So I have the different areas going around

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and then there's like the different points

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and I can compare last quarter to this quarter

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and see what has either gone up or gone down.

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And I just absolutely love that kind of stuff.

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So I don't know, I think there's a place for both of these,

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but thinking on paper is not something I want to like go

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all in with everything, all of my thinking happens on paper,

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but it's definitely the right tool for certain jobs

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and I intend to keep going with it.

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- I think there's gonna be a difference

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between thinking on paper and storing on paper.

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- Yeah, definitely.

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- Like that tends to be a differentiation

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that I tend to make personally.

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It's like I capture a lot of things

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and I process a lot of things on paper.

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And I do have some paper storage of ideas,

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mostly tasks and stuff.

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Though the last couple months have been basically

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non-existent with that.

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And yet there's a place for longer term storage of that

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which is I think where obsidian tends to shine.

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And I say that and yet I haven't used that

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in months at this point either.

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I've been living in base camp

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but it's because we've had like so much stuff

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with the house and that's the shared place

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that my wife and I picked to do all of that

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which has worked brilliantly.

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And yet I haven't, yeah, anyway, long story short,

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thinking on paper versus storing on digital.

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Like that's a line I feel like you're talking about here.

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- Yep, it is.

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And I know I can grab a picture, throw it up somewhere

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but basically the paper is disposable.

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It's the process of writing things down on it

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where the value is created.

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I don't really want it for long term storage.

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- Makes sense.

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All right, well, I guess that brings us to today's book

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which I think is one that we both were super excited about.

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I forget who somebody tweeted this to both of us saying,

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"Hey, Ryan Holiday has a new book coming out

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and I think you pre-ordered it instantly whenever you

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receive that tweet, at least if I follow your Twitter replies."

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- So pro tip for people who want to @ me and recommend a book.

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If you think I'm going to like the book,

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make sure you include your affiliate link

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'cause I will buy it on the spot.

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- Yep, it's so true.

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Mike does that instantly.

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So drop in the Amazon tag.

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And you get a kickback, it's for sure.

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Yes, anyway, long story short,

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Courage is Calling by Ryan Holiday.

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And this is one that, I mean, it just came out

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as we're recording this, what is it?

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Couple weeks ago now, not quite.

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So by the time this releases, it's about two weeks ago plus.

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So it's a super beginner, I don't wanna say beginner.

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It's the beginnings of a series that Ryan Holiday is writing

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which he gets into a little bit in the introduction for this

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about the four virtues, drawing a blank on all of them

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'cause I'm trying to place them in my head

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but courage, wisdom's in there.

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- Temperance and justice.

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- Temperance and justice, there you go.

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And this is the first of those four in courage.

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So he has three more coming as we already are aware.

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He's already made that known to us.

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So there are three more books coming

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on the other three topics, temperance, wisdom, justice.

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And this one being the courage one,

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I feel like is a great place to start

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because it's the foundation that I believe

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the other three are going to build on.

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So as much as we tend to bemoan three part books

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and three part series and such,

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he's doing a four part series

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but he started that with a three part book.

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So it's not always bad.

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We found that out last time.

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Like if you can make it all work, it does work out.

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And I think it does in this case as well.

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So anyway, courage is calling.

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That's today's book.

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Super excited to go through this one with you.

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- Yes, this will be a fun one.

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Ryan Holiday is my jam.

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I'll just get that out of the way at the beginning here.

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So I like this book a lot.

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I do feel like his tone is changing a little bit

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as we read more Ryan Holiday books.

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In fact, in the conclusion, he kind of explains why that is.

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So yeah, let's jump in here.

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- Yeah, so the three parts here are fear, courage,

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and the heroic.

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Those are the parts.

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And then he has chapters,

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I guess you would call them chapters underneath of this.

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This felt very Seth Godin-ish to me.

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- Yep, that's what I thought of.

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- And you know, where he's got like,

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maybe it's a page on this one and four pages on that one.

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It's that sort of thing.

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So in this particular case,

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like the first one has almost 20 chapters in it.

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If you count them all out, it's somewhere around there.

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The second one with courage has closer to 25

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and then the last one's around 15, 20, somewhere in there.

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And so if you count those all as chapters,

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there's a lot of chapters in this book.

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And yet it's classic Ryan Holiday

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in that there's a lot of stories in this.

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I don't feel like I've heard hardly any of these stories before.

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I remember we talked about that in his last book

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where he has done the research.

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He's so well read that he knows

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what stories are repeated over and over again.

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There are topics that he brings up here

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that I felt like, oh, this is the story that goes with this

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that we've heard how many times

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and then he picks something I've never heard of.

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- Yep. - Okay.

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Yep, there's Holiday for you.

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- It's true.

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I told my wife at one point,

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I said, I want to be Ryan Holiday.

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(laughing)

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He has read a gazillion books

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and he basically takes the books that he's read

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and sells them in his own bookstore in Austin, Texas.

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And I think it's called The Painted Porch,

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if I remember correctly.

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I didn't know he had a bookstore down there.

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I want to go down just to visit the bookstore now.

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But I would love to do that kind of thing.

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Just reads that much and understand that much

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and not collect all of the stories and all of the facts,

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but kind of what he does.

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There's things that he talks about

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that we've heard about before,

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but like you said, he picks out one detail

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from that whole story,

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chucks the rest of it,

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and then presents that to support his ideas.

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So it's a really, really cool and effective way to write.

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Going back to your point about

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the Seth Godin flavor of the small chapters.

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This, I thought of that too,

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the practice that we had read.

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And this feels like Seth Godin meets stoic philosophy.

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(laughs)

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That's the best way to describe it, I think.

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- Let's jump into what we've got for an outline here.

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So the three parts, obviously, will follow those.

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There's so many chapters here.

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You have to cherry pick one.

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So I played it the way that editors played it

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and picked three for each of them.

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Feel free to add to those as we go through it, Mike.

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But the first one, actually,

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the very first one isn't an actual chapter, I guess.

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Technically, but it comes from one of the chapters

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in a definition of fear,

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which I've not heard before, but I feel like I should have.

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Maybe you've heard this one before,

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but it follows the acronym FEAR,

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false evidence appearing real.

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Have you heard of this before, Mike?

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This was brand new to me.

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- I had heard this before,

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but I don't know, he's very effective

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in how he describes it,

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because he brings together a whole bunch of things

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from a whole bunch of different perspectives.

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So I'd heard that definition before,

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and he opens this whole section,

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kind of with a whole bunch of stuff from the Bible.

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And he's not a Christian, I don't think.

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He's just studied enough that he has pulled in

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these different philosophies from religious texts,

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and he does that with some of the other religions as well.

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So he doesn't get deep into the original Greek

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and Hebrew meanings and all that kind of stuff,

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but he takes it at King James Version at face value

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and blends that with a lot of the stoic philosophy stuff.

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And I thought that was pretty effective.

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Essentially, that's what I try to do

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with faith-based productivity.

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Not even necessarily intentionally,

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it's just like how my mind goes.

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The reason I wrote my book in the first place

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was I was teaching a Bible college class

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on personal management,

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and I was studying a lot of productivity stuff at the time

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and I was recognizing that a lot of the principles

00:19:26

I was reading about in these New York Times bestseller books

00:19:30

that we cover for Bookworm

00:19:31

were based off of these biblical principles.

00:19:33

So it's kind of cool to see somebody else

00:19:35

making those connections.

00:19:36

- Right.

00:19:38

It honestly made me, he brought it up so often,

00:19:40

it made me question if he was Christian.

00:19:42

'Cause I know we've talked about that before him not being,

00:19:45

but he knows it well enough and talks about it enough,

00:19:49

and it kind of made me second guess that a little bit.

00:19:51

But anyway, that's a side point.

00:19:53

- So let me jump in there real quick,

00:19:55

because I think you and I are echo chambers, right?

00:20:00

- Yep.

00:20:01

- We tend to think well as soon as anyone encounters

00:20:04

the facts that we've encountered

00:20:06

that automatically points to a conversion experience, right?

00:20:10

- Sure, yeah.

00:20:11

- But also one of the things I've learned

00:20:13

from some of these books that we've read

00:20:15

is that we need to find people who aren't like ourselves.

00:20:20

And so that's the niche that Ryan Holiday fills for me

00:20:25

is like he has heard some of this stuff

00:20:27

and he's got a little bit different take on it.

00:20:30

Doesn't mean he's wrong and it's different enough

00:20:33

that I can glean things from reading his books very easily.

00:20:38

Like it's not too far separated.

00:20:42

I feel like we could have a very effective conversation

00:20:47

about some of these ideas,

00:20:49

but he's also not gonna just be somebody who's like,

00:20:51

oh yeah, yeah, of course.

00:20:53

And I feel like that's the most effective form of dialogue.

00:20:57

- Absolutely.

00:20:58

I will say like he does bring it up some biblical texts

00:21:01

in some scenarios where it made me reconnect

00:21:05

to what I've learned about that specific story

00:21:08

in the Bible and then it expands it to

00:21:12

it's this weird thing we learned in how to read a book

00:21:16

as much as we didn't like that book,

00:21:17

the more it comes up,

00:21:19

but the interconnectedness of books.

00:21:22

And you don't often run across mainstream nonfiction books

00:21:27

that do that with the Bible.

00:21:29

And this one does that.

00:21:31

So it's kind of this, to me it's kind of strange that,

00:21:34

okay, well now I've got things interconnecting

00:21:36

to this religious text.

00:21:38

Okay.

00:21:39

That's good, but it's just not something I'm used to.

00:21:43

So there is that piece.

00:21:44

- One example of this, I think it's from the second chapter,

00:21:48

is that he has a number,

00:21:51

and I forget what the number is,

00:21:52

but he says, "Be not afraid is the most often

00:21:54

"repeated phrase in the entire Bible."

00:21:57

So obviously he's looked at the entire text,

00:21:59

he's not just doing a command F.

00:22:02

(laughs)

00:22:03

See how many different phrases come up.

00:22:05

He's familiar enough with it to talk about it intelligently

00:22:09

and his why behind why that phrase is important,

00:22:13

maybe is a little bit different than the one

00:22:16

that really resonates with me,

00:22:17

but that doesn't mean that that's wrong.

00:22:19

The whole chapter that that comes from,

00:22:21

the important thing is to not be afraid.

00:22:23

100% can get on board with that.

00:22:26

So some of the stoic stuff that he talks about,

00:22:29

well I'm sure we'll get into this as we go,

00:22:31

feels a little bit weird to me,

00:22:33

but I just kind of take the ideas and the stories

00:22:36

and apply my own meaning to them,

00:22:40

which is surprisingly easy to do.

00:22:43

- I don't know if he's studied or figured out

00:22:46

how to do that or if it's just the nature of the topic.

00:22:50

I'm not sure which that is, it may be a combo of both,

00:22:52

but yes, it's very relatable in that sense.

00:22:56

So anyway, I wanna come back to false evidence

00:23:00

appearing real, the acronym for fear here,

00:23:02

'cause again, I hadn't heard this,

00:23:05

and whenever I stop and think about the things

00:23:08

that I'm afraid of or I have a slight fear of,

00:23:11

which then holds me back from either making a phone call

00:23:14

or speaking up or acting in some way that I've wanted

00:23:19

to do for a long time, exercise would be the one

00:23:22

that most people would think of false evidence appearing real.

00:23:26

Like, okay, well that's fine.

00:23:28

If there's false evidence appearing real

00:23:30

that's holding me back, what is that false evidence?

00:23:34

We talked about this, I think a little bit last time,

00:23:36

like whenever you articulate something that's in your mind

00:23:39

or you're forced to put words to something like a thought

00:23:43

or an action, it makes it less intimidating and more real

00:23:47

or more absurd depending on what it is.

00:23:51

Like, oh, I'm not running because I don't like my shoes.

00:23:56

Like, that happens, right?

00:23:58

So if you're not a runner and it's because you don't

00:24:01

like your shoes, like that's a real easy thing to solve,

00:24:03

but until you take the time to articulate that,

00:24:08

you don't even realize that that's the problem

00:24:10

and that's why you're not running every day.

00:24:13

So anyway, I appreciated the acronym.

00:24:16

- There's a definition of fear that I really like,

00:24:20

which is believing that what you can't see will come to pass

00:24:25

and I have also heard faith defined the exact same way,

00:24:30

belief that what you can't see will come to pass.

00:24:33

And I think there is a lot of truth to the positive,

00:24:39

negative, you attract what you meditate on sort of a thing.

00:24:46

I don't think it's as simple as you just confess something

00:24:51

and then it automatically manifests,

00:24:54

but I also think that a lot of people who have those knee jerk

00:24:57

negative reactions to the books like, though,

00:25:01

what is it, the life changing magic of thinking big

00:25:03

or something like that.

00:25:05

There's an element of truth there

00:25:06

and the challenge is always to figure out what,

00:25:11

for me anyways, I'll talk about my own personal experience.

00:25:13

The challenge for me is always to figure out

00:25:15

what I am doing wrong.

00:25:17

I know some people will approach these types of books

00:25:20

a little bit differently and they will kind of think like,

00:25:23

well, this person is full of it because I've tried X

00:25:28

and it's not worked for me.

00:25:31

And so they just discount the entire message

00:25:34

and I feel like that is a mistake.

00:25:37

Just because you're not getting the same results,

00:25:40

I mean, maybe what they're saying is packaged

00:25:44

like snake oil and it's, you know,

00:25:46

you just gotta do these three things

00:25:47

and your life is automatically gonna be awesome

00:25:50

and it's never that simple, even if it was,

00:25:53

for them, everybody's situation is different.

00:25:55

But I do believe that we can learn something from everybody

00:25:59

and that positive and negative, attracting what you are,

00:26:04

that is, I've seen that in my own life.

00:26:10

That's why journaling is so important to me

00:26:12

and why a lot of people would say it's so important

00:26:14

that I get into meditation, right?

00:26:16

Because you recognize when you're in those negative spaces

00:26:22

and you don't even realize that that is the energy

00:26:25

that you are creating.

00:26:27

And so at that point, if your focus is negative,

00:26:30

then you start seeing all this stuff

00:26:31

that's going wrong in your life.

00:26:33

And it just completely zaps your motivation

00:26:36

to do anything 'cause all this junk's gonna happen to me

00:26:40

anyways, 'cause you're looking for it.

00:26:42

It's confirmation bias at that point,

00:26:45

as opposed to focusing on things that are going right,

00:26:48

expressing gratitude, recognizing the growth

00:26:51

that's happened.

00:26:52

Instead of being frustrated that you're not

00:26:55

where you thought you should be,

00:26:56

you can look back over the last six months, year, whatever,

00:27:00

say, well, at least I'm not where I was at the beginning

00:27:03

of that season and look how much I've grown.

00:27:06

All I gotta do is keep going.

00:27:08

My pastor's got this saying, day by day, play by play.

00:27:11

You never get the whole thing just mapped out,

00:27:14

you don't walk it out exactly like you think it will be,

00:27:17

as you know, trying to move.

00:27:19

It's a whole bunch of audibles that happen.

00:27:22

Whole bunch of unexpected things you gotta work around,

00:27:26

but you can work around 'em.

00:27:28

It doesn't, when you hit a roadblock,

00:27:30

doesn't mean that you've gone the wrong way.

00:27:32

The obstacle is the way to bring it back

00:27:34

to a previous Ryan Holiday book.

00:27:36

- It's so true.

00:27:37

If you look at something like a remodel and a move,

00:27:41

which has been my life the last few months,

00:27:43

I've been trying not to beat that dead horse,

00:27:46

but it's been something that's taught me

00:27:49

a lot about being able to make quick decisions,

00:27:52

quick, accurate, wise decisions,

00:27:55

and being able to do so in a way that is helpful

00:28:00

to the people around me and not hurtful

00:28:02

to people in the process.

00:28:05

Because we're making calls, or at least I was,

00:28:09

that this could impact the way our house operates

00:28:12

for the next decade, and I have to make that decision

00:28:14

in the span of about 10 minutes.

00:28:16

Like that happens.

00:28:19

And has happened many times.

00:28:21

Like, do I want to pull an extra wire

00:28:23

to this side of the house?

00:28:25

Well, technically I could do it later,

00:28:28

but tearing a ceiling out in order to add a wire

00:28:30

to the other side of the room is just not gonna happen.

00:28:33

So I need to make that call now

00:28:36

and project what the future is gonna look like.

00:28:38

So anyway, making quick decisions is something

00:28:40

that I think is extremely valuable,

00:28:42

but takes a lot of experience to be able to make,

00:28:45

which we'll talk about a little bit later.

00:28:48

So anyway, yes, false evidence appearing real.

00:28:52

I really appreciate it.

00:28:52

One of the other chapters here,

00:28:54

and again, there's a bunch we're gonna skip over,

00:28:56

and there's not really any way around that, I don't think.

00:28:59

But one of the other chapters here is never question

00:29:02

another man's courage.

00:29:05

And this one kind of gave me pause

00:29:08

because basically the concept here is that

00:29:12

you shouldn't question what other people are doing

00:29:16

because you don't always know the internal struggle

00:29:18

that they're fighting with.

00:29:20

And as much as we love to jump to conclusions and say,

00:29:24

"How could you do that?"

00:29:25

Well, you don't understand what happened to get them there.

00:29:28

I mean, take this pandemic that seems to go on forever

00:29:33

and think about all of the small business owners,

00:29:37

your church leaders, the government leaders,

00:29:40

think about what they have to go through

00:29:43

in order to make decisions.

00:29:44

Whether you like what they're deciding or not,

00:29:46

it doesn't matter.

00:29:47

And whether they're doing a good job or not,

00:29:49

that doesn't matter in this case.

00:29:51

It's all about what are they going through

00:29:55

to make those decisions.

00:29:57

If you're anywhere near connected to someone

00:29:59

who's had to make those decisions,

00:30:01

then you tend to give a little more grace

00:30:03

when there's a decision made that you don't like

00:30:06

because you know what trauma they went through

00:30:11

to try to get that decision made.

00:30:13

So anyway, never question another man's courage.

00:30:16

This is one that really makes me stop and like,

00:30:20

okay, yes, I want to critique,

00:30:22

I want to say, hey, you shouldn't do that.

00:30:25

But what am I doing?

00:30:26

And what are they going through to do the thing

00:30:29

that I'm not doing?

00:30:31

I guess that's the point.

00:30:32

- It sounds so simple, right?

00:30:34

Just give somebody the benefit of the doubt.

00:30:38

- Yeah, absolutely.

00:30:40

Super simple, right?

00:30:41

- But in the moment, we have so much trouble with that.

00:30:44

And I think that's kind of Ryan Holiday's point

00:30:47

from this section 'cause he explicitly says,

00:30:50

don't ask what would I do in their shoes,

00:30:53

but ask what am I doing right now?

00:30:56

Which I think is a very effective question.

00:30:58

This is Ryan Holiday at his best.

00:31:02

That exact phrase, what it's doing

00:31:04

is it is putting all of the responsibility

00:31:07

and the ownership on creating a better outcome

00:31:09

instead of on the leader who you don't agree

00:31:12

with their decision and you have no idea

00:31:15

what they've gone through in order to arrive at that decision

00:31:18

on you and what you can do even though you're not

00:31:21

at the top of the totem pole

00:31:24

to help create a better environment for everybody else.

00:31:29

But he does it in a single sentence.

00:31:30

He doesn't spend three paragraphs explaining

00:31:34

why personal responsibility is such an important trait.

00:31:38

He just throws it back in your face.

00:31:40

And I find that very effective reading this book,

00:31:43

but I know some people are not gonna like that at all.

00:31:45

It can be very uncomfortable.

00:31:47

- It's very frustrating.

00:31:49

- It is, yes.

00:31:50

- Just let me be angry.

00:31:51

Can I just be angry?

00:31:52

Please just let me be angry.

00:31:53

- Yeah, let me just be mad at the people who are out

00:31:56

to get me and think that there's a conspiracy everywhere.

00:32:00

You know, the other thing that I appreciate

00:32:02

with this book on the whole idea of the conspiracy theories,

00:32:05

there's a lot of historical examples here.

00:32:08

A lot of stories from like Martin Luther King,

00:32:12

Martin Luther King Jr.

00:32:14

And I forget some of the other ones,

00:32:16

but they're all hundreds of years old, some of them.

00:32:19

And they were going through stuff that wasn't fair.

00:32:23

And when I read that, it just made me realize that, yes,

00:32:27

there probably is stuff going on right now

00:32:31

that we don't know about that isn't right.

00:32:34

So what?

00:32:35

It has always been that way.

00:32:38

You can get upset that it's happening

00:32:41

or you can do your best where you are

00:32:44

with what you have to help combat it,

00:32:47

to stand up for the truth, to have courage.

00:32:49

That's his whole point with this whole book.

00:32:52

And I'm seeing people that I know who are just becoming

00:32:57

more and more bitter about these things

00:33:00

that they are convinced people are doing

00:33:03

behind closed doors that is completely wrong

00:33:06

and it's advancing an agenda that they don't agree with.

00:33:10

And I want this to come out the right way.

00:33:13

Part of me wants to tell them, so what?

00:33:16

Even if that's true, what is worrying about it

00:33:21

gonna help with?

00:33:22

And even if it is true, what can you actually do about it?

00:33:27

It's not like you're gonna find a fact

00:33:30

and share it with a newspaper.

00:33:32

And then all of a sudden, every wrong is going

00:33:34

to be made right.

00:33:36

You have to do your best to live a life of integrity,

00:33:40

a life of character, a life of courage,

00:33:43

and then trust that everything else

00:33:45

is gonna work out in the end,

00:33:47

let the chips fall where they may.

00:33:49

It just seems to me as I see them get all worked up

00:33:52

about some of this stuff,

00:33:53

it's like what an exhausting, frustrating way to live.

00:33:56

- Yeah, I find that in our household,

00:34:00

we call them crazy makers,

00:34:02

but there are just people who focus on all the bad things

00:34:07

and want to scream and moan and complain about it.

00:34:10

Even with my kids, I have a six year old

00:34:13

that I have to tell this to constantly,

00:34:16

which is indicative of the actions we're talking about here,

00:34:20

in that whining and complaining doesn't solve the problem.

00:34:24

You're welcome to moan and complain and cry, that's fine,

00:34:27

but what is the thing you need to do to solve the problem?

00:34:30

Like that's really what we're talking about here.

00:34:34

And I just had this two days ago in one of my kids,

00:34:39

in this case, Rose, wanted to take extra donuts.

00:34:45

We had extra donuts from dad spoiling them

00:34:48

for first day being in the new house

00:34:51

and they were having the leftover donuts

00:34:53

for a snack in the afternoon.

00:34:55

And we had cut them up into different pieces

00:34:57

so that you could have different types, you get it.

00:35:00

And she was gathering one of all the ones she hadn't had yet,

00:35:04

which meant that her plate was quite tall.

00:35:07

We had a mountain going on on this plate.

00:35:09

And I told her, it's like, Rose, you can't do that.

00:35:14

And before I could get the explanation out to just,

00:35:18

like here's why, 'cause I need you to understand this.

00:35:21

Instantly, I haven't had any of these

00:35:24

and you don't want me to be able to have any of the stuff

00:35:26

that I haven't had before.

00:35:28

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up.

00:35:30

I could take that whole plate from you right now.

00:35:32

Like, you don't have to have this.

00:35:35

And the thing here is that in this particular case,

00:35:38

think about the other people who are here.

00:35:40

You have your sisters, you have the other adults

00:35:42

who are here.

00:35:43

Like if you take what you just did,

00:35:45

your sisters don't get any.

00:35:47

And the other folks who are coming in

00:35:48

to have snack at the same time don't get any.

00:35:51

How would you feel if someone else did what you just did?

00:35:55

Like this whole empathy thing, right?

00:35:57

And just trying to explain that to her.

00:35:59

But the whining and complaining was the piece

00:36:02

that jumped out to me.

00:36:03

Like, yeah, she's a kid, she wants donuts, I get it.

00:36:07

Like, that's totally fine.

00:36:08

She's six, right?

00:36:09

There's a level of grace that needs given here.

00:36:11

So just explaining, like, okay,

00:36:13

whining and complaining doesn't solve the problem

00:36:16

of you wanting to have all of these things.

00:36:19

If you think about this, I know a way

00:36:21

to where you can get what you want

00:36:23

and then you can help other people at the same time.

00:36:25

Like, there is a way to do this,

00:36:26

but you have to stop the whining and complaining

00:36:28

and start acting and asking questions

00:36:31

in order to get to that point.

00:36:32

It was a fun learning experience for her.

00:36:35

I have no idea if any of it got through, probably not,

00:36:37

but it's at least a point in the process.

00:36:41

But that whole, like, the whining piece drives me up a wall

00:36:45

coming back to society and what people are doing.

00:36:47

It's like, when people just start moaning

00:36:49

and complaining and yelling and screaming,

00:36:51

that doesn't solve anything other

00:36:53

than make other people mad and angry.

00:36:55

And it's only when you start acting on it

00:36:58

and doing something about it

00:36:59

that you can start going forward.

00:37:02

Anyway, I'm rambling at this point.

00:37:04

I'm gonna quit. (laughs)

00:37:05

- Well, you're kind of setting it up, actually,

00:37:07

to go into the next section, maybe not intentionally,

00:37:11

but one of the things that stood out to me

00:37:14

from this whole book really is the contrast

00:37:19

of fear and love.

00:37:22

So the opposite of fear is, how does he define it?

00:37:27

I think he says in this first section that it's apathy,

00:37:33

but then he talks about, in the next sections,

00:37:37

how the opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy.

00:37:42

You don't really care enough to make a decision

00:37:46

one way or the other.

00:37:47

So essentially what he's talking about,

00:37:49

this whole section with fear is,

00:37:51

this is how you are feeling.

00:37:53

It doesn't have to stop you from acting.

00:37:57

And the action needs to be tied to a motivation

00:38:01

that is bigger than yourself.

00:38:03

That's what I get from that story of your kid.

00:38:08

It's all about them.

00:38:10

And I have kids that similar scenarios, just this week,

00:38:15

it's all about them.

00:38:18

At some point, you've got to become an adult though,

00:38:22

and quit being so selfish.

00:38:24

And there's a lot of quote unquote adults

00:38:27

who haven't really got that memo yet.

00:38:30

I do think though that this whole, I don't know,

00:38:35

I'm not quite sure what to do with the rest of this section

00:38:39

'cause the next part would courage.

00:38:41

That's really the thing that's fascinating to me is,

00:38:44

when you connect to a vision that is bigger

00:38:47

than yourself, it can cause you to do some pretty amazing things.

00:38:52

So the first section here,

00:38:54

this is all just about staring the giant down

00:38:57

that's in front of you,

00:38:59

but the next part is the exciting part to me.

00:39:03

You had one more point on here though,

00:39:04

that all growth is a leap,

00:39:05

and maybe that's the place to go from here

00:39:07

because there is no certainty here.

00:39:10

You have to go beyond what you think you are capable of.

00:39:16

And this reminds me a lot, in fact,

00:39:18

he mentions the second mountain later on

00:39:20

where you climb that first mountain,

00:39:22

David Brooks, that book that we read.

00:39:25

It's all about you getting what you want out of life

00:39:27

and you get to the top of that mountain

00:39:29

and you look around and you're like,

00:39:30

is this it?

00:39:31

And then you realize, oh, there's another mountain

00:39:33

that's not about you,

00:39:34

and that's really the one you should have been climbing

00:39:36

the whole time.

00:39:37

- Yes, so I put all growth as a leap.

00:39:40

This is one of the subsections under fear.

00:39:42

I put that in here because it's one of these

00:39:46

that you could easily misconstrue, I think,

00:39:49

or maybe not misconstrue,

00:39:50

but it's easy to look past it

00:39:52

because we don't want to put ourselves

00:39:56

in a place where we can't go back.

00:39:59

This is actually, this is one of the places

00:40:00

where I was like, okay, the whole Burn the Boats story.

00:40:04

This is one where I fully expected that story to come up.

00:40:08

It's like, okay, when you land

00:40:09

and you have to fight to go forward, burn the boats

00:40:12

'cause then you can't go back

00:40:13

and your only option is to win the battle.

00:40:15

That's the story that I expected to hear that.

00:40:18

Hear, hear that, of course, didn't come up.

00:40:21

So I was very grateful to not have the same story again.

00:40:24

So there's that.

00:40:25

But anyway, all growth is a leap.

00:40:26

The point here is that if you overcome fear

00:40:29

and you're able to make that leap,

00:40:32

it then grows you as a person

00:40:35

and then you become a better person through this.

00:40:37

Like that's the concept here.

00:40:39

And this is approaching the end of this part

00:40:42

where we're starting to get into the courage piece

00:40:45

and it just struck me as like,

00:40:47

this is a thing that I don't like to do.

00:40:50

Nobody likes to put themselves out there unnecessarily,

00:40:53

but that's exactly what he's calling us to do here

00:40:56

is like jump, make that leap, you'll grow,

00:40:59

you'll be better when you're done.

00:41:00

It may be uncomfortable, but that's the point.

00:41:03

That's what he's wanting you to do.

00:41:05

- Yes, yes, exactly.

00:41:07

I found that quote by the way,

00:41:08

I messed it up a little bit, so let me correct it quick.

00:41:10

- Okay.

00:41:11

- It's from we are afraid to believe

00:41:12

the opposite of courage is not fear, it is apathy.

00:41:17

So the point still kind of stands

00:41:20

that you've got this choice in front of you,

00:41:22

you can take the courageous path,

00:41:23

you can take the fearful path,

00:41:25

but you know you can't stay where you are.

00:41:28

Apathy is just kind of like,

00:41:29

"Oh, whatever, I don't really care."

00:41:31

(laughs)

00:41:32

- Yeah.

00:41:32

- But the thing from the section that you were talking about

00:41:35

the challenges me is continue to put yourself

00:41:38

in a position where you have to make a leap,

00:41:41

which is terrifying to think about.

00:41:44

I'm kind of in a position right now

00:41:48

where I need to do that in an area of my life

00:41:53

and I don't look forward to it,

00:41:56

but I know it's good.

00:41:59

I mean, it's kind of interesting the timing

00:42:01

of reading this book for me

00:42:04

because it is essentially a message

00:42:07

that I need to hear right now.

00:42:09

Because there's some things that are changing

00:42:11

and it's not gonna be easy,

00:42:14

there's gonna be some difficult conversations

00:42:17

and I can try to avoid them because I'm a people pleaser,

00:42:22

but that's just gonna prolong the inevitable

00:42:25

and it's not ultimately gonna be beneficial

00:42:28

for anybody involved.

00:42:30

So I walk away from this particular section

00:42:35

where it's encouraging me just to lean into it

00:42:39

and I feel like that encouragement,

00:42:42

sometimes it just takes one other person,

00:42:45

doesn't even have to be somebody close to you

00:42:47

who believes in you, that that's enough for you

00:42:51

to take that leap.

00:42:52

And that's inspiring to me to try to do that

00:42:57

for other people.

00:42:58

I don't think I have a huge platform in people's lives

00:43:03

and I don't think that I've accomplished a whole ton,

00:43:06

but I know that there are at least a handful of people

00:43:10

that think a little bit differently

00:43:13

and I'm encouraged reading that section

00:43:17

to try to help as many of those people as I can.

00:43:22

Not to get too busy with the things that I have to do,

00:43:27

but to recognize the people who are looking up to me

00:43:31

and who just need a little bit of encouragement

00:43:33

to step out there and see what they're really capable of.

00:43:37

- Yeah, I feel like this is a good place

00:43:38

to jump into the second part for courage

00:43:42

based on what you were just saying,

00:43:43

which he starts this off with a very brief definition here,

00:43:48

very first line of the whole part.

00:43:51

Courage is the management of and the triumph over fear.

00:43:55

And when you stop and work your way through that,

00:43:58

if you think about the specific fears

00:44:00

that you're dealing with,

00:44:01

whether it's publishing a YouTube video

00:44:03

or putting an article out there

00:44:05

or saying yes to a promotion even,

00:44:08

like any of those, if you think about it,

00:44:11

"Well, yeah, you're overcoming a fear of some sort."

00:44:14

Well, that's courage to use his definition there.

00:44:18

And I like that.

00:44:19

I mean, it's a good way to start us off here.

00:44:22

And one of the parts that he specifically calls out

00:44:27

in one of these little sub-chapper things,

00:44:30

is preparation makes you brave.

00:44:32

Brave is kind of a synonym he's using in places

00:44:36

to compliment courage as well.

00:44:40

And preparation is one that I've found

00:44:43

that when you're well prepared,

00:44:46

it's easy to have courage to make that leap

00:44:48

and overcome a fear in some form,

00:44:52

to use kind of one of our house things.

00:44:56

I took the leap and pulled an electrical permit

00:45:00

as part of our big remodel, which terrified me

00:45:04

because it meant that I was gonna be forced

00:45:06

to do it all absolutely the right way.

00:45:09

I've done a lot of electrical.

00:45:10

I'm not afraid of pulling cords and running electrical wires.

00:45:13

It's something I'm very comfortable doing.

00:45:16

But I've reached that point by, you know,

00:45:19

having taken a class in college

00:45:21

and having worked around and with electricians over time.

00:45:24

And like, there wasn't really anything in this process

00:45:26

that I felt like I couldn't do.

00:45:27

If wired new breakers into panels,

00:45:29

like this is not something that daunts me.

00:45:32

But I have an inspector who's gonna come in

00:45:34

and look it all over.

00:45:36

And I've had him in twice now.

00:45:38

And we've gotta do a final,

00:45:39

which is gonna be an extremely minor, quick thing.

00:45:43

But the hard one's already done.

00:45:44

And at this point in time,

00:45:46

like I feel like I'm really well set up

00:45:49

to do any form of electrical in the future.

00:45:53

But some of that is because like, I was able,

00:45:55

I felt like I had the courage to step forward

00:45:57

and do that whole process with the inspector

00:46:00

because of the preparation I'd had,

00:46:02

wiring things on the farm or, you know,

00:46:04

previous things I've done in the past in school and such.

00:46:07

So having that preparation makes it easier

00:46:10

to have the courage to jump out

00:46:13

and, you know, overcome some of those fears.

00:46:15

And it doesn't feel like it has to be as big of a leap

00:46:17

whenever you're doing that.

00:46:18

- Yeah, I understand the point

00:46:21

that he's making in that particular section.

00:46:23

I feel like this chapter out of the whole section

00:46:25

was least helpful to me though.

00:46:28

Because at some point,

00:46:31

doesn't matter how well prepared you are,

00:46:33

there's still gonna be an element of risk involved

00:46:35

and you're gonna have to make the leap.

00:46:38

- Yes, yes.

00:46:39

- So I totally understand and empathize with a person

00:46:42

who needs to hear this specific advice

00:46:45

that yes, you can make it easier

00:46:47

by thinking it through and preparing the best that you can.

00:46:51

But for somebody like me who will prepare

00:46:53

and prepare and prepare and prepare and prepare

00:46:55

and not do the actual thing,

00:46:57

this one I kind of read it and I was like,

00:47:01

"Ah, that one's not for me."

00:47:03

I did like this section though

00:47:06

about the courage being contagious.

00:47:10

This is kind of from the first chapter here

00:47:12

where you talked about the definition of courage.

00:47:15

But he mentions that courage like fear is contagious

00:47:18

and he splits the world into two groups,

00:47:20

cowards and non-cowards.

00:47:23

- Yeah.

00:47:24

- And so it inspires me to be one of the non-cowards.

00:47:29

And the truth is if you think about this,

00:47:32

we all have opportunities to be a coward

00:47:34

or a non-coward every single day

00:47:36

in sometimes small ways, sometimes big ways.

00:47:40

And it's the choices that you make every single day

00:47:44

that get you to the point where you can really dig

00:47:47

in your heels when something big needs to be pushed back on.

00:47:52

- One of the stories that he mentioned here

00:47:54

is actually a very, very small mention of this,

00:47:58

but do you know who August Landmasser is?

00:48:01

Have you seen that picture of the crowd

00:48:06

and everybody in it is doing the Nazi salute

00:48:09

except for one guy in the back with his arms crossed?

00:48:11

- Oh yeah, I have seen that.

00:48:13

- Yeah, that's August Landmasser.

00:48:15

And he mentions August Landmasser,

00:48:18

does not mention anything else about him,

00:48:21

at least not that I could remember,

00:48:23

but I read that and I was like, huh, that's interesting.

00:48:26

That name sounds familiar.

00:48:28

Who is that guy?

00:48:28

So at that point I put the book down

00:48:31

and I went and Googled August Landmasser

00:48:34

and I saw that picture and I was like, oh, okay.

00:48:38

And then there's obviously all of the inspirational messages

00:48:42

around like be this guy, right?

00:48:44

The face of evil is standing right in front of you

00:48:47

and you're willing to stand up and say,

00:48:51

no, I'm not gonna do that.

00:48:53

Which immediately I thought of the story

00:48:56

of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego

00:48:58

from the Bible, same sort of situation.

00:49:00

King of Babylon says,

00:49:01

bow down on worship this golden statue

00:49:03

and they're like, no, we're not gonna do it.

00:49:04

So he throws them in the fiery furnace and they survive.

00:49:08

But August Landmasser,

00:49:10

so I dug into the story behind this

00:49:13

because I wanted to know who this guy was.

00:49:17

He wasn't just some random dude who was like,

00:49:19

no, I don't like you, Hitler.

00:49:21

He actually joined the Nazi party in 1930

00:49:25

because he was indifferent

00:49:28

and he thought that the German economy was in shambles.

00:49:31

Being a card-carrying Nazi would be an inform somewhere

00:49:33

and he'd be able to get a job.

00:49:35

So he's working at this shipyard

00:49:38

and Adolf Hitler stops by

00:49:41

and they have this big rally.

00:49:43

This picture they believe was taken on June 13th,

00:49:46

1936 and August Landmasser had a secret relationship

00:49:51

with a Jewish woman starting in 1935.

00:49:53

So, yeah.

00:49:57

Yeah, so obviously he's got other motivations here,

00:50:00

which again, getting back to like the whole thing

00:50:03

that really spoke to me about this whole book

00:50:06

is the motivation of love

00:50:08

because if you just want to take a stand against something

00:50:13

at some point, personally, I believe you will crack.

00:50:17

But if you have a motivation beyond yourself,

00:50:22

something else, someone else that you want to protect,

00:50:27

the motivation at that point being love is positive,

00:50:31

it's not negative, I just want to stick it to this guy,

00:50:34

that's the most powerful motivation that you can have.

00:50:37

So this is totally a tangent from two sentences

00:50:41

in this, it's good to be difficult chapter.

00:50:43

Yeah. That inspired me to do all this study

00:50:45

and find out this thing,

00:50:47

but that's the kind of research

00:50:50

that Ryan Holiday puts into this point being

00:50:54

that there is a whole lot more

00:50:55

if you want to dig to find it.

00:50:57

He does that in a lot of places.

00:50:59

He'll just throw a name out.

00:51:01

And I'm grateful to say we've read so much

00:51:05

that there's very few of those that I felt like,

00:51:08

oh, I don't know who that is,

00:51:10

but there are a handful and that was one of them

00:51:13

and I was like, I don't know who that is

00:51:14

and it doesn't bother me right now.

00:51:17

So I didn't bother to dig deep into it,

00:51:19

but yes, there's so much where it's like an inner,

00:51:24

again, that interconnectedness

00:51:26

between other books and such.

00:51:28

One of the other sections here in The Courage Piece

00:51:31

is one that I feel like I really resonate with.

00:51:35

The title of it is called Go,

00:51:37

which is basically don't think, just act based,

00:51:40

like that's the gist of this.

00:51:42

- Jocko Willink chapter.

00:51:43

- I know, yes, Jocko Willink comes up in this one.

00:51:46

And if you take the time to process

00:51:50

how dangerous something is or all the things

00:51:53

that could go wrong or how much of a threat

00:51:56

there is out there,

00:51:58

you're gonna have more tendencies to not go.

00:52:01

So instead of taking the time to process, just act.

00:52:05

This is something as an ADD person,

00:52:07

I know is very, very important

00:52:09

because I can question myself for hours

00:52:12

before doing something.

00:52:14

So moving quickly and not giving myself time

00:52:18

for that transitional question mark

00:52:21

is a very, very good thing.

00:52:25

This isn't connected to this particular chapter,

00:52:27

but early, early on, there's a story about

00:52:31

a couple guys who are, you know,

00:52:33

I think it was, was it Ulysses S. Grant

00:52:35

and one other guy that we're trying to make a run back

00:52:38

to camp so that they weren't to AWOL

00:52:41

and we're hearing wolves.

00:52:42

- Yep.

00:52:43

- The other guy, not Grant, said,

00:52:45

"How many wolves do you think there are?"

00:52:47

Grant was like 20, like that's what it sounds like.

00:52:50

And they get up towards them and find out it's two.

00:52:53

And they keep riding right at them and they just run off.

00:52:58

- Yep.

00:52:59

- Like, well, if you just keep going,

00:53:02

a lot of times those fears are squashed

00:53:05

before you even have time to realize how dangerous it could be.

00:53:08

Or even if it's not a fully dangerous thing.

00:53:11

Like, you don't have time to think about how,

00:53:15

I guess, like what other people are gonna think about you

00:53:18

in the process.

00:53:19

So you're better off, just don't bother.

00:53:22

Just move, go.

00:53:23

- Yeah, that chapter reminded me of something

00:53:28

that is in the focus course.

00:53:30

Action brings clarity.

00:53:32

The point being that as soon as you start moving,

00:53:36

usually that's when you figure out what the next step is.

00:53:39

And this is the difficult part.

00:53:40

How do you reconcile that with the preparation makes you

00:53:44

brain? (laughs)

00:53:46

'Cause I feel like it's different almost in every situation.

00:53:49

Sometimes you do need to do the preparation.

00:53:52

If you were to call in the electrician

00:53:55

and they're gonna make sure you're up to code

00:53:57

and you're like, "Oh, I just figured you know I'd get started."

00:54:00

No, no, no, no, no.

00:54:01

Rip it all out, start over.

00:54:04

- Yeah, but for a lot of the creative work that you and I do

00:54:08

and probably a lot of people that listen to this,

00:54:10

who have a dream to start a podcast,

00:54:13

create a YouTube video, write a blog post, write a book,

00:54:17

whatever, the opposite is true.

00:54:18

You don't need to have it all figured out.

00:54:20

You just gotta step out there and start doing it.

00:54:22

And then as you do that, the path becomes clear.

00:54:26

I don't think you can boil it down to a single formula,

00:54:28

which is kind of refreshing.

00:54:31

Talking about this book, it's almost like an encyclopedia

00:54:34

of everything related to courage

00:54:35

and you kind of have to pick and choose the elements

00:54:37

that apply to your own personal situation.

00:54:39

But I think there's benefit to that.

00:54:41

It's not going to scratch the itch for somebody

00:54:43

who wants a quick fix to something,

00:54:46

but that's kind of the point.

00:54:48

There is no quick fix.

00:54:50

There's just you taking responsibility for your own life.

00:54:54

In fact, one of the things he says in this section

00:54:58

is that you are never powerless.

00:55:01

In the courage he says in that chapter,

00:55:03

you can always resist.

00:55:05

Courage is defined as saying, not if I can help it.

00:55:08

And the truth is there are always opportunities for you

00:55:12

to say no to things.

00:55:14

He shares a really cool one at the end of the book,

00:55:18

which we'll hopefully talk about in a little bit.

00:55:21

But you read that stuff in this particular section

00:55:24

and it gets me thinking about all of the different places

00:55:27

that I can take a tiny stand in some way.

00:55:30

- Yeah, I feel like if we go back to the preparation

00:55:33

versus go pieces, this is partly why I picked those two

00:55:36

'cause they do conflict with each other somewhat.

00:55:39

And they also conflict a little bit with the next one,

00:55:41

make it a habit as well, which is essentially,

00:55:45

whenever you have something you're fearful of,

00:55:49

make it a point to stand up.

00:55:50

Don't be afraid to cause a big stink.

00:55:53

Don't be afraid of putting your neck out there,

00:55:55

make that a habit.

00:55:56

And when you see those things come up, do it repeatedly.

00:55:59

And then it doesn't become as big of a deal to you,

00:56:02

even though it's a very common experience.

00:56:06

But anyway, if you're making it a habit, you're preparing,

00:56:09

but the preparation versus go piece

00:56:11

and how those conflict, yes, preparation can delay the going,

00:56:15

but they're two separate entities.

00:56:17

Like if you take the electrical thing,

00:56:18

I had prepared by doing electrical in years past.

00:56:21

But in the moment of deciding,

00:56:25

should I pull a permit and have an inspector

00:56:27

or should I try to fly this under the radar?

00:56:29

It's like, no, just get it pulled and then don't think,

00:56:31

don't think about it.

00:56:32

Like get, you know, fill out the paperwork, do it done.

00:56:35

And don't worry about, you know, how dangerous or scary

00:56:39

that's gonna be to, well, not dangerous,

00:56:41

but how scary that's gonna be to try to go through

00:56:43

what I'm doing with somebody who knows this inside out.

00:56:47

- Yeah, and kind of along with that,

00:56:48

making it a habit is the courage to commit,

00:56:52

which is a chapter in here.

00:56:53

And I love this quote from page 153,

00:56:57

losers have always gotten together in little groups

00:56:59

and talked about winners.

00:57:00

- It's true.

00:57:03

- So don't be part of the loser group,

00:57:06

be part of the winner group who's actually doing the things.

00:57:09

- Yes.

00:57:10

- Even if you're scared to get started.

00:57:12

- All right, so what does that bring us to?

00:57:15

The last section here, the heroic,

00:57:17

which is basically the person behind all of this

00:57:20

who's having the courage to overcome the fear,

00:57:25

but at the same time, it has a very specific turn to it.

00:57:30

So far we've been talking about internally in yourself,

00:57:33

having the courage to overcome something internal,

00:57:36

an internal fear, but the heroic takes a twist on it

00:57:41

and it's having the courage to risk yourself

00:57:45

for the sake of someone else.

00:57:47

So now we're involving a third or a second person

00:57:50

in this process.

00:57:53

And I think I would say that courage,

00:57:56

when we think about courage, like the quintessential,

00:57:59

he had courage, like we generally would think about someone

00:58:03

in a battle that's doing something to save someone else,

00:58:06

like saving the damsel in distress, like that whole concept,

00:58:10

at least that's where my brain goes,

00:58:11

that's the first instinct I have

00:58:14

whenever somebody mentions the word courage,

00:58:16

it's like overcoming something to save someone else

00:58:18

or for someone else.

00:58:20

It's not always an internal battle.

00:58:23

He saves that for the very end, like,

00:58:25

okay, we've got the groundwork lately.

00:58:27

Here's the fear side, here's the courage

00:58:29

of overcoming that fear.

00:58:30

And then, by the way, we can overcome that fear

00:58:33

and help other people at the same time.

00:58:35

And that's where we get to this heroic piece.

00:58:40

And one of the early chapters he has here

00:58:44

is titled "The Cause Makes All."

00:58:47

And this is something I think,

00:58:50

we were talking about society today.

00:58:53

People have a lot of causes that they fight for

00:58:55

and absolutely they're having the courage to stand up

00:58:57

and overcome the fear to fight for those causes,

00:59:00

absolutely 100%.

00:59:01

But at the same time, there are a lot of cases

00:59:05

where that cause doesn't actually have that many people

00:59:08

behind it and not that many people actually care about it,

00:59:10

they're just blowing it all out of proportion,

00:59:12

so they have a reason to fight.

00:59:14

And that's a problem.

00:59:16

Yes.

00:59:17

Make sure the cause is actually a legitimate cause first.

00:59:21

Yeah, make sure it's not a selfish cause.

00:59:23

I think is a better way to sum it up maybe.

00:59:26

Yes. I love this whole section.

00:59:28

This is where, very first chapter,

00:59:29

he says, "The opposite of fear is love."

00:59:32

And "The Cause Makes All."

00:59:34

Here it was, "Have a reason."

00:59:36

Mentioned jumping on a grenade only matters

00:59:38

if it accomplishes something.

00:59:40

And the very next chapter kind of gets into what you

00:59:43

were just talking about with identifying the right cause.

00:59:48

It says, "The braver thing is not to fight."

00:59:51

And I think this is the chapter where he starts to talk

00:59:55

about Abraham Lincoln and not the way that he's typically

01:00:00

portrayed as someone who stood up against slavery.

01:00:07

Eventually it came to that,

01:00:11

but that's not where he started.

01:00:14

He basically was trying to prevent conflict.

01:00:19

At least the Ryan Holiday version of this story.

01:00:22

The South eventually found a motivation for starting a fight

01:00:27

based off of a selfish motivation.

01:00:31

And at that point, Abraham Lincoln had the courage,

01:00:35

heroism, whatever, to not back down.

01:00:40

One of the things he says in this chapter,

01:00:42

which I thought is great,

01:00:43

"Be willing to negotiate and compromise,

01:00:44

but not to run away."

01:00:46

And that heroes fight just as hard to prevent a conflict

01:00:48

as they do inside the conflict they find themselves in.

01:00:52

But ultimately that conflict, if you can avoid it,

01:00:57

that's the best course of action.

01:00:59

Even if it means that you have to lose face.

01:01:03

Being right doesn't matter, he says,

01:01:04

"Let the other person save face."

01:01:07

And I was thinking through that.

01:01:10

And what that looks like for me,

01:01:14

I feel like this is something I can agree with,

01:01:18

but I would have a hard time applying.

01:01:21

I tend to see things as very black and white.

01:01:24

This is right, this is wrong.

01:01:26

And I don't have a specific action item with this

01:01:30

because I don't think that there is conflict

01:01:34

that could be avoided that I find myself in

01:01:37

frequently where I can practice this.

01:01:40

But I do want to take a note of this

01:01:43

and the next time I find myself there,

01:01:45

find myself asking, how can I give the other person

01:01:49

and out here?

01:01:50

Even if I think I'm right, me getting my way

01:01:53

isn't the important thing.

01:01:55

The important thing is number one,

01:01:58

that we do what's right, not what's easy.

01:02:00

But number two, if it's really not that big a deal

01:02:05

and they think they won, who cares?

01:02:07

I'm not sure I'm doing a very good job of explaining this,

01:02:12

but this part was challenging to me.

01:02:14

- Yeah, I think that, okay, I know I preface this a lot,

01:02:18

but of course I work at a church

01:02:20

and I have many opinionated people

01:02:25

who like to offer their thoughts to me.

01:02:28

And some of those thoughts and opinions that are offered

01:02:32

can lead to some battles occasionally

01:02:36

or can cause me to need to act on them.

01:02:39

Like I'm basically forced into making either

01:02:42

a public decision or yes, anyway.

01:02:45

Something along those lines.

01:02:47

And there are a number of cases where I have to go

01:02:51

through the process of listening

01:02:53

and trying to gather all the information about something

01:02:58

when I know at the very beginning

01:02:59

I'm not gonna do anything with it.

01:03:01

And yet the actual action,

01:03:05

and this kind of goes into the last part

01:03:08

that I've got down here for the heroic,

01:03:10

is silence is violence.

01:03:11

And it's where choosing not to say something

01:03:15

can cause a mess.

01:03:17

- Correct.

01:03:17

- Can make a big stink and sometimes that's what you need.

01:03:23

And I have had, especially over the last year and a half,

01:03:28

I've had a number of decisions that I've had to make

01:03:30

as a tech director that have impacted our entire church.

01:03:34

I feel like for the good,

01:03:36

and yet I'm gonna get a lot of criticism on those decisions

01:03:39

and have people reaching out directly to me

01:03:41

for those decisions.

01:03:43

Because I know if I do certain things in certain ways

01:03:46

it's going to impact the way church runs

01:03:48

because the entire church is live stream only.

01:03:51

Like that has happened.

01:03:52

So there is a lot of power with that,

01:03:54

but at the same time, like I know that sometimes

01:03:57

choosing not to fight a battle is the harder road to take

01:04:01

when the other person is just trying to get a fight.

01:04:04

Like that's not what you need.

01:04:05

But at the same time I've had cases where

01:04:08

someone is specifically asking me for something

01:04:11

and to do something and I just choose not to respond.

01:04:15

And I have had that many times and I don't like it,

01:04:19

but they're like, I just have to choose.

01:04:21

Like if I say, yep, I'll do that,

01:04:23

then I've got a big problem.

01:04:25

If I say, no, I'm not gonna do that,

01:04:28

I have a big problem.

01:04:29

But if I just decline to answer and do nothing,

01:04:34

it forces the other person to then make a decision

01:04:37

and act from there, which is actually what needs to happen.

01:04:42

But that's really, really not fun to do.

01:04:47

It'd be a lot easier for me to just say yes or no.

01:04:51

- Right, and when you have too much to do

01:04:53

that's kind of what you fall back into is just yes or no.

01:04:57

And then you've got some conflict.

01:05:00

But I don't know, maybe from an outside perspective

01:05:03

it's easier to see.

01:05:04

But in that sort of situation,

01:05:07

you did a much better job of painting a picture

01:05:09

of what this might look like than I was doing.

01:05:12

You've got somebody who's telling you

01:05:14

to do something you know isn't the right thing to do.

01:05:17

You can just say yes, go along with it

01:05:19

even though you don't wanna do it.

01:05:20

You can say no, stand up for what you think is right.

01:05:23

Now you've got conflict, you've got to resolve.

01:05:25

The harder option number C is to say,

01:05:30

well what do you think about doing it this way?

01:05:34

Because then we could do X, Y, Z.

01:05:37

Yeah, I think that's what we should do.

01:05:39

And then you respond, oh great idea.

01:05:41

You paint it as like their suggestion

01:05:44

and wow, you're so smart.

01:05:45

That's more work.

01:05:48

And in the moment when you're just trying to get stuff done

01:05:50

you don't wanna navigate that.

01:05:53

And that maybe is oversimplifying it too

01:05:55

because it almost sounds like manipulative.

01:05:58

But you get the point, that's a ridiculous example maybe

01:06:02

of how you could save face but still get your way

01:06:05

if you believe that this is a hill that is worth dying on.

01:06:09

But I think my default reaction tends to be

01:06:12

the stand up for no, this is not the right thing.

01:06:15

How dare you even suggest this?

01:06:17

What were you thinking?

01:06:18

And now people's feelings are hurt

01:06:20

and we have to support through stuff.

01:06:22

I would say just to put a little more meat to this

01:06:25

to give you an example of how this has panned out.

01:06:29

It's like okay well, from a text dance

01:06:32

I'm in charge of what the overall production

01:06:35

of our live stream looks like and how it operates.

01:06:38

What camera angles are we using?

01:06:39

What are the overlays?

01:06:40

What are the graphics?

01:06:41

What are the, what's the flow of that live stream?

01:06:45

Because it's very different than if you're in the building

01:06:47

in the sanctuary slash worship center as we call it.

01:06:51

And with that the camera angles and stuff that we tend to take

01:06:55

regularly have the congregation in those shots.

01:06:59

Because the one thing that we have chosen to do,

01:07:02

the direction at least everybody's on board with,

01:07:05

that's kind of the direction I've said is that the live stream

01:07:08

is to make it feel like you are in the seats in the room.

01:07:12

When you're in the seats in the room,

01:07:14

you have people right next to you or close to you,

01:07:16

you're worshiping together.

01:07:18

Thus the cameras are designed to make you have that feel

01:07:22

and try to make it feel like you're there in the room.

01:07:25

The downside of that is that it's not always

01:07:30

visually entertaining,

01:07:32

which is what people expect from a video broadcast.

01:07:37

It's not a big, overly done, lots of flashing lights,

01:07:42

lots of quick camera angles, like that's not it.

01:07:46

Because that's not the point.

01:07:48

And we could do that,

01:07:50

but I have people who tell me like,

01:07:52

"You need to do faster switching on your camera

01:07:55

'cause it makes it feel more like it's a fun experience.

01:07:58

They do that in the Super Bowl all the time."

01:08:00

It's like, "Hey, guess what?

01:08:01

"We're not watching the Super Bowl."

01:08:02

Like this is church, this is very different.

01:08:05

And whenever people have asked me that,

01:08:07

they've told me like, "You need to do this."

01:08:10

I can either say, "Yes, you're correct."

01:08:13

Which then implicates me to do something about it.

01:08:17

I could say no, in which case,

01:08:19

I've got a big long drawn out explanation for why.

01:08:23

And in some cases, depending on the person,

01:08:25

I will go through with that.

01:08:28

But I've had enough people tell me this

01:08:29

that in most cases, I just choose not to respond to them

01:08:33

'cause they're generally in an email,

01:08:35

whenever people do this.

01:08:36

And if it's that important to them,

01:08:38

it's like, "Come find me."

01:08:41

And it make it a real deal instead of taking the easy way out

01:08:45

and sending an email.

01:08:47

But anyway, that's where I tend to land on some of this.

01:08:51

Okay, yes, I get your opinion.

01:08:54

I'm not gonna take the time to respond to it

01:08:56

in this particular case because it's not a battle worth

01:08:58

fighting yes or no on this.

01:09:00

It's way too nuanced for that.

01:09:03

- And ultimately, you have to consider the source.

01:09:05

- Anyway, there you go.

01:09:06

- Right, so this is one person offering their opinion

01:09:10

and they don't realize all of the other data points

01:09:13

and all the other people that it impacts.

01:09:16

I don't know what the right solution there is,

01:09:19

but ultimately the ideal outcome is that they feel heard,

01:09:23

right?

01:09:24

And maybe you don't go along with their suggestion,

01:09:28

but at least they know that it was considered,

01:09:32

even though maybe you've heard it for the 100th time

01:09:34

and then see email.

01:09:37

Yeah.

01:09:38

- Yeah, and I do tell folks,

01:09:40

like some of our staff knows that if someone's gonna offer

01:09:44

an opinion about how the tech side of things run

01:09:47

on a Sunday morning, my expectation is that you are going

01:09:51

to find me on a Sunday morning or you're going to request

01:09:55

time to talk about it because this is such a nuanced side

01:09:59

of what happens that I'm rarely going to just take

01:10:04

a flippant request and listen to it

01:10:07

unless it's from one of my tech team.

01:10:10

If it's from one of them, that's a different conversation,

01:10:13

but they're not going to do that.

01:10:15

They're gonna say, "Hey Joe, I was thinking about

01:10:17

"and they're gonna give me a full explanation

01:10:19

"and they're gonna make a pitch and they're gonna do all..."

01:10:21

Like they know that because if they just say,

01:10:23

"I didn't like the way that was run."

01:10:25

That's not gonna fly, like coming from you,

01:10:27

you're gonna have to explain.

01:10:28

Like, so they know that.

01:10:31

Anyway, I'm going off on something we shouldn't be going off

01:10:33

on, but all that to say, like sometimes I do choose not

01:10:36

to answer.

01:10:37

There's so much more in this section,

01:10:38

just a couple things that I really enjoyed.

01:10:41

There's a chapter here on Going Back to the Valley.

01:10:44

And the story that they mentioned here is Dijic Bonhoeffer

01:10:47

who escaped to the US and then he went back to Germany

01:10:52

where he was executed by the Nazis.

01:10:56

And another example came to mind as I read that

01:11:00

of Viktor Frankl from Man's Search for Meaning.

01:11:03

If you remember at the beginning of that book,

01:11:04

he talked about basically he got the visa

01:11:07

to go do the research in the US,

01:11:09

but he knew his people were gonna have to go through

01:11:11

some stuff, so he's like, "I gotta stay here

01:11:13

and suffer with them."

01:11:15

And that, it's easy to think about that and say,

01:11:20

"Well, yeah, they made the right choice."

01:11:23

I try to put myself in those positions and I hope

01:11:27

that I would be able to make that kind of choice.

01:11:31

But I really have trouble saying, "Yes, I would do that

01:11:35

because I don't think you really know until you.

01:11:38

You face something like that."

01:11:40

So I have not faced anything like that,

01:11:42

but that's true heroism on display.

01:11:47

And then the other thing you mentioned,

01:11:49

the Burn the Boats, that pops up again in this section

01:11:53

under the chapter, "You must burn the white flag,"

01:11:55

because in addition to the Burn the Boats story,

01:11:57

which he doesn't just rehash

01:11:59

'cause it's been told a million times,

01:12:01

he says that you can't just burn the boats,

01:12:02

you also have to burn the white flag.

01:12:04

So once you get over there,

01:12:05

the defeat surrender is not an option.

01:12:10

He says, "Defeat is a choice the brave never choose,"

01:12:13

which I really liked.

01:12:14

The one who won't ever quit will be the winner.

01:12:17

And I like that, but again, think about this in context

01:12:23

of everything that he's talking about in this section

01:12:25

where love is the motivator,

01:12:28

so the one who will never quit fighting for other people,

01:12:32

not fighting for yourself and what you can get.

01:12:36

That's inspiring and challenging to me.

01:12:38

- All right, what else, Mike?

01:12:40

I feel like we've talked about a lot of this

01:12:42

and there's a, again, books have been this way lately.

01:12:44

There's a ton here that we're not talking about.

01:12:47

- Of course. - It's true.

01:12:48

- Ryan Holiday is really good at that one.

01:12:50

Read the book.

01:12:53

- Last thing I'll mention from this section, "The Heroic,"

01:12:56

'cause there's a whole chapter here.

01:12:59

No one is unbreakable,

01:13:01

and there's this Japanese art of repairing broken dishes

01:13:04

and making them better called kint suji,

01:13:06

which I thought was pretty cool.

01:13:08

And his big takeaway there is that the world is cruel,

01:13:10

you're gonna be broken,

01:13:12

courage is getting back up when you've been broken

01:13:14

and finding a way to grow stronger

01:13:16

at those broken places.

01:13:18

Kind of letting the challenge or the trial

01:13:21

that you've gone through letting that be

01:13:23

or message or your testimony,

01:13:25

that's the strongest message that you have

01:13:29

is that you went through this thing.

01:13:31

So not trying to hide that stuff

01:13:34

or my life is perfect, yada, yada, yada,

01:13:36

but these are the things that I've struggled with

01:13:38

because that's the most powerful version of your story

01:13:43

that can really do the most benefit for other people.

01:13:46

And then the other thing is probably the conclusion.

01:13:48

You wanna talk about that real quick?

01:13:50

- Sure, yeah.

01:13:50

I think you've been itching to talk about it,

01:13:52

so why don't you enjoy it?

01:13:53

- So the conclusion,

01:13:56

I didn't jot down any notes on this in my mind node file,

01:14:01

but it's basically Ryan Holiday's story

01:14:06

from when he was working at American Apparel.

01:14:10

And there was a CEO there who had asked him

01:14:15

to leak these naked pictures of somebody

01:14:19

that was suing him as kind of like this revenge porn thing

01:14:23

to discredit them from the lawsuit.

01:14:26

And Ryan Holiday, too, his credit said he wouldn't do it,

01:14:29

but it's basically him explaining that he failed

01:14:33

at that moment to have the courage that he needed

01:14:35

because he realized that even though he wouldn't do it,

01:14:39

he didn't stop anything.

01:14:40

A week later, he saw the CEO doing an interview

01:14:44

with somebody and saw the pictures up on the screen

01:14:47

and he realized that he just got somebody else

01:14:48

to leak it instead.

01:14:50

And so there's a lot to unpack there.

01:14:54

Number one, I think it's cool that Ryan Holiday

01:14:57

is willing to share essentially mistakes from his past.

01:15:01

That's how he's framing it is.

01:15:02

I should have been more brave.

01:15:04

I should have had the courage to say,

01:15:07

"No, this is wrong, not just I won't do this,

01:15:10

but you can't do this."

01:15:12

And he talks about some of the threats

01:15:16

that he experienced as he got more vocal

01:15:20

about standing up for stuff.

01:15:22

And I think that's encouraging to hear

01:15:25

for other people who know that they need to stand up

01:15:29

for the right thing, stand up for the truth

01:15:32

and are scared to do it because something is gonna happen.

01:15:36

Well, yeah, something might happen,

01:15:38

something happened to Ryan Holiday,

01:15:40

but he was able to get through it.

01:15:42

So that's inspiring to me on a small level

01:15:46

and I can see that being inspiring to other people,

01:15:48

but he basically ends it with kind of like this encouragement

01:15:53

that from that moment he's decided

01:15:55

that he is going to try to build that bravery

01:15:59

and that courage going forward,

01:16:01

which is kind of why he gets into the tone

01:16:05

for his books has changed over the years

01:16:07

because he realizes that he does have a platform

01:16:11

and he needs to speak out against things

01:16:13

that he thinks are wrong.

01:16:15

And he shares how he published some op-eds

01:16:19

in "The New Yorker" and lost his job because of it,

01:16:23

or his column because of it, that kind of stuff.

01:16:27

And I feel like hearing that is inspiring to me,

01:16:32

even though I'm not at the level that Ryan Holiday is at,

01:16:35

I don't have the op-ed column at the New Yorker or wherever.

01:16:40

And I haven't published the books that he has,

01:16:43

but it's inspiring to see that he's standing up

01:16:46

for what he believes is right.

01:16:48

He's getting pushed back.

01:16:50

There are ramifications for it,

01:16:52

but one level you kind of see where he is

01:16:54

and you see how he's kind of overcome it all anyways.

01:16:58

I feel like being courageous does a couple of things.

01:17:02

One, the people who don't agree with you, it makes them mad.

01:17:07

But number two, the people who do agree with you,

01:17:10

it makes them, for lack of a better term, the raving fans.

01:17:15

They are part of your tribe now.

01:17:19

And that's what I wanna do.

01:17:22

That's what I wanna be known for.

01:17:24

I don't have a specific action item with that.

01:17:27

I need to take a stand for this specific thing,

01:17:29

but I walk away from this being like,

01:17:32

"Yeah, Ryan Holiday can do it then I can do it too."

01:17:35

Yeah, I'm gonna hold that thought

01:17:37

'cause I'm gonna bring it out here in style and raving.

01:17:39

But the thing with this whole book

01:17:42

that I find fascinating is the ending

01:17:46

because Ryan takes a tact

01:17:49

that you don't see many authors take

01:17:51

in that they've just laid out

01:17:54

the foundation of the problem, fear,

01:17:56

what you do to solve it, courage,

01:17:59

and then how to help others with that in the heroic.

01:18:03

And then he ends it with his own failure to do exactly that,

01:18:06

which is so interesting to me and yet inspiring

01:18:10

that you've got someone who understands this

01:18:13

in its entirety and then shows you how they themselves

01:18:18

have failed to do the thing they're asking you to do.

01:18:22

But then lays out the groundwork

01:18:24

for what they're gonna do themselves moving forward

01:18:28

in the format and the direction of the books

01:18:32

that they're writing.

01:18:33

In this case, Ryan's choosing these four virtues.

01:18:37

And I would say it's probably because he's seeing

01:18:39

a lot of what we've talked about here

01:18:41

in issues with society and he's wanting

01:18:43

to help show a path forward.

01:18:47

And I can appreciate that.

01:18:49

I really can, so well done, Holiday.

01:18:52

Yeah, and this is the most effective way

01:18:55

to communicate, I feel, is not to pretend

01:18:59

like you have mastered this stuff

01:19:01

but to share your own failures,

01:19:03

to communicate that I am on this journey as well.

01:19:08

And I feel like that's difficult to do,

01:19:13

especially in a written medium

01:19:16

because all you have is the words,

01:19:19

something more informal like a podcast

01:19:21

or even a video, I feel like it's a little bit easier

01:19:25

to understand what the person is really saying

01:19:28

and who they really are.

01:19:31

But when all you have is the message

01:19:33

and you don't know the story behind it,

01:19:35

it's very easy for any of the advice in a book like this

01:19:39

to come across as prescriptive.

01:19:41

This is all you gotta do.

01:19:43

And some people lean into that too much in my opinion

01:19:47

and they even say this is all you gotta do.

01:19:50

And that stuff just is entirely distasteful to me.

01:19:55

And like I said, I wanna be Ryan Holiday basically.

01:19:57

I feel like he's really good at this.

01:19:59

(laughing)

01:20:00

He's a master communicator, at least in the written medium.

01:20:04

And I wanna leave people feeling the same way

01:20:09

that I felt coming away from this book.

01:20:12

Like yeah, this guy is not perfect, but he's genuine.

01:20:16

He's doing his very best.

01:20:17

He's made mistakes.

01:20:18

He's learned from him and he's getting better.

01:20:22

He's gonna keep going.

01:20:24

He's gonna keep growing.

01:20:25

That's somebody that I'm willing to listen to.

01:20:28

Well, looking at action items here,

01:20:32

I didn't write anything down.

01:20:34

Like, and there's probably some easy ways to explain that.

01:20:39

But at the same time, it's strange to me

01:20:43

that I've got a book about courage and taking action

01:20:47

and taking a leap and stuff.

01:20:49

And yet I don't have anything specific that I wrote down.

01:20:53

And it's a bit odd.

01:20:55

- Sure.

01:20:56

- 'Cause I feel like I should.

01:20:58

It even calls out how should is a problem in our society

01:21:01

at one point.

01:21:02

And yet I feel like I need to act

01:21:06

and I am not sure on what.

01:21:07

Some of that might be that I'm just like,

01:21:10

within days coming out of crazy.

01:21:13

And some of it is like,

01:21:15

I haven't had the space to figure out

01:21:18

what big push I need to make next.

01:21:21

If there's a big push I need to make right now.

01:21:23

Part of me wants to just take the action item

01:21:25

of breathe a little bit and process this one,

01:21:29

which I'm going to be taking the space to do.

01:21:32

Just because, and when I say that,

01:21:34

the tactical way of doing that that I'm talking about is,

01:21:37

I'm gonna take a couple days off of reading,

01:21:39

which I haven't done in a long time.

01:21:41

And just kind of marinate on this one a little bit.

01:21:44

'Cause like I said earlier,

01:21:45

I spent the last 45 minutes before we recorded

01:21:48

finishing this book.

01:21:49

And I don't feel like, although,

01:21:51

we've had a great conversation here

01:21:53

and I feel like I really understand

01:21:54

what holiday's talking about.

01:21:56

I haven't fully processed what that means to me yet.

01:22:01

And I need to do that.

01:22:02

So I need to take that specific action item.

01:22:05

'Cause I don't want this one to just,

01:22:07

okay, great.

01:22:08

Let's move on.

01:22:09

I need to take that space there.

01:22:11

So that's what I'm gonna take for an action item

01:22:14

that said, what do you have, sir?

01:22:16

- Officially I have nothing.

01:22:18

Unofficially.

01:22:19

- See, isn't that weird?

01:22:20

- It is,

01:22:22

but it's not at the same time

01:22:25

because I feel like,

01:22:27

- Okay.

01:22:28

- I don't know.

01:22:29

If you were to push me for some specific ones,

01:22:32

I could give them to you.

01:22:34

So one thing that I've already done from this,

01:22:38

I kind of mentioned the whole story

01:22:40

behind August Land Messer.

01:22:42

And there's definitely a sermon in that.

01:22:46

(laughs)

01:22:47

Which I probably will present some form of that.

01:22:52

We've got a men's rally at our church this Friday.

01:22:54

So I'm already thinking,

01:22:56

like, this is gonna be part of what I'm gonna be talking about.

01:23:00

But also it's really just inspirational.

01:23:04

It's not,

01:23:06

I don't wanna say it's corrective,

01:23:08

but kind of like,

01:23:10

it's not,

01:23:11

you need to make this specific adjustment.

01:23:13

It's really just,

01:23:15

here are some stories about people who had courage

01:23:18

and it inspires you to try to be like them.

01:23:20

But really it's just developing the character

01:23:23

that you need to rise to the moment

01:23:25

when it presents itself.

01:23:26

And I don't know how you plan that.

01:23:29

(laughs)

01:23:31

I think there's some stuff I'm dealing with personally

01:23:36

where this is already beneficial and helpful,

01:23:39

but there's not anything that I specifically want to do

01:23:43

out of this.

01:23:44

Yeah, so I'm with you with no official action items,

01:23:49

but I also don't think that that means

01:23:50

this book was not impactful either.

01:23:53

Right, right.

01:23:54

Okay, so,

01:23:55

style and rating,

01:23:56

it's a holiday book.

01:23:57

So there's tons of stories you've not heard before,

01:24:00

most likely.

01:24:01

I noticed in this particular case,

01:24:03

he has a tendency to take a story

01:24:07

or a specific character person in history

01:24:10

and tell you a lot of stories about that person.

01:24:13

From angles you've not heard about.

01:24:16

Like there are,

01:24:17

like things with corruption in the New York Police Department

01:24:21

in the past.

01:24:22

And he explains so many different aspects of that.

01:24:27

And that's just one example.

01:24:31

He does that many, many times through this.

01:24:34

Again, Ryan's easy to read.

01:24:36

He's an expert communicator.

01:24:38

He's very good at putting his book together.

01:24:41

And in this particular case,

01:24:44

we have books that are,

01:24:46

there's either a system or a specific action item

01:24:48

they're wanting you to take.

01:24:51

This one doesn't really have that,

01:24:52

which is probably why we don't have an action item.

01:24:55

You know, if you're reading atomic habits,

01:24:57

it's pretty easy to come out of that

01:24:59

with an action item to build certain habits.

01:25:03

That's an easy one.

01:25:04

This is not that.

01:25:05

It is not geared towards that.

01:25:07

It's not even that style.

01:25:08

It's more of an inspirational book.

01:25:11

But more than that,

01:25:12

he's, yes, it's an inspirational type book,

01:25:16

but it's got, like as Blake is saying in the comments

01:25:20

here in the chat,

01:25:21

you know, it's more like a call to action.

01:25:23

Like let's move, like start now.

01:25:27

And the question is in what direction

01:25:30

and what are you gonna work towards?

01:25:32

It's not necessarily a,

01:25:34

this is the specific thing I want you to do.

01:25:36

This is the notebook I want you to use.

01:25:38

It doesn't have that at all,

01:25:40

but it's like, I don't feel like I can just sit anymore.

01:25:45

I feel like I've gotta be doing something now,

01:25:48

but the question is what is that?

01:25:49

Which is why I think I've got the action item of just,

01:25:52

like I need to marinate on this

01:25:53

'cause I feel like I should be moving now.

01:25:57

And I don't know where.

01:26:00

Like that's kind of the feeling I've got on it.

01:26:03

Which is a really interesting dynamic

01:26:05

that I can't say I've had from a book in a while.

01:26:08

So there's that.

01:26:10

As far as rating, I can't find any reason

01:26:13

to rate this anything less than a 5.0.

01:26:16

I know we just did a double 5.0,

01:26:19

but like to me, this is a top notch book.

01:26:22

It's Ryan Holiday once again.

01:26:25

I have a very hard time arguing with him

01:26:27

on really anything.

01:26:29

He's showing me an interconnectedness

01:26:32

in between our non-fiction books and scripture.

01:26:35

He's got me, you know, wanting to do big things

01:26:39

and I don't know what.

01:26:40

Like he's ticked off all the boxes here

01:26:43

and I'm not sure what to fault him for

01:26:46

other than what do I do now, Ryan?

01:26:49

Like, come on.

01:26:50

So there is that aspect.

01:26:53

So anyway, I'll let's say I'm gonna put it at 5.0.

01:26:57

- All right.

01:26:57

Well, this is an easy 5.0 for me as well.

01:27:00

They're done.

01:27:01

No, just kidding.

01:27:02

- Okay, all right.

01:27:04

So what's next?

01:27:05

- I will say that this book being the first

01:27:09

of the series of four, I think this one is 5.0,

01:27:13

but I could see the other ones not impacting me

01:27:17

like this one does.

01:27:18

He lays out at the beginning that courage

01:27:20

is kind of the foundational virtue

01:27:22

that all of the other ones are built on top of.

01:27:25

So I feel this one, he's really gotta get you excited

01:27:29

about if you're going to apply anything

01:27:32

from the following ones.

01:27:33

And he did that very effectively.

01:27:36

But I don't think that the other books in this series

01:27:40

are automatically 5.0 just because this one was.

01:27:44

I also wanna address something Blake mentioned in the chat.

01:27:46

This is Ryan as a way of writing

01:27:48

that almost has a driving urgent style

01:27:49

that can be difficult to read

01:27:51

if you're in a relaxing mode,

01:27:52

a call to action instead of just informing.

01:27:55

I agree with that.

01:27:57

I think that's good.

01:27:58

I think that if you are looking for a casual read,

01:28:06

this is not for you.

01:28:07

But I feel for anybody who is concerned about

01:28:12

doing the best they can with what they have,

01:28:17

which would be most of the people listening to Bookworm.

01:28:20

And I'm not implying that Blake doesn't fall

01:28:22

into this category as well.

01:28:24

But this is an essential read.

01:28:27

It's almost like one of those ones where yes,

01:28:29

it's uncomfortable, but it's uncomfortable on purpose.

01:28:33

I mentioned Victor Franklesman's search for meaning

01:28:35

and I recommend that book more than any other book

01:28:38

we have read, but it's never something that I am like,

01:28:42

oh, you just gotta read this, you're gonna love it.

01:28:44

It's like you gotta read this 'cause it's going to change you.

01:28:48

You're not going to like it.

01:28:50

It's gonna be very difficult.

01:28:51

You'll probably cry, but it's important.

01:28:56

And you have to go through that at least once in your life.

01:28:59

That's kinda how I feel with this book.

01:29:02

And I don't even think any of the things

01:29:04

that Ryan mentioned in this were completely life-changing,

01:29:08

never heard this before, a lot of these things

01:29:11

I had heard before because I've kind of had become

01:29:16

a student of leadership.

01:29:19

Just as an example, one of the things

01:29:21

that he mentioned in here, which we didn't really talk about

01:29:23

in this last section, but there's totally a conversation

01:29:27

to be had about this is the whole idea

01:29:31

of the audacity of hope.

01:29:33

He says, "Leaders, idealers, and hope.

01:29:34

"Essentially, a leader is a salesperson."

01:29:37

So anybody who says to me,

01:29:39

well, I'm just not a salesperson.

01:29:42

First thing I ask him is like, are you married?

01:29:44

'Cause if you're married, you sold yourself at least once.

01:29:47

And real leaders are not salespeople,

01:29:52

we would think of salespeople, the snake oil salespeople,

01:29:55

where they're just looking to get something.

01:29:57

They are looking to help other people authentically

01:30:01

and get them to a place,

01:30:02

but that's essentially if you are a leader,

01:30:04

you are selling the fact that you can get people

01:30:06

from where they are to where they want to go,

01:30:08

otherwise they're not going to follow you.

01:30:11

And a true leader is gonna accept that responsibility

01:30:13

and they're gonna take that seriously.

01:30:15

Bible says that pastors are gonna be

01:30:17

kind of double judgment.

01:30:18

It's one of the things I appreciate about my church

01:30:20

and my pastors, they take that seriously

01:30:23

and they don't wanna steer you in the wrong direction.

01:30:26

They wanna present the truth

01:30:27

and let you make your own decisions.

01:30:30

And that's kind of what Ryan Holidays is doing here

01:30:32

is he's giving you the facts,

01:30:35

he's telling you that you're made for more essentially

01:30:39

and what are you gonna do about it?

01:30:41

So I think that's good,

01:30:42

it should inspire you to change some things.

01:30:44

It should make you uncomfortable maybe

01:30:46

with the way you've been living.

01:30:48

Even though I have been trying to do this my entire life,

01:30:53

I still feel that reading this,

01:30:56

I feel like I really haven't been going after this

01:30:59

to the degree that I should.

01:31:01

So there is that inspirational aspect to it.

01:31:04

But yeah, you can't just read this

01:31:05

and sit back and do nothing.

01:31:07

If you do that, then you have completely missed the point.

01:31:12

So I guess that's the only thing I can say about this book

01:31:14

is you gotta expect that going into it.

01:31:17

If you want an easy read, if you want a casual read,

01:31:20

pick up something about digital minimalism

01:31:22

or the minimalist home or something like that.

01:31:25

Or, oh, someday when I can eliminate this clutter,

01:31:28

that's gonna be great.

01:31:29

But all the stories that he talks about in here,

01:31:33

all of the pictures that he paints of these people

01:31:36

who did these heroic and courageous things,

01:31:39

none of those situations were easy.

01:31:42

None of them were enjoyable.

01:31:46

It was always this person went through this horrendous thing

01:31:51

and that is why history remembers them.

01:31:54

And so you walk away from this,

01:31:57

inspired to be one of those people that history remembers,

01:32:01

but yeah, it's gonna require some sacrifice.

01:32:04

- Yep, this is a book I was reading in the mornings

01:32:06

and it didn't occur to me that it was such a driving

01:32:08

and urgent style because like,

01:32:10

hey, that works great 'cause I'm getting my day started.

01:32:13

But if I was trying to read that at night

01:32:15

when I was getting ready to go to sleep,

01:32:16

I don't think I would sleep too well

01:32:17

'cause I'd feel like I should be acting on something instead.

01:32:20

So there's that.

01:32:21

That said, what's coming up next, Mike?

01:32:25

We got another double five oh,

01:32:26

this might be the first time we've had a back-to-back double five oh,

01:32:29

but we'll see if the next ones can hold up to that standard.

01:32:34

What's next?

01:32:36

- Next is A Minute to Think by Juliet Funt.

01:32:39

And I had never heard of this book

01:32:44

prior to it being recommended to me

01:32:47

by somebody in my mastermind group.

01:32:49

I floated the idea a little while ago to the people in my group.

01:32:53

What's the most impactful book you've read this year?

01:32:56

And so this is one that came up from that conversation

01:32:59

and I'm excited to jump into it.

01:33:02

- Cool, cool.

01:33:03

Following that, I suppose you don't know this yet either.

01:33:06

I feel like it's time we cover one that's brought up fairly

01:33:10

regularly by an author that we've read everything else from,

01:33:14

but I haven't read this from.

01:33:16

And we need to cover this, I think,

01:33:19

'cause I feel like I want a bookworm episode on this book,

01:33:22

but it doesn't exist yet.

01:33:24

And that is So Good They Can't Again.

01:33:26

- Yes.

01:33:27

- By Cal Newport.

01:33:28

I feel like we need to cover this, right?

01:33:30

Like, it's almost sad that we haven't done this yet.

01:33:34

It's a well-known book, right?

01:33:36

But we need to cover this.

01:33:37

So I think it's time.

01:33:39

- Yes, it is time.

01:33:41

- There's that.

01:33:41

So Joe's coming out of crazy.

01:33:44

I need to take a breather and then I'm gonna be stepping

01:33:47

into the next book, which means no gap books right now,

01:33:50

but I do see gap books coming back in my near future,

01:33:53

which is super exciting.

01:33:54

But what do you have for a gap book?

01:33:57

- I have Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick.

01:34:01

- Okay.

01:34:03

- It's basically about writing better nonfiction.

01:34:07

And that's what I like.

01:34:11

One of the things, so this is an official action item,

01:34:15

but one of the things that this book has inspired me to do

01:34:18

is to start writing more consistently.

01:34:21

I've published a couple of newsletters the last several weeks.

01:34:24

I'll put a link in the show notes that people want to subscribe

01:34:28

to the newsletter.

01:34:30

But I was always apprehensive about it before,

01:34:34

because anytime you publish a newsletter,

01:34:37

you get a whole bunch of people unsubscribing.

01:34:39

And so from a numbers perspective,

01:34:41

it's almost like one of the worst things you can do.

01:34:43

But I know it's something that I should be doing.

01:34:46

- Yep.

01:34:47

- And I didn't really understand the impact

01:34:50

that was having on the people who actually wanted

01:34:52

to hear from me.

01:34:53

So I sent the first one and I got like a dozen responses

01:34:56

within the first couple of hours.

01:34:58

And oh, it's so great to see this again.

01:35:00

So one of the things that this book has inspired me to do

01:35:04

is to write more.

01:35:06

And obviously one of the things I want to write eventually

01:35:10

is an updated version of my "Thou shalt hustle" book.

01:35:12

I want to lean into that.

01:35:13

Talk about being courageous.

01:35:15

Again, an unofficial action item, right?

01:35:17

But that term hustle,

01:35:19

there's this whole hustle culture

01:35:21

that is very, I have a distasteful response to that.

01:35:26

But as I was thinking about it,

01:35:28

I'm like, oh, I lost that battle for that word.

01:35:30

Gary Veeze taking it in a different direction.

01:35:33

But then I started thinking,

01:35:35

this is a stupid definition of courage, right?

01:35:37

But what's the courageous thing to do?

01:35:40

Lean into it.

01:35:40

If I think it means something else,

01:35:42

then let's define it as something else.

01:35:46

And you know what?

01:35:46

The people who are in that hustle culture

01:35:48

who are gonna stumble onto my book

01:35:50

because it has it in the title,

01:35:52

those are the exact people

01:35:53

that need to hear that message anyways.

01:35:54

So.

01:35:55

- There you go.

01:35:57

All right.

01:35:58

Well, thanks to you who are watching

01:36:00

and listening to Bookworm.

01:36:02

Thank you so much.

01:36:04

We keep going because, well,

01:36:06

because we like doing this,

01:36:07

but also because you're here as well.

01:36:10

And we're grateful to you.

01:36:12

So one of the ways that I know people support us

01:36:15

and we're very grateful for those of you

01:36:17

who do this is to join the Bookworm Membership Club.

01:36:22

You can do that at bookworm.fm/membership.

01:36:26

It's five bucks a month.

01:36:27

You help us to buy books, keep the lights on,

01:36:29

pay the hosting, pay Toby so we get editing done.

01:36:33

All sorts of fun stuff in that sense.

01:36:35

Basically keeping Bookworm going.

01:36:38

And you also get some cool perks

01:36:40

that come along for the ride whenever you do that,

01:36:43

not just the goodwill of keeping Bookworm alive,

01:36:45

but also some cool wallpaper that Mike put together,

01:36:49

all of Mike's mine node files that he's been able to create

01:36:53

unless they were so extensive

01:36:54

that it would have been ridiculous.

01:36:57

So there are those.

01:36:58

There's some old gap book episodes they did

01:37:00

on some books that I read

01:37:01

that weren't official Bookworm books.

01:37:03

And there's a lot to it.

01:37:05

So again, Bookworm.fm/membership.

01:37:09

We'd love to have you on board.

01:37:10

- All right.

01:37:11

If you are reading along with us,

01:37:13

pick up A Minute to Think by Juliet Front.

01:37:15

And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.