Bookworm Transcripts

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8 a.m. is way too early to record a podcast.

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Joe Billeg, yet here we are.

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You're very gracious for letting us do this at a clock on a Monday morning.

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So there's that.

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And Kudos to Blake for joining us so early on the live stream because I know it was very

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short notice, but he still made it.

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So good job team.

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He did.

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Yep.

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I'm not sure how much detail you want to go into, but kind of a strange circumstance

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which led to the rescheduling of this podcast.

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Yeah.

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The plan was to record this three days ago on Friday.

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And it wasn't going to happen because I was in the middle of an insurance process because

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it's two weeks ago today.

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We took our girls to Great Wolf Lodge, did the whole water park thing, but in the process

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of that one night stay, our suburban was stolen.

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Super fun.

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And the great people at the Great Wolf Lodge did not have cameras on this area, nor did

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Joe have any form of like tracking inside the vehicle.

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Thus it is now gone.

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And when I was going to be recording with Mike on Friday, is when I was in the middle

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of phone calls and adjuster meetings and stuff and trying to determine what is the value

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of now gone suburban.

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So super fun financial stuff going on there.

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But yes, we had our trucks stolen.

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Not a fun experience.

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Yeah, that really stinks.

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I'm very sorry to hear that.

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Probably brought a whole range of emotions which is very appropriate for today's book.

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That is probably one of the more forced segues I've heard from you, Mike.

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Well done.

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Well, we're not ready to go there quite yet.

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We've got some follow up to talk about here.

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Yes.

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So did you create a task management system diagram?

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I have one started.

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I don't have it done.

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Part of that is because after you and I finished recording last time, we had this conversation

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about how Joe was going to publish this.

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And that kind of changed how in depth this was going to be.

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And I've spent more time on this silly diagram, Mike, than I think I have ever spent on something

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simple and yet complex.

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So here we are.

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I have a very, I don't want to say a rough draft because it's more than that.

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It's like a first or second draft on it, but it continues to morph on about an every other

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day, third day period.

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So still kind of working through what that all will look like, but I need to have it in

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such a way that it can be published, whether it's on my blog or elsewhere.

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I don't know quite yet, but anyway, it's in progress.

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That's my point.

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So it does exist.

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I do have a draft, but I'm not ready to share it yet.

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Okay.

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That's fair enough.

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My whole task management world was slipped upside down as I started doing some research

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into task management side of obsidian, by the way.

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So mine is now out of date.

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Did you know you can do start dates for tasks in obsidian and have system level notifications

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show up?

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Yeah.

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You can do scheduled dates to where it doesn't show up until a day and then you can have it

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show up only on that one day plus due dates.

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Yeah, you can do all of that.

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The trick with that is it's with any extra piece of metadata, right?

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Anytime you have the option for that, you have to be careful because just because you

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can use it doesn't mean you should in your case.

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Yeah, you shouldn't use all of them, but I have long been looking for the start dates

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and the reminders just kind of blew my mind that you could actually have system level

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reminders, not in app reminders.

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I figured you could get the little purple boxes to show up, but it's insane.

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So yeah, yeah obsidian is not blue.

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I always have to remind myself of that.

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That's right.

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It's got the little purple stone as the icon, unless you use the custom icon, which I did

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of course you did.

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Yeah, so I will be documenting that experiment in the near future.

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We made it three and a half minutes, I think, until I mentioned obsidian.

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Well done.

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Is that a record?

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Probably not.

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Probably not.

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My follow up here was to collect more models.

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And I don't think I have collected any specific models, but I have written in the past couple

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weeks about my theme for the year, which is the year of recalibration.

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And it's kind of all based on mental models and collecting new ones and understanding

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there's a whole bunch of stuff that I don't really know.

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So I could put a link in the show notes to the newsletter that I sent out about that

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if people are interested.

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But this is an ongoing project.

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And I feel even more strongly after the last couple weeks that this is kind of the thing

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for me this year is to just reevaluate everything.

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And the way to do that is to collecting these models.

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So nothing specific that I have collected and put inside of set obsidian database, but

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it's in progress and will continue to be in progress probably for the rest of my life.

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Yeah, you're basically saying you're never going to stop thinking.

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That's essentially what you're kind of saying.

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Well, it's thinking in a specific direction.

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So when I talk about the year of recalibration, it's basically all the things that I've assumed

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and I've kind of built my habits and routines around.

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I want to challenge all that stuff.

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And the way you challenge it is you get different contradictory maybe perspectives towards some

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of that stuff.

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And so I feel that is very much in line with the mental models.

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Maybe it's not framed as mental models.

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Maybe it's just, hey, did you ever think about this?

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So one of the things, I guess, you know, one part of this that I have been complete, I

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have completed in the last couple of weeks is just the whole, like what time I wake up

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because for those who don't know, I've been diagnosed with epilepsy.

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And so one of the things that can trigger a seizure is not getting enough sleep.

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So I have to sleep my eight hours every night.

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Otherwise I am not going to drive and I got to be really, really careful just because

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it's a stressor and you can't really like tell when a seizure is going to come on.

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I haven't had one in 20 plus years at this point because I've been so careful with this

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stuff.

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But so just get up earlier, you know, that's not really an option for me.

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A whole bunch of things need to change in order for that to happen.

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And for the last couple of years, up until I broke my hand, I have been getting up probably

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about 6.45, 7 a.m. because I got to get my eight hours of sleep and just that's the

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natural time by the time everybody comes home from church or wherever we are at night, basketball

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game, get out of the kids in bed, downshift, my wife and I go to bed, like that's just

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kind of the natural rhythm.

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But I want to push that forward.

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And so it requires a whole lot of Herculean effort.

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It feels like sometimes to put things in other places.

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And then also instead of going to the gym for an hour in the middle of the day, I'm

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trying to, we have a rowing machine, which was a COVID purchase when we couldn't go to

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the gym.

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And I've just been trying to do like these intense rowing workouts in the mornings, just

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10, 15 minutes, get a little bit of a sweat first thing in the morning.

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And then I'll get to the gym if it works later on, but at least I've done something, you

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know, and trying to do that before the rest of my regular morning routine before I start

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my actual work.

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And that's like I've already made that change kind of inspired by another gap book that

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I had read earlier this year, the 5am club, which I'm not sure I would recommend.

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But there's like this ideal day towards the end of that book.

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And I looked at some of the elements of it and I'm like, yeah, that kind of makes sense.

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So I'm trying to figure out how that works for me.

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So I guess you could say it's kind of an experiment based off of a new mental model, a new old

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mental model of getting up early.

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It sounds like you're collecting a whole bunch of stuff.

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Like there's a lot inside of that, which I would imagine the book that we're going to

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cover today throws a lot in that knowing how many different things and thoughts this book

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gave me.

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I think I'm itching to get into this one, Mike, but like there's just a lot in here

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that I feel like would fit into the concept of doing more models in your note system.

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But I also know that if you don't have like a good way to process your thinking, like

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you and I do this over bookworm, you do a lot of it in your writing inside of Obsidian

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text files and such.

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Like if you don't have a good way of processing your thoughts, I feel like it's easy to get

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caught up in bad models, like in bad routine thinking, and you don't really have a good

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way of getting out of that unless you have someone else to bounce it off of or again,

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some way to write it down.

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I agreed.

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Yeah, we can get into today's book just real quickly though, that rowing machine that is

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Blake's fault.

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It is the concept to model D. It's a great rowing machine, very expensive.

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But yeah, I believe this is going to be my justification for making it a good purchase.

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I definitely have not used it enough to justify it yet, but so far last couple of weeks is

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getting up early and using the rowing machine.

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It has been great.

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Gets my blood going, makes me awake, which I really need after.

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The last week, by the way, I did this like cleanse, fast, sort of a thing.

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I did a complete fast a couple of days, but otherwise, just fruit and veggies, water,

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gave up coffee for a week and made me very sleepy.

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There were a couple nights I slept like 12 hours.

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I don't think I could pull that off if I wanted to.

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I would have to be sick to pull that off, I think.

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It just doesn't work.

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I've tried it before.

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Staying in bed eight and a half hours is borderline painful for me.

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It was too long.

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It was an organized fast that we did with our church, but definitely had a lot of health

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benefits as well and kind of a reset.

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I had done this at the beginning of the year for a lot of years in a row and hadn't done

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it the last couple of years.

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I was definitely, definitely new.

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Felt good once you get over the being tired all the time for the first couple of days.

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Fair enough.

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All right, let's get into today's book, which is The Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown,

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the book that you did not think I would pick.

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Not at all.

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Not at all.

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You totally threw me off guard and you picked this one.

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Just curious, why were you so surprised when I picked this one?

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Why did you think this is not a Mike book?

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This might get into bookworm stereotypes.

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That's fine.

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I feel like your type of book has a tendency to be all about daily routine, repetitive

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actions.

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It's habits, it's routines, it's traditions, it's, I don't want to say systems, now that

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I've learned too much about systems.

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It's like that style, I guess.

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You probably would have said systems prior to reading thinking in systems would be my

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guess.

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Prior to last book.

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Yeah.

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But then it's usually me who picks the one that's way out there a little bit weird and

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gets all borderline touchy-feely and breaks the mold and that's where I tend to push us.

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I feel like this one being heart-driven versus logistical-driven, I guess, breaks that mold

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in my head, which is why when you said Atlas of the Heart, this was right up there in

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the realm of books I was looking at, which would make me think that this is kind of my

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stereotypical book, which is probably why I really enjoyed reading this.

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But I was not expecting it from you.

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I just wasn't.

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So there's that.

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Are you calling me cold and mechanical, Jobe-leg?

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Completely cold and mechanical.

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That is exactly what I was getting at.

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No.

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Nah, I'm just kidding.

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So and as I reflect back on some of the books that I have selected for Bookworm versus the

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books that you've selected for Bookworm, I can see how you arrived at that.

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I think what I realized with picking, there was another one recently that kind of surprised

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you.

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I forget which one it was.

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I realized that the way that I pick books is I pick the ones that are about a topic I'm

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interested in.

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And it is maybe a little bit weird that my interest has kind of gone in this direction.

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But I also think maybe it's not unnatural.

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That was really the place it was going to go if you look back at the history.

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He's like, okay, well, we've exhausted the habits and routines now.

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Let's move to something else.

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And we haven't completely exhausted it.

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I know there's other stuff out there.

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But always.

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I feel like I've gotten to the point where like, that's enough.

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Okay, let's try something else now.

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And then kind of going in line with the theme of recalibration and leaning into the things

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that I don't know as much about or maybe make me a little bit uncomfortable.

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I when I picked this one didn't feel like it was unnatural at all to be honest.

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But I guess that's just because I have my perspective on this and I can see how I got

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to this point.

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And this is just kind of like, oh, yeah, this looks cool.

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And very much in line with examining the parts of me that have not been looked at for a

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while, maybe.

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Sure.

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So, but yeah, this book is interesting.

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It's not really a book.

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I don't know.

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It doesn't really fit the book or mold, to be honest.

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It's more like an encyclopedia about emotions.

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It's a beautiful hardcover book.

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If you do get that version, I do recommend people get that version, not the Kindle version

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because it's full color and there's so many pictures and so much beautiful typography

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and the layout is great.

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And it's just it's a work of art and it is definitely worth the $16 or whatever it was

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to get it off of Amazon.

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So link in the show notes.

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By the way, if you want to support the podcast, all of the book links, all the links to every

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book that we we mentioned are in the show notes and those are all affiliate links.

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So when you buy a book that way, we get a little kickback.

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So thanks for considering doing that.

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And if you don't like Amazon affiliate links, there you go.

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Now you can avoid them.

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It's broken down into 13 different sections and it covers, I think I said 87 different

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emotions.

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So my thought is that we can just kind of crank through the different parts because I

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think the way that they are broken up is really interesting.

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And then as we go through the different parts, maybe we touch on one or two emotions, maybe

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one each that she talks about in these different points.

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I've got a few points for just as I was taking notes in my mind node file here, things I

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wanted to talk to you about from a couple of these these areas.

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But I don't think this book lends itself to a very deep back and forth conversation about

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a topic.

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Now, famous last words as we go off the rails and we do that anyways.

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But that's kind of what we do, right?

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But you're right.

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This isn't a we're going to go on a journey book and we're going to make one point across

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the entire book.

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That's not what this is.

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This is borderline a dictionary.

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And it's and I say that because and I'm sure you'll get to this.

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There's 13 parts in this book and they're all places we go as they're titled and underneath

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of those are individual emotions.

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But most of what you're getting is that when she goes to each end of those independent

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emotions, she will define it and then tell you about it, tell a story about it, explain

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the research behind it and how we should maybe manage it in some cases, like what to do about

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it, how to contradict it in some cases, how to bring about the good ones more often.

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She'll she'll do that.

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But for the most part, it's here's what this is and here's how it affects us.

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So it's not necessarily a prescriptive book in that sense.

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There's not a straightforward call to action out of this.

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Well, I shouldn't say that.

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There is a point at the very end where she does have a bit of a call to action, but it's

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not even really made that way.

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So all that to say, I feel like this is one that you can easily sit on and then come back

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to regularly.

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This is one of those that I think I'm just going to have around just to look things at

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like, wait a second, what was that again?

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So I don't think this is one that you can process very quickly all at once.

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It's something I think you're going to have to reference back to in the future.

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Yes, I love the style of this book and we'll get into style and rating obviously at the

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end.

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But I think it's important to mention here at the beginning that there is a whole bunch

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of research, a whole bunch of studies.

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She's got a whole research team that she works with and she does an incredible job of balancing

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that research with her own personal stories.

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So she has lots of examples for all of these different emotions and it's not the same cookie

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cutter approach to each and every one of them.

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So it's a really interesting approach to a book.

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And you mentioned there isn't a call to action.

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I would say at the beginning, there is a call to adventure, let's say.

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Because she talks about how this, I mean, it's in the title, the atlas of the heart,

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right?

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And this harkens back to something that we had heard from the great mental models.

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Number one was the map is not the territory.

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So that's all about like taking the role of the map maker and redefining the scope of

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the territory or the land in front of you.

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And that's kind of what she's saying here.

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Let's just talk real briefly about the introduction here.

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She talks about being a map maker and a traveler.

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And I feel like this is a really cool metaphor that sets up the rest of the book because

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at the beginning, she talks about how most people can only identify a couple of emotions,

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mad, sad and glad basically.

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And there's 87 of them that she defines here.

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I keep saying that number because it kind of blows my mind.

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And she's basically encouraging us to explore some of these.

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And that can be uncomfortable.

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I found that she's naming all of these.

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I kind of think back to points in my life where I have felt each and every one of these.

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And I didn't for all of them have like a direct connection for some of that stuff.

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But at least it was asking myself the question as we went into each and every section, when

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have I felt this before?

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And she says right in this introduction, there's three essential questions.

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Where am I?

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How did I get here from there?

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And how do I get there from here?

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So I think that's really important as you're considering kind of doing a self analysis of

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your own emotional state and being able to correctly label how you're feeling now that

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you have a whole bunch more vocabulary to use, and then you can kind of see, oh, these are

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the factors that brought me to this place good or bad.

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And if I want to go somewhere else, what direction do I need to head?

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Yeah, there's a lot that you can discern from each of these in that as you're going through

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them, like, okay, when have I experienced this?

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And sometimes that can bring back very good memories.

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In a lot of cases, it brings back the pain.

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And I have to admit, this is easily the most I've ever cried reading a book for bookworm.

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I don't know if this is your experience, but this is the way it was for me.

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Like there's some stories in here that bring back things that are not easy to process.

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And you're reading these stories and you're just working through times you've been wrong,

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times you've made mistakes when you've been humiliated, like all of these things come

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back.

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And the way that she tells a story and the way she explains it is so raw.

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Ugh, okay, I don't want to be that guy that's sitting over here in a corner crying while

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I'm reading a book, a nonfiction book for that matter.

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And here I am.

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And I'm like, okay, I'm going to put this book down for a while because I can't do this

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right now.

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Like, that's what this did, at least to me.

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Maybe this is me being an emotional person, but that's, that was my experience.

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And yes, there are some of these that bring back and help you understand.

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It's like, oh, that's what's going on.

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Like, if you have difficult situations you're going through right now, it's like, okay,

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well, how is that person doing right now and why are they acting the way that they are?

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There's probably a lot more going on in those situations.

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And I know that's kind of vague the way I'm saying that it's intentional at the moment,

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but there's just a lot of different aspects that you could take with these from seeing

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them in situations you're dealing with, from looking at your own past, from pains that

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you're going through, joys that you're going through.

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There's a lot of these that can bring back a lot of emotions.

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So if you are reading this or planning to read this, just be aware.

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You're going to go on a trip when you read this one.

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That's true.

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I mean, that's not an unexpected response.

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I don't think because one of the things I jotted down in the mind node file is in the

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introduction that being able to communicate about emotions is part of healing.

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And my response to all of the emotions that she listed here was I now have a much bigger

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vocabulary in order to communicate about these emotions with.

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And so if you experience something, especially something traumatic and you don't have the

00:23:55

vocabulary to talk about it, I think it's very natural to just shut it down and not fully

00:24:00

process it.

00:24:02

And then when you go back and read this book and you read about some of these emotions

00:24:09

and you hear some of her stories and then maybe that triggers something like you went

00:24:14

through something similar, I can totally see how you would just be a mess after reading

00:24:20

some of these.

00:24:23

That's actually, let's put a pin in that because I want to dissect that a little bit

00:24:26

further.

00:24:28

Part one is places we go when things are uncertain or too much.

00:24:35

And I asked you about this earlier and you said you were cool talking about it.

00:24:41

So I'm just going to go for it.

00:24:42

You think this is too much than just pushback?

00:24:45

We'll cut it out.

00:24:46

But you mentioned that you just had your suburban stolen.

00:24:50

So you were fighting with insurance to prove that it was worth as much as you said it or

00:24:56

more than what they were saying it was.

00:24:58

So probably a whole bunch of these in this section you're going through right now.

00:25:06

Do you mind kind of just talking through some of this and maybe some of the stuff that you

00:25:11

were feeling and if there's one particular you want to dissect a little bit further

00:25:14

we can do that on air and hopefully you won't cry.

00:25:18

Yeah, so some of the, yeah, I don't think I'll cry on here here, but so the emotions underneath

00:25:24

of this, so places we go when things are uncertain or too much, those are stress, overwhelm,

00:25:29

anxiety, worry, avoidance, excitement, dread, fear, vulnerability.

00:25:34

These are all things that are in most cases things we don't want to talk about.

00:25:40

And in the case of the suburban it was one of those, you know, when it first happened

00:25:46

there wasn't really a, oh gosh, what just happened I feel violated.

00:25:50

I didn't have that at all.

00:25:52

I don't know if that's a factor of the books that we've read, Mike, but in my stance it

00:25:57

was what just happened?

00:25:59

Is that actually what happened?

00:26:01

It was more of a disbelief than anything at the beginning and then it became pure logistical

00:26:07

to me.

00:26:08

And I don't know if that's just my protector sense coming in trying to take care of my

00:26:14

family.

00:26:15

I don't know what that is, but I went straight into, okay, how do we get home?

00:26:20

Because we're obviously not home right now.

00:26:22

Well, okay, so rental car, it's part of our insurance, blah, blah, blah, that all came

00:26:26

together very easily.

00:26:28

And then on top of that, there is the stress of, okay, well now I've got to talk to the

00:26:33

police and I've got to work with the detective and we've got to try to figure out how to

00:26:36

find the thing.

00:26:37

It's very likely not going to happen.

00:26:39

There's all these things that have to happen logistically.

00:26:43

And yet for me, I can't say that I've been stressed in the situation until I started working

00:26:50

with the insurance side because a lot of it was out of my control.

00:26:54

And at the same time, I felt very overwhelmed by it, you know, if I'm using some of these

00:26:59

terms here, but just because it was so much that had to happen, which is why we ended

00:27:04

up moving bookworm from Friday.

00:27:06

Because it just seemed like I've got to figure out some very fine details of what is the

00:27:11

price difference between a suburban that has a bench in the middle row versus one that

00:27:14

has bucket seats.

00:27:16

Like that's the level of detail I had to get to.

00:27:19

And I had not even two hours to get to those answers and have raw data to prove it.

00:27:26

That's basically what I had to get down to.

00:27:28

Now, since then, I can tell you that it worked out.

00:27:32

I reached a settlement with the insurance company, one that I think we're both happy

00:27:37

with.

00:27:38

So that has all worked out.

00:27:40

It was worth it.

00:27:41

But the time crunch and the not knowing puts you in a spot where emotions are very high

00:27:48

and it gets very difficult to work through that.

00:27:53

Something I was not expecting because I work in IT.

00:27:56

I deal with stressful situations all the time, almost daily.

00:28:00

People will have issues three minutes before a service starts and event starts.

00:28:05

And I go in and research their computer and of course they just completely freak out.

00:28:08

It's like, "We don't have time for that."

00:28:09

It's like, "Yeah, you do.

00:28:10

That'll wait.

00:28:11

It'll be okay."

00:28:12

And I'm completely calm in that situation and it just drives people up the wall.

00:28:16

So I deal with that stuff all the time.

00:28:19

So it doesn't freak me out.

00:28:21

But I will tell you that I know that someone else in the same position I was talking to

00:28:27

the police would freak out.

00:28:29

And I know that because I wasn't the only one that had a vehicle stolen that night.

00:28:33

There was someone else that had a minivan stolen as well, which in my head I'm like,

00:28:36

"Why would you just deal with minivan?"

00:28:37

That's what went through my head.

00:28:39

But anyway, the other gentleman who they were working with to try to figure out simple

00:28:45

stuff, what's the VIN number?

00:28:47

What's the license plate?

00:28:48

What's the thing look like?

00:28:49

Where'd you park?

00:28:50

Like, these are very basic things that police need to know.

00:28:52

They're not going to find your vehicle if they don't know your license plate number, right?

00:28:55

I had written all that down and handed it over to them on a note card because I knew they

00:28:58

were going to want it ahead of time.

00:29:00

The other guy was completely freaking out.

00:29:02

He just kept explaining how he had booked the reservation and it wasn't his car.

00:29:05

It was his father-in-laws.

00:29:07

And he's not sure why they would pick his car.

00:29:09

What are we going to do?

00:29:10

How am I going to get home?

00:29:11

Like, these are the questions he was asking the police whenever they would ask him what's

00:29:15

your license plate number.

00:29:16

It's like, that doesn't help at all.

00:29:18

He just completely freaked out and wasn't able to slow down and process that.

00:29:23

So I watched this guy and of course the police got frustrated and said, "Fine, we'll come

00:29:27

back to you.

00:29:28

Do you know your license plate number?"

00:29:29

And looked at me.

00:29:30

It's like, "Here you go.

00:29:31

This is, I think, everything you need to know."

00:29:32

And they asked me like two questions.

00:29:34

I was there for 30 seconds and I was gone.

00:29:36

That's as far as it went.

00:29:37

So I say that because I think there's something to do and this is why I say I'm like, I think

00:29:43

there's something to do with maybe the books and things that we've learned over the last

00:29:47

however many years now of reading that stressful situations you can either freak out about them

00:29:54

as this guy was doing or you can take your time, process it and run with it, decide what

00:30:01

to do next and you're fine.

00:30:03

But as far as the emotions behind it, mine came later.

00:30:08

It wasn't the onset.

00:30:10

It's been more with the insurance side of it than anything.

00:30:12

I don't know if that answers your questions.

00:30:15

It does.

00:30:16

That is the Joe Buellig response I expected.

00:30:19

Here's everything you need to know.

00:30:21

Now go do your job.

00:30:23

Yes.

00:30:24

Exactly.

00:30:25

From our conversations on Friday, I could tell you were a little bit stressed and I'm

00:30:31

actually pretty impressed that you got resolution within a couple of hours.

00:30:34

I could totally see how if you don't have any resolution and like, okay, we'll get back

00:30:39

to you like if I was in that situation that ruins my whole weekend.

00:30:44

Right.

00:30:45

Right.

00:30:46

It's totally good.

00:30:47

Yeah.

00:30:48

And I have had that beat into me a little bit over the last six months or so because of

00:30:53

the house remodel we went through and I told Becky this absolutely.

00:30:57

It's like so much of that remodel prepped me for things like this because it's out of

00:31:02

my control when I can get supplies.

00:31:04

It's out of my control when I can get subcontractors in like so many things are out of my control

00:31:09

that you kind of get forced into, okay, well, you just make your backup plans and you really

00:31:16

can't change it.

00:31:17

So there's no point in me getting upset.

00:31:19

So I was in the middle of waiting for police case numbers and an official from the rental

00:31:25

company for when we were going to get a car to get home and I had a good three hours

00:31:31

to wait, two hours to wait.

00:31:34

So I went to the water park and went down the slides with the kids.

00:31:37

Like it doesn't do me any good to sit around and wait and stress about the things.

00:31:41

So let's go have some fun and do the lazy river and freak the kids out with raft rides

00:31:46

that are too fast for them.

00:31:48

Well, have fun.

00:31:49

So that's what we did.

00:31:52

So you mentioned the lazy river and one of our favorite movies lately has been Flora and

00:31:58

Ulysses.

00:31:59

Are you familiar with this?

00:32:01

No, that's new to me.

00:32:03

I think it's a classic book that was remade as a movie on Disney Plus and there's a point

00:32:10

in their worth.

00:32:12

The little girl is reflecting on better days when her parents were together and they used

00:32:18

to go to the water park and her dad used to bring an extra swimming suit and put it in

00:32:22

the lazy river just to watch the lifeguards freak out.

00:32:28

And now I kind of want to do that.

00:32:31

Yeah, yeah, I would definitely be up for that.

00:32:34

Cool.

00:32:35

Yeah, we should probably move on.

00:32:37

But the other thing that I liked from this section was vulnerability.

00:32:42

Vulnerability is the emotion that we experienced during times when certainly risk and emotional

00:32:46

exposure.

00:32:47

But the thing that I like about this is that there is no courage without vulnerability

00:32:51

harkening back obviously to courage is calling, which we both love the Ryan Holiday book.

00:33:00

And yeah, it just is very appropriate for me with some of the stuff that I'm going through

00:33:06

right now.

00:33:07

I don't know how it's going to work out, but I'm just kind of throwing it out there and

00:33:11

it is all working out.

00:33:14

Harkening back to a gap book that I read, the power of positive thinking that one seems

00:33:20

to come up over and over and over again.

00:33:22

I love that book.

00:33:23

We should probably cover that one for bookworm at some point by Norman Vincent Peele.

00:33:28

Definitely not for everybody, but there's a phrase in that book, you know, everything

00:33:31

is always working out for me.

00:33:33

And I've kind of been saying that over and over again.

00:33:38

And when I started doing that, that's actually the day after that is when I broke my hand.

00:33:45

But it's healed.

00:33:46

I went to the doctor, got the all clear, got to play a guitar on the worship team yesterday

00:33:50

at church.

00:33:51

Still a little stiff, but it's all good.

00:33:54

So it's kind of interesting to me how like all that temporary stuff can trigger any of

00:33:59

these emotions, but when you take a step back and you see big picture, it ends up being

00:34:06

not quite as bad or even good as you think in the moment.

00:34:11

It's less extreme, you know, everything is kind of more even keeled.

00:34:15

But vulnerability is the thing for me now.

00:34:17

And if I were to create an action item from this, which I don't have any action items,

00:34:21

I don't think because like you said, this is an encyclopedia, but it would be to put

00:34:25

myself in more vulnerable situations very much in line with the theme of recalibration.

00:34:31

Yeah.

00:34:32

And just to echo some of what you're saying is like she mentions that vulnerability is

00:34:36

one of those things that it's one of the last things we want to do.

00:34:40

But it's one of the first things we expect of other people.

00:34:44

We want other people to share their heart and be open, but it's one of the last things

00:34:49

that we want to do.

00:34:50

And it's such this such a weird thing because the moment you do share vulnerability and

00:34:54

you're not completely, you know, cold and calculated and everything's perfect.

00:34:59

If you do share your unknowns and your questions, your scene is more credible.

00:35:05

So it's contradictory kind of, but it's exactly as you would expect at the same time.

00:35:11

Yeah, true.

00:35:12

Yeah, there's so much in this book.

00:35:15

We're not even going to touch on a tenth of it, especially at this rate because we got

00:35:20

to get moving.

00:35:21

It's getting me a six hour episode if you wanted it to be.

00:35:23

It's totally good.

00:35:25

All right, let's talk about part two, which is places we go when we compare.

00:35:33

And I'll just as we go through each of these parts, you did this for part one.

00:35:37

And I'll continue to do this just so people know what's in here.

00:35:40

But we won't talk about all of these.

00:35:42

The emotions listed here are comparison, admiration, reverence, envy, jealousy, shaden

00:35:49

Freud and Freud and Freud.

00:35:51

Shaden Freud.

00:35:52

Okay.

00:35:53

And then Freud and Freud.

00:35:54

Is that how you say that?

00:35:55

Yep.

00:35:56

Okay.

00:35:57

So obviously there's some cool names we could dissect here, but the one that I think sets

00:36:01

the stage for everything in here is comparison, which is not actually an emotion, but it does

00:36:06

drive all sorts of feelings.

00:36:07

So she includes it.

00:36:09

But the thing that I jotted down that stood out to me from this section is that comparison

00:36:14

is a creativity killer.

00:36:16

And she has this phrase, which I think defines this more perfectly than I have ever heard

00:36:22

in my entire life, which is the pressure to be like everyone else, but better.

00:36:28

Exactly.

00:36:29

You ever feel that?

00:36:31

Oh, absolutely.

00:36:32

And it honestly, it stops me from doing a lot of things too, because I see people who

00:36:36

are better at me than take video editing, for example.

00:36:40

So I'm not going to release videos because there's other people that are way better

00:36:43

at it than me.

00:36:44

Well, I'm comparing to them, but I don't want to do anything or act on it unless I'm better

00:36:50

than them.

00:36:51

So I'm comparing, but I want to be better.

00:36:53

It's a vicious cycle.

00:36:56

It is.

00:36:57

It is.

00:36:58

Yeah.

00:36:59

I don't think we need to go into a whole lot here other than the Chardonn Freida.

00:37:04

This is pretty insidious.

00:37:07

This is deriving pleasure or joy from someone else's suffering or misfortune.

00:37:13

So definitely avoid this.

00:37:17

This requires counter empathy.

00:37:20

I think empathy is probably going to come up in a lot of these, but it's obviously very

00:37:26

much tied to the places we go when we compare ourselves to somebody else.

00:37:31

When you see somebody else being successful, are you happy for them or do you kind of resent

00:37:35

the fact that they are successful?

00:37:39

So interesting how this ties back to Mindset by Carol Dweck and just the perspective of

00:37:48

if there's only so much success to go around, then someone else being successful means that

00:37:54

there's less for me.

00:37:55

I got to do whatever I can to get as much as I can or viewing it as this is not a zero

00:38:03

sum game.

00:38:04

There's enough success for everybody, which is more in line with my school of thought,

00:38:08

but there was definitely a point before reading that book that I felt that way.

00:38:13

So it's also kind of interesting to me reading this.

00:38:16

As you mentioned, at this point in our lives after we've covered 136 other books, 136 books

00:38:23

joke.

00:38:24

This is number 137.

00:38:26

That's crazy.

00:38:27

So we've developed maybe a little bit of emotional intelligence as we have gone through a lot

00:38:32

of other books.

00:38:33

Yeah, the shot in Freuda that you mentioned in case somebody missed it, that's when you

00:38:38

get joy or pleasure from somebody else's pain or suffering or misfortune.

00:38:44

If you combine that with some of the other emotions, it will talk about a little bit

00:38:48

later and then overlay our political and societal culture, which she does call out here.

00:38:57

It's almost sickening to think about how it perpetuates the cycle of hate and how it

00:39:04

forces us into a world of just not liking another person because of something very simple

00:39:10

that we don't even understand entirely.

00:39:12

If someone has a different belief system than you or wants to make their own choice in a

00:39:19

situation and you wish ill on them and get excited when they're hurt, you're in a bad

00:39:24

place, you're in a really bad place whether you realize that or not.

00:39:29

So it's something you need to address very quickly because it leads to some very dangerous

00:39:35

situations which again she talks about later.

00:39:38

Agreed.

00:39:39

So don't go there, which is kind of the whole point in sharing some of this stuff is like

00:39:43

you can identify where you want to end up and where you want to avoid entirely.

00:39:48

This is one of those ones that you want to stay away from.

00:39:51

Alright, the next section here is part three, which is places we go when things don't go

00:40:01

as planned.

00:40:03

And again, reading through the emotions here, boredom, disappointment, expectations, regret,

00:40:11

discouragement, resignation, and frustration.

00:40:16

Any of these stand out to you?

00:40:18

Just the first one there, the boredom piece, well that and frustration, but the boredom

00:40:24

piece she spells out that a lot of times there's the historical or cliche almost phrase whenever

00:40:32

people say that, you know, if I'm bored, well I'll find something for you to do.

00:40:36

That's what I grew up with.

00:40:38

Like a lot of people hear that with kids.

00:40:40

Like you kids say, I'm bored.

00:40:42

Great.

00:40:43

I've got some work for you to do.

00:40:44

There's stuff on the floor that needs cleaned up.

00:40:46

You can pick up stuff in the kitchen.

00:40:47

You can wash dishes.

00:40:48

I've got wood that needs move from place to place.

00:40:50

Like there's lots of things I can give you to do.

00:40:54

But she even tells the stories here of how she learned to simply wait whenever her kids

00:41:01

would say that because it was not very long before they started doing something creative

00:41:06

and you know, super interesting or fun for themselves because they just made something

00:41:11

up.

00:41:12

They imagined something and were able to learn something.

00:41:15

So boredom is a place where we can be very creative and a lot of great ideas come from.

00:41:21

So a lot of times we think of boredom as a bad thing when in fact it's a very good thing

00:41:26

if you're willing to sit in it and work your way through that.

00:41:31

So boredom was one of them that stood out to me.

00:41:33

The other one was the frustration piece.

00:41:37

And part of that is because I have a bank of things that have royally frustrated me in

00:41:44

recent weeks.

00:41:45

Some of that involves a suburban.

00:41:47

Some of it is just work stuff.

00:41:50

Some of it is just my own choices that I'm not happy with.

00:41:54

And sometimes and a lot of times there are things that are just out of my control that

00:41:59

I feel like I want to change but I can't so I get frustrated by it.

00:42:04

And it's easy to see how that can lead to things like anger and she even calls that

00:42:08

out.

00:42:09

But it's also that just because you're frustrated by something you have to make the choices to

00:42:14

what to do about it.

00:42:15

And whenever you make the choice and start moving towards action in the case instead

00:42:19

of just sitting in the frustration, that's the only real time you're able to get out of

00:42:24

that is to start moving and stop just sitting in it.

00:42:28

So that's that would be the thing that I need to learn.

00:42:31

Because I like to just wallow in the frustration and just be upset about it and make it worse.

00:42:38

When really I need to just get off my tail and go help somebody else with something similar

00:42:43

to get over that.

00:42:45

So don't be like Joe, get up and move on.

00:42:50

Kind of interesting as we talked through this that we think both kind of focus and gravitate

00:42:55

towards the ones where we have failed instead of the ones where we have wins.

00:43:02

Yeah.

00:43:03

But oh yeah, definitely.

00:43:06

I think that's probably natural but it'd be interesting to hear if other people had

00:43:09

that same response as they read through this.

00:43:12

The one that I want to talk about from this section real quickly is disappointment.

00:43:19

And there's a statement here which I think is very powerful on page 50.

00:43:24

She says, "There are too many people in the world today who decide to live disappointed

00:43:28

rather than risk feeling disappointed."

00:43:31

And disappointment is simply unmet expectations.

00:43:33

So that to me sounds a lot like the doorway to resignation.

00:43:39

Like I'm just not even going to try because I might figure out that I can't do it.

00:43:44

And that harkens back to something she said, "I wrote it down in part one but it applies

00:43:48

to a lot of different emotions throughout this book for anxiety which can be either

00:43:53

a trait or a state."

00:43:55

So a lot of these emotions can be either a state which is a temporary condition or become

00:44:01

a trait and be part of our personality.

00:44:04

And I don't remember if she said this directly or not but it seems to me the ones that become

00:44:09

a part of our personality.

00:44:11

Those are conditioned over time.

00:44:12

It's not like you're born with this.

00:44:15

And there are things that you can do to overcome it as you develop your own emotional intelligence

00:44:21

I would think.

00:44:23

But when it comes to disappointment and that harkens to the vulnerability piece that I

00:44:27

talked about from part one, don't not do something because you might fail at it and

00:44:34

you might feel disappointed because if you don't try you will live disappointed for the

00:44:40

rest of your life potentially.

00:44:42

Yeah, that's a good point.

00:44:43

It's very easy to take something that's a temporary emotion and turning it into a long-term

00:44:49

personality trait.

00:44:51

Like you can do that.

00:44:52

Don't do that.

00:44:53

It seems like every single section we end with don't do that.

00:44:57

It's like my kids sometimes they will do something and they hurt themselves and I regularly

00:45:05

joke with trying to lighten the mood in a lot of times that way they don't turn it

00:45:08

into a complete meltdown.

00:45:09

It's like, "Hey, don't do that.

00:45:10

It hurts when you do that."

00:45:12

And I tell them that.

00:45:13

And I remember what it was.

00:45:15

Sometimes over the weekend I did something.

00:45:18

I dropped a hammer or something and it hit me and I'm like, "Ouch."

00:45:21

I made that comment.

00:45:22

It's one of those like, "It more surprised me than anything."

00:45:25

And my oldest Emma just like, "Dad, don't do that.

00:45:28

It hurts when you do that."

00:45:29

I'm like, "Thanks.

00:45:30

Thanks Emma."

00:45:31

Turns out.

00:45:32

I appreciate that.

00:45:33

Thanks for being my parrot.

00:45:34

I appreciate that.

00:45:36

Yeah.

00:45:37

So I guess that brings us to part four.

00:45:41

Yep.

00:45:42

Part four places we go when it's beyond us.

00:45:45

And again, the emotions are all wonder, confusion, curiosity, interest, and surprise.

00:45:54

And I think this is kind of interesting.

00:45:56

These are primarily, I would say, positive as opposed to the first couple sections here.

00:46:02

There's a lot of negative ones.

00:46:03

If you're going to label them positive versus negative.

00:46:08

But when it's beyond us, this is the one that description kind of triggers a negative

00:46:15

response from me because in the natural, I want to control everything.

00:46:22

Very logical, high-fact finder.

00:46:26

This is the thing I want to avoid at all costs, just my personality.

00:46:32

Yeah.

00:46:33

This is where, and I get where she has spent a lot of time trying to pick the words here.

00:46:38

I know that she has been very careful in choosing these.

00:46:41

But like part three is places we go when things don't go as planned.

00:46:45

Places we go when it's beyond us as part four.

00:46:47

If you start looking at those, you could easily get to a point where you say, "Well, those

00:46:52

are kind of the same thing.

00:46:54

If it's beyond us, it didn't go as we thought it would.

00:46:56

But if it didn't go as planned, well, it's beyond us."

00:46:59

Like you could easily make that jump.

00:47:02

But I think what she's getting at is that if it didn't go as planned, it means you had

00:47:05

a preconceived expectation with it.

00:47:09

Whereas when it's beyond us, you had no expectation.

00:47:12

Like she tells the story of her daughter who they were on a lake and she was just kickback

00:47:18

making a picture memory as she called it.

00:47:21

And that is something that created awe in Brené.

00:47:26

So it's just something that you don't expect to see it.

00:47:30

She mentions that these are a lot of times tied to nature, a spiritual experience, something

00:47:36

that's more artistic, I guess.

00:47:39

And I could see how she gets to that point.

00:47:42

But you're right.

00:47:43

These are absolutely more of the, if you had determined more of a positive side.

00:47:47

Any in here that you really want to discuss?

00:47:50

I don't think any more than that.

00:47:52

I mean, it's fairly straightforward on these.

00:47:54

I don't have any of it or like, "I have struggles with this."

00:47:57

Because these are the fun ones.

00:47:59

These aren't painful ones.

00:48:01

They are the fun ones.

00:48:03

I think the one I want to lean into is the curiosity, which again goes in line with the

00:48:08

year of recalibration.

00:48:09

This again is both a trait and a state.

00:48:12

And it involves both feeling and thinking.

00:48:14

It doesn't exist without interest, which is a cognitive openness to engaging with a

00:48:20

topic or experience.

00:48:22

So you combine those and you very much get the state that I described in the beginning.

00:48:32

I think naturally I tend to fall back into the things that I know.

00:48:38

So this is not a natural response for me, but it's something I want to embrace in the

00:48:45

next year.

00:48:46

So hopefully as we continue to read books like this, push me outside my comfort zone.

00:48:53

I can check that as complete.

00:48:54

There you go.

00:48:55

All right.

00:48:56

I've been doing a lot of talking about the emotions.

00:48:57

You want to introduce part five?

00:48:59

Yeah.

00:49:00

So part five places we go when things aren't what they seem.

00:49:03

These are amusement, bittersweetness, nostalgia, cognitive dissonance, paradox, irony, sarcasm.

00:49:11

I have a couple of things here.

00:49:14

One is on sarcasm because this was kind of convicting to me because I tend to be very

00:49:19

sarcastic.

00:49:20

I'm just making extreme comments or twisting words just for fun.

00:49:24

Like I do this.

00:49:25

If you've listened to Bookworm for more than three seconds, you know that Joe tends to

00:49:28

be sarcastic.

00:49:29

And one thing that stood out to me is the fact that kids can't pick that up until what

00:49:36

was it like age 10, nine or 10, something along those lines?

00:49:40

Yeah.

00:49:41

And true.

00:49:42

Yep.

00:49:43

I might be a bad father.

00:49:44

I'm like that crossed my mind whenever I read that.

00:49:47

It's like, I do this all the time and don't even realize I'm doing it.

00:49:51

It's such a thing that's so ingrained in me that I make these comments all the time.

00:49:57

And I'm sure that it frustrates my children.

00:49:59

So that was very convicting to me.

00:50:02

It's like, I was not aware of that.

00:50:04

That never crossed my mind.

00:50:05

I assumed they were picking up what I was getting.

00:50:08

And it makes sense why my almost nine year old is now getting it and starting to be the

00:50:13

same.

00:50:14

And I realize, oh, the other two have no clue.

00:50:18

That might explain why the one gets really upset when I do that once in a while.

00:50:21

So I should probably stop that.

00:50:24

So anyway, that was something that stood out.

00:50:26

The other one was that with nostalgia, did this one strike you?

00:50:30

Because I think of nostalgia as like the quintessential picture I have in my head is the guy who's

00:50:36

at the bar telling some football story from when he was in high school.

00:50:40

And he's reflecting on the thing that he was doing at the time because it was, you know,

00:50:44

the highlight of his life.

00:50:45

Like, that's what I have in my head whenever I think of nostalgia, which anyway, that's

00:50:50

kind of what I saw.

00:50:52

The picture I get is Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite.

00:50:55

Coach would have put your own movements.

00:50:57

Yes.

00:50:58

No doubt.

00:50:59

No doubt in my mind.

00:51:02

I did not realize that the term nostalgia, it comes from two Greek words, nastas and alga.

00:51:09

Alga, which means homecoming and then pain.

00:51:13

The term came from the 1600s when a medical student was dealing with some Swiss soldiers,

00:51:20

I think that were mercenaries that were fighting wars a long ways from home for an extended

00:51:26

amount of time.

00:51:27

And they were literally getting sick from missing home.

00:51:31

And he termed this disease nostalgia.

00:51:35

So nostalgia was an illness.

00:51:38

And today we think of it as just reflecting on the good old days when really the intentional

00:51:45

part of that word is just you are ill.

00:51:48

You need to let that go.

00:51:49

It is painful to be focusing on that, which I don't think actually is the current day

00:51:54

definition of that.

00:51:56

That's the origin of it.

00:51:58

Yeah, I think you're probably right.

00:52:00

And I think I have seen tinges of this, and this is kind of interesting because I see

00:52:06

a lot of parents of kids that are older than ours, whether they are significantly older

00:52:15

than Rachel and I, or just a little bit older, kind of in the same stage of life, but had

00:52:21

children earlier, they will make these comments of like, oh, I remember when little Johnny

00:52:27

was two years old and used to do this.

00:52:30

And man, I really miss that.

00:52:33

And I've never felt like I really miss those days.

00:52:37

I enjoy them when they're happening.

00:52:39

I love the fact that Adelaide can't say marshmallow and says farm fellow instead.

00:52:46

Or because I leave for church early to be on worship team, she's like, dad, you're going

00:52:50

to go to church.

00:52:52

Choch.

00:52:54

And stuff is humorous to me, but as she learns to say words, I don't have that like, aw,

00:53:02

she does it right now.

00:53:03

I don't understand that part of it really, just not the way my brain works.

00:53:09

I mean, I get it like why other people feel that way, but I've kind of fought to not fall

00:53:16

into that myself and just make the most of every moment along the journey so that when

00:53:22

they are older and they leave the house, I don't say, oh, I wish I would have done this

00:53:28

with my kids.

00:53:30

But I think that's a version of this and I can totally see how that kind of, it's not,

00:53:34

doesn't seem like it's real major, but it kind of triggers and some of that negative

00:53:40

sadness and the yearning for the way things used to be.

00:53:42

And if I've learned anything from this book, that can kind of lead you into some dark places

00:53:46

if you're, you're not careful, but you're not guaranteed to go there either.

00:53:50

So I don't think it's like avoid this at all costs, but just kind of interesting.

00:53:55

The other one that I like from this is cognitive dissonance, which again is because this is

00:54:00

in line with my theme.

00:54:02

And this is when you have that state of tension that occurs when you hold two cognitions,

00:54:06

which are ideas, attitudes, beliefs, or opinions that are psychologically inconsistent with each

00:54:11

other as I look to understand things more and can collect models that contradict my current

00:54:21

worldview.

00:54:22

Maybe I know this is going to come with the territory and I'm going to have to wrestle

00:54:26

through this.

00:54:27

But she even says in this section that it's important to invite new information to the

00:54:31

table.

00:54:32

So just the fact that this cognitive dissonance isn't a bad thing unless you tend to run for

00:54:36

the hills when you feel it and avoid those things because they challenge your current

00:54:40

belief systems and your traditions.

00:54:43

I actually think that if you collect contrary opinions and beliefs and you wrestle through

00:54:49

this kind of dissonance, it can actually reinforce your beliefs and make them stronger.

00:54:54

It's kind of like you're tested by fire.

00:54:55

If it's not challenged, it's not very strong.

00:54:57

And the fact that you have to kind of wrestle through and reconcile these things in your

00:55:01

head sometimes is galvanizing.

00:55:03

Yeah, absolutely.

00:55:04

Yeah, if we go to part six here, places we go when we're hurting, this is when we started

00:55:11

to get to points where Joe started crying a lot.

00:55:14

So the emotions underneath of here, anguish, hopelessness, despair, sadness, grief, these

00:55:21

are ones that are very painful to experience.

00:55:26

She tells stories of losing a dog or she told the story of her reaction to something that

00:55:33

happened, but then she didn't actually tell us what happened.

00:55:35

She got a phone call and it was devastating.

00:55:38

She ended up needing to go home when they were on their way to an event church.

00:55:43

I don't remember where they were going, but these are ones that are difficult.

00:55:48

And if I have to summarize all of them because there's a lot and you could go into each one

00:55:53

of these independently and if you want to pick one out, go for it, Mike.

00:55:56

But anguish, hopelessness, despair, sadness, grief, they kind of all work together in

00:56:04

some way or another.

00:56:05

Obviously, I've mentioned before that I work at a church and I run sound and such for funerals.

00:56:09

I've got a really big one coming up on Saturday, which is going to be very painful and I'm

00:56:15

aware of that.

00:56:17

And it's a very big tech thing for me because the funeral is going to be so large, a very

00:56:22

prominent figure in our five state area is having his service at our church.

00:56:30

And it's not something that I take lightly, but at the same time, it means that I've got

00:56:34

close to 25 different people helping me run the thing.

00:56:38

So I've got a lot logistically and technically that I've got to run.

00:56:41

But at the same time, it means that I've got a lot of people helping me run it who are

00:56:45

hurting deeply and have had to work with people who are in such dire straits that it's difficult

00:56:54

for them to make good decisions.

00:56:56

Having read this and realizing how those different emotions impact our decision making process,

00:57:01

which she doesn't spell out specifically, but she at least explains how you get there

00:57:05

and what to do about it in some cases.

00:57:07

But it's been very helpful and informative to me because I have no connection to this

00:57:13

person.

00:57:14

In this case, I'm kind of the clear headed one and can work my way through it, but it

00:57:19

means that a lot of times I have like, okay, settle down.

00:57:21

I understand what you're going through.

00:57:23

Let's set that emotion aside.

00:57:25

Let's focus on the technical right now.

00:57:27

I'm not trying to be insensitive.

00:57:28

We just need to make this decision and then we can process the emotion thing afterwards,

00:57:34

but we don't have time to do that part right now.

00:57:36

But those are two separate things.

00:57:38

So trying to spell that out helps people in this case.

00:57:42

It doesn't always.

00:57:43

That's the absolute worst thing you could do.

00:57:45

You need to stop feeling that emotion because we need to make a decision about that's not

00:57:49

helpful in many, many cases, but in this particular one, it does seem to help folks.

00:57:55

I don't know how I got there.

00:57:56

But anyway, places we go when we're hurting.

00:57:59

Yeah.

00:58:00

The pet thing you'd mentioned, that brought back emotions when our previous dog had to

00:58:07

be put down and it was a very traumatic circumstance when we had a cockapoo.

00:58:17

So cockerspaniel poodle mix about 20 pounds and he was getting older and his back had

00:58:24

been messed up from when he was a, I don't know, must have been like two or three.

00:58:28

We had him on a leash outside and he just like, not a very smart dog, just like took

00:58:33

off and got snapped back when he reached the end of his leash and ended up hurting his

00:58:39

back.

00:58:40

So as he got older, he had some issues and you could tell he was in a lot of pain.

00:58:45

And towards the end, he had trouble walking on his back leg and he would like fall down

00:58:54

and then be in pain and had trouble getting back up.

00:58:58

And I was actually downstairs recording a podcast.

00:59:04

My wife was at the gym.

00:59:06

I think the kids were with him.

00:59:07

He was in his kennel to make sure that he didn't get hurt.

00:59:11

But somehow he got hurt anyways and was freaking out and tried to bite his way out of his cage

00:59:18

and up getting his canine teeth stuck in the grate and just completely freaked out,

00:59:22

like shattered his jaw.

00:59:24

I went upstairs and there's a huge mess.

00:59:27

He took him to the animal hospital and he's already in a ton of pain from his back.

00:59:32

Now his jaw is completely busted.

00:59:35

You know, they put him under to get the grate off and they're like, "Well, what do you

00:59:39

want to do?"

00:59:40

And at that point, I'm like, "Just put him out of his misery."

00:59:45

But it was not anticipated.

00:59:48

Like, we knew it was coming, but we didn't know it was coming then.

00:59:52

And so I remember my wife and I both like days after that.

00:59:56

And we always told ourselves, "It's just a dog."

01:00:00

But we bald like babies and for about two months, like every time I drove past that animal

01:00:07

hospital, the emotions would come back.

01:00:11

So I definitely felt the grief from this section and it kind of surprised me that that would

01:00:19

be triggered so acutely by the loss of a pet.

01:00:23

I always thought, you know, when the dog dies, it's just a dog.

01:00:28

We'll get a new one at some point.

01:00:30

It'll be totally fine.

01:00:32

And the kids were fine, but my wife and I were a mess.

01:00:38

And then it would get re-triggered because they sent his collar back to us.

01:00:45

And so Adelaide was really, really little.

01:00:48

She couldn't even talk, but she found the collar and she would walk around the house

01:00:52

panting like a dog.

01:00:55

And like, because she missed the puppy, but she couldn't say like, "Oh, I missed the dog."

01:01:00

You know, so crazy.

01:01:03

Now I know what to expect for next time, but got a new dog anyways.

01:01:08

My opinion, everybody should have a dog.

01:01:09

You should.

01:01:10

No cats though.

01:01:12

No cats.

01:01:13

I concur.

01:01:14

All right, let's go into part seven.

01:01:18

Places we go with others, the emotions listed here, compassion, pity, empathy, sympathy,

01:01:25

boundaries and comparative suffering.

01:01:28

And the one I want to call out, we don't really need to discuss this a whole lot.

01:01:35

But comparative suffering, I feel this is something that we have all felt with COVID.

01:01:45

But the idea with comparative suffering is that you compare your situation to somebody

01:01:51

else's and it's not as bad.

01:01:53

So you don't feel like you have the right to talk about it.

01:01:58

And I don't want to discount all of the negative stuff that has happened with COVID and people

01:02:05

who have lost loved ones.

01:02:07

I personally haven't done that.

01:02:10

We've lost some friends.

01:02:12

Some people that go to our church.

01:02:14

But I feel like because I haven't had a brother or sister or somebody like kind of unexpected

01:02:23

that just caught it and totally took them out and completely crushed our world, like

01:02:30

I don't have the right to talk about it.

01:02:32

And she would basically say that you got to fight against that.

01:02:36

And I want to call this out because I feel like I have seen this and just about everybody

01:02:41

that I know where they always temper their own experiences based off of somebody else

01:02:47

who has gone through something worse.

01:02:49

And I feel like that's really dangerous because if you are comparing yourself to somebody

01:02:55

else who has experienced something worse, then the natural reaction is like, well, I

01:03:01

don't have it so bad.

01:03:02

I'm just not going to say anything, which means you don't process that stuff, which

01:03:05

means it just sits there in festers.

01:03:08

Like you got to talk about it and just because somebody else went through something completely

01:03:13

horrible doesn't mean that you don't have some trauma that needs to be processed as

01:03:19

well.

01:03:20

Yeah, I think you're absolutely spot on with a comparative suffering because we see it

01:03:26

everywhere, especially with COVID because it's regularly used as justification for actions

01:03:33

on both sides of every argument, it seems like.

01:03:37

So it doesn't seem to matter what your viewpoint is.

01:03:40

We use that to justify what we're doing.

01:03:43

But one of the pieces here that I want to call, I'm absolutely comparative suffering

01:03:47

is a big one right now, but I think empathy is when we can't skip over here.

01:03:52

And that's because she does bring that up in many of these different, the other emotions

01:03:57

in this particular part.

01:03:59

But it's basically the feeling of someone else's emotions and going through that pain

01:04:04

with them or understanding why they have dealt with things or why they've made the decisions

01:04:11

that they have.

01:04:13

And it's one that I feel like we could use an awful lot of right now.

01:04:18

And nobody seems to want to.

01:04:20

I shouldn't say nobody.

01:04:21

That's extreme.

01:04:22

But a lot of people don't want to do that because it's uncomfortable.

01:04:26

It's uncomfortable for someone who is a Democrat to sit down with a Republican and try to figure

01:04:33

out why they think the way they do.

01:04:35

And vice versa, absolutely.

01:04:37

It's very difficult for someone on the Republican side to sit down with a Democrat without

01:04:43

being humiliating to the other person.

01:04:45

Like, stop it, basically.

01:04:48

And we struggle to try to understand someone else's decisions because you don't know the

01:04:54

whole story.

01:04:55

You don't know what they've gone through.

01:04:57

You don't know how they got there.

01:04:58

So it's not something that you can just say, "Well, he's...

01:05:03

I don't even know what."

01:05:05

He made a decision about choosing to not be vaccinated, so therefore, obviously, he's

01:05:10

these 12 things.

01:05:12

Well, you don't know that whole story.

01:05:15

And you could flip it easily.

01:05:17

They chose to be vaccinated.

01:05:18

So obviously, they are these 25 things.

01:05:21

Like, that's not true.

01:05:23

You don't know that.

01:05:24

So don't make those assumptions because you don't know what they're going through and

01:05:28

you don't know how they got there.

01:05:30

So settle down.

01:05:32

It's okay.

01:05:34

Ask them questions about how they got there.

01:05:36

Maybe help them with that decision.

01:05:38

But don't force the issue.

01:05:41

Yeah.

01:05:42

Also, like in the empathy section, there's a whole bunch of empathy misses, she calls,

01:05:48

which is sympathy, which is, "I feel sorry for you.

01:05:52

Judgment, you should feel shame.

01:05:53

Disappointment, you've let me down."

01:05:55

Discharging discomfort with blame, this feels terrible.

01:05:58

Who can we blame?

01:05:59

You.

01:06:00

Minimize or avoid.

01:06:02

Let's make this go away.

01:06:03

Comparing or competing.

01:06:04

If you think that's bad, which kind of gets into the comparative suffering, speaking the

01:06:09

truth, empower, don't upset people or make them uncomfortable, any vice-giving or problem-solving.

01:06:13

I can fix this and I can fix you.

01:06:16

I really like those statements that go along with those different descriptions.

01:06:20

I feel that really helps me to understand those.

01:06:25

Anything else from this section?

01:06:26

No.

01:06:27

I think we should go into part eight, which is places we go when we fall short.

01:06:33

The emotions underneath of this are shame, self-compassion, perfectionism, guilt, humiliation,

01:06:41

and embarrassment.

01:06:42

I hesitate to say this, but I feel like this might be one of the most important parts in

01:06:46

this whole book.

01:06:47

If you're going to skim this, which I don't think you'll be able to do, but this might

01:06:51

be the big one.

01:06:54

There's two in here that really struck me.

01:06:57

The first one is shame, which I think that's her thing.

01:07:00

She brings that one up regularly and probably for good reason, but essentially, shame is

01:07:06

believing that you are a bad person.

01:07:08

You are focused on yourself and you think you are bad for whatever reason.

01:07:13

You name it.

01:07:14

You're flawed.

01:07:15

There's something wrong with you, even though there's probably not, even if there is, it

01:07:20

doesn't matter.

01:07:21

Having that shame does nothing for you that's positive.

01:07:25

Trying to get past that is a very good thing, but not easy to do at the same time.

01:07:32

The one that struck me, this might be the one that hit me the most in this entire book.

01:07:37

That was humiliation.

01:07:39

I say that because she explains in here how humiliation was a very big part, if not the

01:07:50

deciding factor, of a bank of what was it, 10 school shootings between 1996 and 1999,

01:07:59

that the primary emotion behind those was humiliation.

01:08:04

She goes on to explain how humiliation can lead to aggression and violence and dehumanization

01:08:12

and humiliating others as a result of that.

01:08:17

That can come out whenever you have passionate political and cultural beliefs.

01:08:21

She also says shame and humiliation will never be effective social justice tools because the

01:08:26

reaction to those is so violent.

01:08:30

I cannot help but think about how many times you see on social media of people just humiliating

01:08:38

people as much as they possibly can because they don't have the same views as them.

01:08:43

If you see what I just said, humiliation leads to violence and aggression, which then leads

01:08:49

people to humiliating other people, which then leads to aggression and violence.

01:08:53

Guess what we're doing?

01:08:55

We've created this big massive circle of being mad at each other and trying to hurt each

01:09:01

other.

01:09:02

If you go back to the shadon froyda, wishing ill on other people and being happy when

01:09:07

it does happen, if you're rejoicing when somebody gets COVID, something is wrong.

01:09:13

That's the type of thing that we're talking about.

01:09:16

All of that leads to a perpetual cycle of just horrible, horrible things and actions.

01:09:23

Yeah, that's a really good point.

01:09:25

In fact, I jotted down a quote from the section, "Never allow anyone to be humiliated in your

01:09:30

presence."

01:09:32

When I initially read this, did not jot down any action items.

01:09:37

I think I'll make that one.

01:09:40

There's no way I'll remark that complete, but that's never stopped me before.

01:09:46

Just kind of a mental reminder that that's important.

01:09:51

Let the other person say a face.

01:09:53

I feel like we all have opportunities to practice that.

01:09:57

The other thing that stood out to me from this section, and this is not nearly as big

01:10:01

a deal as what you just described, but perfectionism, which is the self-destructive and addictive

01:10:06

belief system that fuels doing everything perfectly to avoid painful feelings of shame,

01:10:10

judgment, and blame.

01:10:12

I feel like we talk about this quite a bit because we're both creators and I feel it's

01:10:17

easy for people like us who make stuff to fall into this.

01:10:22

Just a reminder that you are not what you accomplish or what you create and to disconnect

01:10:29

from the thought of what other people are going to think.

01:10:32

So much easier said than done.

01:10:35

I understand that, but good reminder.

01:10:38

For sure.

01:10:39

All right.

01:10:40

Part nine is places we go when we search for connection and the emotions here are belonging

01:10:49

fitting in.

01:10:50

Yes, those are different.

01:10:52

Connection, disconnection, insecurity, invisibility, and loneliness.

01:10:58

What stood out to you from this section?

01:11:00

The big ones were belonging and fitting in and the difference between those.

01:11:05

I mean, I could go on about probably the other five pretty easy, but like you mentioned,

01:11:10

like it's easy to think of those two as the same belonging and fitting in, but really

01:11:14

belonging is when you have a group of people who understand you and they accept you for

01:11:19

who you are, fitting in is when I'm morphing who I am in a situation in order to bolt like

01:11:26

pseudo belong in a group for a temporary period.

01:11:31

So if I'm trying to fit in, I'm going to tweak who I am to be in that group.

01:11:35

Whereas if I'm belonging, I get to be who I truly am and belong in that group.

01:11:40

So yes, I think that I mean, there's so many different places you could take that, but.

01:11:43

Yeah, that's a real important distinction.

01:11:46

And I'm glad that you called that out.

01:11:48

I'll just add to that.

01:11:49

I think that there's a connection that happens with the belonging versus the fitting in connection

01:11:56

is the energy that exists when people feel they are seen, heard and valued when you belong

01:12:02

and you are accepted because of who you are.

01:12:06

That is when you are seen when you fit in because you're like everyone else.

01:12:10

That's kind of when you're invisible.

01:12:13

She also brings in Maslow's hierarchy of needs here, which from the bottom physiological

01:12:20

and safety, love and belonging, steam and self actualization.

01:12:24

And I call that out because I've got this triangle thing that comes from the book embedded

01:12:30

in my my node file.

01:12:32

But this is a great example of how she has taken all of these concepts and she has applied

01:12:38

her own style and put them into the book.

01:12:42

There's lots of comics and drawings that go along with all this stuff.

01:12:47

There's some really great ones in this particular section.

01:12:49

So again, just a call, I guess, to get the hardcover printed version of this book rather

01:12:56

than the digital one.

01:12:58

Yeah, goes a long ways.

01:13:00

All right.

01:13:01

Part 10 is places we go when our heart is open and the emotions listed here love lovelessness,

01:13:12

heartbreak, trust, self trust, betrayal, defensiveness, flooding and hurt.

01:13:20

And this is kind of where we start to realize how much you can get into any one of these

01:13:25

because trust specifically, she's written books on that.

01:13:30

Yeah.

01:13:31

And she's also got like the, how do you define love?

01:13:36

Good luck.

01:13:37

Well, that went down and you're going to have lots of people super excited, but there's

01:13:42

so much that goes with that that it's really tough to define it, which is like there's

01:13:47

a lot that you could cover on these specific emotions.

01:13:51

I can't say I have any of these that that really stand out to me other than just the

01:13:55

fact that collectively, like this one kind of goes back and forth, right?

01:14:00

So some of these collections are a perceived negative, right?

01:14:05

When we fall short, all of those could be perceived as negative.

01:14:11

Whereas if we go back to the one when it's beyond us, all the awe and amazement and such,

01:14:17

like those are all positives, generally speaking.

01:14:20

This one, when you open your heart, it's kind of back and forth.

01:14:24

Like it's, it's a crapshoot.

01:14:25

Good luck.

01:14:26

Essentially.

01:14:27

Some of these are considered positive.

01:14:30

Some of them are very difficult to deal with.

01:14:35

Some of them, even though they're difficult or positive to have gone through, right?

01:14:40

So it does go back and forth.

01:14:43

So I don't think I have one specific that jumped out to me though.

01:14:46

The one that kind of jumped out to me was flooding.

01:14:51

And just because I recognize from reading this section, flooding by the way is a sensation

01:14:56

of feeling psychologically and physically overwhelmed during conflict, making it virtually impossible

01:15:01

to have a productive problem solving discussion.

01:15:04

And the more pressure that we're under, the more likely we are to be flooded.

01:15:09

So there's only so much that our bodies and our nervous systems can stand before they

01:15:13

flip the switch and then you stop communicating and you start attacking.

01:15:16

And I feel like I can, having read this, I can identify points in my life where I have

01:15:23

felt that.

01:15:24

But also I feel like the threshold there is maybe different for everybody.

01:15:29

And also I think there are things that you can do to increase your threshold so you don't

01:15:35

fall into this as easily.

01:15:38

So I just want to call that out and point out, I guess, that this is probably something

01:15:44

we should all work on because when you get to this point, essentially nothing productive

01:15:51

is going to come from this.

01:15:52

Yeah.

01:15:53

I think that probably brings us to part 11 here, places we go when life is good.

01:16:01

Joy, happiness, calm, contentment, gratitude for boating joy, relief and tranquility.

01:16:09

And one thing that really jumped out to me here is that she does call out that joy and

01:16:16

happiness are kind of in two different categories.

01:16:21

Whereas you have joy is kind of an unexpected short lasting thing.

01:16:26

Whereas happiness is very difficult for them to define because it's more of like a state

01:16:30

of being over time.

01:16:32

It's kind of a seasonal thing that can come and go.

01:16:35

So it's not really a personality trait or a state as much as it is like a prolonged state,

01:16:42

which they would say is somewhat different.

01:16:44

So I hadn't really thought about it that way.

01:16:46

Because we tend to use joy and happiness interchangeably.

01:16:50

I just hadn't really thought about it that way.

01:16:52

There's so much of this, right?

01:16:54

She just gives you these definitions and gives you the words for how you're feeling in certain

01:16:59

situations.

01:17:00

So I'm grateful for that at least.

01:17:02

Yeah.

01:17:03

And then she introduces foreboding joy, which is being afraid to lean into good news, wonderful

01:17:09

moments and joy.

01:17:13

And I don't know about you, but this hit home for me.

01:17:18

She says parents experience this a lot with their kids.

01:17:22

But the basic idea here is that something good happens and you kind of think, oh, this

01:17:27

is short lived and something bad is going to happen right after this.

01:17:32

So I don't really know that there's anything to do about that other than to recognize when

01:17:37

this is happening and label it as, oh, there's that foreboding joy again and recognize it

01:17:43

for what it is and try to dismiss it.

01:17:46

The other thing I thought was really cool about this was under calm.

01:17:51

She says there's two questions about calm as a practice, which is, do I have enough information

01:17:57

to freak out?

01:17:58

That's question number one and normally it's no.

01:18:00

And then number two, we'll freaking out help and that's always no.

01:18:05

So if you were to create like one of those decision tree diagrams and you looked at this

01:18:10

every time you got some bad news, for example, and it started triggering that emotion of

01:18:19

probably anxiety is the thing that would trigger this for me.

01:18:23

That's state of freaking out.

01:18:24

You know, that's not one on the list here, but we can picture what that looks like.

01:18:29

So you start feeling that and then, okay, what were the questions here?

01:18:34

Walking through those, you would maybe temper that a little bit.

01:18:38

I'm not sure.

01:18:39

Maybe I should print that out and hang that up somewhere.

01:18:42

Sure.

01:18:43

Sure.

01:18:44

All right.

01:18:45

If you go to, unless you get something else here, if you go to part 12, I think it's where

01:18:51

we're at.

01:18:52

Yep.

01:18:53

Places we go when we feel wronged.

01:18:55

Anger, contempt, disgust, dehumanization, hate, self righteousness.

01:19:02

And if you remember me talking earlier about, you know, we'll talk about this later because

01:19:06

it ties into humiliation or discouragement or anger and such like it, it nostalgia to

01:19:13

some degree.

01:19:14

Like, if you start to look at each of these in particularly, and I have to say every single

01:19:21

one of these struck me.

01:19:22

So I'm probably not going to talk about any of them because of that.

01:19:27

But if you think about so much, and obviously she's writing this in the middle of the pandemic.

01:19:31

So she brings up COVID quite a bit inside of that, which is maybe why we've talked about

01:19:36

it more than we normally would on this show.

01:19:38

But when you get into things like contempt or disgust, dehumanization, like trying to

01:19:46

give the other a different name that's like rats and such, like they talk about how, well,

01:19:52

that's what Hitler did.

01:19:54

So if you are doing things like that, you're on the same track as Hitler.

01:20:00

So keep that in mind.

01:20:02

If you do these things.

01:20:05

It's tough to read any of these and not think of something that's gone on politically or

01:20:14

socially.

01:20:15

But that I feel like is the obvious direction to take this.

01:20:18

Like it's very simple to say, here's what our political landscape is.

01:20:22

Here's how each of these anger, contempt, disgust, dehumanization, hate and self righteousness.

01:20:27

Like these are all happening on every side of the party, on either party.

01:20:33

But again, that's the easy way.

01:20:35

If you think about your day to day and even your past, when these have come up in yourself,

01:20:43

this is a little more humbling and a lot more difficult to just skip past and just say,

01:20:50

oh, yeah, they're crazy.

01:20:52

And I don't want to deal with, I don't want to get into politics because they're all like,

01:20:55

you can do that.

01:20:56

But if you try to think about how you've been angry with someone or something that has caused

01:21:04

contempt in yourself, this gets a lot more real.

01:21:08

And I have thought of, as I've been talking here, it's like, I've thought about three

01:21:11

or four different examples, none of which I can share.

01:21:14

But I wish I could, because I would solidify this a little more.

01:21:18

But it's something that's a lot more difficult to process, I think.

01:21:23

Still a good thing to process, but not as simple to just skip past.

01:21:28

Yeah.

01:21:29

There's a lot to be dissected here.

01:21:32

One of the coolest visuals in the book, I think, is the Four Horsemen of contempt that she

01:21:40

talks about in this section, which she's got a cool graphic here, criticism, defensiveness,

01:21:48

contempt and stone walling, and then kind of the how to stop them.

01:21:56

So contempt, which is, I'm better than you, you're less than me, for example, you can

01:22:03

describe your own feelings and needs without putting yourself on a pedestal above somebody

01:22:09

else.

01:22:11

This is a lot of, I don't think anybody really lives their whole life in this section.

01:22:18

I'm sure there are people.

01:22:20

But the growth-minded people who listen to bookworm probably dip their toes in these

01:22:25

waters every once in a while, but can navigate their way out of them.

01:22:31

I feel like there are a lot of good tips for what to do when in this particular section.

01:22:38

For example, it's talking about anger, if that's a good emotional indicator, it's kind

01:22:43

of like the check engine light on your car.

01:22:46

So when you're feeling angry, she talks about that being a full contact action emotion,

01:22:52

you're ready to put up the dukes, then that's a good point to look inside and say, "Why

01:22:59

do I feel this way?"

01:23:01

And then again, that very effective metaphor of being on a journey and being a map maker,

01:23:10

you can realize, "Okay, I'm heading towards the bad place, and how do I make a course

01:23:14

correction and head towards a good place instead?"

01:23:17

Yeah, for sure.

01:23:18

Should we go to the last section?

01:23:20

Yes, let's do it.

01:23:23

So the last section is part 13, places we go to self-assess.

01:23:32

Just a couple of them here, pride, hubris, and humility.

01:23:37

Anything you want to talk about specifically from this section?

01:23:40

I think the only thing that really wants me, that I want to mention is just that pride

01:23:45

isn't necessarily bad because I think we have that connotation.

01:23:51

It's easy to say, "Don't be so prideful."

01:23:55

When people say that, there's always the connotation of you're puffing yourself up too

01:24:00

much, that sort of thing, pride comes before the fall.

01:24:04

The way she defines it, pride is a feeling of pleasure or celebration related to our

01:24:10

accomplishments or efforts.

01:24:12

I know that pride generally has a negative connotation.

01:24:15

There are some words that just have that tied to them, but it's hard to remember that there

01:24:22

are good forms of pride sometimes.

01:24:25

If you've done something and you've been successful at it, it's okay to be happy and glad that

01:24:32

you were able to achieve that.

01:24:36

I think it gets to be on the negative side when you start bringing it up all the time

01:24:41

and you make a point of making sure that other people know that you did a good job.

01:24:44

That starts to get into different territory when you start doing that.

01:24:48

Don't go that far with it, but just keep in mind, it is okay to be happy about success.

01:24:53

That's all right.

01:24:54

I think the point where things get negative with pride is when it flips from a trait to

01:25:06

a state, or vice versa, sorry, I messed those up.

01:25:09

State is the temporary condition.

01:25:11

Trait is the part of your personality.

01:25:13

If pride is a temporary celebration of something good that you've done, that's fine.

01:25:18

You need to celebrate your wins.

01:25:21

When you stay there, that's when I think it can translate into hubris, which is an inflated

01:25:27

sense of one's own innate abilities.

01:25:28

It's tied to the need for dominance, then two actual accomplishments, and you tend to

01:25:32

go back and celebrate the fact that, oh, I did this one thing one time.

01:25:37

Being willing to disconnect from something after a little wet.

01:25:43

Whether something good happens or something bad happens.

01:25:46

Grieve for a little while, celebrate for a little while, but then be willing to move on.

01:25:51

Set up camp there.

01:25:53

I think the most powerful thing for me in this entire book was one sentence from the

01:26:00

section on humility, which is kind of how she ends the book, or that part of the book

01:26:06

anyways.

01:26:07

There's a couple of things in the very end of it, kind of as a reference, but she has

01:26:12

this sentence that says, "I'm here to get it right, not to be right."

01:26:17

If I were to summarize my life in a single sentence, that's very appropriate.

01:26:23

I think I might steal that.

01:26:25

She mentions that as far as how she conducts her research.

01:26:31

The goal isn't to make your opinions and your hypotheses correct.

01:26:36

It's to figure out what is correct.

01:26:39

That's essentially what she's getting at there.

01:26:41

Absolutely.

01:26:42

That's a tough one to grapple with though, too.

01:26:45

Totally.

01:26:46

You have to be able to recognize that what you do and how you feel based on what you've

01:26:53

done, probably.

01:26:55

That does not define you as a person.

01:27:00

You're constantly trying to, I would hope, this is kind of my mindset.

01:27:07

I'm pretty sure it's your mindset.

01:27:09

Probably most of the people in the bookworms mindset that we have not arrived and we want

01:27:15

to continue to do better with what we have.

01:27:19

Keep going, keep growing, permanent beta, however you want to define it.

01:27:24

But none of us have achieved our final state and ultimately, that is a good thing.

01:27:30

Again, harkening back to the mindset book.

01:27:32

It's amazing how much of this stuff we read now harkens back to mindset.

01:27:37

Yeah, it's like the foundation that the others build on.

01:27:40

Yep.

01:27:41

Well, you got any action items from this book?

01:27:43

You better.

01:27:48

I don't even know.

01:27:49

It's so many places I could take it and so many things I could write down.

01:27:56

I've been sitting on this completed for about four or five days now.

01:28:02

It continues to come up regularly, things that I should be better at doing or understand

01:28:09

better.

01:28:10

None of which have to do with my kids, but I haven't nailed any of it down to this is

01:28:16

a thing I'm going to do other than just be aware of what's going on and be willing to

01:28:22

process emotions out loud.

01:28:24

But that's not something I do naturally.

01:28:27

So there's that piece there.

01:28:29

But I have no idea how to even make that an action item other than just do better.

01:28:33

So do better, I guess.

01:28:36

I don't know.

01:28:37

All right, adding it to the list for follow up.

01:28:41

We'll have two ridiculous action items to cover for follow up next time.

01:28:47

Joe's do better and then mine is never allow anyone to be humiliated in my presence.

01:28:53

That was not when I jotted down ahead of time because there really aren't any real action

01:28:57

items from this book.

01:29:00

But there's lots of things that you can recognize.

01:29:03

But next time I'm in this situation, this is the tactic and this is the one as we were

01:29:08

discussing it that really jumped out to me.

01:29:12

Like, I want to make sure this does not happen in any of the situations that I may find myself

01:29:18

in.

01:29:19

I feel like I tend to fight for people who feel this way anyways, just because based on

01:29:27

the emotional intelligence assessments I've taken, I tend to have high empathy.

01:29:32

So I do feel that when people are humiliated and I want to alleviate that.

01:29:38

But this is a good reminder.

01:29:41

Even if you try to do it but it doesn't happen, keep fighting for it.

01:29:46

Don't let it end in that state.

01:29:49

We have this phrase that we use with our kids always, "end on a win."

01:29:53

You take them somewhere and they're having fun and they're getting crazy.

01:29:56

That's about the time I look at my wife and we've got this signal, you know, like, "wrap

01:30:01

it up."

01:30:02

Because if we stay here too much longer, somebody's going to get hurt and they'll be tears and

01:30:09

that just ruins the whole experience, you know?

01:30:12

Yep.

01:30:13

Yep.

01:30:14

So.

01:30:15

All right.

01:30:16

Style and rating, this is my book.

01:30:19

So I go first.

01:30:22

The style I mentioned a little bit at the beginning, this is totally unique to just about

01:30:26

everything that we have ever read for Bookworm but it is also totally awesome.

01:30:33

It's definitely get the hardcover version.

01:30:36

Don't just listen to it.

01:30:37

Don't get the ebook version because it is a beautiful book.

01:30:43

It is a reference work.

01:30:44

It's almost like a coffee table type book.

01:30:46

Even the cover looks great but the visual design is awesome.

01:30:50

There's a lot of original graphics.

01:30:51

It's a very pleasing, fairly minimalistic, I would say, visual style for a lot of the

01:30:58

diagrams and the comics and things that are in here but really, really well done.

01:31:03

The other unique thing about this, as I mentioned at the beginning, is it's a combination of

01:31:07

the research that she's done which is a ton and personal experiences and stories which

01:31:14

I feel are very, very effective in helping you understand and even feel some of these

01:31:22

emotions.

01:31:23

Now, that being said, you have to recognize that you might be wrecked when you pick this

01:31:29

book up.

01:31:30

If you're just going to grab this book and crank through it like we did, you're going

01:31:37

to uncover some things and that's not a bad thing but you have to be willing to wrestle

01:31:43

through some of that stuff.

01:31:45

If you're looking for a positive pick-me-up type book, this is not the one but if you

01:31:52

are embracing the continuous improvement, personal growth and you're looking for something

01:31:58

that will give you a more extensive vocabulary for describing and dealing with these emotions

01:32:03

which is important because as she described back in the introduction, that's part of the

01:32:06

healing process, then this is absolutely a phenomenal book.

01:32:11

Here's a reason this is like number one bestseller everywhere that you look.

01:32:17

Brene Brown, I feel is like the only person who could have written this book.

01:32:23

So I haven't read a whole lot of her other books.

01:32:27

We did cover Daring Greatly back in the day and this does not read like any of the other

01:32:34

books that she has written probably would be my guest.

01:32:38

It's like little snippets of things but it very quickly moves on to the next thing because

01:32:45

there's 87 different emotions that she's trying to cover here.

01:32:50

I would definitely rate this five stars though.

01:32:53

I feel like this is one of those books that for people who listen to bookworm, this is

01:32:59

an essential piece for your library and it is something that you will not only benefit

01:33:06

from reading through, it is something that you will probably go back to again and again.

01:33:13

Just knowing some of the things that are in here, I feel like the next time I find myself

01:33:19

in one of those places, I will probably reach for this book and go back and reread that section

01:33:25

and be like, "Oh yeah, these are the things that got me to this place and this is the

01:33:30

way out."

01:33:32

And I feel that's going to have phenomenal value.

01:33:36

I mean, if there is a single book from the entire bookworm library that we have read,

01:33:43

that if you were to somehow figure out the amount of future value per dollar that you

01:33:51

paid, this one probably is off the charts, the top one on that list.

01:33:57

I don't think there's anything in here that specifically, like an action item that is

01:34:02

going to change my life, but I feel that some total of all of the things that she discussed

01:34:08

definitely will.

01:34:10

Time be told, whether that proves true or not, but it just feels like one of those things

01:34:16

that's going to pay dividends for the rest of your life once you understand.

01:34:21

There's a whole bunch more here than Mad, Sad, and Glad.

01:34:24

Yeah, by far.

01:34:26

I think that when I picked this up, one of the first things I tend to do thanks to how

01:34:33

to read a book, thank you, Adler, and I looked through the table of contents at the beginning

01:34:39

and just saw places we go win and saw that that's how she had each part laid out.

01:34:46

It's like, "Oh, well that's what she means by Atlas of the heart."

01:34:49

Well, then underneath of that, you see all the emotions and I started flipping through

01:34:53

the book and was seeing some of the definitions before I even started reading it.

01:34:57

I remember setting it down.

01:34:59

I had a cup of tea with me at the time and I took a sip of the tea and I looked out the

01:35:04

window and I told one of my daughters.

01:35:08

I don't remember which one it was.

01:35:10

This one's going to be hard to read, not from a difficulty of writing stance because

01:35:16

Brown does an amazing job of telling stories, of laying out the facts, the research.

01:35:25

She's amazing at that and can do some pretty extensive explanations in very short spans

01:35:32

for paragraphs and sentences and such.

01:35:34

She does an excellent job at writing.

01:35:37

You can tell she's spent a lot of time with this book and you can tell this is, I don't

01:35:42

want to say this is one of her life's work pieces because I don't know that she would

01:35:46

say that, but it feels that way to me.

01:35:49

She's done so much over the last 25, maybe approaching 30 years of research that she

01:35:56

has put into this, that it's easy to see how this is a culmination of a lot in her life

01:36:03

and it's very easy to read from a technical stance.

01:36:08

It's very difficult to read from an emotional stance, I find.

01:36:11

Again, that's me.

01:36:12

Like Mike said, you're going to get wrecked.

01:36:14

You don't do this for fun.

01:36:16

You do this because it's good for you.

01:36:18

But as Mike is saying, you absolutely need to pick this up.

01:36:23

It is most certainly a 5.0.

01:36:24

I don't know how I could not join you on that, but this is something you have to pick up

01:36:30

and I will echo Mike's sentiments.

01:36:33

Skip the Kindle, skip the audiobook.

01:36:34

You got to pick up the hardback.

01:36:38

The one and only complaint I have with that hardback is it's a little weird to write in

01:36:42

because they used a little more of a glossy page than they normally would in a book,

01:36:46

which makes it a little more difficult to underline a write-in, which I tend to do.

01:36:51

So just be aware of that, but that's a fairly minor point because it's not actually that

01:36:56

bad.

01:36:58

It's just a little bit less easy than others.

01:37:01

So anyway, that's the only thing I have to say against it, but that is it.

01:37:06

Outside of that, this is one that you made the comment, like maybe this goes on a coffee

01:37:10

table.

01:37:11

But I was processing that.

01:37:13

It's actually a really good idea because this is something atlas of the heart.

01:37:17

It's one of those things that will draw you in.

01:37:19

It's like, "What do you mean by that?"

01:37:21

And you pick it up and then you can start flipping through it.

01:37:23

It's easy for someone to catch up on something very quickly.

01:37:27

Like, "Oh, what does she say about anger?"

01:37:29

And you can flip over there and you can get the gist of what she's talking about in the

01:37:33

span of a minute.

01:37:34

It does not take long to get the definition and figure out what she's talking about.

01:37:38

If you're just skimming, you can get a lot just from skimming this book, but it's going

01:37:43

to take some time to actually read it emotionally, I think.

01:37:46

So please pick this up.

01:37:49

You got to read this one.

01:37:50

If you haven't read other bookworm books and you just use us to skip the reading part,

01:37:55

don't do that on this one because there's a lot we did not cover.

01:37:58

There's two ones we didn't talk about and we just skipped over.

01:38:02

So you'll definitely get value out of it.

01:38:04

So for sure, pick this one up.

01:38:07

Alright, so let's put Atlas of the Heart on the shelf.

01:38:12

What's next, Joe?

01:38:13

Yeah, so the one up next is "How to Change" by Katie Milkman.

01:38:19

And this comes on my side, kind of off the heels of one of your last books, which was

01:38:23

the 4,000 weeks.

01:38:24

It's like, "Okay, well, how do we think about what we're doing for change and what are

01:38:30

good ways to do this?"

01:38:31

You and I have flipped categories here recently.

01:38:34

I don't know what that is.

01:38:36

So trying to figure out, "Okay, well, what's some of the science say around, like, how

01:38:39

do you make changes to your life?"

01:38:41

That's kind of what I'm going for here.

01:38:43

And then after that, what are you doing, Mike?

01:38:46

After that, I'm going to force you to help me complete my action item for this time and

01:38:52

collect more models and read through personal Socrates by Mark Champagne.

01:38:58

This is a book I had mentioned previously.

01:39:00

I had picked it up.

01:39:01

I gifted it to people, I've started it, but I have not gone through it completely.

01:39:06

But I feel this is going to lead to some great discussion.

01:39:12

Again, not your typical bookworm book, couple of sections, 10 chapters, et cetera.

01:39:19

So we'll have to get creative in how we go through this one.

01:39:23

But I feel like the discussion from this is going to be great.

01:39:26

And from the moment I cracked it open, I knew we were going to talk about this at some time.

01:39:31

And having talked through the year of recalibration and the action item from this time, and especially

01:39:39

the discussion after this and embracing the things that we typically don't naturally gravitate

01:39:47

towards, I feel like this is the right time for this book as well.

01:39:52

For me personally, but I also think you're going to really enjoy it.

01:39:55

So that's what we'll do next.

01:39:57

All right, you got any gap books?

01:39:59

No, I've been busy with insurance.

01:40:02

And now I get the honors of trying to buy a vehicle.

01:40:04

So that's what I'm in the middle of.

01:40:06

Any extra waking moment that I have, that's where it's been going lately.

01:40:10

So no, unfortunately.

01:40:13

Fair enough.

01:40:14

You?

01:40:15

I do have a gap book which I have started, but then put down because I did not like it.

01:40:23

And that is the pleasures of reading in an age of distraction by Alan Jacobs.

01:40:28

That's kind of disappointed.

01:40:29

I didn't enjoy this one, but just the, I got like three, fours of the way through it and

01:40:35

just couldn't finish it.

01:40:37

Just the style of it did not really resonate for me.

01:40:42

He's a professor and he's kind of extolling the virtues of the Mortimer Adler book at the

01:40:49

beginning, but then it kind of drifts into a whole bunch of personal opinion that didn't

01:40:56

really hit with me.

01:40:58

So that brings up an important point though, which is why I wanted to talk about it a

01:41:03

little bit is that it, for bookworm, we pick books and we have to read them because we're

01:41:08

going to have a discussion on the entire book.

01:41:11

And there are some books that I'm very grateful for having muscled through, but there are so

01:41:15

many books in the world.

01:41:17

Yes.

01:41:18

So many books that I want to read that if one just isn't doing it for you, be willing

01:41:25

to let it go and go read something else because what will happen if you continue to force

01:41:30

yourself to read books that you don't like is that you're just going to not like reading.

01:41:36

And eventually you're going to stop reading.

01:41:39

And that's not a good place.

01:41:41

Yeah, that's fair.

01:41:43

Or if you muscled through things, you challenge yourself to stick with things when they're

01:41:49

difficult or you potentially learn something that you weren't expecting to learn and it

01:41:54

challenges your viewpoints.

01:41:55

Like there's that side of it as well.

01:41:57

So just because you don't agree with something or don't like it doesn't necessarily mean

01:42:01

it's a blanket stop, but just like you got to float that line a little bit.

01:42:07

It's not a easy answer.

01:42:08

Yeah, you got to temper it.

01:42:09

So if you're reading something you don't like then go read something you do like and that's

01:42:15

kind of his advice from that book, which is kind of interesting.

01:42:19

Maybe that's where I felt the permission to set that one down.

01:42:23

But just was not doing it for me.

01:42:25

It's like a collection of essays and just the whole style sounds very, I don't know,

01:42:30

I don't want to be negative.

01:42:31

Maybe other people really like that.

01:42:33

That's okay.

01:42:34

We'll just leave it there.

01:42:35

Okay.

01:42:36

It's kind of a challenging one.

01:42:38

I did finish it, but that was I don't remember why it's a fairly short book.

01:42:43

It's not super long.

01:42:44

It is.

01:42:45

Yeah.

01:42:46

Yeah.

01:42:47

All right.

01:42:48

So thank you to everybody who showed up and attended live.

01:42:50

We actually have a pretty happening discussion in the YouTube chat here.

01:42:55

So if you want to join us there'll be links to all that stuff in the show notes.

01:43:00

Joe always tweets out from the Bookworm FM account on Twitter when we are going to

01:43:05

go live and has the link.

01:43:07

So thanks to everybody who did that.

01:43:10

Thanks especially to the Bookworm Club Premium members who pay five bucks a month to help

01:43:15

us keep the lights on.

01:43:17

Really means a lot to both Joe and I.

01:43:18

It's the only way that we make money from the podcast and it's not a lot of money, but

01:43:23

it pays for the servers and buys us a couple of books.

01:43:28

So thank you so much for those of you who support our work directly.

01:43:31

The link to do that I believe is bookworm.fm/membership.

01:43:35

Again, link in the show notes.

01:43:37

When you do sign up, you get access to a few perks.

01:43:41

A wallpaper that I created, some gap episodes that Joe's recorded over the years.

01:43:48

And probably the big thing at this point, I assume you're okay with me framing it that

01:43:53

way because I do update this periodically is all of the book notes that I do take.

01:43:58

I upload those as both PDF files and my node files.

01:44:01

So you can use my node like I do to take notes on books.

01:44:03

You can download those and use that as the jumping off point for taking the book notes

01:44:09

yourself, which I never anticipated that people would actually want to do, but get a

01:44:15

lot of requests for that kind of stuff.

01:44:16

So all that stuff is in the club.

01:44:19

And again, if you want to join bookworm.fm/membership.

01:44:23

Yeah, you're not out of line with the whole.

01:44:25

The big perk is Mike's stuff, all his notes.

01:44:28

By far, that's the best part of the club for sure.

01:44:32

So definitely go join if you're interested in that.

01:44:34

And if you're one of those amazing people who's reading along like Martin, you need to pick

01:44:38

up how to change by Katie Milkman.

01:44:41

And we'll go through that one with you in a couple of weeks.