Bookworm Transcripts

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This episode of Bookworm is sponsored by HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit.

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Go to hellofresh.com/bookworm65 and use the code Bookworm65

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It's a big day, Mike Schmitz.

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It is.

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Very big day.

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It's a very big day. This is something that we've been, I

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guess, discussing, plotting, planning for

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how long. Oh, man. It's been a while.

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Yeah. It's been a year.

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Well, probably, probably at least a year.

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And we've done a complete flip-flop on this topic, by the way, over the years.

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From where we started.

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Yes.

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Basically, what we're talking about is ads,

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because whenever we first started Bookworm, we had this whole mentality of,

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let's try to do this without ads.

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And then as time went on, we were like, "Well, maybe it would be a good idea,

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but maybe not."

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And then maybe it would be a good idea, but there's some reasons not to do it.

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And then it's like, "Yeah, we should do this."

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So, today's the day, I believe, if I understand all the stuff correctly.

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Unless something goes wrong between now and next Friday.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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So, we are making that move.

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And we have had a decent conversation even today about what does that mean for all sorts of things.

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So, there's lots and lots and lots of behind the scenes detail stuff that goes with it.

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But the short of the long is that we are putting ads on Bookworm to help with the monetization piece of that.

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And as part of that, it also means we have to have the conversation around,

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what does that mean for Bookworm memberships?

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And ultimately, it means we get to offer a pretty sweet perk to people who are members

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and that if you don't want the ads, you can get the ad-free version of the show,

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just like you're used to right inside the Bookworm Club membership.

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So, that much we know right now.

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There's some other stuff where we're potentially moving the community to a different setup,

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but that'll all go along for the ride from what we can tell.

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So, we'll get to that part when we get there.

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But for now, it's a big day.

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It's a big day for Bookworm.

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It is.

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And I mentioned we've gone 180 on this because after we shared publicly our hesitation with the ads,

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we basically got a bunch of Bookworm listeners who said,

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"If it helps support the show, then 100% you should do it."

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So, we've started, well, this was years ago that we started looking for a partner to help us

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get some ads and we started working with Backbeat Media,

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Dave Hamilton, who I've met at MaxTock.

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I think maybe you've met him too.

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Is that the way you were there?

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Yeah, just briefly, yeah.

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Yeah, so I felt comfortable working with him because I've met him in person

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and they're starting to book some ads for the show, which is awesome.

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And side note on that, I guess, it's easier to do that now because the podcast has actually grown quite a bit

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in the last couple months.

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So, thank you to everyone who has shared the podcast with people.

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Future is bright for Bookworm.

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And I just want to thank everybody who supported the podcast over the years here at the beginning.

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Yeah, it's been very humbling, I would say, to see...

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We could see all the analytics behind the scenes, right?

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So, you get to see all the download numbers and blah, blah, blah.

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It's a double-edged sword, for sure.

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It can show you some good things.

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But you can always find the negatives that come in, the mix there.

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But honestly, it's awesome to see how many new people are finding Bookworm.

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So, if you're one of those new people, welcome aboard.

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This is pretty sweet to have you here with us.

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So, we're grateful to have all of our listeners join us along for this ride.

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So, I'm glad that we've got enough people interested in that that we're able to earn a little bit of an income off of that

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and help continue to pay all the hosting fees and buy the books and the coffees and teas and all the things.

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So, thanks. You guys are awesome. Really appreciate it.

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Yes.

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And what Joe was alluding to with the ad free version, we're still figuring out the logistics of this.

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But this will probably be a separate feed that you can subscribe to in the Bookworm Club Premium section.

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So, there'll be the paywall there, the people who actually support it financially.

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And one of the perks that we'll add to that in addition to the Mind Node files and the Gap Book episodes

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and things like that is the feed where we just export the same version of the show minus the ads.

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And from what I can tell of the sponsors that we're going to be getting, these are not going to be lengthy.

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They're going to be products we believe in have personal experience with that kind of thing.

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So, if you don't care, just feel free to keep the current feed.

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But if you are a Bookworm Club Premium member and you want the ad free version, by the time this goes live,

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I think we'll have that figured out and should be a URL that you can subscribe to.

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And once we figure out how that works, it'll be in the show notes.

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So, there you go. We've got some time between here and there.

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Did you get an action item before we even got to action items?

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I know. This is either super exciting or frustrating.

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I'm probably a little bit both. So, yes, action items, that's the name of the game.

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Speaking of which, we have a whole slew of them here that we need to follow up on

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because the last book hit us hard and heavy.

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Oh, by the way, I should mention the Easter egg with the last one.

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Oh, yeah.

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Yes, you need to explain this.

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Yeah, and shout out here to Joshua who put together the Bookworm stats page.

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He's the one who kind of gave me the idea for this because he has a page which will link in the show notes

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that shows all of the ratings for all the episodes that we've ever done.

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And the golden books are the ones that we have both given five stars to.

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And there's a piece at the bottom of that website, the trivia, which says how many golden books there have been

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and when the last one was.

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So, I took that idea and I had my son, Joshua, create a metal decal sort of a thing that is kind of similar

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to the old golden books that you would see, like the kids' books.

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The little seal that you would see on the cover of those.

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So, he designed one and I put it on the Bookworm logo and that was the chapter art for the

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style and rating section of the last episode that we both gave, how to calm your mind by Chris Bailey five stars.

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So, I've been waiting for the next golden book so we can use that and it just happened to be last episode.

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So, if you missed that, go check the chapter artwork in your POG catcher of choice for episode 163.

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That was super fun.

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Mike texted me and said, "There's an Easter egg."

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He didn't go find it like, "Okay."

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Knowing the timing is like it's either at the beginning or the end.

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It's like, "Okay, I got nothing.

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I'm five minutes in and there's nothing here."

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He's like, "Okay, let me jump the end."

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Oh, that's cool.

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That's fun.

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Super fun.

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All right, we got a lot to get through here.

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So, we've got a couple of these that we were both going to do.

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One of those was meditate, which I did a couple times.

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I think I'm going to be continuing this.

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That's partially because of today's book, which we'll get to.

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But I don't think I'm far enough in on this to be able to have any form of concrete opinions per my history with this.

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Knowing that typically it takes a little while for me to start noticing effects from something like this.

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So, I'm reserving judgment at the moment, Mike.

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What were your results on this?

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I'm mixed.

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Okay.

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I'm trying a bunch of different apps for this, but I have been doing it more consistently, primarily because the last couple of weeks have been pretty stressful for me with the day job.

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In addition to all the other things that I do, I'm also leading the hiring efforts.

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I have done 30 interviews at this point for our next growth marketer, and that's a lot.

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I don't envy you at all on that.

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Yeah.

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Well, I'm definitely not extroverted, so it is draining.

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But I actually like being part of this process.

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I've got a background with the family business and emotional intelligence, and so we're using those EQ assessments as part of the process and kind of putting the emphasis on the culture fit over the technical skills at the beginning, which I made it, I think, a lot easier to whittle people down.

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Got a bunch of qualified candidates, which is pretty awesome.

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So pretty happy with the results.

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However, yeah, it's been a lot of time.

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I don't like just showing up and talking.

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I want to read through the resumes, go through all the information that they provide ahead of time and really know what I'm talking about when I show up for the interviews.

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So a lot of prep, a lot of time actually doing the interviews, but that has led to me feeling overwhelmed and trying to practice mindfulness meditation more frequently.

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Did you take the burnout inventory, Mazlok burnout inventory?

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I did.

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Okay.

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I'll let go.

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I've got my results right here.

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Okay.

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So I'm pretty close to burnout.

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All right.

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I'm not sure if you want to share results on here or not, but I failed to get it taken, so I'm not going to be able to do that.

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I'll have to do it next time.

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Gotcha.

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You're cool.

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I don't mind doing it.

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It's really interesting and I'll share it just because I think it will be illuminating for other people who are considering doing something similar.

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So the inventory that I took, it gives you your percentile scores in three different areas, exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy.

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Okay.

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So exhaustion is just like the overwhelm that you feel from primarily your work environment.

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Cynicism is the belief that what you do matters.

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Sounds bad, but basically like, do you feel like when you try to do something, it will have the desired effect?

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It's best way to describe it, I think.

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And professional efficacy, this is like how well you can deal with the stress based on the techniques and things that Chris had talked about in the last book.

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So my exhaustion percentile is 94.

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My cynicism score is 96.

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My efficacy is 35.

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That one being low, that actually means that I'm pretty good at dealing with it.

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So my takeaway from this is that my, again, this is partly my own making.

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All right, I'm not trying to project like it's all my jobs fault.

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The environment though, and the mixture of the environment plus me means that this is very, very stressful for me.

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I'm doing a pretty good job of dealing with it.

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However, those scores being so high for exhaustion and cynicism, that is a huge red flag for me.

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I think I mentioned last time that I actually did experience a mild panic attack.

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Yeah, you mentioned that.

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Yeah, so that actually occurred after I had taken this inventory.

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I took this right away when I first heard about it.

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And so I saw this and I was like, "Uh oh."

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And then like a week or two later, it happened.

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So that is evidence, I think, that it lends credibility to everything Chris talked about in my opinion.

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And there's definitely things I want to do to change this, trying to take a little bit more agency and ownership over that and just trying to chill when it comes to it.

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When it comes to the work that I do, I'm very results oriented, results driven.

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If I don't see the results, I get frustrated.

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And that's kind of where I'm at right now, is like, there's no real clear connection between what I do day to day and driving the results that my position is responsible for.

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It takes time.

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So, yeah, it's kind of frustrating, but this assessment is really great and very illuminating, I think.

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I would recommend probably everybody take this because what it can do is show you when you are about to crash before you actually do that.

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So you don't get completely destroyed by it.

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You can start to mitigate it and practice some of the stuff that Chris was talking about.

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Totally fair. I should probably take this then.

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I would recommend it.

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Yes, I have it on my list and I put it on the list for follow up for next time too.

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So, I should get that done.

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I've got a couple more here. Three more?

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Yeah, three more. One of them was my evening journaling, doing that in my notebook.

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I've been doing that. I think we'll talk about that one a little bit more even yet today's book, but it is fascinating to me if you're willing to sit down and write about how you feel the day went.

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You can have journaling prompts. You can have the questions you're going to ask. You can do all of that. That's fine.

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I'm not arguing with that at all. I'm just saying, if you're going to just like, here's how the day went.

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Here's how I feel about it. Here's where I got frustrated. Here's where things went really well.

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This is what got me excited. This is what movie sad.

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Just detailing that out forces the awareness of what you're experiencing throughout the day.

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I find that doing that means that I'm able to process how I'm doing a lot quicker than when you just kind of go through the numbness of, I don't know, today was kind of rough.

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But if I actually sat down and process the entire day, what you realize is, no, the last hour was rough, but the previous remaining part of the day was perfectly fine.

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The other 15 hours of the day were fine, but that one hour was really bad.

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It just happens to be at the very end when you happen to be doing this journaling process.

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It can kind of skew your view of the entire day and how it went. That is one that I feel like is super helpful.

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I kind of wish I'd been doing that a lot earlier. This is how this goes, right? The other two that I've got here, they kind of go together.

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One is to not use my phone to fill gaps. We're so prone to doing.

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And then the other was to do a dopamine reduction, basically getting away from things that tend to feed that unnecessarily.

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And both of these, again, they kind of go hand in hand, but it is interesting to me how many more things you'll notice when you're not using that phone to fill time.

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And it's also fascinating to me when other people notice that you're not doing that.

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That was a side effect that I was not prepared for, but simple things like everybody, if you're waiting in line for the bathroom, everybody pulls out their phone while they're waiting.

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If you don't, it's almost weird to be that person who doesn't.

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Because then it kind of feels like you're just watching people go in and out of the bathroom, which is kind of awkward.

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Don't be awkward in that way.

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But you know what I mean? People notice when you're not doing it.

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And then that leads to some weird conversations at times, but at the same time, it's like, I'm okay with that.

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I'm okay with being the odd person out in this scenario.

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And it does mean that they're slowly becomes less of a dependence on that time filler of the phone.

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So I feel like that's a good habit to build, and I'm hopeful that I'm able to continue that habit, because that's a tough one that I still fight.

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Like every time I find myself waiting, it's like, I find myself like reaching for my pocket right away.

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It's like, okay, don't, don't do it. Don't do it.

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So that's where I'm at. You've got a lot more here than that, though.

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I do. We can move quickly through these because I failed at many of them.

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Okay.

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Well, as I mentioned, day job stuff has been kind of nuts, which means that the transition time block on my schedule did not happen, even if it had been there wasn't going to work.

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Great. Stress inventory. This is, I guess, technically done, but it's not done.

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I started it. It exists.

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I'm keeping tabs on the things that are stressing me out. I'm taking notes, basically.

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I plan to review this, my next personal retreat, and see if those things have been resolved.

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I took the burnout inventory, but that was done before you read the book last time.

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Make a list of things that I savor. I've started to do this too, but there's not a whole lot on this list.

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So again, like not really done, but started and I want to review that.

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Do adopamine fast. This has not happened yet.

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I do think this is something I want to do at some point, but when you're talking about reaching for the phone, I do have to share.

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I used to have that feeling all the time.

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The one thing that basically completely eliminated that for me was Elon Musk turning off support for third party Twitter clients.

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This sounds ridiculous, but I'm messing around a little bit with Mastodon, and it's just not, I don't think it's for me.

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Twitter used to be because I like the chronological timeline and I like the community that was there.

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The whole tech side has gone to Mastodon, and that's cool. I still like some of that stuff, but that's not everybody.

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All the creative stuff primarily still happens on Twitter. However, Twitter is an absolutely horrible experience if you can't use that chronological timeline.

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So I tried it for like a day or two with the Twitter app, and I was like, "This is not working for me."

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And pretty much overnight, I was like, "I'm done."

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I still will go on there occasionally and look for mentions and messages and things, because I've been doing the social writing for a while,

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and I still get people who will stumble upon my obsidian thread and stuff and apply it that way.

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I like doing that. I'll probably still figure out a way to write and publish to Twitter, not using Twitter, which is cool.

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That's kind of the ideal scenario, right? You don't consume any of it.

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Yep. But yeah, so big dent in the dopamine recently.

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Deliberately choose analog tasks to travel to digital analog divide.

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I don't have any examples of this that have won recently, although I have really leaned into the Onyx books.

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The tab ultra, I mentioned that in the last episode. I have since written up, I think it's like 3,000 words on it with some pictures for the sweet setup.

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I'll put a link to that in the show notes, but I love this device.

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So that's not entirely accurate with that description for that action item, but kind of that's how it's manifested.

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Meditating, we talked a little bit about that, and I am working on that, and then adding a journal entry on how the day went when I shut down.

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This has been a complete failure, but it's kind of spurred the type of entry.

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I don't know. I should say it's a complete failure. There is no additional entry being added.

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However, I have had this in mind when I do my journal entries at the end of the day.

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So the original idea was that this would be coupled with that transition time block on my schedule, and that's when I would write it.

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It hasn't happened once, but I am adding more entries at the end of the day when I'm doing my journaling routine with the Onyx books.

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Does that make sense?

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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So yeah, mixed bag, but I'm happy with the results.

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Okay.

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There's a lot there.

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I feel like there's a lot of things we need to carry over in for next time.

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I don't know. I mean, I don't really...

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I think we just want to let them die off.

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I'm okay letting the transition time block die off for now.

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I'm okay letting the dopamine fast die off for now.

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Maybe revisit that at some point.

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And then the journal entry on how my day went, I'll let that die off as well.

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But there's been positive traction in the journaling space for me.

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I consider that a win even if it's not what I had in mind when I created that action item.

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Totally fair.

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All right.

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On that note, we should move into today's book before it gets to be too late here, which is...

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Why has nobody told me this before?

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By Dr. Julie Smith, who we are affectionately referring to as the TikTok doctor, because I first learned about Dr. Julie Smith through Instagram reels,

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because she was making like these psychology short bits videos, which I think, if I understand her,

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just the same things she posts on TikTok, which is where she's actually known,

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which I'm not really a part of at all, because TikTok.

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But regardless, she took a lot of her learnings from that process and then wrote a book about these little short snippets of things that people have told her.

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She was like, "Why has no one explained this to me before?"

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So she made a book out of all of these little things.

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And that is what we're holding in our hands.

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So this is a very new book, just released last year, Memory Serves.

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Yes, it should be.

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And we've got a bank of, what is it, eight sections?

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Yeah, it's got eight sections to it, a little bit of an intro, which I kind of explained just now.

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But there's a lot here, and I think that there's a lot of questions to work through on each of these sections,

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which will be a fun conversation.

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But what were your initial thoughts on the TikTok, Dr. Mike?

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An interesting premise.

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I think I like the approach to the book without getting too much into the style and rating.

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It was really intriguing to me that there were all these little sections, and it was kind of a reference guide.

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It reminded me a lot of Atlas of the Heart by Renee Brown when we went through that one.

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Like a reference work, not necessarily a read from beginning to end.

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I have no desire to engage with TikTok whatsoever.

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So I kind of anticipated that her style was going to rub me the wrong way.

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And that's completely unfair to TikTok because I haven't spent enough time there to really understand exactly what it is.

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However, I'm okay with that bias, and I don't really care.

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I think that's fair, because I've spent a little bit of time on TikTok.

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And like Blake says in the chat, adults see TikTok videos through Instagram.

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So basically what I've learned is the TikToks that do really well on TikTok get posted to Instagram, and those are the ones I watch.

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So I'm terrible. That's what that means.

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I don't think so.

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Let's jump in here because I feel like there's a lot we could cover.

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Some of these we might go deep on. Some of them were probably going to just cover very briefly.

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But the introduction of this is basically what I was explaining.

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There is this Dr. Julie Smith is a clinical psychologist and is taking a lot of her experience in consulting with people and her experience at school and through what she's learned through the social media videos that she creates.

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She has learned through that process these little quick bites and these things that people don't necessarily have as a foundation of understanding their own brain and how things operate.

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And how does mood impact that? How is motivation a piece of that?

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And we walk through all of these, and we will.

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But she's essentially taking the experience of one of her particular, and it's a handful of her clients who basically said, you know, the stuff that you're explaining to me is seemingly very straightforward and very basic.

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Why has no one told me this before? And that's where that question comes from.

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It is one of her sessions with a client and her just realizing things are going to be hard, but it's okay, I can get through this.

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And that's kind of the basis for what kick started the process that she started of making these videos, which then grew significantly to the point where she wrote the book.

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So the introduction is kind of laying out that particular groundwork for where did this book even come from?

00:26:15

Yeah, I like the story that she tells in the introduction, and really the title comes directly from something that one of her clients had said to her.

00:26:25

So that's a real effective opener for the, what is it, 40 chapters, almost 36.

00:26:35

Yep, 36 different chapters that are going to follow addressing lots of little micro topics based on the short form videos that she's created.

00:26:45

Yeah, so there's 36 chapters here, eight parts that we'll cover.

00:26:50

And obviously we're not covering every chapter, which is why I put the parts down, because they're kind of like big chapters, if you will.

00:26:57

And we'll kind of walk through those.

00:27:00

So without further ado, here we go. Part one, which is titled on dark places.

00:27:08

And there are, what is it, five chapters here, understanding low mood, mood pitfalls to watch out for, things that help, how to turn bad days into better days, how to get the basics right.

00:27:22

And the gist of this is that, you know, everybody has bad days, everybody has bad moods, everybody has difficult things that they're working through.

00:27:34

And what do you do about it?

00:27:37

And to me, that's kind of the real basis for what the whole book is like, here's this thing.

00:27:44

And what happens if it doesn't go well and here's what you can do about it. And there's a whole bunch of things I feel like I could cover here.

00:27:52

But the ones that I feel like are the most impactful, at least to me, is just understanding that one of the best things you can do when you are in a low mood is like get up and move.

00:28:06

And this is like dumb simple stuff, right? If I'm feeling terrible, sitting on the couch eating chips watching a football game is not going to help.

00:28:14

If anything is going to make it worse. So getting my butt out of the chair and physically moving from a neurological stance can help improve that mood and can help, like, get your spirits up, if you will.

00:28:28

Again, there's a whole bunch of other things that she's talking about, but something like that simple, we don't really think about it that way. Like, generally, it's like, I don't feel very good, so I'm going to go lay down and try to rest.

00:28:39

No, that's the opposite of what you should do. Get up and keep doing something because otherwise you're just going to continue to wallow in the mess and it's just going to get worse.

00:28:48

Yeah, this is going to be a tough one to discuss because you're right. There's a lot of like really basic stuff here. I will say at the beginning, like the part one on dark places, and then she ends part eight on a meaningful life.

00:29:05

So it kind of does this whole big circle from negative to positive. And I found that I didn't really enjoy picking this book up at the beginning.

00:29:21

So, I think the only reasons why she started the way that she did here. I think it's important that she mentions at the beginning in chapter one that many people struggle with these low days and they don't tell anybody.

00:29:37

So, I think when I get up and move, like, that's not new information. I think if there's a takeaway for me with this first section, it's from chapter three when she's talking about mindfulness, because she frames this a little bit differently

00:30:02

in how it's like a positive cycle. We've heard this before in terms of mindfulness meditation that it's not about how good you are at it, the fact that your mind keeps wandering like that's natural, right? But she talks about how practicing mindfulness increases our ability to be mindful and she defines mindfulness is choosing which

00:30:19

thoughts to shine the spotlight on. That's a cool visual that really clicked with me and how metacognition is thought about your thoughts. That's getting into the brain science stuff a little bit, which that part fascinates me.

00:30:36

And it occurred to me as I was thinking about this that we don't do enough thinking about our thinking. Page 36, she also mentions the power of any thought is in how much we buy into it. So, recognizing that you're going to have thoughts that are not going to be helpful.

00:30:54

And then the real important thing is like, what do you do with those? How much credence do you give them? How much weight? How much do you let them impact you? And I can definitely do a little bit better with that.

00:31:05

Yeah, that was one of the notes I wrote about chapter three was just that this might be the first time that I had somebody explain to me via book in this particular case. And this is why I mentioned meditation is something I'm going to continue with.

00:31:23

This is the first time I've realized that meditation can be more about metacognition, understanding my own thoughts as opposed to simply peacefulness and calm mind state. And that's not really the point. But basically once that clicked, I was like, wait a second.

00:31:43

They've been saying this for a long time. It just didn't click for me until she said that, that it's more about understanding what it is that you're thinking about, like thinking about what I'm thinking, like what you're saying, which is nonsense for some people.

00:31:57

But I don't believe I've ever fully connected those dots on meditation. And that's why I'm going to continue that particular process. I've been trying to do it for the last, I think, three days now, just trying to be repetitive about it.

00:32:15

I know that it doesn't work well for me to do it first things in the morning, just because I'm already kind of in a pretty good state at that point.

00:32:22

So I've been trying to do it right after lunch, because at that point, my brain's a thousand miles an hour and there's so many things going on that I need to, like that's the point at which I need to slow down.

00:32:31

That was another thing that I kind of got from this is like, you know, you can have those highs and lows even sub day. Like we tend to think of like, that was a good day. That was a bad day. That was a medium day.

00:32:42

That's how we refer to it. But those can come up and down within the hours. So you may have a couple hours where it's rough. You may have a couple hours where it's really good. And then the rest of the day was kind of neutral.

00:32:58

But when it hits those negative points, like that's where breathing exercises or doing the meditation stuff, like in that moment, it can help change that over. So that was one of the pieces here.

00:33:11

And that's in chapter four is like how to turn bad days into better days. Like that's some of the stuff that she's referring to.

00:33:16

You know, you got to do something. Just sitting on it's not going to eliminate that problem. So you got to move. Like you got to do something about it.

00:33:25

Yep, I agree. I don't think I have anything else to add to this first section, but that does kind of lead into the next one.

00:33:35

Yeah. Yeah. So then the next part here is referred to as on motivation. So welcome to the motivation space, where we get to talk about how to motivate yourself to be motivated.

00:33:49

And this is again where she starts off with like, let's understand the thing. So let's understand motivation. And so that's the chapter six there. Chapter seven is how to nurture that motivation feeling.

00:34:02

Then how do you make yourself do something we don't feel like it. And then big life changes. Where do I start? And I think it's important here that at the beginning of this, she talks about how motivation is not something you're born with.

00:34:15

Like we tend to think of like high energy people that have a lot of motivation in general. And we tend to think like, that's just a very motivated person.

00:34:23

Maybe or they're just really good at, you know, creating motivation out of nothing. Because that tends to be it more than anything. It's not that that's just who they are. So they have figured out the process that they need to go through for their personality in order to make that happen.

00:34:43

And that's the part that I think is important. I am not one of those people. I just want to point that out. That is not something that I can do. I wish I could do that. But I have to play all sorts of games in order to do the motivation tricks.

00:34:57

Yeah, so this section talks about how motivation is not a skill in chapter six. And I'm not sure I agree with that. I think I know what she's driving at why she frames it that way. But when you say it's not a skill, I think being able to recognize it and utilize it is a skill.

00:35:18

So that's essentially why she has this section in the book, right? Capitalizing on motivation, at least as a skill. So I didn't really like this section. I was looking forward to the definition here because I feel that motivation is actually more important than willpower when it comes to trying to get everything done.

00:35:43

I know that they're linked, but for a long time, I tried to just rely on the willpower based on the Roy Baumreister study with the turnips and the cookies that people are probably way too familiar with at this point.

00:35:58

So I won't regurgitate that, but that was my entry into the productivity space. Like, "Oh, well, you just got to protect your willpower." And there's some truth to that.

00:36:08

But if you've got low willpower and something is really important, you'll find a way to get it done. I think of like, you see the stories of the tiny little moms who their kid is caught under a car and all of a sudden they figure out a way. It doesn't matter how much willpower they have.

00:36:24

That's a young kid. They got no willpower because it's all been drained, right? But they summon the strength. They're motivated to save their kid's life.

00:36:31

So they pick up the vehicle and you're like, "How in the world did they do that?" So that's the power of motivation I feel. It's really, really powerful. And you should figure out ways to tap that.

00:36:41

And everybody's probably a little bit different. But the way that she defines it here in the notes that I took, it's kind of like why you even try it.

00:36:49

Yeah. And this is where I don't think you're wrong in saying that it's a skill that you can develop. And that's why I said that when people seem to have this innate ability, it's not necessarily something they're born with.

00:37:04

It is definitely a skill that they have developed. Now, they may have the ability to do that because their parents were both that way and they just learned how to do that from a very young age. That's very possible.

00:37:18

It's hard to know what led to that. But I don't know. There's a lot that she has here for how to nurture that feeling, which is maybe kind of what we're getting at here.

00:37:32

But it's simple stuff like what we've already talked about, which is like moving your body, which is the first thing she says, staying connected with your goal, keeping it small and resisting temptations.

00:37:44

That's kind of how she's referring to how to nurture this motivation feeling.

00:37:51

It's like, "Okay. It seems kind of wishy-washy on that, and it seems kind of repetitive. We're only on part two here. We're already talking about the same mechanisms for how to develop this."

00:38:06

Getting out of low mood and developing motivation, both meaning get up and move.

00:38:14

We're going to see that one repeated regularly. Heads up. Spoiler alert.

00:38:18

That's a theme. I tried not to hold that against her because recognized the source material for all of this, which is the tiny little videos.

00:38:28

I have been a content creator, so I completely understand she's probably got her content calendar schedule, right?

00:38:38

And you're figuring out what's the best thing that's for this type of medium, these short little videos. That's her preferred medium.

00:38:45

But for me, it would be podcast episodes, videos, and articles.

00:38:50

And you can communicate different things different ways. She's taking a short visual medium and trying to extend it into a long written medium.

00:38:59

So there are going to be lots of places where those videos are going to overlap.

00:39:05

If you're just viewing a library of videos, it's no big deal. It's like, "Hey, I told you about this before."

00:39:09

And it's kind of reinforcing it. It feels weird when you're reading it, though.

00:39:14

It feels very disjointed combined with the small size of the chapters.

00:39:22

Well, let's keep going because I think this is going to continue. Part three is on emotional pain.

00:39:30

There's four chapters in this one. Make it all go away. What to do with emotions, how to harness the power of your words, and how to support someone.

00:39:39

And I think the important part here, at least that I got out of it, was that emotions aren't for you or against you.

00:39:49

It's just how you are right now. And this is where the mindfulness meditation thing comes back.

00:39:55

Like, "Okay, paying attention to how I feel right now." That doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good or bad thing.

00:40:01

It just means that you can either choose to act on it or choose to sit in it. And sitting in it isn't always the best call.

00:40:12

And when you have bad... I don't even want to say bad. When you have what you consider to be a negative experience,

00:40:24

it's easy to get sad, angry, upset, depressed, take your pick of all these negative emotions.

00:40:34

But it can lead us to wanting to push it away, just ignoring it and denying it. But that's just going to make it get worse.

00:40:41

So she's not wrong in that. But what do you do with those? And that's where she has a handful of things.

00:40:49

Like, just seeing what they are, just being aware of what they are and trying to acknowledge why do you feel that way.

00:40:56

And then she has a couple of things here which are kind of interesting. One is to name it.

00:41:02

And I've heard of this before, like naming something, like the angry monster.

00:41:06

Like, "Oh, here comes Angry Joe." Giving that a name. That's a horrible example.

00:41:12

But giving that a name can help you identify it as something kind of outside of yourself and not who you are.

00:41:21

Like, identifying like, "This is an angry feeling that I have. That doesn't make me an angry person."

00:41:27

Like, there is a difference there. You're like giving yourself a little bit of separation.

00:41:31

The other one that I thought was kind of interesting is the self-soothing practices.

00:41:36

Then she brings up a couple places a little later which, you know, they're basically, you know, to go back to our dopamine thing.

00:41:46

Like, it's basically indulging in those. That's kind of what I took it as.

00:41:50

Like, "Okay, let's listen to some calming music. Let's do some relaxation techniques. Drink a warm drink."

00:41:57

Like, it's kind of indulging in those things to kind of soothe yourself.

00:42:02

It's not necessarily something you want to do all the time.

00:42:06

I wouldn't recommend doing that all the time whenever you have these, but it can help in that process.

00:42:13

So anyway, emotions.

00:42:15

There was one aha moment for me from chapter 10 which is titled "Make It All Go Away."

00:42:22

And she mentioned specifically what not to do with emotions which is to push them away or accept them as facts.

00:42:28

And the dichotomy there is really the thing that kind of resonated with me.

00:42:33

So what are you supposed to do? You're supposed to identify it and then acknowledge it.

00:42:38

Dismiss it if it's not helpful.

00:42:40

Chapter 12, she's got the feelings wheel.

00:42:44

And this is where you were kind of talking about being specific and giving it a name.

00:42:50

However, this is like all of these chapters, kind of surface level with all of this stuff.

00:42:58

There's a lot of complicated concepts that she talks about here and entire books could be written about some of this stuff.

00:43:05

In this case, there was a really good book, "Atlas of the Heart" by Bernay Brown.

00:43:10

And I would recommend you read that one instead.

00:43:12

This feelings wheel is not that helpful, I don't think.

00:43:17

Maybe if we had not read that one and I saw this, I was like, "Oh, okay, yeah, you can go multiple levels deeper here."

00:43:23

But when I saw this, I was like, "This is a crappy version of "Atlas of the Heart."

00:43:30

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00:45:30

So maybe that's where we need to move on to the next one, which is on grief.

00:45:35

Now, I got a little bit confused here because this is where we just came out of emotional pain, and then we go into grief.

00:45:42

And I get that those are different, but they feel very much the same to me.

00:45:49

Basically, I think the differentiating point here is that it's essentially emotional pain on steroids, like it's an experience that's not a good thing.

00:46:01

It's essentially emotional pain on steroids, like it's an extreme emotional pain when you get to grief.

00:46:09

And ultimately, what we tend to think of is when someone says that they're grieving, the immediate assumption is that somebody very close to them has died.

00:46:19

And that's the primary place that she focuses on, but she also acknowledges that it doesn't have to be that.

00:46:25

Like, there are other things that can cause grief at the same scale.

00:46:30

I know some people who do that with their pets when they die.

00:46:33

So that happens.

00:46:35

And she goes through the stages of grief by explaining that there really aren't stages of grief, which I thought was, wait, what?

00:46:47

It's like, basically, here are what we call the stages of grief, but we know that they're not actually stages because you can float in and out of all of them at different times

00:46:54

and start in different places.

00:46:56

Like, okay, that's fine.

00:46:58

Just seemed a little odd to name it that whenever you're saying that it doesn't exist.

00:47:03

But anyway, those are things like denial, anger towards it.

00:47:07

You start bargaining, trying to bargain your way out of it, maybe with God, depression and acceptance.

00:47:14

And you can kind of float in and out of each of those.

00:47:19

But at the end of the day, what she's really getting at is like, you're not going to bring that person back in the case of a death.

00:47:29

You're going to have to move on with life at some point.

00:47:33

The question is, in what way are you going to continue to connect with that person, even though they are past?

00:47:41

And that's okay.

00:47:42

That sounds a little weird.

00:47:43

It sounds a little strange for me to say it that way.

00:47:46

This is why people set up headstones in graves sites.

00:47:51

That's the whole thing, right?

00:47:54

Let's go visit that, visit mom and dad, go visit grandma and grandpa.

00:47:58

They're in the graveyard, but that's where we go.

00:48:04

So you have to figure out what that relationship is going to be.

00:48:07

And it's very difficult to figure out what that is at the beginning.

00:48:10

And it can take a lot of time.

00:48:13

So to me, this is just an extreme version of part three on the emotional pain piece.

00:48:20

Yeah, I agree.

00:48:21

This is the section I have the least amount of notes for.

00:48:25

I think the one additional aha moment I had here was that if you disconnect from one emotion, you disconnect with them all.

00:48:34

Never really thought of it that way, but it makes sense if you're trying to bottle up your emotions because you don't want to feel grief.

00:48:41

Then that also makes it harder to feel joy or any of the other positive emotions that you're probably craving when you're going through that.

00:48:49

So the fact that they're linked, that's a good reminder.

00:48:55

Go ahead and feel the feels and then work through it, which she's got different steps on how to do that, which she got from somebody else.

00:49:04

William Warden, I think, is the four tasks of mourning.

00:49:08

However, yeah, I don't know if I don't know why, but I was just like, let's get out of this section.

00:49:16

Maybe I have issues with grief.

00:49:18

I don't know.

00:49:19

I never really thought about it.

00:49:21

I don't think I do.

00:49:23

But yeah, there's a denial, the anger, the bargaining, depression, acceptance, all that kind of stuff.

00:49:30

I understand that.

00:49:32

I feel like I've had to work through that myself.

00:49:35

I just felt that there wasn't a whole lot for me in this section.

00:49:40

Yeah, I could see that.

00:49:42

This is, well, I'll save those thoughts at the end.

00:49:45

I have thoughts on the whole thing as a whole, like in totality.

00:49:51

So we'll get there.

00:49:53

The next section, the next part here is on self-doubt.

00:49:57

This one I found kind of interesting, but there's four chapters here as well, dealing with criticism and disapproval.

00:50:04

The key to building confidence, you are not your mistakes and being enough.

00:50:10

This little territory on self-doubt, like this is where we start to float with self-esteem.

00:50:16

It's where we float with people pleasing and, you know, confidence in general.

00:50:22

Like these are all things that a very large number of people struggle with, and we have entire subcultures devoted to this whole category.

00:50:32

And it is fascinating to me the detail that she puts into some of this, but at the same time, the very small things that can lead to very big problems.

00:50:46

Take the people pleasing, for example, like that's me, through and through.

00:50:50

But I had not really thought about it.

00:50:53

I've jokingly called myself a people pleaser for a long time, but she had this section in there.

00:50:59

It was like this two-sentence thing where she was talking about how people pleasing leads to more anxiety, which immediately made me think of Chris Bailey and how to calm her mind.

00:51:09

So, like that was an immediate jump for me.

00:51:12

But she also said that people pleasing can leave us without the ability to express our own needs.

00:51:20

We don't necessarily understand our own likes and dislikes, and it can prevent the adherence to boundaries.

00:51:27

It's like, "Huh, you're not wrong in that because I'm head over heels into this territory."

00:51:35

And it's like, "Huh, that's interesting because there have been some simple things.

00:51:39

Now I've been working on this one for quite some time, so this is not like a new revelation to me.

00:51:44

I just didn't really connect the dots that those things were related.

00:51:49

But things like, "What kind of music do you like to listen to?"

00:51:53

It's like, if you ask me that question, I'm a sound person. I don't really have an answer to that question.

00:51:58

I don't really know.

00:51:59

I grew up listening to Country all the time, but that was because there was only one radio station that ever came in, and when you're on the tractor, your only option was that one radio station.

00:52:06

This is pre-phones, so just the way it goes.

00:52:10

So you got old Country or nothing.

00:52:13

It's like, "Well, that was better than listening to the Hum of the motor all day long, so you'd turn it on."

00:52:18

So that's what I grew up with, but then growing up in the 90s, there's all the hip-hop world that was taking off and rap and such.

00:52:28

So that's kind of in the background as well, because I had a lot of friends that were into those things.

00:52:32

But what kind of music does Joe like to listen to?

00:52:36

I don't really know. I don't think I could answer that question.

00:52:39

So simple stuff like that, it seems absurd, but it was always more of, "What is going to...

00:52:47

What do most people in this scenario want to listen to?"

00:52:50

Well, that's the one that I want to listen to.

00:52:52

Well, it doesn't have anything to do with what I want to listen to.

00:52:55

It's what I think everybody else is. That's a people-pleasing thing.

00:52:58

But I've never fully connected those dots that that's what's going on.

00:53:02

Now I've been working on that one for a long time.

00:53:04

So I'm aware of that, but that's actually just one small piece of this section.

00:53:10

But I know that this particular part I feel like is one that a lot of people could maybe learn from and resonate with.

00:53:16

So to me, this was one of the strongest parts in the whole book.

00:53:19

Yeah, I enjoyed part five more than any of the other parts.

00:53:25

And that people-pleasing idea that comes from chapter 18.

00:53:29

I liked quite a bit from that chapter as well, including simple stuff that just hit me different this time.

00:53:35

Like, it's impossible to please everyone all the time. Well, duh.

00:53:38

Yeah, but when I read that, I was like, "Yeah, that's true. Good reminder."

00:53:43

Another thing that hit me was that people who are highly critical of others are often highly critical of themselves as well.

00:53:49

That's me.

00:53:51

So I recognizing that in myself with number one, the intention of giving other people a break.

00:54:00

But then also as I learned to do that, I feel like that's got positive ramifications for myself as well.

00:54:06

It talks about the spotlight effect, which is something that we've heard before, but this is a reminder.

00:54:12

That's how we tend to overestimate how much others are focused on us.

00:54:16

And the next thing that really hit me was from the next chapter.

00:54:21

That confidence is like a home that you build for yourself.

00:54:24

It requires you to be vulnerable. Courage comes first, and then confidence comes second.

00:54:30

That's a lot of what I've learned and experienced over the last year at the day job.

00:54:35

It's a role that I had never really done before and had to learn as I go.

00:54:41

And I'm sure that I was also contributing to my high burnout inventory scores is I just kind of constantly been at the edge there.

00:54:50

She's got the learning model with like the comfort zone, the stretch zone, and the panic zone.

00:54:55

Again, nothing like super new here, but going through this, I felt like there were a lot more aha moments from this.

00:55:04

And maybe that's the intention of all these little videos is like they're going to hit different people different ways.

00:55:09

And the clients that she works with, maybe I'm not one of them, but something from chapter one or chapter two has the same effect that some of this stuff from part five, you know, head on me.

00:55:22

Well, let's go on to the next one. We got three more here. This one's part six on fear.

00:55:28

And there's five chapters in this one, make anxiety disappear. Things we do that make anxiety worse. How to calm anxiety right now.

00:55:37

What to do with anxious thoughts and fear of the inevitable. And she starts this one off with kind of an interesting story.

00:55:44

She's apparently deathly afraid of heights. And she was in.

00:55:50

I can't remember, but.

00:55:52

And Italy was it. Yeah, the tower pizza, right? Yeah, leaning tower pizza. I had like I had this whole like, I know it was leaning tower pizza, but I had a blank on what country it was in.

00:56:02

Like how did I do that? Anyway, there was another story she tells later, which is the same sort of thing where she got her marriage proposal.

00:56:11

So yes, this one though her now husband bought her tickets to go up in this leaning tower pizza, but she's deathly afraid of heights.

00:56:23

And she goes up in the top of the tower and then borderline complete meltdown ends up like on the ground, hands and feet on the platform at the top of the tower.

00:56:34

As if that's going to help. And apparently he took a picture of her because he's such a such a great guy.

00:56:43

And then they come back down and she's like thrilled to be on grass and not up in the sky. Anyway, I'm making light of it.

00:56:51

I am far. I'm the opposite of somebody who's afraid of heights. Mike knows this. I've climbed up on top of his house before.

00:56:56

Because I wouldn't. I should not be ingest on that. I'm aware of that. I have my own fears. But that type of fear is crippling for some people.

00:57:09

And everybody's got their thing. But it's a form of anxiety. That's how it all can come about.

00:57:18

So she has things that we can do that make it worse. Things you should not do. Which is some of why she told that story because she did the wrong thing.

00:57:26

She was trying to pretend that she wasn't that high and convince herself that she was safe by closing her eyes and hiding from it.

00:57:33

Well, that's just going to perpetuate or make the thing worse over time. Which is like the escape situation.

00:57:39

You can avoid it. You can try to compensate for it with a variety of strategies. You can anticipate the next thing.

00:57:46

There's all sorts of stuff that you can do to try to make this go away in the short term. And those can be successful in the short term.

00:57:55

But in the long term, it can make things much, much worse. Which is why she gets into some of the things like how to calm things right now.

00:58:04

Which, if you've been following along with this, you probably know some of the tactics she's going to recommend here.

00:58:11

Let's just mention some things like meditation, breathing, and exercise. Do you get the theme here?

00:58:18

So these come up yet again. And that's not necessarily wrong because it will help. Not arguing with that.

00:58:26

It just seems kind of repetitive at this point. So anyway, fear and anxiety. She's kind of got these not synonyms.

00:58:36

But they're pretty close in the way that she's referring to this.

00:58:41

This is an interesting section to me because we just came out of how to calm your mind with Chris Bailey.

00:58:48

So I'm kind of curious to your thoughts on how those two compare at this point.

00:58:54

Well, the way she defines fear and how she groups these things together feels kind of weird to me.

00:59:02

Like the anxiety that she talks about and the stories that she shared.

00:59:08

She says on page 193 in the first chapter in this section about making anxiety disappear.

00:59:13

The things that give us immediate relief from our fear tend to feed that fear in the long term.

00:59:16

That's kind of the basis of everything that she's sharing with the story that you told.

00:59:23

And then chapter 24, how to calm anxiety right now. Very clickbaity title.

00:59:28

But small video, so it makes sense.

00:59:31

And just there's some good stuff in there about slowing your breath. One of the things that kind of stood out to me was that you can extend your out breath and that actually slows your heart rate.

00:59:41

So you physically force your body into to calm. I never really made that connection before.

00:59:47

It's a tactical piece. If your in-breath is shorter than your out breath, it has that calming effect. That's kind of cool.

00:59:55

But I don't really like the way that she grouped these things together. It feels kind of like a hodgepodge.

01:00:00

Chapter 26 is kind of about fear of death. Like how does that fit with anxiety?

01:00:06

I don't know. I don't want another section on that specifically. That's not what I'm asking for here.

01:00:12

But I don't know. I understand why it's here reading it in book format feels a little bit weird.

01:00:21

And if you're asking me to compare it to how to calm your mind by Chris Bailey, I feel like that book is way better, but it's also a little bit unfair to compare those because his is written with a different format in mind.

01:00:34

So he's able to go deeper on a lot of this stuff. She mentions a lot of research studies, but just in passing where Chris is kind of digging a little bit deeper and sharing the insights from the studies that he's read.

01:00:48

I feel like Chris has a lot more practical suggestions for what to do, which is interesting to me because one of the taglines with this is tools for the ups and downs.

01:01:04

Okay. Well, it is tools for the ups and downs, but at the same time, there's a lot of like, find something that works for you that's recommended.

01:01:16

But isn't that the point of why I'm reading this is to figure out what that is. So at this point, I know that I need to breathe and I need to meditate.

01:01:27

I need to move.

01:01:29

That's what that's what I know.

01:01:30

Do you think she, the way this is put together, I think she even says in the introduction that it's kind of like a reference. Do you think that she intended people to read it, cover to cover like we did?

01:01:41

I think it's an excellent question. I think that it's not really intended that way. So I think there is a little bit of a, this is a handbook.

01:01:53

Like if I'm stressed right now, I'm going to go to the stress section and work through that, in which case she does need to repeat those things. So I'm a little bit in just when I say here we go again, because I'm aware that that's like a resource scenario.

01:02:08

But at the same time, if you do read it, cover to cover, I feel like it should still be cohesive in that way. Like I feel like it should be possible to read it that way.

01:02:18

And it not feel like you're reading the same thing repetitively. Am I wrong on that? I feel like I'm not asking you too much.

01:02:27

No, I get where you're coming from with that. So I think maybe this is the wrong medium.

01:02:33

That's like, true.

01:02:35

All of this, the best version of this exists as like a Facebook quiz where you answer a couple of questions and it funnels you down a path and then you land on one of these chapters.

01:02:50

Sure.

01:02:51

Sort of like a choose your own adventure book for dealing with mental health.

01:02:57

Yeah.

01:02:58

Which sounds ridiculous to describe it that way. But I think that's how most people would approach this.

01:03:04

They flip through the table of contents. They find one that's interesting to them.

01:03:07

It would recommend breathing. And then she'd mention, oh, I talked about this in chapter eight and then they would flip there.

01:03:13

And they'd go through three or four of them and be like, oh, that was interesting and helpful.

01:03:19

And they put it on the shelf and they never think about it again.

01:03:21

Sure. Yeah, that's possible.

01:03:24

I don't know. I don't know how to take that. Because at the same time, like it is a book.

01:03:29

It is a book.

01:03:30

Part of me wants to read it front to back. A book written by the TikTok doctor who came famous on a platform that leverages people's lack of attention span.

01:03:44

So like it doesn't fit.

01:03:47

Yeah. It's interesting.

01:03:49

All right. Let's go to the next section, which is part seven on stress.

01:03:54

Is stress different from anxiety? Why reducing stress is not the only answer?

01:03:59

When good stress goes bad, making stress work for you.

01:04:04

And the answer to the first one of those chapter titles is yes. Stress is different from anxiety.

01:04:11

Basically, if I can summarize what she would define as stress, like anxiety is what we were just talking about, kind of borderline fear.

01:04:19

And stress is where like your skill sets and your ability to handle a situation isn't necessarily up to the same level.

01:04:28

Is what you're being presented with.

01:04:31

Right. So if I am fully capable of dealing with the situation, like let's take a, you know, I work in tech at a church, right?

01:04:39

So let's take Sunday morning.

01:04:41

Let's say that my person who's going to get up into announcements at the beginning of the service walks up there and the microphone doesn't work.

01:04:50

Is Joe stressed in that situation? Nope. Not at all.

01:04:55

Because I know exactly what I need to do in that scenario in order to make it happen and I can make it happen in the span of about four seconds.

01:05:02

So I know how to handle that situation. That's, that's easy.

01:05:07

We can take a different example similar to that where I had a men's conference this past Saturday.

01:05:15

They were running a band as part of that.

01:05:19

And, but we also had a live stream that we were bringing in. We weren't producing it. We were consuming it.

01:05:24

And whenever my drummer was getting ready to start, he hollered up, Joe, I've got the feed in my ears.

01:05:30

He has in ear monitor. So he was listening, listening through the headphones to everything else.

01:05:35

But the feed that was coming from the computer, the audio for it was going into his ears, but it wasn't in the room.

01:05:40

Like you couldn't hear it in the room. And I could not find it on the board.

01:05:44

I couldn't find it on the sound board. I couldn't figure out why he had it in his ears.

01:05:48

That was stressful. Because I could not solve that.

01:05:52

Muting it didn't solve the problem. You would think simple things like that would solve it. But it didn't.

01:05:56

And I now have learned that there was potentially a problem with our sound boards getting replaced for these reasons.

01:06:02

But I don't think there was anything I could have done about it.

01:06:06

Now we managed to get it off by muting the computer that was producing the sound.

01:06:10

But it was very stressful in the situation because I had no time and had no idea what was going on.

01:06:14

Because the situation required more of me than I was able to solve in that moment.

01:06:20

So that became very stressful. Two very similar situations.

01:06:24

One is going to cause a lot of stress. The other one isn't.

01:06:27

Just because of the difference in how I know how to respond to those.

01:06:30

So I think that's kind of how she would define this.

01:06:33

And then gets in through a whole bunch of stuff on what to do about it.

01:06:36

Which I think we'll get to in a minute. Anyway, I'll stop talking.

01:06:40

Yeah, there's different kinds of stress. However, I liked Chris Bailey's definition of the different kinds of stress better.

01:06:46

Of course.

01:06:47

There is one thing she says here which I think is important that you can't separate stress from a meaningful life.

01:06:55

That's from chapter 28.

01:06:57

Why reducing stress is not the answer.

01:07:00

She kind of talks about maybe it's the next section where she really gets into it.

01:07:04

But we're kind of wired as humans to overcome challenges.

01:07:10

So I think that's important to recognize because the standard response is make the pain go away.

01:07:16

And the fact that I'm feeling stressed, I just want stress to go away.

01:07:20

That's not the right approach necessarily.

01:07:23

And I know that already.

01:07:26

But I think that could be a Naha moment if you're picking up this book without having read some of the other ones that we have also read, including the one that we covered last episode.

01:07:40

Again, surprise surprise, that one goes deeper and I consider that to be a better resource for this kind of stuff.

01:07:46

However, there is one thing I wanted to unpack here.

01:07:50

And that is something from chapter 30.

01:07:54

She says that those who build their lives on self-focused goals are more vulnerable to depression, anxiety and loneliness.

01:08:02

And the point she's making here is that if your entire world is built around you, then it is too small.

01:08:10

The more most fulfilling life is the one that is done in service of other people and the greater good.

01:08:17

So that got me thinking.

01:08:19

Those who build their lives on self-focused goals.

01:08:23

However, there are so many books that we have read that fall into the category of self-help or personal development.

01:08:36

Right?

01:08:37

All about making myself the best version of myself, getting what I want out of the world.

01:08:44

I have a hard time separating everything that I have heard about goals and self-focused goals.

01:08:55

Now, I'm not saying that I disagree with what she's saying, but I guess the aha moment for me was that I rail against goals all the time.

01:09:03

Why do I do that?

01:09:04

Because I think most people's goals are self-focused.

01:09:09

And I feel like there's a lot of truth in what she's saying right here.

01:09:15

And I kind of have experiences of shared my story of running the half marathon and set the goal, worked really hard, hurt myself, finished the race, crossed the finish line.

01:09:24

Then was like, "Now what?"

01:09:26

You knew I was hurt, had to fill the void and I couldn't go run another race.

01:09:31

Had to be something else that filled that.

01:09:35

So I think the habits versus goals thing, not to rehash that whole discussion, that's one way of mitigating this because just by not having a goal, that means that you're not going to have a self-focused goal.

01:09:48

However, the self-focused goals specifically, that adds another perspective or another dimension, I should say, to this whole thing that's been bouncing around in my brain lately around goals and why I don't like them.

01:10:02

And the fact that she's got science that can link depression, anxiety and loneliness to, "I want to make myself better."

01:10:09

That's kind of sobering as people who record a podcast on, you could argue, personal development.

01:10:17

Yep, yep.

01:10:19

Not necessarily a thought I want to perpetuate for very long.

01:10:27

Yeah, I guess that's probably a good place. Let's go into that last part there, which is on a meaningful life.

01:10:33

There's five chapters here. The problem with "I just want to be happy."

01:10:37

Working out what matters, how to create a life with meaning, relationships, when to seek help.

01:10:43

And I feel like that last one, when to seek help is kind of its own thing.

01:10:47

It shouldn't necessarily be on this particular part.

01:10:50

Maybe that's what it's intended to, but it's okay.

01:10:53

But on a meaningful life, she starts off with the problem of "I just want to be happy."

01:10:58

Basically, with the assumption and the understanding that the term or the word "happy" has so many things wrapped up in it,

01:11:08

that the question is, "Well, when are you happy?"

01:11:10

"Well, there's so many things that are assumed in that term."

01:11:15

"Well, what is that?"

01:11:16

"What even is it to feel happy?"

01:11:18

"I don't know. What counts? What if one area of my life is not okay?

01:11:24

Is it okay to be happy if there's one area that I'm struggling with?"

01:11:27

"Well, maybe? I don't know."

01:11:29

That's really the problem.

01:11:31

Then she works through this determining what your values are scenario.

01:11:36

She does mention doing something in service of others, which is why the relationships piece is there,

01:11:43

and building relationships with other people, because that's a very crucial component of this.

01:11:48

You're not going to get through life without other people, at least not a meaningful life.

01:11:53

That's a very interesting and, I think, telling place for her to end the bulk of the book is with those relationships.

01:12:05

Even the last one with "When to seek help."

01:12:07

"When should you go see a doctor for this, whether a medical doctor, counselor, or somebody?"

01:12:16

"When should you go do that?"

01:12:17

Even that's based on a relationship with somebody else.

01:12:20

It is telling to me that you've got this whole thing, and it's all about what's going on inside my brain and my mental health,

01:12:27

and yet one of the crucial components is the other people that I'm around,

01:12:31

and the friendships and the close relatives, and people I love,

01:12:39

like those people in my life, like those are very crucial components of a meaningful life.

01:12:44

I think that is absolutely spot on, if that can be a place where this should end.

01:12:49

Yet it is also a bit of a struggle for a lot of people, because I know we have such a digital age

01:12:58

that it's very easy to separate from the in-person contact, and it's like,

01:13:04

"Okay, let's just, you know, this friendship is primarily over Facebook, or this one is primarily over text,

01:13:11

and I only call this person when I absolutely have to, and this person I see occasionally,

01:13:15

versus the people that you see every single day, or at least a couple times a week."

01:13:20

So, those are very different scenarios, and we tend to do more of the former of that scenario list

01:13:26

than we do the latter, so the in-person thing we don't do as much,

01:13:30

just because the tech makes it so easy to skip that,

01:13:34

that I feel like we're missing out on a lot if we make that a primary means a communication and relationship,

01:13:41

because I'm not sure we should qualify it as a true relationship, but that's splitting hairs.

01:13:49

Yeah, I agree with all of that. That's not the part that really stood up to me from this section surprise surprise,

01:13:54

but I did like this section a lot.

01:13:56

The first chapter here, the problem with I just want to be happy, talks about values a lot,

01:14:03

and goals versus values, which is a whole conversation we could have on that,

01:14:10

but I really like the emphasis on the values and getting clarity on those,

01:14:15

but she had some important context here, which I had not heard described.

01:14:19

I agree with this 100%, though, that values help us persevere through difficult times, right?

01:14:25

But then they're not who you are. They can change, right? They can change over time.

01:14:29

You can decide this was important to me, it was a value, and when it's no longer useful, you can change that value.

01:14:36

She has this values star, which is, in my opinion, a cheesy version of the Wheel of Life.

01:14:45

That one just makes way more sense to me, and I do it every quarter as part of my personal retreat process.

01:14:52

I really like that.

01:14:54

I like the visual for that she's going for here, but there's better versions of this, I think.

01:15:01

Same concept, though, and this reminded me of when you had asked me a couple episodes ago,

01:15:10

if I knew of a resource for figuring out your personal mission statement sort of thing,

01:15:16

and I committed a "I don't know of one, so I'm going to write one."

01:15:19

I feel more emboldened to write that now, because this whole book has been these little sections

01:15:24

where she shares a couple good tidbits, but because of the short-form videos that they're based on,

01:15:29

it doesn't really go deep.

01:15:31

I can see where this stuff is leading to, and everything that she talked about in this section

01:15:36

with the exception of the relationship stuff, and the last chapter about when to actually seek help for this kind of thing.

01:15:43

I'm looking at it and I'm like, "Yeah, I get where you're going, but I've got a better version of this."

01:15:51

So I guess that one of the things that I realized from reading this last section,

01:15:55

I've kind of had a limiting belief in kind of holding me back on this,

01:15:59

is like, "I don't know that much about this stuff, but here's someone who wrote a book,

01:16:05

who created a bunch of videos that it's based off of, but this is long-form book."

01:16:10

Yeah, there's a lot of other stuff in here that we've read entire books on, so part eight on a meaningful life.

01:16:15

Okay, there's my short little section, which should be a book on this topic, right?

01:16:21

And then she shares some stuff, and I feel like it's kind of fresh.

01:16:26

This is stuff that I've been studying and figuring out for myself.

01:16:30

She's got a little different perspective on it.

01:16:32

I'm piecing together this, plus like the Donald Miller here on Emission stuff,

01:16:36

and all the sort of things that I'm putting on in my head.

01:16:38

I'm getting more frustrated every time I encounter this stuff,

01:16:41

because I'm like, "Nobody is doing this right!"

01:16:43

So I'm recommitting here, I guess, that I'm going to put together a resource for that,

01:16:50

but that is a long-term action item.

01:16:52

You're not holding me responsible for that one next time.

01:16:55

I was processing how to ask you what the deadline for this should be.

01:16:59

No deadline. No deadline.

01:17:02

Huh.

01:17:04

Well, I guess that brings us to the end of the book.

01:17:08

And I have a couple of thoughts here just holistically on this.

01:17:14

One of those is that she has all of this, and we've mentioned this many times,

01:17:22

like this feels very basic, like this has been mentioned before, like people know this.

01:17:26

In general, I think that's true, but in small areas, I think that's not true.

01:17:35

And I say that knowing that there's a lot of stuff in here that I know I wish I had learned

01:17:43

when I was in high school or earlier.

01:17:46

And I know that growing up there were many adults looking back on it who don't know a lot of this,

01:17:53

at least in the area where I grew up.

01:17:56

So this is a whole bank of information that I absolutely could see how somebody would say,

01:18:01

"Why has nobody told me this before?"

01:18:03

Like I could totally see where that question comes from.

01:18:06

And had it not been for the hundreds of books that I've now read that cover stuff in this territory,

01:18:15

in some form or another, this would all feel like shocking.

01:18:21

Wait, what? That's how that works? That's all it takes?

01:18:25

That's how I need to think about that? That stress can be good?

01:18:29

What? Like stuff like that I could see completely changing somebody's brain.

01:18:35

And if I had read this in college, it would have completely broke my brain.

01:18:43

But reading it now, it's like, "Eh, I'm critiquing a lot of things."

01:18:48

Because like that could have been said better, you're disjointed here, you're disjointed there.

01:18:51

I'm kind of getting into style here.

01:18:53

But holistically, I know that this could be very good for some people.

01:18:58

And for others who are well read, it's probably less helpful.

01:19:04

At the same time, if you think about the culture that she's writing for or making things for,

01:19:09

and this was my other thing, her TikTok videos that I've consumed through Instagram,

01:19:14

are actually really good. Did you watch any of these, by chance?

01:19:17

No, they never tried to live too.

01:19:19

So like for example, the stress one, she had one just the other day of how if you have a jar,

01:19:27

and she had it filling with water, if you have this jar that's filling with water,

01:19:31

and that's stress coming into your life, it will eventually overflow and you'll blow up

01:19:35

and have all sorts of like panic attack and all sorts of stuff that come with it.

01:19:39

And yet if you are meditating, if you're exercising, she's drilling holes in this thing.

01:19:45

Like if you're doing all these things, it can alleviate some of that pressure for stress

01:19:49

to the point where it starts to keep up with the amount of stress that's coming into your life.

01:19:53

Like that visual is very helpful.

01:19:55

Yep.

01:19:56

But you can't do that in a book because you can't drill holes in a thing filling with water

01:20:02

for everybody as they're reading the book. Like you can't do that.

01:20:06

So like she's coming from that short form video world and does very good with that.

01:20:12

And don't think it translated as well to this particular format.

01:20:16

But her TikTok videos, the ones that I've seen at least are really good.

01:20:19

Also recognize that you and I are probably not her target market for the rest.

01:20:26

It's like Carol in the chat has mentioned that we didn't really understand how stuff fit together

01:20:32

in part six on fear. I specifically said I don't understand the fear of death part filling in there.

01:20:38

Carol mentions that she's got an adult son who's been diagnosed with anxiety disorder.

01:20:42

Those are the clients that Dr. Julie Smith works with.

01:20:46

And so she understands this. A lot of his anxiety shows up as medical issues.

01:20:51

And she also mentions that there's good tidbits in here that someone with anxiety could use

01:20:55

and how these chapters can help when you need it.

01:20:59

They are essential when you're in that downward spiral.

01:21:02

You and I can't relate to that because we haven't been in that situation.

01:21:06

So that's an important context I feel.

01:21:10

But also again is the basis of my question like how are you supposed to read this book?

01:21:16

We had to tackle it from a bookworm perspective and that's I don't think what she had in mind.

01:21:21

Correct.

01:21:22

Yeah. Well, before we continue to far down this style stance, let's do some action items here.

01:21:28

I have one which is a carryover from last time, which is to take the burnout inventory.

01:21:35

I would have written down meditation again and I would have written down exercise,

01:21:42

but I'm kind of already in the middle of those from past action items at this point.

01:21:49

So I didn't write them down just because it's kind of a new, like it's still already a thing

01:21:53

that I'm in the middle of attempting.

01:21:55

So I don't feel like it warrants that.

01:21:57

But I don't really have anything that's new from this book this time around.

01:22:01

Partially because this is all stuff I feel like we've covered in some form or another.

01:22:06

I think it's stuff we've covered in one form or another and it's also not entirely actionable

01:22:12

unless you are coming in here from a vector of I want to solve this specific problem.

01:22:17

This is what I'm dealing with right now.

01:22:19

I don't think you and I are necessarily dealing with any of these specific things.

01:22:23

So that decreases the action item potential for me.

01:22:27

There are some things that were kind of like aha moments but those are just like nice to know.

01:22:31

Next time I'm in a situation I'm going to try to remember this sort of a thing.

01:22:36

There was nothing in here that I felt very actionable.

01:22:39

I think the one obvious one would be the carry over with mindfulness meditation from last time.

01:22:44

That's in progress.

01:22:45

So I guess we could follow up with that again and see if that's gaining any traction because

01:22:51

that has kind of been something that has come and gone for me over the years.

01:22:55

But other than that I got nothing.

01:22:58

Yeah.

01:22:59

Well, if we step into this style and reading as far as like style goes, we were kind of talking

01:23:04

about it already.

01:23:05

But I just want to add to that.

01:23:08

Did you notice how many stories she told?

01:23:12

I didn't put a number on it but I don't feel like there were a ton.

01:23:17

No.

01:23:18

This is a point that we talk about on a lot of books.

01:23:23

Like they told a lot of stories.

01:23:25

It really made the topic come alive and they're really good storyteller.

01:23:31

This is backwards from that in that there are very few stories.

01:23:35

I can only think of three off the top of my head.

01:23:40

Two of which involve her being scared of heights.

01:23:43

So like that is and I don't think any story was like a historical story or a recent event.

01:23:52

Like there's mentions of the pandemic in a couple places but it's only in passing.

01:23:56

It's not an actual story about it.

01:23:59

There's not really much for here's a thing.

01:24:03

Here's a topic.

01:24:04

Here's stress.

01:24:05

Here's how people can cope with it.

01:24:07

And it could set itself up for here's an example of how President Roosevelt was in a stressful situation.

01:24:15

And here's how he handled it.

01:24:16

And this is why that works well.

01:24:18

Like that type of context doesn't exist in this book.

01:24:23

It is very much a here's the situation.

01:24:26

Here's what's going on.

01:24:28

Here's what you do about it.

01:24:29

But there's not really any color added to that through story.

01:24:33

And as we've known for a long time like story is what connects a lot of things.

01:24:38

It connects a lot of dots and helps things become memorable.

01:24:41

And as I'm processing this book over the last couple days just in totality.

01:24:48

Like I'm aware that there's a lot of this I feel like I'm going to forget.

01:24:53

Because I think what Carol's getting at is like I don't think this is intended to be read front to back.

01:24:59

We've kind of covered that a little bit.

01:25:01

I think this is really a you know if you're going to read it front to back it's mostly to know what you have in your hands and what you have on your shelf so that when you're struggling with something you can't do it.

01:25:10

You're struggling with something you can go pull it out and look at that particular scenario.

01:25:14

But at the same time like I have to be aware like if I needed to pull this out to reference the section on grief.

01:25:22

I'm probably going to go grab a tool go one days being mortal as opposed to this one.

01:25:30

Like that's probably the route I'm going to go.

01:25:33

And that's not silly bad it just means that we've got other books on our tool belt that we could grab for those specific scenarios.

01:25:41

Now that also said like there are some places here where I could see pulling this out as a reference at time.

01:25:48

But you know like we were saying you know sometimes if you're in the throes of something.

01:25:53

Something short and sound bite-ish is exactly what you're going to need.

01:25:59

Because you're not going to have the attention span to handle something long form like some of the books that we're referencing here.

01:26:07

So I could see where this could be helpful in those scenarios.

01:26:12

I'm also aware that there are many people in circles who this would completely blow their mind.

01:26:19

Coming from a subculture where that probably is the case.

01:26:24

The first hurdle I'd have to get over is getting them to read a book.

01:26:28

And the second hurdle would be that this is the one that they should read.

01:26:32

So I don't know that I could ever pull that off.

01:26:35

But at the same time like I know that again if I had read this in college it would have completely shattered my thinking on how my mental state works.

01:26:44

So this could have been a very big impact on could have had a very big impact on me at that time.

01:26:50

At this point in time as a bookworm book in the structure of how we review books for bookworm this just is tough to fit into that model because I don't think it's made for that model.

01:27:03

And that's okay.

01:27:05

You know we have books that deviate from that structure.

01:27:08

Nine times out of ten they're ones that Joe has selected much to Mike's chagrin.

01:27:13

And that's okay.

01:27:15

It's fun to deviate on occasion.

01:27:18

As far as how to rate it.

01:27:20

There are a lot of things in here that I don't know that I would say I disagree with them but I feel like you're missing out on like some broader picture things.

01:27:29

At least given my belief system.

01:27:34

There's some stuff here that I would struggle with just because of like I don't think that works that way.

01:27:40

You're missing out on a higher power scenario here.

01:27:43

So like that's something that I know I don't know about that.

01:27:47

So that all said you know there are a few good tidbits here.

01:27:51

For the most part though there's a lot of like this is just tough for me to work through and fairly repetitive.

01:27:57

So from a bookworm stance like I'm going to put it at 3.5.

01:28:02

Just because it just I.

01:28:05

It could have been a lot better.

01:28:07

That's what I'm thinking.

01:28:09

So 3.5 for me.

01:28:10

Sure.

01:28:12

Well from a bookworm perspective I think that is a fair rating.

01:28:17

Your criticisms with the lack of stories and just jumping in like this is the problem.

01:28:26

Here's what you do about it.

01:28:27

The word that came to mind as you were talking about that was prescriptive.

01:28:31

Which makes sense.

01:28:33

Yeah you know there is that.

01:28:34

You know.

01:28:35

Makes sense because he's a doctor yeah.

01:28:38

So I feel that's the intention with this book.

01:28:43

And I also recognize that I'm not the person that this was really written for.

01:28:50

There were a couple of moments for me and I did like reading it.

01:28:55

I like the format of the book.

01:28:58

I like the little summaries at the end of the chapters.

01:29:02

From a notes perspective that was great just to like make sure I didn't miss anything super important.

01:29:09

And even though it's 320 pages because they're these short chapters and that little box little summary blurb at the end of the chapters on its own page it actually reads pretty quickly if you are going to read the whole thing.

01:29:25

So I recognize that you know we're tackling this from a perspective which she probably didn't intend even given the medium and how she's trying to if you were making the argument that a book should be read from cover to cover just trying to stretch a bunch of short form videos into a longer book.

01:29:42

I don't want to necessarily discount that too much.

01:29:48

I think there are people like Carol Sun who this is a great resource for.

01:29:52

I don't know anyone personally that I would recommend this to.

01:29:57

However, Charles, I'll start to think you know if we had come to this book at the beginning of the bookworm journey before we read Deep Work before we read essentialism you know and some of these ideas that have stuck with us for a really long time over the years.

01:30:12

Would there be things in here that really just kind of rocked our world I think potentially yeah.

01:30:17

Though we can boil it down to exercise meditation etc.

01:30:23

You know and say like oh yeah well nothing new here we read that before but I think with the right person in the right scenario this could be a pretty transformative book and it is not hard to read so take that into consideration.

01:30:38

I'm going to give it a slightly higher score than you did I'm going to say 4.0.

01:30:44

I really think that's the cap though just because of the fact that we don't really go deep in any of these areas.

01:30:53

When you think about what bookworm is and the books that we've rated higher than that it is a complete disservice to all of those other really great books to put this in that same tier because it's not the same thing.

01:31:07

You know and that doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad but it's not my cup of tea.

01:31:16

I'm not going to look for another one on this topic let me put it put it that way or with this format.

01:31:22

However other than having some I guess preferential differences on like the format and how I wish it wouldn't have started so negative on the dark places.

01:31:35

I don't really have a whole lot to say bad about it.

01:31:41

I'm trying to recognize the you know where she's coming from when she puts this together and realize that that's just not for me.

01:31:50

But I think in terms of the quality of what she has created here it's probably pretty good even if you and I don't fully appreciate it.

01:31:58

All right it's time to put it on the shelf Mike what's next.

01:32:03

Next is the creative act a way of being by Rick Rubin.

01:32:08

This one's making the productivity/creativity circuit.

01:32:13

I've heard a lot of people saying a lot of good things about this book but I have not had a chance to start it yet so I cannot verify that.

01:32:20

I am anxious to get started anxious is the wrong word I am excited to get started.

01:32:25

You're happy to start it.

01:32:27

There we go.

01:32:29

Yeah no I've got this and I'm hoping to start it tonight so I have high hopes based on what everybody else is saying about it.

01:32:36

I hope this is what they say because this should be good.

01:32:40

After that.

01:32:41

Oh yeah after that I suppose I didn't put this in the outline so you don't even know huh.

01:32:47

The future is analog this is by David Sacks.

01:32:50

Have you seen this one.

01:32:51

I bought it.

01:32:52

Oh you did.

01:32:55

So the future is analog.

01:32:57

Tag land and this is how to create a more human world.

01:33:00

I read his book The Revenge of Analog a few years ago and that was a solid read and I did not know that David Sacks had another book out until I saw.

01:33:15

All right I had heard David on the Art of Manliness podcast talking about the future is analog.

01:33:22

I was like wait he's got another one out I need to go find that.

01:33:25

So I took the first chance I could and threw it on top of you here for a bookworm.

01:33:30

So here we go future is analog.

01:33:32

Why would we avoid a book like this.

01:33:35

This is exactly what we need to read.

01:33:38

Good choice.

01:33:39

Good choice.

01:33:40

How about gap books Mike.

01:33:43

I'm nervous to pick one so I'm going to leave that blank.

01:33:48

Yeah the creative act is pretty big by the way.

01:33:52

Oh yeah it's solid.

01:33:54

Yeah that it is.

01:33:58

I hesitate to even say a name but I had mentioned a little while back that I had picked up tools of Titans Tim Ferris.

01:34:06

That's one that you have come in and out.

01:34:09

I've been in a little bit whenever I've got a little bit more reading time at nights but you're probably going to hear that one come in and out over the next couple months just because it's not when you sit down and read.

01:34:20

What is it 600 pages I think long and it's in very small like segments that you can consume.

01:34:27

So it's kind of designed for that but anyway it's good read but I float in and out on it.

01:34:34

That's what I've been in when I've got a little extra time but it hasn't been enough time because of the books that we're in.

01:34:39

Sure.

01:34:40

So that all said you know as we talked about at the very beginning of the show book rooms in a bit of a transition right now but we do know that the memberships will stick around and the memberships will get you access to the ad free version of the show.

01:34:56

We're super grateful to everybody who listens and who has joined those memberships because you've helped bring us to where we are now so it absolutely could not happen without you and we love seeing you guys in the chat seeing your comments online.

01:35:09

There's been a lot of mentions of bookworm here and there in all the social media places lately and it's been really cool to see that and see how bookworm is helping people figure out what to read and what to do, what action items to take in their own life.

01:35:21

So we'll see all of that and the culmination of that is found in the bookworm club where we kind of put people together with each other on this book journey.

01:35:31

So if you're interested in joining that club.bookworm.fm it will stay there no matter where it lives what platform it's on and if you want to get access to the ad free versions mics book notes and some extra fun perks.

01:35:44

You can go to bookworm.fm/membership that link will stay the same as well and that will get you access to all of those goodies and again huge thank you to all of you who listen and who have joined us on this ride.

01:35:57

Alright so if you are reading along with us pick up the creative act by Rick Rubin and we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.