Bookworm Transcripts

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So when does Obsidian University officially start?

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It officially starts June 12th.

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So that will be just a couple of days after this episode releases.

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But I wanted to give one last call out if anyone wants to join.

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I am really excited about this one.

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Also very nervous.

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The imposter syndrome is kicking in hard.

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But the life-themed cohort has gone really well.

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You probably don't even know this because you weren't there for the last one.

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But we added a bonus session because everyone wanted to come back and share their life theme

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after they worked on it.

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So we added a sixth call to that one.

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And I'm starting to do...

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That's tomorrow.

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Yep.

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Okay.

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Good to know.

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It is in circle but I hadn't told you that we added that.

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Yeah.

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Where I'm at in that is because I'm almost caught up.

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But I got to share the core values and then the life theme itself.

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And this actually plays into a little bit of follow up.

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I'll get to this in a little bit.

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But that's like all I'm catching up on that.

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So that's good to know.

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I will plan to be there and try to get caught up before then.

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Cool.

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But yeah, having done five soon to be six weeks of that cohort and just seeing the...

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Or hearing the feedback.

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I've started to do one-on-one calls with people also just to ask like, what could be better?

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Like, how would you improve this for next time sort of a thing?

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And the feedback has all been pretty positive.

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Obviously, there's some things that I can do a little bit better and I have ideas for

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making it even better next go around.

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But that has given me the confidence to say that I can do a pretty mean cohort.

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Good.

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And so I am looking forward to doing that with Obsidian in the next couple of weeks.

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So yeah, it starts June 12th.

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Goes for four weeks after that.

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And the cost is $247.

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The link will be in the show notes if anyone wants to join.

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But you can just go to ObsidianUniversity.com.

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And that will get you access to not just the...

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I guess there are going to be 12 different live calls.

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There will be eight different content sessions and four open office sessions where we can

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just nerd out about stuff and answer questions and inspire each other about better ways to

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use Obsidian.

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But then all of that stuff will be recorded and all that will exist inside of another circle

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community.

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Just because circle is the platform that I understand and it's the easiest way to deliver

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all this stuff, in my opinion, in a private way.

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People who pay can get access to it and also gives me some flexibility for adding some

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more stuff to that.

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Sitting University campus I'm calling it in the future.

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Nice.

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I'm super excited about this.

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You're going to knock it out of the park.

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I totally know you are.

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So thank you.

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Just having been through the life theme cohort, if you run it in any form whatsoever close

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to that, it's going to be gold.

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So yeah, you'll be good.

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Awesome.

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You're going to join us?

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Yes.

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I have my support.

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100%.

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I'm going to try to.

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Alrighty.

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It's my goal.

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I don't know if I'm going to be able to catch all of them because I know I've got some trips

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involved that are going to conflict with that that are already on the calendar.

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But my goal is to join it.

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Yeah, it'll be good.

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Cool.

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You've got to be there at least for the first one.

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So I can give you credit for convincing me to use Obsidian from Realm Research.

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Alright, good to know.

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I will be there to take the accolades.

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Gladly.

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Well, we better get into some of this other follow up because there's a bunch of it here.

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I've got two of them.

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I'm actually going to defer despite there being a long list of them.

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But it occurred to me.

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So the two that I'm referring to are come up with my own filtering questions.

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This is kind of like, how do you decide what it is you're going to take on and not take

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on.

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And it occurred to me that this actually is and can be a direct overlap with your life

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theme cohort.

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And as I've been working on like the core values piece and trying to document my own

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core values, it occurred to me that it's pretty simple to take that concept and tweak

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it to question form.

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And that's what I've been like working through.

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And to kind of coincide with that, it also interacts with the first one on the list, which

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was list 10 things for I know I'm being successful when.

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So I have a list of about I would say about 18 of these that I've been like whittling down.

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But those are all like intertwined with each other I'm finding.

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Like trying to get those questions, the 10 things and then the core values piece and

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trying to get all of those condensed to where I'm happy with them.

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Like I'm super close on that just not 100%.

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So I wrote them, I actually put them down in the action items thing for next time because

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I want to make sure that I get these 100% and can share those next time because they're

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just not in shareable form right now.

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But I don't want them to get lost because that happens to me at times.

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I was like, yeah, we'll follow up with that next time.

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And then when we're putting together the notes and we don't remember which ones we're going

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to carry over and then they're gone.

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And I want that to happen.

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So carrying these over Mike, don't let me don't let me miss it.

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So those are my best.

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The other two that are on my list are get consistent with the evening journaling, which

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I have been.

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Every night I've been sitting down with my trusty notebook and writing and just kind

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of writing about the day and a few other questions that I've got that I run through at night.

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That's super helpful.

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So glad that I'm doing that.

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The last one was no phone in bed.

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I should know this.

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This is like Joe, you should really not have this problem, but here we are.

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And I've been pretty good about it.

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I have slipped a couple times where I'm quick pulling up chess real quick to make a quick

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move before I roll over to go to sleep.

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I was like, wait, I'm not supposed to be doing this.

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I'll do it in the morning.

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So I have slipped a few times for sure.

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But overall, I've been pretty good.

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So there's that.

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How about you?

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You do have to ask, don't you?

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I do.

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This is partly why I'm a big part of why we do bookworm.

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Yeah.

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Well, I'm going to fail this one pretty significantly.

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Uh oh.

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Yeah.

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So I'm not sure if you heard recently, but quit my job.

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What?

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And I have been scrambling a bit, shall we say, to get some things up and running.

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It's not bad stuff.

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It's not like even unexpected stuff.

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It's just little things taking longer than I thought they were going to.

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Like I'm doing some business consulting, right?

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And I've got a couple of clients already, which is awesome.

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But I need a website before I go to Craft & Commerce next week.

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So oh yeah, I should build a website.

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Things like that where it's like this needs to get done.

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It wasn't part of the plan.

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And those things keep popping up.

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So I'll go through my action items here just so you can shame me with each one.

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Because that's what I do.

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Yeah.

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Uh let's tend things for I know I'm being successful when I have not done that.

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I've been thinking about this, but that does not count because uh I've been thinking about

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what do I want it to look like by the end of the year.

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Anytime you go through a major life transition, that's like a perfect time to reconsider all

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of your habits, routines, what's your ideal day going to look like.

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I mentioned last week in the life theme cohort.

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By the way, I changed my life theme.

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So like I'm thinking about this stuff and what it looks like, but I didn't make this

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list.

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I also did not come up with my own filtering questions.

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They had some on page 45 and the gap and the gain, but I did not modify those.

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I did not teach my family to call each other out when in the gap.

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I've thought about this several times and every time I think about it, it's late at

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night and I'm like, should I bring this up with Rachel?

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Now we'll talk about it tomorrow and then I forget.

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Yep.

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So I'll mark a couple of these to carry over to since you're going to do the same and uh

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may not have a bunch of action items from this book.

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Spoiler alert.

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No phone before bed.

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This one I've succeeded at, but not with the shift I was going to make, which was using

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the books for journaling and that's it.

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I've kind of dabbled with the books and I'm using it, but not as consistently or the way

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I had envisioned it.

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There's still a lot that's happening on the computer specifically and because I am working

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from home and there's always a bunch of things to do.

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I'm finding myself slipping into working into the evening.

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So this is part of like a larger not official bookworm action item, but really establishing

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my shutdown routine and this is what I'm going to work on today.

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When it hits this time, I am officially done and not allowing myself to go back into the

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office, the studio, whatever, you know, my home office.

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Getting consistent with gratitude journaling.

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I've done this a few times, but I wouldn't say it's consistent yet.

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So progress, but not there yet.

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And then the experience transformer, I did actually look for this online.

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I can't find this thing.

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The only thing I can find is something called an impact filter, which is sort of related

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but not exactly and just looking at it confirms what I thought last time that whatever strategic

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coach is going to create is way too complicated.

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So I'm officially going to walk away from this one.

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All right.

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So we had a lot of work to do for next time.

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That we do.

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And I am hoping there's not going to be a ton of action items from this book.

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We'll see by the time we get to the end.

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We'll see that that said, let's jump into today's book so that we don't have to revel

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in the lack of accomplishment we both have on our action items here.

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Baskin our failures.

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Yep.

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Let's just focus on the positives.

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Today's book is the things you can see only when you slow down by Heyman Sunam and Heyman

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Sunam is a Zen Buddhist and has education from UC Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton.

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The book has been printed in 30 languages, sold 4 million copies, 265 pages long.

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But you wouldn't really know that because if you glance through the thing, there's a

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lot of pictures, lots of like short, I don't want to say poems, but like these like almost

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proverbs like or Psalms.

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If you want to take a scriptural reference there, there's like a bank of those at the

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end of every chapter.

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It's just a very different format.

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It's 265 pages, but there's maybe what 100 pages or so of reading involved here.

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I don't think I'm saying that in a negative way.

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I don't mean it that way regardless.

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Lots of artwork.

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It was originally written in 2012, translated in 2017.

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I wrote all this stuff down because I'm always trying to find this stuff whenever I'm trying

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to talk about the book at the beginning.

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But yeah, that's what I know.

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The things you can see only when you slow down and my original intent for picking this

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up was just that it feels like life is crazy busy and I never really seem to know why or

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what's causing that.

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And I'm grateful for having picked this one up at this point just because if anything,

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it's an interesting book.

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But since this was my choice and sometimes I pick books that drive you a little bit crazy,

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what was your gut reaction when I told you we were going to read this book?

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Because I know this is one that keeps showing up on lists for me and it sounded like you

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had never heard of it before.

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So first impressions, Mike, what did you get?

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I had not heard of it before.

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My first impression was you joining the monastery?

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Yeah, totally.

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Yep, that's in a couple of weeks here.

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Yeah, I don't really know what I expected going into it because this was not my book.

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I am curious what you expected because I think what this was based on what you told me was

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not exactly what you expected.

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It is essentially a lot of life philosophy from a Buddhist monk.

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And there are some things in here definitely that are worthwhile to think about.

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I just don't.

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But it does have, I think, limited value for both you and I because there is a fundamental

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difference in our theology with the writers.

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Now that's fine.

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We need to embrace contrary opinions.

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Going back to liminal thinking by Dave Gray, we need to consider things and consider the

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fact that we may be wrong.

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I don't think though you were looking for something that was going to challenge your

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faith.

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And ultimately that's kind of the way it read to me.

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Because at a fundamental level he does kind of talk about at the end that there's a lot

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more in common here in the last chapter.

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I'm sure we'll dissect that more.

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But just felt a little bit like I can see what you're saying with that.

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And I agree with the larger principle, but you and I disagree with some very fundamental

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things.

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And I felt like I had that reaction to a lot of the things that were in this book.

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Yeah, when I originally chose this, it was partially because it kept showing up on lists.

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And some of the picture of what I had in my brain was like what I see when I go on walks

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on trails in the woods.

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It's a chance when I slow down and you just listen to the birds and the kids screaming

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in the background.

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And it's a joke.

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It's okay.

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I have to laugh at it, but there's that.

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But you're in a peaceful situation and you start to notice things, especially if you're

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walking a similar trail daily, which is what I do.

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And when you do that, you have a tendency to notice things that you maybe didn't notice

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the last 20 times you've walked that exact same path.

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So you'll start to see things like that tree has a branch that's now broken or, huh, interesting.

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There's a bird nest over there and there's little ones in it.

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And I've apparently not noticed them until now.

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So it's fun to see like the new life, the things as they change, like you can start to

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see those things, but it has a little bit of a different effect as you see it each time.

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That concept is what I had in my brain when I picked this up of you're able to slow yourself

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and then you can pay attention to the things around you that you wouldn't normally pay

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attention to.

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Like, what are those things that you would notice when you slow down?

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I was not expecting like life philosophy.

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Here's how rest should work.

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Here's how mindfulness happens.

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Here's what happens if you're too passionate about something like I was not expecting that

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at all.

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Like that was, yeah, far from my brain.

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I think if I had maybe done a little more looking at it, noticed some of the Buddhist

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leanings here.

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I don't know that that would have deterred me though, because I'm not sure I was reading

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through some of the like cursory introduction stuff this morning.

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Just wondering, what is it that led me to picking this thing up?

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I don't think I noticed anything in all of that that would have queued me into it being

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different than what I had originally expected.

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So there's that.

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Just kind of caught me off guard a little bit, I suppose.

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I don't think it really caught me off guard because I feel like a lot of the advice around

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mindfulness meditation is somewhat anchored in this Zen Buddhist spirituality, which

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isn't necessarily bad, but it also really makes me appreciate people like Chris Bailey

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with how to calm your mind, because he comes at it from a strictly scientific approach.

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What does the research say?

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What is happening physiologically in your body when you are focusing on your breath and things

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like that?

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How to calm your mind is way beyond just the mindfulness meditation practice.

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He's got a separate audible book, which is all about that, but how to train your mind.

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But again, it's like all the productivity benefits.

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Those are applicable across a large number of domains.

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Most of the stuff that I've come across though in terms of book recommendations for how to

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meditate and all that kind of stuff has the same tone as this one.

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This one isn't even that.

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It's not.

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Here's how you meditate more effectively or anything like that, which I don't think that's

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necessarily what you were going for.

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I guess that's kind of what I was thinking.

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This might be when I picked it up.

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Yeah, it's like a whole bunch of short one-liner type things.

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Well, there's a couple of stories at the beginning of each chapter.

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Then there's sub-sections in each chapter, which are again, there are personal stories

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that are added there.

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But then a lot of it is just like this tweet length, little pithy sayings.

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It almost was like Seth Godin for Zen Buddhist philosophy.

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And that's not necessarily bad, but it's not my cup of tea.

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Let's jump in here because if we dive into this prologue, I think that'll maybe shed a

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little bit of light on this as well.

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But at the very beginning, he's talking about how he's a Zen monk.

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At some point, he started sharing some of his thoughts and things on Facebook and Twitter.

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He got a lot of feedback on that that people really enjoyed it.

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And he liked getting that feedback.

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So then he wrote a book about it.

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That's kind of the process here.

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I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but I think it maybe informs

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a little bit of why he's using these short segments of sorts at the end of these chapters.

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I think that's maybe why he's doing that because it made me wonder if those aren't some of

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his posts.

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Like, did he just copy some of his Facebook posts and put them at the end of this?

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Maybe?

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I don't know.

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It's possible.

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I don't Facebook know, but it kind of made me wonder about that.

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But all it is is he's just kind of explaining his background, how he got to the book situation

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and of course has some of those sayings, paragraphs of sorts at the end of that.

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But yes.

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Does that seem odd to you at all that a monk, regardless of the religion, starts off on

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Facebook and then writes the book?

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Okay.

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Jump into chapter one, rest.

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Towards the beginning of this, he mentions how some people find it conflicting that his

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very full schedule, like he has a very full schedule, but yet he's a zinn monk, a Buddhist

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monk.

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And it's like, huh, how do those two go together?

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I mean, and he makes a comment that like if he wanted more rest, he could just say no

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to things, but he doesn't.

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So I don't know.

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Yes, I'm with you.

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It seems strange, but I also have a hard time.

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I have a hard time putting all those pieces together.

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It just didn't seem to add up to me.

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As you get through this first chapter of rest, I mean, there's some stuff that's like, wait

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a second, what are you talking about?

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This like right out of the gate, we're starting to get into worldview conflicting thoughts.

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Okay.

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All right.

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What did I get us into here?

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I'm not really trying to point out a contradiction.

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I just think it's kind of interesting because I don't know exactly why he decided to become

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a monk.

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And I have known a few people who have joined religious orders.

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And like, I'm sure that there are different reasons to join different orders, different

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objectives with all of them.

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So I'm not going to profess to know that this is the way that they all work, but it

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occurs to me that out of the people that I've known who have made that decision, at least

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partly it's been because they want to put themselves in a certain environment and take

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themselves out of this worldly environment.

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And by choosing to stay on Facebook, you're immediately going back there.

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Yes.

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I guess my first response to joining a religious order, but still being on Facebook is kind

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of like, well, you're sort of self sabotaging there, which again, is completely unfair because

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I don't know the real motives behind it.

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And ultimately, people on Facebook need to be reached too.

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But I just have myself a strong visceral negative reaction to Facebook anyways.

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And everyone has their thing, right?

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It's kind of become popular to trash Twitter, but that's still the one that I enjoy.

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So to each their own, but it just was a little bit weird.

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It's like, wait, huh, that's interesting.

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Yeah.

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And I know like right here at the beginning in the rest chapter, he gets into this like

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not disconnect, but a connection between your mind and what the universe is and how your

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entire universe is what your mind can see and comprehend.

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And like that's similar to what we're talking about here because if you like, we don't necessarily

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understand everything that a Zen Buddhist monk does and what their life looks like.

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I don't have any experience with that at all.

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So my universe, according to his language, my universe would tell me that those types

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of activities don't exist because I don't have any perception of those.

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So in my universe, it doesn't exist.

00:24:01

The problem I have is that it does exist.

00:24:03

I'm just not aware of it.

00:24:05

And there's a lot of things that do exist and do happen whether my mind will acknowledge

00:24:11

it or not.

00:24:13

Like I can't change that.

00:24:15

But I can't say that having read his section on that, like his explanation of that particular

00:24:20

idea, like what you do for breakfast doesn't even happen because I'm not aware of it.

00:24:28

Like that's the way I would take that.

00:24:31

Maybe that's a gross exaggeration of what he's referring to, but that was my perception

00:24:36

of what he was intending or maybe not attending.

00:24:39

That was just the way it came across to me.

00:24:42

So I had a very hard time connecting the dots on this, which is not good because this is

00:24:45

where we're starting in the book.

00:24:47

Like this is page one and two that we're talking about.

00:24:50

It's like, okay, now what do I do?

00:24:52

This is like the foundation.

00:24:54

The rest of the book is going to build on.

00:24:55

So now how am I supposed to put the rest of the dots together?

00:24:59

So I got very nervous at this point.

00:25:03

So maybe I completely missed something.

00:25:05

If you're trying to connect dots, you are in for a battle.

00:25:14

Looking back at my notes from this book, there is no through line to any of this stuff.

00:25:21

It's a bunch of random tidbits that are organized into roughly eight different topics.

00:25:31

And I don't know if they all started off as some sort of social media post or not.

00:25:37

It kind of feels like a lot of this stuff was.

00:25:40

And there's a few things in here that I jotted down that I think are pretty cool.

00:25:47

Nothing is intrinsically good or bad.

00:25:49

It's always relative.

00:25:50

That kind of hearkens back to what we learned with the gap in the gain and the whole idea

00:25:55

behind transforming your experiences.

00:25:57

You can take a negative thing and glean some positive from it just by your attitude and

00:26:02

your perspective on the thing, choosing not to stay there and be resentful that this thing

00:26:07

happened.

00:26:08

It's not the outside world.

00:26:10

That's a whirlwind.

00:26:11

It's our mind.

00:26:13

That was kind of challenging.

00:26:14

I mentioned I'm in the middle of it with figuring out a couple different business things.

00:26:21

And when I read that, it's like, wow, so all this stuff, all this pressure, busyness that

00:26:28

I'm feeling, that's all internal.

00:26:30

It doesn't have to be that way.

00:26:32

I think I kind of failed that test these last couple of weeks.

00:26:38

All right.

00:26:39

Yeah.

00:26:40

So I don't know, but looking at the things that I jotted down to my original point in

00:26:45

response to you, there's no real connection between these things other than the loose

00:26:51

grouping of rest.

00:26:54

One of the things I jotted down was that too many choices make people unhappy.

00:26:59

Those who work nonstop work without joy.

00:27:02

I don't know.

00:27:04

I mean, any of these things in isolation is kind of like, well, let's stop and think about

00:27:07

that.

00:27:08

But to be honest, there's not a whole lot in here that I was like, okay, this is a major

00:27:13

thing and I can't wait to talk about this with Joe.

00:27:17

Yeah.

00:27:18

I will say, like in this first section, like outside of this hole, your mind is the universe.

00:27:23

The thing I don't understand.

00:27:27

There are a couple of points here that I wrote down that I think are very valid.

00:27:32

One of those was humor opens closed hearts.

00:27:36

And he's kind of getting there through, if you take the time to rest, you can do that

00:27:43

in a social situation and if you're able to find some reason to laugh, it's a way of opening

00:27:52

up your heart to the world, even if you're in a very rough situation.

00:27:58

Like that, I totally, I'm with you 100%.

00:28:01

It's something I do on a small scale when I know I've got people who are mourning that

00:28:07

I'm around or tense situations where people are nervous.

00:28:12

Like I'll sometimes try to make some smaller, weird joke of some sort just to try to break

00:28:18

ice.

00:28:19

Like I'll do that at times.

00:28:20

But there was another one that, and this was my interpretation of what he has down, but

00:28:26

it's like when you have a situation that you need or a decision that you need to make,

00:28:32

take the time required to process it before you act.

00:28:37

And it does come out a little bit later, but like don't process things angry.

00:28:42

We've talked about this.

00:28:43

I don't know how many times on the show is like if you're mad, angry, upset, that's the

00:28:47

last time you need to be making decisions and just acting on things.

00:28:50

Just take deep breath, walk away, come back to it later.

00:28:54

Like you're going to be significantly better in the long run.

00:28:57

But yes, this is at least some redemption in the first chapter.

00:29:03

I will say that.

00:29:04

Yeah, I don't think I have a whole lot else to say about the first one.

00:29:10

You want to go to the second one?

00:29:12

Yeah, so let's jump into mindfulness.

00:29:15

The second chapter here.

00:29:17

There's one mindfulness.

00:29:19

That's exactly what we've talked about before, being mindful of the things going on right

00:29:23

now.

00:29:24

But there was a, and this is a little bit of the strong emotion thing and piece that

00:29:29

it comes up.

00:29:30

He had an analogy here that I actually really, really liked.

00:29:32

This was the fish tank thing, which I had never heard of this.

00:29:37

But just imagine that you've got muddy water in a fish tank.

00:29:43

When you've got muddy water in a fish tank, equate that to like a difficult nasty situation

00:29:49

that just happened.

00:29:51

The worst thing you can do is act on it right away.

00:29:57

Because think about that, if you've got mud in the water and you start like trying to

00:30:00

push that mud down to the bottom.

00:30:02

What happens?

00:30:03

It just stirs it up even more and it gets even muddier.

00:30:06

So it makes the situation worse.

00:30:09

But if you take the time to step away from it and give it the space that silt and stuff

00:30:15

can sink to the bottom and it can start to give you clarity in the water.

00:30:20

It's like, I'd never really thought about the whole muddy fish tank thing, but I really

00:30:23

like that.

00:30:24

I'm probably going to steal that analogy in some form.

00:30:26

But I really like that one.

00:30:28

And that, that to me makes a lot of sense when I've got difficult decisions to make

00:30:32

or difficult situations to deal with.

00:30:35

Stick to your head, muddy fish tank.

00:30:37

Okay.

00:30:38

All right.

00:30:39

Settle down.

00:30:40

It'll be okay.

00:30:41

Yeah, I like that story too and that mental picture.

00:30:49

But I also feel like this is the kind of thing that I expected from this book.

00:30:58

And this is the kind of thing that it sounds cool, but for whatever reason doesn't really

00:31:05

get me excited.

00:31:08

I don't know what it is.

00:31:09

Maybe there's something wrong with me.

00:31:13

I'll take the blame for this one.

00:31:16

I mean, that story, I understand the point, which is basically if you put mud in the water,

00:31:24

you can't push it down, you just got to wait and let it settle.

00:31:29

So it's a effective metaphor, but also like after the initial, oh yeah, that's kind of

00:31:34

a cool story.

00:31:35

I find myself being like, okay, on to the next thing.

00:31:39

Maybe that means that my fish tank is muddy and I'm still trying to push it down.

00:31:45

I'm sure that's what he would probably tell me if we were having a conversation.

00:31:51

Something about that approach that just doesn't jive with me and I got to do more reflection

00:31:58

and figure out why is it that I'm not a big fan of that?

00:32:03

Maybe it's because it makes me uncomfortable because I really need to spend some time thinking

00:32:08

through it, but I don't know.

00:32:10

I'd like to think that I'm okay doing uncomfortable things.

00:32:14

I mean, I did just quit my job.

00:32:18

I'm not saying that I don't have room to grow, especially personally.

00:32:27

I'm not doing a very good job of explaining this, but I'm trying to put into words this

00:32:32

general disengagement I have with this material and this tone and I really don't understand

00:32:43

why.

00:32:44

I would say from my stance where I'm sitting, if I'm getting excited over an analogy for

00:32:52

something that I feel like is pretty obvious, just because it gives me a different way of

00:32:59

talking about it.

00:33:00

Number one, that's a nugget that I got from a book, so it's probably worth reading because

00:33:06

at some point, one nugget out of a book makes the book worth it.

00:33:10

It doesn't have to be completely life changing.

00:33:12

I just want one thing out of the book and then it was worth it.

00:33:15

There is that component, but also if it's something just like an analogy about a fish

00:33:20

tank and dealing with difficult situations, it's kind of a lame thing that if that's the

00:33:27

piece that I'm super excited about because that tells me that the rest of it is probably

00:33:31

lackluster and just kind of what you would expect.

00:33:36

There is that as well.

00:33:37

At the same time, here's maybe, again, this is me, the amount of the book that is him

00:33:48

writing about the topic and then explaining it is actually very short, which then means

00:33:54

that probably half or more of each chapter is spent with these like short, pithy statements,

00:34:00

two sentence, one liners, one paragraph things that are completely disconnected from each

00:34:04

other.

00:34:05

There is no through line in those at all.

00:34:07

They are completely separate.

00:34:08

They are social media posts, if you will.

00:34:12

That's not what we sign up for when we read books.

00:34:15

I'm not expecting to cruise through somebody's Twitter feed when I buy a book.

00:34:21

That's the opposite of what I'm after.

00:34:24

So, I don't want the short stuff.

00:34:26

I want a long explanation of something.

00:34:29

That's why I bought the book.

00:34:32

So it's a little frustrating to me to have more than half the chapter with these short

00:34:36

social media posts type segments.

00:34:38

So that's a little frustrating.

00:34:41

Maybe that's some of what you're noticing, but those were some of my thoughts on it.

00:34:47

I don't know.

00:34:48

I mean, let's just take that idea of the fish tank, right?

00:34:52

You could expound that into a larger thing.

00:34:54

I don't think it's just that this, it's a small little story.

00:34:58

I mean, we literally just read a book, The Gap and the Game, which was a simple idea.

00:35:02

Yeah.

00:35:03

Expanded to fill a book.

00:35:05

So why do I get all excited about that one, but find myself resisting this one?

00:35:13

That's the thing there.

00:35:15

And the only thing that I can really put my finger on is that a lot of these types of

00:35:25

stories that are in this book, and I'm not going to ascribe this specifically to the Zen

00:35:34

Buddhist mindset.

00:35:35

I'm just going to say from this author in this book, it seems like there is a bit of a,

00:35:46

pride's not the right word, but kind of like patting yourself on the back for going deep

00:35:52

enough.

00:35:53

And I kind of feel like when it comes to this sort of stuff, especially with emotions, because

00:35:56

that's what this is all about.

00:35:58

The main point here is that the harder we try to suppress negative emotions, the more we

00:36:01

turn them up.

00:36:03

Okay, well, I'm ready to admit that my emotions aren't always right.

00:36:11

So let's move on from that, you know, and it kind of feels like he's like, no, no, you

00:36:18

just got to go deeper.

00:36:19

You just got to go deeper.

00:36:22

And I find that a little uncomfortable.

00:36:25

And again, maybe that means I should, but my first reaction upon reading this is like,

00:36:32

okay, I see where you're coming from.

00:36:35

And yeah, we don't want to suppress negative emotions.

00:36:39

We're not going to try to pretend that stuff doesn't get there, but we did just read the

00:36:42

gap in the game.

00:36:43

We're not going to stay there.

00:36:44

And I'm not going to sit there and say, Oh, I feel so bad.

00:36:47

I feel so bad.

00:36:48

Why do I feel so bad?

00:36:50

And I'm wallowing that till I get deep enough.

00:36:52

Oh, this is the root of it.

00:36:53

Like, I feel it's kind of contradictory to the book that we just read.

00:36:59

And that I'm more in the camp of, okay, I recognize this thing, but I'm not going to

00:37:05

just sit here and let it define me either.

00:37:08

And that's not exactly what he's saying.

00:37:10

So like, this is really difficult to verbalize because I'm putting words in people's mouths

00:37:16

on both sides here, but it feels like these are competing ideas and I'm having a hard

00:37:24

time reconciling them.

00:37:26

All I know is that this, let's just sit and be one with the world and figure out and feel

00:37:33

what really is like that is not me.

00:37:37

Well, contrast that with the next chapter, which is passion, right?

00:37:43

Basically strong emotions.

00:37:44

So going from the place of having negative emotions and just trying to sit in it and

00:37:51

be aware of it, right, to overwhelming positive emotions.

00:37:57

And he tells the story of when he first started teaching, he was giving his students too much

00:38:01

to do and he was treating it as if that was the only class that they had.

00:38:06

So he was overwhelming them with homework and extra things.

00:38:08

So like, yeah, absolutely, you need to back off, dude.

00:38:11

But it was because it was his first class, his first time as a professor, super eager,

00:38:15

super excited.

00:38:17

Remember that eagerness a little bit is what he's getting at here.

00:38:20

It's like that I get, but I can't say that like over excitement is what I expected when

00:38:27

I see passion as the title.

00:38:31

So like that immediately through a disconnect.

00:38:33

So then I had a hard time connecting the rest of the chapter to it because I just didn't

00:38:37

I didn't follow it because like he tells that story.

00:38:42

He talks about you need to learn to control overflowing eagerness.

00:38:46

And then he had a quote that I was like, wait, what?

00:38:50

Being right isn't nearly as important as being happy together.

00:38:54

And I just wanted to say no, sometimes being right is absolutely the right thing.

00:39:03

So I don't know.

00:39:07

I didn't know what to do with that.

00:39:08

And I also didn't know how that connected with passion.

00:39:12

So I just had a hard time with this one.

00:39:14

I wrote completely disconnected thoughts down and I'm not sure what they really came from.

00:39:20

Well, I mean, that is the totality of my notes for this book to be honest.

00:39:26

So with with passion specifically, and again, if you were to talk to him, you'd probably

00:39:32

say passion is not necessarily bad.

00:39:34

But a lot of the things that I jotted down here are warnings against unbridled passion.

00:39:41

You mentioned that page 78, no matter how effective the medicine may be, if you demand

00:39:45

that someone take it, it can taste like poison.

00:39:48

So that's kind of he was talking about that with the teaching example that you mentioned

00:39:54

and realizing that he can't just be excited about the topic.

00:39:58

He's got to basically put it out there and then it's up to his students to engage with

00:40:02

it.

00:40:03

And when he stops trying to force it upon them, that's when they actually engaged with it

00:40:07

and liked it and it changed their lives.

00:40:11

So that is kind of like dial back the passion.

00:40:15

Sometimes our zeal can get in the way of being effective and getting results.

00:40:18

The most dangerous people are those who have passion but lack wisdom.

00:40:22

People won't be convinced until they are heard and respected.

00:40:25

So the common theme here is always like, just chill.

00:40:32

So I tend to think I am a fairly passionate person.

00:40:40

And I don't know if I just jotted down all the things that were sort of like the warnings

00:40:48

against that because of my personality or if that really is the tone of this chapter,

00:40:54

but at least based off of my notes, that's the message that I heard.

00:41:00

And again, not a big fan of that.

00:41:04

Tell me how I can channel it effectively.

00:41:09

And it's okay to share a few warnings here and there, but it feels like that's what the

00:41:12

majority of this stuff is.

00:41:14

And it's not even warnings like make sure that you are careful.

00:41:19

It seems like he goes out of his way to be very careful about some of the ways that he

00:41:23

phrases things.

00:41:25

It's almost like by telling a story or using a subject himself or somebody else that's

00:41:31

not connected, it's less not forceful, but maybe condemning in the listener's ear.

00:41:41

Like they're not hearing judgment.

00:41:44

If they are, it's because they're putting themselves in that picture.

00:41:47

Maybe that's like an intentional choice.

00:41:50

But again, like I don't really like that.

00:41:54

My personality, myself personally, I would prefer to, and I would be willing to pay good

00:42:02

money for a coach who is going to tell me, hey, this is what you're doing wrong.

00:42:09

Now knock it off and do this instead.

00:42:11

And it's like that's so anti the tone he's trying to take with this book.

00:42:15

It's hard for me to relate to.

00:42:18

But again, that's personality.

00:42:20

So I'll give the benefit of it out there.

00:42:24

If you go on to the next chapter, relationships, this is where I started to put together a

00:42:29

theme and it'll carry over into the next chapter too for sure.

00:42:34

Relationships at the beginning of this, he talks about how he was on a trip with someone

00:42:39

he had met and became good friends with.

00:42:42

And they were really good friends, but by a few days in, they were just sick and tired

00:42:47

of each other.

00:42:48

And they just wanted to get away and he kind of sensed it.

00:42:51

So they went off and did their own thing.

00:42:53

And then after some time away, they felt great and came back together.

00:42:56

The part that struck me about this is just that with the passion piece, he's talking

00:43:03

about the problem he created as a professor with the mindfulness piece he was talking

00:43:10

about, you know, sitting with negative emotions to understand where they're coming from and

00:43:15

being mindful of where those come from.

00:43:19

And then jump back to where we're at now on this relationship, he was talking about the

00:43:23

negative thing of being around people too much.

00:43:26

And this is where it struck me that like he's, he's mentioning the negative side of each

00:43:31

of these things at the beginning of these chapters, which is the opposite of what I

00:43:35

would have expected from a monk in this situation.

00:43:40

So I think this is where I started to say, okay, why are we focusing on the negative

00:43:45

side of this at the beginning of these?

00:43:49

I don't really understand why that's the focal point when I felt like this was again,

00:43:56

come back to the beginning of where I started.

00:43:57

The things you can see only when you slow down, like to me, that immediately has like

00:44:02

a positive connotation.

00:44:04

There's things that I should be able to notice if I slow down, right?

00:44:08

And I don't know that anybody would say it's a bad thing to notice things if you slow

00:44:13

down, but he's pointing out these negative components of each of these topics as we dive

00:44:18

into them.

00:44:20

So I feel like there's a, at least in my simpleton brain, there's a direct conflict

00:44:26

here between what I'm finding in each of these chapters and what my expectation was.

00:44:31

So maybe that's me sitting in the gap and not sitting in the gain.

00:44:37

I don't know what that is, but that's what I started to notice here.

00:44:43

Regardless of all that, he has some good points in here on this.

00:44:47

Good conversation requires honesty.

00:44:50

Otherwise people get bored in conversation and just want it to end.

00:44:56

So I mean, it's something that I feel like has some good points there.

00:45:01

You know, he's got another one here.

00:45:02

Forgive others for your own sake, not necessarily for theirs, just so you can let things go.

00:45:09

But again, he's focusing on the negative side of something.

00:45:11

This can cause a lot of problems for you if you don't let it go.

00:45:14

So I don't know.

00:45:15

I just struggled with it once I connected those dots.

00:45:18

Yeah.

00:45:20

The thing that challenged me from this chapter was right at the beginning, and there's not

00:45:25

an action I'm associated with this, but there is some thinking to be done here on how much

00:45:30

do we invest in good relationships?

00:45:35

I don't know.

00:45:36

Like this chapter out of all of the chapters, I felt like his message finally got through

00:45:40

to me.

00:45:41

And it was more so, hey, you should really spend some time thinking about this rather

00:45:46

than all of the short little tactical one liners.

00:45:51

I don't know why that is, but yeah, maybe because this is the area I need to grow the

00:46:00

most in.

00:46:01

I don't know.

00:46:02

Yep.

00:46:03

That's right.

00:46:04

Right there.

00:46:05

Nailed it.

00:46:06

I am introverted and my idea of a good time on a Friday night is sitting at home with a

00:46:13

book, but I don't know.

00:46:16

I also feel like I've internalized this message.

00:46:19

It's been a recurring topic, if not action item on bookworm over the years of recognizing

00:46:25

the importance of relationships.

00:46:27

But the big thing I walk out of this chapter with is just a renewed desire to audit my

00:46:36

relationships, I guess, and invest in them a little bit more intentionally.

00:46:42

Yeah, I've got a lot going on right now and I completely biffed all my action items from

00:46:47

this time, but this still feels important to me.

00:46:52

Not necessarily I want to do something about it, but I want to make sure that I'm not missing

00:46:58

it if that makes sense.

00:47:00

Yep.

00:47:01

Well, let's move on to the next one because I don't really understand this one, which

00:47:07

is love.

00:47:08

It's the next chapter.

00:47:10

And by not understanding it, I don't mean I don't understand love, though my wife might

00:47:14

disagree with that.

00:47:17

But I did feel like this one, again, he starts off with a negative story of how he was on

00:47:23

a trip on a trip studying somewhere.

00:47:26

I don't remember what the this is a weird one.

00:47:29

It is a weird one, but he was talking about where was he at?

00:47:34

He was in.

00:47:35

I thought somebody came to where he was as a kid.

00:47:40

That's what it was.

00:47:42

And he fell in love with this gal.

00:47:45

Yep.

00:47:46

And she mentioned that she was going home in two weeks and he was sick because he had

00:47:52

become so enamored with her.

00:47:55

And then he doesn't tell her about how he feels about her.

00:48:00

She goes back to the United States and then somehow contacted him about three years later

00:48:07

to let him know that she was getting married and invited him to the wedding and he didn't

00:48:12

go.

00:48:13

Then at one point they connect later and her then husband greeted him warmly and it was

00:48:20

like this painful thing that he just dealt with and I don't know if he ever told her.

00:48:24

I mean, he has now in the book.

00:48:28

So again, we're talking about the negative side of something.

00:48:35

You didn't stand up and say something.

00:48:38

Maybe that's a Western idea thing that he didn't grow up with.

00:48:45

I don't know.

00:48:46

I don't know what the situation is here, but I don't know why I'm hearing this story.

00:48:49

And I'm not sure how it applies to the rest of the book because I got so confused at this

00:48:57

point that I just didn't know what to do with it.

00:49:01

I just really didn't.

00:49:03

Maybe you have a connecting point here, but I didn't really understand how it fit.

00:49:07

No, this one I only jettled down a couple of things.

00:49:10

This was the chapter I had the least amount of notes from.

00:49:13

Well, tied for the last chapter on spirituality.

00:49:19

I think a couple of things that kind of stood out to me.

00:49:23

The heart is slower than the mind.

00:49:26

I mentioned at the beginning one of the worst feelings is to believe that you don't matter

00:49:31

and no action item associated with that.

00:49:34

Rather than again, I want to think about how do I make sure that people that I interact

00:49:41

with don't feel that way.

00:49:44

Specifically, I can think of times in my life when I have felt like I don't matter stupid

00:49:51

little things like I'm talking to somebody and they're not paying attention.

00:49:56

I'm in the middle of saying something and they just blurt out something totally unrelated

00:50:01

because they're switching topics like they're not even hearing what I'm saying.

00:50:05

It becomes obvious in that moment and I hate that.

00:50:09

But yeah, I did not get any love advice from this chapter either.

00:50:16

I certainly did not.

00:50:17

Though maybe I should have.

00:50:19

I don't know.

00:50:21

I think maybe you and I are not the target market, at least for this chapter.

00:50:28

True.

00:50:30

There's a lot of those little pieces of advice, not necessarily the stories.

00:50:36

The stories are pretty generalizable, I feel.

00:50:38

But a lot of the advice that little snippets that are in here are written towards somebody

00:50:46

who is, I feel like transitioning between high school age, college age, entering the

00:50:52

workforce, new adult, basically.

00:50:57

And so it's kind of like I wish I would have known these things when I was this age, is

00:51:03

the approach that he's taking with some of this stuff.

00:51:05

But what that does is it makes people who are not in that stage of life and firmly committed

00:51:14

to at least some of the choices that they've made.

00:51:16

It's kind of like, well, that one's not for me.

00:51:20

The next chapter is life because we haven't been talking about life yet.

00:51:26

And this one, he starts off with a story about how he walks around New York City and sometimes

00:51:30

people ask him if he knows Kung Fu.

00:51:34

And it's usually the kids who ask him that, but it's because he's walking around in a

00:51:39

white robe and looks like a monk.

00:51:42

And kids think that guys who wear robes like that are going to no martial arts.

00:51:49

So that's where he starts.

00:51:52

But adults always want to know, are you super calm, super happy, supers in, all the things,

00:51:59

which is my stereotype, obviously, because this is the negative thing always being brought

00:52:04

up.

00:52:05

Though this one's not really a negative, it doesn't really pitch it as a negative thing.

00:52:10

So kudos to him on that.

00:52:13

But he does get into just happiness in general.

00:52:15

But again, I'm not really sure where he's headed here, other than just take the experiences

00:52:24

that happen and try to view them in a positive light and don't let things get to you.

00:52:29

That's really the moral of the story, I think.

00:52:32

But I'm not, again, 100%.

00:52:35

Well, I'm not sure I can give you any solid direction on the meaning of life, but the chapter

00:52:47

or the time we have on this earth.

00:52:51

But some things I jotted down in here that I really liked.

00:52:55

I think this might be the one that I jotted the most notes from.

00:53:00

I like on page 180 where he says the biggest obstacle to learning is pretending to know

00:53:05

even when you don't.

00:53:07

That is one of the better articulations of this feeling that I have felt and actually

00:53:13

brought up in conversation a couple of times in the last couple of weeks about how the more

00:53:18

I know, the less I think I know.

00:53:22

But I never really viewed it as like, if I think I know things, that being an obstacle

00:53:28

to learning things.

00:53:30

But I like that framing that makes a lot of sense.

00:53:35

Talks about how where you live shapes you.

00:53:38

I didn't like that part partly because I forget, I don't think it was the last book,

00:53:43

but maybe the one before that.

00:53:45

Some recent book told us that we needed to move to where the other people like us were.

00:53:51

If we wanted to, oh, it was the pathless path maybe about surrounding yourself with those

00:53:59

kind of people that you wanted to be.

00:54:03

I don't remember.

00:54:04

But anyways, I've been rebelling against that idea for a while because I live in the middle

00:54:09

of Wisconsin.

00:54:11

This isn't where the techy startup stuff is, but those are my people.

00:54:16

Does that mean I have to move to San Francisco?

00:54:19

I hope not.

00:54:21

But I do think that there is some truth to this, where you live does actually shape you.

00:54:28

There's another phrase here, the more you know, the more you think you don't, the more

00:54:31

you don't know, the more you think you do.

00:54:34

What I was talking about earlier, but it was interesting to me the way that was phrased,

00:54:39

there's this reverse bias that kicks in.

00:54:44

It's like if you encounter somebody who thinks they have no idea what they're doing, they're

00:54:48

probably pretty smart.

00:54:50

They're running into someone who thinks they got it all figured out, probably an idiot.

00:54:55

It's not exactly how he was saying, but that's kind of how I heard it.

00:54:58

The connotation.

00:54:59

Yep.

00:55:00

Yep.

00:55:01

Knowledge wants to talk, wisdom wants to listen.

00:55:03

I like that phrase a lot.

00:55:04

And then the other one that I really liked was that life is like jazz.

00:55:07

Much of it is improvised.

00:55:10

I guess I like that because I feel like I'm doing a lot of improvising lately with the

00:55:17

career change and it's uncomfortable for my personality to not know how everything is

00:55:27

going to play out.

00:55:29

I can't plan it all out.

00:55:33

That's probably good for me, but I would like it all to be neatly ordered and follow the

00:55:40

instructions, please.

00:55:42

The instructions.

00:55:44

Where are those?

00:55:47

I don't know.

00:55:48

I was thinking of the Lego movie.

00:55:51

Emmet, you know at the beginning where everyone just follow the instructions.

00:55:56

That's my personality.

00:55:57

So I guess that phrase is kind of confirmation, I guess, for the stage of life I find myself

00:56:02

in.

00:56:03

And I take comfort in that, realizing that this is the way it's supposed to be and everything

00:56:07

is going to be okay.

00:56:09

He does have, there's a section in here on this life chapter that I did.

00:56:14

I'd forgotten it was in this particular piece.

00:56:16

But he's got like these three liberating insights that he says that a spring day as he was turning

00:56:22

30, he looked into his mind and realized three things.

00:56:26

That seems really.

00:56:27

I don't like those at all.

00:56:29

You know what that reminded me of?

00:56:32

Is it Ecclesiastes?

00:56:34

You know Solomon's like, there are six things, Lord to test.

00:56:38

No, seven that are in abomination.

00:56:40

Yes.

00:56:41

And it's like all these lists.

00:56:43

That's what that reminded me of.

00:56:44

And I was like, I've never liked these.

00:56:47

Anyway, he had these three liberating insights.

00:56:53

And despite his phrasing for how he gets to them, I think these three are pretty solid

00:56:59

actually.

00:57:00

The first of which is that people aren't as interested in you as you think they are,

00:57:05

which again, which I talked about before, not a grand idea that's completely revolutionary.

00:57:13

Yeah, everyone has to like you.

00:57:15

Also true.

00:57:18

Number three, most things we end up doing for ourselves as much as we think we're doing

00:57:25

things for other people.

00:57:26

We generally are doing them for ourselves.

00:57:29

That one probably, but has a little more leeway, I would think.

00:57:35

But it's like, at least these are borderline actionable.

00:57:40

But at the same time, again, this is not fully connected to the original idea that you need

00:57:50

to slow down.

00:57:51

So I kind of get it and I kind of don't at the same time.

00:57:54

Regardless, out of context, I like those three.

00:57:58

Yeah, I don't disagree with the content from those, just the framing of those lists.

00:58:07

I really don't like.

00:58:09

I hope I don't do that.

00:58:11

I probably do.

00:58:13

He talks about how when there's something you don't like about someone else, it's usually

00:58:16

because there's something about yourself that you don't like, that you see in the book.

00:58:19

Yeah, I don't like how true that is though.

00:58:22

Yep.

00:58:23

All right, let's talk about the future, which is the last, no, second to last chapter before

00:58:28

the epilogue.

00:58:30

The future, he starts off with, there's a section here.

00:58:34

One word of encouragement can change the future.

00:58:37

And he talks about a school teacher of his that had a word of encouragement that he was

00:58:43

going to be a leader and a role model to his student, his fellow students.

00:58:49

And it completely changed his trajectory.

00:58:51

And he even says that he doesn't think he would be as influential today were it not

00:58:56

for her.

00:58:58

This feels like a very grandiose exaggeration to me.

00:59:04

And I think that's just, it's the result of being on edge and questioning so many things

00:59:10

because there's so many things are like on the brink of me not trusting the book entirely.

00:59:17

So I think because of that, it made me think, are you sure it was that big a deal?

00:59:21

Like it just made me not certain.

00:59:24

Regardless, the idea is solid.

00:59:27

Like encouraging, especially young people can have a tremendous impact on their future.

00:59:34

And if you ever want to see a kid get completely dedicated to accomplishing something, just

00:59:39

tell them you think that they're awesome and that they can totally succeed at something.

00:59:43

And they just thrive at least every time I've been able to see that happen, it's been phenomenal.

00:59:50

So encourage children for sure.

00:59:53

But it works with adults too.

00:59:57

Yeah, I jotted down a phrase here.

01:00:02

One word of encouragement said with kindness and hope could change a person's future.

01:00:07

And I really did like the story that he shared with this one where he was actually over at

01:00:12

his friend's house and his friend's mom was a teacher.

01:00:16

And he didn't like her as a teacher.

01:00:18

And so he wanted to make sure he was out of his friend's house before she came home.

01:00:23

And then lost track of time because they were playing with some new toys.

01:00:27

And what he realized was that outside of the classroom, she was a really kind person.

01:00:34

And she said something to him that kind of shaped his future.

01:00:39

To be honest though, I want to do that obviously for other people, but I want to be careful

01:00:46

about how I do that.

01:00:47

I couldn't help but think of mindset by Carol Dweck at this section because the example

01:00:54

that he shared, she had a very specific, you're going to do this sort of a thing.

01:01:01

And that's cool that he was inspired and he actually did it.

01:01:04

But I feel like Carol Dweck talks about the danger of doing that and how you can set your

01:01:09

kids up specifically for failure.

01:01:12

I mean, not if it's somebody else's kid that makes it any better necessarily.

01:01:17

But you feel it more I think with your own kids for sure.

01:01:22

I want to be careful not to get them to the point where they feel they have to succeed

01:01:30

or they're going to disappoint.

01:01:35

And obviously that's a perspective that is kind of missing from this section.

01:01:43

But I do like the idea of speaking into people's future and I do believe that there are a

01:01:48

lot of people past me included who just needed someone to believe in them and say, you have

01:01:54

what it takes, give it a shot.

01:01:57

So I want to be that for other people, I want to enable other people.

01:02:05

And I don't know exactly how to do that obviously.

01:02:09

But inspired to do it from this chapter, a couple other like random ideas that are powerful

01:02:16

in this too about enjoying the process of learning something new.

01:02:21

I feel like that's what we do with bookworm.

01:02:23

We read these books.

01:02:24

And for whatever reason, there's a certain group of people that I encounter in real life

01:02:29

that have really hard time believing that I enjoy reading these nonfiction books.

01:02:38

Yes.

01:02:39

I'm glad I'm not the only one that experiences that because whenever I say something about

01:02:42

reading productivity, self-help business, nonfiction books, the response is one of two

01:02:48

things.

01:02:49

It's usually, huh, that's interesting.

01:02:51

And why?

01:02:52

Why would you do that?

01:02:54

Yeah, I feel like if I encounter someone in real life and find out that they really enjoy

01:03:01

reading and we start, oh, well, what do you really, what do you like reading?

01:03:05

What's the last book that you read that you really enjoyed?

01:03:09

They will almost always pick something from fiction.

01:03:11

I will obviously always pick something from nonfiction and immediately there's this disconnect.

01:03:18

And it's like, you get real excited and then, oh, you're not like me.

01:03:22

Yep.

01:03:23

Yep.

01:03:24

We recently hired a new pastor on staff for our youth pastor and I was in his office

01:03:28

setting up his computer and he had a bunch of books on the wall.

01:03:33

So of course I'm looking through books while I'm waiting for him to change his password.

01:03:36

It's like, you read a lot.

01:03:38

It's like, yeah, I read a book every couple of weeks.

01:03:40

It's like, oh, who's your favorite author?

01:03:42

What's your favorite title?

01:03:43

It's like, it's not, not in the same realm.

01:03:47

Like I already know this, Darren.

01:03:49

Like it's just not like seeing what's on your wall.

01:03:52

It's like, this isn't, we're not going to be on the same page.

01:03:54

I can already tell you that.

01:03:56

Yep.

01:03:58

Uh, but that is why, um, I feel that I am like that is I have learned to enjoy the process

01:04:09

of learning something new.

01:04:11

And it's not learning something new.

01:04:14

I feel like with the stuff that we do for bookworm is different than most people would probably

01:04:20

approach learning something new because we alternate picking the books and we don't have

01:04:25

a hundred percent say on which ones we're going to do.

01:04:28

And even if when we do, you know, the general advice would be if you don't enjoy a book,

01:04:33

don't finish it, but we have to, because we said we were going to do it and we're going

01:04:36

to talk about it.

01:04:38

So I think there are some books that we've just had to muscle through.

01:04:43

And I've had to learn to just find the nuggets and brew on those, even if I don't really

01:04:50

enjoy the overall message or tone of the book, I can always find something to make it a worthwhile

01:04:57

investment of my time.

01:04:59

Whereas I feel like a lot of people would pick up a book and if it's not resonating,

01:05:03

they'd just be like, ah, I'm not going to finish reading that one.

01:05:07

And that's probably a very valid approach, probably the right approach for a lot of

01:05:11

people.

01:05:13

But there is something to be said about having to stick with the books and finish the hard

01:05:18

things and do it in a way where it's not a drudgery.

01:05:26

So I guess when I'm learning new things, I'm looking for anything that might be interesting.

01:05:33

And that opens me up to a lot of new ideas.

01:05:35

Whereas I think maybe the default approach would be I want to figure out how to do this

01:05:43

specific thing.

01:05:44

And so I will go pick a book, which is going to help me solve this particular problem.

01:05:48

And again, very valid reason to pick up a book, but I'm thankful for having to muscle

01:05:54

through the bad ones.

01:05:56

I feel like that has made me a better reader and a better learner over low these many years.

01:06:03

It's good to know I'll keep picking bad books for you then.

01:06:08

That's not what I meant.

01:06:09

I've picked bad books too.

01:06:11

You never really know what you're getting into when you buy something off of Amazon.

01:06:15

Wait, that means you can't judge a book by its cover.

01:06:17

Okay, good to know.

01:06:18

But I'm.

01:06:19

All right.

01:06:20

Well, let's talk about spirituality because.

01:06:25

Do we have to?

01:06:26

We have to.

01:06:27

This is the last chapter of the book before the epilogue and he starts it with a section

01:06:34

called long lost cousins.

01:06:36

And really the only way I can explain that is that he had a chance to go to a different

01:06:41

mon.

01:06:42

Was it a monastery?

01:06:43

I think it was a monastery.

01:06:46

I think it was a monastery, but it was not of the same religion.

01:06:50

It was a Christian monastery, but I don't.

01:06:54

A mechanical Christian monastic community is the way he explained it.

01:06:58

Yeah, I know nothing about that specifically, but basically they treated him really, really

01:07:03

well and they developed a bond with the people that were there and yeah, that's the way it

01:07:08

should be.

01:07:09

Correct.

01:07:10

Yeah.

01:07:11

And it was something that struck him and basically he's saying that sometimes you're

01:07:19

going to run across other people who have different views than you, but you're close

01:07:24

enough that you can have a kindred spirit and connect with them and build relationships

01:07:30

with them.

01:07:31

Not necessarily like you're not necessarily going to get into debates with them.

01:07:36

You're not necessarily going to agree with them 100%, but you're within the same territory.

01:07:42

So I kind of get that.

01:07:45

I'm not entirely certain why it needs to be called spirituality.

01:07:52

When he's talking about that, because that was the only, I believe that was the only

01:07:54

section here.

01:07:56

I'm double checking.

01:07:57

Yeah.

01:07:58

That was the only thing he had here.

01:08:00

Oh, no, wait, there was a different one.

01:08:02

Two spiritual paths and one family.

01:08:04

Yeah, he's talking about how two different people can have two different viewpoints.

01:08:08

Mm-hmm.

01:08:09

Basically, just get along.

01:08:11

That's the thing.

01:08:12

Right.

01:08:13

Kind of struck.

01:08:14

Well, spirituality, if someone disagrees with you, you don't have to argue about it.

01:08:20

You don't have to debate about it.

01:08:21

You don't have to try to convince the other person, just get along.

01:08:24

That was the error I got from it, which I would sorely disagree with, that premise.

01:08:30

But I'm also not entirely certain that that's what he's trying to get across either.

01:08:34

I don't know.

01:08:35

Maybe you have a better view on it, Mike.

01:08:38

Not really, but I feel like this maybe is mislabeled.

01:08:41

So it's a spirituality.

01:08:42

But really what he's talking about, at least the notes that I jotted down is religion.

01:08:47

I know that some of the anecdotal stuff in there is more general spiritual stuff.

01:08:54

But the stories, yeah.

01:08:58

And then even some of the things that I jotted down, like, you reap what you sow.

01:09:03

You don't receive more love from God by asking for it.

01:09:06

Those are his words.

01:09:08

Those are not mine.

01:09:11

I'm internalizing what he's saying.

01:09:13

This is like what's in the book.

01:09:15

The holier a person is, the more they describe themselves as a sinner.

01:09:19

Religious conflicts can be blamed not on the founders, but on the followers.

01:09:23

That's an interesting idea.

01:09:25

And maybe that's worth discussion.

01:09:27

I think I agree with that.

01:09:29

He says, you know, if I forget the people he mentioned, Gandhi, Jesus and Mohammed were

01:09:38

to sit down, they wouldn't be fighting.

01:09:42

They would be able to get along.

01:09:44

But the followers can't.

01:09:47

I think there is some truth to that.

01:09:50

But I also firmly disagree with the notion that they're all the same.

01:09:58

I got to be careful here because I think everyone who follows any religion would say

01:10:05

that, that they don't believe that they are all the same.

01:10:11

Otherwise, like, why did you land on the one that you chose?

01:10:15

Now, obviously with our Christian theology, we have very specific beliefs, which, as I

01:10:21

mentioned at the beginning, are kind of contradictory to some of the tone and the message throughout

01:10:28

this entire book.

01:10:29

It's not just this last chapter on spirituality here that I am feeling the truth.

01:10:35

This tension.

01:10:38

But I don't know.

01:10:41

In my opinion, there are two paths to talking about this stuff.

01:10:48

For me, that are acceptable.

01:10:51

One is I will not talk about certain things, certain places.

01:10:58

You know, you don't argue online, that sort of thing.

01:11:03

And there are some of the topics in the books that we cover for Bookworm, for example, where

01:11:09

I might bring up my experience and share some personal story.

01:11:13

But I'm not going to interject my faith into the topic and say, "This is what everybody

01:11:20

must do because that is not right."

01:11:25

But then if we're going to chat after church on Sunday and some productivity topic comes

01:11:33

up, it'll have a very different tone because of the context and the environment of that

01:11:42

conversation.

01:11:44

So either, you know, this is a religious conversation and we've all got this shared understanding

01:11:51

of, well, this is the, from my experience, it would be the Bible.

01:11:57

Okay, we're going to base our conversation off of this or we're going to not have that

01:12:03

shared understanding in which case the conversation is going to sound very different.

01:12:07

And this one is kind of like in the middle where it's like, "Well, we can talk about

01:12:12

this stuff over here, but they're basically all the same."

01:12:15

So what that is is it's trying to force the narrowing of these two things I feel, but

01:12:21

in a way that is not confrontational in any way, shape, or form.

01:12:27

And I don't know how you do that well.

01:12:32

I almost wish like he would just preach at me, "This is why you should be a Zen Buddhist

01:12:37

monk like me," or cut this chapter out completely.

01:12:41

Yes.

01:12:43

Or reframe it not something along spirituality and religion, but like you were talking about

01:12:50

being a decent human's persons.

01:12:54

That's something I say at my house all the time, my kids are fighting.

01:12:56

He's like, "Hey, can we be decent human's persons?"

01:13:00

I like it.

01:13:01

And they're like, "Yeah."

01:13:06

Because they inherently know like what they're doing and the way that they're acting is

01:13:11

annoying and frustrating to somebody else.

01:13:14

And this isn't the place to push to get your way.

01:13:18

Yes.

01:13:19

Right?

01:13:20

You are not more important than another person, so stop acting like it.

01:13:23

Yep.

01:13:24

Yep.

01:13:25

Exactly.

01:13:26

I just didn't care for that.

01:13:28

I didn't even write anything down on this chapter.

01:13:30

I don't even understand other than like you were saying, "We're all one and the same," which

01:13:36

we're not.

01:13:37

So that brings us to the epilogue, which I didn't even write the title for it down in my notes.

01:13:46

It was what?

01:13:47

Two pages?

01:13:48

Two pages long, I think.

01:13:50

Basically, he's talking about your original face as he calls it, pay attention to what's

01:13:58

going on.

01:14:00

My takeaway from it was just that this is a call to be mindful of what's happening.

01:14:06

Blow your roll, basically.

01:14:09

Settle down, pay attention, be a decent human being, decent humans persons.

01:14:16

There you go.

01:14:18

That's what it says, not verbatim.

01:14:21

This is, I feel like, where you finally got what you thought you were going to get at

01:14:25

the beginning of the book.

01:14:26

Correct.

01:14:27

Yes.

01:14:28

He puts a piece in the puzzle, but it doesn't go to the same puzzle.

01:14:37

That's the trick.

01:14:38

It goes into the puzzle that I thought I was getting, but it doesn't go into the puzzle

01:14:41

he gave me.

01:14:44

Well, yes and no.

01:14:49

I think it depends on your perspective.

01:14:51

I'm willing to concede that if you come from a different background, a different belief

01:14:57

system, there probably are.

01:14:58

There probably is a way that the stuff ties together more firmly, but it didn't for me

01:15:07

and sounds like it didn't for you.

01:15:10

This epilogue here, this two page section where he talks about how wisdom isn't something

01:15:16

we acquire.

01:15:17

It's something that arises naturally as we slow down and notice what is already there.

01:15:22

That's a really powerful idea.

01:15:24

The big message here is slow down, the friend, the silent observer, just look at things.

01:15:32

But I can envision a very different book titled, "The Things You Can See," only when you slow

01:15:39

down that extrapolates that idea in a much different way than the eight chapters that

01:15:45

we got.

01:15:46

I would rather read that book.

01:15:51

But that, again, is just me.

01:15:53

I'm sure that there are people who this approach really resonates with.

01:15:58

You said when you picked it, there's a lot of really great reviews of this book on Amazon.

01:16:07

Maybe we're just cut from a different cloth.

01:16:10

We know that one, but there's that.

01:16:14

Let's do some action items because this is going to be super exciting.

01:16:20

I have one from this book, which is, "No Distractions at Breakfast."

01:16:27

This is based on the title of the book and the expectation I had for the book.

01:16:33

It is not based on anything that I found inside of the book.

01:16:37

This is just me knowing that over breakfast, I have a tendency to have a book in my hand

01:16:43

while I'm meeting at breakfast.

01:16:45

My family starts doing their scurry, scurry thing to make their own breakfast if they're

01:16:49

up and out of bed yet.

01:16:52

I would rather be in the moment there with them and pay attention to them and have conversations

01:16:58

with them than be off in my own little world.

01:17:03

That's my choice.

01:17:06

That's not because of anything in the book itself.

01:17:08

It's just based on my expectations of the book.

01:17:11

I've got the other two that I'm carrying over as well, but that's the only one that's

01:17:14

from this book.

01:17:15

How about you, Mike?

01:17:17

How many do you have from this one?

01:17:19

I do not have a single action item from this book.

01:17:26

Argument could be made that there were a couple of things I brought up that I should create

01:17:32

action items around.

01:17:35

I feel like it gave me some context for things that I want to kind of noodle on, but there's

01:17:43

nothing specific that I felt by the next time I want to have resolved this.

01:17:52

This whole book kind of read to me interesting, nice to know information, but kind of felt

01:18:02

like it was written for somebody else.

01:18:04

Yep.

01:18:05

All right.

01:18:06

Let's do some style and reading.

01:18:10

Style wise, it's a little disjointed for me.

01:18:16

When he got to where he was telling his stories, the stories are well written and the stories

01:18:21

I can engage with pretty easily.

01:18:24

Had a hard time connecting the story to the idea in a way that I resonated with.

01:18:32

Then you get to the short segmented pieces at the end.

01:18:36

I get where, and maybe this is it, maybe this is like a skimmer book.

01:18:41

This is not a sit down or read a book.

01:18:44

Maybe this is a, you're supposed to skim over some of these and take them with, do that

01:18:52

over a period of time and then sit with it in silence and process it.

01:18:58

Maybe that's what I'm supposed to do with it.

01:19:00

He does say at the very beginning in the prologue that you need to not rush through this and

01:19:04

read it like a novel, but you need to read it bit by bit.

01:19:08

But we've had just shy of three weeks since we last recorded.

01:19:13

I didn't read this all in like single shots.

01:19:15

I'm going to read four chapters and be done for the day.

01:19:18

I did read half a chapter a day just because I could and we had the time to do that.

01:19:24

He told me to slow down when I read it.

01:19:26

So I did.

01:19:27

I still didn't.

01:19:29

I still didn't see it.

01:19:31

So I struggled with the format, his choice of structure there.

01:19:37

I struggled with some of his points and not understanding them.

01:19:41

I struggled with just pure belief system conflicts.

01:19:46

Struggled with a lot of things.

01:19:48

That said, there are some fun little tidbits in here.

01:19:51

I mean, it's, it's one of those like, did I get a single tidbit out of it that was worth

01:19:54

reading it?

01:19:55

Yeah, I figured out how to explain mud in a fish tank.

01:19:58

Like that, that I'm good with.

01:19:59

Like, if that's the only thing I get from it, it's probably worth it.

01:20:04

But when it comes to rating this, like, I'm going to put it at 3.0.

01:20:11

I just don't see it above that.

01:20:13

I don't see it as something I'm really going to.

01:20:16

I don't think I'm recommending this to anybody.

01:20:19

If you want a fun read to just kind of argue with a little bit, I know some people pick

01:20:24

up books just because they want an argument.

01:20:27

Sure.

01:20:28

This is your book.

01:20:29

I'll give you a little bit more of it.

01:20:30

If you're in, if you're in the same belief systems as Mike and I, you want something

01:20:35

to argue with, here you go.

01:20:36

You can pick it up and try to pick it apart.

01:20:40

If you are interested in some of these philosophical viewpoints, yeah, it's probably a book for

01:20:47

you, but I don't think generally speaking, I'm going to recommend this.

01:20:50

But that's where I land.

01:20:52

How about you, Mike?

01:20:55

Do you remember before smartphones, people would keep magazines and other reading materials

01:21:05

in their bathrooms?

01:21:06

Oh, yeah.

01:21:07

In fact, I had the magazine racks by the toilet.

01:21:09

That was a thing.

01:21:10

Yeah.

01:21:11

The house that we live in, when we bought it, it had one of those in the master bathroom.

01:21:19

And I remember as a kid, the stuff that would be in there would be like readers digest type

01:21:27

stuff where you could get through a article, page or two, in one sitting.

01:21:34

Yep.

01:21:35

I feel like that is the perfect place for a book list.

01:21:40

All right.

01:21:44

In the bathroom while you're sitting on the toilet.

01:21:47

Okay.

01:21:48

Well, not necessarily that, but the very short little, I want to get inspired by something

01:21:56

quick, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time going deep on something.

01:22:03

That's what this reads like to be.

01:22:05

It's almost like a devotional sort of a thing.

01:22:11

That's not how we read it, obviously.

01:22:14

So I'm tending to think that maybe this book just doesn't fit bookworm.

01:22:23

I think that is a very real possibility that being said, and as I shared throughout this,

01:22:32

I didn't really care for it.

01:22:35

From the very beginning, it was a forced read for me.

01:22:40

There were little things and little tidbits that were kind of insightful, but as I said,

01:22:45

there's just had trouble connecting with this one in any way, shape or form.

01:22:53

It is an easy read and the writing style is interesting, even if the content and the

01:23:01

tone really wasn't something that I cared for.

01:23:05

Yeah, Blake is right.

01:23:06

There is something to be said about challenging your thoughts or facing things that you don't

01:23:10

necessarily resonate with.

01:23:12

But it also wasn't going to satisfy me if I was going to take that approach either, because

01:23:19

if I'm going to wrestle with something that I don't agree with, I want to know about it.

01:23:25

I want to dive deep on it.

01:23:26

I want to understand where it's coming from, and you can't get that a few sentences at

01:23:30

a time, disconnected tidbits at a time.

01:23:35

I don't know.

01:23:36

There's a lot of things I just didn't really care for with this book, but I do think that

01:23:39

the right person in the right context would probably enjoy it a lot.

01:23:44

It's very colorful.

01:23:46

That's one thing I think we maybe mentioned at the beginning, but didn't talk a whole

01:23:50

lot about as we went through here, but it's more a piece of art than it is a collection

01:23:59

of insights.

01:24:00

I don't know.

01:24:01

Like a lot of the books that we read tend to be deep dives on a particular topic, and

01:24:09

we're going to learn about said topic.

01:24:14

The style, the visual aspect of the book is almost neglected, and the focus is solely

01:24:26

on the ideas or the words themselves.

01:24:29

I'm not necessarily saying that's the better approach, but I think it is for bookworm.

01:24:37

I do think that it just really doesn't quite fit.

01:24:42

I will meet you at the 3.0, and I don't think I will be recommending this one to anyone

01:24:51

either, but that doesn't mean that I have negative feelings about it.

01:24:58

I feel like there wasn't enough here for me really to disagree strongly with it.

01:25:04

It felt very surface level, and I wish even if it would have taken a stronger stance of

01:25:15

this is the Zen Buddhist approach, and this is the right one you should listen to me.

01:25:21

I don't know.

01:25:22

Maybe that is in itself a contradiction with Zen Buddhism.

01:25:27

I feel like strong convictions lightly held.

01:25:32

I would prefer to engage in dialogue with someone who is trying to really convince me

01:25:38

of something rather than just pointing something out.

01:25:41

I'm like, "Okay, now do with that what you will."

01:25:45

Ultimately I'll do that anyways, but that sort of hands off approach.

01:25:53

I think the net result is that the emotion and the passion about what the author is saying

01:26:04

is somewhat lost.

01:26:07

I have no doubt that if you had a conversation in real life, it would not be that way because

01:26:14

you'd be able to look into the author's eyes and you'd be able to see their body language,

01:26:18

you could see how much they really care about some of this stuff.

01:26:24

You don't necessarily need to hype yourself up and be overly excited.

01:26:29

I think there's a lot of people who do that to a phony level, and that I don't like either,

01:26:35

but I get done with this and I'm like, "Be excited about something."

01:26:40

"Just show me all the bad stuff."

01:26:45

All right, let's put it on the shelf, Mike.

01:26:48

What's next?

01:26:50

Next is decoding greatness from Ron Friedman.

01:26:55

This is a recommendation from the Bookworm Club.

01:26:59

I have not started this one, but I have kind of paged through it.

01:27:03

This looks like a refreshing change from this book.

01:27:09

This is better that way.

01:27:12

It sounds good.

01:27:14

After that, in October of last year, Annie Duke, which we read of one of her other books,

01:27:23

Thinking in Bets, she came out with a new one called Quit, the power of knowing when

01:27:27

to walk away.

01:27:30

I was trying to figure out what book to pick before we started, and it was one you had

01:27:33

mentioned that you'd bought recently, and I know I had a friend recommend it to me via

01:27:37

text as well.

01:27:38

It's like, "Hey, you should pick this up."

01:27:41

We're going to pick this up.

01:27:44

We can read it together because that's how Bookworm works.

01:27:48

Deal.

01:27:49

Cool.

01:27:50

Done.

01:27:51

Awesome.

01:27:52

We're not going to quit that one, but we will read quit.

01:27:55

Gap books?

01:27:56

What do you got, Mike?

01:27:57

I've got a new one by Seth Godin that came just the other day called the song of significance,

01:28:05

and I don't know anything about this other than it's Seth Godin, so I'm sure it's going

01:28:09

to be amazing.

01:28:11

Cool.

01:28:12

What about you?

01:28:13

I'm still working my way through Tribe of Mentors.

01:28:17

Tim Ferriss' book.

01:28:18

So I told you it was going to keep popping up.

01:28:22

Yes, it will.

01:28:23

So I'll have to do a few more of the bios.

01:28:26

Super fun.

01:28:28

Always fun, but another thing that's super fun is when people join the Bookworm Club,

01:28:34

I'm full of these awesome segues today.

01:28:37

So, yes, if you join the Bookworm Club, we'll think you're awesome.

01:28:41

Even if you just listen to Bookworm.

01:28:43

But if you join the club, club.bookworm.fm, it is a circle community, and you can make

01:28:48

recommendations in there.

01:28:50

You can chat about the episodes when they come up.

01:28:53

Chat about the books.

01:28:54

Tell us how we got the ratings all wrong.

01:28:56

And the other amazing thing you can do is you can join the pro membership.

01:29:01

You can do that very easily by going to bookworm.fm/pro or bookworm.fm/membership.

01:29:07

I think those both work.

01:29:08

Pro is easier to type, though.

01:29:11

But you can join the Bookworm Pro membership, and that gets you access to all of Mike's

01:29:17

mind node files, extra goodies.

01:29:20

We talk about this all the time.

01:29:21

But ultimately, we think you're amazing when you do that.

01:29:24

So thank you to those of you who have done that.

01:29:26

You get access to some ad-free episodes, the bootleg episodes, which that of this one

01:29:31

will be up very shortly when we're done recording here, because it gets all the pre and post

01:29:35

conversation outside the episode itself, which is always super entertaining and sometimes

01:29:40

boring and sometimes really weird.

01:29:43

But that's the way it works.

01:29:44

So yes, thanks to those of you who are members who are in that pro membership.

01:29:48

And if you haven't joined, be sure to do so at bookworm.fm/pro.

01:29:51

All right.

01:29:53

And if you are reading along with us, pick up Decoding Greatness by Ron Friedman.

01:29:59

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