Bookworm Transcripts

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How did things go with you at the whole I want to go to the last one there because I want to know

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How did your breakpoint ritual thing for fast recovery go?

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Well

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This is something I still need to kind of figure out, but this is what I've discovered from

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Watching my patterns and this seems to work pretty well

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is that at any given day I will go to several different locations and

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So what I'll do is I'll focus on a project like maybe I'm working on a video for Asian efficiency

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And I'll spend sometimes couple hours doing that specific task and then when I get done

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I will actually go somewhere else

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so to a coffee shop or

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to my off-site office or

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to the library, but just getting a change of scenery

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really helps me and

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for whatever reason it seems like the travel time in between there is

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kind of at least what I've conditioned myself to do is my

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breakpoint ritual

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and like I said I

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Just kind of noticed this pattern and recognized that it does seem to be working at least to some degree

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But I'm gonna try a few things to tweak it in the future. So we may have to follow up with this one again

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Okay, that's kind of where that's at

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interesting so

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Just so I understand so the whole point of this is to take advantage of short periods of time

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so that you can I

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Guess re-energize before you get into something so you're taking advantage of the what is it?

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In tennis, it's like the 90 seconds between points and you're trying to take advantage of that so that

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you can

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How do I say that you can get more energy for the next thing you're moving into did I say that right?

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Yeah, I kind of view it as like pedaling before the hill, okay?

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You know that you're you know that you're gonna have this in my specific situation

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I'll just say like a deep work period coming up, okay

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and so

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You're not like freaking out because that's coming up

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But it is on your radar and you realize that by the time you sit down to work on this thing which

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Going even further back

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You know when we talked about how I was scheduling out every hour of my day on my digital calendar like that helps too because I know at

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3 p.m

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I'm gonna be here doing this and so if I get done at 230 now, I know I can kind of zone out

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Relax usually that's when I'm in transit between different places

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And then I know that when I get there like I've got to hit the ground running if that makes sense

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Yeah, so just recognizing that I think helps me

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not have to deal with the

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Procrastination that would typically come from like okay now

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I'm here at my desk and I know I need to work on this thing

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But I just don't feel like it. I've already kind of gotten myself to the point where oh, yeah, let's do this

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So what do you what do you do?

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You've got your time period. Are you like doing breathing?

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Things are you just trying to focus your mind on certain things? What is the exact thing you're doing?

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I'm getting real specific on you

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Yeah, and that's that's the thing where I haven't really articulated it

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I kind of making some general observations here

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I'm like this is what I've been doing and like I said it seems to be working pretty well

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But now I feel like I can start to fine tune this a little bit

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I think what I do there's no specific

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Ritual like I'm going to do so many sets of breathing or anything like that

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Maybe I should try some of those things, but that's not where I've that's not where I'm at right now

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what I

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Basically I'm doing is checking the box. Okay. I'm done with this task now

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I can usually reward myself by listening to part of a podcast for example while I'm in the car

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But if I'm in the car and I'm listening to the podcast

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I know like I pull into the parking lot at my office that the entire walk up to my office

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I am thinking about what I'm going to be doing. So I'm kind of shifting gears there

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it basically is

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And I use podcasts. I'm a little bit weird. So that that's my my reward so to speak. I guess

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I'm trying to be intentional about where specifically I listen to those and not just have them playing all the time

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So that's kind of the spot that I've I've settled in on is like by transit times

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That's when I'm really gonna gonna crank out some of those podcasts and so that's my little treat and then when I get out of the car

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It's okay. Now. I got to focus

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I got to start pedaling before the hill because when I get to the office like this has got to happen

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It makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it does it does

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I think and just to clarify a little bit part of these these action items are coming from

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the

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book that we went through last time the power of full engagement and what you're talking about for

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like these

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Reenergizing rituals and the the short time periods. That's kind of what I did with

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The whole shutdown ritual piece because I know that was a thing I took away was I wanted to do something

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Towards the end of my day just so I could get that transition period from

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my work stuff to family life because that's

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We all deal with that. That's a painful transition that a lot of us deal with is I'm doing stuff at work

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I'm head down. I'm really good at getting myself focused on that and then I go home and it's like every

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battle armor piece comes off and we we stop

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being as

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intentional with

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Our focus and we're not as on the game when we get home and that just means that our family ends up catching

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The second tier of us, which is not what I want

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so part of what I did was put together this shutdown ritual and

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Part of the reason I was asking specifically what you were doing is because I found that with mine

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It was extremely helpful to do some of those breathing exercises

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And it's real simple stuff like you know

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breathe in for a certain amount of seconds and breathe out for a certain number of seconds and do that like ten times and

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It's it's crazy to me how much that little adjustment

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can make a big impact whenever it comes to

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Going upstairs because it's seven steps up the stairs to to home. So it's literally a ten second commute

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so that means that

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Work stuff is very easy to take with you mentally

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I mean it's pretty easy to shut things down and shut off the computer shut off all of the the work stuff on your computer and pieces

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But getting your mind to shut down. That's not nearly as easy

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Right and that's one of the things that I discovered during my when I was thinking about this breakpoint ritual and knowing that I was

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Gonna have to give you an answer when we recorded today

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Was out I guess a couple weeks ago maybe a month ago

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I was kind of in this place where I was thinking about

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Where we're spending money as a family and do I really need this off-site office because in reality when I go there

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I'm there for a couple hours some days. I don't even get here and

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It's kind of expensive. So maybe I should just

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Get out of that office and then I tried just going to the office and working for an extended period of time

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Like even six hours out of my day. I find that I start to go crazy

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But I do that no matter where I am and so

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Kind of what I've resolved is that I'm gonna keep the office and it's okay that I am gonna pop around from place to place to place

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Because that's kind of my natural rhythm in terms of my productivity and how I get stuff done

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That makes sense. That makes sense. So you can create those oscillations like what you were talking about last time

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Yeah, but I cannot do it sounds like you

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You know you've got an office at at home and you go down to your office and you and you work

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And then when it's time to be done for the day you go upstairs or wherever your office is located and I don't think

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I'd be able to do that. I think I need more time

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to make that mental shift and

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I would agree with that that

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The way I do things in the way my office is set up

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Just to bring clarity around that so I work from home obviously and

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What I do is I go downstairs to our family room so at seven steps down

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There's a door to our family room. So I go inside the family room

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I think our room this room is supposed to be the master suite of the house

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I think and the only reason I say this because there's a fireplace here

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There's a bathroom and then there's like a walk-in closet and the walk-in closet is I think it's what is it?

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10 feet wide. I think it's what it amounts to so it's 10 feet wide and it's about 3 and a half to 4 feet deep

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So it's a pretty big

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closet

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I took that closet and put a desk inside of it and it's got like those bi-fold doors

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So two sets of bi-fold doors. So it's a full-on five-foot wide

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Opening to it so I can open those up and then my desk and everything is inside that closet

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It's kind of weird. I know anyway walks very short my desk and office and everything is inside that closet. Well

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what I do is I go to work and when I go to work and I

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Essentially do all the mindset shifts so that I'm

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Separated and I'm staying at work when I get there and then the process of

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Shutting it down is kind of like what I was talking about. You've got the rituals. You've got ways that separate off

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So I kind of treat it during the day as if it is a full-on

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separate place so

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My family doesn't come and interrupt. I try not to make frequent trips upstairs

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It's just a constant thing where I keep that separation and treat it like it's an external

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Office and I think if it wasn't for that especially having the door to the office

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I think if it wasn't for that

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It would be very very difficult to

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Create that kind of separation so I've kind of built a lot of that in but I've been working from home for three years now

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So I've I've got a little bit of experience with it. It's it's not for everybody. I will say that

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Your pro I'm still a newbie

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How long have you been working from home?

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Officially a year as of July

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Okay, so you got your feet wet with it and you're starting to get all the details figured out that explains some of your

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Rituals and why those are helpful like some of the because I feel like some of the rituals that people put in place

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Can that they're like how do I explain that?

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It's where you're you're new to a scenario

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So you put in certain routines and rituals to help you learn how to work in that scenario does that make sense?

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It's it's like a transitional routine so that it helps you learn the different scenarios

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I had to do a lot of that stuff whenever I first started working from home

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because I had to do I

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Treated it as if it was an external office and still did the I put on my

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Slacks and button up and that's just what I wore to work

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So I dressed up for work even though I was just at home

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So I had to do a lot of that stuff at least at first just to keep me

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To keep me on the game. Otherwise, it was just ridiculous and I could never think of it

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I just kept thinking oh, I'm at home. I'm at the family room. Let's watch TV like that's just what I kept thinking

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For a while. I did a really good job of

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The same same sort of thing I was gonna maintain my my dress code but in the last probably month or two

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I've definitely fallen into shorts in a t-shirt. Yep. Yep. I

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Get it. I get it

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Is there anything else on follow-up or are we good?

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Nope, I think it's time to talk about our feelings. Okay. All right, so the book for this week is

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Daring greatly by Brene Brown and this is my pick and part of the reason I picked this because

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It's not a simple reasoning for picking this so I think it makes a lot of sense, but

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to me, I've I've always struggled with I

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guess opening up and letting people get close to me I've always been very defensive as a person and

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I could honestly say I could never tell you why I am that way

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and I watched a couple of

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Brene Brown's TED talks which she references heavily in this book, but I'd watched the two that she mentions in the book and

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kind of got hooked on her as a person and as a researcher and

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Have followed quite a bit of her stuff in the past and I just felt like this is this would be a good time to finally pick the book up and

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And work through it. So

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Here we are and now we get to talk about our feelings Mike. Sorry about that. That's all right

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I have not watched the the TED talks by the way, so you mentioned that she has a

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Texas accent, but I

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Did not hear that as I was going through the yeah

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See if you're gonna pick this up if you're gonna read it. I I do highly recommend that you watch those TED talks because

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this whole time

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I I have some friends who are in Texas and I have worked with some people in Texas and I love the Texan accent

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I cannot tell you why I just know that I do and

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listening to Brene and her talks

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Immediately meant that as I was reading this book I was hearing a Texan accent the whole time. It was awesome and

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Made it a lot of fun

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I go to Texas fairly frequently, but I go there to meet with the Asian efficiency crew

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So tan and zack definitely do not have Texas

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I don't think I could see tan with a Texan accent. I could see zack picking one up over time

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But maybe I don't think I'll ever hear tan

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No

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in that way

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Anyway, uh, let's see. So yes, I recommend watching the TED talks as

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kind of a precursor to this because it will also make some sense

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Because she references those quite a bit in the book and I think it makes a lot of sense to see

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the two that she

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Presented before you read the book because there's a lot of the references that I think she makes in the book that

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That seemed to come more to life to me. They did I

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I read one of the scenarios to my wife and it didn't make any sense to her at all

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So it made me wonder if the TED talks were

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required watching before this, but I don't know you'll have to let me know what you thought

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well

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Brene references

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Other books that she's written the TED talks other places in this book

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A lot in fact my wife sat next to me one night when I was reading this and just read over my shoulder for a couple

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pages and she made the same mistake I did and thought that Brene was actually a guy for some reason

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Ah

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And she said this guy refers to himself way too much

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And it didn't really bother me, but you know a casual observers

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uh

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opinion, I guess

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There there were a lot of citations of different articles that she did and uh other other books that she's written

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So I kind of feel like this book

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uh

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Is a little bit different in that most of the books that we we tackle are on

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Like a specific topic and maybe that's just the way that a lot of the people in the productivity space anyways or the leadership

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Type books that we would typically read

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Maybe they get you know a book deal and they're they're going to write this book about this

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Specific topic and then they're going to move on to the next thing

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It really seemed like

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For Brene when when she was writing this book it was the culmination of the evolution of her journey

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Basically everything that she's gone through to get to this point

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And so she's building off of all these other experiences all these other things that she's built and written over the years

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And I think that's actually pretty cool. I like that approach rather than just okay

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Now i'm going to talk about this topic and then later on i'll talk about a different topic

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Yeah, that was one thing that I

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Because I haven't read her other books obviously

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uh

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So that meant that there was a lot of the stuff that she brought up that I found myself

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clipping or

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Hunting down some of the articles that she was talking about so that I could go look them up later

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So I found myself doing that quite a bit and i'm okay with that. I think that's

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Okay to have some of that. I will agree that she did do it a lot

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Uh, not I don't think she did it excessively though that that would be at least my opinion

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I don't think she did it excessively, but to me it was helpful to think of it that way of

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this is a culmination of

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Multiple years what was it 12 years of research? I think is what she said

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Uh, so it's it's a lot of research that's gone into

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This particular book. So it's I think it's well done

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Yeah, I I agree and I like a lot of the the things that she referenced and brought into this uh, this book

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I really like the

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Exerp she she clipped from theodor rosavelt's talk at the at the very beginning

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I actually shared that in a class that I taught over at uh at our church the other day on uncreative thinking

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Um, should I just read through the quote real quick? Yeah, I think so because

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Well, that's where the term daring greatly comes from and it's it's

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It culminates a lot of what she talks about in the entire book

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And I think there's a lot of value in the quote itself and there's so much of what we're

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Hopefully going to be going through here that will this will bring a lot of that to light

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I think and it'll be something we can reference to the rest of this

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Okay, cool. Yeah, this this quote is awesome. I need to get this frame then put somewhere

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I took that as an action here. It's like I want to get this framed

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Uh, so the quote goes it is not the critic who counts

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Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better

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The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena

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Who's faces marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly who airs come short again and again

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Because there is no effort without error and shortcoming

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But who does actually strive to do the deeds who knows great enthusiasms the great devotions

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Spend some self in a worthy cause who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement

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And who at worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly

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And that's from uh citizenship in a republic by theodor rosavelt from april 23rd 1910

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in perese france

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I missed that part

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It's okay. It's all right. No, I I love this especially

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the beginning of that second paragraph the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena

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and part of the reason I bring that up is that

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as

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as people who create things for the internet and we create these things and we produce them and we kick them out

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uh, it's very easy to get large amounts of

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criticism online and

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Just as an example as of

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Was it a week ago? Yes a week ago. I launched

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Uh a new omni focus course videos and such

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Well, the important part is that anytime I launch something like that. There's always a wave of

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Feedback that comes from that. It's typically

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Going to come through email and even though i've done all this work on cutting back on the amount of email

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I get I still get a lot of this criticism stuff that comes in

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Simply because people will take the time to fill out a contact form just to be able to send you this stuff

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But there's a lot of people that will say this is a piece of junk. You should never write you should never create things

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these videos are worthless and

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Most of the time I would well in this case I would say all of the time

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Uh

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That feedback is coming from people who either

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One they're anonymous or two they've never created a video or a website in their life

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and three have no idea what they're talking about

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So in context of this quote, these are people they're not in the arena

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They're not in this whole creative world

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And what that ultimately tells you is that they're and i'm generalizing here of course

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But when it comes to these trolls, it's a lot of people who just don't

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They're not happy with where they're at in life. They're not happy that someone did something that they feel like they could have done

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So the only thing that they can think of to do is to lash out at the person who did it

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and

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I think bernaid talks about this quite a bit with this whole vulnerability thing because

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It's

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It's something that you have to put yourself out there. You have to continue creating

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And continue pushing to do things and it's okay if people are upset about it

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Just because they give you some negative feedback doesn't mean they actually know what they're talking about and it doesn't mean that you should trust them either

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Right don't don't trust the shame trolls

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It's true. It's true

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Yeah, the very the beginning of this book was very war of art esque. Yeah, it was a lot of stuff. Yeah

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Yeah, so it kind of harking back to reading reading that book

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But there was one phrase in particular that I really really liked

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About being uh to be creative. We must be vulnerable

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You had brought up vulnerability and that was obviously a big theme throughout this book

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But the uh the thing I wrote down was shame leads to fear leads to risk aversion and risk aversion

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Kills innovation. So a lot of times the people who are

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picking on all the little things that maybe you did wrong or aren't perfect about whatever you've created and you've published and you've

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Put out there to the world

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they

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Again generalizing but i'm going to say that most of them probably are stuck

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at that risk aversion stage where maybe they they're upset because they had this idea

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and

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They didn't do anything with it because

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They didn't want to expose themselves to the risk of somebody saying that that's not good enough

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Or they did it wrong or would have been better if they did it a different way

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And that kills innovation and I think that's really sad. I think there's a lot of people

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Even people that I've known in my own life who have had ideas for things

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And they'll tell me and like hey, yeah, that's a really good idea. You should do that

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and then they never actually do it and

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a lot of times I think about like well, what is the difference between

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somebody who

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Publishers or creates something and somebody who just has all of these

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Ideas and steven press field would say they give into the resistance

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But I think that this phrase really articulated it for me that they they had they experienced shame

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They experienced the fear but really the road of it is that risk aversion where they just want to play it safe

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And they just want to do what they know to do and they want to stay inside

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Their comfort zone, you know that they don't want to dare greatly as Theodore Roosevelt would say

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I think this is interesting because there's a lot of

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There's a lot of this out there

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It's very easy to find people who are

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We talked about this last time a little bit too of people who are just really upset with their work

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And they're not happy with what's going on and then they don't do anything about it

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They don't put it together a plan on how to change it. They don't do anything to

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You know, why are you here? What is your mission? What what would help you get fully engaged with everything that's going on?

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They don't want to ask those questions and

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One thing that she brings up here is

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This concept of exhaustion as a status symbol

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I mean when you talk to people how many times do folks say that you know, how are you doing?

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Oh, I'm busy and uh, you know, I'd rather be busy than bored like you just you hear that type of thing quite a bit

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And it makes me wonder

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If we're not hiding behind

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Busy

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I don't know if that's a good way to say that or not

00:24:54

But it seems like to me that there's a lot of folks that

00:24:57

Could do a lot of really good things, but like you're saying there's a lot of fear with putting yourself out there

00:25:02

and there's a lot of anxiety that can come from

00:25:05

Creating and putting things out in the world and and dealing with the potential for

00:25:10

Negative feedback like what I was talking about with all the crazy emails and crazy people

00:25:16

You know dealing with that is not fun. You just have to learn how to have a wall in that arena

00:25:22

but

00:25:24

We hide behind this pre preconceived notion of I'm busy so therefore I'm in a good place and

00:25:30

We're all busy and that means that if I'm busy. I'm I'm getting somewhere. It just seems like

00:25:35

That's the end all be all is to be busy, which makes zero sense whatsoever

00:25:40

Yeah, and there's a whole section at the the end where she really kind of unpacks that

00:25:47

but um from what you're talking about still at the beginning of the book, I think the way she phrased it

00:25:53

was

00:25:54

scarcity

00:25:55

where

00:25:57

It's never enough and she uses some examples like I didn't get enough sleep. I don't have enough time, etc

00:26:02

and so I kind of view the busyness that people will put themselves under as

00:26:08

an attempt to accumulate enough of

00:26:12

whatever the the monetary

00:26:15

Medium is that they they think they need in order to be successful

00:26:20

But the the reality of it is that no matter how much of that stuff you accumulate

00:26:25

No matter how much sleep you get no matter how much time you have if you never if you aren't

00:26:32

enough

00:26:34

Now you're never going to get to that point where you are satisfied

00:26:38

We're never enough. It's just the way it is

00:26:42

I think that's what she's getting at is it's very easy to

00:26:46

Think internally of I'm I'm never going to do this right like take uh, you know, since we're talking about this omni focus course

00:26:55

uh, the one thing that I fought with that was

00:26:58

uh, David Sparks has his screen casts out on omnifocus and

00:27:05

that like what I did is

00:27:08

probably technically a direct competitor to that

00:27:12

Which is no small thing when you have someone as great at screencasting as max barking

00:27:19

And it's very easy to take a look at the things that he has done

00:27:24

And then try to compare yourself to that and say I'm never good enough

00:27:27

So what's the point in even trying?

00:27:29

So it's very easy to take a look at that and think well, why would I even put myself out there?

00:27:33

Because there's already great things out there. This is you know, take it to the next level with the trolls

00:27:38

Like this is exactly what they're coming up with is

00:27:41

They most likely and again i'm generalizing because I i'm not going to spend time trying to figure out what every troll is thinking

00:27:47

Uh, but my my generalization generalization say that right generalization

00:27:54

of

00:27:55

People who will send that type of?

00:27:57

Feedback is that they don't feel like they're good enough to do something so they don't and then they're upset about it and then they're

00:28:05

Negative feedback is a way of making themselves

00:28:09

Feel better. So I I get what you're saying with you really got to put yourself out there and a lot of this arena and

00:28:15

A lot of this never good enough thing is very easy to

00:28:20

overtake us and keep us from doing anything important, but she does talk about the scarcity thing quite a bit

00:28:25

I had to kind of think about what does she mean by scarcity whenever it would come up quite a bit because to me

00:28:31

I don't think of scarcity that way of I'm not good enough or I'm not something enough

00:28:36

and

00:28:38

It just threw me off a little bit just as a mental nomenclature thing

00:28:42

Sure. Well, have you ever have you ever been into video games?

00:28:47

No, I haven't I never have people always oh my gosh. I get you talk about negative feedback. I am not a gamer

00:28:53

Well, maybe maybe that's why this clicked for me because I I used to be really into like the the role playing type games

00:29:00

And the the core element in any role playing game is you want to get to a certain level

00:29:07

You level up and then you get new abilities for your character. So that's kind of how I viewed this is like

00:29:13

Scarcity not being enough. It's like well soon as I get to level 13

00:29:16

You know then I'm going to be able to get this ability and then everything's just going to click

00:29:21

Everything's going to be easier. But just like those role playing games as soon as you get to another level

00:29:27

There's another level bad guy. There's another right boss character that you have to you have to defeat

00:29:34

Who's also got increased abilities?

00:29:36

So just like all of those game mechanics

00:29:40

I would say in the real world like you're never going to get to the point where you're like, okay

00:29:44

Yeah, now things are going to be good. You know, you have to be okay now

00:29:48

And then when you get to that point

00:29:51

Then everything else that you do and everything else that you would create

00:29:55

It is enough because it's just an extension of who you are who you've already come to grips with and you don't have to worry so much

00:30:04

I mean obviously you still the things that people say about the stuff that you create

00:30:10

Bug you I know this too from my my book

00:30:12

I don't remember all the people who gave it five stars and the four and a half star average rating on amazon

00:30:17

I remember the one guy exactly didn't understand what I was saying and has theological issues with the way I presented a bible verse

00:30:25

And I just what I don't I don't even think about all the people that it's helped and

00:30:32

That's brought revelation in a different perspective to I think about the one guy

00:30:37

And if I could just talk to that one guy and set him straight, you know, and sometimes it's it's anger

00:30:42

It's like well, I wish I could talk to that guy and I could really set him straight

00:30:45

If I could get him in a room we could talk it out and get it right right

00:30:48

Right, but that's that doesn't that doesn't help. You know what helps is realizing that

00:30:55

I have this thing in me and I need to get it out there

00:30:59

And I'm gonna get it out there and I don't care what people think I am gonna throw it out there

00:31:03

And when we do that honestly like if we take an objective look at the feedback that we get

00:31:08

The fact that we are being vulnerable when we are creating something people do like that

00:31:12

in fact

00:31:14

She says that we love seeing raw truth and openness and other people but we're afraid to let them see it in us

00:31:20

I think that's the

00:31:22

the default reaction when people see something that you've created

00:31:26

not the the internet trolls who are going to bash whatever you create as a

00:31:30

You know a shield as bernay brown would call it in in this book

00:31:33

But I think a lot of people are like hey, yeah, that's cool that you're you're making that and it kind of inspires them

00:31:39

Even if they aren't going to get to the point where they're going to be the ones that want to

00:31:44

Publish their thing. I read a statistic one time. I forget exactly what it is. So I'm probably going to mess this up

00:31:50

But there's a surprising number of people who believe that they have a book in them and that they should write it

00:31:58

It's something like 81 percent. Wow, but if you look at the number of books that are written every year

00:32:04

It's like 0.04 percent that actually do it

00:32:08

Wow, and so when just in the case of a book for example like when you

00:32:13

I have people that go to church with me for example

00:32:18

They they find out I wrote a book and they're like, oh man, that's really cool that you did that and a lot of them

00:32:24

Have this dream have this idea to write a book

00:32:27

But they haven't acted on it yet and the same thing could be used in the context of the video course that you created for omnifocus

00:32:32

Which is good by the way. I haven't gotten back to you with my little blurb for your web. Oh awesome. Thank you

00:32:36

I did start going through it

00:32:39

and

00:32:40

Yeah, so I think whatever the you know the medium or the arena is a principle is

00:32:44

Still the same that

00:32:47

Just when we when we reconcile in our heads that this is who we are

00:32:52

You know our strengths our flaws whatever and I'm going to use what I have to create something

00:32:58

then most of the people

00:33:01

Are going to look at that as a positive thing and hopefully it's going to inspire some of them to take the step and overcome resistance and get

00:33:08

Whatever's in their heart out into the world as well

00:33:11

I do this a little bit with

00:33:14

Some folks that I've talked to about this podcast about

00:33:18

We we sit down we talk about a book and it's a book that we've read in two weeks

00:33:23

and usually the response I get from that is what you read a book in two weeks and

00:33:28

It's just this seriously you did that and if you stop and start quizzing about it and just start

00:33:35

You know do do the math on it as as far as how much time does it actually take

00:33:40

To read one and how how far do you have to read each day to do it? Well, depending on the length of the book

00:33:47

It's usually somewhere between 15 and 20 pages a day

00:33:50

I mean, which is not a lot. I mean if you take 20 to 25 minutes and a day depending on how fast you read

00:33:56

You can read, you know enough to read a book in two weeks. At least that's my perspective

00:34:02

Uh and whenever I bring that up to some people and say, you know, this is how much time I spend on it

00:34:07

It's really not much. It's really small and the reason I bring that up is that

00:34:14

It doesn't take a whole lot to do something big if you just chip away at it a little bit at a time

00:34:19

We've talked about this before multiple times of just building the habits and do the little things day in and day out

00:34:24

And you eventually come up with something big and I try to tell that to people

00:34:28

Time and time again, and it just seems to go in one ear and out the other just like it's not hard

00:34:33

It's really not you're just thinking about it wrong. You you have this in goal. It's way too big in your mind

00:34:39

And you're thinking you have to sit down and read a third of a book in a day

00:34:43

You don't have to do that. It's not that difficult. You just need to make sure you have a dedicated time for it every day and make it a priority

00:34:49

I mean, it's that simple, but

00:34:51

It's that difficult at the same time

00:34:53

Yeah, and I think like reading a book you have a pretty good idea of there's just many pages

00:35:00

I have to do this much this much each day, but when it comes to

00:35:04

Creating something like your course for example, it's hard to articulate

00:35:11

Soon as this thing is done, then it will be finished

00:35:14

It's hard to estimate the scope in my opinion of a lot of those projects because as you're working on it

00:35:19

Stuff will pop up

00:35:21

Stuff will change

00:35:22

You know, you might get in the middle of it and omni-relooses a new version and everything changes, you know

00:35:28

Uh, all your all your screenshots all your videos like there's a new look now

00:35:33

So you've got to redo them all

00:35:35

And I I think that when it comes to creating something like that like you said

00:35:40

That the key is to show up every day and just chip away at it

00:35:44

But it's a decision every single day then to be vulnerable

00:35:49

Because the the definition of vulnerability that she uses in the book is uncertainty risk and emotional exposure

00:35:55

so

00:35:58

To show up every day and say i'm gonna devote some time to this i'm going to devote some effort to this

00:36:02

I'm going to put my heart and soul into this thing

00:36:05

And not know exactly what the end product is going to look like that's really hard for some people

00:36:12

I think the

00:36:15

For me the omni-focus course is a good example and I don't mean to be you know for the listeners

00:36:19

I'm sorry that we keep talking about it. This is not a promotional thing. This is just a this is the latest thing I did

00:36:24

and it's it's something like what you're saying where

00:36:27

With omni-focus with a task manager like this and we're both productivity nerds

00:36:33

uh

00:36:34

When it comes to something like that, it's a very personal thing because the items that you put in there

00:36:40

That you put in that system are very very close to your heart

00:36:44

You know, i've got things in there about my wife. I've got a lot of things in there about my family

00:36:49

me personally the things that are that go through my mind that

00:36:54

Very few people will ever see or hear about

00:36:58

So there's a lot of very close things to each person inside those types of systems

00:37:03

And whenever you build something like a video course

00:37:07

Obviously you want to use a demonstration

00:37:10

Uh tool for it and just have a new database for it, but in the case of this one

00:37:16

It didn't want to I didn't want it to be that way because that's what everybody does

00:37:21

That's what a lot of folks want to do. So

00:37:24

When you're creating something like that you have to in order to connect with people you want to put yourself out there

00:37:29

You know, she's got the quote and it's similar to what I think you were getting at

00:37:34

I see if I can get this pulled up really quickly here

00:37:37

But the it simply says vulnerability is the last thing I want to see in me

00:37:41

But the first thing I look for in you and right to me that makes a lot of sense and that means that

00:37:47

When other people are looking at me

00:37:50

They want to see me being vulnerable, which is the thing that terrifies me

00:37:54

but

00:37:56

in something like a course that you put together that is about a tool that your life is in

00:38:02

You really have to open yourself up and say, okay, here's here are the things I'm struggling with

00:38:07

Here are the things I'm dealing with and here's how I'm working with it

00:38:11

And when you have something like that that you're just going to put out there

00:38:15

Okay

00:38:16

And then you give people coming in and saying it's a worthless piece of junk and you should never create videos

00:38:20

Again, it's like oh good grief. What did I do so?

00:38:23

Right, right, uh, this is going to be jumping around a little bit, but that's all I think

00:38:30

Overall already

00:38:32

No, no, no, that's okay. I I want to ask you though because she talks about

00:38:36

two different

00:38:39

Two different ways that people

00:38:42

Will appear to be vulnerable, but she says it's not really vulnerability

00:38:47

And I think it applies to what you're talking about with all of your examples

00:38:50

Inside of whatever you're going to create and again, just use the omni focus course as an example. So there's the

00:38:59

Floodlighting she calls it

00:39:02

where

00:39:05

When you when you floodlight, it's almost like you're oversharing

00:39:09

just to

00:39:11

kind of

00:39:12

Throw stuff out there and it can kind of be overwhelming to people at some point

00:39:17

There's another one where she calls it the smashing grab I believe

00:39:21

Where it's like i'm going to share something with you, which appears vulnerable, but really it's just so that I can get what I want or what I need

00:39:30

out of you

00:39:31

and

00:39:33

I don't think that what you've done with the course

00:39:36

Is either of those things, but maybe it's worth taking a moment to kind of unpack those

00:39:43

and kind of explain like

00:39:45

what the difference is between

00:39:47

Doing it in an authentic way because she talks about how like you want to share your story because when you share the story you control the ending

00:39:55

as opposed to

00:39:58

Almost a manipulative way of appearing vulnerable. That's not vulnerable vulnerable

00:40:03

Vulnerability if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense because

00:40:07

Those two in particular ones that I know

00:40:11

run fairly rampant in social media

00:40:14

Because people like to say well, here's my awesome meal that I had

00:40:20

Tell me how awesome you think it is like there's some of that right here's a tragic thing that happened to me that

00:40:25

Tell a lot of people probably wouldn't be tragic. So you're just looking for some feedback

00:40:29

It kind of becomes a way to

00:40:32

Escape a lot of your own

00:40:34

True feelings about something just because you're trying to get everybody else's feedback and try to make yourself feel better with

00:40:41

Uh, what they are saying as opposed to just coming to grips with how you truly feel and just being

00:40:47

Open with the people close to you. So

00:40:49

Broadcasting things doesn't work. That's kind of a

00:40:53

What what's she call it oversharing? There's some there's another name that she's right

00:40:57

She's a lot of names. I think for some of the same things but I with the course

00:41:02

The one specifically that you brought up the smashing grab where you're putting something out there and then hoping to get a lot of quick feedback on it

00:41:09

Trying to manipulate very quickly and pull something from it

00:41:12

I tried specifically with the course not to do that one simply because I know that is one that

00:41:18

I think for me if I just let my mind run rampant I would tend to lean towards that

00:41:24

So I have to be very careful with that one and I'm aware of that

00:41:27

And the way that I combated that with the course because with something like that it's very easy to put

00:41:33

Something that's somewhat controversial in a video

00:41:37

And then just see what people say about it just to try to get some of that feedback so you're trying to elicit some of that

00:41:42

negative potential

00:41:45

Feedback that can come with it. So to prevent that that was one reason I chose not to allow

00:41:51

any sort of discussion or commenting on

00:41:54

the site which is

00:41:57

That's a challenge that was a problem for me because I wanted

00:42:00

I wanted some way to get feedback from people on if they had questions

00:42:05

But at the same time I don't want to be

00:42:07

I don't want to use it as a medium to try to show

00:42:11

Show off joe

00:42:13

Does it do you get the difference there?

00:42:14

Like I'm not I'm trying to get feedback on you know, how do I make this better?

00:42:19

Or how do you is there a better way to explain this and not show off?

00:42:23

Uh, so I have some ways that I've done in the past with using forums and and dropping comments on it and creating whole discussion sites behind sites like that

00:42:33

And I know how to do that. It's very easy to do. I can spin it up in 30 minutes and it's done

00:42:36

And it's not a big deal for me

00:42:39

But I specifically chose not to because of that issue and I did not want to go down that path

00:42:44

Right, I think that

00:42:47

that particular

00:42:50

Approach and I think the term she used for that is is flood lighting

00:42:54

Um, but maybe that's a different one

00:42:56

Uh, I would argue that it really has to do with the intention

00:43:02

and find what you are sharing

00:43:04

I do think that it is possible in a public forum

00:43:09

to be vulnerable and share a story with the intention and

00:43:15

result of

00:43:18

being able to help other people who are in a similar situation

00:43:22

but the

00:43:23

motivation behind it can't be for

00:43:26

personal gain

00:43:28

so I guess an example of that

00:43:32

would be

00:43:33

I'm going to

00:43:35

air all of this dirty laundry on social media or on my blog or whatever

00:43:39

with the hope that people will

00:43:42

Come and comment and say something like oh, it's it's okay

00:43:45

You know, it's really not that big a deal

00:43:48

Or you don't have to feel so bad or this sort of thing happened to me

00:43:52

uh instead of

00:43:55

Because instead of trying to help other people you're trying to help yourself in that in that instance

00:44:02

um, I think that's the

00:44:04

the uh, the the key there would you

00:44:06

agree? Yeah, I think it has to do with the story piece because there's so much of

00:44:13

I mean look at social medias and and look at the length of these posts

00:44:18

and

00:44:19

Whenever you're just trying to air-lirty laundry and you're just trying to you're trying to get a

00:44:23

Response from people it seems like to me and this I have zero data on this. It's not even in the book

00:44:28

I don't know where I'm getting this other than just a feeling it seems like to me that the shorter

00:44:33

The post the more likely it is that someone's looking for a response

00:44:39

And again, I might be completely off on that

00:44:41

But the ones where it seems like the person is extremely open and they're very vulnerable. They're being very authentic

00:44:48

It's a full on, you know

00:44:51

Hundreds of words maybe thousands of words that they're putting into it

00:44:56

Multiple pictures that explain it

00:44:58

There's more depth to it to try to give a lot more of the backstory as opposed to just

00:45:03

Look at what happened to me, you know, there's there's more detail that comes behind it

00:45:08

So you can understand it in more detail and not just

00:45:12

Throwing it out there my off rocker

00:45:15

No, no, I think that the the shorter

00:45:19

the shorter posts that are designed to

00:45:24

Elicit a lengthy response though. I think I might classify that as like a smash and grab where

00:45:30

She even uses the story in the the book of like a typical burglary a smash and grab burglary where people will just smash the window

00:45:38

And they'll grab whatever is valuable in sight

00:45:40

so

00:45:43

In the especially in in the social media or the online world

00:45:46

I think it's it's definitely possible that you would throw something out there with the

00:45:51

Knowing that this is going to break some windows. This is going to take some people off

00:45:55

and then

00:45:57

trying to benefit from the

00:45:59

resulting bruja

00:46:01

and the conflict that ensues by

00:46:04

dragging things out of out of people

00:46:06

Um, maybe for the intention of using it against them at a future date. I don't know. I mean the the the uh the motives there can be

00:46:14

um, there's probably a lot of different

00:46:16

Unpure motives that that can come out of come out of that but

00:46:21

I just I think of all of the things that I see especially on social media

00:46:26

And when I read that those two extremes in terms of things that are that look like vulnerability, but they're not vulnerability

00:46:33

And it really just made me

00:46:35

Look at that stuff in a different light and really

00:46:40

Kind of dig deeper and look at the motives behind it in the past. I would just kind of like gloss over that stuff and I don't want the drama

00:46:47

you know

00:46:49

but uh, now it's almost kind of sad when I see some of those things because

00:46:53

I feel like a lot of the people that I know that share that type of stuff

00:46:58

They're not necessarily doing it

00:47:02

Because they if you were to ask them that they want the the reaction that results from it

00:47:08

On a psychological level. I think they're kind of conditioned to

00:47:12

To do that because any attention is is good attention maybe

00:47:18

But like if you were to really dig deep and do you realize what you're doing?

00:47:21

Oh, no, it didn't didn't ever really intend for that to happen

00:47:24

But it's like well, what are you doing? What are you posting this for?

00:47:27

Of course, this is going to happen like I think that there's a lot of people who are just kind of stuck in this

00:47:31

Because they're craving that connection that comes from real vulnerability, but they can't find it

00:47:37

Anywhere as an example with social media like the average person I forget what the statistic was but they've got

00:47:45

hundreds of Facebook friends quote unquote

00:47:48

which

00:47:50

Maybe we don't even want to go there because

00:47:52

You get pretty passionate about that that subject

00:47:55

But uh, those aren't really your friends

00:47:58

You're not going to call up those people when you have a fight with your wife

00:48:01

And they're not going to you know, talk you off the ledge so to speak

00:48:05

Those are just people that you've known in your past who probably you

00:48:10

This is a good chance. You'll never actually physically talk to them again

00:48:14

And uh, I forget again the statistic. I should have looked all this stuff up

00:48:18

I didn't really know we were going to go here, but uh, the average the average american

00:48:23

Uh, I read somewhere it has on average

00:48:26

two

00:48:28

Uh, two real friends and a lot of people it's it's less than that a lot

00:48:33

There's a surprising in number. I think it was something like 50 that don't actually have anybody

00:48:37

That they could consider a real friend

00:48:41

And I apologize if i'm mingling those statistics, but I remember reading it and just being like

00:48:45

Completely blown away by the fact that there's a lot of people who are

00:48:49

Believing alive via social media specifically where oh, I've got this great social network

00:48:56

but

00:48:58

In reality like they're hurting and they're crying out for somebody to notice them

00:49:03

It's again another sad

00:49:07

Scenario, but even if your stats are off even if it's

00:49:11

Four and two still that seems still really low

00:49:15

To me. This is my perspective though

00:49:18

Yeah, but I don't know. I mean reading this this book

00:49:23

uh and talking about

00:49:25

vulnerability and

00:49:27

All of the the vulnerability shields in particular

00:49:30

Like all of the things that we we do

00:49:33

Uh, a lot of times unconsciously to avoid

00:49:38

vulnerability when vulnerability in the right context with the right people is really the thing that will provide the the connection and

00:49:47

The meaning that we're after like it's really really sad and I've gone through these vulnerabilities shields

00:49:53

I totally saw myself applying these

00:49:57

Which is disheartening isn't it? It's like you're looking at these things. Oh my gosh. I'm all of these things like this is

00:50:04

This is not good

00:50:05

Right, so I do this stuff too, but um should we go through these real quick?

00:50:10

Uh, sure sure. Okay, so I wrote down the three main ones

00:50:15

The first one was foreboding joy

00:50:18

Which is the idea that

00:50:21

this situation is too good to be true

00:50:24

and

00:50:26

what this looks like

00:50:28

Is that when something is going really really well?

00:50:32

You are looking and watching for something to go wrong your rehearsing tragedy as bernay would put it

00:50:38

Uh, so even when things are going really great, you're never able to really celebrate or be happy

00:50:44

You don't have that joy because you're expecting disappointment at any moment

00:50:50

I hate this one. I absolutely hate this one because so I have a race car brain every time

00:50:55

I'm you know, we go for a walk and our oldest is riding your bike and I think about people

00:51:02

Coming out of nowhere. Just gonna run her over. It's like oh my gosh. This is not helpful

00:51:06

Yeah, no, I do the the same thing too though

00:51:10

But the solution to this is actually something that I have started applying in my own life before I started reading this book

00:51:18

And the solution is to practice gratitude

00:51:20

One of the things that we have done me and my wife is

00:51:25

We have on Sunday nights after we get back from church. We have our family meetings

00:51:31

and we will go over the calendar. We'll go over the

00:51:36

the menu sometimes so like what we're gonna cook for meals throughout the week and

00:51:42

Once a month we'll go over the budget as well

00:51:45

and then we will usually go for a walk take the dog for a walk and

00:51:50

We will practice gratitude and we will talk about one thing specifically and the other person that we are grateful for from the last week

00:52:01

And that has made a huge difference. I can tell you

00:52:04

Doesn't seem like a big deal

00:52:07

but it really

00:52:10

It really is in practice like especially I think for

00:52:14

Brene talks about in the book how

00:52:18

A women experience shame in their appearance

00:52:22

But men experience shame in their their weakness or their lack of strength

00:52:26

Uh, I think that in just from my own experience with my my wife

00:52:31

If I am not telling her that I'm thankful for the things that she is doing right

00:52:36

She can tend to focus on the negative things because again

00:52:40

I have trouble practicing

00:52:43

These things as well. I forebore forebore joy and I I tend to focus on the things that go wrong

00:52:49

and how do we fix this but

00:52:53

That really helps her and also it's obviously nice to hear from your wife the things that she's done right as well

00:52:58

Other things that she's grateful for in you, but

00:53:00

Really the the big benefit for me is seeing the impact that it has

00:53:06

My wife because I can see it's like a huge weight that gets lifted off of her shoulders whenever we talk about these things

00:53:13

I thought it was interesting that Brene brought up that she didn't even research men at the beginning

00:53:19

She thought it was a women's thing right. I thought that was kind of funny, but she

00:53:23

She tells some very emotional stories about how she came to some of these revelations and

00:53:29

They can strike you. I mean going through the process of how she learned

00:53:33

Uh, how men experience shame as opposed to women

00:53:37

It'll it'll make you stop and think but it's not something that you would

00:53:42

Assume very easily, but it's it's one of those myths that out that are out there as that men shouldn't experience shame

00:53:49

And it's just not the not the case. It's it's definitely prevalent

00:53:53

I know I will admit to that and it's one that you know and if you go on to the next

00:54:00

Vulnerability shield that we put on to keep us from being vulnerable

00:54:03

Of perfectionism. That's one that I know I deal with very heavily

00:54:08

I am a perfectionist to a tea and what she gets at with the shield is we put this on so that

00:54:14

Uh, people don't see who we truly are so we can eliminate some of the pain

00:54:18

You know the perception is that

00:54:20

You're perfectionist. You're trying to make every detail right. It's a striving for excellence. Well, that's kind of a misnomer

00:54:26

It's not actually the case. You're really

00:54:29

Just trying to prevent potential pain trying to keep things from being

00:54:33

negative and

00:54:36

It can create a lot of issues and her

00:54:38

Uh, what'd she call it her

00:54:42

Way of combating that is to appreciate cracks and just being okay with things when they're not perfect and

00:54:48

When it's that simple when it's something that's just like, okay, just be okay with this

00:54:53

But i'm not okay with that like

00:54:56

It doesn't work that way, but I get what she's saying where you have to just be aware of

00:55:00

Where things are not going to be absolutely to a tea

00:55:04

And then just learn to appreciate the beauty in some of those

00:55:08

shortcomings

00:55:11

Yeah, and I think that

00:55:13

Because I I definitely suffer from this one as as well where I want things to be perfect

00:55:18

I want whatever battles I fight to be perfect

00:55:21

but the truth is that even if you win the battle sometimes you're going to have scars

00:55:26

and

00:55:28

When I read, you know appreciating the beauty of the the cracks, that's kind of how I

00:55:33

Thought of that is appreciating the beauty of the the scars

00:55:37

so

00:55:40

You ship this omnifocus course and it's not perfect and people are pointing out all the things that you messed up on

00:55:45

That's okay

00:55:47

You at least shipped something

00:55:49

You know and the fact that you have a whole bunch of haters, that's okay those may be scars

00:55:54

But it shows that you've fought resistance and you've won

00:55:57

So the scars I think a lot of times like we want we want everything to look perfect on the outside

00:56:04

We want everybody to think that we've got this all together

00:56:09

And that we don't hurt we don't experience shame. We don't experience

00:56:15

Fear fatigue any any of these these quote-unquote negative emotions

00:56:21

which she really dives into with the book with specifically

00:56:24

specifically men

00:56:27

that

00:56:28

It's okay to have some visible signs some visible remnants of some things that haven't gone

00:56:34

perfectly

00:56:36

And looking back at my own life, I can see the the things that have scarred me and the things that have hurt because maybe sometimes

00:56:43

It's my own fault even where like I just didn't handle the situation well

00:56:47

but

00:56:49

I've learned from those mistakes and I've become a better person

00:56:53

by

00:56:55

not just pushing

00:56:57

past those things

00:56:58

But actually taking the time to reflect and look at those things and glean the lessons that that were there

00:57:04

You know that that specific thing right there that was that was really hard, but it really didn't need to be

00:57:09

So next time when I'm in that situation next time I launch a video course next time

00:57:14

I

00:57:16

I write a book, you know, I'm gonna take this approach

00:57:19

And just the fact that we've gone through those things and we now have a personal

00:57:25

Story we have a testimony we have a message of how we overcame that's when we can share that with other people

00:57:31

When we appreciate the beauty of the cracks when we appreciate the beauty of the scars

00:57:35

And we can communicate that in a way that's not like we're talking about the false vulnerability that can really inspire people

00:57:42

Yeah, I think there's a lot of value there because you know that's

00:57:46

Not being perfect, you know, this goes back to what we were saying earlier people look for vulnerability

00:57:50

They want to see it in you and if you're constantly striving for

00:57:53

perfection then

00:57:56

They're really not going to see that you know, for example

00:58:00

This weekend so I'm leaving tomorrow to go to a wedding and I'm the best man at this wedding

00:58:05

So I get the honor of giving a speech

00:58:07

I have zero problems being in front of people. I'm perfectly okay giving speeches

00:58:11

But there's always this thing in the back of my mind of what happens if I stumble over my words or I said something wrong or

00:58:18

You know, what if I accidentally kick the chair and fall over like what?

00:58:22

What do you like these things run through my head constantly and

00:58:27

Just knowing that that stuff does happen and it's okay. And if people see stuff like that

00:58:33

As long as you recover and you can you know, do the whole self-deprecation thing

00:58:37

As long as you're okay with it. They're okay with it

00:58:40

They're going to be looking for you to admit it and not, you know, get upset and

00:58:45

Pout and get off the stage and throw a fit like they're not looking for that

00:58:49

They want you to you know, step up and be vulnerable in that situation and

00:58:54

If you're constantly striving for the perfection of how you're going to do something like giving a speech at a wedding

00:58:58

You end up giving a really terrible speech because you can never actually let loose and let yourself come through in what you're saying

00:59:06

So I think there is a lot of value in letting the cracks come through

00:59:09

the third one is numbing and

00:59:13

this

00:59:15

uh, we

00:59:17

Talked a little bit about earlier. I think when most people think of numbing they probably think of like the

00:59:24

the alcohol or the drugs, which is definitely

00:59:26

a flavor of numbing but I think that busyness is

00:59:32

Effort to to numb things as well

00:59:36

So the solution to this one specifically mentioned setting boundaries finding true comfort

00:59:42

Uh, just knowing myself. This is another one that again

00:59:47

I I deal with because I've had to work really hard to set boundaries where I'm not

00:59:54

Working all the time or I'm not building something all the time. I'm not focusing on

00:59:58

What I'm creating all the time and I am actually dialing down and taking the time to

01:00:04

be fully engaged with my family when I'm when I'm at home

01:00:09

and uh, just got a quote in here that I absolutely loved she mentions the hustle for worthiness

01:00:17

Uh, she says that

01:00:21

We are a culture of people who have bought into the idea that if we stay busy enough the truth of our lives won't catch up with us

01:00:28

and

01:00:31

That is definitely a vulnerability shield that I have worn in the past

01:00:36

Yeah, I

01:00:40

When it comes to numbing I am one of those busy people that if I keep myself moving

01:00:47

fast and I continue setting tight deadlines and I continue taking more clients than I should

01:00:52

It keeps me at a point where I don't have to stop and

01:00:57

Be me I can just stay in work mode. I I refer to a lot of scenarios as corporate joe

01:01:03

Uh, when I'm kidding with my wife

01:01:06

I was in a scenario and I got uncomfortable so then I pulled out corporate joe where it I just kind of sometimes I go blank faced and I just

01:01:14

Get let's get business done all emotion and all rational, you know, just let yourself go

01:01:19

That's all out the window because we've got to get things done. So it's it's a very bad thing. I think to to fall into but

01:01:26

I do definitely fall into that if let's keep myself busy because then there's less

01:01:31

So less troubling less. I don't know what to say there. There's less

01:01:35

risk of

01:01:37

Having to deal with being vulnerable if I you know am not as busy and I leave space in between things

01:01:44

Yeah, when you're when you're busy you can kind of gloss over things

01:01:50

and

01:01:51

You can just focus on the next thing that you need to do the nest next task on the list so to speak

01:01:59

and I think this actually applies to

01:02:01

To email as well because a lot of people will live out of their inbox

01:02:07

Because they want to feel

01:02:12

Busy because then they don't have to wrestle with the fact that they have not taken the time to identify priorities

01:02:18

And figure out what is really important

01:02:21

You know going back to the the Eisenhower box

01:02:25

You have got the four quadrants

01:02:28

You know the things on the from left to right you've got

01:02:32

Urgent and the not urgent and then from top to bottom you've got important and then not important

01:02:39

the

01:02:40

Default I think for a lot of people is to live life on the left side of that quadrant and just respond to the things that are urgent

01:02:47

And you may actually do some things that are important and urgent

01:02:50

But not a lot of stuff falls into that category. So where does the where do we spend the rest of our time?

01:02:55

Where do all those fillers come from? It's all the things that other people are saying are urgent

01:03:00

but really are not that important that

01:03:03

in my life i've seen and

01:03:06

People that I work with at Asian efficiency the people that the customers that we work with that seems to be the big struggle

01:03:13

Is how do I break that cycle and get out of the place where I am just stuck responding to the things that other people are telling me

01:03:21

Are urgent sometimes you're in a situation like a job for example where your boss is actually

01:03:28

Articulating your priorities throughout your day, but a lot of people

01:03:33

They just willingly embrace this stuff because they don't take the time to

01:03:37

Figure out how they're going to direct their day and what their life is going to be about

01:03:42

They're not going to set those those goals because that's more work and it kind of comes back to

01:03:47

Well, I'm too busy to take the time to articulate my goals, which would make me less busy

01:03:51

You know chicken chicken and egg egg situation

01:03:55

but I saw a lot of truth in this hustle for for worthiness and

01:04:04

just the fact that we

01:04:06

Are addicted to this this busyness

01:04:09

And I really think it's it's sad

01:04:12

You know like I said, maybe it's just because my situation there's a lot of people that we work with at Asian efficiency like this is where they are

01:04:18

They recognize that this is the problem and they're trying to find a solution for it

01:04:21

but

01:04:23

It just seems to me that there are a lot of people who are stuck here who don't even realize that this is a problem

01:04:29

That the average response time to the emails that come into their inbox is three minutes and they're proud of that

01:04:34

You know

01:04:35

They spend 6.3 hours per day an email just like the average us worker and they don't think twice about it

01:04:41

And I think that with this book

01:04:45

Bringing it back to

01:04:49

vulnerability

01:04:50

The fact that we are

01:04:52

So busy that we always have something to do

01:04:56

That is the excuse that we use well, I can't be vulnerable right now

01:04:59

You know as soon as I get through my task list then we can sit down and we can talk about our feelings

01:05:04

But they're never going to get to that point

01:05:07

Because as soon as they check five things off they've got six more things that they have to do

01:05:11

Which is intentional on their part

01:05:14

Exactly

01:05:16

Right. I don't think a lot of people realize that it's intentional, but you're absolutely right like they're using this as an escape mechanism

01:05:23

Which is really sad and we've been saying that a lot these things are sad

01:05:27

But the thing that to me is interesting is well, we're both parents is that they're

01:05:32

She very gratefully went through

01:05:35

some processes on how this can work out with kids

01:05:38

And I think that's very helpful because as parents

01:05:43

You listen to a lot of this and if you read through the book she does talk a lot about how

01:05:49

Some of these shields that we just went through with the perfectionism and the the numbing and such that

01:05:54

We're taught those at a very young age and some of them are in are part of us. They're just our personality

01:06:01

But

01:06:02

There's a lot of the mechanisms that are taught to us. So the question there is

01:06:06

How do you help your kids become as she would call it shame resilient?

01:06:11

How do you help yourself to or help your kids learn how a lot of this works and

01:06:18

My takeaway from that mic is live it

01:06:20

There's there's a lot of parenting advice out there people can come up on both sides of the fence even though they're both really doing a lot of

01:06:27

uh great

01:06:29

Research and and digging on how they want to parent and you can do the exact same amount of research read the same articles and come to completely different conclusions

01:06:36

And it's just you know, no parent can do it the right way and when you're looking at everybody else. So

01:06:42

Ultimately to me and my wife and I have been doing this for quite some time

01:06:48

uh, well

01:06:49

As long as we've had kids we've done it since day one, but we we just kind of come at it from the perspective of

01:06:55

Our kids are going to catch us. They're going to be like us

01:06:58

If I want my kids to be successful and to have

01:07:02

a certain character trait

01:07:05

I just need to live it like I need to be that and if i'm not going to be that if i'm not willing to be that

01:07:11

How can I expect them to be that so?

01:07:15

The ultimate for me anyway of how I took a took a lot of this away from the book was just live it

01:07:21

And and be this and talk to your kids about it and just explain to them what you're doing

01:07:26

Right the the question that she posed is am I the adult? I want my kids to become because

01:07:34

They are going to catch more from what we do than what we say

01:07:40

She also articulates the difference between

01:07:43

Operational and practiced values and she has a couple different examples of those

01:07:47

But I thought that was really good and this is something that i've been aware of for

01:07:51

Quite a while not to say that i've mastered this though because I still catch myself doing things that are not in line with my

01:07:58

Core values and my belief system and then I get mad at myself and the whole why why in the world did I do that?

01:08:05

But it's important to recognize that sometimes we don't do what we think we do

01:08:12

And ultimately we can't give people what we don't have we can't reproduce anything but who we are

01:08:19

And rene talks about how that naturally will lead to disengagement

01:08:23

When we try to do that when we try to tell our kids that you shouldn't smoke you shouldn't drink

01:08:29

But they see mom and dad smoking and drinking then that leads to disengagement because we have in her words broken the social contract

01:08:37

And I believe it's because that we tend to judge others by what we see we judge others by their actions

01:08:44

But we judge ourselves by our intentions

01:08:47

So we can we can justify it in our own head saying well, I want to quit smoking. I want to stop doing this thing

01:08:53

I want to stop getting mad and yelling at my kids whatever it is, you know, fill in the blank

01:08:58

And it's just something that I struggle with, you know, but other people especially your kids they're not going to

01:09:05

catch that

01:09:07

They're going to they're going to catch what you actually do

01:09:10

And another thing that I really got out of that section of the book which I thought was awesome was

01:09:16

Sitting on the same side of the table

01:09:19

As a parent

01:09:21

Tendency can be to go into I'll just call it like teacher mode where you're at the front of the front of the class and they're

01:09:27

Sitting in their desk and this is the way things are, you know, columba sailed the ocean blue in 1492

01:09:35

But what's really effective is

01:09:37

changing the

01:09:40

The seating dynamic and she even tells a story of how she got

01:09:44

A bad grade I forget what the class was but she went in to talk to her teacher about it

01:09:49

And she had rehearsed in her head about how mad she was going to be and she pictured her

01:09:53

Her professor sitting at her behind her big desk

01:09:57

And she was going to say these things and then she got into the professor's office

01:10:01

And they met at this table in her office and the professor sat right next to her

01:10:05

And it completely disarmed her through her through her all off

01:10:08

Uh, and so that's that's something that I definitely want to implement and practice

01:10:14

in uh in my relationship with uh with my kids as well as

01:10:19

Not trying to just fix things, you know, they're they're gonna make mistakes

01:10:24

They're gonna go through things and not just tell them well

01:10:27

This is how you fix it but come sit on the same side of the table and

01:10:32

Understand their perspective understand their feelings or emotions what they're going through

01:10:37

And then empathize with that relate with that and then we can together work to solve this problem

01:10:43

I'm looking at our action items and I can tell just by looking at what we wrote down

01:10:49

But the the primary impact that this book had on us was our relationship with our kids

01:10:55

because

01:10:57

I think there a lot of this is just

01:10:59

One of those you got to under it's an understanding. Here's what you can

01:11:03

How you can see this part of the world in your own life. I don't really think there's a bunch of

01:11:09

You know with something like getting things done the book getting things done

01:11:13

There's a lot of action items that you can take from that

01:11:18

There's a lot of things that you can try to implement in your life after reading that. This is more of a

01:11:23

Just understand how people operate type of book and it's just a it can change a few things

01:11:29

Which is what we've got written down here

01:11:31

But I think a lot of it is just here's how life works

01:11:35

There's a lot of this and I honestly I told my wife this is like this is actually in my opinion

01:11:41

This is a decent marriage book simply because

01:11:44

Right and you can understand what some of these mechanisms are that we use to try to shame each other and keep people from being vulnerable

01:11:52

And how to open up to be vulnerable to build trust

01:11:56

So to me that's core of building a good marriage. So it just seemed like to me this could be a good

01:12:02

Application there anyway, that's a bunny trail action items

01:12:05

It seems like all of ours applied to kids and the one that I wrote down is a change from using the

01:12:13

term you are a blank to you've made certain decisions or certain type blank choices

01:12:21

And the example here is like you were really good today or you were bad today. Well

01:12:26

No, they're not good or bad

01:12:29

each day they're good kids, but they just made some bad choices and

01:12:34

Understanding the difference there and just helping them see that you're a good kid. I love you. You're a great kid

01:12:41

You've just made some bad decisions here and trying to separate the you are a something so that they're separating the difference between

01:12:50

uh the shaming mechanism of you're a bad person to

01:12:53

Maybe just the guilt side of it of this is just a bad choice that was made

01:12:58

Do you get the difference there because it's ultimately the difference between

01:13:01

How you perceive yourself and how you perceive the actions that you've taken?

01:13:06

So that's something I want to try to implement with my kids

01:13:08

Just helping them see the difference in those two because I don't want them to obviously I don't want a parent using shame

01:13:14

So that's that's the big change that I took away from this

01:13:19

Right. Yeah. No, I definitely understand that and that's something that we

01:13:24

We do all the time with our our boys is

01:13:27

they're pretty crazy and they

01:13:31

Do some things that

01:13:35

Sometimes you're just like why in the world did you ever think that that that was a good idea?

01:13:40

How did you know that idea?

01:13:43

Right exactly

01:13:45

and uh

01:13:46

Yeah, so one of the things we we say all the time is like when we are

01:13:50

Correcting them and they're getting upset because they're being corrected

01:13:54

It's like okay. So

01:13:56

How you respond right here is really important like make a good choice

01:14:00

You don't have to be upset about the fact that you were corrected

01:14:04

You know, you can change your attitude right now. We've completely forgotten about it. You know, we can move on

01:14:10

It's up to you now. You have to make a good choice

01:14:12

So yeah, definitely that that's really important and then backing up just a little bit

01:14:16

You know, you mentioned that we're

01:14:18

All of our takeaways tend to be with uh with regards to parenting

01:14:23

I think that's because parenting is the easiest

01:14:27

Everyday application and practice of the vulnerabilities stuff that brine is talking about in this book. Oh, yeah, they force you into it

01:14:34

Right. I mean kids are

01:14:37

vulnerable

01:14:39

They're gonna wear their heart on their sleeves and so you have to match that as a parent like a lot of the stuff

01:14:44

It's in this book. You you will have relationships where there will be times when

01:14:49

When entering into vulnerability the correct way is going to be appropriate and you're gonna be able to practice this stuff

01:14:57

But if you're a parent you can do it in 10 minutes as soon as you

01:15:00

Right downstairs. Yep, you know, so it's it's instant practice and uh

01:15:05

It's it's an important it's an important job

01:15:09

I mean like you are shaping the lives of these these little humans who are you are responsible for keeping alive

01:15:14

It's my fault there. Yeah

01:15:16

Right

01:15:18

So for me there's a responsibility with that too

01:15:21

We're like I don't want to mess this up if there's a better way to do this

01:15:24

I am going to try and do the better way. You know, I may I may suck at it and I may make mistakes from time to time

01:15:30

But I'm gonna own those mistakes

01:15:32

And I'm gonna I'm gonna be vulnerable. I'm gonna be authentic and when I make a mistake

01:15:36

like one of the things that that I'd really try to do is when I

01:15:42

Make a mistake. I tell my kids

01:15:46

In front of my wife, you know, daddy was wrong daddy made a mistake

01:15:50

But anyways rabbit trail my

01:15:54

My takeaway here was it's a small one and I mentioned already

01:15:58

You know some of the things that I'm gonna try and implement but the one thing that really hit me

01:16:04

was

01:16:06

She talked about how when

01:16:09

She sees her kids when her kids come into the room. She wants her facial expression that they see

01:16:15

very first thing to be positive. She wants it to be joy that they are now in the room

01:16:21

And because I've got four crazy boys at home

01:16:25

I tend to you know, they come running into the room. I tend to deer in the headlights eyes real big like don't break anything

01:16:33

You know

01:16:35

So I definitely see myself responding negatively sometimes

01:16:39

It's not even really negative sometimes, but it's not the positive and I do want to cultivate that

01:16:45

I want my kids to feel welcomed and feel happy when they are

01:16:50

in in my presence and so

01:16:53

My facial expressions are definitely one of the things that I can do to cultivate that

01:16:57

So that's one of the things that I want to change. I started doing this one

01:17:02

Whenever I read that part I read it that morning and then I did it

01:17:05

as soon as I saw the girls next and

01:17:08

My girls are young enough that they a lot of communication is through body language to them

01:17:16

The way that you smile the way you act whenever you come around especially our oldest

01:17:23

I can communicate things with her and never say a word like it's very easy to do with certain kids

01:17:30

And I think our kids are very sensitive to that and what I found was that I was the same thing as you

01:17:34

They would come running and they're girls. They're not you know, they're not rambunctious boys

01:17:38

They they're careful with the way that they run so they don't they rarely run into things Mike

01:17:43

I don't really deal with that at all, but yet I'm still

01:17:45

I'm still anxious whenever they take off running through the house and

01:17:50

Whenever they would do that I would always like be watching, you know, are they gonna knock over that table?

01:17:55

like are they gonna

01:17:57

I'm always watching that and I think they picked up on that for a long time and I never even it never crossed my mind

01:18:02

So I started doing this whole smile first thing and it just completely changes

01:18:07

Yeah, it's it's a real joy and I I know just from my

01:18:11

Personal experience that that is well worth well worth the time. So I'm definitely keeping that one as an action item

01:18:17

Yeah, that's that's gonna be I'm anticipating a struggle with this one

01:18:21

But I do believe that it's it's worth it my two-year-old especially like he has absolutely no fear

01:18:27

Yeah, we take him to the to the pool and he just like runs and jumps off of the off of the edge of the pool and he can't swim, you know

01:18:33

So yeah, my natural reaction is you know, make sure that the area is clear and keep them alive

01:18:42

Nice, nice. I thought this book was very easy to read

01:18:46

I had a hard time putting it down some days, especially when she got into the middle of one of her stories about how something happened

01:18:53

and she didn't use, you know,

01:18:55

Thomas A and

01:18:57

Jimmy B like she was real real people that were easy to differentiate but uh, I I really enjoyed the way that she wrote

01:19:05

She would she had a pretty good mix of stories and research findings in here. So I thought it was very relatable

01:19:12

I would say it's pretty easy for just about anybody to pick up and and understand

01:19:17

I agree with you. I really liked the writing style. The only thing I had a little bit of a hard time with was the fact

01:19:25

That she's a little crass

01:19:27

And so sometimes the language she's texting really

01:19:31

Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I had the same issues though with uh, the war of art with steven press field

01:19:37

But I don't know it felt a little bit different of an application like with steven press field

01:19:42

You could tell that sometimes the words that he used

01:19:45

He weighed them very carefully and he used them specifically to make an impact

01:19:52

Whereas here it just seemed more like every every day conversation

01:19:56

Um, definitely some other words could have been used and that type of stuff bothers me sometimes. So

01:20:02

Yeah, no, I get you and I'm I am not

01:20:06

I would say I'm not as sensitive to that partially because I grew up on a farm and I've worked with farmers for a long time and

01:20:14

I hear that type of stuff a lot

01:20:17

So I'm not as sensitive to it. So there are definitely times when I'm reading something

01:20:23

Or I'm reading something out loud and it doesn't even cross my mind

01:20:28

Sometimes Mike and I'll say things and it's like, oh no, uh, the girls are in the room like okay

01:20:32

All right. So anyway long story short. I I don't think that hit

01:20:38

I don't think that really strikes me the way it does with you, but that's just differences in backgrounds

01:20:43

I think so ultimately I found it very easy to read but some of the points I think to your point where

01:20:50

Maybe a bit crass as you're saying, but ultimately I think what I came down to for a rating is about 4.5

01:20:58

I would put it at I don't think I would go clear to the five

01:21:01

Uh, not really sure why it just doesn't seem like it has

01:21:05

The full on five star effect is what some of the other books that we've read has that's my

01:21:11

One and only rationale you can pick me apart on that one, but that's I think where I'm gonna land

01:21:15

No, that's that's completely fine

01:21:19

Uh, I really enjoyed the book. It was very different than a lot of the other books that we've read

01:21:25

And I struggled with some parts of it

01:21:29

But I really did like the content really did like the writing style

01:21:35

Like I said the the language sometimes was enough to kind of snap me out of the

01:21:40

The flow of what she was trying to trying to communicate

01:21:44

So, uh, I'm gonna say four stars

01:21:47

Awesome

01:21:50

So we got a four and a 4.5

01:21:52

Overall decent book. I would say good book. I would say yeah, definitely recommend it

01:21:57

Uh, so what's I don't have the list in front of me. What comes next Mike

01:22:02

Up next is start with why by simon sinek

01:22:09

And uh, this was my choice

01:22:11

And then after that we've got the innovators dilemma by clayton christianson, which is your choice

01:22:17

So simon sinek he's another one of these ted talk guys. So

01:22:21

Do you think we should

01:22:25

I've seen his ted talk do you think it's one of those where you need to

01:22:28

Watch the ted talk before you read it

01:22:31

I'm not sure uh to tell you the truth. I've not seen his ted talk. I

01:22:36

tend to not be a big video guy

01:22:38

Um, I don't know why but I just never really

01:22:42

Connected with that. So I've read one of his other books

01:22:45

Leaders eat last

01:22:47

And absolutely loved it. So and I've heard from a lot of people that start with why is even better. So

01:22:52

Cool excited to jump into that one. Awesome. I'm probably gonna watch it because I like ted talks

01:22:57

Gives me an excuse

01:23:01

Yeah, so if you have uh, any other recommendations

01:23:06

uh, do listener for books that you want us to read we actually have a page on the

01:23:11

Bookworm websites if you go to bookworm.fm there will be I believe a button on the right hand side to

01:23:18

Recommend a book. Otherwise you go bookworm.fm/recommend

01:23:22

and you can put in the book title

01:23:25

and also

01:23:28

We've got a list of all the books that we have read as well as all of the upcoming books

01:23:35

So if you go to bookworm.fm/books you can see all of that as well

01:23:40

And that book list also has

01:23:43

Some of these recommendations that we get in so whenever those come in I tend to add them to that list right away

01:23:49

Because I I set it up so it's really easy to do that

01:23:50

But yeah, if you recommend a book it does get added out on that book list as well and also

01:23:56

Uh, if you would go out on iTunes and leave us a review. I know we say this a lot. We've said it

01:24:00

I think most every episode at this point, but it does help a lot

01:24:04

Uh, apples got some funny algorithms on how they decide who to feature and how people can discover

01:24:10

New podcasts and it's just a great way to

01:24:13

Show your support for the show and help other people find it

01:24:17

So, uh, if you would just go to the show notes

01:24:19

Click on the link down towards the bottom of the list of show notes and go leave us a review there

01:24:23

And uh, we really appreciate you guys taking the time to listen to this

01:24:27

We've got a couple different type of things in the works

01:24:31

So stay tuned and we will talk to you in a couple weeks.