Focused - 131: Liminal Thinking

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

We're all a lot less objective than we give ourselves credit for. David & Mike attempt to figure out why by considering limiting beliefs, learning loops, and the slippery slope of self-sealing logic.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? I'm doing well. How about yourself? I am wondering about many of my assumptions, frankly. I have a lot of questions. Yeah, so the topic for today's show is liminal thinking,

which is inspired by a book by Dave Gray, which you've read this book now, correct? Yeah. So the topic for today's show is liminal thinking, which is inspired by a book by Dave Gray, which you've read this book now, correct? with some of these books because I can listen to it while I'm pulling weeds and whatnot. But then when I go to read it, I have a better idea of kind of what's coming and figuring out what's more important to me and not. Sure. So which, which version did you like the best? Well, I, I liked the, um, I liked the storytelling element of an audible book, but, um, when it's content like this and there's a lot of good stuff in there, I really do like to stop and highlight it and kind of like pick it out and then get it into, you know, the whole air quote system. And I can't do that until I start highlighting the book. So I guess if I had to only do one, it would be the Kindle book. Sure. Well, I almost never listened to books. I read them. I've got them all on the shelf behind me as we record. But I do remember somebody telling me that they had listened to this book and it was

really good because it was read by the author. I think those are the best audible books, the ones that are read by the authors, because they have the revelation that they're trying to communicate. And when someone just has handed a script and tries to recreate that, it's got a different emotion behind it. This is a very short book. It is very visual. And I first picked this up because Joe made me for the Bookworm podcast.

But I remember reading through this with Joe and we have a very specific format as we go through all the different sections of the book and we give it a rating and things like that. And the entire time I was reading it, I was itching to talk to you about it as well. Because there's so much overlap here with focused and really just questioning your beliefs. Like you said, the whole word liminal, like the root of that means threshold. And so it's leaving one thing and going into another. And I think this is a really powerful idea.

And it's almost necessary if you're really going to extract as much value as you can from these books that you would read, these courses that you watch, even the podcast that you listen to. I was really challenged as I went through this, not just to surround myself with the same familiar voices that say the same thing a bunch of different ways, but to really talk to and hear the voices of the people that believe things different than I do and decide for myself, you know, where the truth is, because the reality is not that I know it all or that they know it all. I agree. And I do think that this is something that awareness, just like in the last episode when we talked about toxic productivity, I felt like awareness was one of the best defenses to

this. I feel like that's the exact same thing with limiting beliefs and liminal thinking is that if you're aware of it, suddenly you see it in your day-to-day life all the time. Yeah, there's so much overlap here with the previous episode on toxic productivity. When we recorded that one, I actually talked to you and said, should we bring this into that episode, or is there enough here for a whole other episode? And we decided that there was probably more than enough here for an entire other episode. But toxic productivity, as we talked about in the last episode, that really, I believe, exists inside of this bubble of belief that he talks about in liminal thinking, where you surround yourself with people who are saying the same things, the things that you believe, and that is a glimpse, it's one perspective, one angle into

reality, but true reality is so much bigger, so much more than any one perspective can give you. And so if you really want to understand something, you really need to intentionally seek out these voices that are contrary to what you already believe, because it's not going to happen by default. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the areas of my life where I feel like my years as a trial lawyer really helped, because it is really easy when you're in a room with other lawyers working on the case with you and clients and witnesses that are all, you know, hoping that you win the case to sit around and create this bubble of disbelief, you know, this idea of this narrative that you have is how it's going to go down and how the 12 licensed or voters or registered licensed drivers or registered voters are going to decide it when you put in

front of a jury and you smack your face into reality very quickly if you're not able to step out of that bubble and look at it more objectively to see where the issues really are and and i have smacked my face into it you know because i think we, uh, but, but once you do that a few times, I think it really does help you kind of question reality a little bit or the reality that you've accepted. Yeah. These got this visual in the book of the reality is like the baseline and he calls that the unknowable. And then on top of that is your experience. So that's kind of your reality. on top of that is your experience. So that's kind of your reality. And he tells in the book this story about the blind men who are trying to describe an elephant, and they've all got a different part of the elephant. One's describing the ear, one is describing the trunk, one is

describing the tail. And in their descriptions, these are all very, very different descriptions. And it would be very easy for any of the other people who have an actual piece of the elephant to hear the description and be like, oh no, that is not right at all because that's so different to my experience. And he's saying that you really can't know everything. A lot of that story, that applies to really any area and we have to go into it questioning our own beliefs and recognizing that we don't know as much as we think we know yeah i mean and the point one of the points he made there was not only when the guy who's holding the um was that this the trunk that's the the nose part is the trunk right

and then then you got the guy who's holding the ear when they talk to each other they're going to think the other one's an idiot you know because they don't know the other person's experience and they're both essentially wrong anyway so i don't know i've heard this the story before i almost feel like it's a parable at this point, but I've never heard it described the way that he does in this book. And it really did kind of sink in with me. And it was a great framework. It's the very beginning of the book, and you carry it really throughout the book. Yeah. And then on top of that is your attention, and our capacity for information is limited by our attention. This part kind of

blew my mind. He said that we have the ability to get about 11 million bits of information per second, but our conscious attention, the thing we're paying attention to, thing we are focused on, is limited to 40 bits per second. So from 11 million bits, which is already a limited amount of information that we can take in, down to 40 bits, that's quite a jump. Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about the iPhone when I read this. It's like, what if you made an iPhone that had, you know, like a hundred megapixel camera and the best microphones in the world in it and all of the, you know, the best sensor stack you could imagine. And then you put a processor in it from an Apple II, you know a small minuscule amount of that

then it becomes a question of which 40 bits are you going to pick versus me yeah and then i'm going to latch on to my 40 bits you're going to latch on to your 40 bits and then we're going to argue about whose 40 bits are correct when the truth is probably they both are yeah and once again you're holding the trunk and i'm holding the ear at that point. So it doesn't really matter. I don't know. I didn't follow up his footnotes on that, but that, you know, if that's true, that was one of the most remarkable bits of data that stood out in the book for me of how much we, how much we collect versus how much we process. Yeah, there's a ton of footnotes,

and these are based off of studies that he didn't do, but he's citing a source, and there's a whole big research section in the back of the book. I think the point, though, is well taken that your focused attention is very limited. He describes it as kind of the needle on a record player. And then on top of that are built all of your theories, your judgments, and your beliefs.

We really have this house of cards of everything that we believe to be true sitting on top of this very, very small sliver of what is actual reality that we have chosen to build our entire lives on. And then sitting on top of that is the bubble of belief with all of the people who have that exact same 40 bits per second perspective to the things that we've experienced. And they're reinforcing all of the things that we've believed as quote-unquote obvious. And this really hit me

when I saw this visual. And as I was thinking about this, I was kind of asking myself, where have I made this error where I have just focused on what I think I know, and then there's enough other people around me who believe the same thing and they're saying the same thing and what do i consider to be obvious which really isn't number one really isn't obvious but number two maybe is dead wrong because i'm not willing to look at it from other perspectives yeah i mean i kind of came from a different angle on this whole thing. One of my takeaways from this book was, I mean, influenced by this 40 bits detail, but the fact is the world is a very complicated place and we are barely evolved monkeys. You know, I read somewhere that the difference between monkey

and human DNA is like 4%. You know, it's not much. And so how do we process all of this stuff? Well, we have to come up with some sort of infrastructure to hang the world on, or we would just, our heads would explode when we wake up out of bed every day, right? And I do think that is just a coping mechanism that as humans we have built in. But, you know, being aware of it, I feel like that's what this book really, the service it provides, allows you to be aware of, yeah, there is these closed bubbles of information and these loops that you put together to make sense of the world. And it's not necessarily reality. In fact, it definitely isn't. I think you can take as a given that all of us are holding a different piece of the elephant based on our experience and where we grew up and our culture and all

these other things going on. And there's nothing that we can do to change that fact that we have different pieces of the elephant. But maybe if we can be aware that there are other pieces of the elephant out there, maybe we can learn a little bit along the way. Exactly. And as I think about my own productivity journey, kind of how I got interested in the topic, I can definitely see this bubble of belief where we tend to band together in obvious clubs, kind of rallying around this idea of time management and efficiency. I remember when I first, I think one of the first productivity books I read was Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. And there's a lot of good things in that book. The whole idea of doing the hard thing first as it pertains to beating procrastination, that helped me a lot. But I know a lot of other people who that is very toxic advice.

I saw a visual on Twitter the other day of somebody who was approaching this from an ADHD background. And they were specifically saying that eat that frog is terrible advice for anybody who has ADHD. And I can't speak to that specifically, but it was kind of the contrary argument that actually for someone with that mindset, they have to eat the ice cream first. And I talked to one of my friends, I showed this to him because I know that they've battled with ADHD. And I talked to one of my friends, I showed this to him because I know that they've battled with ADHD. And I said, is this true? And he said, oh, 100%. Absolutely. This is spot on. And that really got the ball rolling as it pertained to liminal thinking in my bubble of belief. Because when I started studying productivity, there were a bunch of people around

me who were saying, yeah, eat that frog, like beat procrastination. That's definitely the right approach. And I'm recognized now that actually for a certain group of people, that's actually the worst advice that you can give someone. And there's so much more when it comes to true productivity, which how are you going to define that, right? I don't think it's necessarily, it's in our tagline. It's more than cranking widgets, right? So it's being intentional. It's doing the things that you want to define that right i don't think it's necessarily it's in our tagline it's more than cranking widgets right so it's being intentional it's doing the things that you want to do what's the best way to do that it's going to differ for each and every person and you kind of have to figure out what works for you and toxic productivity i think that kind of devolves into a system like this is the one true way to quote unquote be productive. And some people just really have a hard time following through with that. It's not necessarily their fault. They've

just been told like this is the right way to do it. And that's a bubble of belief. Yeah. I mean, so much of the advice in the productivity space is peddling bubbles. It's like, don't worry your pretty little head about anything else. Just, you know, follow these four steps and everything will be great. And of course, your life is going to just follow a pattern where you'll always be able to follow those four steps, right? There'll never be a problem.

And of course, that's not true. Yep. And then you combine that with this slippery slope, right? So we have these beliefs that are built off of internal coherence. So does it make sense to us? And then external validation where we test it in the real world. is that we're not going to validate things externally if they aren't coherent internally. So we already talked about how we don't know everything, but if new information doesn't line up with our very limited understanding of how the world works,

we're not even going to test it. I mean, a good example of this on me is Kenny G, right? I love jazz music. When I was a young man, Kenny G was quite popular, and I thought he was terrible. And I felt like there were all these great jazz musicians that couldn't afford to pay their rent, and then there was this guy that had the hair, you know, the look and the publicist, and he was selling millions of albums. And I was so hell bent on it that I, I told when we got married, I told, I wrote into the contract with the DJ that if she played any Kenny G songs that, you know, we didn't have to pay her. I mean, I wasn't going to do that to her, but that was kind of my feelings, you know? And so, uh, then as so many things, as you get older, you start to question like a lot

of assumptions you've had over the course of your life. And you realize that most of them are BS. And, and I started listening to Kenny G recently and I got through the, the internal, you know, filter. It's like, okay, what, maybe this guy is playing jazz music so i listen to him he's okay still not my my cup of tea but it's like it's funny how i wouldn't even let myself listen to him to consider him for decades right you know so do you think that the liminal thinking this is you mentioned as you get older your perspective changes a little bit do you think that as you get older you naturally embrace more

of a liminal thinking mindset or is this something that you have to choose intentionally and it really doesn't matter what age you are when you first come to this idea? Well, the advantage that you have of age, and I'm not that old, you know, I'm in my early 50s, but I have had my face smacked into reality a few times more than someone who's in their 20s, you know, where I believed I knew how things worked. And then that led to the consequences that you can expect from unquestioning belief in something that's not true. And so as you smack your face into reality several times, suddenly you start to question a lot of the assumptions you make,

and you're more willing to consider that you might be wrong. That's the benefit of age. If you were able to learn that in your 20s maybe you wouldn't need to smack your face as many times as i have sure i do think that that's a little bit different than what he's talking about with the liminal thinking though i think that is recognizing that maybe you don't know everything so there's a little bit of overlap there, but I'm putting words in Dave Gray's mouth at this point. I think he would say though that liminal thinking would be actively seeking out the contrary opinions that you know are out there. So one step would be recognizing that there are contrary opinions out there and maybe I don't have the right one.

But then the next level and the liminal thinking level would really be to seek those out and consider them even though they don't line up with your internal coherence necessarily. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build your online presence and run your business. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, they've got you covered. Squarespace combines cutting-edge design

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I would call it, I don't want to call it a foundation because it's really kind of a shaky foundation, but what are the, you know, what are the systems that lead to liminal thinking that you need to be questioning? Well, the big one I think that contributes to this is limiting beliefs. And he has a definition of limiting belief as a belief that narrows the range of possibilities. And the insidious thing about this, as I was reading this book, I realized that there are lots of places where I have assumed limiting beliefs, and I did not realize it until after the fact when I have felt like I was painted into a corner and I resented the fact that I had no options. But if you go back and you retrace your steps, you can totally see how you ended up there.

Can you give us an example? If you want. Sure. Well, I think one would be when you leave college or you're going into the world of work before you have a family, before you have any sort of responsibilities. I remember feeling like the world is my oyster. I can do absolutely anything. And then I got married and now I have to support a wife. And so I take a job and it's got insurance benefits. And so I want to make sure that if anything were to happen, my wife is going to be taken care of. And then I've got five kids. So now I'm really feeling the pressure. And at that point, it's a lot harder for me to make the decision to just leave my comfy job and the regularity of that paycheck and go out and do something on my own. Now,

I went through that myself and I had to figure stuff out on my own against my will, so to speak. So I also learned that some of these limiting beliefs and the fear that is attached to them, it's not actually as bad as I made it out to be in my own head. I was able to figure things out. as bad as I made it out to be in my own head. I was able to figure things out. But the limiting belief was, well, you can't possibly do that. That's not an option for you anymore. Maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you could have made your thing, started your business, whatever. But now that ship has sailed. I think that's one version of a limiting belief that probably a lot of focused listeners can relate to yeah i agree i also think there's there's a discussion here

in the relationship between beliefs and your identity because i think that as yeah i mean beliefs don't come out of a vacuum in some instances they're fed to you as you're growing up and others that you know you pick growing up and others that, you know, you pick them up from the people that you surround yourself with. But eventually it becomes, you don't, you don't distinguish them as something that you've adopted. You do, you distinguish them as your, your own identity, right? Yep. And I think that is something that people can really get challenged with because now when you're talking about liminal thinking, you're saying you're questioning my own identity of myself. Yeah, that's the governing belief part of this, which Dave Gray defines as a belief that is deeply tied to identity and feelings of self-worth. self-worth. And this makes a lot of sense in explaining why we naturally gravitate towards these bubbles of belief that just reinforce the things that we think we already know.

Because a contrary opinion, we're going to take that not as a challenge to the belief that we hold. We're going to take that as a challenge to ourselves and our character. And that's hard to overcome. I do think a big part of it, you kind of mentioned already, the big takeaway from this book is not a specific action item, but it's more a thought process and a perspective, I do think you can choose to identify these things that come at you not as personal attacks, but that is definitely easier said than done. Yeah. I mean, we are all holding different parts of the elephant and you're not going to change that. But if you're aware of that, that gives you a little bit of objectivity and maybe the ability to step aside. But when it comes to these core beliefs that are part of your person, you know, that, you know,

was taught to you at your grandpappy's knee, that is rough. You know, that is rough to question that. That is rough. That is rough to question that. Yeah. Another thing that maybe a positive version of overcoming a limiting belief here, because I think we've been talking a lot about the challenges and the threat that we feel when these beliefs are challenged, but it's not all bad. And it doesn't have to be a crisis situation like me being let go from a previous job in order to cause you to change some of this stuff. I've got another example of this, which I'll keep pretty short because I've told it before. But I never considered myself to be creative until I read Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. In fact, I would write

songs on my guitar and I would get frustrated because I would realize after the fact that I took a chord progression from some other song that I heard on the radio. And then when I heard it, I'm like, oh man, I guess I just don't have the gift of creativity because I can't just get everything in a flash of inspiration like some of these other people seem to do. And I thought, I just don't have the creative gene. That was a limiting belief that I had. And I think that could also be a governing belief. I think a lot of people grow up thinking, well, I'm just not creative like these other people that I see who are doing fancy things with their sketches and all that sort of stuff. But when I read Steal Like an

Artist, I realized that these are really just dots that I'm collecting and the output is kind of based off of a formula. It has nothing to do with how good or bad I am at being creative. It's just me connecting dots in a way that maybe somebody hasn't done before, but the dots themselves are not completely original. Yeah. There's only 12 notes. You're okay. dots themselves are not completely original. Yeah. There's only 12 notes. You're okay. Exactly. Exactly. So once I gave myself permission to create again, because I no longer had to judge myself based off of the output, I was able to look at it more objectively and I would see something that I created and not say, oh, well, that's terrible

because it's similar to something else. I would look at it more objectively and see parts of it that I liked, parts of it that I didn't like. If I did notice that I did copy something, I didn't like that part of it, I would take notes about that and then go back and try to collect some more dots and try to make it a little bit more unique the next time. But I didn't have the pressure to activate that creativity gene and make it work anymore. And the frustrating thing about this, I feel like a lot of this is kind of is told to you at a young age. Like I had a rule with my kids. They weren't allowed to say that, like, I'm just not good at math.

You could tell me that you choose not to focus on math, but you can't tell me you're bad at math. Because I just don't believe that. And but I think too often young kids are told, well, you're just not good at art. So and then like you're in fifth grade and now you're not going to do art for the rest of your life. And it's silly. in fifth grade and now you're not going to do art for the rest of your life. And it's silly. But I think that's a good exercise, I think, for anyone thinking about this is what are my limiting beliefs that were bestowed upon me that I just accepted? And the thing is, you don't even recognize when you assume these limiting beliefs sometimes.

recognize when you assume these limiting beliefs sometimes. It could have happened at a very early age that you created something, you drew a picture with your crayons, and you didn't get the reaction that you were hoping for. And so you just felt like, I'm not going to try that again. And that's not the only limiting belief that people deal with, but that's an easy example, which is why we continue to talk about it. But I heard somebody say one time that when you give a child a box of crayons, they inherently know what to do. They just take them out and they start drawing. They don't think about, well, what if I fail? Over time, we come to base our value off of other people's reactions to the things that we create. And so we don't want to disappoint anybody. We don't want to think about it. And really, we get to this point where we have this inside of us. We're wired to create, but we're not doing it. So there's this tension. And then eventually you get to this point where you get brave enough to ask for your

crayons back to try again. And I love that story. I love the whole idea of overcoming these limiting beliefs. But a lot of times you don't even recognize that you have these because it maybe wasn't the bully at school who planted the seed for a limiting belief. It could have been a parent or a loved one who had the very best of intentions when they told you something, but you received it in a way where you just didn't want to open yourself up to failing and being hurt again. Yeah, I wonder what the overlap between the idea of liminal thinking and mindset are. I would guess that there's a lot. Yeah, there's got to be. Mindset is one of the best books that I have ever read by Carol Dweck. And it talks basically about the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset. And it's interesting because in that book, she uses some examples like

John McEnroe, the tennis player, and she ascribes to him a fixed mindset. And one of the reasons that he would get so upset whenever he lost a match is because that failure was a judgment on him as a person because of that fixed mindset. A growth mindset is like, oh, well, I tried that and that didn't work. I guess I'll try something else. And then liminal thinking I see is like a bookend to this where you're actively seeking out some of the other ideas and thinking outside the box, really, even considering things that seem to be contrary to what you understand and just seeing what works and what doesn't. Well, and I also feel like there may be a

relationship between liminal thinking and a fixed mindset. Like if you find that in general, you have a fixed mindset about some area of your life that you just can't get past, maybe underlying that is some sort of liminal thinking about your abilities or, you know, something about that underlying topic. And I don't know, I'm just kind of thinking of this as we record. So I haven't really thought it through entirely. But I do think that like, if you're trying to trace a problem, a lot of times just thinking through, well, why is it this way? Why is it that I can only address this topic from a fixed mindset perspective? I think that

there's a good chance there's some liminal thinking underlying it all. Sure. You know, I've shared a couple examples here. Do you have any of limiting or even limiting governing beliefs that you've struggled with over the years? Yeah. I mean, too many. I mean, honestly, my parents grew up in the depression and they had a really hard time. And like my mom's family didn't have any money. My grandfather was an electrician that got laid off during the depression. They literally had no money. But he was, he's from Quebec and he was a sharp guy and kind of, you know, he's able to live in the wild. So they found an abandoned cabin in Massachusetts and he trapped foxes and he sold the pelts.

That's how they got through the depression. So my parents and my dad was the same thing. He was from Missouri, very poor. And so their whole thing growing up was you get a job, you work your butt off and do a good job and think, work ethic to give to your children. But it was drilled so hard that it was very hard for me to let go of a job and go out and try anything on my own, you know? And it took me years. And even when I was aware of why, you know, and my parents had kind of instilled this in me, it still was very hard for me to get over it.

And it wasn't until probably far too late in the process that I went out on my own and everything worked out. I mean, that's the genesis of this podcast. But I had a limiting belief about my ability to do anything but work hard for somebody else. And that was really difficult. The analogy that comes to mind, because I've been doing some weeding lately, is these strong opinions lightly held. Some of those limiting beliefs, they've been growing there for a really long time. That's a pretty developed

weed. And at that point, it is very difficult to just yank that thing out of the ground. But when they are just poking through, it's easy to just grab them and pull them up by the roots. But when they've had a chance to be established, especially those bigger ones, those root systems, those can be really, really solid. And it can feel very uncomfortable when you pull those things up. As I was reading this book, though, I was challenged to do the exact thing that you were just describing, which is to hold all of these governing beliefs lightly. He even uses that visual of these roots that go down deep under the ground. Those are your governing beliefs, the ones that kind of hold everything together. But if you really want to realize your full potential, you have to be

willing to dig that stuff up, especially when you realize that this was true. Yes, there's an element of truth to this, but it's not the entire truth. It is good to get and hold a job and provide for your family, but it maybe isn't the best thing for me personally. That's one thing that I will consider when I am making the decision to go out on my own and do my own thing, but I can't just let that control everything in my life, every decision that I make. It has to be filtered through a larger lens. Yep. I don't know what to add to that, but yeah. That was a challenge for me. And I said earlier, so much of this is awareness. In that case, I was aware of the problem, but I still, it was the deep, the roots were very deep. Let's just

leave it at that. And they remain to me to a large extent. I still, it was the deep, the roots were very deep. Let's just leave it at that. And they, they, they remain to me to a large extent. I still think about it. Like, am I, I still question myself sometimes. So how do you overcome that? Like, how did you change your mind about this being the right thing to do? I know some of this stuff that, that you did, but. I think key to me was reframing the priority. I felt like I was increasingly unhappy and my parents, the reason the parent, my parents instilled that my parents were very much about family and taking care of your family. And I realized that what I was, if I wasn't, if I was not happy and I came home every day, what kind of example

was I setting for my kids? And I think I, that was part of it. And that, you know, gave me some freedom to try something else. And, um, I don't know. And also I just worked my butt off and I built a side business at the same time until I knew that that was successful enough that I wouldn't be in the poor house if the other thing didn't, didn't work, you know, the advice that we gave on free agents for, you know, a couple of years, you know, you know, I didn't, I didn't just go out on a lark. I, I put my ducks in a row and, you know, at the end of the day it was fine. And, and I, I don't want to make a bigger deal out of this than it is, but you know, at the end of the day, it was fine. And, and I, I don't want to make a bigger deal out of this than it is, but you know, that was a, that was a limiting belief for me, probably the biggest one I've dealt with, but I continue to bump into them all the time.

Like I had a call from an old high school friend and I guess this would qualify. Maybe not. I don't know. But I grew up in the eighties and in the 80s was a kind of a weird time where, you know, homosexuality was really starting to come out. But it had been suppressed so hard for so long that when I grew up, we didn't really talk about it. And then like, I had a call from one of my best friends in high school. And he says, Oh, yeah, I'm gay. I'm like, well, of course you are. And I felt stupid that I didn't realize it'm like, well, of course you are. And I felt stupid that I didn't realize it the whole time we were friends, you know? And I apologized to him. I'm like, I didn't, how come I didn't like, you know, take better care of you as a friend? You

know, how come I wasn't there for you? And he's like, he says, nobody realized it back then. It was just, you know, it wasn't in our reality. That was the word he used. And after I got that call, I thought about it a lot. I mean, what are the things that I am not seeing around me just because of the way things are? And it really caused me to, I think about that a lot now when I try to be the best possible friend to the people around me. I try to be the best possible friend to the people around me. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Discourse. Discourse was founded in 2013 by Jeff Atwood from Stack Overflow,

Robin Ward, and Sam Safran. And it's a powerful, flexible, open-source community platform where discussions are searchable so you can find all the relevant details for your project. The platform is designed with moderation in mind, helping you keep the discussion on track and high value while minimizing the impact of trolls and spam. It integrates with Zapier, Patreon, Memberful, and more. I'm really excited to have Discourse as a sponsor because I've used Discourse for years. Some of my favorite communities are built on Discourse. In fact, the Focused Forum and the larger Mac Power Users Forum that it's connected to is built in Discourse, as is the community for the Bookworm podcast that I do with my friend Joe Buehlig. Discourse is a great option for building your community online.

And what I love about Discourse is it allows you to connect with a lot of other people who aren't in the same place as you. Now, that sounds really simple, but I remember when I was first getting into the productivity space and I was looking for people like me who were interested in learning and becoming better,

and I couldn't find them where I lived locally. So I found these communities online. And back then, there wasn't a tool like Discourse. I wish there had been because Discourse gives you all the tools that you need to build a thriving community, but it also gives you the administration tools to make sure that it stays a positive place that cannot be said about all online communities. And it's really easy to get up and running with it. It's fully customizable, and it's a great way to get started building your community and connecting with other like-minded people. Discourse is offering a 100% 14-day free trial after that planned start at $100 per month. And the folks at Discourse are giving Focus listeners 50% off your first two months after you start your subscription. Just go to discourse.org and use the coupon code RELAY2021,

Relay 2021, all one word, R-E-L-A-Y 2021 when signing up. That's discourse.org, code RELAY2021 when signing up for 50% off of your first two months. And I also wanted to mention their new offering, Discourse for Teams. This is perfect for smaller teams or businesses that are looking to use Discourse to collaborate because it's a private, focused Discourse instance with some added features, including a new sidebar, automatic

icebreakers, team updates, and more to help teams work together more effectively. Now, there isn't currently an offer code for the Teams offering, but plans start at just $20 per month. And if you want to learn more about that, you can go to teams.discourse.com. Our thanks to Discourse for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. So we shared some personal stories about these limiting beliefs. And in this section, I thought it might be kind of cool

to ask ourselves why. How did those get so firmly established? And I think it's a combination of both the learning loop, as Dave Gray describes it in this book, and also the negative version of this, which he calls the doom loop. And actually, I guess the first version would be the delight loop, where you've got a belief and that influences an action that produces a result, which then is feedback for the next action or avoiding the action. And as you were talking, David, about the beliefs that were instilled into you by your your parents i could see both of these at play sure where the learning loop actually let's start with the doom loop because the thing that was

kind of motivating the uh what was being passed down to you was the circumstances, being in the depression, making sure that you can provide for your family. You don't want to be in that situation where the rug is yanked out from underneath you. So don't do that, right? That's a doom loop. But then also, as you are working in a normal job, you realize that there are other things that replace that doom loop for you. And namely, the lack of freedom being the big one. And so the way out of that is the learning loop. And I think this is a really powerful idea where you have these things that are either spiraling down or they are spiraling upwards, and they're not going to spiral upwards by default. You have the ability, though, to take control when you recognize something is going

the wrong way. An intervention, basically, to change the direction and say, I'm going to do the other thing. I'm going to go the other and say, I'm going to do the other thing. I'm going to go the other way, and I'm going to look for the positive application of what sort of beliefs could influence actions, could produce results, and provide positive feedback to change this trajectory. Yeah. So let's explain the loop. What are the mechanics of it? Sure. So there's the belief. Well, actually, I guess it's first of all founded in a need. And then that need produces a belief, kind of like a theory, I guess, about the way things

work. And then that influences the action, which produces a result. That result, you either like it or you don't. That produces feedback then, which reinforces either a positive or a negative cycle. And there's positive and negative versions of this with the delight loop and the doom loop. Do you have any examples of this other than kind of what we've already talked about that you could share from your own experience? Well, I think there's, I mean, I shared the big one of my life was the whole, you know, depression era thing. But I see this working in small and big ways throughout my life.

You know, we talk a lot about productivity stuff. And like, for example, the David Allen getting things done, you know, the Bible of so many people's theories on productivity. I mean, it had a big impact on me. And, you know, I would, you know, applying this kind of loop to it, you know, what is the need at solving? It's the ability to get your work done and feel like you're on top of things, you know, and then you get a series of beliefs about how to handle it that lead to actions. And then suddenly you start getting your work done faster. And then it, you know, it, it loops it, you know, the flywheel effect kicks in

and that's a positive loop. And that's an example of something applied in kind of the productivity space I apply to. But the interesting thing about that is as that flywheel continues, you may realize that it's still not solving the underlying problem of, am I doing the work that I want to be doing with my life? Right. Yeah. And very quickly, the flywheel becomes a negative loop because suddenly you're getting really good at answering email, but when they put you in the ground, you're never going to have written the novel that you had inside your head.

Yeah. I remember reading, I think it was Die Empty by Todd Henry, and he was telling a story that he picked up from one of his friends who had asked him what is the most valuable land in the world. And Todd Henry, throughout real estate in Manhattan, diamond mines in South Africa, and his friends, says, wrong, it's the graveyard because that's where all the unfounded businesses are, all the unwritten books, all the things people said, I'll get to that eventually. I'll do that tomorrow. And then eventually they ran out of tomorrows. I think that is, I have mixed feelings about that story. When I first read it, I'm like, oh man,

that's so powerful. Don't put off till tomorrow, which you can do today. Let's make, hey, well, the sun is shining. But I also don't like the negativity and the fear that is attached to that. And I feel like the learning loop is more along the lines of habits as opposed to that would be goals. The goal being, I'm going to write my book, I'm going to go out on my own, I'm going to start my business, whatever. The learning loop is more like the consistency that you do day in, day out that will ultimately lead to the results that you're looking for. But you can't get ahead of yourself. You can't say, well, I want to have this New York Times bestselling book by the time I die. I don't know. Is that an effective motivator for you? The more I understand about habits the the more put off i am to that whole idea to me the the underlying metric is i want to do my best at whatever i do and you know so and that's like when i took the bar exam as a good example right so i got out of law school and i had to take the bar exam like two months later.

And then I was getting married that December. So graduation was like June bar exams into July and wedding is at the end of December. Well, the bar exam results come out at least back then, like early December, it takes six months to grade the test. like early December. It takes six months to grade the test. And so I knew that the results were going to be out like two weeks before all of my friends and family got together to celebrate my wedding. And I really did not want the narrative of my wedding to be, hey, nice wedding. Sorry, you failed the bar, right? But I knew I would make myself crazy with that mindset. So I just decided what I want to do is I want to be at my wedding knowing that there is not a single stone I left unturned to do my best on the bar.

And whatever the results are with the bar, that's fine. So long as I have no regrets about my effort. And that has served me well. I use that with everything I do. I try to instill that in my children. The result doesn't matter as much as the effort. That kind of can feed into some of that toxic productivity stuff where, well, I'm not really giving it my all if I'm not working 60 hours a week because that's what I see everybody else doing around me. Whereas the learning loop is really just trying something, giving it your best shot, and then looking objectively at the results and figuring out what your next move is. figuring out what your next move is. And as I was thinking about this learning loop and the trajectory of my own career, I can totally see how I didn't understand this, but I was definitely

applying this because I didn't consider myself a writer. That was a limiting belief that I had. And then I got an idea to write a book. Well, what does a writer do? They write. So I guess I better learn how to write. Started a blog, what does a writer do? They write. So I guess I better learn how to write. Started a blog, started publishing that got me connected with the first company that I was working with. And one thing has always led to another. And along the different stages in my journey, there have been these different tipping points, I guess, where it has opened the door to something else that I never considered for me to do. Then that was like webinars, that was speaking, podcasting. And even with just like podcasting

as an example, I remember when I first got into podcasting, I was listening to a lot of these big podcasts and thinking to myself, man, it would be really cool if I was able to do something like that someday. And then I would listen to my own recordings and be like, well, that's absolute garbage. No one's going to want to listen to that. And I really just did it enough. And every time I did it, I went back and listened to it and recognized, well, I used these filler words here, joined the Toastmasters group to help me eliminate those, help me organize my thoughts better, get more comfortable speaking extemporaneously

where I don't have everything all scripted out. And it's just been one learning loop after another, which has gotten me to the point that I'm at. And I still think there's so much more for me to learn, but this is actually when it's functioning the right way, this is very rewarding, even though you're constantly being reminded of what you don't know. Yeah. I mean, I really think that the willingness to learn and the enthusiasm to learn is one of the best traits you can have. I really do try to bring kind of the beginner's mind mindset to anything new that I do. And I actually

enjoy the process. Maybe that helps. I don't know. How do you think you reconcile that beginner's mindset with the accumulated knowledge. Because every once in a while, there's something that changes the game. And I think there's value in recognizing when you're at one of those points where you just got to chuck what you have been believing, what you have been building and embrace the new thing. Yeah. The, uh, so,

uh, did you see the third Indiana Jones movie? Yeah. Yeah. There's a scene where he has to take the leap of faith, you know, when he's going for the arc, that wasn't the arc.

That was the, um, it was the cup of Christ. He was going to, so there's a, there's a can't this, this Canyon, he has to cross and clearly

he can't. And the clue is you just have to stop step and he steps and it's an, a, an optical illusion is actually something there to hold him up. I think you got to take that leap, you know, and that's just life, right? You just got to do it. Got to be willing to fall down. I mean, an example of this for me was I got really good at making iBooks with Apple.

I was doing iBooks, and I made several field guides with iBooks, and then I started to get the impression that Apple wasn't that interested in iBooks, and I decided to just chuck that out the window and start making these video field guides instead of the book field guides. And a bunch of people wrote me to tell me how wrong I was. And I was willing to be wrong, but I just did it and it worked out.

And who knows, you know, where, where that will be in five to 10 years. But I do think the, it is very easy to get comfortable in success. and that is a very dangerous place to be. You have to be willing to question, you have to be willing to, to start over again. I remember when I was working full time with a family business and we were investing a bunch of money in a new online version.

And this was about the time that Steve Jobs had written the open letter about Flash. And Flash was what everybody was building online products in back then. And I remember talking to my dad about it and being like, I think HTML5 is the way to go with this. We guessed right, basically. But it reminded me of the... We're not the only company that's gone through that, obviously. There's a whole book, The Innovator's Dilemma, by Clayton Christensen, which talks about this very issue. Kodak invents the first digital camera, but they don't want to disrupt their film camera business. So they don't do anything with it. And eventually, there is a disruptor who comes in and challenges things and they take over

the market. And I feel like it's easy to play armchair quarterback and say, well, I wouldn't just sit there and let that happen. I would have been smart enough to recognize that this is the future. smart enough to recognize that this is the future. But until you're in there and you do have that thing that is working, and then you're faced with a choice, do I continue to go with this or do I try the new thing? You really don't understand the pressure that is involved with that choice. It's very, very difficult to cut something off, especially when that branch is still producing some fruit with the belief that this other thing

is going to be the way to go. And that's when you stumble into self-sealing logic. Like, we have for 100 years made money selling film. We're going to do that for another 100 years. And by the way, my bonus is calculated about how much film we sell, not how many digital cameras we sell. And so internally, you're not willing to consider it. And the only external data you're going to look at is stuff that affirms your internal beliefs. And we do this all the time. I mean, the thing I want to just keep hammering home is none of us are above this. You know, you may be listening to this and thinking about some group of people in the world right now that you're like, oh, those guys, they're totally guilty of this, but I am enlightened and I don't do that. No, you do it too. And that's the trick, right?

Figuring out where your weak spots are because we all have them. Yeah. Talk about a doom loop, by the way. I want to talk about loops for a second loop, by the way. use the David Allen thing for a while, you know, the getting things done. I feel like the getting things done system really does create a positive loop for a lot of people where they're able to handle things better, but that's not the end of the story. And that loop can turn into a doom loop if it's not attended, or maybe that loop needs to end at some point and you need to go on to something else. And I think there really needs to be, you know, it gets back to awareness, but you've got to be aware of where you're making these changes and when you need to get off that horse and get on a different one. Yeah, you need to know where your blind spots are too. I think that's another

piece to this, which he addresses in the second part of the book. So part one is how beliefs shape everything. Part two is what to do about it. And he talks about triangulation and falsifiability, some of that sort of stuff. But the big point here, I think, as it pertains to these doom versus delight loops is simply knowing that you can't see everything. And then with blind spots, specifically, I think about it in a vehicle, right? There's a specific spot in the vehicle while you are driving it that you can't see. But if you get somebody and put them in a specific place, they will be able to see what you can't see. And then you can get feedback from them on

what is in that blind spot. But a lot of times we don't even realize the blind spots that we do have in our life. In a vehicle, it's kind of obvious. I can't see that spot over there. But when it comes to reality and what is knowable, it's very easy to look past these things. That's why I think conversations with people are so important, as long as you are intentionally choosing people who are going to challenge your beliefs and not just reinforce them, who are willing to tell you the uncomfortable truth, maybe. Even if it forces you to wrestle with some things, ultimately that is going to be for your betterment and it's going to help you see some of these blind spots.

Yeah. There's another part in the book where he talks about his friend. That's a turnaround guy. And I've dealt with these folks as well with some of my clients. When a business fails, you bring in a turnaround person to try and rescue the business or to liquidate the business. And the turnaround guy tells the author, yeah, if we want to turn the business around, we can do it.

All we have to do is ask the employees and the customers. Because so often they do know what can turn a business around, but management can't hear that. I think that's true in our own personal lives as well. to that position where a turnaround person comes in and literally just talks to the employees that are already there. Because I can imagine that for a lot of these companies, it's not that they never talk to their employees and these employees aren't saying these things. Maybe in some cases, that's the case. But I would imagine there's probably a lot of instances where the employees are communicating the exact same information and management and just just completely tuned it out yeah it's hard um you know just today as we record this i just released a new redesign of max sparky right i mean this is a very like non-consequential example but i've been using the same design of my of my blog

for i don't know five six years now and in the meantime i've added you know a lot of video courses and another two podcasts and it just felt to me like everything was getting really noisy and bolt on and i made the mistake of announcing hey i redesigned you know what do you think and boy people have thoughts. And it's like, OK, well, I should listen to my customers. These are people who like my stuff and they want to buy stuff from me. If they say that this is wrong, then I should reconsider. But it is really hard, I think, when you run something.

And you can't just focus on one person. But nonetheless, thereada, yada, yada. Yeah. How do you reconcile that? You know, there's not a whole lot you can do when someone's going to pull that. But that doesn't necessarily mean that what worked in the past is going to work from this point forward either. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Memberful. Go to memberful.com slash focus to get best-in-class membership software with no credit card required to get started. Memberful is the easiest way to sell memberships to your audience. Used by the biggest creators on the web,

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Our thanks to Memberful for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. All right, Mike, so I feel like we've been hitting liminal thinking pretty hard. What are some practical steps people can do to identify and avoid their own personal liminal thinking traps? Sure. Well, the big one we've kind of alluded to it, I think throughout this whole episode is just recognizing that you're biased. I'm biased, you're biased. We're all biased. There is no one who is completely objective. Even though I think that a lot of people specifically who would listen to this podcast, I feel like focus attracts a different productivity crowd maybe.

Prior to reading this book, if you were to ask me, do you consider yourself to be objective? I probably would have said yes. But after reading this, I recognize there is no way for me to be completely objective. So recognize that you're going to come into any conversation with your own biases, your own emotionally charged beliefs, and recognize that you can't necessarily disconnect those emotions or those biases, but maybe you can compensate for them. Maybe you can take them into consideration when you're weighing some contrary information. Yeah, that's excellent advice. I would add that I think that just generally, you should try to cultivate your curiosity and you should try to

suppress your ego. I feel like just going at life with a sense of curiosity is such a good trait because it allows you to be wrong without feeling personally offended, allows you to change your mind, and it allows you to learn about other people's bubbles and maybe question your own. But curiosity, I feel like, is a very powerful tool in this battle against liminal thinking. I agree, and I love that term curiosity. I do agree that if I were to pick a descriptive term that I would like to embody my approach to life, permanently curious would be it. I do have to recognize, though, again, that I'm going to be biased. So when I'm curious about something, I do have

some preconceived notion in my head already of what the right course of action is with the information. What am I going to do with this information that I'm getting. The other thing that I walked away from the book really feeling like I need to do a better job of is making sure that I am collecting facts from the right places. One of the best lines in this book, in my opinion, is the internet is a grocery store for facts. And the point being that you don't go into a grocery store saying, I am going to sample everything in this grocery store because that is the true representation of what this grocery store is. You're going to go in there with your favorite things and you're going to go to your favorite aisles and you're going to buy your favorite products and that's it. You're not going to consider any of the other items that are on the shelves. And when it comes to beliefs and facts to support those beliefs, you can find just about anything online.

Yeah, I like that line as well. I do think, though, I was thinking as you were talking about this, what beliefs do you need to question? And just the idea of the fact that you're curious doesn't mean that you're abandoning your beliefs. I think it'd be very easy to hear that advice and say, well, my beliefs are very important to me, and I'm not willing to just throw my beliefs overboard. And I'm not asking you to do that. I'm just asking you to be curious and to be aware of this stuff. And then you can make your own decisions later. But also let your beliefs stand up to a little challenge once in a while. If nothing else, it makes your beliefs stronger. Exactly. And that's the thing that we avoid most of the time because it's uncomfortable. And I know that's a generalization, but I do this too. And so what I want to do after reading this book is not just surround myself in an echo chamber, bubble of

belief, same people saying the same things that are reinforcing the same beliefs that I already have, but find the people who are different from me and have a conversation with them, not from the perspective of I want to change their minds, but going into it curious and wondering what they're going to say should be changing my mind. what they're going to say should be changing my mind. Yeah, I read a book a couple months ago called You Are Now Less Dumb, and it was by David McRaney. It really was just a collection of psychological studies on people. But one of them that really stood out for me was making people with very strong beliefs.

Like, if you're very liberal, they made you watch conservative news. If you're very conservative, they made you watch liberal news. And I think they use an MRI or whatever. But they studied what your brain does when you watch this stuff that you strongly disagree with. And it was interesting because the frontal cortex and this is from memory from two months ago but i think it was the is the frontal cortex area where you process and consider arguments but that area of the brain would turn off that you know watching beliefs or watching people say things that you disagreed with strongly was so painful that your brain would

literally turn off the parts that would analyze what they were saying wow that's why when you stumble into like something on tv that you strongly disagree with you find yourself compelled to turn the channel because you're like i can't take this anymore it literally is a you have a a physical reaction to it and um that was really interesting to me because when I read that, I thought, well, I don't want to be that guy. I would really like to keep that area of my brain turned on when I hear something that questions something I believe in for my own edification, to make sure my beliefs are the right beliefs. my own, you know, to make sure my beliefs are the right beliefs. Yeah. It can be scary to consider the fact that some of the people who you disagree with might have an element of truth in their arguments. Yeah.

That's not something your rational brain wants to hear. But I think what Dave Gray is saying in this book, and it also is echoed in things like, just read the new Adam Grant book, I think it's Think Again. And there's a whole chapter in there about, interesting, because he wrote this before COVID, but specifically talking to people who are anti-vaccinations and just having the conversation with them about why they felt that way. And the research that they did found that simply by letting them express their beliefs and empathizing with their feelings, they would change their minds on their own. So I got to be careful with this because I don't think,

you know, I want to portray empathy as a weapon to change people's minds about things. I think the very best thing you can do from a liminal thinking perspective is assume that you are the problem and take responsibility for your own beliefs, not try to fix somebody else. and take responsibility for your own beliefs, not try to fix somebody else. But the truth is that your world does become a better place when you go into those conversations openly questioning some of the things that you have held on to and being willing to be shown where you might be wrong. It's really, really difficult. And I don't think I have enough experience with this to say like, well, yeah, this is sustainable. I do recognize there's some biological wiring here, which is going to fight against this. And I'm kind of hoping that I can

tame that part so that I can have these conversations and I can, you know, practice number nine, he talks about evolving yourself, right? Hopefully I can embrace that because you can't change the world without changing yourself, he talks about in that specific chapter. Well, I do think that this is a challenge. And I think that it's something, as we've said several times throughout the show, it's a malady that we all suffer from. throughout the show, it's a malady that we all suffer from. So I get that.

I think the theme of the show is not to teach you how to go out and change other people's minds about their beliefs, but to get you to question yours with a sense of curiosity. I'm not telling you to drop your beliefs. I think you should hold on to them if it makes sense, but at least be willing to consider them. And if nothing else, be aware of your bubble. I'm not saying you even have to leave your bubble, but at least be willing to consider them. And if nothing else, be aware of your bubble. I'm not saying you even have to leave your bubble, but be aware of it. Exactly. And then when it comes to objectivity, there's a concept he talks about in the book

about triangulation and how you just collect more theories. So I can totally recognize points in my own life where I have subscribed to a theory which maybe wasn't a good theory. That's another point he makes is this falsifiability, the test of a good theory being that it can be disproven. If I have this theory that nobody can disprove, then I can kind of use that as evidence that, oh, I guess I was right then, and it just becomes one

of those governing beliefs. It becomes firmly entrenched. But a good theory is one that can be disproven, and I'm trying to disprove it, actually, because if I can't disprove it, then it shows that there's an element of truth to it. But I think, speaking for myself, I can recognize points where I have just made these theories so broad and so general that really they can't be argued with. Nobody argues with them, so I just hold on to them. Yeah. And also, I mean, I think the reason why we're giving a whole show to this is I do think this is a very important life tool for you to live your best life. Like going back to my parents emphasis that I get a job and be good at the job and work there until I get the gold watch and retire.

That doesn't really exist anymore. You know, I mean the, their, you know, their, um, their model was born in like the forties and fifties, you know, the world doesn't really work that way anymore. Layoffs are very frequent and companies change and the world moves fast and there's all sorts of things going on to turn a successful company upside down. Even if you are a good employee, you can still find yourself out on the street one day. And the model they built in my head didn't really match reality. And I want

you to question your models too, because maybe that's the case. And we don't want you to get caught flat-footed one day. Definitely. And along with that and the changing models and challenging things, another point he talks about in the book is creating a safe space. And every time I've heard that term before, I've heard it in companies and organizations that haven't really understood what it meant, but used it. I've got an open door policy. You can talk to me about anything, but no one wants to because that's not the culture. But as it pertains to liminal thinking and changing your mind about things, I do think that you can create a space,

a safe space for these conversations to be had. And as long as you go into them without trying to impose your will and change the other person's mind, every time you have one of these honest conversations, what you are doing is you are building trust. And the more trust that you build, the more authentic the conversations become, the more effective they are when it comes to changing your own mind about some of these things that maybe you've held on to your entire life. Have you come up with a tool set to identify when you are in a bubble?

Like, are you actively looking for that now? I'm trying to. I'm not going to confess that I have figured out a way to do it effectively because I think there are little bubbles of belief that we're a part of everywhere. There's one for this podcast, the whole Mac versus PC thing. That's a bubble of belief. And is it really imperative that Mac Sparky understands everything in the PC side? Probably not. So I think you have to kind of choose the ones that are really important and worth investing your time and attention into. I think there's so many of these around us

that you can't just make one mindset shift and then apply it everywhere. Yeah, and I feel like, because I was trying to, after I finished reading this, I was trying to think, well, how am I going to act on this? How am I going to be able to benefit from this knowledge that I don't fall into some trap? And I think that the only thing I have at this point, really, is that, you know, beware of certainty. know beware of certainty i think anytime you're certain about something it's very easy to dismiss anything that doesn't fit that certainty and and i'd like to actually just kind of call out i'm not

talking about spirituality here i don't want to that's not what i mean i'm talking about certainty and the way your business is run or the way children should be raised or stuff like that. I think certainty in those senses is, for me, I'm trying to turn that into a little bit of a red flag. And I'm not saying that I'm not going to say, well, I was wrong, but I'm at least going to consider it whenever I catch myself being certain of something. One example of that as it pertains to parenting specifically, I think when I first started parenting, my oldest son is very much like me. And so my wife has actually said that she's learned a lot about me by being his mother. Yeah, sure. So with my oldest son, it was fairly straightforward for me. I kind of knew what he was thinking. I knew the best

approach to help him understand certain things. And then we had more kids and they are all very, very different. And the second one, I had to realize very early on that what worked with my oldest was not going to work with him. And I needed to have, I needed to basically chuck everything that I knew about raising kids and ask, and ask what's the right thing for this specific kid. And that was difficult. You know, when we had our first child and we had some experience, we thought, well, we kind of got this figured out. This isn't so hard.

This isn't so bad. And then very quickly you realize how much you don't know. And that's a pretty minor example, but I think it's one at least a lot of parents can relate to. Yeah. This is something I'm actually struggling with. If you're listening, you'll probably hear it in my voice. It's like, I think this is for real. I think we all are carrying around these bubbles that we've grown up in or created on our own, and we need to be aware of them. But we also all have belief systems that are the foundation of our life. And as humans, we need these things to keep us afloat. And you just have to walk the line between that. I don't know how else to put it. Walk the line and have people in your life,

I think is another important aspect of this, who are willing to tell you the truth. When it comes to the bubble of belief, I feel like that whole term seems very negative because it's kind of, you're surrounding yourself with people who just keep telling you what you want to hear. But it doesn't have to be that way. constantly wanting to learn, who have embraced a growth mindset, who admit that they don't have all the answers and are on this journey with you and aren't willing or aren't scared to share their perspective, even if it's not what you want to hear all the time. And a curious life is a lot more fun than a judgmental one.

Definitely. and a curious life is a lot more fun than a judgmental one definitely before i leave let me tell you about another show on relay fm and that's top four where hosts tiff and marco can make a top four list out of just about anything and it'll probably make you delightfully furious indulge in the randomness and listen for yourself at relay.fm slash top four or search for top four anywhere you get your podcasts. Thanks again to our sponsors, Squarespace, Discourse, and Memberful. We are the Focus podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focus. You can find the forum at talk.macpowerusers.com. There's a focused forum right in there for you, and we'll see you next time.