On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Ozan Varol ON: 9 Strategies to Manage Success and Failure in Work and Life

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

Do you crave the mental focus of a rocket scientist but think it’s something you will never achieve? Join Jay Shetty and Ozan Varol in this ON Purpose episode to learn simple strategies you can use to make giant leaps in work and life. Varol shares his wisdom on first principle thinking, knowing the difference between strategy and tactic, and shifting your mental focus. Catch the whole episode to hear Jay Shetty and Ozan Varol explain how you can think like a rocket scientist.A word from our sponsors:Find better ways to advance your health. Check out the advanced smartwatch, Fitbit Sense, and visit https://www.fitbit.com to get FREE SHIPPING.Let NetSuite show you how they'll benefit your business with a FREE Product Tour at https://www.NetSuite.com/Jay.JUST Egg makes it easy to take the first step toward a healthier lifestyle and plant-based diet, without sacrificing taste. JUST Egg is available nationwide on Amazon Prime Now or Instacart or at Whole Foods, your local grocery store or co-op in the egg aisle or frozen section. Literati is a subscription book club that sends a beautiful book to your door each month, hand-picked by world-renowned authors and leaders. Visit https://www.literati.com/ONPURPOSE to get $50 off your annual membership.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is your space to explore mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Take good care.

Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Nunehm. I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bon vivant, but mostly a human just trying to figure out what it's all about. And not lost is my new podcast about all those things. It's a travel show where each week I go with a friend to a new place and to really understand it, I try to get invited to a local's house for dinner where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party,

it doesn't always work out. Ooh, I have to get back to you. Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet.

Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Louis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw, real life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your

podcast. Join the journey soon. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose and on one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every single one of you who come back every single week to listen, learn, and grow. Now, I'm really excited about bringing you fascinating guests where we can dissect their minds, understand their concepts and theories, and figure out how to practically live their messages in our lives. And you know how much I love authors and how much I love books. And I remember seeing this on a list of books that Adam Ron and Susan Cain had published.

And it immediately caught my eye because the title was Think Like A Rocket Scientist. And I thought to myself, this is cool, who's written this? And it happened to be a form of rocket scientist. And I was fascinated because obviously, as you know, my books will think like a monk written by me a form of monk.

And I think, oh, here we go. We got something in common. We're trying to challenge people to think differently. And so this book immediately caught my eye. I've read through a ton of it already and commented at the finish it, but I'm so excited that today I get to sit with the author, Ozanne Varo, is a rocket scientist,

turned award-winning professor, author and podcast host, a native of Istanbul, he moved to America to major in astrophysics at Cornell University, then served on the operations team for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers project. Viral later became a law professor at Lewis & Clark College and wrote the Democratic Cube DeR published by Oxford University Press. Viraryals articles have appeared in outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, BBC, Time, CNN, The Washington Post, Slate and Foreign Policy.

Now, this is gonna be really interesting to you guys, because I know you like regular content. He blogs weekly on his website, osanvaryals.com will give you the link later, and Varyals has delivered keynote speeches to both small and large groups at major corporations, nonprofits, and government institutions.

Today, as I said, we're going to speak about his new book, which is Think Like a Rocket Scientist, the simple strategies you can use to make giant leaps in work and life. Azan, what a pleasure to have you here today. Jay, delighted to be here. Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, absolutely.

It's not every day that you get to sit down with a former rocket scientist This is I see this as a huge honor or a former monk for me, you know It's like this is like almost the beginning of a joke like a rocket set a former rocket scientist and a former monk walking to a bar So true. We'll see what happens next. Yeah, we need to invite a funny friend too. It's like, who else can we invite to our, you know, they always say like a good conversation is between like people who just have really crazy unique experiences. And I feel like this is kind of like that, you know, like rocket scientists, at least from my uneducated brain, you know, it's all about exploring and going outward and seeing what's possible

and living as a monk is all about going inward and seeing what's possible. And so it's fascinating to sit down with you and think about that. But I want to start off with this question as we dive into your book and talk about many things. How do you actually become a rocket scientist? Like what is the process of that? Because growing up, I didn't even know that existed. And often, we kind of refer to it in some ways,

like among, we refer to it as a term that it's kind of like make-believe or imaginary. Or it's not necessarily a real thing. So tell us that. Yeah. You know, there is no college major called Rocket Science. There was actually probably no one with the official drop title rocket scientist.

We just use the term rocket science colloquially to refer to the science and engineering behind space travel. So for example, I was an astrophysics major, but you can also become a rocket scientist by majoring in aeronautical engineering, for example. So for me, the term is used broadly to refer to people working on space travel, people working on converting the seemingly impossible into the possible.

Yeah, it's awesome and fascinating and it's great to hear that because I was thinking, wow, what if they were actually job titles called Rocket Sign? It would be crazy, it would be crazy. But tell me about this, when you decided to write this book, why did you think it was important? Similarly, I was trying to challenge people with mindsets with my title, why was it important for you to challenge people right now to start thinking like a Rocket Scientist? What is it about the thinking of a Rocket Scientist that is it about the thinking of a rocket scientist

that is so vital and important for everyone today? So I opened the book with telling the story of President John F. Kennedy stepping up to the podium at Rice University Stadium. This was in September 1962. And he pledged to land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth before the decade is out. Now, at the time, this was literally a moonshot.

And a lot of people in the audience thought he was crazy. People at NASA thought he was out of his mind, because so many prerequisites for making the moon landing a reality hadn't been done yet. No American astronaut I worked outside of a spacecraft, two spacecraft that had never docked together in space. NASA didn't know if the lunar surface was solid enough to support a lander or whether their communication system would work on the moon.

I mean, JFK actually said some of the metals required to build the rockets hadn't even been invented. We just jumped into the cosmic void and hoped that we'd grow wings on the way up. And grow those wings we did. In less than seven years after Kennedy's pledge, Neil and Buzz took their giant lead from mankind. And the contrast I like to draw is a child who was just six years old when the Wright brothers took their first power flight. So this was back in 1903. It lasted for about 12 seconds, moved 100 feet, would have been 72 when the flight became powerful enough to put a man on the moon.

I mean, think about that for a second. That's 66 years. That's within a single human lifespan. And that giant leap is often attributed to technology, right? This was a triumph of technology, but I don't think that's right. I think the triumph really belongs to the humans behind the technology.

And a certain thought process they used to turn the seemingly impossible into the possible. So I wanted to write a book about that thought process in part because the rocket science, it's such an intimidating term, right? Hence the saying like this is rocket science or it's not rocket science., right, hence the saying like this is rocket science or it's not rocket science. So we tend to put these people in a corner

and say that's just reserved for geniuses, right? I don't want to know anything about that because it's too complicated. So I didn't want to write a book about the science behind rocket science, but I wanted to take these nine simple strategies from rocket science about approaching uncertainty, about innovating within constraints.

Talk to people about how rocket scientists approach failure, how they approach success, and walk them through really simply how they can take these principles and use them in their own lives to make giant leaps. Yeah, and I love that. I love how practical that is because I think for anyone, and obviously you've given a very grand example of like, you know, when John F. Kennedy is pledging to go to the moon, but you think about even in our lives, like so many times we have ideas or dreams or things

that we would love to work towards, but we kind of see it as unreachable. And we kind of put them and leave them there on the shelf and we go, oh, well, let's never really get it happen for me. It's probably not possible. But what I feel like you're trying to do with this book and that's what I saw when I was reading it, is that these nine strategies that you share, they're actually like little steps

to be able to make that giant leap in your own life. And I really appreciate that because I think, whenever you hear about these, especially these big statements, I think there's a famous statement from Henry Ford. And it was like, if I asked people what they would have wanted, they would have said, fast to horses. And it's like, you know, that people don't have the vision to really bring that into reality.

And I feel like you're trying to ground that for all of us through all these nine strategies. And I love the studies that you do share and the stories that you do share in here. What is some, what was the one that surprised you the most? Right? What was the outcome or the kind of principle that you actually thought, you know,

that's actually really counterintuitive. Like you may have thought of it some way, but actually it was like, oh no, that totally blew my own mind, or blew your mind. I think the last chapter in the book, which is called Nothing Fails Like Success, is probably one of the more counterintuitive takeaways from the book, right?

Because we tend to think of success as a good thing. I devote that chapter to explaining how success can create complacency. And I discuss to the biggest disasters in rocket science history, which are the challenger and Columbia Space Shuttle disasters, which claimed the lives of all seven astronauts on board. And those disasters happen after NASA had experienced a string of triumph with successes. So with respect to the challenger, there was a number of really successful

challengers, Space Shuttle launches, I'm sorry, leading up to challenger. And NASA began to develop tunnel vision. Even when engineers were raising their hands and saying, look, the O-rings, which were responsible for the explosion of the challenger, they were being damaged, flight after flight. And one engineer actually six months before the challenger disaster, he wrote a memo that turned out to be really prescient. He said, if we don't do something about the problem with the O-rings, which by the way, are these flexible rings that seal the boosters to make sure that hot gases don't escape. So they serve a critical function. He wrote a memo saying that if we don't fix this problem,

it's going to be a catastrophe of the highest order. I'm talking the loss of human life. But the managers ignored the engineers requests, because they thought, look, in previous missions, we succeeded. Even when there was damage to the O-ring. So as long as we repeat the process that we followed yesterday, then success is inevitable. And basically, the same thing happened

after the Columbia Special disaster as well. The technical flaw was different, but the underlying cultural flaw of success creating complacency, of success creating conformity, was very much the same. And so to me, that was really counterintuitive because our first instinct when we succeed is to start lighting cigars, right? Popping champagne course to start celebrating. But when we do that, we fail to realize that we may have succeeded despite making a bad

decision, despite making a bad decision, despite making a serious misstep. And if you don't sort of sit and conduct the same type of analysis that might follow a failure, if you don't look back and say, you know what, why, what role did luck and privilege and opportunity play in this success? If you don't do that sort of reckoning, then

those small little failures will eventually snowball into something that you can control. So I think there's a lot of value to thinking of ourselves even after we succeed as a work in progress. So I think the moment you think you've made it is the moment you stop growing. The moment you declare yourself to be an expert on something is a moment that you start, you know, making confident declarations without backing it up with the facts. The moment you think you're in the lead is the moment you just stop listening to other people. And so, um, so I think there's a lot of value to even when success arrives to staying humble and realize that, you know what, you succeeded not necessarily because of your genius, but you may have gotten lucky. And if you don't fix the errors that happen in the path to that success, then those failures,

those small failures might catch up to you in the long run. Yeah, I think that's a super powerful and strong message. I think there's this. I saw this really good viral video recently. I think I shared it to an Instagram. It was a video that someone had compiled of, and the tagline was, don't celebrate too early. And it was a compilation of like swimming races, marathon sprints, where the person just started celebrating when they were about to hit the line and the number two came and took their place And it's happened multiple times and obviously that's in a very

That's in a very specific, you know race scenario, but even in life it's so much so I feel like yeah You don't learn as much when you win unless you conduct that analysis and I remember in a very small way I remember every time I if I did well in exams, I would always regret it the year later when I'd be like, wait a minute, how did I do well last year? Like I wish I wrote down why I did well, right? Because then I would have some thing to go on. And you're so right that there's such a need for that post-win analysis and the appreciation of not just luck, but the appreciation of things that lined up, the appreciation of things that just happened, not even by chance to look, but by happened because the things that went right that you didn't expect, right?

And I think it's almost like when we win, we're like, are we expected that to happen? But when we lose, it's like, oh, I didn't expect that. And then that's when we tear it apart. Hey, it's Debbie Brown. And my podcast, Deeply Well, is a soft place to land on your wellness journey. I hold conscious conversations with leaders and radical healers and wellness and mental health

around topics that are meant to expand and support you on your journey. From guided meditations to deep conversations with some of the world's most gifted experts in self-care, trauma, psychology, spirituality, astrology, and even intimacy. Here is where you'll pick up the tools to live as your highest self. Make better choices. Heal and have more joy. My work is rooted in advanced meditation, metaphysics, spiritual psychology, energy healing, and trauma-informed practices.

I believe that the more we heal and grow within ourselves, the more we are able to bring our creativity to life, and live our purpose, which leads to community impact and higher consciousness for all beings. Deeply well with Debbie Brown is your soft place to land, to work on yourself without judgment, to heal, to learn, to grow, to become who you deserve to be. Deeply well is available now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Big love, namaste. A good way to learn about a place is to talk to the people that live there. There's just this sexy vibe and Montreal, this pulse, this energy. What was seen as a very snotty city, people call it Bosedangeless. New Orleans is a town that never forgets its pay. A great way to get to know a place is to get invited to a dinner party. Hi, I'm Brendan Friends' newdom, and not lost is my new travel podcast,

where a friend and I go places, see the sights, and try to finagle our way into a dinner party. We're kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party. It doesn't always work out. I would love that, but I have like a Cholala who is aggressive towards strangers. We learn about the places we're visiting, yes, but we also learn about ourselves. I don't spend as much time thinking about how I'm going to die alone when I'm traveling, but I get to travel with someone I love. Oh, see, I love you too. And also, we get to eat as much—

I love you too. I have a lot of therapy goals behind that. You're so white, I love it. Listen to Not Lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Romani and I am back with season two of my podcast Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was loved bomb by the Tinder Swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money he took.

But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissists in your life. Each week you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I guess a lot of people feel and you address this to a lot of people feel like they never

we. And so they're more in that category of failing. And I think this, I've seen this quote before and seen it turn around before called fail like a scientist. And it's almost like, fail like a rocket scientist sound even more aligned with it. And you talk about failure in the book. Tell us about how to really fail effectively because you talk about not just failing fast but learning fast. And I love that change. And I want to know more about that because I think we hear a lot about oh just fail and it's okay to make mistakes and it's okay to fail But I'm more fascinated by how we can really fail effectively and dive into that because I think for most people they don't win and get complacent

We fail but we don't learn fast enough. So let's let's dive into that Yeah, that's absolutely right Jay and I think the distinction that you just mentioned between failing fast and learning fast is a really important one. Because that mantra of fail fast, fail often, fail forward is all the rage these days in Silicon Valley. I was reading that, and I talk about this in the book too, that Silicon Valley companies are now holding funerals for failed startups,

complete with like DJs, spinning records and backpipes and liquor flowing freely. And I don't buy it. I don't buy it because go back to our discussion with success. When you celebrate something, you're probably not learning from it. And so to me, the goal should be to learn fast, to not fail fast, and research really bears us out too. I said a research study of cardiac surgeons who actually get worse after they fail, after they bought your procedure. They don't get better. Failed

entrepreneurs are no more successful at taking a company public than first time entrepreneurs. It happens, we don't learn from failure because often we attribute failure when we fail to external factors. You know, we say we failed not because I made a mistake, but we failed because it wasn't the right time, right? We failed because of the customers or the competitors or the regulators. And when we don't do that internal reckoning, then we don't learn from anything. So moving from failure to failure without really learning is a recipe for disaster.

It's a scientist to take a very different approach to failure, to them, and this is true for successful businesses and successful people as well. Failure can be the best teacher if you know how to approach it properly. And almost all breakthroughs are evolutionary, not revolutionary. So let me talk about what I mean by that, because you'd write a lot of people think like they're not succeeding, but they're not succeeding because their time horizon is

already attached toward the short term, right? They're looking at the next week, the next month, and they're not looking as Kennedy did seven years down the road, or even a year down the road. If you look at scientific history, every single breakthrough has been evolutionary. Albert Einstein's first several proofs for E equals MC squared completely failed. Thomas Edison famously said, I haven't failed, I just found 10,000 ways that won't work. James Dyson, the famous British inventor, he spent I think 15 years came up

with over 5,000 prototypes of his bagless vacuum until he found the one that worked. So we tend to be obsessed with grand openings, but the opening doesn't have to be grand as long as the finale is. And I think one of the best things that we can do, and I see this with businesses, with politicians, businesses are chasing these short term quarterly outcomes, politicians are looking at the immediate electoral cycle, but the businesses and the people who can calibrate their thinking for the long term. Know that they might not have to endure some pain in the short term that they might have to fail a few times, but if they're learning from each of these failures, if they're learning fast,

that's gonna be the recipe for creating something extraordinary down the road. And when I look at my own life, any success I had with the book came because of decisions I made three years ago, four years ago, not decisions I made two months ago. The really important decisions tend to have a long lifespan. But once you start planting the seeds, they'll grow slowly. But if you keep doing that, then they become something that's really far more than what

you could have expected, which is true for the moon landing as well, right? I mean, seven years from Kennedy's plush to landing on the moon is really incredible. And it's because for once we decided to look not for the next year, not for the next two years, but for seven years down the road. Yeah, definitely. That reminds me of a statement I had from Bill Gates where he said that we overestimate what we can do in one year and underestimate what we can do in 10 years. And I guess it's hard though to feel like when you're making

a decision, it never feels right because we decide whether decisions feel right based on the result. And that's actually a mistake I feel because sometimes you can get a result that you didn't want from the right decision for you at the time. But I feel like so much of our decision making

is given validation based on the result. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly We're always like we paralyze ourselves because we're like I don't have this the right decision because I don't know What's gonna happen in three years? So how do you make a decision? Regardless of trying to live three years ahead because in one sense you no one knows right no one can see that Yeah, and I want to underscore what you just said, Jay, because it's so, so important. It's possible to do lots of things right and still fail. And it's also possible to do lots of things wrong

and still succeed. This happens all the time. I mean, this happens in soccer, this happens in landing a rover on Mars, this happens in soccer, this happens in landing a rover on Mars, this happens in businesses, but we're so obsessed with the outputs that we forgot, we forget the quality of the inputs. And so, on a personal level, the thing that I do is, and the thing that I advise other people on businesses to do is to reorient their focus away from outcomes and toward inputs.

So, for me, for example, writing the book, if I'm thinking about bestseller lists and how many copies the book is going to sell, two things are going to happen. One is going to completely rob the joy out of what I do. I mean, I love writing. It's like the thing I love the most. When I get up in the morning, I spend three hours writing, and that's a great day for me. But once I start thinking about quantity of sales and bestseller lists, completely robs the joy away from what I do. And number two, and perhaps worse, when people start focusing on outcomes, they start making bad decisions. Because they

try to sort of anticipate what the market is going to want and sort of cater to that. That's certainly an important part of the equation, but it can't be the only part of the equation. And so often, we're so narrowly focused on the outcome that we forget about the inputs, the things that are actually going to make our work great.

So I think that pivot from outcome to process is a really important one. Another useful strategy that I've used in the past, too, that I've seen successful businesses use, is the pre-mortem. So to take some of the focus out of the outcome, you basically say the pre-mortem says, let's assume that whatever working on failed and work backward from that to figure out what may have gone wrong. And then you sit down and say, okay, well,

it failed because of X, Y, and Z. So for example, for me, the failure would be, I didn't submit the book on time to the publisher. And then I work backward from that to figure out, well, why may I have failed, right? It could be because I didn't do the research in a timely fashion. It could be because I wasn't doing the writing on a consistent basis. And then you figure out basically ways to guard against those threats.

And that also has a way of identifying things that could lead to potentially bad outcomes. But really, the best thing we can do is to be more input oriented and less outcome oriented. And that requires, after, by the way, both failure and success, asking the same questions. What went wrong with the success? What went right with the success? What went wrong with the failure? And what went right with the failure, and what went right with this failure. That takes the focus off of the outcome and points you toward what matters, which are the inputs.

Yeah, I'm so glad we agree on that. I've actually shared something very, very similar with the book when I get asked the same thing. I couldn't agree with you more. It's such an obsession with the process because it's that obsession with the process that gives the best opportunity for the result. As opposed to the focus on the result and the reward completely takes you away from this current ability to be creative.

With what you do, my creators, I've often described it as like selfish creators and sell out creators. So I think of like a sell out creator is a creator who's trying to pander so much to the audience that you miss out on your inner voice, which is actually what makes it unique. And then the selfish creator is kind of like the person who writes a book that only they want to read. And that we know that isn't good either because it's kind of like, you know, and so yeah, finding that balance, but still always focused on the input. I think it's so important before you start focusing on thinking about how to market something

or put something out there. And those are some really powerful entrepreneurial tips. I wanted to ask you if you could explain what first principles thinking is and how Elon Musk has used it because I think that would really interest my audience as well. Sure. So when Elon Musk was first thinking about sending rockets to Mars, to take people to Mars, he first began by shopping for used rockets

on the American market. And Musk was a really rich guy. This was right after he sold PayPal to eBay. But even as wealthy as he was, rockets were way too expensive on the American market. So he then went to Russia, I kid you not to shop for decommissions intercontinental ballistic missiles without the nuclear warheads on top of course, but even those were too expensive. So one of his plane rides back from Russia empty handed, he had an epiphany, and he arrived

that epiphany using first principles thinking. So first principles thinking is a way of cutting through assumptions that are cluttering your thinking as if you're cutting through a jungle with a machete. You're basically unlearning what you know, you're leaving behind the baggage of history to pave the way for a better tomorrow. The analogy I give in the book is a difference between a cover band and an original singer. So a cover band plays somebody else's songs, but the original singer goes back to the raw materials, the musical notes, and goes through the painstaking process of

creating something. So Elon Musk realized initially that he was playing the role of a cover band and trying to buy rockets that other people had built and so he went back to first principles and asked himself, well, wait a minute, what is a rocket made out of? Like what are the non-negotiable raw materials of a rocket? And how much would it cost if I just bought these on the open market and then built the rockets myself? And it turned out that it was like 2% of the typical price of a rocket, which is a crazy

ratio. So he just said, screw it. I'm going to build my rockets, my next generation rockets from scratch. And first principles thinking led him, along with Jeff Bezos, a space company, Boulot Origin, to upend another deeply entrenched assumption in rocket science. So, for decades, rockets that carried their payload into orbit couldn't be reused. They would burn up in the atmosphere or plunge into the ocean, requiring an entirely new rocket to be rebuilt. Now, imagine doing that for commercial

flights, right? You fly from I'm in Portland, you're in Los Angeles, J, I fly from Portland to Los Angeles, the passengers deplane, someone steps up to the plane and just torches it. Sounds crazy, but that's basically what we did for rockets for decades. And a modern rocket isn't that much more and more expensive than a Boeing 737, but space flight is so much more expensive because rockets couldn't be reused, at least not efficiently. And SpaceX and Blue Origin have both changed that. They're reusing numerous rocket stages, sending them back out to space like certified pre-owned

vehicles. And so when SpaceX took two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, it was a few weeks ago when we were recording this, but the first stage of the rocket that carried them into space, landing back, landed back on the, on the sparse, in the middle of the ocean, there's now a landing pad next to the launch pad

at Kennedy Space Center. And that's a new thing in rocket science because both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were able to look at the problem in a different light than others had done before and questions and assumption that that's so many people in the industry had taken for granted. Yeah, that's fascinating. I had no idea, I've never heard that before. I definitely didn't know that. It's what I like about it the most is just that, I think so many of us in our life

fall into the bad habit of allowing the assumptions that we hear of an industry or a group or a society or a community to become our assumptions and our reality. And it's like, you know, almost like assumptions, just just putting on other people's assumptions as if there are clothes. And then all of a sudden, it feels like there are assumptions. And they just block us from being really creative, being really innovative, and finding these solutions. And we may not even be trying to solve space

travel. But the point is that the same principle is so powerful for us, whether it's with our habits or even whether it's with what we think is possible. And, you know, I think so often we hear things like, oh, but you need money to make more money, like as an example. Right. And it's like, oh, well, if you adopt that assumption,

it means you will be waiting a very, very long time. Or we have an assumption of like, oh no, you have to have educated or trained in this way to be in that industry or whatever it may be. And I think you're so right that all of these things end up blocking us. And just yeah, just kind of wasting time. They make us waste time when we can go. Yeah. And what you strive for ends up becoming your ceiling, right? So if you're striving to be mediocre, then that's the best you can do. You can't always get what you want as the Rolling Stones remind us, but if you aim a little bit higher than you have in the past, it's amazing.

And especially if you're reoriented toward the long term, it's amazing what you're able to accomplish. I think many of us operate out of like jail cells of our own making. We're gripping the bars, we're cursing the guards, let us out, but the door is open actually. You can just get out and leave, but we're operating on there's so many assumptions. And by the way, this is not our fault. These assumptions usually come from social conditioning. They come from educational conditioning as well.

Like, we've been seduced into believing that flying lower is safer than flying higher. That small dreams are, are wiser than moonshots. And when you hear that message over and over and over again, it becomes your jail cell. And when you hear that message over and over and over again, it becomes your jail cell. You know, I was fortunate enough to, I grew up in Istanbul in very humble circumstances, but my parents made me believe that basically,

if I worked hard for it, that anything was within my reach. And so what I was 17 years old, I learned English as a second language, came to the United States by myself, my parents didn't speak a word of English, but they encouraged me to pursue my dream. So I remember I was 17 years old, I got into Cornell, and I was sitting in Istanbul, and I was obsessed with space, even then. I mean, I was obsessed with space dating back to like when I was five.

And I was researching what the astronomy department at Cornell was up to. And I saw that a professor was in charge of this plan mission to Mars. That what would later be called the Mars Exploration Rovers Project. And, you know, if I was operating out of the jail cell that my society had constructed for me, I probably would have said, oh,

like it's amazing that he's working on this and how lucky are the people that are working with him. But there is no way that I'm going to apply, right? Because what do I have to contribute? And that voice definitely appeared in my head. He said, the voice said to me, you're a skinny kid with a funny name, but you know, from a country halfway around the globe, if you send this email to him asking for a job that doesn't exist,

there was no job listing. He's just gonna laugh, right? Like, this is a complete moonshot for you. Know your place and don't do it. But then I ask myself two questions, and these two questions I still ask myself every day. The first one is, what's the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen, honestly, in most cases,

is like everything that you care for is still going to be there. For me, the worst case scenario was that he just never went back to my email. Even if you can come up with more answers to that, by the way, write them down. It's really powerful at writing down those possible worst case scenario, has a strange way of like disempowering them. And then ask yourself also, and this is the question I asked myself, was the best that can happen? If you send this email, was the best that can happen

and the best that can happen did happen, which is I landed a job on the operations team for this Mars project in like two weeks later, I had front row seats to the action. And, you know, thanks in part to I taught myself how to program in high school. But, but I think that that is that is really, really important because we, we just, we get in our own way in so many different ways that it's not our fault. It's so much social and educational conditioning and it requires purpose and effort and being intentional to be able to strip away those layers of social conditioning to regain our childlike curiosity and the childlike dreaming that we used to do,

which is I think so important and such a crucial ingredient in any success story. Yeah, that's, thank you for sharing that, by the way. I was gonna dive into that. So I'm glad you shared that then your journey to that because, I'm sure many of your school friends would have not thought about doing something like that or maybe some of them tried

or maybe some of them would have even have been envisioned it. And so often we're thinking differently to the people around us. And it's scary. It's scary to think differently to the people around you. And I think a lot of people listening or watching this can identify with that where you feel a bit of fear because you're like, oh, maybe I'm not allowed to think like this. Or maybe I shouldn't think like this. Or maybe actually if I think like this, I'm going to to think like this or maybe I shouldn't think like this or maybe actually if I

think like this I'm going to get into more trouble. But you spoke about two things that are really important. You talked about working hard and obviously we hear a lot about working smart. And what I like in the book is you talk about a different screen strategy and a tactic. And you give this example of Tina Cedig's $5 challenge. But the reason why I wanted to bring that up is I think that's a really important distinction because I think in our journeys sometimes to create these moonshots, there's a big difference in strategy and tactic. And everyone tries to use the word strategy a lot. And we also try to use the word tactic and hacks a lot.

But there is a big difference. So yeah, if you just explain that to us the difference in how we think more strategically for our own child. Sure. So tactics and strategy, as you said, they tend to be used interchangeably, but they actually refer to very different things. So tactics are, I will actually, I should start with the definition of strategies. Your strategy is like a plan, an overall plan for achieving an objective.

And then tactics are the tools you're using, the actions you're taking to actually get to that objective. And often, tactics are traps. And what we see when people look for life hacks, for example, or a formula, they're asking tactical questions. They're trying to see, well, let me see what this other person did. And let me just copy and paste their tactics and expect to get the same outcome, which is usually a recipe for disaster.

I'm Mungeshia Tikhler, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're gonna get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop, but just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good, there is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Conquer your New Year's resolution to be more productive with the Before Breakfast Podcast in each bite-sized daily episode, time management and productivity expert Laura Vandercam teaches you how to make the most of your time, both at work and at home. These are the practical suggestions you need to get more done with your day. Just as lifting weights keeps our bodies strong as we age, learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to before Breakfast on the iHeart Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the 1680s, a feisty opera singer burned down an unnery and stole away with her secret lover. In 1810, a pirate queen negotiated her cruise way to total freedom with all their loot. During World War II, a flirtatious gambling double agent helped keep D-Day a secret from the Germans. What do these stories have in common? They're all about real women who were left out of your history books.

If you're tired of missing out, check out the Womanica podcast, a daily women's history podcast highlighting women you may not have heard of, but definitely should know about. I'm your host Jenny Kaplan and for me, diving into these stories is the best part of my day. I learned something new about women from around the world and leafyling amazed, inspired, and sometimes shocked. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

But strategy is very different. Once you define your own strategy, once you zoom out from the tactics to thinking about what you actually want to achieve in your life, then tactics become a lot more malleable. Then there is like so many, so much more wiggle room in terms of coming out with different ways of achieving something. So you mentioned the $5 challenge that Tina Ceele gives that at Stanford, if I can just recap that for the audience.

So Tina Ceele is a professor at Stanford who runs at entrepreneurship class and she walks into a classroom and divides up the classroom into teams. And she says, each team gets $5 on seed funding. And your goal, you've got two hours to make as much money as possible, and then you're gonna give a three minute presentation

to the class. So take a moment to think what you would do if you were in one of these teams. Now most teams did what you might expect them to do. They took the $5 and they bought materials for a makeshift car wash, or they went all school and started like a lemonade stand.

And those teams didn't do really well. The teams that were a lot more successful asked a very different question. They realized that the tactic, which is the $5 bill sitting in front of you, was basically a worthless and distracting resource. Instead, they went back to first principles, which we talked about before, and framed the problem more broadly as, what do we do to make the most about money as possible

if we start with absolutely nothing? So one particularly successful team ended up making reservations at popular Silicon Valley restaurants and then selling those reservation times to wealthy executives who wanted to skip the wait. And they made an impressive, I think, $300 in two hours. But the team that came in first realized that both the $5 tactic and the two hours were not the most valuable in their arsenal.

Instead, they realized that the most valuable tool in their arsenal was a three minute presentation time they had in front of this captivated Stanford class. They ended up selling that three minute slot to a company that was interested in recruiting Stanford students and walked away with like $700 and it's genius because they were asking the strategic question of like, what do we do?

What do we have here? It's so easy to get distracted by the $5, right? So ask yourself, what is the $5 in your life? What is the three, how do you abandon that and find the more valuable two hours? But even that, how do you abandon the two hours and find the most valuable three minutes? That's in front of you, that's sitting in front of you, that's just looking right at you. You know, breakthroughs, we tend to think, begin with a smart answer, but they often begin with a smart question that reframes a problem and

Season and the lights that no one else is seeing it You know the way you told it as well, which I thought was brilliant It's almost like yeah the resource that we almost have sometimes we're like okay, so I've got $500 to invest so I've got $50 to invest and you're so right that that can actually be a distraction in the limitation as opposed to a Broke thing in that. And you're so right that that can actually be a distraction and the limitation as opposed to a growth thing. Second of all, the two hour time constraint, we often tell ourselves, I've got to do this in the next three months and it's just a false time constraint, right? There isn't a real deadline to it and we're putting a false deadline on ourselves. And then finally, we often

miss the smallest amount of time that actually could be the most valuable. When you think about three minutes I've got three minutes to present we got to prepare for that But you don't see that as an opportunity and when you hear that example You're like that makes so much sense But but that's not the first thing that would come to any of our minds I guess my question begins to think how do we start Shifting to think in that direction. What what are the habits? What are the

Mental changes that that a rocket scientist or people who are able to think in that direction. What are the habits? What are the mental changes that the rocket scientist or people who are able to think like that? What are the steps that they're taking to get that? Because we're not going to get there overnight by trying to imitate that example. It's very easy to think, oh yeah, next time someone asks me that cool question, I'm going to try and then we learn, right? It doesn't work like that. So how do you actually build that mental muscle that allows you to actually think like that? Absolutely. So there's a number of things you can do.

One is to first become better at asking questions. I think that's such an important skill, because we live in a society that's so obsessed with answers and finding the right answer. But right answers are so cheap these days. Honestly, if by the time that you can Google and find the answer to a question on Google, the world has moved on.

But being able to ask smart questions is a really important skill. And one of the ways that you can do that is to be able to sort of emulate the team that won the $5 challenge, is to ask strategic questions and move away from tactics. So move away from the what you're doing

to why you're trying to do what you do. So think about strategy, because once you zoom out to see the strategy, then you might be able to spot tactics that other people are missing. The second thing that I found really valuable is to bring in people into the conversation, who know nothing about what I'm working on. So outsiders basically. And outsiders have a way

of asking really good questions to spot what you're missing. Because they are not whether it's a conventional wisdom, they don't know the status quo. So they're going to ask you what people call quote unquote dumb questions. They're actually not dumb at all because they go to some like fundamental aspect of the problem that you're failing to see. And this is why, by the way, so many of the success stories

that we just talked about are outsiders to their industries. So Elon Musk, he came to rocket science from Silicon Valley and he learned about rocket science by reading textbooks on a beach somewhere in Rio de Janeiro after his sole pay belt to eBay. Jeff Bezos was in the finance world before he went into to start Amazon. Reed Hastings was a software developer before he started Netflix and all of these people were able to see the holes in the thinking of the established players because they were outsiders.

And so this doesn't mean that, you know, you hire an expensive consultant or bring in an expensive speaker, it could be as simple as talking to your significant other or your friend who knows nothing about what you're working on, but presenting to them what you're thinking about and letting them ask those really simple questions that are going to jolt you out of your perspective.

The story I tell in the book is about JK Rowling and the first Harry Potter book. When she submitted the Harry Potter, I think it was the Sorcerer Stone, which is the first book, to publishers, they were unanimous in their opinion. They all thought that the book was not worth printing. One publisher in the UK called Bloomsbury Publishing, so promise in the book, one others missed it. And the head of Bloomsbury Publishing, Nigel Newton,

he saw promise in the book because he had a secret weapon by the name of Alice, his eight-year-old bookworm daughter. And so what Nigel did was to bring the first chapter of Harry Potter home with him. And he gave the first chapter to Alice. Alice read the book, and she came back down, stairs, and went to her dad and said, Dad, this is so much better than anything else I've read. And the input of Alice convinced her dad to write a meager 2,500 pound check to JK Rowling to acquire the rights to publish the first Harry Potter book, which, by the way, is the best bet made in publishing history, right?

Because JK Rowling is now a billion dollar author, all because Nigel Newton was willing to get the opinion of someone who was a complete outsider to the publishing industry, Alice, but was a member of the target audience for the book. So that's something else you can do is to bring in outsiders into the conversation. And the third thing I would say

is to be very intentional about questioning the assumptions in your life. So ask yourself, you know, why do I have this process? Why do I have this routine? Why do I have this habit? Why am I doing what I'm doing on a daily basis? Because we normally don't ask those questions. When we get into the habit of doing something,

we're operating on autopilot, right? It's like, you know, choose your adventure, choose your own adventure book that always has the same ending. So it's really important to disrupt yourself from time to time and ask, why is this process in place? Why am I taking the same route to work every day? Why am I using this browser to do what I do? I mean, these are very simple questions, but if you extend them to the more important decisions in your life, it's really amazing what can happen as a result. Before we started recording, we were talking about how my book tour got canceled because my book was published on April 14th when the pandemic was wreaking havoc on the world. And you know, that I spent two days just being miserable because I was basically trying to control

what can't be controlled, right? I can't change the pandemic. I can't change its disruption on my book marketing plans. But then that disruption, I started asking myself the more productive questions of, okay, I can't change the hand that the universe dealt me, but what can I do with the hand that I was dealt? What assumptions am I operating under?

And my assumption, by the way, which was not first principles thinking, was that author's new book tours. And this is the only reason I was doing it, by the way, right? Like other authors I admire, they publish a book, they go on a book tour. So I'm going to publish a book. I'm also going to go on a book tour, but not stopping and asking myself the more strategic question of, well, what is the purpose of a book tour? Because a book tour is a tactic, right? In service of a broader strategy of spreading the word about the ideas in the book. That is my overall goal, is to help empower people to think like a rocket scientist, to reimagine

the status quo. And if I zoom out and ask myself that strategic question, the tactics become malleable. And by the way, I started to realize that the tactic of a book tour is like the $5 bill. It's not worth the certainly not, but it's not the best use of my time. I mean, I could get on a plane and fly to New York and walk into a Barnes and Noble and sign books for 50 people and come home and that's going to take me an entire day or two. Or I could sit in the comfort of my office as I'm doing now, and do virtual events and virtual book launches and podcast conversations and reach a far bigger audience that I would have reached with a book tour.

And often we don't question assumptions until the universe forces out of the status quo, right? Forces us out of the status quo. That's when we start questioning everything, but the people who get ahead are the ones quo, that's when we start questioning everything, but the people who get ahead are the ones who do that questioning before they're forced out of the status quo, before a crisis strikes. They're doing the questioning and asking these strategic questions to themselves before crisis comes knocking on the door. So you have to, in many cases, dig the well before your thirsty and think through your outdated assumptions before the

universe does it for you. I couldn't agree with you more. Thank you for that very thoughtful set of steps and thoughts that we can go to and it all comes back down to asking the right questions. And that's, you know, that's what we forget. You're right. Like when you ask yourself the wrong question, you get lost in a whole trajectory. The wrong question of like, okay, well, what are other authors doing that I have to do?

Right, like that question is what leads you down this whole trajectory of planning and building and traveling, and then you come back from all that, go wait a minute, that didn't make any sense. And so, or not that it didn't make any sense, it wasn't right and appropriate for the kind of time that we're in. And I can agree with you more.

So I'm, yeah, I'm hoping that everyone's listening right now. There's a lot of subtext in what I was on telling us around just, you know, really looking at the decisions you're making in your life right now, really reflecting about the steps you're taking in your life right now. I'm just questioning why you're doing them, what you're doing them for, why they make sense.

And if you don't have a good enough answer for yourself, and that's really the most important answer is, can you answer it for yourself? Because someone else may have a perfect reason for why they think you should do something. But if you don't have a good answer for why you think you should do it, then it's probably not as strong as you believe it is. So I was on a few more questions for you before we round up, but I want to ask you this one

on the book, why do you suggest we use the Lisa Badel's Kill the Company exercise? I love it too, it's another great example. Yeah, it's one of my favorite exercises. And the story I tell in the book is from Merck and how Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier applied it, but basically he asked his executives to play the role of from from Merck and how Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier applied it, but basically he asked his executives To play the role of one of Merck's top competitors for a day and so they switched perspectives and They figured out ways to kill the company to put Merck out of business Which is when CEOs talk about changing innovation?

They're asking usually the cliche questions like how to think outside the box, or what's the next big thing. But those cliche questions tend to generate cliche answers. But if you play this game of kill the company, and you ask your executives to come up with ways to put the company out of business, then they are by definition moving out of the

current perspective, moving outside of the box and looking at the box from the perspective of a competitor seeking to destroy it. Now, that's the first part of the exercise. Once you identify those threats, then you switch to the opposite perspectives. You go, but they went back to being merc executives and figured out ways to defend against those threats. And so, and you can, you don't have to be a big corporation to apply that in your own life.

You can ask yourself, you know, you can play the kill the company game with your job, right? You can say, well, why might my boss pass me up for a promotion? Why may I not get this job that I'm interviewing for? Or why are people buying our competitors products? It's not because you're right and they're wrong. It's not because they're stupid.

It's because they're seeing something that you're not seeing. It's because they believe something that you don't believe. It's because they're telling themselves a different story. And you're not gonna be able to see that story if you're looking at the world from your own limited perspective and kill the company is a great way of forcing yourself out of that perspective and adapting the perspective of somebody else. Yeah, I think it's a great activity to do with yourself, to do with your teams, to do it anyone because it actually allows you to think so big and broad and crazy, which

being told to think outside of the box definitely doesn't do it. Or to have a creative brainstorm definitely doesn't do. So no, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. Okay, I was on. So what I want to ask you now is these final two segments of the podcast, which are called Fill in the Blanks and the Final Five. So Fill in the Blanks is, I read a sentence and you have to fill in the final word and the final five I'll

introduce straight after that. So are you ready? Yep, ready. Okay, so okay, let me think which ones I want to pick. I've got a choice for you here. Challenging conventional wisdom starts with conventional wisdom starts with. Getting out of your jail cell. Okay. Absorbing complex issues. Begins with simplifying them. Nice. Reframing a problem welcomes. Better answers. What impresses me most about humans is their ability to adapt to the to the answer. Nice. Good. Okay. These are your final five. So the final five, these are questions that are answered in one word to one sentence. Maximum, you can't, you're very good, you follow the rules, which is always wonderful. Not everyone always does, so I really appreciate it. So here we go.

This is, some of these are a bit more personal. So if you need to feel the need to talk a bit more, you can, the first two, especially. How often do you walk Einstein? And do you find yourself to be more creative during those times of the year? Yeah, we walk him, my wife Kathy and I walk him once or twice a day, at at least and absolutely. Some of the best

ideas I've had in recent memory have come during those walks because one I'm stepping away from what I'm doing and actually letting my subconscious make connections. But also I've got an amazing partner with me, a sounding board, who's asking me the right questions that because, you know, she doesn't know what I'm working on. So she has that outsider perspective that we talked about, and she'll often help me see things that I'm missing. I love that. That's beautiful.

The second question is actually about, because you started the book dedicated to Kathy, and you say, my cosmic constant. Yes. What was the thinking behind the user that terminology? What does that mean to you? Well, I think it's, you know, it's, it was a connection to the universe, of course, and thinking like a rocket scientist. And, and I've had so many changes in my life coming from Turkey to the United States as an immigrant. And then Turkey, to the United States, as an immigrant, and then from astrophysics to law, practicing lawyer to law professor, and then from law professor to popular author and speaker.

So the ground underneath my feet has never been stable, really, and my whole life is just that changes the only, or it seems like changes the only constant, but there's another constant in my life, which is, which is Kathy. Really enough, I also dedicate my book to my wife. I love that. Yeah, people are similar. Mine says to my wife who's more monk than I'll ever be. I love that so much.

Yeah, and it's very true. Okay, cool. All right, last three questions of the interview. What's something that you were once certain of that you recently changed your mind on? I was certain once that science and spirituality could not be reconciled and I've changed my opinion about that in the past probably year or two actually. I was always I had this very materialistic view of the world not in the monetary sense, but in the sense that like anything that's not subject to proof or disproved by the scientific method was not worth thinking about. And I don't think that anymore. I think science and spirituality, thinking like a monk and thinking like a rocket scientist can coexist in ways that are beneficial

to both fields. Okay, last two questions. If you could create a law that everyone in the world would have to follow, what would it be? If I could create a law that everyone in the world had to follow, you know, be kinder to one another. I know it sounds cliche, but it's so important to just be a little bit more kinder to one

another and to see each other in a way that we don't see each other. You know, we're not looking at people like a commercial transaction, a business card, or the person standing in between you and your Starbucks Machiato, but actually seeing them as a human being who's experienced joy and sorrow, who's experienced triumph and grief. In all of their imperfect, beautiful glory, we don't do that. We just walk past people. We just see through each other as opposed to really see each other.

And I think that would be the lie what creatives is requires to actually see each other. Yeah, I love that. Thank you. And the fifth and final question is, what was your biggest lesson that you learned from the last 12 months? Success doesn't make you happy. If you're not happy before success. And it's not that I wasn't happy. It just, I think I've had this, and this isn't just 12 months, by the way, it's probably my whole life. I've tied myself, I tied myself worth around my accomplishments. And so I would sort of get a big dopamine hit, whatever I succeeded at something. And I always thought that happiness was over the next mountain. And as long as I conquer this next thing, you know, achieve this next milestone, that's

going to bring me, bring me happiness. But if you're not happy before success, you're not going to be happy after success. And to me, it's happiness comes from not those big moments that you anticipate, going back to what we talked about before, but actually reorienting your focus toward the process, toward the little joys of life, like the joy of our morning walk with Einstein, the joy of my morning cup of coffee,

the joy of an uninterrupted hour of writing. That's where happiness comes from. Happiness to me, it doesn't come from the big accomplishments, regardless of what it might look like from the outside. It's always hard to, whenever we first admit that it's hard to kind of stomach it sometimes, like I will also, for, I, I will, I've also for a long time realized that in, in at least in my opinion, happiness and success are two different things.

Yeah. And, and success is based on what I achieve. And happiness is based on how I feel about myself and, and how I feel about what I'm doing and contributing. And, and I don't think happiness, if you're happy, it makes you more successful. And I don't think if you're successful, it makes you more successful. And I don't think if you're successful, it makes you happier. I think they are just what they are. And it's okay.

Like I think I have dreams to be happier. And I also have dreams to be successful. And I have plans to be happy. And I have plans to be successful. And I see them as separate. They give me a different sense of meaning and fulfillment in different ways. And when you try and interconnect them, which is what I think you're saying,

there's so many of us for so long believe that if we're successful, we'd be happy. Well, the opposite too, which is, oh, if you're happy, then you'll be successful. And that's not true either, you know, it just, it doesn't really matter. And you can define what each of them are for you. So no, thank you, Azar. Thank you for sharing that. Really appreciate everyone. This is Azan Varoel and the book, think like a rocket scientist. Simple strategies you can use to make giant

leaps in work and life. You can go and grab a copy now. I obviously highly recommend this book. I think it's fascinating the way Azan tells stories is a phenomenal writer. Of course, you can check out his blog as well. But the book definitely goes at that point of just crystallizing a lot of these really, really important and fascinating tips. And that's when I love a lot of the book. It's like, it's tough that will make sense, but it will be so much more practical and deeper for you as you dive into the stories and the studies

that Ozanne makes really, really clear for us like he's done today. Ozanne, thank you so much for joining in the on-purpose family. Really, really great for me. And I hope we actually get to me in person one day too. Yeah, I love that as well. You just live right down the coast here.

And if I can say one more thing, Jay, I'd love to offer a special bonus to your audience for getting a copy of the book. If you head over to rocket science book.com, forward slash purpose, you'll find 12 short videos that I recorded. Recorded these are like three-minute by-size videos with practical actionable insights from the book that you can implement right away. I'm also gonna share with you a 30-minute productivity video

that I have that takes you behind the scenes on sort of how I structure my days and how I get more done and less time. And you can find all of that at rockassciencebook.com for a slash purpose. I love that. Thank you so much for offering that. I really, really appreciate it and make sure you make the mug of that rocket science book.com forward slash purpose to get all of that information and it's all free. So please, please, please, go and grab it. Don't miss that on the opportunity, of course, go and grab a copy of the book at

Amazon, Barnes and Noble and I'm a copy of the book, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and I'm sure, well, have a good book, so thank you so much, was on, thank you so much. My pleasure, Jay. The one you feed explores how to build a fulfilling life admits the challenges we face. We share manageable steps to living with more joy

and less fear through guidance on emotional resilience, transformational habits, and personal growth. I'm your host, Eric Zimmer, and I speak with experts ranging from psychologists to spiritual teachers, offering powerful lessons to apply daily. Create the life you want now. Listen to the one you feed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets.

It's hard to believe we're entering our eighth season, and yet we're constantly discovering new secrets. The variety of them continues to be astonishing. I can't wait to share ten incredible stories with you, stories of tenacity, resilience, and the profoundly necessary excavation of long-held family secrets. Listen to season eight of Family Secrets on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Getting better with money is a great goal for 2023, but how are you gonna make it happen? Ordering a book that lingers on your nightstand isn't gonna do the trick. Instead, check out our podcast, How to Money. That's right, we're two best buds offering all the helpful personal finance information you need without putting you to sleep. We offer guidance three times a week and we talk about debt payoff, saving more, intelligent investing, and increasing

your earnings. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them make progress with their financial goals. You can listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. to how to money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.