The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 336: Neil Pasricha - How To Build Resilience & Live An Intentional Life

Starting point is 00:00:00 You need to just ask yourself two questions. And these two questions, Ryan, are the two questions I tell anybody to ask if they're thinking about making a career change. Number one, which of these two decisions will you regret not doing more on your deathbed? Okay, that is the deathbed question. It is simply, for me, it was, oh man, I really, I know I'll kick myself if I don't try to write another book, right? Like, that was my big thing. And then the two, the second question is, I call it the plan B question, is simply what will you do if it fails? So for me, with the writing stuff, I was like, well, I guess I'll brush off the old LinkedIn profile and go knocking on doors.

Starting point is 00:00:42 I think I could probably get another job. So it's a decent fallback plan. And if you can sort of ask yourself those two questions, a deathbed question and the plan B question, then you will help yourself jump. We are opening up applications to our learning leader circle. we do this once per year. Think back to the great conversation I had with the legendary Jim Collins episode 216. He said, Ryan, before you get too caught up in your why, in your what, you need to be very intentional about your who. Who will be your friends?

Starting point is 00:01:17 Who will be your mentor? Who will you help? Who will you choose to surround yourself with? That will be the single greatest determining factor in your long-term success. think about that. I'd ask you the same question. Who are you choosing to surround yourself with to help you grow, to push you, to challenge you, and to be there when you need help? This is a chance to surround yourself with other growth-oriented leaders looking to challenge themselves and grow to become more effective both personally and professionally. We've added specific curriculum

Starting point is 00:01:52 elements so that by the end of the year, you'll have tangible outcomes to measure your growth and be a more effective leader. These groups are intentionally curated and kept small. And time and again, the thing that people say they love most about these groups is the relationships they're able to build with one another very quickly. If you'd like to apply, go to learningleaders circle.com. That's learning leader circle.com to apply. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Brixie and Meyer.

Starting point is 00:02:29 I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for you. being here. Text, learners to 4-4-2-2-2. In order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world, receive mindful Monday updates. What I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking

Starting point is 00:02:44 about. Also, give you the opportunity to be part of my book launch team. Text, learners to 4-4-222. Now, on tonight's featured leader with my great friend, Neil Pasrecha, the New York Times best-selling author of many books,

Starting point is 00:03:00 including The Book of Awesome, and the happiness equation, which have spent over 200 weeks on bestseller list and sold over a million copies. He's also one of the most popular TED speakers in the world. His latest book is titled, You Are Awesome. A few of the topics we discussed in addition to that book, why you need an untouchable day and how to get one, then why you should choose to be a big fish and a small pond. and how that applies to your life and career.

Starting point is 00:03:36 Then what every commencement speech gets wrong? And then why you need to add a dot, dot, dot, dot, and what that means. So ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good with Neil Pasricha. All right, one of my all-time favorite people. He's back, and Neil, I don't say that for every guest. And actually, I hardly ever say that. But welcome back to the Learning Leader Show, Neil Pazerich. So good to have you here, man.

Starting point is 00:04:06 So good to be back, and you are one of the very few people who correctly pronounced my last name, by the way. That's important. And you didn't even ask. You didn't even double check. You were just went right into it. People are scared of my name, and you just went right in. I wish I had my name like Hawk. But I don't have the Hawk.

Starting point is 00:04:21 I have Pass Recha, and you just nailed it. I just want to say, thanks. Well, I do feel a little lucky. My name is quite simple. There's no shortening or lengthening on my passport. It's simply Ryan Hawk. It makes it pretty nice. And even all the guys you hang with, I'm like, James Clear.

Starting point is 00:04:36 Ryan Hall. Are you guys making up your names? Like, seriously, Mark Manson. I'm like, you guys are lucky. I'm like, I have this ethnic name. I mean, I got to live with this thing. It's like I have to say, you know I tell people? I say it's like passing a salt shaker reaching for it and relaxing afterwards. Past reach. I have like tutelage. I do this like multiple times a day. Anyway, I'll call all hashtag and jealousy and jealousy rant now. Well, I have to say I, you're, you're, you're making me feel even more grateful for some of the simplicity in my name. And because you have to deal with that all the time. My dad actually was named.

Starting point is 00:05:11 He goes by his middle name. And he said that was one of his rules as he would not make us go by our middle name because it is an issue having to flip-flop names on different random official documents. So he goes, hey, one piece of advice for your kids, name them what you're going to call them. So like our daughter, her name is Charlie. And that's becoming more of a unisex name, our youngest daughter. and we decided to actually name her Charlie. Most people name their kid Charlotte and then call them Charlie. Right.

Starting point is 00:05:41 Her name on her birth certificate is actually Charlie. Oh, I love that. Call them or name them what you're going to call them. So we did that for her. So anyway, which is after my middle name. Takeaway number one from this week's episode of the Learning Leader podcast, name them what you're going to name them. Name them what you're going to call them.

Starting point is 00:05:57 Name them what you're going to call them. Makes their life a little bit easier. So anyway. So Neil, last time. we recorded, it was released December 31st, 2017, so a few years has passed, which is pretty wild, because it's gone really fast. You created something for the show that I've since borrowed and used on many episodes, and it was called the End of the Podcast Club. And essentially, you said, hey, let's do this, end the podcast club. Email both of us, something that you learned or something

Starting point is 00:06:30 that was useful that you could put into play. And so we can keep the conversation going, not only between us, but also with our fans and friends. And so because of that, I'd like to now institute something else new based on your idea, which is the beginning of the podcast club, which is... But don't you feel like most people are in that one? Don't you feel like most people kind of... Like, they're still here?

Starting point is 00:06:55 The podcast club is special because you made it to the end. You made it to the end, where it's the beginning. I mean, this is just like all the, all the, this is just like everybody. That's a good point. Should we hold off then? No, I'm happy to do it. The end of the podcast club, for those that don't know, was the fact that we got to the end and I said, listen, I always feel like there's a strange, bizarre membership of people that make it to the end of the podcast. Like, you're in the basement of a hotel gym in Mongolia.

Starting point is 00:07:19 You're driving a truck in the middle of the night. You're pushing a car or folding laundry. I don't know what you're doing, but you made it to the end. You listened to the end. And so I said, send me and Ryan an email what you learned. And we gave it our email addresses. And to your point, we're still getting, you've still getting them two years. We're still getting them two years later.

Starting point is 00:07:35 It's pretty cool. So that just actually speaks to like the virality of your podcast that people go into the archive so deeply years after that. It is a good feeling when someone, they start at a random point and then they go back and start from episode one and go all the way through. That's a note I get quite a bit. That's another club that you should start, the completest max. Oh, maybe that's the one. Like who is, and they're doing two a week usually where they're doing current one and then they'll go like to one. Then current one, then to two.

Starting point is 00:08:03 Current one, then to three all the way up. And they're like, I got like probably, I don't know, man, 50 or 60 weeks and I'll be back all caught up completely. But yeah, it's a cool feeling. It's certainly a good signal. But it's also got to be weird if you listen that way because you're going from, okay, here he is in his current state. Now let me listen to how terrible he sounded four years ago. Current state four years ago. It's like watching first season.

Starting point is 00:08:27 of Seinfeld. Although Seinfeld, they're all good. So it's a little bit different. But you hear the growth. First season of friends. Like Ross has a monkey. Where'd the monkey go? I knew you'd have some random stuff to say.

Starting point is 00:08:40 Okay. We're still doing the beginning of the podcast club, even though it doesn't make sense. My email is Ryan at learning leader.com. Neil. Neil at globalhappiness.org. What a great email, by the way. But Neil at globalhappiness.org, send us an email. the first thing you hear that is useful, helpful, something you could actually implement into your life to make it better, to live more intentional, as Neil might say, send us a beginning of the podcast club, even though it's much easier to be a part of that club than the end.

Starting point is 00:09:13 We still want to hear, still sticking with the idea, even though Neil is as I'm not surprised as shown why it doesn't make as much sense, but we're going to do it anyway. beginning of the podcast club, send an email to Neil, me, and, okay, let's get it going. So last time we spoke, Neil, you know I love studying people who have found a way to sustain excellence. And you are absolutely one of those people, especially when it comes to the word sustaining because you've consistently put out so much useful work that has impacted the lives. of literally millions of people with the data to back up that statement and book sales and blog hits and everything else. Impacted millions of people.

Starting point is 00:10:02 So when you think about both your own characteristics and qualities as well as those that you surround yourself with, of the people who have sustained excellence, what have you found that those people have in common? So it's so funny you asked this because you just mentioned before we hit record that I had just chat with Malcolm Gladwell. and I interviewed him for my podcast.

Starting point is 00:10:23 And I was outside his apartment in West Village of New York talking to his assistant. And I was all nervous, right? I was like, what, you know, what's he doing up there? Is he, is he like waiting for me? And she's like, no, no, just relax. He often just sits in his apartment and reads all day. And I was like, what? He just sits in his apartment and reads all day.

Starting point is 00:10:43 So first of all, I was like, whoa, I'm so jealous. And then I realize something, which is that, hey, wait a minute, I kind of do that too. I have something I call untouchable days. I do them one day per week. These are days where I am literally unreachable, untouchable by anyone, including my wife. So I have, my phone is on airplay mode. My internet is off, like off my laptop. And I'm not in contact with the outside world in any way.

Starting point is 00:11:10 Even your wife? Even my wife. So for a while, it was like, log in at lunch and see if there's any emergencies. But after a year of doing that, there is no emergencies. And instead, I get barraged with text messages and emails and can't get. out back into my cocoon of silence again. So we, instead I just say, I'm going to be like at this coffee shop or I'll be like around here if you need me. Like if someone, if one of our kids breaks their leg in preschool, like you'll drive down Bloor Street and you'll find me somewhere.

Starting point is 00:11:34 But again, no, I, we did it for a while and there was no emergencies. So this untouchable day concept and this Malcolm Gladwell sitting home reading content is something I am seeing over and over again. David Sedaris, a other guy interviewed, you know, his work has impacted many more millions of people than mine. It's like he doesn't have any call. He doesn't have any email. He has no website. He's got no social media. He does not want to hear any media that he's been on. He has no address that you can send stuff to. What I'm saying is these people are in this, in this, in this world, where everyone's trying to monetize our brains and our attentions with endless streaming everything, with auto-clicking, endless hashtagging everything. The Twitter feed never ends. The Instagram feed never

Starting point is 00:12:18 ends. You know what it's like. These people are saying, I'm living in the matrix and I'm choosing to unplug myself occasionally. Okay. I do it once a week and I'm telling you, Ryan, these untouchable days I do one day a week. And I wrote an article about this for HBR if you want to link to it in the show notes. These untouchable days have ended up becoming the genesis of all my best, like I look back over the last even couple of years of my life, my best ideas. My podcast came from there. My new book, of course, was written during those untouchable days. My writing productivity goes up more than 10 times. I'll write like 500 words a day on a normal day, like between meetings or in the morning before my kids wake up. But on an untouchable day, I can sometimes write around 5,000 words.

Starting point is 00:13:02 Now, are they perfectly edited? No, no, no, no, no. But my point is just getting the words down on paper is like a 10x output compared to my normal, you know, occasionally interrupted days. And there's a reason why McKinsey Consulting has released a report saying 31% of our time now during the day is spent bookmarking, prioritizing, and switching between tasks. 31%. That means we're not doing anything. We're just deciding what to do. And if you can relate to that feeling of constant prioritization and list checking and what do I do next and opening and closing browser tabs, I'm telling you the solution is untouchable days. All right, Neil, I have to play devil's advocate because the average person listening does not have your job, right? You are a writer, a keynote speaker, a podcaster, right? You're a regularly a maker. So you are a creator of work of content that helps people.

Starting point is 00:13:58 Most people listening have a job, a nine to five-ish type job. A lot of them are managers or mid-level managers in bigger companies and they have mortgages to pay in cars. same bills that you have to pay, but they don't have the same job as you. That person's listening saying, hey, Neil, must be nice. Yeah, that sounds great. I'd love to do that, but that's not realistic. What about for that person, what advice would you give to them when it comes to whether it's, hey, good for you. You still should do this or perhaps is there a different answer for a person like that?

Starting point is 00:14:31 Well, here's the thing. I get this sort of, I'm going to call them an excuse a lot. And here's my clever rejoinder. It's that when I worked for the CEO of Walmart for four years, I was his, Dave Cheese writes, I was his project manager. I helped, I traveled with him and I was his chief of staff kind of thing. He was kind of like this. He literally had no, he did not use email at all. He did not use phone at all. I'm talking zero. And people would be like, oh my gosh, like he's the CEO. Like, of course, it's easy for him to say. He's the CEO. He's the boss. But you know what they're missing, Ryan? He's the CEO because he did that. And similarly, I'm not a right. who's putting out books, that doesn't give me permission to take untouchable days. I am actually a writer putting up because of my untouchable days. And so if you are in a corporate job, listen to this and you're like, okay, again, I can't do that. Could you take an untouchable lunch? Could you take an untouchable afternoon? What are you doing for lunch? Are you going out with six of your friends from work every

Starting point is 00:15:27 day, you know, kind of still on your email and stuff? Could you actually untether yourself from that? Sometimes at Walmart, and I was there 10 years, what I would do is I would just kind of disappear. I would walk out to the parking lot, drive to a park, and honestly, I'd take a snooze or, like, just chill by, like, the river. And, like, then I would come back to work completely energized. First of all, we all have nature deficit disorder as a side note. But also because I'm unplugging myself and letting my thoughts slowly ferment, congeal, and process. I'm stepping out of the machine and getting up onto the captain's chair and making sure my ship

Starting point is 00:16:01 is going the right direction. Zooming out of your problems helps make sure that you're not just doing things right. but you're actually doing the right things. So if you are in a job, if you're an emergency room nurse, if you are an assistant to a busy boss, if you are a knowledge worker kind of in in incessant meetings or whatever, could you create untouchable moments? And as a side note to this, as a little corollary,

Starting point is 00:16:23 I will say, I have done a study with a productivity author, and we have found that the two best hours a day to check email are 9 to 10 in the morning and 4 to 5 p.m. If you're in like an office worker job. And the reason is because you give everybody the perception that you're always on. You still do two hours of email a day. But you create a 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. window that is like an oasis. You know, you close off your outlook or your Gmail or whatever, and you are untethering yourself.

Starting point is 00:16:49 If you work at a desk, could you work in the cafeteria? Could you work outside? Could you work from a... There are ways to do it. And it won't... Don't let it be the excuse. Let it be the cause of the great ideas and creativity and solutions and new methods and new processes that you start bringing the table and people are like, hey, suddenly Ryan is suddenly

Starting point is 00:17:08 bring all these great ideas. And it's that this can be your secret. It's because you, because you're taking time to let your thoughts process. I've found when I'm asked that question about sustaining excellence, and it's so cool here you say this, that there's two words that come to mind, this long time listeners, I've heard me say this before, but I'll keep saying it, is that they are incredibly thoughtful. And then from that, they are incredibly intentional with their actions after putting a lot of thought into it. And so I think if you hear me say that leader is very thoughtful and intentional, that's about as big of a compliment as I could give them. Based on what I found and studied over the past four and a half years and 330 plus of these conversations, is that those two things combined together lead to a lot.

Starting point is 00:17:59 lot of excellence happening over a sustained period of time. And that sounds like exactly the way that you've been operating for a long time. And you have been the corporate America guy. You've done that. You are from Harvard. You've done the schooling, the grad school, as well as the corporate job. So I think you, just because you don't do that now, does that mean you can't speak to it? It means that you've created a life to where you help more people in different ways outside of corporate America. Yeah. And by the way, leaving Walmart. It was a very, very agonizing decision for me. Some people probably don't know this about me, but I did what I'm doing now on the side as my side hustle at Walmart for eight years.

Starting point is 00:18:39 I'm talking the book of awesome, the book of awesome, the sequel, the book of holiday awesome, the happiness equation. When we spoke last, the happiness equation, my blog for four years, 200 speeches, man, that was all a side hustle. I was at Walmart for eight overlapping years. And in fact, when I left Walmart, I had such a pain about it because I had this, you know, I'm an East, I'm an East Indian guy. You know, I was told to be a doctor, certainly have a salary, certainly have a pension, certainly have a job. So to quit and tell my parents I'm going to be an artist. Are you kidding me? That's not, that's like, that's like, that's like, you know, totally opposite of how I was raised. But I then talked to Dave, and I'll identify him here, although I don't think I usually say it's from him. So he's the former CEO of Walmart International. And I said, Dave, What should I do? I'm loving the writing and the speaking stuff. At the same time, I'm the director of leadership at Walmart, and I kind of feel like I could keep going up and up the corporate ladder. And he said, Neil, you need to just ask yourself two questions. And these two questions, Ryan, are the two questions I tell anybody to ask if they're thinking about making a career change.

Starting point is 00:19:45 Number one, which of these two decisions will you regret not doing more on your deathbed? And that is the deathbed question is simply, for me, it was, oh man, I really, I know I'll kick myself if I don't try to write another book, right? Like, that was my big thing. And then the two, the second question is, I call it the plan B question, is simply what will you do if it fails? So for me, with the writing stuff, I was like, well, I guess I'll brush off the old LinkedIn profile and go knocking on doors. I think I could probably get another job. So it's a decent fallback plan. And if you can sort of ask yourself this two questions, the deathbed question and the plan B question, then you will help yourself jump if you feel like you need to push yourself as I did. Do you think even thinking of a plan B could be an issue though, or did that make it, did you feel better having a plan? Because I've talked to entrepreneurs who started businesses that said, I didn't burn the boats. I didn't even think of not being successful.

Starting point is 00:20:46 Like we were going to make this work. I admire the psychology of those people so much. It's just not the way I feel. I feel like I manage risk. I'm like, you know, I want to be able to like know that I can go back and do something. Even if you don't know, I certainly have more risks than maybe sort of, I'm probably somewhere in the middle. But those entrepreneurs who think like that who you interview so well, yeah, like that's a psychology that I just don't have. What would you do?

Starting point is 00:21:14 Like right now, let's say for something happened and you had to go get a job. Like, what type of job would you look for? Well, so here's the thing. That could happen. And it still could. I don't have a pension. I don't got dentist coverage now. When I go to the dentist, it's $400. I pay out of my pocket because what I'm doing now is I'm spending all my time writing,

Starting point is 00:21:32 writing books, and then giving speeches about it. So I'm definitely like in the ether. You know what I mean? But if it all flunked, if I ended up putting out a book and it bombed, and another book in it bombed and suddenly speaking shriveled up and suddenly it's like literally and the podcast died and all that stuff, it could happen. Average person, remember, publishes 1.01 books. Have you ever heard that stat? What? Maybe, yeah, the average published author apparently publishes something like 1.01 book or 1.1 books, meaning that 99% of people who publish a book publish one. And then there's, like, I'm on my seventh book. It's crazy. I shouldn't be, I'm way on the, like, third, you know, I'm like way far away from the me. It kind of feels way out there. So you think, yeah, if it falls through, what would I do? Well, what I would do then is I would brush off the old resume, look at the experiences I've had, ask myself, what? what it is I want to do and where I could add the most value.

Starting point is 00:22:25 It's that old then diagram. You probably know it, which is an overlap of kind of what am I good at? You know, what does the world need? And what can I do that no one else can? You know, it's like, it's like kind of what's in the middle of that spot? And then I would probably log on to like indeed.com. Well, you look for the who, right? Who are the people that you've impacted or people that maybe know you

Starting point is 00:22:50 that you could talk to about something to work. I would imagine that's what I feel like whether we look at the strength of weak ties or the people within your network that both front line and extended to say, okay, this is the way I would go about doing meaningful work. That's different. I mean, I don't. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't mean to get like too down that. I was painting a portrait of like I'm like destitute on the street. I need to get back up kind of thing. But yeah, if I still have a roll of decks of people I can call, you better believe I'm going to be like, oh, Ryan. Hey, let's do this. Listen, I want to ask you a couple of. I want to get into some of the new book. So one of the things that you've published on the website and within it, though, that I think is a good way to start this conversation because there's a jumping off point is. And I am slightly embarrassed that I don't know how to pronounce this word. The T-A-O-I-S-T-T-T-O-I-S-T-W-S. How do you say that word, Neil? Well, some people say Taoist.

Starting point is 00:23:47 Almost like it sounds like a D. Okay. Yeah. I feel like I've heard it both ways. Okay, Dallas-F-F-F-A-B-L. about a farmer with one horse. Could you tell briefly that story and why it's important that this is one of the first messages of your newest book, which is titled, You Are Awesome. Sure.

Starting point is 00:24:05 Well, this is the fable of the farmer of one horse. A farmer had only one horse. One day, his horse ran away. His neighbor said, I'm so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset. The farmer just said, we'll see. A few days later, his horse came.

Starting point is 00:24:22 came back with 20 wild horses following. The man and his son corralled all 21 horses. His neighbor said, congratulations. This is such good news. You must be so happy. And the farmer just said, we'll see. One of the wild horses kicked the man's only son breaking both his legs. His neighbor said, I am so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset. The man just said, we'll see. The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed every young man, but the farmer's son was spared, since his broken legs prevented him from being drafted. His neighbor said, congratulations, this is such good news. You must be so happy. And the man just said, of course, we'll see. Now, the point of the

Starting point is 00:25:10 fable, it's an old Taoist fable, so of course everyone can take their own conclusions from it, but the point to me is like, oh, that's resilience. That is the definition of resilience. That is the definition of resilience. That guy has understood that every sort of what I would call skyrocketing pleasure or stomach-turning defeat defines not who you are, but simply where you are. And that skill, I believe, Ryan, is a muscle, a skill, you know, a tool. We've lost. We've lost. And I think we've lost it because we live in a world where we have everything. You can press a button. The car will pick you up. The phone will entertain you on your way home, and by the time you get home, there's hot food on your porch that you ordered while you were in

Starting point is 00:25:51 the car. Are you kidding me? We live like kings. But the side effect of this era of infinite abundance that we live in is we no longer have the tools to process or manage any form of failure. As a result, we're seeing skyrocketing anxiety, depression, suicide, and loneliness. And I don't mean increasing. I mean skyrocketing.

Starting point is 00:26:09 Like anxiety rates for young women are up from like 30% in their most recent data. And this is data that typically moves like. 1% every five years or so. So we are seeing skyrocketing unhappiness in an era where we are all living like kings were living 50 years ago. Why? What is it? Well, I think the thing we're missing is resilience. And I get told sometimes by like parents. They come talk to me. They're like after speech. Like my son was like, you know, valedictorian in high school and he went to Duke and he was captain of the football team. And on his first day of his job, after he graduated, his boss said something rude to him in an email. And he called me at night crying, saying, I can't go to work the next day.

Starting point is 00:26:56 So what I'm saying, Ryan, is we live in an era where our skin is so thin. We equate getting two likes on our photos on Instagram with, like, having no friends, having to leave the tribe. We all are losers because everybody on the internet's better than us, by definition. You can't be the winner of, like, everyone's got more likes and more, everyone's got more podcast downloads compared to the podcasts you look at, right, Ryan? Like, I mean, it's just the way we look at things. So I, that is essentially, you introduce it. That's the crux of my new book. The book is called, You Are Awesome, but the subtitle really indicates what it's about, how to navigate change, wrestle with failure, and live an intentional life. And really, I'm trying to teach myself more

Starting point is 00:27:36 than anyone and my kids and anyone who reads it. How do we build up that muscle? Okay. Great intro. Let's get to some of the key tactics from the book. I believe your original subtitle was nine secrets to getting stronger and living an intentional life. Is that right? And that changed over. That's probably the review copy that you had. Yeah, the advanced copy. And so, which I just love that little kind of the process to get to the word smithing of titles. So anyway, let's get into some of it. Let me, are you cool if I just pull out some of my notes and then you expand on some of it? Anything, yeah. Okay. What about, you know, I've given a commencement speech, or are you given viral TED Talks? I would imagine you're giving commencement speeches. You have written about what,

Starting point is 00:28:23 you say all of them, but I would say probably most of them. But what do all commencement speeches get wrong? Specifically around this, do what you love, mantra. Totally. Yeah. Okay, so if you listen to like a classic cliche commencement speech, speech. It's like somebody on stage, wearing a cap and gown because they got an honorary degree, is telling a roomful of people or a group full of graduates, you know, find your passion, do what

Starting point is 00:28:50 you love and everyone cheers and claps and it feels so inspirational. But the question missing from the commencement speeches, most commencement speeches, is do you love it so much that you can take the pain and the punishment too? This question is never asked, but is vitally important because we know from I mean I look into the research on resilience it turns out that you need to lose more to win more that's not going to be that surprising for people

Starting point is 00:29:20 I mean the guy who has the most wins in all of baseball Say young also has the most losses Say young the guy who has the most strikeouts in baseball Nolan Ryan also has the most walks you know the reason a wedding photographer takes 50 awesome pictures at a wedding is because they take

Starting point is 00:29:36 2,000 photos so they're throwing out 99% of them So the idea of losing more to win more is not unusual for people, but the question is never asked. Do you love it so much? You can take the pain and the punishment too. Meaning, if you really want to become a rock star, are you cool with lugging heavy amps to smoky clubs on Tuesday nights at two in the morning for five years? Are you cool with sitting in your basement trying to practice the same three-core progression over and over again until you can play it with your eyes closed, till you can play it while singing, until you can play it while singing

Starting point is 00:30:08 in front of an audience who was talking, that's not easy to do. And it takes years of practice. Those small losses add up to something very successful. But they're the question you're really to ask, you need to like the pain along the way to the thing you want to do. And by the way, I didn't use that rockster musician example frivolously. It was actually taught to me by Mark Manson, right, author of The Sutter of Not Giving a Fuck. And Mark says he wanted to be a rock musician, but the burden of those, you know, those experiences was too much for him. He couldn't imagine the sort of the practicing and the lugging of the amps and stuff, whereas writing was actually something he loved the torture of.

Starting point is 00:30:50 He was always like this angry guy in Facebook comments, and he was always like arguing with people just to argue with them. And he was essentially practicing the pain of writing for years and years and years before his first book came out and sold a bazillion copies. but you could argue it sold a bazillion copies because this guy had gone through the pain and the punishment of 10 years or more of writing for free to practice and go through that. That's such a great additional question to ask because I found that with the work that I do, that loving the process of the pain and some of the struggles, especially writing a book,

Starting point is 00:31:25 which you and I have talked about, and we're going to talk more about of the process of writing and then rewriting and rewriting and reading and then getting critical feedback and being like, oh my goodness. Like, did I just waste that? No, that's part of the deal. Like, that's part of the pain. You've got to feel some of that along the way in order to get to the point where you're going to write something that's going to impact and change people's lives for the better.

Starting point is 00:31:49 And I think that that is a critical question to ask because most people, once they do ask that, if they're honest, they may change their mind. I mean, I'll give you an example. I had a really good friend in high school who was tremendously gifted in two very disparate things. One, he was an incredible good coder and programmer and got into the top computer science program in Canada for university. And at the other hand, he was the lead actor in the school play. And everyone said, this guy has got the best singing voice ever.

Starting point is 00:32:18 He should go into musical theater. And sure enough, he got into the best musical theater program in Canada as well. And so I said to him, Tom, which one are you going to do? And when he told me which one he picked, and it doesn't really matter to this. the story, but to tell you, he picked the computer option. It was like, you know, the journey towards getting good at that was something he wanted to do, struggling at home, getting, I don't know, JavaScript programs to compile or whatever it is those guys do. I don't really know, versus being in like off, off, off Broadway shows for 10 years living in like a tiny shoebox

Starting point is 00:32:51 in Manhattan, like struggling to make ends meet as you go on the incline. I mean, pick your pain, pick your poison and make sure you know going in that which poison it is that you want. Don't focus on the end goal. Focus on, as you said, the process. Great way to put it. There is a part of your book where you say it's not wise to buy the $5 million New York City condo. And it's really a great metaphor that I won't share the whole part because I think you'll tell it better, obviously, because you came up with it. but this could be helpful for people at any stage in their career.

Starting point is 00:33:29 So why should you not buy the $5 million New York City condo? As if all of us listening here could, but why should you not do that? Well, because in 1984, an incredible racer study was published that asked a very poignant and insightful question, which has said, is it better to be a big fish in a small pond even if you don't learn to swim as well. that was where the original metaphor of big fish in a small pond kind of came from from a research perspective and of course the research showed as you may imagine that the answer is yes it is if you can put yourself in a game you can win if you can rig the game so you're the big fish in a small pond then something the researchers call academic self-concept rises for this is

Starting point is 00:34:16 the interesting part up to 10 years after you'll leave the pond Now, let's pocket that research study for a second and talk about the condo. When I flip open the New York Times magazine, you know, Sunday New York Times magazine, I don't do this very often because I don't really really need to read the news, but if I stumble across an issue, I open that first page, I'm like, you know, brand new condos launching on like the shores of the Hudson River, you know, starting at $5 million. And I pause at that. I'm like, starting at $5 million?

Starting point is 00:34:47 dollars, that's the, that's the worst condo in the building. Like, if the condo is 30 stories high, you're on the second floor. If everybody's got a view of the river, you're facing the, like, courtyard or maybe like the traffic, you got the noise, you've got probably no amenities. Maybe the top floors have a balcony. You don't. You're basically buying the loser position in the building. You are spending $5 million to be, literally, the smallest fish in a very big.

Starting point is 00:35:17 big pond. Don't do that. The thing I learned on resilience when I was studying to write this book is continue to find places you can actually purposefully win. So I give the metaphor of when I started doing keynote speeches. It was after my, like I didn't start doing keynote speeches. They asked me to do them because the book of awesome got popular. And then so they said, oh, come on in. Like, we'll start booking you from speeches. I'm like, okay, cool. How's it work? And they're like, well, we want to put you in this like budget range. Okay. And I was like, whoa, I was like, whoa, that sounds like way too high. Like, I can't imagine giving a speech for that much money.

Starting point is 00:35:52 What was it? It was like $10,000 to $15,000. Okay. All right. And I was like, who else is in that range? And they're like, oh, it's like New York Times bestselling authors and gold medal winning Olympians and like, you know, rock star professors. And I was like, I'd heard of all the names.

Starting point is 00:36:06 I was like, oh, yeah, like, don't put me in there. What's the low? I was like, what's the lowest range you have? And they're like, like, $5,000 because we work on commission and that's kind of the lowest. You are flying somewhere, taking your time, distilling everything you've learned down into, like, one captivating speech. So it's like, it's worth a lot to the organizations and you do change your behavior. So that's the lowest range we have. I said, honestly, guys, put me in the lowest range because I would, I don't even think, like, I think that's still vastly overpaying for what I'm able to do.

Starting point is 00:36:37 I've never given a speech before. So, like, for money like that. And so they did. And guess what, Ryan? I was put into like boardrooms of like 50 people and like local environments where I could win at and I could get successful. And my confidence went up and my ability to like interact with the crowd went up. And I learned how to open a speech and how to close a speech. And I made notes.

Starting point is 00:36:59 I wrote a script and I got good. And now today, you know, that was years ago. Now today I'm speaking to, you know, I'll speak to like a Vegas casino of like 5,000 people. And I know I wouldn't be doing that today if it wasn't for the fact that. what I was first asked to do it. I pushed them to say, put me in the lowest possible range because I need to practice. I need to get. You felt like you needed the reps?

Starting point is 00:37:24 I mean, because I was going to say, I mean, this is. I need to feel like a big fish in a small, I want to get good at it first. If they put me in that 10 to 15 range and it was my first beach and I was sent down to Vegas to be in a casino. Honestly, man, I would have sucked. And then not only do I suck, I also think I suck. And that's even worse. And you think then. And then additionally, you mean then you'll never get.

Starting point is 00:37:43 book, do you mean? You needed the repetitions with smaller crowds in case you, you know, struggled through it that you didn't, you didn't let a thousand people know that you weren't very good yet. Instead, you let 50 people know? Or is that part of it? It's more myself. And so this phrase academic self-concept is really important. It means how good do you think you are? The question that I ask in the book is, would you rather be a nine in a group of fives, a nine in a group of nines, or a five in a group of nines? And I know that question. sounds a bit hard to grasp maybe over a podcast, but the biggest results of these studies say, actually, you'd rather be a nine in a group of fives. Golf from the T's closer to the pen.

Starting point is 00:38:22 Enter the marathon in the slowest category. You know, rig the game a little bit so you can win it, because then your confidence will go up and then it will stay up as you keep going and ratcheting yourself further. Like, this is such, so, and I didn't even tell you yet, but I got this message directly from the dean of Harvard Business School because I was whining and complaint. I ended up getting a scholarship and I had lunch with this guy. He was the dean of Harvard Business School for like 15 years.

Starting point is 00:38:50 His name was John MacArthur. And he asked me, so Neil, how's it going at Harvard? And I was like, man, it sucks. I'm stressed. I'm like trying to apply for all these jobs, like, you know, millionaire consultants and bankers and they got black. Everyone's trying to get the same 10 jobs.

Starting point is 00:39:06 We all want to work for like McKinsey and Goldman Sachs and Google or wherever. and he's like, oh, he's like, you're like a guy staring into a beach, and like on the beach are like 10 sunbathing beauties. Pick a gender, any gender you want. And you're like this guy, and you like can't wait to run in there. But like beside you are a thousand other people who can't wait to run in there with you. And only 10 of you guys are going to win. And if you win, you win a life full of stress.

Starting point is 00:39:39 constantly looking over your shoulder, wondering if you're going to lose this beautiful person that you ended up being with. But instead of being one of the losers, like the 900 plus people will be, why don't you just leave the beach? And I was struggling to kind of follow this metaphor. I was like, what do you talk? Like, what do you mean? Leave the beach. He's like, go to the library. Meet the nerd at the library. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, I mean, don't interview with all the companies flying to Harvard Business School and private jets. Instead, call up the broken companies, the bankrupt companies, the companies with the PR problem, the companies with a flat share price, the companies that don't have private jets to fly to Harvard

Starting point is 00:40:18 for recruiting, call them up, cold call them. And if you get inside those companies, you will be a big fish in a small pond. You will get a seat at the table. You won't be taking notes in the meeting. You'll be leading the meeting. You'll be given a bigger job because they want new ideas. They want fresh insights. When you talk, people will listen.

Starting point is 00:40:35 They want to know what you have to say. Your learning will accelerate. Your ability to grow as a leader will dramatically accelerate, and you'll be making a difference for a company that needs it. And honestly, Ryan, after that lunch I had with Dean John McArthur, rest in peace, he sadly just passed away a few weeks ago. This guy was a hero to me. He honestly, largely because of this lunch we had, I left Harvard Business School's Career Services kind of department, which is a really big department. I didn't leave the school. I left the formal application process.

Starting point is 00:41:08 I made an Excel spreadsheet on my own of 100 companies that I thought were interesting to me, but were not recruiting at the school because they either didn't have the money or didn't have the interest or whatever. I cold called them. I got a call back from half of them, say 50. I got a real call with like 15 of them. And I got an offer from five of them. And so that's how I even ended up at Walmart in the first place was because I cold called them. They weren't coming to Harvard.

Starting point is 00:41:35 You kidding me? So then I got into them and guess what? I was the only person with a master's degree in the whole building when I got there. So it was just that it wasn't that the thing I had was better than people. It was that it was different than people. And as I say in the book, different is better than better. I was the one person in a meeting room who could offer an alternative opinion. There was lots I didn't know.

Starting point is 00:41:59 I didn't have any Walmart experience, no operations experience, no retail experience. I was totally behind on most things that people had experience. But the things I had experience in were different. And so different is better than better. I was offering a skill set that a lot of people didn't have. And as a result, in my domain, I was a big fish. So I got quick promotions and I was able to go up at the company over the years. What about the idea of regularly putting yourself in situations, surrounding yourself with people who level you up? They're smarter than you. They have more wisdom, more experience, more life repetitions than you. How does that, compare and contrast with this being a big fish in a small pond because I have felt some of the benefit and power in being the least intelligent person in a room, whether it's at a conference or, you know what I'm saying, where I thought copiously taking notes and feeling like I'm learning a lot because I'm around others who have done what I want to do and they've done it better and they've done it before me. What about how does that compare and contrast? So I love that principle.

Starting point is 00:43:05 And that principle, of course, sounds very opposing. That principle is based on the phrase, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room, as our mutual friend Jason Gainer would, of course, say. And I think that's a great point. But here's the thing. My book is about resilience. My book is about getting back up. My book is about gaining confidence. My book is about what you do when you don't feel good.

Starting point is 00:43:27 So when I went to talk to John MacArthur, I felt troubled. I was struggling. I was in the rough. I was in the mess. And so what I wasn't looking for that is to be put into a room with everybody smarter than me. That would have made me feel worse. You need to build confidence. Exactly. What I was looking to there was to get back up. That's what the principle of resilience is. I was looking to try to figure out a game I could win. I was trying to figure out something small I could be good at. Right? It felt good to get calls back from 50 companies because they were like, who's this

Starting point is 00:43:56 weirdo calling? We don't get calls from like people going to, going to school and business program, asking us questions about like how our leadership department is run. So, I got calls back. That felt good because when I applied to the other places, I sure didn't get calls back, right? And so this is a principle to help you build confidence, build yourself up. Of course, if you're killing it, if you're top of your class, ace in your game, if you're on fire, you're definitely,

Starting point is 00:44:22 I agree with that principle. Now put yourself in situations where that will continue to push yourself. But that's from a place of strength, whereas I'm talking about from a place which I suffer from, often a place of intellectual lack of confidence, or I don't think I'm good enough. So then I have to put myself somewhere where I'm like, I can do this. Very useful. Just as a reminder, the research shows when your academic self-concept increases in these small

Starting point is 00:44:48 ponds, it stays up from up to 10 years after you leave the pond. So I'm not saying swim in the shallows forever. I'm saying do it to think, like go give speeches in the little boardrooms because then when you get to the Vegas stages, you'll be awesome. Yeah. You'll still be able to get there, but you'll be off. because you practiced it and you got your confidence. And academic self-concept rose.

Starting point is 00:45:08 I love reading when people talk about their parents. And you've written about your mom in this book. And I'll point out one specific area. And there's more than more than this, certainly. But why should we add a dot, dot, dot to our lives? Why is this better? And perhaps you can explain the analogy and why this is better. and for us to think with a mindset this way and how this involves your mom.

Starting point is 00:45:35 Sure, absolutely. Well, again, my book is about resilience. And the reason I wrote it is because I do feel that paradox right now in society of people feeling lesser than high anxiety, high expression, high, loneliness, high, it may not overlap with your demographic, Ryan, because I know you're, I know your listeners, because they've been emailing me for two years. Like, they're like, you know, they may be. Well, but we all, you know, we all deal with this. Yeah. So the thing I'm talking about is when you're in the rough, when you just got dumped out of a relationship, when you got fired from a job, when you lost a friend or family member to death or whatever that is for you, it feels like a period. Can you real quick? I don't mean to interrupt, but can you can you real quickly explain? I know you said the last time we talked, but for those who are newer listeners, what happened to you with your first, wife as well as one of your best friends. Sure. Ten years ago, my wife left me and my best friend took

Starting point is 00:46:35 his own life in the span of a few weeks. That's why, and it was just devastating, and I lost 40 pounds of distress, and I was in shock, and I was in misery, and I was just a shell of myself in every physical and mental weight possible. That's why I started writing my blog, 1000 Awesome Things.com, which eventually went viral, won these awards and turned into my first book, The Book of Awesome. So that first book I wrote was about gratitude and I was looking for it myself. Now, it would be easy when that happened for me to be like, you know, to frankly contemplate. And I didn't go to these super dark thoughts, but I was like, this is, I'm not lovable. I'm not, I'm not worthy of being married to.

Starting point is 00:47:16 I'm not attractive. I'm not, do you know what I mean? Like you have these thoughts. They float in your mind when you go through something devastating. And we know from research that we all have that tendency. See, there's a great research study from Daniel Gilbert at Harvard and his colleagues called The End of History Illusion, which shows, this is amazing research, that when anybody is asked to describe the last 10 years of their life, they paint a tempestuous portrait of intrigue. You know, like, I met this person, I moved here, I got this job, and all this stuff happened. And then when they're asked, what are the next 10 years of your life look like?

Starting point is 00:47:46 Everybody says, oh, well, nothing will change. I'll be the exact same as I am now. I'm sure I'll still be married to Sally and live right here and be in this job. We're all totally wrong. We cannot see the future, so we therefore don't think it exists. That's why the research study is called the end of history illusion. I call it putting a sentence, I'm sorry, putting a period at the end of your sentence. If instead you can change that period in your mind to an ellipsis, a dot, dot, dot, then you allow the story that is your life to continue.

Starting point is 00:48:17 you. My mom had her story end many times. She was born a girl and a family praying for a boy. She was living under kind of East Africa in the sort of 50s and 60s when there was a huge dictatorship with Idi Amin and her family essentially had to flee East Africa. She was ushered into an arranged marriage with a dude she met once, who was my dad, but she met him for the second time at their wedding. She was then shipped across the ocean to North America, here where I live into the suburbs of Toronto, where she had no friends, she had no family, she had no culture, she ate pretty much no meat, and there was no meals that didn't have meat. She didn't have anything. And so when I talked to her about this,

Starting point is 00:49:03 more recently as an adult trying to learn from my parents, she said, oh, I always just added the word yet to everything that was happening. So I don't eat meat yet. I don't know this man yet. I don't know how to ballroom dance, because my dad would take her ballroom dancing, yet. And that yet, the dot, dot, dot, dot yet, actually allows us mentally to see a little sliver of light between the door and the frame after you hear the latch click.

Starting point is 00:49:33 It is how I define resilience. It is contemplating the possibility that things can continue. So for those listening that may be in a very devastating place, as I was when my wife left me and just when I was going through all the stuff I just mentioned, just trying to keep going is enough. Just make it through another day, another day, another day. If you can do that, then all the other tools and models we're talking about,

Starting point is 00:50:01 about finding small ponds with the $5,000 condo, about losing more to win more in order to build up your sort of failure muscle, all that stuff, we can build that up later, but you mentioned it, my mom, this is the first chapter of the book, I open the book this way because I'm talking to people who may be like I was in a sort of devastating, stark, challenging position. And I don't know why it is, Ryan, but it seems like lots of my readers are in these books. You know, I get so many emails for people like, I just got a cancer diagnosis. Someone bought me your book or whatever.

Starting point is 00:50:34 So I feel like I'm talking to that person because they're talking to me a lot. Okay, let's go over one and wrote. I think it's very powerful and impactful. I appreciate you telling, especially as a, So it's a personal story because there's really tough things, you know, that you've bounced back from. The two-minute morning practice that takes the worry out of waking up. Yeah. So right now we have a wake-up problem.

Starting point is 00:51:00 We all wake up and I don't know. So ask yourself, how do you spend the first two minutes of your day? Most people will tell you, if you ask them honestly, and they answer honestly, they say, I grab my cell phone and I see my missing text messages or emails from the night before. And I do that because it's plugged in near my bed and it functions also as my alarm clock. Where do I begin? Don't do that. Plug your cell phone into the basement. Make it two stories away from wherever you are.

Starting point is 00:51:31 Put it in the garage somewhere far away from you. Go to Walmart. Go to Amazon. Buy an alarm clock for $10. Make your bedroom a safe mental sanctuary. And now when you open your eyes, if you do fear some, if you do you do, You feel some worry and anxiety when you wake up as I do and as I think most people do because the project you're working. Like for me right now, it's like my book launch, stress sinks in. I'm sure, you know, for you some thing.

Starting point is 00:51:53 You know, your book's coming out soon. You're going to wake up sometimes in the morning. You're going to feel that right away. When you feel that, do a simple two-minute morning practice that will really help. All three of these prompts that I say to fill out are backed by a specific research study that I can talk about. So grab a note card or a cue card or a journal as I do and write. three things. I will let go of. I am grateful for and I will focus on. Okay. I will let go of, this is the first and maybe the most powerful, helps you crystallize and inject a little mental anxiety. The truth is, religion has figured this out. Have you heard of the Catholic Confession Chamber? You know, the... I've done it. Right, right. But it's not just Catholic, Catholicism. Buddhism, Mormonism, Judaism, Islam, all these religions have a form of confession baked into their practice. However, as we live in an increasingly secular society, most of us don't have a way to process, like, that, what I call contemporary confession. I think that's partly why websites such as postsecret.com, who's Frank Warren has collected a million postcards of people confessing things to him, and he publishes that on his website six New York Times bestselling books. It's a big thing.

Starting point is 00:53:13 It's because of this. So I will let go of. I will let go of comparing my book launch to Tim Ferriss's book launch. I will let go of the five pounds of blubber I put on my stomach over the Thanksgiving holidays. I will let go of the fact that I haven't had time to go to the gym in the last week. Whatever it is, whatever it is. I will let go of the fact that I yelled at my kid yesterday and I felt like a bad dad. You know, like let yourself go.

Starting point is 00:53:36 Just let release it. Because otherwise it will sit in the back of your subconscious as a little worry spinning in your mind all day, and that is exhausting. After you write, I will let go of, now you've kind of cleaned your brain a bit, you then write down, I am grateful for. The key here, based on the research from Emmons and McCullough, who showed us that if you write down 10 things you're grateful for a week, then you will be not only happier, but physically healthier after a 10-week period, is to write things that are very specific.

Starting point is 00:54:04 So do not write down my wife every day. Instead write down, you know, the fact that my husband Antonio put down the toilet seat. Yesterday in a meeting, my boss said thank you, and he hasn't said thank you to me in a year. You know, I got an assist in hockey practice. Whatever, just little tiny things that you're grateful for. And then finally, the last prompt is I will focus on. Now that your mind has been a little bit cleansed and a little bit focused, help hopefully focus on the positive, it's time to carve from your gigantic, we all have them, your gigantic could do and should do list.

Starting point is 00:54:42 we all have them, one thing you will get done today. So if this morning, Ryan, you wrote down, you know, have a chat with Neil, well, guess what? Tonight you get to cross that off and feel good about yourself. Whereas what you do, if you do what most people do is have this gigantic endless laundry list of stuff that they're trying to do, near term, short term, long term, whatever, no matter what, at the end of the day, you're going to feel like a failure because you're just going to feel like, I got seven things done, I've got 300 left, or I got 12 left, or whatever. So just write down one thing you'll focus on, and that is such a helpful way to avoid decision fatigue, which I know you've talked about in the past on your show, but decision fatigue is killing all of us right now.

Starting point is 00:55:22 We have too many decisions to make, and this helps us get away for them. Hey, how about goal setting? I know I cut you off, but I'm curious about this. For example, if I'm looking towards next year and setting revenue goals for my business, my service line, what I do? I'm getting very personal, but I think this could relate to anybody. Are you, based on the research that you've done and all of the scientific evidence out there, are you more apt to set low goals that you are pretty certain you're going to hit because doing that will actually create greater output, greater happiness, more, I guess you could call

Starting point is 00:56:00 it success, or how do you use what you've learned when setting goals? Okay, a few things on this. Number one, there's a really famous study from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University showing clearly that every dollar you make over $70,000 does not affect your level of happiness. Okay, so money does buy happiness, money does make you happy up to a certain point. And even if you adjust it for inflation from a study, it's still like 80 grand. Okay. I'm not saying that's a low number.

Starting point is 00:56:32 What I'm saying is like, let's just put your goals in context here. Okay, let's just make sure your goals aren't just wild for the sake of being wild. Then I'd say on top of that, yes, I absolutely would set the lowest possible level of goal. I'm not like these people that set moonshots and like, you know, I want to help a billion people, you know, smile. Like I love those people. They're some of my friends. But I'm like, whoa, like, you got a crazy goal, man. Like, my goal is to like be a good dad, like, be a great husband, be a great son.

Starting point is 00:57:03 How about book sales for this book? Do you set a goal? No, no goals. No goals. Like week one, pre-launch, like any of that. Like, so here's the thing. Here's the other thing that comes from the research. This was mostly from the happiest equation, so it's, it's, so intrinsic goals, which means either internal goals, those actually work. Extrinsic goals, don't. Extrinsic goals are goals external to you. So an intrinsic goal is like, you know, I want to write one page a day on my new book. An extrinsic goal is, I want to sell this many books. You see, one of them you can control, one of them you can't. And we know from the research that only the intrinsic goals actually matter. In fact, they found in the research, they've done this amazing studies. A lot of us from Teresa Emma Belae at Harvard University. They've asked people like, you know, 12-year-old girls to teach a younger girl piano. And they say to one of them, one group of girls, hey, you know, at the end, you probably get a thank you.

Starting point is 00:58:02 and you're going to experience the joy of teaching. And they say the other group of girls, hey, at the end of the half an hour, you're going to get a ticket to go to the movies for free, like an extrinsic motivator. Well, guess what? You're going to guess this right, probably, but guess which group was,

Starting point is 00:58:20 guess which group of teachers was less patient, more frustrated, got angry more quickly, and left at the exact minute the half an hour was over. The latter. Of course. The ones that were given no, actual tangible, extrinsic reward stayed longer, or more patient, connected deeper with their

Starting point is 00:58:39 intrinsic goals. So on this new book, you are awesome. Don't get me wrong. Of course I wanted to sell a million copies. That'd be nice. However, Ryan, I'm under no mistake. I can't control that. I can't.

Starting point is 00:58:51 I can only can control what I can control. And so it's foolish of me to peg my future happiness on something that I cannot control. Now, what can I control? I can have great conversations with friends of mine on their podcast before it comes out, right? Like, I can do that. You have a totally insane program, which is the 1,000 book package. And I'm going to tell you why I feel extra special because I got to experience this 1,000 book package. And I only bought one book, which the first bullet point, I assume you know this because you wrote it,

Starting point is 00:59:30 is dinner with Neil in Toronto, which I did after I went to a Jason Gaynard workshop in Toronto. And that's part of the 1,000 book package on your website, Neil.Blog, is if you're willing to really ante up, you could fly up to Toronto and have a meal. And I will tell you, it's worth it. It absolutely is. Having the engaging conversation, having you book an incredible restaurant. By the way, what was that trick to get a table at a place that was completely booked? Oh, I don't remember. What was it?

Starting point is 01:00:02 I don't have a trick at the time. Well, you said you call ahead. I think I just go. No. I think I just go. No, and I don't just do that. You called ahead and I don't remember exactly how it worked, but it was full because I tried and it was, there was no tables.

Starting point is 01:00:15 And I don't know how you sweet talk to the person to getting us a table. Oh, I remember what it is. I know what I do. If I go, if I call restaurant, then they're totally full. And this is like where you were going as I wanted to meet you for meal somewhere. Is I go to them and I say, tell me what time of all the reservations you have,

Starting point is 01:00:33 tell me which one comes the latest. And so let's say we were meeting for lunch at 12. They're like, oh, well, that table is reserved for a 1245 lunch. And I'm like, we'll be out before 1245. You'll get to turn the table before that comes. I 100% guarantee because I have to actually be at work at 1245. So I always just say that or something like that. And I hold true to my promise.

Starting point is 01:00:53 So they have to budget enough time for people to have like coffee and dessert and ice cream and stuff. But I'm just like, I'll just work within, I'll help make it a win-win. Like, you want to have another meal there. You know, you get more revenue. And I'm happy to leave by the time you say the table has to be free. So I can sometimes just like trying to get into the level of what Tim Urban would call first principles and say, what is it that they want? And I can do it for them too. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:01:17 You know, it's a great dinner. I was going to put somebody off a table. If we have anybody listening who's got a little bit of extra money, the thousand book package will be fun. because you get to fly out to Toronto. It includes me giving a speech and I fly them to Toronto. Like, it's basically like a trip to Toronto. A thousand books is a lot. Like, what is it?

Starting point is 01:01:36 If an average book's 20 bucks, do the math. It's not cheap. But it's definitely, I can say it's worth it because I got to experience it. And part of what we talked about at that dinner was the fact that you were getting into podcasting. And now you're full-blown, a big-time podcast or worth your three books podcast. And I'm curious, what have you learned or what has been surprising now about you, shifting from the world of writing as your primary and speaking on stages to now as a podcaster? You had some incredible guests. I know I'm going to come up to either Toronto or Chicago and meet up with you and record for your show.

Starting point is 01:02:15 But what, how has it been for you? So, thank you. First of all, I learned from you and I had lunches with a few people like you to say, like, okay, tell me more about this. podcasting thing because I wanted to launch this show that was on this epic quest to uncover the 1,000 most formative books in the world. You probably know this. I'm obsessed with the number 1,000 because the average lifespan is 1,000 months long. The average person is awake for a thousand minutes a day. This is true. The average lifespan is 1,000 months. The average waking time we have a day is 1,000 minutes. My first blog was called 1,000 awesome things. So now my whole podcast is

Starting point is 01:02:50 1,000 formative books, but that was not a catchy podcast title. So I call it. I call it. I called it three books, and each guest we have, and I can't wait to have you and hear what your three are, tells me their three most formative books. I read them in advance. We talk about some of the themes from them. And yeah, it's been fun. I've had Mitch Album and Malcolm Glowal and David Sedaris and Judy Blumen, a lot of authors and heroes, and it's a great excuse to kind of sit down and chat books. What have I learned? First of all, be careful what you chew off. Because from the outside, podcasting looks very easy. I'm not saying it is. I'm not saying it is. easy. I'm saying from the outside, it looks easy. People might listen to you every week and be like, oh, if I could do that, I just press a button and talk. No, no, no, no, no. It's way more complicated. You have to, you know how much time I spend preparing for each podcast? I mean, you had to just read my book. That takes a while. Never mind, think about which would be most, which of these chapters would be most effective for your listeners coming up, coming up with questions. Then while you're having the conversation, this is the thing I never appreciated as a guest. As a guest, I just sit here in chat.

Starting point is 01:03:53 But as a host, you're trying to balance the time of the podcast, what they're saying, the next question you're going to ask, keeping them on track. I don't know how you do it. It's so hard. You're trying to balance all this up while making it interesting to listen to. And then, I don't know if you edit your podcast or not. But sometimes I'm like, oh, that podcast was like two and a half hours. It's like, whoa, that went way too long. Oh, shit, I have to take an hour out of this.

Starting point is 01:04:18 Like, now that itself is a whole other thing. Yeah, I've never done that part. other stuff, you said, but never cut like that now. Well, we edit, but, like, this episode, I can already tell, I'm going to, like, I'm thinking of the notes. I'll send my producer editor, the audio engineer. I'll tell him no edits. You're a pro as a speaker, so it doesn't need any edits.

Starting point is 01:04:42 So, no, there will not be any edits to this episode. Okay, that's interesting. And I don't usually make some, but then I also give my guest the opportunity to cut stuff. And sometimes I'm talking to guests. I mentioned, I named dropped all these big, fancy people, but you know who else? interview in my podcast. The Korean woman that runs the grocery store at the corner of my street, the world's greatest Uber driver, someone who's running an incredible mental health clinic. I love talking to the sort of every person who is changing the world in a small but beautiful way.

Starting point is 01:05:08 And that's a big part of my focus for the show. Because I believe that leaders don't necessarily have titles and don't necessarily have brand names and don't necessarily have books and don't necessarily have salad arenas. They are leading our communities and doing small, beautiful things. And so I'll tell you, Ryan, those guests are harder for me to get. They are a lot less confident doing the show, and they always want to listen to it after, and they change stuff. You know what I mean? So I'm trying to balance that. And the other thing is, you have a podcast release schedule. So do I. Manga is not as challenging as yours. I release a podcast on the exact minute of every single new moon and every single full moon.

Starting point is 01:05:48 It's the weirdest schedule in history. I love it, though. I love it. Well, here's why. I don't trust the Gregorian calendar. Nobody knows how many days February has. Can anyone explain daylight savings to me properly? Honestly, we made the thing up.

Starting point is 01:06:02 We've been using this Gregorian calendar for 500 years. The lunar calendar, my friend, now that's a calendar for you and me. The lunar calendar is 30,000 years old. Our holidays are organized next to it. You know what time it is by looking up in the sky. You're like, it's getting full. And when it does get full, by the way, it's not just the ties that shift, the menstrual cycles, the people go, people, our bodies are connected to the moon. And I used to sit beside the customer service department at Walmart and they'd get probably a 200% increasing calls on the day of the full moon.

Starting point is 01:06:35 Really? Yeah. It was insane. Ask any teacher, elementary school teacher, you know, what's it like in your school or your classroom on the full moon? And they will tell you for sure it's a different set of behaviors. I've asked every teacher that's fascinating to me. I don't know. I'm not a super mystical person,

Starting point is 01:06:52 but I'm just like, what is up with the moon? So I've pegged it to the lunar calendar. By the way, don't do that because the Apple algorithm does not understand me at all, why I'm releasing podcasts at 3.32 a.m. on a Tuesday, followed by 1.30 p.m. two Sundays away. But I'm doing that because I want books to be grounded,

Starting point is 01:07:09 centered, and long-lasting, and I'm trying to create the show. It's a 15-year podcast. My podcast goes to 2031, right? I'm releasing 33 lunar cycles takes me all the way up to September 1st, 552 a.m. 2,031. And so I'm, yeah, so, and even though my schedule is like, lax compared to yours, like, if you do the math, it kind of works out to about 26 chapters of my show every year, it's still like, I'm always like, oh, my gosh, I'm always like, oh, my gosh, I'm always like, I don't know if this happens to you, but I'm always like, right at the end, I'm like, oh my gosh, I put myself in these pickles, or I have to suddenly.

Starting point is 01:07:46 Anyway, the entire thing I've learned is it's way harder than I thought. Yeah. That's the summary of it. Like most good things are, right? Yes. The team, like you related to sports, the team that wins all those games, a lot of hard stuff preceded that, right? The preparation of practice and work and all of that, it doesn't happen without that. When something looks easy, people think it is easy.

Starting point is 01:08:14 Yeah. And that's the problem. How many times somebody said to you, Ryan, oh, what a great idea for a podcast. And the implication in that what I would call backhand a compliment is, had I thought of that, I could be doing it too. You know, oftentimes I hear from my blog or my books, oh, what a great idea. A thousand awesome things. Good idea. Actually, my idea was garbage. Writing down a list of things you like, man, anyone can do that. The gift or the challenge was doing it every single day for a thousand straight days, four years, no stopping. That was the hard part. My ideas are like, like,

Starting point is 01:08:45 It's doing it. Doing it. Exactly. The idea to execution, it's a big arrow, and you've got to do it, right? And you've got to keep going. The consistency has been key for me, I would say, and certainly key for you and what you've done. But, man, this is awesome. I really appreciate you coming back.

Starting point is 01:09:03 I'm excited to record for your podcast, three books. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you and the new book online? Every single thing I do is at neal. dot blog, just n-e-I-L-B-L-O-G. And I already mentioned my email address at the front of the show. Beginning of the podcast club. You made it to the end now, so let us know what you think. Looking forward to hearing from you, and Neil and I will certainly be talking again soon.

Starting point is 01:09:31 Neil, thanks so much, man. Talk to you soon. Thanks, Ryan. All right. As you can probably tell, I have a great time when I get to speak with Neil. We've had a number of conversations about the book writing process. podcasting and certainly had that really enjoyable dinner together in Toronto. So this was a joy for me to record with Neil.

Starting point is 01:09:53 A few of the areas that really stuck out to me. He had a side hustle for eight years while working at Walmart before deciding to do that full time. I found that to be amazing. And then the quote, he's the CEO because of his untouchable time. Think about that and how it applies to your life. life. The person got to the place where they are because of the practices and routines and rituals they put in place along the way. And that it's an excuse for us not to put this at least into part of our days, if not for a full day like Neil.

Starting point is 01:10:30 And then the science behind why extrinsic goals don't work. And implementing more intrinsic goals, more realistic goals for you to achieve to make you feel better and why the science behind that will lead you. to have a better opportunity to sustain excellence. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. If so, I would love it if you would tell a friend or two, perhaps one that has never listened to a podcast or the Learning Leaders Show and tell them why this one with Neil Pasricha

Starting point is 01:10:58 could be so helpful. Thank you so much for continuing to spread the word and support what I do on a daily basis. For that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you next week. Can't wait. We are opening up applications to our learning leader circle.

Starting point is 01:11:18 We do this once per year. Think back to the great conversation I had with the legendary Jim Collins, episode 216. He said, Ryan, before you get too caught up in your why, in your what, you need to be very intentional about your who. Who will be your friends? Who will be your mentor? Who will you help?

Starting point is 01:11:39 Who will you choose to surround yourself with? That will be the single. greatest determining factor in your long-term success. Think about that. I'd ask you the same question. Who are you choosing to surround yourself with to help you grow, to push you, to challenge you, and to be there when you need help. This is a chance to surround yourself with other growth-oriented leaders looking to challenge themselves and grow to become more effective both personally and professionally. We've added specific curriculum elements so that by the end of the year you'll have tangible outcomes to measure your growth and be a more effective leader.

Starting point is 01:12:18 These groups are intentionally curated and kept small. And time and again, the thing that people say they love most about these groups is the relationships they're able to build with one another very quickly. If you'd like to apply, go to learningleaders circle.com. That's learningleaders circle.com to apply.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 336: Neil Pasricha - How To Build Resilience & Live An Intentional Life

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