Speaker 1: At one point in your life you should definitely like
Speaker 1: change absolutely everything about you and see what it's like,
Speaker 1: see how it goes. Welcome to the one you feed
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is
Speaker 1: Julian Smith, CEO of Breather and on demand relaxation company
Speaker 1: that helps you find beautiful, practical spaces that you can
Speaker 1: reserve on the go. Julian is also a New York
Speaker 1: Times best selling author of three books. Two of these
Speaker 1: Trust Agents and The Impact Equation. We're written with one
Speaker 1: of our other fantastic guests Chris Brogan. The third book,
Speaker 1: called The Flinch, has consistently remained one of the top
Speaker 1: Red Kindle books since it was published in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: Julian's online work has been read by millions. Here's the interview.
Speaker 1: Hi Julian, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to have you. I'm a big fan of
Speaker 1: your book The Flinch, and uh, I've I've read it
Speaker 1: several times. It's it's it's really wonderful. Thank you. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that put I put it up, work into it.
Speaker 1: I hope that it was good at the end. I'm
Speaker 1: happy you don't like that. Yes, So our podcast is
Speaker 1: based on the parable of of two Wolves, where there's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work and
Speaker 1: writing that you do. Yeah. So, um, I'm familiar with
Speaker 1: the parable, and I don't know what does it mean
Speaker 1: to me? I think that I think it's just more
Speaker 1: about reinforcing habits at its core, like try, I'm really
Speaker 1: it's very easy to sort of fall into that kind
Speaker 1: of magical thinking or whatever, but to sort of bring
Speaker 1: it down to its core message, which is really about like, like,
Speaker 1: build the habits that you, even if you're not that person,
Speaker 1: build the habits so that you can become that person
Speaker 1: that you want to be. Right and uh, And that's
Speaker 1: a sort of that's a question that can last a
Speaker 1: lifetime and maybe even should, which is why I think
Speaker 1: that story is very insightful and true and can be
Speaker 1: told probably over. You know, we'll still tell that story
Speaker 1: to our kids, and they'll plant that their kids, maybe exactly.
Speaker 1: And so, what are some of those habits you think
Speaker 1: that that are are important for you, that you work
Speaker 1: to build to to help you be the person you
Speaker 1: want to be. It's funny because you're asking me so directly,
Speaker 1: and I'm so not used to being asked directly. So
Speaker 1: so the answer is what am I constantly working towards.
Speaker 1: I have a million different habits that I'm trying to
Speaker 1: build at any given time, and I you know if
Speaker 1: you so. When I wrote that book, The Flinch, it
Speaker 1: was published in two thousand and eleven, it's a totally
Speaker 1: different place than where I am now. So I'll try
Speaker 1: to explain that difference so that you the listener, can
Speaker 1: appreciate exactly what it is that is different and how
Speaker 1: that sort of impacts your life. So um, into thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: I was I was starting like weightlifting, parkour, and a
Speaker 1: bunch of really physical activities. And basically the book goes
Speaker 1: into this in this detail about how the physical action
Speaker 1: of flinching is akin to the psychological behavior that we've
Speaker 1: developed to shy away from challenge, and we do that
Speaker 1: over a period of a whole lifetime. So that's what
Speaker 1: I did then, is I wrote books for a living.
Speaker 1: I got advances from publishing companies and I would just
Speaker 1: write about ideas that I thought were really interesting and
Speaker 1: and my life was did not. It only had the
Speaker 1: challenges that I decided to put into it. And so
Speaker 1: that would mean things like, oh, you know, that's very
Speaker 1: heavily into like physical exercise and training and all these things. Also,
Speaker 1: I was right challenging myself to write a book that
Speaker 1: was incredibly difficult and and and hard to to become,
Speaker 1: to make it as pure as I could. I hope
Speaker 1: I've succeeded to that took it. To contrast that to
Speaker 1: what I do now, I run a startup with several
Speaker 1: million dollars in funding. That I started there was a
Speaker 1: crazy idea that no one believed in, and now that's
Speaker 1: that has a great deal of its own momentum in
Speaker 1: the public eye. And uh, and I have ten employees
Speaker 1: and I'm going to thirty employees. And so I have
Speaker 1: a totally different life than I had three years ago.
Speaker 1: And I can just see all of my habits breaking down.
Speaker 1: So I was so good at like I'm so good
Speaker 1: at taking care of myself, at eating properly, at all
Speaker 1: these like positivity things, like I was very much in
Speaker 1: that shole self help kind of mindset, but trying to
Speaker 1: remove any magical thinking out of it. And now I
Speaker 1: still am that person who cares about those things. But
Speaker 1: I I understand when people are like I just don't
Speaker 1: have the time and all those things. So I'm I'm
Speaker 1: in this to combat those things. I've develop up a
Speaker 1: series of really strong habits which was like certain you know,
Speaker 1: time very rigorous, like time to wake up, check emails,
Speaker 1: certain time in box zero every day. You know. I
Speaker 1: have a gratitude diary, like all these that are almost
Speaker 1: like religious rituals to keep me sane. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have a bunch of them,
Speaker 1: but it just speaks to how under stress you can
Speaker 1: become a totally different person, which is not at all
Speaker 1: the person that you want to be if you're not careful. Oh,
Speaker 1: I agree. There's nothing like a startup to to sink
Speaker 1: all your your normal, normal, good habits. And there is
Speaker 1: a real I think everybody that's and not not just
Speaker 1: startups are entrepreneurs, but anybody who is working really hard
Speaker 1: on something being able to do those other things that
Speaker 1: are for lack of a better word, more nourishing to
Speaker 1: our to our spirit or to our to our mental
Speaker 1: and emotional health and in our body, those things fall
Speaker 1: away pretty quickly in and I agree it is a
Speaker 1: there's a lot of discipline involved in in trying to
Speaker 1: stay on top of those things. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: constant challenge. It totally is. And and uh it really
Speaker 1: the great irony of that whole thing actually is that
Speaker 1: the book that you were talking about at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this program is a book where you're trying to
Speaker 1: develop the habit of challenging yourself. And of course I
Speaker 1: had written this book, right and and so when I
Speaker 1: had this idea for this company that was working on
Speaker 1: like become a huge part of my life, now, I
Speaker 1: was like, my god, this is the hardest thing that
Speaker 1: I could possibly ever think of doing. It. It looks
Speaker 1: like it's doable, but it's incredibly difficult, an incredibly arduous,
Speaker 1: and it's going to take five years or something like
Speaker 1: that for sure at least. Right So, but I had
Speaker 1: written the book, and the book said do the hardest
Speaker 1: thing that you could possibly imagine doing. And otherwise what
Speaker 1: kind of like what kind of person are you really?
Speaker 1: You know? And and so I had no choice but
Speaker 1: to but to become that person, even though I was
Speaker 1: in that person, you know, turning myself into a CEO
Speaker 1: and turning myself into you know, like a like almost
Speaker 1: like a therapist talking to people that I work with,
Speaker 1: and you know, like and while maintaining my relationship. And
Speaker 1: I just thinks so I was very much like I
Speaker 1: like to think that I had some authenticity and in
Speaker 1: being a talker then, but I was really a talker
Speaker 1: now I'm now I've become a doer and uh, and
Speaker 1: that and the ability to go and just like that's
Speaker 1: going to be incredibly hard and it's gonna be a challenge.
Speaker 1: Let's go has really become a way of life for me. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it certainly serves you well in in starting a
Speaker 1: business or being the CEO. Do you want to tell
Speaker 1: us briefly about what your new businesses? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I worked on it for a year and a half,
Speaker 1: so I mean you could look it up if you want.
Speaker 1: It's called Breather, like take a breather, and we provide
Speaker 1: like sort of a network of rooms you can unlock
Speaker 1: with your phone at any time. I don't want to
Speaker 1: pitch it, but like, you can look it up. It's
Speaker 1: a Breather dot com. It's doing super well. It's scrowing
Speaker 1: really fast and uh, and it was it was definitely
Speaker 1: one of those things where maybe it speaks to sort
Speaker 1: of the message of this of this show, which is
Speaker 1: like like maybe listening to yourself and all these things
Speaker 1: are really one of those things where you're starting something
Speaker 1: and everyone was like that is totally stupid and you
Speaker 1: should not do that, and really led me from what
Speaker 1: I had like a super cushy life. Probably it was
Speaker 1: like in which I only did things that I want
Speaker 1: to do versus now where it's like my life is
Speaker 1: like a military exercise and precision as much as possible.
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, you're just like you should have at
Speaker 1: least one at one point in your life. You should
Speaker 1: definitely like change absolutely everything about you and see what
Speaker 1: it's like, see how it goes. Yep, yep, I agree.
Speaker 1: So let's let's spend a little time and and talk
Speaker 1: more about the book The Flinch and dig into some
Speaker 1: of those concepts, because I think they're really in line
Speaker 1: with a lot of what we talked about on this
Speaker 1: show and a lot of the things that themes that
Speaker 1: come up over and over again. So could you tell
Speaker 1: us again you alluded to it briefly, but what the
Speaker 1: concept behind the Flinch is? Okay, So here is the
Speaker 1: the quick and easy version of that we have. It's
Speaker 1: a really short book and it's actually one of the
Speaker 1: only free, permanently free downloads, so you can get from Amazon.
Speaker 1: It's not possible, no, no person can put a book
Speaker 1: on Amazon perpetually for free. But somehow that when we
Speaker 1: were when we published this, we figured that out. So
Speaker 1: you can get it for free even now, even though
Speaker 1: it's been published three years ago. So go ahead and
Speaker 1: get that book. And it's super short and basically what
Speaker 1: it's about. Highly recommended. Thank you. I appreciate that the
Speaker 1: book essentially says, here's a bunch of stuff that we
Speaker 1: claim we want to do. It doesn't matter what it is,
Speaker 1: it's not what the point is. Like, everyone has their
Speaker 1: own personal, really important list of things. Uh, they could
Speaker 1: be totally trivial. I want to get married and have children.
Speaker 1: That's not trivial, but they could be commonplace. I could
Speaker 1: I want to get married and have children and then
Speaker 1: or I want to travel to go to the Paris
Speaker 1: one time, or you know, it could be anything from
Speaker 1: that too, totally otherworldly, foreign things that no one thinks
Speaker 1: are in or saying at all. It doesn't matter. We're
Speaker 1: always talking about these things, we're always thinking about them,
Speaker 1: and we do not do them. So it is it
Speaker 1: is a and yet we have all the information available
Speaker 1: to us. And this is really like we're in the
Speaker 1: information age. And in this age, you can look up anything.
Speaker 1: Here's how to ride a bike and you can go
Speaker 1: to wiki, how dot com or what about website Google.
Speaker 1: It will tell you everything you need to know. Every
Speaker 1: single piece of information is there. And yet truly, if
Speaker 1: the information were accurate, you would have learned to do
Speaker 1: it by now, Like if the information was enough, I
Speaker 1: would speak Spanish properly, but I don't why. And so
Speaker 1: essentially the book is about this this thing I guess,
Speaker 1: which we call the flint in the book, and it
Speaker 1: is like the it's that X, which is like that
Speaker 1: that unknown thing which prevents us from doing the things
Speaker 1: that we want to do. And it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: the secret, hidden thing in every action we take or
Speaker 1: don't take. And that flinch is it's a fear response, right,
Speaker 1: it's you're describing that we have this response like if
Speaker 1: I were to slap my co host like I just did.
Speaker 1: There he flinches, right, and he doesn't have a choice.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a choice, right, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's not really about him. So so and uh, and
Speaker 1: you've got these guys, right, the train in this thing
Speaker 1: called the Spear Program sp e a R. You can
Speaker 1: look it up online. But it's like, essentially, like flinch retraining,
Speaker 1: it does really exists, and it's it's studied by a
Speaker 1: police and the military and all these other people. And
Speaker 1: essentially what this response is is like, you can never
Speaker 1: get rid of the flinch, this thing you were born
Speaker 1: with that when you fall that you're gonna close your
Speaker 1: eyes and protect your head. But you can retrain that
Speaker 1: thing physically. It is possible to retrain it. And so
Speaker 1: here's a here's a kind of mental retraining that you
Speaker 1: were you're going to go through. And um. In parts
Speaker 1: of the book, you know, I make people go through
Speaker 1: very simple exercises that anyone can do in their own
Speaker 1: house by and large, but that are very difficult to
Speaker 1: do for psychological reasons, a number of different psychological reasons.
Speaker 1: So essentially I was, I'm pointing out almost and the
Speaker 1: reason that I think this book works, and it's it's
Speaker 1: been read by like a million people or something. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason this book works is because it's speaking to
Speaker 1: you in your own voice that you have in your head.
Speaker 1: If I was out there going hey, guys, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: you the hosts of this show, like your assholes and
Speaker 1: and and your cowards or something. I would be just
Speaker 1: be a horrible way to talk to some other person.
Speaker 1: But I wrote that book, and because you're reading it
Speaker 1: to yourself, it comes off as being you talking to yourself,
Speaker 1: and so it makes it okay, Right, let's say those things. Yea,
Speaker 1: mm hmmm, h m hm. And the the idea is
Speaker 1: to learn to lean into that fear is that is
Speaker 1: that the heart of it that if we learned to
Speaker 1: lean into fear, then that gets us overdoing these things
Speaker 1: that we're not doing in life. Uh, you could say that,
Speaker 1: I think they It's very easy. You gotta be careful
Speaker 1: that cliches. Right, If cliches are cliches, you you naturally
Speaker 1: hear them, and when you hear them, you go, oh,
Speaker 1: I've heard that before. And as soon as you think, oh,
Speaker 1: I've heard that before, you instantly you buy a large
Speaker 1: you're going to discount it. So you have to be
Speaker 1: very careful in the way that you talk about an
Speaker 1: idea like And that's why we talk about that's why
Speaker 1: in that book that we talked about it that way
Speaker 1: because we we wanted to be a new way that
Speaker 1: you heard it in reality. You know, everyone has written
Speaker 1: every book ever. I know this, I've written several of
Speaker 1: them by this point, I've written a thousand blog posts.
Speaker 1: Every single thing has been said before. But for some reason,
Speaker 1: one particular message it hits you in the right way,
Speaker 1: and other versions of that message do not hit you
Speaker 1: in the right way. So when I wrote write the book,
Speaker 1: it's like it's almost like it's almost like being in
Speaker 1: a sweat lodge or whatever, and you're like, you've gotta
Speaker 1: you have to actually go there and be there in
Speaker 1: that book to feel it. Because if I were to
Speaker 1: explain to you what that book is, like we're talking
Speaker 1: about a l it's so trivial that you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that I need to read that thing, but
Speaker 1: I actually, in actuality, you probably haven't solved the problem,
Speaker 1: so you should probably read the book. Even me, I
Speaker 1: don't know that I can properly explain it. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of the magic of that thing. Uh. And that's
Speaker 1: why it's so hard to write that it requires the
Speaker 1: experience you're having having to go through it so you
Speaker 1: can feel the same way I felt when I wrote
Speaker 1: it in the same way you felt when you read
Speaker 1: it that several times that you've read it, right, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: And I think, but I think there are some maybe
Speaker 1: some some things you say in there that I'll point
Speaker 1: to specifically that maybe give some of the flavor and
Speaker 1: point out some of the things that I thought were
Speaker 1: particularly um interesting in the book. One of them that
Speaker 1: you you talk about is that you say, the lessons
Speaker 1: you learn best by are those you get burned by.
Speaker 1: Without the scar, there's no evidence or strong memory adults
Speaker 1: know what's safe, so we we tend to listen to
Speaker 1: what's to advice. But it's we don't learn lessons that way.
Speaker 1: M hm, right, m you don't exactly, which is actually
Speaker 1: exactly what I just said. It's like I can tell
Speaker 1: you something a hundred times, but unless you feel it,
Speaker 1: it will have no profound effect, right like, And you
Speaker 1: don't need And I think the exact thing that I
Speaker 1: say in there is like, you don't need to throw
Speaker 1: yourself into a fire to figure out that it's bad.
Speaker 1: But with that in mind, a lot of things do
Speaker 1: need to be felt in order to be uh, in
Speaker 1: order for the change to really occur. There's another thing
Speaker 1: that you talk about in the book that I really love,
Speaker 1: and you say, whatever decision you make reinforces what you
Speaker 1: do next time, And I think that is such a
Speaker 1: critical life lesson that That's the way I think of
Speaker 1: the term karma, right, is that it's like wearing grooves
Speaker 1: into a record. Is it just every time I give
Speaker 1: into that bad habit, I'm make it easier to do
Speaker 1: next time. I set that thing in motion. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what you're what you're getting at there, which
Speaker 1: is a really profound idea, which is that every every
Speaker 1: moment matters, not just what the impact of say, you know,
Speaker 1: let's just use I'm not gonna eat ice cream. Eating
Speaker 1: ice cream is not just the fact that I eat
Speaker 1: five hundred calories. It's the fact that I've made it
Speaker 1: easier to do it next time and next time and
Speaker 1: next time. Yeah, I I built They have it, and
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I don't know if they say,
Speaker 1: like the gray matter in your brain is actually affected
Speaker 1: by by the decisions that you make. And the reason
Speaker 1: creativity is so hard is because the decision process and
Speaker 1: the way that you think about an idea becomes reinforced
Speaker 1: over time, you know, and the way that people have
Speaker 1: new ideas is large, by and large by looking at
Speaker 1: something that they have never done before and looking at
Speaker 1: it in a new way and not knowing whether something
Speaker 1: is possible just because they have no experience versus people
Speaker 1: who have the experience and they're like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I can't be done. So so with that and the
Speaker 1: natural conclusion of that idea is everything you're doing right
Speaker 1: now is going to make you into This is who
Speaker 1: you are. You are the person as you act right
Speaker 1: the way that I don't know if I wrote that
Speaker 1: in there, but it's like this, this whole idea Christianity
Speaker 1: is like well known Indian stage and he has this
Speaker 1: whole thing where he's like, you could you take a
Speaker 1: rock from the garden and and you just put it
Speaker 1: on your mantelpiece and it's just a regular rock. Right.
Speaker 1: But then over over a period of days, if you
Speaker 1: just practice for thirty days, you're just gonna You're gonna
Speaker 1: like kneel and pray in front of the rock. At
Speaker 1: the end of that thirty days, that rock will be
Speaker 1: like a fucking religion to you, and and and you'll
Speaker 1: just be like, I love this rock. I cannot think
Speaker 1: of getting rid of it. It means so much to
Speaker 1: me because you're behaving in that way, and it would
Speaker 1: be a sin not to walk by the rock and
Speaker 1: and to and to you know, to to bow down
Speaker 1: to it just because you've done it and you've been
Speaker 1: doing it your entire life. So uh so, with that
Speaker 1: in mind, and it could put this incredible weight to
Speaker 1: think about this the things in this way, you can
Speaker 1: put this incredible weight on your shoulders where you're like,
Speaker 1: every thing that I do wrong is fucking my life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in a way like it kind of is.
Speaker 1: And and and actually one of my my false is
Speaker 1: that put a great deal of gravitas into everything that
Speaker 1: I say and thinking it's probably not always a good thing.
Speaker 1: But but I really think that that person that you
Speaker 1: are is being reinforced or being destroyed by every action
Speaker 1: that you take. The same reason you could probably you know,
Speaker 1: you probably always start going up steps with the same
Speaker 1: foot every single time, and it's uncomfortable to do it
Speaker 1: with the other simple things like that all the way
Speaker 1: down to why I have arguments with my wife and
Speaker 1: I have the same argument every time. Yep, oh, I agree,
Speaker 1: And I think it is easy to to be too
Speaker 1: heavy handed about that to be constantly every moment freaking
Speaker 1: out because I just did something I didn't want to do. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a middle ground all of that, But
Speaker 1: it is a pretty fundamental truth that that what we
Speaker 1: are doing is shaping who we who we are, and
Speaker 1: who we become. But the good flip side to that
Speaker 1: is I can change that at any point, hopefully right exactly,
Speaker 1: you have the ability to do it. And the earlier
Speaker 1: that you begin reinforcing another thing, the easier it becomes
Speaker 1: for that. I think that thing that you prefer to
Speaker 1: become a habit, and hopefully it will. You talk about
Speaker 1: in dealing with fear, you say you need to start
Speaker 1: recognizing your fight or flight response. This is the real
Speaker 1: challenge what you'll spend most of your time on because
Speaker 1: it's such a strong instinct. Every alternative you develop is
Speaker 1: highly valuable because it opens your options dramatically. Can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about what you mean there? Um?
Speaker 1: I think I think it's a version of the same idea,
Speaker 1: which is a simple thing that I'm trying to fix
Speaker 1: right now, is that I eat out a lot. And
Speaker 1: it's funny when you take these are really deep things
Speaker 1: in this book or whatever that the carry meaning and
Speaker 1: then you express them in relation to your regular life,
Speaker 1: right because then you're like, now it's just a boring
Speaker 1: anecdote compared to the depth of this thing. But the
Speaker 1: actually the triviality the anecdote shows just how powerful the
Speaker 1: thing is. Like I'm gonna I'm gonna keep eating up
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life and I'm never gonna
Speaker 1: learn to cook unless I every day I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pick up that knife. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know, like be j fog, do you know
Speaker 1: about this thing? This? Uh, this just method of developing habits,
Speaker 1: which are called the tiny steps habits, And basically it's
Speaker 1: like you get up and a series of habits and
Speaker 1: I know, I'll tell you what mine is right now.
Speaker 1: It's really really simple. I will wake up and if
Speaker 1: I go to well, get to my bathroom and I
Speaker 1: weigh myself as first day in the morning, very shortly thereafter,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna floss, I'm gonna brush my teeth, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take a shower. Once I take a shower, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get out. I'm gonna take my vitamins. That's gonna take
Speaker 1: vitamins I'm gonna undo, then clean, take the dish clean,
Speaker 1: dishwashers out, a dish out of the dishwasher. Then I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make coffee. I'm gonna bring it to my girlfriend
Speaker 1: like that. That is what I do. If I do
Speaker 1: not weigh myself, none of those things will happen. Like
Speaker 1: That's how how you know our our machine to machine
Speaker 1: parts of our brain work is that we're literally like
Speaker 1: animals just doing the same thing over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. So building those grooves the first two times,
Speaker 1: you don't have to think about it as being like
Speaker 1: every habit. You think about it in one thing. It's
Speaker 1: like if you say something like when I come home,
Speaker 1: I take my shoes off, and then I turn left
Speaker 1: in the kitchen and I put my hand on the
Speaker 1: handle of my chef's knife. And then once you do that,
Speaker 1: you'll be like, well, I guess I have to do
Speaker 1: something with the chef's knife, right, So, uh, that series
Speaker 1: it's it's actually not you know, people turn to try
Speaker 1: to turn the behavior changing. This really tough thing that
Speaker 1: takes a lot of that. But oh I got I
Speaker 1: gotta quick the five course bill. No, no, just put
Speaker 1: your hand on the knife it's literally all you have
Speaker 1: to do. That's why in one of my habit things
Speaker 1: that I have on one of my apps, it says
Speaker 1: clean for two minutes. And what that really means is
Speaker 1: is just start cleaning, because two minutes is a non
Speaker 1: threatening number, and then once you start cleaning, it will
Speaker 1: just happen by itself. I'm a I'm a huge fan
Speaker 1: and proponent of that, of that concept of you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a bit I set the timer for five minutes
Speaker 1: to get started on things I don't want to do
Speaker 1: or that I'm stuck on, to just get started. And
Speaker 1: momentum is such a powerful force. If you can, if
Speaker 1: we can just get moving in the right direction, often
Speaker 1: that's that's enough. And and I agree it. I think
Speaker 1: that we've we've talked about this on this show over
Speaker 1: and over, which is doing a very little bit of
Speaker 1: something is much better than and doing that consistently is
Speaker 1: much better than going to the gym once every three
Speaker 1: weeks and lifting for three hours. You'll be far better
Speaker 1: off doing some small exercise for five minutes a day.
Speaker 1: That's right, because the habit is there, and you can
Speaker 1: do that seven days a week or whatever instead of
Speaker 1: once a month. And I think you get that positive
Speaker 1: reinforcement by I said I was going to do this,
Speaker 1: I did it. I feel good about that, versus that
Speaker 1: negative reinforcement we talked about earlier, which as I said
Speaker 1: I was going to do this, I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: I got I'm a loser. Why bother? Why bother? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you could always build from a small base, much
Speaker 1: much easier. I totally agree, exactly. And you don't. You
Speaker 1: don't think about those things. And the thing is so
Speaker 1: much of it is managing your emotion, which is the
Speaker 1: only thing that that book is about. Um. Managing your
Speaker 1: emotion is all about. And and that's why I like
Speaker 1: the book is so short, because it makes you feel
Speaker 1: you you're gonna read it, and you're reading, like twenty
Speaker 1: minutes is so short. It's like an essay and not
Speaker 1: leave them. And then you've done, you're done reading it,
Speaker 1: and then you feel good. And so much of of
Speaker 1: you going, I don't know, doing whatever that thing is
Speaker 1: that you want to do comes from the sense of all,
Speaker 1: I feel good, so I'm gonna go do it now.
Speaker 1: And if you so, it's almost like a deliberate here's
Speaker 1: here's this thing you can a hold a lot of it.
Speaker 1: It's not a candy bar, you know, it's some other
Speaker 1: thing and that thing makes you feel good and then
Speaker 1: you can you feel like you know a lot of
Speaker 1: the There's like almost four reviews on Amazon by this point,
Speaker 1: and they're all like, I feel like I can smash
Speaker 1: through a wall when I when I read this thing,
Speaker 1: which is why the same you know, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: you read it quite a few times. Even I read
Speaker 1: it sometimes because I'm like, wow, I am amazing, Like
Speaker 1: I could do anything. After you read the book, It's
Speaker 1: it's powerful. It's also a very um it's a challenging
Speaker 1: book to read though it's not a feel good I
Speaker 1: mean I think, yeah, you do. You do get a
Speaker 1: feeling of strength from it. But there are some lines
Speaker 1: and I'll read one now that when I when I
Speaker 1: read it, I go, oh, ship, yep, that sounds like me.
Speaker 1: And most people don't actually want to face the flinch.
Speaker 1: They just want to be in a movie about it.
Speaker 1: They want the glory, not the suffering. They don't want
Speaker 1: scars because they like being soft. They don't want to
Speaker 1: be humiliated, they won't respect. They just don't want to
Speaker 1: earn it, which I think is a is a very
Speaker 1: good um summation, certainly of what my approach has been
Speaker 1: to things in the past, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: which ties a lot to this. I expect everything to
Speaker 1: be easy, fast, and now you know, and that that's
Speaker 1: not that's simply not the way life is and that's
Speaker 1: not the way change happens. And uh, I really like that.
Speaker 1: And when I read it, though, it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a sobering reminder that that if we want to be
Speaker 1: people that are worthy of being admired, or we want
Speaker 1: to be great people, there's a sacrifice and there's and
Speaker 1: there's effort that goes into that. Yeah, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a quote in there. It's like, it's interesting because I've
Speaker 1: never I've never gotten a comment about it. I don't think,
Speaker 1: I don't actually talked about but it's quote that comes
Speaker 1: from the Koran. And I'm not a religious person, but
Speaker 1: those kinds of old texts are really interesting to me,
Speaker 1: both religious and not religious ones. So something like do
Speaker 1: you think that you will enter into the garden of
Speaker 1: the light before the suffering that you that of those
Speaker 1: who have come before you? You know, like it's like, well,
Speaker 1: look at all because you just you just look at
Speaker 1: these people. I don't know, they're on stage or they
Speaker 1: have this great relationship, or you know, their dogs like
Speaker 1: just the best behaved or whatever, whatever thing it is
Speaker 1: that you're like looking and you're interested in and uh
Speaker 1: and and you're like, but why can't I like and
Speaker 1: I had that? Well, it's because you didn't do anything.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't come by itself. But people, the
Speaker 1: movie version of it is much easier. It's much easier
Speaker 1: to watch than it is to do. And that's why,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's why there's so few people like that.
Speaker 1: So again, it's not about like you being this perfect
Speaker 1: you know, uber mint or whatever the hell. It's really
Speaker 1: just like, like, be the person that you actually want
Speaker 1: to be, not the person that is easy to to be.
Speaker 1: You talk about there's a line you use and we
Speaker 1: tell was Again. What I like about the book is
Speaker 1: so many of the themes that I think come up
Speaker 1: over and over for us in the show. And that's
Speaker 1: part of what I was I'm interested in with this
Speaker 1: show is what are the things that keep coming up
Speaker 1: over and over again because they really point to some fundamental,
Speaker 1: fundamental truths and lessons. And one of them is if
Speaker 1: you aren't willing, you say, if you aren't willing to
Speaker 1: sacrifice your comfort, you don't have what it takes. And
Speaker 1: I think this gets back to that that that point
Speaker 1: of being willing to make that that extra effort and
Speaker 1: and being aware of needing to make that extra effort.
Speaker 1: It's it's the same thing you started companying. You know,
Speaker 1: they're always like, well, you're gonna have to be make sacrifices.
Speaker 1: They just don't tell you what those sacrifices are ahead
Speaker 1: of time, and they don't tell you that they're going
Speaker 1: to be hard, for example, right, and and when you
Speaker 1: have when you're getting married and you're like hearing, oh,
Speaker 1: marriage is hard, but you know what I actually feel
Speaker 1: all those things, And then when it comes to it's understanding.
Speaker 1: It's a conversation about loyalty a few weeks ago with
Speaker 1: a friend of mine and and I think he pointed
Speaker 1: out and he said something like, loyalty is not being
Speaker 1: loyal when it's convenient to you. Loyalty, the true quality
Speaker 1: comes from being loyal when it is not an easy decision.
Speaker 1: That's what loyalty is. It's not just like I'm loyalty
Speaker 1: loyal when I feel like it. It's I'm loyal when
Speaker 1: it's difficult. I'm loyal at war, not at peace. And
Speaker 1: and and so it's really easy that this rose colored
Speaker 1: glasses about yourself. And again, like talking about it right now,
Speaker 1: I can only probably talk about it in relation to
Speaker 1: myself because like I talked about in relation to you
Speaker 1: or to you know, do the listener or whatever. And
Speaker 1: I'm a dick. But it's like, let's let's not. Let's
Speaker 1: not have rose colored glasses about ourselves because it does
Speaker 1: nobody at disservice. Somebody, you know, a front of mine,
Speaker 1: there's two kids, and he said, oh god, now I
Speaker 1: have to be that person them that that my kids
Speaker 1: would admire. I don't have a choice now because I
Speaker 1: have to admire to somebody. You know, they're gonna be
Speaker 1: judging me. I better. I better be the person that
Speaker 1: they want as a bad I think that that whole
Speaker 1: thing points to this idea that there's no like, you know, courage,
Speaker 1: There's no courage unless there's fear. There's nothing to be
Speaker 1: courageous about unless there's fear. And in an attempt at
Speaker 1: a lot of times to eliminate all negativity from our lives,
Speaker 1: are all all difficult events. We end up in a
Speaker 1: position where we eliminate all our ability to build those
Speaker 1: muscles because we're never confronted with anything, because we just
Speaker 1: simply say I don't like that, doesn't feel good, I
Speaker 1: don't want that thing, or I don't want a life
Speaker 1: that has this or that in it. But almost all
Speaker 1: great lives have a pretty healthy degree of struggle, challenge, suffering, right,
Speaker 1: And you can see this in the UH in the
Speaker 1: what do they call it the hero's journey like that
Speaker 1: Joseph Campbell model twelve steps to get from the touch,
Speaker 1: from going from regular person to hero with the sword
Speaker 1: that kills the dragon and the returns from a great
Speaker 1: quest and all these other things. Right, and and you're
Speaker 1: just looking at the question, You're like, you'd always be like, okay,
Speaker 1: so where am I in this quest? Right now? There's
Speaker 1: a step in the in the quest, it's called the
Speaker 1: refusal to the call. So first there's a call, which is,
Speaker 1: here's this great thing you were called to do it?
Speaker 1: You know, you know, the lady comes out of the
Speaker 1: lake and she hands you like a flower or some
Speaker 1: other you know, a mythical story. And then part of
Speaker 1: that twelve step journey is not like a it's a
Speaker 1: different stewelve step journey is uh is the refusal to call,
Speaker 1: which is the hero says, no, I don't want I
Speaker 1: don't want to accept what this means. So he goes
Speaker 1: back to his regular life. But then he's given a
Speaker 1: second reminder. That second reminder says to him, No, remember
Speaker 1: that thing you forgot about. That thing is really important
Speaker 1: and only you can do it. And then you go out.
Speaker 1: And then the hero goes back and lady on the lake,
Speaker 1: miraculously or whatever is still there, and she has the
Speaker 1: flower and she gives you the flower, and then you go, oh,
Speaker 1: I have to go out and bring this on top
Speaker 1: of the mountain or whatever. So I'm going to read
Speaker 1: one last quote from the book. We can maybe just
Speaker 1: talk about it for a second, and then we're near
Speaker 1: the end of our time so we can wrap up.
Speaker 1: But I particularly love this one because I think it
Speaker 1: ties a lot of different things together, a lot of
Speaker 1: what we've just talked about, and it says flinch breaking
Speaker 1: is all about eliminating the pointless, cowardly and habitual and
Speaker 1: choosing the useful instead. Useful cannot be discovered in the
Speaker 1: abstract it has to actually happen. What do you think
Speaker 1: that's about? Well, I think it covers a little of
Speaker 1: everything we just talked about. You can't you you can't
Speaker 1: discover these things via somebody else. Um, you you have
Speaker 1: to you have to go on the difficult journey that
Speaker 1: you have to eliminate the pointless and the cowardly and
Speaker 1: the habitual and do all those things in order and
Speaker 1: search for what what is useful to you? And only
Speaker 1: you are going to know what that thing is. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. And it's like, here's a series of things
Speaker 1: that I do, Uh, should I really be this person?
Speaker 1: You know? And it's weird because there's some versions of
Speaker 1: it that are like that are that are just about
Speaker 1: habits and behavior like I I can do it by
Speaker 1: by putting the hand on the knife so that I
Speaker 1: can start cooking or something. But other of them are
Speaker 1: actually mental happits like I want to remember to be
Speaker 1: grateful every day or something, you know. They so they
Speaker 1: there's all these ways that you can just you just
Speaker 1: think like I'm really a robot or I'm an animal
Speaker 1: and I can just be trained. And the one layer
Speaker 1: or the one edge that we have on ourselves, and
Speaker 1: maybe others don't have it that you can actually train yourself.
Speaker 1: But but whether to do so is a choice, you know,
Speaker 1: and and and in order to do that, you have
Speaker 1: this layer of thinking that you can hopefully have above
Speaker 1: yourself to can convince yourself that it's worthwhile. And you
Speaker 1: get an opportunity to do that every day, and you
Speaker 1: can sort of start over every day, which is always
Speaker 1: a mess yep yep. And I love that idea of
Speaker 1: eliminating I love the categories the pointless, the cowardly, and
Speaker 1: the habitual, which tends to cover a lot of ground
Speaker 1: of where we spend at least I spend time that
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't mean anything to me. And I agree with
Speaker 1: the habitual part. And I say this all the time
Speaker 1: on the show. So much of the reason that I
Speaker 1: that we do this show is because we have to
Speaker 1: be reminded. I have to be reminded all the time
Speaker 1: that I'm making these choices all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm making the habitual choice or the pointless choice, and
Speaker 1: I'm not even aware of it very often. And so
Speaker 1: that's what I part of why I do this is
Speaker 1: to keep reminding myself, like, yes, these choices moment by moment,
Speaker 1: day by day add up and they matter, Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and it's uh yeah, and it's and it's not a
Speaker 1: thing that you would just figure out one day and
Speaker 1: then just live the rest of your wife blight by
Speaker 1: yourself that way. And it needs to be done constantly, exactly. Well, Julian,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time. I know
Speaker 1: you are really busy with the new company. Um, good
Speaker 1: luck on expanding the Breathers. I hope someday there will
Speaker 1: be one in Columbus, Ohio. And uh and uh we
Speaker 1: will talk again soon. So thanks so much, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. I really appreciate it. All right, take
Speaker 1: care bye, take care bye bye. You can learn more
Speaker 1: about Julian Smith and this podcast at one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash Smith