#55 – 7 Books that CHANGED our lives

Summary

Books:

How to win friends and influence people – Dale Carnegie

The power of Now – Eckart Tolle

Come as You Are – Emily Nagoski

Women’s anatomy of arousal – Sheri Winston

Mating in Captivity – Esther Perel

Why we sleep – Matthew Walker

Essentialism – Greg Mckeown

War of Art – Steven Pressfield

Non-Violent Communication – Marshall Rosenberg

Transcript

[00:00:00] In today’s episode, we are going to talk about books, the books that have changed our lives the most. And when me and Erik did. We were planning this episode.

[00:00:14] We found out that we both have the same favorite book and we both found out that this one book we would actually recommend more than all of the other books together. And of course we’re gonna put that in the end. It’s here. And if I am to. I haven’t introduced you yet. And before that, we are gonna have a pretty fast paced episode. We’re gonna run two books that have really changed our lives and our habits for the better. And I’m here with Erik Bergman, the founder of Great dot com and one of my best friends and my buddy in creating this podcast.

[00:00:58] How are you?

[00:01:00] And they’re very good. I’m excited about this and looking forward to talk about books.

[00:01:05] And if I would tell eleven year old Erik that I’m going to say that sentence, he would probably punch me in the balls because he was not accepting of books. And anyway, I’m here with my good friend Emily, the host of this podcast.

[00:01:20] The first one to join me in the journey of Great. And probably one of the people I know who’ve read the most books to the hottest. So when he says something is good, I’m gonna trust him. So how are you, my good friend?

[00:01:37] I feel excited about this episode because.

[00:01:42] Like you mentioned on your Instagram, you have shared some of these books ideas. And then people have read them and reached out to you and say, Wow, I’ve read this. It changed my life. I’m doing completely different things now. And that was that took you a couple of seconds. And it might change the trajectory of someone’s whole life and the people they touch. So I’m super excited to do a episode about books. And together we are doing that becoming great podcast. And the purpose here is that we want to help everyone out there who wants to make the world better through entrepreneurship. So, hey, feel ready to get into it. Are you ready? Do you think you can keep up? Erik, I’m not sure you’re a really quick guy. Well, me fast pace. All right. So hit me the first book that you would recommend that have changed your life.

[00:02:33] So the book I recommend by far the most often is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And we will give you all these books with the authors and stuff in the description of the episode. So you don’t need to remember everything. But you know how to win friends and influence people has been the most.

[00:02:55] I think it’s been the book where I stopped the most when I’ve been reading it or listening to it and like contemplating a ha. And it goes. It’s so full with small tricks like that, you can apply in your social life that. OK. This is the first thing that comes to mind as he talks about dogs and he says, why do people love dogs? They do basically nothing, but they’re spreading positivity and joy. They run up towards you in the hallway. They always whip their tail back and forth and they make us feel loved. And he said in this book that if you become a person who you give people the same feeling as a dog, do you just generally showing love, generally smiling or whipping your tail, for that matter? You’re going up towards people when you meet them and like make them feel that, wow, you really want to meet them. And showing all these love, you will be a person who people love to be around and feel very good around. So just the simple mindset of thinking what would a dog do right now has made me change my behavior in lots of situations. It brings me a lot of joy and I can see how it brings joy to others around me.

[00:04:13] So who would you think would benefit from reading this book?

[00:04:16] Everyone. Everyone I think so from my perspective, something that was really interesting.

[00:04:24] I’ve always considered myself good in social situations. I’ve always considered myself to be a extroverted person who makes people relax and have fun and whatnot. And I realize just from reading this book that there are so many situations where I’ve done things that been less than optimal, where I’ve behaved in ways I might have make jokes on someone’s expense that I haven’t even considered the effect of. Or another part about this book is how to deal with them with different agreed difference opinions. So he says that there is no way to win a disagreement. You can only lose it. Basically saying that if you and I disagree on something and I try to win the argument, the best case quote unquote scenario is that I turn out to look smarter than you do and you turn out to look a little bit more stupid and not liking the situation and liking me less and liking yourself less, which means that the win, quote unquote, is just a failure.

[00:05:29] I think what you’re saying now is highly useful. And I think a better title for this book would be how to not make friends and influence. Because I think becoming likable and influential has a lot to do with how they’re removed PE behaviors that is causing people not to hire. That’s what’s going to be left is a person that people enjoy being around.

[00:05:49] Yeah, basically unlearning behaviors that we’ve learned and that we’ve learned from others and then applying that.

[00:05:57] Yeah. Or we’re we are still conscious and aware of.

[00:06:00] Yeah that’s true. Okay, that’s that’s my book. Let’s keep their first Taipei’s thing. What’s the first book on your list and what did you learn from it and how did it impact your life? One question at a time, please. I can’t be that. It’s fast paced. You decided the pill. Horrible. OK, let’s go slow it down to the face. What’s the verse saying?

[00:06:23] And that’s befitting for the title of this book, because the first book I want to bring up is called The Power of Now by Echo Towler. And this is a spiritual book. And I wouldn’t say this is maybe the best spiritual book I’ve ever read. But for me, it was hugely important because this book started to make me think about how can I? And make my mind more clear from negative thoughts, how can it be more presenting the moment, thinking less about the future and dwell on the past? How can I be with my emotions in a way that is healthy? How can I be more creative and have less fear? And I think any book that is causing you to think about those things can be hugely important for someone that is running a company, for example, who just want to be a better person.

[00:07:21] So you mentioned that you you learned about being more in the moment, thinking less about the future and less about the past.

[00:07:29] What in what way did this book teach you that, for example?

[00:07:38] What I realized when I read a book, because I was maybe twenty three, I realized that maybe ninety eight percent of my thoughts are not only kind of repetitive and unnecessary, they’re actually preventing me from being relaxed and creative. So, for example, let’s say that I’m going on an elevator ride. It’s a 10 second ride before I read a book. My natural thing to do would be to look at my phone or think about something that happened to me or what I’m going to do after lunch. So what he’s talking about in the book is if you instead spend those 10 seconds just checking in. How does my body feel? Would take a couple of deep breaths. Your mind will naturally slow down. There will be less thoughts, but the thoughts you have will be more creative, more peaceful and more fruitful. And I definitely have experienced that effect.

[00:08:37] Ok, so when when you say that the thoughts are repetitive and negative in many ways, what’s what’s an example of a thought like that?

[00:08:45] So there is a place for planning. I sit down today, I will do these four things. But to all they think about next, I’m going to do this. Next, I’m going to do this. Next I’m going to do this. Next I’m going to do this. That might not be as useful. So to create that awareness of, OK, right now, I’m yes, I’m not here. Some other place. And bring your awareness back to what you’re doing right now.

[00:09:11] Ok. So it’s negative in the sense that you’re thinking about something that takes you away from the moment. Hands take you away from life, in a sense.

[00:09:21] Exactly. So before I always hated cooking.

[00:09:25] Now I really enjoy cooking. And I think it has to do with that. I am more in the moment when I’m preparing food. I’m more thinking about I’m looking at the food. I’m smelling it more aware. I’m aware of how it feels like when I’m shopping at the tomato. And that makes me feel some kind of childlike joy from which cooking that wouldn’t be there if I was in a fantasy about what I’m gonna do tomorrow or what is this person thinking about me or good and bad or I don’t like that. I like this. This person did that to me.

[00:09:57] Okay, so let’s say you’re shopping a tomato. And before you read this book when you were 22 or whatnot, your head would be going on about something that happened or is something that could happen or whatnot. And now your mind is clear in a sense, which makes your presence with the feeling of the knife on your hand, the smell that comes from the tomato and. Yeah. Yes. Being with that.

[00:10:21] Yes. And I’m definitely not clear like a.. Totally. Like sometimes I’m meditating and I look really pressing from the outside. But in my mind there is the lumberjack song from my computer. It’s among productivities. OK. I’m always in the future. The past still. I’m just slightly more aware of when it’s happened. So if my mind is like a wild horse before it puts just running around like crazy, now it’s slightly more chill. And that has added life quality.

[00:10:47] Nice. So who is this book for? I think this is a. Affair.

[00:10:55] If you haven’t thought about how to think it’s a good introduction to spirituality and that is a bit of a Ruwi word, but it just means how do I get a call my mind, how do I get better understanding of my emotions and how can I become more creative and more in the moment?

[00:11:13] So you could say an introduction to being more pressing with life. Yeah. And understanding why that’s important. So let’s move on. Which is your second book you would recommend?

[00:11:28] So my second book is more or less category of books, and it’s about sex and relationships. So Adam, about two years ago, me and Johanna, my fiance and we. Well, for the first eight years, our relationship, we struggled with that. Our sex life didn’t work the way we wanted it to or I wanted it to. I always wanted a lot more sex than she did. And that caused a lot of problems in our relationship. And I felt very.

[00:11:58] Tied down, being not in control of this whatsoever. She had all control because whenever she wanted to have sex, then obviously I wanted to have sex and I felt that I had no understanding of what I could do about this or couldn’t do others. And then my friend Ken recommended me three books and they’re called Come Ask You Are Woman’s Anatomy of arousal and Mating in captivity? And once again, we’ll put them all in the description. And reading these books gave me for the first time an awareness of all the things that I had done wrong in our relationship that coursed.

[00:12:40] Well, Johanna, to want less sex. All the things that I’m actually in charge of here, I can control my own behavior, which will influence the situation. So before I read the book, I felt very powerless. I couldn’t really do anything about anything.

[00:12:55] But just reading this book gave me two kids that I could apply for change.

[00:13:06] So kind of again, it’s a book that highlights if I’m stop doing these mistakes, what’s gonna be left is a person that can create sexual intimacy in a more harmonious way.

[00:13:21] Yeah, definitely. So one thing that come from come as you are. Which I felt was very interesting is she talks about the gas and the brake pedal in a car and she refers to that as. Basically, everything in life is about either to procreate and have sex or to run away and hide from the lion chasing us. We pretty much only have those two reasons to live, procreate and survive. So everything in life is a reason to have sex or a reason to run away and hide. And in our current lives, pretty much all of us have a lot of reasons to have sex like we were in love. We are attracted to each other. Blah, blah, blah. But we at the same time have a lot of stress. We think a lot about how our bodies look. We think a lot about does this person really love me or are they leaving me or do. Does he feel. From her perspective and does he feel concerned that we haven’t had sex? So he’s actually not here. There’s all of these fears that land on the brake pedal that makes up for reasons not to have sex. And I’ve always tried to build up more sexual tension. So maybe I took a hotel room and booked that with a Jacuzzi or I arranged his beautiful dinner or I did things that added two reasons to have sex box.

[00:14:46] But I’ve never thought about taking things away from the brake pedal. I never considered that. And what I didn’t realize was whenever I rented a hotel room with a Jacuzzi, for example, I added some reasons to have more sex because it’s romantic and it’s beautiful and whatnot. But at the same time, at a lot of pressure and expectations like for her. Okay. Now, he booked his hotel room. He’s expecting us to have sex blahblahblah. So I’m putting things on the brake at the same time. And this book got me an understanding. Go ahead. Okay. What are all the things that are on the break and how can I focus on getting them away? So how can I make her feel safe? How can I make her feel enough? How can I make you take less stress out of her way? For example, I clean the kitchen, which is something that she’s thinking about, that it’s not clean, which becomes a reason not to have sex or how can I make her feel financially safe and not worried about the future, which is another reason not to have sex. Probably the biggest reason society’s problem. We’re thinking of money too much. So gave me two kids of understanding. Okay, let’s take these things away instead of trying to adding things.

[00:15:55] And that really changed a lot in my mentality, going from more or less paralyzed in this matter, more or less given up on ever getting anywhere, realizing that there is a lot of things that I can do to make things differently.

[00:16:11] Me that knows you well. I know that before you started doing this research, you felt powerless when it came to the difference in sexual appetite between you and your partner and afterwards.

[00:16:23] I know that you were a person that had hope. You’re saying it becomes one percent better each day. It’s not perfect and or years’ time. I guess this book had a big effect on you. So who would you recommend it for?

[00:16:38] Well, the books, most of them are actually written for women. But I would recommend them to anyone who won’t.

[00:16:45] So ironically, in today’s society, we are all expected to be good at sex. So like all of us want to be good at sex. But very few of us have ever read a book about it, have a sexual mentor actually giving us guidance or watch even a documentary about it.

[00:17:02] Best case scenario, we have this conversation that’s awkward with our father about flowers and bees and whatnot, and we tried to learn this from most of the time.

[00:17:13] Similar aged people with next to no experience themselves. So if I’m 15 years old, so try to have sex, then I’m trying to learn, quote unquote from another 15 year old or so woman. And obviously, we’re getting nowhere. And so I think if you’ve never read a book about sex, which I believe almost goes for everyone, then I think it’s so crucial to read a couple of books about sex. Just understand yourself and your partner and people around you. So come as you are. Women’s Anatomy of Arousal and Mating in Captivity was the first three books that I’ve read and I took valuable thing from each and every one of them form for me as a man, but would have been equally valuable for a woman to read. Mm hmm. Anyone who wants to have sex.

[00:18:02] Yeah. And it’s super interesting how everything else she learned about sex probably came from serious and poor. And there. That’s all about putting things on the gas pedal.

[00:18:11] Yeah. No one ever talks about the fact that one of the biggest reasons for couples not to have sex is financial issues, for example. And that keeps our head distracted in so many ways or worries about the status or whatever. Yeah. So that’s a whole category of books. Let’s get back to you, my good friend. Let’s see what’s next on your list.

[00:18:35] The next book that I want to talk about, I read recently and I really felt like it had a big impact on how I structure my life. And that book is called Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.

[00:18:48] Ok. And did you change how you sleep from it? I did.

[00:18:52] Why? Mostly I changed how I look at sleep because God is basically pointing out in this book he’s explaining many ways of how important sleeps, but he’s also showing that sleeping less. And he’s claiming that most people need eight hours and maybe even a power up during the day. And he shows a lot of research that shows that if you sleep less than that, that correlates very, very heavily to living a shorter life and pretty much all diseases that you don’t want.

[00:19:28] Ok, so if you sleep less than eight hours, you’re likely to live a shorter life. So you’re basically just using a credit card on your life by being awake now and then dying earlier.

[00:19:39] Yes. And this is the biggest misconception that I had about what it means to live longer. Because when I think about live longer, I think of it as my life would be the same until some point in the future where I will live a couple of more years before I die. And it’s very hard to think about the future in that way. We’re not that good at it as humans.

[00:20:03] So let me see if I understand you correctly. So you’ve been thinking, OK, I’m going to live until 85, but I’m actually just going to have a good life until 80. And then there will be five years of suffering because I’m old and constantly do anything.

[00:20:17] Yeah, or maybe even like this, that if I sleep good, I’ll be 100 years old if I sleep, but I’ll be 8 years old and I’m thinking, whatever, I don’t care about that. That’s future image problem. Okay. All right. So the big shift in me is that I don’t think of H in years anymore. That’s the biggest shift I spoke about. And it doesn’t make any sense for me to think about your age as how many years have I been on this planet? It’s just something we made up, and the only benefit, the constant thinking of H in that way is if you want to compare yourself with society or with other people. What matters to me is how old is your body and how close is your body to being sick or die?

[00:21:06] Yeah. So let’s say we could put it in percentage instead, like some big part of your life.

[00:21:11] Have you lived exactly Pursehouse. How big percentage actually come before your body will stop working? You will have bad symptoms of aging like wrinkles, deceases and let’s.

[00:21:25] Let’s say the first 90 percent of life is high quality. Yes. Well, yes. Taking a number that if you die of age in the first 90 percent could be reached at 50. If you’re living like partying drug addicts, rockstar. So then you’re only you’re already into the last 10 percent. But if you’re living super healthily, sleeping very well and all of that. Maybe your first 90 percent is when you’re 100, so. Or even 110 and xactly.

[00:21:53] So instead of thinking living longer, I’m have swapped that for the word staying young.

[00:22:00] I like that. I like that. So color and I stay young. Yeah.

[00:22:05] And then sleep becomes crucial to stay young.

[00:22:08] It’s crucial to stay young. And stay young is something that is happening to you today. And I think that is something that I care more about and that people care more about. It will make you more vital, look better, had more energy, be more creative. Yeah. And and the thing is, what I realized is that. I’ve read them, you know, like if you look at Instagram accounts to talk about business, honestly, God crush it. I only sleep five hours per day. And it’s such a shitty advice because you’re not saving any time, you’re just going to age quicker. So take you, for example, you build Catina Media in how many years? Three and a half, three and a half years. And then maybe some time before and after I get out of said, let’s say it. Let’s say it took you five years to let’s say five years. How much did you sleep?

[00:23:01] I actually slept quite proper, that would say I didn’t do anything else. But the only reason where I slept. Was that your hand. I wanted to head over to sleep. I probably slept seven hours a night. All in all, say, but I’ve always slept.

[00:23:15] But I know from you that you said that you were so stressed and time that you had to drink whiskey, you fall asleep. And that’s another thing in the book. I’m sorry to bring the bad use, but alcohol is horrible for your sleep. There’s so much evidence that even one glass of wine a day is ruining your sleep. Sorry. I’m sorry for the bad news. But let let’s say that you. Let’s just play with an experiment. Let’s say that you stressed so much to create this company for five years yet that maybe you only got 50 percent sleep efficiency. Yeah, that means that it actually took you 10 years of your life.

[00:23:50] That’s very well put. It has basically it only took five years in time, but it took 10 years off my bodies. It took 10 years of my life because I pushed myself so hard.

[00:24:01] So I play poker as a professional for seven years where I played for 12, 14 hours a day, slept horribly stressed all the time. So if I’m looking at my how much I made per year, I would have to put that probably in half to get a fair assignment of how much of my life that I actually put into this.

[00:24:20] This is super in-stream. An interesting perspective. I know I thought about it yesterday and you can compare yourself with others counting in years. It sounds cool to do it in a short time. Himuro.

[00:24:32] But it makes no sense from a Lino’s only benefit you get from that is to be able to look better compared to other people. That’s the only benefit of looking at your life in 8 years.

[00:24:43] It’s really interesting. Makes a lot of a lot of sense. Yeah. Cool.

[00:24:48] So we have to change how we look at H and the words we use to be able to make healthy decisions when it comes to sleep slowing down. Prioritize good food working out, stay younger is the reason I like that.

[00:25:04] And this book is foreveryone than I assume everyone who sleeps for everyone.

[00:25:09] And if you don’t like reading, there’s he’s on the Joe Rogan podcast and he’s a charismatic guy. I think it’s a one, two hour interview. She will get like most things from the book out of listening to that podcast.

[00:25:22] And what was his name? Matthew Walker. Matthew Walker. Get. So it’s 26 minutes. Do you want to do one wage?

[00:25:33] Yeah, let’s let’s do the full list. Let’s do the full list. I want to do it. So let’s book.

[00:25:39] So my third book on the list is called Essentialism by an author named Greg McEwan. And it’s basically about. How to get more out of your life by being good at saying no to the things that doesn’t matter. So it’s all about doing the things that really matter in life and say fuck no to the rest of it. So one thing that he says in the book is that if it’s not to hell. Yeah, then it’s a no. Basically if someone asks you to do something, if you’re not feeling oh yeah, I want to do this, then it’s a better option to say no because otherwise you’ll end up doing things you don’t really want to do, or at least you’re not passionate about it.

[00:26:23] Because let’s say there are a hundred different things you can do in your life today and. 30 of them are things you absolutely don’t want to do.

[00:26:33] So they go easily away for anyone, then sixty nine of them are things that you would consider doing. That’s pretty fine. And one is the thing that you would love to do. It’s much more likely that you’re gonna get the question about something that you would consider doing and you’ll then say, yes, but that means that you don’t have time to do or find that thing that you would love to do because you’re already busy doing something that you don’t really enjoy.

[00:26:59] So what happens if you end up just doing nothing? You missed out on something.

[00:27:04] So then you have time that you can actually use to find that thing you really want to do and see if you can try things. You can try something new, maybe go to a theater class. Read a new book. Look for something. Find a new friend. Whatever it is that you can instead look for things that you really enjoy.

[00:27:22] And that process is called being bored. Yeah. So pretty much changing out things that you kind of want to do to being bored. Yeah. Smart move in life. Yeah.

[00:27:34] I’m not personally a big fan of using the word board like that. I think that people associated with bench watching a Netflix show that they don’t really enjoy. And if you’re bored binge watching and that’s Flick’s show, then you’re not going to use your creative way of thinking about anything or getting anywhere. But being undistracted would say, let’s let your mind be undistracted. Don’t just scroll the Instagram feed. Don’t binge watch a TV show that you don’t really enjoy. Yeah, that was what I’m doing. If I feel that’s what I’m doing now, what I feel like I’m being bored with, for example, I’m on, I’m working and I’m feeling I’m not productive right now and my head is too tired to do something. Then I go and actively rest. So I look for that to be a it’s a signal from my brain. You’re not focused. Erik, go rest. And I do that instead. And I think clearing my schedule from things that I don’t actually want to do has opened up. At first it opens up a lot of time because you don’t know what you want to do. So what’s the next step? But if you. When I started using that time to things find things I really enjoyed doing. Now, I mean, the sad part about this is that every day flies by so quickly because I’m doing so many things that I enjoy doing.

[00:28:55] That is my experience as well from this concept of getting away with activities, relationships and behaviors, that isn’t really adding maybe eight out of 10 value to life.

[00:29:09] However, nine out of 10 is saying no to that dinner with the people. You don’t actually want to go to dinner to. It’s hard to say it, but it’s worth it. Saying no to drinking alcohol when you don’t really want to because you know, it’s going to take away energy from the next day. But. So he talks about this in something that called a 90 points rule, which is now the version of saying, hell, yeah, basically. And you can ask yourself when you’re in front of a task or whatever it is, does this how many how many points or percentage we can say out of zero to a hundred. Does this feel important to me or enjoyable to me? And if it’s anything less than 90, then you can easily say, OK, I want to say no to this. I have the I have the data that says that this is just a 60 whatever. And one situation that comes to mind was I was on a ski resort with a bunch of friends and we were on an after ski. And I just didn’t enjoy this at all. I wasn’t in the mood, but I didn’t want to be the first one leaving because no one wants to be the first one leaving. Or at least I don’t want to be the first one leaving. And I ask myself, okay, Erik, on a scale from 1 to 100. How much do you really want to be here?

[00:30:22] I’m like, if the maybe.

[00:30:26] And then I have given myself an answer saying, okay, you don’t want to be here, then it’s better to go. And then I could use that number to say, Okay, Erik, this is clear to me. I want to leave. And I left. I got rested and.

[00:30:39] It was just a lot better choice for me, but it’s really hard to make that choice because it’s a socially awkward choice.

[00:30:47] So who should read this book?

[00:30:50] I’m getting tired of seeing everyone, but I’m going to say everyone.

[00:30:54] Anyone who doesn’t know people who is funny. Difficult to say no or yes or is feeling overwhelmed.

[00:31:00] Anyone who is stressed and wants to get more value out of their lives definitely get less stressed and still get more things done because a lot of people asks me on on Instagram stuff, how do I get less stressed? What how to deal with stress? And I’m saying the best way to deal with stress is do not get stressed in the first place. And the best way of not getting stressed is to get good at saying no, because if you’re good at saying no, then you’re not going to waste your time. Doing crap is not important to.

[00:31:33] Yeah, a man, a man brother. Let’s move on. Yes. kimmey are now your number three. And then we’ll run to the favorite one or both of us. Dum dum. Cliff hanger.

[00:31:46] My number three is called the War of Art by a guy called Steven Press Field. And it’s not much of a war except it’s. So when I said this to Erik when a planned episode, he thought it was the art of War by Charles go loud s so it’s not datebook. I think it’s written in a similar way to. It’s very well written. It’s short and it’s like short chapters of maybe one to two pages so you can just open it up, read two pages and then put it away like that.

[00:32:19] So what did you. How did this book impact your life? What did you learn from it?

[00:32:22] So the book is talks about the balance, the natural balance between creativity and what he calls resistance.

[00:32:33] So what he’s talking about in the book is that every time you’re doing something creative which or productive, which can be anything that has the intention of moving you to new levels of the next level in life. So that could be anything that you’re building a company, you’re writing a book, you are having a difficult conversation with a friend. Anything that involves getting stronger abs.

[00:33:00] And anything that has the intention of making your life better yet will create something that he calls resistance.

[00:33:08] And he’s talking about resistance as a force of nature, almost like gravity. It’s built into moving upwards in your life.

[00:33:18] Okay. Yeah, I can relate. However, the feeling of this, it takes energy to do. Exactly, yeah.

[00:33:28] So he’s saying that is a natural force that will happen only when you move upward. So if you move downwards, you’re not going to have any resistance. It will leave you. So, yes.

[00:33:36] So you take it takes more energy to eat a salad than to eat a bag of chips.

[00:33:41] Eating about ships is not going to create any resistance for you at all. You have a free pass there.

[00:33:46] So it’s not taking me up either. It’s taking me down.

[00:33:49] Exactly. So this book, every chapter is basically pointing out different ways that resistance is tricking us from achieving our dreams and being creative, which I think is hugely important because there is a lot of talk on inspirational Instagram accounts, for example, that says follow your passion, do what you love, do what your heart says. And it’s very easy to. Confuse the feeling of passion with the trickery of resistance. That’s a right now I’m super passionate about watching Netflix or eating that hamburger. So this books makes it easier, I think, to pinpoint my coming from a place of pure passion and creativity here, or am I being tricked by this sneaky natural force called resistance?

[00:34:38] Ok. Is it passion that takes me up or is it simply just the feeling of being able to go down?

[00:34:46] Yeah. Is it resistance? Pretending to be passion?

[00:34:49] Yeah. So if it’s passion, it makes it easy to bicycle uphill. It doesn’t feel like a lot of work, but if it’s not passion, it feels like you’re a go at. Well, you’re actually going downhill. And that’s obviously a lot easier with a bike.

[00:35:05] Yeah. Something like not exactly exciting. So he’s talking about his way of overcoming this has a lot to do with discipline. And he talks about discipline can give you freedom to be more creative and live the life that you want. And I think that is important to some how take him. It’s very easy to take in the idea that just follow your passion, follow your heart. It’s gonna be rainbows. But he’s talking about how can I use the discipline to make myself better experience of life and be more free? Can you give an example? So he’s talking about that everyone have access to what he calls them use, and Muse is a Roman word that means inner spirit where creativity comes from and everyone has access to this. But if we only come to do those who are willing to do the work. Meaning if you’re gonna write something, your muse will only visit when you sit down with an empty page and spend time with it. And that requires discipline. So discipline comes before creativity.

[00:36:08] Ok, so you could.

[00:36:11] As long as you sit and really look for the good ideas, sooner or later they will come. But if you don’t go looking for the ideas, they will not.

[00:36:18] Exactly.

[00:36:20] So it’s easy to think of creativity as something that just imagine magically shows up, and at some point it probably can be. But most of the times it comes from the people who are willing to look for it the most.

[00:36:32] I think it comes to it comes natural. Whatever that means. Like if you look at Californication, you have the main character, a guy who’s just a screw up in his whole life and then get the super idea for a book in one day. Yeah. It’s like the Hollywood version of creativity. And some people are absurdly creative, but that’s maybe the top 0.1 percent of the population. I think many other people need some ritual of discipline to invite this muse into their life if they want to experience a reliable creativity that happens on a regular basis.

[00:37:06] Yeah, I read a reason to read the book, The Originals by Adam Grant. So really good as well. And he talks about create tippity. Well, he talks about the best way to achieve greatness is to do many things. And it takes like all these big gear like Mozart, Bach and these kind of guys. And he says that it’s super clear that the person who did the most different musical pieces also got the most really famous ones. But even if like I don’t know, let’s say Bach did 600 different musical pieces.

[00:37:42] It was only like six that got really good, that got super, super famous.

[00:37:47] And if you a six hundred compared to the next guy who did 50. Yeah.

[00:37:51] And that was the main difference. And then the creativity comes from time. The top performance is comes over time. Not he wouldn’t probably wouldn’t ever be able to sit down and just do those six that got really good.

[00:38:05] But that’s the one you see and that’s the last you hear of. And this ties so much into your last book, essentialism, because can you imagine how much Bach said no to other things to favorite a crate of six hundred pieces. He was saying no all day long and making space to sit down at the piano and practice, practice, practice, practice.

[00:38:25] Yeah, definitely.

[00:38:27] And I thought about this, you know, the concept of one hit wonders like this artists that does one good song and then they disappear. And I thought about this on a walk the other day that probably what happens there is that there are millions of artists that produce that first song or that produces songs. And some get really famous from one song. And it’s easy to think that they were good when they produced a song, but it’s probably just that they were lucky. I mean, if a million people produce one song, each one song is gonna be really, really good know from just pure luck. And that person had no idea what made it good and will not be able to replicate the same thing. And that then becomes the concert. The one hit wonders that people. They got lucky.

[00:39:09] Yeah. They have no.

[00:39:13] They don’t have the tools to be able to say no, they don’t have to understanding how resistance is fooling them out from their creative endeavors. But now maybe inviting them to more parties, more ways to enjoy life. And yeah, yeah. I mean things like that is bad, but.

[00:39:32] I think the discipline is also needed. I mean, think like the despacito guy did by far the biggest, most played song on YouTube. I think it’s like 4 billion views on YouTube or something insane like that and then gone. This was three years ago. Four years ago. Did one song that got a little bit attention and then heard nothing. Mm hmm. And it was probably just luck. That song first song came from it wasn’t that he was even close to being the best artist in the world yet.

[00:40:01] All right. I want to move on to the final book. I’ve prepared the drum roll, but both me and Erik Hasse’s our favorite book ever.

[00:40:11] I’ve read it three times at least. I’m going to read it many more times. I’m gonna create we’re gonna create the whole podcast episodes. And I’m saying episodes about this for sure. I’m gonna create YouTube videos about this book because it’s so absurdly useful in our life.

[00:40:28] Erik, the Bible.

[00:40:30] The Bible. Sorry, guys, it’s not the Bible. It’s nonviolent communication by Marshall Rosenberg, the by far most useful book that I’ve read in my life.

[00:40:44] And yes, as David said, I will create a lot of content on this book and we’ll reread it several times in my life.

[00:40:52] We’ll read it to my children, will read it to create a school for your children about this.

[00:40:58] I might actually create a school about it. So tell me about this. What have you learned from from Marshall in this book?

[00:41:08] I think it’s.

[00:41:11] Kind of similar to the other books for talked about.

[00:41:18] It talks about communication and what behaviors is preventing clear communications that feel good between people that creates connection. So do you have some examples of things that are that is violent communication?

[00:41:39] Well, the first thing that comes to mind that are learned from the books is not necessarily violent communication is. That a lot of the time in my life I’ve been listening to reply. I haven’t really listened to understand or listened to make you feel heard or listened to value you. I’ve been listening to say something smart back. So I’ve ended up giving a lot of advice. For example, even though that’s probably not what the other person is is looking for. So to get an understanding of. What people need in a moment, which is a lot of time, just someone to listening to those might sound like one situation that happens a lot in my life is that I’ve always had a lot of problems with my stomach and I bring it up every now and then. And. I am not looking for advice because I’ve already tried everything and everyone is giving me advice. But as soon as I say something about my stomach, everyone gives advice. Everyone goes into advising mode. And I’m just looking for empathy or understanding right now. And instead I get a lot of advice. I haven’t tried this. Haven’t tried that. Have you tried this? And it’s kind of feel like I’m getting guilt from not having tried absolutely everything. I don’t maybe have the energy to try everything, and I just want to be listened to. And this situation was something that I’ve understood from reading this book. Why? I just feel that I want to be listened to and I’ve been able to tell when to other people just want to be listened to. I don’t. Most people don’t want advice. If they want advice, they’ll ask for it. Most people just want to be listened to.

[00:43:10] So just sharing something, you get a response that is causing you to get like annoyed or get a weird feeling in your stomach and you don’t know why. Yeah. So I think with this, the reason you get that sensation in your body is because the communication is violent. And I think this books breaks down what kind of communication is violent? So when that situation happens, you’re okay. I’m reacting like that because if either what that person is saying or what I’m thinking or how I view the situation.

[00:43:45] Yeah, I really don’t like the name of this book. And I really don’t like talking about violence. Communication. It sounds so hard that I feel that a lot of people turn off to me, it’s like violent. Is to say, you fucking suck. That’s what I would think about if someone says violence. While most of the things in this book are just about less than perfect behaviors, that.

[00:44:13] Creates that that makes it harder to communicate and be honest with each other. So it’s I think one of one of the reasons why this book isn’t more famous than it is, I believe is is the name because it’s doesn’t say anything. And quite frankly, what even could scare me away from it.

[00:44:36] So.

[00:44:38] I feel a little bit overwhelmed, even trying to dissect what this book is about, because this is one concept that is called Listening. There’s probably 10 key concepts in this book that can have communication skills. So I would say let’s keep it pretty short and sweet about nonviolent communication from now we make a whole episode about it.

[00:44:58] But what who do you think should read it and how it changed your life?

[00:45:06] So this book, combined with the books about sex and relationships that I mentioned before, completely revolutionized me, mine and Jóhannes relationship, for example, and it made it so much easier for me to talk with her about tough things. It’s it’s partly about listening, but it’s also about communicating from a place of needs instead of judgments. What is it that I’m needing right now? What’s behind all of my words? What what are the feelings and needs? And it made it so much. It gave me a tool box to talk about emotions in a real way and also listen for emotions in a real way and to be with other people’s emotions. You know how to be present with them. And as you said before, it highlighted a lot of things that I’ve done wrong in my life, that I it’s more about taking those things away than it is to learn something new. It’s more about seeing which behaviors and patterns are not being useful for me. And it’s changed how I’m talking to you and my closest friends. I feel that I’m a lot better at listening and communicating and standing up for myself and a lot of things. It’s helped me how I’m talking to my my brother and my family.

[00:46:24] And yes, basically this is a book for anyone who wants to get good at communication.

[00:46:31] It’s deeper and more complicated than how to win friends and influence people. So I believe that how to win friends and influence people is an amazing beginners book. But this is the book that can change your life completely.

[00:46:46] So, yeah, that’s it’s as all the other books is a book for everyone, especially people who are interested in communication.

[00:46:56] Yes, I know what you said about it has revolutionized relationships. I can. I 100 percent agree with that. It has revolutionized my ability to be intimate with someone. And I’m super grateful for that. And the most important relationship it has improved for me is the relationship with myself. And it’s easy to forget about that because thoughts in our mind. It’s often a dialogue between different aspects of our psyche and when they are speaking to each other in a violent way of accusation and blame and punishment and victim mentality, we’re not really seeing things as clearly as we could. And we’re not being as loving to ourselves as I think we all deserve.

[00:47:40] Yeah, that’s very true. It’s been made a big difference in how I’m talk to myself as well and being aware of the times when I’m saying harsh things to myself. So anyone who’s got a self, a friend, a family or a spouse. Yes, everyone. Everyone would benefit from reading this book.

[00:48:00] I think so many times should be mandatory in school. I think this is more important than most subjects in school. So I feel like it’s time to wrap this up. Do you have something more before we go there, huh?

[00:48:14] No, that’s. Wrap this up. Quick summary. How to win friends and influence people. Power of now. Come as you are. Woman’s anatomy. Other. Also mating in captivity. Why we sleep. Essentialism. War of art. And most importantly, nonviolent communication. And yes, we will put all the books in the description.

[00:48:35] Yes. And please send two. Maybe Eric’s Instagram. A picture of you reading a book that would if we see that we have inspired you, that would make us very happy. And Erik, if somebody want to help us out and they like this podcast, it like what we’re trying to do here, how can they help?

[00:48:54] So if you go to your podcast up and you click the subscribe button, you’re greatly increasing our chances to get into the different topless everywhere. So far, we’ve gotten into the magical number of zero top lists, but we really get it. So please subscribe to our podcast. It greatly helps our chances to get out in the world because these topics are usually based on the percentage of people subscribing. So not necessarily the most listeners, but percentage of people subscribing. So please click subscribe. And thank you for today. See you next week, brother. Chairs by.