The 10 Principles of Rational Living with John Vespasian

Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back.

818-572-2910.

Welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio. I'm so thrilled you are with us on this beautiful, beautiful day. It's getting into fall, you can feel it, at least in the United States. Our guest is actually calling in from Italy, so we'll talk to him about, you know, that environment and that season and whatnot. But I do want to first, before we get into anything, I do just want to kind of take a moment and let's be sure that we are acknowledging all around the world the significance of of today because we never want to forget what happened here in the States on September 11, 2011. And it doesn't matter where you live, where you are, like John in Italy, it impacted all of us around the world because life as we knew it changed on that day. And I was at the grocery store this morning and it just so happened at the same moment of the first plane crashes. And I was very grateful that Publix, the grocery store here in Atlanta, they, you know, announced on the loudspeakers to just take a moment and just be still and just in memory of those who lost their lives, those who put their lives in danger, those who are protecting us since September 11, 2011 to today. And for all the family members that are living with the heartbreak of a lost one possibly, or an injured one, or just, you know, living in a new normal themselves. So if we could just all— on the radio it's hard to take a moment, but if we can all just kind of take a moment, whether you say a prayer, whether you just make an affirmation, or you just have a thought, in regards to, uh, that incident on September 11th. Um, everyone, I'm sure, around the world and the universe and the energy the universe creates, I will appreciate that. So to everyone out there, God bless, and God bless everyone, um, including America, but everyone around the world. Uh, okay, so let's switch things up because we're gonna have a lively conversation with our guests, but before we do We have a couple of great guests coming up. We have Dorothy Kuhn is going to be visiting with us next week. She'll be talking to us about 9 ways to respond to mansplanning. Mansplanning. You don't know what it is? Tune in next Tuesday at noon Eastern time to find out. Then we're going to talk with Chris Stefanik on self-sabotage. Now, shedding the bitches all around, just those bitches of fear and insecurities and negativities that we just, you know, get consumed with that then wreak havoc on our happiness and our joy and our personal growth and personal development. Exactly what we're going to be talking about today, and he'll take a different slant on it in a couple of weeks when we talk self-sabotage. And then I can't believe it, but we're rolling steadily into the October time frame, so we'll kick off spooky October with our Q4 Ask Bernadette. Now if you're wondering, yes, we're in the 9th month. We're rolling into ending Q3 into Q4. From a business perspective, whether you're an entrepreneur or a corporate professional, but even in life, we've had 9 months of personal goals, of highs and lows, of successes and missteps, of achievement and maybe disappointment. And so we'll kind of take a look at in our Ask Bernadette episode 2, what can we be doing to finish the year strong. So whatever stories, whatever questions, whatever advice you need, whatever challenge you might be having, be sure to put it out there on Facebook, on Twitter, on our Shedding the Bitch pages. You can send it to me directly to BernadetteBoas@SheddingTheBitch.com. You can put it out to me in a direct message on LinkedIn or even a post update on LinkedIn, wherever you choose to reach out to us, please do so because there's no reason for you not to be able to get the advice and the support that you need from myself or any one of our amazing guests like our guest today in order for you to shift your bitches to riches, as we say here. All right, so let's all work together to finish the year strong, but at the same time, we have every day an opportunity to hit the reset button. So do not wait until, you know, there is a Monday coming around or a new month coming around or, gosh forbid, a new year coming around. Let us not wait. Let us try to address it as we speak. Okay. So I am, I would need to verify. John, are you able to hear me?

Yes, I can hear you very well.

Okay, because I'm getting a— it must be BlogTalk's not having a good day because I'm getting some messages popping up. All right, so let me introduce the subject. So what we typically do is we'll introduce the topic. I'll give you a rich question, everyone, to really kind of ground yourself in the conversation we're going to have today. And then we'll take a brief break. I'm going to check on these technical issues. We'll take a brief break, come back, introduce Jon, and get right into the conversation so we have a good amount of time. For this conversation. So today we're going to be talking about— there's going to be a couple of things we're going to talk about. The whole subject matter that was posted was around rational living, and John talks about that in a very unique and powerful way, and he's got 9 books to support all of his beliefs and his viewpoint on personal development, but he also has this very interesting Twist on sequence and how do you sequence in your life and the amazing power of finding the right sequence of steps that will get you wherever it is that you're trying to go. And so I want to kind of blend into this conversation with John all the different topics that he covers around becoming unbreakable, thriving in difficult times, the rational living, sequentiality, and a number of other things. So really, your rich question I want you to ground yourself in for this conversation is: what area of your life seems to be out of sequence, seems to be out of sorts? It's not very logical to you. It might not seem rational, whatever is going on in your life right now, and, and therefore it might be providing you a great deal of stress, and you just need some tips, some advice, sometimes tough love in order for you to kind of get into the right sequence, get into the right mindset, get into that rationality that helps you take control of your direction, your journey, your destiny. So if you are tweeting with us, Facebooking with us, you can always use the hashtag #personaldevelopment and of course hashtag #shedthebitch. So we're going to take a quick break. When we get back, we're going to dive into this conversation. I'll get you an introduction to our guest and and we will start sequencing our life so we have a powerful life ahead of us. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com /shuttingthebitchradio and follow the program for all the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. Alright, we are talking rational living, sequentiality, or the sequence of life, and a number of other topics with our guest, Jon Vespasian. He is the author of 9 books around rational living. He has turned his international background and personal interest in history into a breed of personal development books that emphasize rationality, resilience, and learning from real-life examples. His latest books are titled On Becoming Unbreakable, that was in 2015, then in 2016 it was Thriving in Difficult Times. And now, sequentiality, the amazing power of finding the right sequence of steps. Welcome to the program, John.

Hi, Bernadette. Many thanks for having me on.

Okay, so first, before we dive into all of this, where in Italy are you? Because I'm imagining hills and green pastures.

Yes, indeed. I am in Florence. So you are perfectly right about the scene.

Beautiful, beautiful. And are— what season would you be in right now?

Uh, now it's, uh, we're in the middle of the summer. It's very, very hot.

Oh, okay. All right, then, as we're rolling into, uh, fall just a tad bit, but it's still hot. It is still hot. So before we dive into these specific questions regarding the subject, can you help us understand how did you kind of make this shift, make this move, and find your own way. And you talk about the fact that it's from real-life examples, or 9 books that you've been writing. So, could you give us some history about yourself, and then we'll talk about kind of what is your approach to personal development and those kind of things?

Yes, the transition to writing books started out of sheer frustration. Frustration, irritation, because after reading books of all kinds—personal development, finance, marketing—for decades, at a certain point I became very unhappy with the kind of books I could find about personal development because in most cases I regard them as very unrealistic, very fluffy, they are not based on facts. So I started to write, uh, 10 years ago, I started to write the kind of books I want to read, which are very much factual. They are based on real people, they are based on history, they are based on biographies. And what I do in my books is to basically go through hundreds of biographies of real people and try to draw principles that we can apply in the 21st century right now in our lives.

So is that approach that you've taken, by going and, and really, um, uh, going and interviewing and researching people, is that what you're considering the best, best method for personal development in your— in, in explaining it and in helping people understand where personal development comes from, is by kind of getting to know people and kind of their backgrounds and their histories and where they come from and their culture. Is that your approach to really understanding it?

Yeah, my approach is to examine the stories, why people succeed, why people fail, why some people become extremely unhappy, and on the contrary, why people sometimes become very happy with very little money. So I go through the stories, I try to draw principles that are universal that I apply in every century. I take characters from the 20th century, sometimes also from ancient history, from medieval history, from the 18th century. So I take personal— persons from all countries and different periods of history in order to have a wide range of experience and try to draw principles that are universal. Right.

And they're universal, but also they carry through time. So, you know, if people don't care about someone— if they say, well, I don't want to read about somebody from 150, 200, 500, 800 years ago, is your belief that, well, we carry forward some basics and some universal beliefs and principles that stand up today? Yes.

Let me just give you an example. The idea for the latest book came from Luigi Cornaro. He lived in the 16th century, and I was reading his work last year. He's the first person in history who is reported, actually proved, to have lived 100 and he lived 110 years. I found the story very interesting because he wrote about his system for becoming very old. And I find the, the story fascinating. Cornaro was very, very sick when he was in his mid-30s. He went to different physicians, they told him very clearly that he was going to die. He had massive inflammation, he had pain all over his body, and they told him to go home and prepare to die because they could not find any cure. And Cornaro recovered, and this is a fascinating story, recovered by finding the right sequence of steps. And this is what gave me the idea of the book, because what he found through trial and error is still applicable today. He found an almost perfect diet, an almost perfect lifestyle. He experimented with different types of food, and he came to a conclusion After trying different things, he recovered after 6 months by finding a very good diet that he maintained all his life. And he went to become almost vegetarian, almost completely vegetarian. He cut the number of calories. He consumed organic milk. I mean, he had a diet like we know today in the 21st century to be a very good diet. Very well balanced. And he also changed his lifestyle. He went from being a night owl to going to bed very early, to waking up very early, to having a very balanced life. And he lived, he lived very, very old, and he wrote about it. And this is why we know. So I found the story super interesting because Cornaro, he didn't start out to become very old. It wasn't his goal in life. He was doing something else, but at a certain moment, he was so sick that he had to find the solution. And he found the solution. Right. Uh, nobody actually believed in him. And, uh, the stories I tell in the latest book is how people find, uh, the right sequence of steps. And I think they are universal stories because the principles, uh, that, uh, show people how to find a way, uh, they are principles that don't change, uh, through the centuries.

Now, is it the Is it the sequence of steps or is it the, they're all the same principles of which if you hit one, you know, if you hit the first one the third time or in the third sequence, it's still gonna work for you? Or is this book and is this opportunity for someone to learn kind of what is the actual sequence of things that if you do in a particular order, then you would be able to transform your life.

Yes. Every person has a different context and different background, so it would not be very realistic to give you a perfect sequence for everybody because it doesn't work like this. But what the book does, and I think this is the important lesson from history, is to show the patterns that people use to finding the principles. Let me just give you an example. One of the principles that I identified in the book after going through really hundreds of biographies is that people who become very successful, I think also very happy, they always have a pattern of building assets. They build material assets, could be a company, could be a career. They build social networks, they build their health because they take care of their health, but they're always building. They are always building some kind of assets, whether it is intellectual property, ideas, innovation. You just mentioned the tragedy of 9/11 at the beginning of the show, which is totally the contrary, is destroying. When you see people becoming full of anger and destroying themselves or destroying other people. It's exactly the contrary. The right sequence of steps, the sequence that I would say leads to prosperity, leads to happiness, leads to well-being, always goes through building, through building assets. And I can just tell you a story from the book I think is very good to illustrate this point. And it's the story of Alexander von Humboldt. Humboldt lived in the 19th century. He's very well known in Europe because the University of Berlin in Germany is named after Humboldt. And Humboldt had a fascinating career because he hated his job. I found the story very intriguing that he became so successful and so well known when he started in the wrong place. He started completely— in a job he hated. He wanted to move to another job, but he couldn't find anything better. He had studied to become a geologist, and he found a job as a mining inspector. His job was to write reports of excavations of mining, and he really hated it. He tried years to find something else, but could not find any other opportunity. The market was very tight. But something happened, and his mother passed away, and he inherited a small amount of money. It's like someone inheriting a small house, a house from his parents. And what most people do in this situation is just to sell the house and to use the money to live more comfortably. They buy a new car, they buy some gadgets, and they spend the money, and they basically keep doing the same. Humboldt did something different, and this really drew my attention because he changed his life completely. He took this amount of money and he tried to start a company, to start a new venture. He wanted to explore South America, and he used the money he inherited to try to raise capital for a big expedition. He went to Spain, he was rejected. He went to France to talk to Napoleon, he was rejected. He went to Belgium, he was rejected 5 times. He went around Germany trying to raise money, he was rejected everywhere. And eventually, what Humboldt did, which is really a fascinating pattern, is to use the little money he had left to go there on his own. He walked from Mexico to Argentina with a friend, taking notes, making drawings. Eventually, after spending very little money, because he did it very inexpensively, he returned to Europe and he published his notes into 8 books. And overnight he became the most famous explorer in Europe. He built a career on that. He built a huge career. He was hired by the Russian government to explore Siberia. He became very wealthy and very happy. And the gist of the story is that Humboldt built assets. He used his drive, his interest in exploration to build assets, and he built these assets with these books that he wrote. And he published the books himself, but they made him famous, and he built a fantastic career from that. Instead of wasting the money buying a new house or a new car, he built assets. And this is the message that you will find in many of the stories, uh, sequentiality works when you build assets, right? That's—

that is fascinating. I have to say, that is fascinating. And I think a couple of things that really kind of stuck out there for me is, um, is one of the patterns that you picked up on, and when it— where it comes with to personal development, is it that, you know, something Does something major have to happen in one's life? It doesn't necessarily have to be hardship, but like a major, you know, shift, good or bad, in someone's life in order to send them on this trajectory? Or what do you think, you know, in all the patterns that you would have found, is there something common across all of those, all of those things?

Yes, in all the stories I give in the book, and I really give stories from different centuries and different areas of professional areas, I did not find one example of someone having a smooth career. Smoothness is not part of the formula. Every single example I found of people becoming extremely successful, extremely happy, they all have to face adversity. And this is I think an interesting pattern because human beings are very reluctant to change. When you get used to a certain lifestyle, certain career, certain friends, we are very reluctant to change. And the example I gave you about Cornaro, he changed his lifestyle, he changed his diet because he was going to die. He didn't want to change, but he had no choice because otherwise he would have died. Let me just give you another example from the book. This is the story of Jacques Cousteau. He was a very famous oceanographer, a TV producer. He did shows on TV shows about the ocean. He became very famous in the 1980s and 1990s. Cousteau. And few people know how he got there, but Cousteau didn't start to become a TV producer He wanted to be a soldier. He wanted to be an officer in the French Navy. He started to become an officer. He wanted to run a ship, to become a military man for life. The problem with Cousteau is that when he was in his 20s, he had a very severe road accident. He crashed his car and he broke his arms and his legs. And this is a very serious matter because you cannot really do anything. It's very difficult to recover because you have to be completely immobilized for months. He was in bed in the hospital for months. And after he was released from hospital, the doctors told him, you have to swim, because if you don't swim, you will never recover your muscles. Your muscles have completely atrophied after this period. You have to go swimming, otherwise you will never be able to walk or to do a normal life. And Cousteau, who didn't really particularly like swimming, he started to do some swimming. He found it very boring. Then he started to do some diving. And eventually, he started to experiment with making pictures under the surface with a camera. And he experimented. He took some pictures. Then he found that he could make some short movies. And eventually in the 1970s, when he was still recovering from his injury, he shot the first movie under the water. He made a short movie. And then he put together the footage. I mean, you have to realize it was very primitive because the camera he was using was experimental. But he had to swim the whole day, so he thought, okay, maybe I can make something out of it. Of course, he started to do these movies, and eventually he put together the footage and he sent it to a festival, a film festival in France, and he won a prize because people found the movie so weird. It was about undersea life, and it was very innovative because nobody was doing that in the 1970s. And so he said, okay, maybe, maybe there is a market here, maybe I can do something. And he became the first person to actually make this kind of movies. At the beginning they were very crappy, they, they, it was really footage put together, he didn't have good equipment, but he started to do it and eventually he found distribution. And from that, little by little, he got into TV shows He started to make shows about, uh, wrecks from ancient ships, and within 10 years he was a star. He quit the Navy because it was a complete waste of time, and he started to become a very famous TV personality. And this is how Cousteau became a great producer. But the, the, the lesson from the story is that when Cousteau was in the hospital He was really very severely sick. He took months to recover. He started to swim. Instead of wasting his time, he found a way to use the situation because some people become crazy when they cannot move for months. Right. But Cousteau always, always tried to use the time productively, and eventually he found this photography, undersea photography. And he made something out of it. And this is a story, a pattern, a pattern you find in many careers. People are doing something and then they get, they get blocked, they get an obstacle they cannot surmount, and they start to do something slightly different or something different. And if you are alert, if you are really awake, you will find a way to make it into perhaps another career, not the one you were looking for, but this pattern of using the opportunities, the obstacles, to find a new sequence of steps, you will find it in many successful people. Cousteau never wanted to be a TV producer, he wanted to be a Navy officer, but at a certain point he found the opportunity and he took it.

That is fascinating. That is fascinating. But so help me understand in your books, why are you so skeptical about positive thinking? Because a lot of what you've talked about with Humboldt and Corona and now Jacques Cousteau, there seems to be an element of that. So why are you skeptical about it? Well, there is an element of optimism.

Because obviously these people were fighters, they wanted to get somewhere, they wanted to do better, but they were not positive thinkers in the way that they had a goal, a super clear goal, and they didn't want to deviate from the goal. My criticism of positive thinking is that some people get stuck in a goal and say, "Okay, I want to become, I want to be a prima ballerina, this is the only thing I care for, I will never consider any other career." And then people just try to do it and say, I'm going to be positive, I'm going to make it, I'm going to make it. They cheer up themselves the whole day, even if the market they want to get into is very narrow. And this happens very often to people who want to be movie stars or they want to be music performers. These markets are very small, it's very difficult to to break in. You might find a way to use your talent differently and become very successful. You should not be focused on only one goal, and this is why I call the book Sequentiality and not Positive Thinking, because when people look for a sequence of steps, very often they end up somewhere else, not because they are positive thinkers. They are enthusiastic, They want to become better people, but they are not restrained by a very specific goal. I think it's sometimes a mistake when people say, I want to be this and only this. You might be closing the door to bigger opportunities.

No, I love that. I absolutely love that because you said it earlier. If you said earlier in, in one of the examples that if you stay alert you know, and you stay open— well, you didn't use the word open, but you said you stay alert. But if they— if people stayed open to considering what other opportunities might be shown to them, then they may find that they get to a place even better than where they think they're going. But there's so many people that are just locked in and closed off on a particular thing that they're working toward that they that they kind of eliminate or delete everything else around them. Is that what you're thinking?

That's correct, and let me just mention quickly another pattern of sequentiality. One of the patterns that you find very often in successful people, and I say very happy people, is that they solve their problems by moving. I mean moving to another city, moving to another country, changing location, and this is a pattern that in history is well established. Sometimes people become very depressed, they become very anxious when they cannot solve problems because sometimes they're in the wrong place, they're in the wrong environment. Maybe they're in a place there are no jobs, there are no career opportunities, and the, the, the solution is something very practical. You just have to find a place where better opportunities for you. Maybe where you live now is very good for somewhere else, for someone else, because there are people who want to live there because they have different ambitions, but maybe not for you. I mean, in the book, in this book, Sequentiality, I tell the story of Casanova. Casanova is known to be a great seducer, but few people know that he was a complete failure in his youth. He really was fired from different jobs, he was prosecuted, he wanted to be a lawyer, he failed completely, he enlisted in the army, he wanted to be a military officer, he was fired as well. It was a complete disaster. He only became successful when he quit, he left his country, he was living in Italy, in Venice. He had problem after problem, he could not find an opening, and eventually, only when he moved to France, when he moved to Paris, he became very successful. Within a few years, he became a millionaire. And this is because he could apply his particular talents to the right environment, to the right opportunities. And I tell you, people get unnecessarily depressed, unnecessarily stressed, when the solution sometimes is very simple. You have to find a place, you have to find an environment where there are better opportunities.

Yeah, yeah. I have to say that I can totally relate to that. I had to make a major relocation type of move in 1995. I wanted to, but more importantly, I needed to, and I was in one of those places that just wasn't very productive. Now, that said, not to say that since I've been in Atlanta, where I really feel is my home and my feet are dug in deep here, I then had to change and, and relocate where I was working because I was so miserable and unhappy and, and not really, you know, um, successful, uh, this kind of success I want today versus the monetary, monetary success I was having. And so that, that change, that relocation wasn't another state, but, but it was a whole different environment. So yeah, I fully understand that. That is all— that is very, very cool that you can see these patterns all the way through time and in environments and cultures and whatnot. So why do you think— and because you talk about this— why do you think that, you know, there is millions of people that are so depressed they can barely function? Why do you think that is? What is causing them to be so stuck that they can't make a shift toward finding, like we're talking about, finding where they're going to be the most productive and successful?

Yeah, I think it's a huge problem. I think only in the US there are 50 million people dependent on medication against depression, stress. I think it's a huge problem. Worldwide, we are talking hundreds of millions of people. In my opinion, it's a question of having the wrong philosophy. And this is why we were talking about positive thinking. People have very narrow expectations. Say, I want to become super successful by the end of the year, or I want to get married by January, or I want to have a child by June. I mean, they have these calendar-like expectations. And this is very unrealistic. It's very easy to get frustrated when you don't have your career moving very quickly as you want, or because there are many obstacles, and sometimes your plans are going to become unrealistic. And if you have this narrow mentality that you must have success immediately, you must have social acceptance immediately, it's very easy to get depressed because every obstacle looks like, like a mountain you could never surmount. And people get this short fixation, of short-time orientation. And this is very dangerous. And I think this is a philosophical problem. And in our time, in the 21st century, it is massive. I mean, we are talking about millions and millions of people who can barely function in society. They have to take medication. And what they need— I mean, some cases, of course, you need medical treatment. But in many cases, I think you need a philosophy which is more realistic. And this is why in my books I really underline that the first commandment of personal development is to become realistic, to become down to earth. Because if you get into abstractions, really you will actually lose touch with reality and you will become— you get into your head, you get isolated, and then you become very depressed.

Right. So what, what is that, you know, what is that one thing? And I love that the first commandment is to become realistic and down to earth. Um, what do you do? And I will want to mention, everybody, um, you can, you can Facebook and Twitter with John at John Vespasian, um, and just look his— look up his name and you're going to find him, and his last name V-E-S-P-A-S-H-I-A-N. P-A-S-I-A-N. You'll find it on, um, our BlogTalkRadio channel. You'll find it on our website. We'll be posting it all over the place. Um, and you can obviously find his books at amazon.com, uh, and go to an author page, his author page for, uh, John Vespasian, and you'll find all of his books there. And you definitely want to look into them. You definitely want to Facebook and, and, uh, tweet with him, follow what he's posting. And of course get access to his books. So what do you think that one, what one step can our listeners today take apart from buying your books and reading them, but what can they do to become realistic? 'Cause many of them probably think, oh, my eyes are wide open, I'm being realistic, but when you and I know that that's not the case, but what is that one thing that they could be doing to be down to earth and realistic?

If you remember only one thing from today's conversation, let it be this one. The best recipe, the best formula to be realistic, to actually to make a good decision, is to look at your life in terms of a lifetime. You are going to live 80, 90 years, 95 years, perhaps 100 years. When you make decisions, when you face obstacles, when you're trying to develop your ambitions, you have to look at things in perspective, in the perspective of your lifetime. You have to look at your career in the perspective of decades, not years, not weeks, not months. And people become very depressed and very anxious when they don't have the right perspective. I mean, you are not going to die tomorrow or next week or next year. I mean, you have decades. Normally, people have decades ahead of them. And you have to try to think in these terms. It's very difficult for human beings to think in terms of a lifetime.. But when you are choosing a career, when you are getting married, when you are making a big decision, you have to think ahead. You have to think in terms of what it's going to be like in 10 years, in 20 years, in 30 years, because you are going to live very long. Today, many people live to their 90s and beyond. And this is the right perspective. You just get this into your head, and you get the habit of thinking in terms of a lifetime., you will make hugely better decisions.

So, okay, but when I hear that and then I go back to hearing your example of, you know, wanting to be a ballerina and yet it's not realistic, the pool, the opportunity is very small. So how does one who might be thinking today that they want to be this, you know, and this is just a wild example, but they want to be a ballerina, but now they have to apply their lifetime to it versus the next, you know, year, 5 years. You know, how do they— what do you suggest they look at? The fact whether or not them working so hard for decades to become a ballerina only to, you know, then have 40 years of them needing to have another skill and something else that they're going to be able to do. Help us kind of translate that because thinking about a lifetime even at my age of 55 still seems vast.

Yes. I see your logic. The difference is between having a goal and having a direction. And this is, I think, is a key difference when you think in terms of a lifetime. When you're talking about a ballerina, say I want to be a prima ballerina and I want to of course you need a ballet ensemble, you need an orchestra, you need a theater. I mean, you really need a huge infrastructure. And there is nothing against trying to become a prima ballerina, but for me it's not just a goal, it's a direction. And if the direction is correct and say, yo, I want to get into dancing, I want to get into ballet, you will find a way. You will find a way to make a living out of it. Not necessarily about being a prima ballerina, you might end up having a dance school, or running some kind of dance floor, whatever. You will find a way to turn your talents, your training, into a way to make a living. But forget about narrow goals. The idea of thinking in terms of a life plan is to have a sense of direction. You need to have an idea of what you like, what you don't like, and try to make a living or try to develop relationships in the areas you like. It does not mean that you must have a narrow goal and then become completely destroyed when you fail. Let me just give you an example. Look, one of the stories I tell in the book is the story of Gregor Mendel, who was a scientist in the 19th century. And Mendel is famous because he discovered the laws of inheritance, how parents pass the traits to their children. Mendel, I took it as an example in the book because he failed completely in his career. His dream was to become a teacher. He wanted to become a school teacher, a physics teacher. He went to university in Vienna. He studied very hard physics for years, day and night. He wanted to get good marks. He got a degree. And he prepared to become a teacher, and he had to pass an examination. There was a certification board. You have to pass an exam. And the problem with Mendel is that he was a very shy, very shy person. He went to this examination for becoming a teacher. He could not put a sentence together. He was a genius. He was very knowledgeable about his subject, but he was a very, very shy person. And he failed completely. He was crushed. He was very depressed. And then he spent another 4 years preparing again for the examination. He did it again and he failed again. He could not speak. He was not a public speaker. He would have been a disaster as a teacher, even if he was a genius. And Mendel eventually found a way to use his talent for something else. So instead of becoming a physics teacher, he ended up doing experiments with plants in his yard. He was living in a monastery because he became a monk. And he was doing experiments with pea plants, crossing them and trying to find which plants become a certain color, a certain shape. He was taking notes. And eventually he came up with groundbreaking science. And the message from the story is that Mendel had a very clear goal, but the goal was small. He was too small. Right. In the end, he found, he found a way to use his talent. So he had a very, very strong direction. He had a very scientific mind. But if you have a very narrow goal like Mendel, you can be easily crushed because there are many factors. I mean, Mendel He wanted to be a teacher. In retrospect, it was very stupid because he was clearly not cut to be a teacher. But he believed his whole life he wanted to be a teacher. He worked, and it was only when he found himself rejected that he had to find another outlet for his talent. This is why I always say, right, try to have a very, very strong direction, but don't be very strict about goals because goals can change.

Right, right, right, right. And you can have goals, just don't be strict about them and don't be limited to them and don't be closed-minded that that goal might change and shift and totally go away, you know, at some point in time. Yeah, I absolutely— yeah, I absolutely agree with that. Okay, we're not done talking, but we do need to take a break. So we'll take a quick break, come back, and then I have some more questions for our guest, John Vespasian. Am I pronouncing your last name correctly? Vespasian. John Vespasian. Okay, so we'll be right back.

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Welcome back everyone. We are having a fascinating conversation with our guest John Despachian. He's the author of 9 books around rational living. His latest books are titled On Becoming Unbreakable in 2015, then in 2016 he had Thriving in Difficult Times, and the latest book that we're talking about is Sequentiality: The Amazing Power of Finding the Right Sequence of Steps. So check out his author page on Amazon.com. And you'll be able to find all, you know, the information about how you can buy one and/or more, which I would suggest, of his books. And then at the same time, you can always Facebook and tweet with him and just look for John Despatian and you'll find him on both Facebook and Twitter. So John, what is the common thread that, you know, 9 books and all around this idea of rational living. So what's the thread that you're finding through all of your work that you've done?

Yeah, the main idea that appears in the books is that human beings, we make better decisions when we try to be rational, but it's very difficult, especially when we are under pressure, when we are stressed, when we have severe health problems. It's very difficult for us to be rational. So the whole purpose of my work is to show people hundreds of stories, how you can make slightly better decisions when you're under pressure, because it makes a big difference. If you make a decision which is 1%, 2% better when you're in a crisis, the difference can be life or death. And this is why I think that we only learn through stories. It's very difficult to remember by heart the principles when you are dealing with a crisis. But if you know the stories, and you know the stories of different people who have gone through similar situations, the stories will come back to your mind automatically, and you will choose the right course of action because you know, okay, I remember this, I know what I have to do.

Yes, I firmly believe and agree with that. I think that is I think that's a truth that we all need to really consider. That when we go to buy, you know, self-help books or educational training programs, whatever the case might be, it's great to get a lot of numbers and facts and figures and statistics and all this kind of good stuff. But when you really think back on what do you remember, what can you recall from your learnings and what moved you, what emotionally connected with you, 9 out of 10 times it's going to be stories. And so I really want all of you, to look into John's books, uh, because like he said, he, he's, you know, interviewed, or he's researched, and he's dug into hundreds of stories, um, that have created these patterns and these, um, these, uh, examples for you. And I can guarantee you, just even the ones that he's talked about today, you know, Corona and Humble and Jacques Cousteau and Mendel, You know, there's one or two of those that I can specifically relate to. So it's a great way for learning. So I want to remind you, On Becoming Unbelievable— Unbreakable, On Becoming Unbreakable was in 2015, Thriving in Difficult Times 2016, and his latest is Sequentiality: The Amazing Power of Finding the Right Sequence of Steps. And keep in mind, we've been talking about examples that have gone back to like the 16th century. So they're very relatable, they're very relevant, and they're very pertinent to today and what you may or may not be dealing with. So I really, you know, I really suggest you look up and look into reading his books. So, John, we have about a minute or so. What last bits of advice or thoughts or a story would you want to share with our listeners?

Yes. Let me just tell you one thing that you have to avoid at all costs, because in all the research I've done, is the habit that completely destroys sequentiality, and is the attitude of being hypersensitive. Don't be hypersensitive. It's the fashion in the 21st century that people become angry all the time when they hear something they don't like. They go through the roof, they cry, they spend the whole day ruminating about some nonsense they heard on the radio. Being hypersensitive will destroy your life, will destroy your communities, will destroy your social network. I can give you examples in history, people who destroyed their careers, they destroyed their family because they were completely hypersensitive, completely disproportionate in their reactions. Yeah, stay away from this pattern because it will destroy you completely.

And amen to that, because, um, you know, if had I not had my shift back in 2008 or '09, I was, you know, on the brink of just destroying everything that I had. And it was for that. And I never heard it like that. I've never heard it in the, in the vein of the attitude of hypersensitivity. Um, I just was full of angst and I was allowing it to destroy me in, in every facet of my life. So that is fabulous. So everyone, take John's advice. Avoid the attitude of hypersensitivity. Uh, just let it go. Let it go. Let it go. It's not, it's not all about you, and it doesn't have to affect you, you know, in a way that makes you angry or depressed or sad. Or to his point about the 50 million people in the U.S., you know, that are on medications, let alone the millions and millions around the world that are self-medicating themselves simply because they haven't found that recipe. I love that. The best recipe according to John is to be realistic and make good decisions, is to look at your lifetime, not just today, a week, a month, a year, and a goal and a strict goal. Be open to considering the fact that you're looking at a lifetime. John, I want to thank you so much for being part of the program. This has been awesome.

Many thanks, Bernadette.

And for everyone out there, please have a rich and prosperous week. Come back here next Tuesday at noon Eastern time for Dorothy Kuhn. We're gonna learn about mansplaining. Have a great week, everybody. Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com.

See you next week.