This 1 Book Is Worth More Than Reading 1,000 Books

There are lots of books I could suggest which are very important, which are very helpful. But in this video I'm just going to talk about one. The book is called Peaks and Valleys by Spencer Johnson. It's such a short book. But in this video I'm going to break down for you some of the key ideas how you can use it. And I heavily suggest you take the two hours to either read or listen to this book. I listen to books on audiobook and I listen to them a little bit faster. So it literally takes about an hour. I've actually listened to the book twice in the last day just to get myself re brought back into the knowledge of this book. So let me just go ahead and jump into it and share with you the core concept and some of the key ideas you can use from this book. So the core idea of Peaks and Valleys is that we all have peaks and valleys in our lives. It's kind of like a heartbeat. Like you don't want a flat line, right? It's always going up and down. And peaks are just as important as valleys. All things can happen for you, not to you. This is one of the big ideas that I would say comes from the book, is that nothing happens to you, it all happens for you. And that is a mantra or a belief system that leads to post traumatic growth. Now, one of the big ideas is that people stay in their valleys because they don't. They don't think that the peaks are possible. You stay in your valley in a lot of ways out of ignorance and also out of being a product of your environment, out of not being able to look out and see new things. And so when you want something new, it's going to lead you to a new peak. And when you start going up the peak, you're going to learn new lessons. There's a great concept that there are no mistakes in life, only lessons. And lessons are repeated until they're learned. And so as you're climbing a new peak, you're going to get new lessons and ultimately you can have a lot of peak experiences. But here's kind of the crux of the book. The crux of the book is, is that the bad things in people's lives happen because of what they do on their peaks. And the good things in people's lives happen because of what they do on their valleys. So let me say that again. The bad things in people's lives happen because of what they do on their peaks. We can all have peak experiences where we're having a personal peak. Personal Peak, according to Spencer Johnson, is when you overcome fear, when you do something that autonomously you really want. And so we can start to feel really good about ourselves. And through ego or overconfidence, we may then create unnecessary valleys. There's actually a different book on the subject which is really cool called the big leap by Dr. Gay Hendricks. And he has a concept he calls the upper limit problem. And the upper limit, according to Gay Hendricks, is when you start to experience some form of success and then you start to go outside of your homeostasis. Subconsciously, we all have a baseline for what we believe we're worthy of. So separate book on that subject is called hdl. Raise your hdl, which is your healthy deserve level or even work by Stephen Hawk or David Hawkins. David Hawkins wrote a book called Letting Go. And David Hawkins said that our unconscious will only allow us to have what we believe we deserve. Emotionally. If you don't believe you deserve something, then you're going to subconsciously self sabotage yourself. And this is what happens when people get on their peaks. They go up the peak and then subconsciously they do something stupid. You know, for example, you start making a lot of money and rather than being wise on your peak and investing for the future and putting stuff away and setting yourself up for future valleys, which will come based on just a changing external world or based on, you know, your own learning process, by not learning the lessons of the peak and by, you know, putting away stuff for future valleys, you blow your resources and essentially you create unnecessary valleys. But there's another concept and this goes back to lessons are repeated until they're learned. To go from one level to another in life, you have to learn certain things. One of my good friends just told me that, who had just sold his business, said that selling his business was kind of like the exam. It was kind of the end exam of that level to see if he truly had learned the lessons which would enable him to go to the next level. After a lot, he realized he did learn those lessons, although some of his business partners didn't. So unfortunately they're going to have to repeat the cycle a few times until they learn the lesson. In other words, they're going to have to go through some valleys, which in this case my friend won't have to go through because he did learn the lessons. And so now he's going to go on a new new peaks. And so back to the idea of Spencer Johnson where he says the, the good things happen in your life because of what you do in your valleys. We're all going to have valleys. Life is a journey and it's a beautiful journey. And it, it can't just be straight up, right? Like you're, we're gonna go up and down. We're all human beings. A lot of people don't like the valleys because the valleys are where it feels like things are going backwards or things are really tough. There's a great quote that says all progress starts by telling the truth. And so the valleys force you in a lot of ways to look inward and to be really honest with yourself. All progress starts by telling the truth. So let's just say you're climbing some mountain, right? You're going up a level of your life, whether, whatever it is, and then you haven't learned all the lessons. And so you start to go into a valley and the valley is going to, you know, it's essentially you resisting the change that you need to make in order to learn the lessons to go to the next level. When you actually learn the lessons of your valleys and are grateful even in those valleys, then you can create new and bigger peaks in the future. One of the things that Spencer Johnson talks about in this book that I think is really cool is the same principles for extending your peaks are the same principles for getting out of the valley. One of them is obviously gratitude. Gratitude for what you have, but also for, for, for everything that has been and everything that will be. Gratitude is very powerful. Humility is powerful. If you're not humble, you're going to maybe be on a peak, but you're going to create unnecessary valleys in the future. Whereas if you're humble in the valley, if you're happy in the valley, there's that great quote that there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. One of the reasons people stay in valleys for a really long time is because they have a victim mindset where they think everything is happening to me, right? Rather than if it's happening for you. If you're, if, if everything is happening for you, then you can turn anything in life into a peak. This is, this is what post traumatic growth is all about. And yes, certain things will, will happen. Tragedies will happen, unexpected situations will happen, health problems will happen, Family members, friends will make rough choices or even pass away. You might lose your leg, you might become paralyzed. If you come from the stance that all things happen for me, not to me, then you can learn the lessons of the valley again. One of the things that Spencer Johnson talks about in that book is he says what is actually true of this situation, what is the truth? And the truth is it's never as good as you think when you're on the peak, and it's never as bad as you think when you're in the valley. We have a tendency to over overthink that things are way better than they really are if, if things are going well, or overthink that things are horrible. When that is always, there's always lessons and there's always good in any valley. And once you learn that, you can move forward. This is actually, I think, a really beautiful lesson for trauma. You know, something rough happened in your life and that puts you in a valley, but you will stay in that valley so long as you don't learn the lessons from the experience, so long as you believe that that happens to you rather than for you. And yes, things can happen outside your control, but you are the one who ultimately defines the meaning of your experiences. And post traumatic growth means you actually take ownership of your past. A great book on this subject is called Time and Psychological Explanation by Brent Slife. And he breaks down the psychology of time. From a psychology standpoint, time is not sequential meaning. Time is not like the past is not behind us, which we can't access, and the future is not up ahead, which we can't access. Actually, from a psychological standpoint, we're always accessing the past, present and future at all times. Time is holistic meaning. The past, present and future exist simultaneously. And one of the things that Brent's life talks about in that book, it's more accurate to say that the present causes the meaning of the past than that the past causes the meaning of the present. What he means by that is that in the present we actually reconstruct the past and we. And we define the meaning of those experiences. And so me, for example, we've all gone through trauma or valleys or challenges, unexpected, et cetera. But me in the present, I can reconstruct that memory and I can think about how and why that happened for me and what are the benefits I've gotten from that. And thus in the present, I'm shaping the meaning of the past. And that's what Brent's life is saying. He said it's more accurate to say that the present causes the meaning of the past than to say that the past is dictating what's going on in the present. So you do have agency and the past is imagined. The past is a story. Yes, there were certain things that happened, but your meaning of it, your narration of it, and the use you get out of it is up to you. Another thing that he talks about is just simply extending the peaks. And this is just the idea that you can go from success to success to success by truly learning lessons, by staying humble, by always having a bigger future. This is one of the key aspects of, of psychology is the idea that as people, we are primarily in. Viktor Frankl hit this very, very big in man's search for meaning, which is that if you don't have a why to live for, you're going to struggle. You got to have a future, you got to have a compelling future. This is just psychology 101. Without a purposeful and compelling future, the present loses meaning. You're weight, you're distracted in the present. So you know you've got to have a peak that you're expanding and stretching towards. That gives you meaning and it also gives you purpose. It gives you something to stretch for, it gives you something to wake up for. Without that sense of purpose, adventure, joy, life becomes monotonous and you essentially, you have no purpose and you have no meaning. So it's important to have future peaks and that over time, those peaks will become more and more purposeful, more and more compelling, more and more meaningful. But those peaks are in a lot of ways there to transform you, to teach you lessons. Lessons are repeated until learned. This is just such a really good book. There's infinite lessons in this book. It's short. I highly challenge you. Grab this book, study it, read it. I know that I kind of gave multiple other book suggestions, but I think that the book Peaks and Valleys in a lot of ways is just a simple way of, of truly breaking down a lot of the deep psychological knowledge about how to move forward, about how to transform your life, and that the peaks that you will achieve will seem impossible to your past self. The peaks that I have achieved, the peak experiences, but also the, the, the achievements, the life I've created at the bottom of the mountain. It may seem impossible to get up there, but as you start climbing up the mountain, you start learning lessons, you start to build confidence. In psychology, confidence is the byproduct of past performance. And so as you start making progress, you start to build confidence. This reminds me of Dan Sullivan's 4C's formula, which is essentially that you have to make a commitment, but commitment leads to courage because you're committing to something above and beyond anything you've ever done. And that leads to courage, which is being open and honest about the lessons you need to learn, but also trying things that might not work. And then through your commitment and courage by going up the mountain, you start, you start to develop capability, capability that you didn't have before. You start to have skills, perspectives that you didn't have before. And then ultimately you start to develop confidence because you're making progress in a goal directed manner. And you start to see things and know things and believe things that your past self didn't see and know. And as you go up the mountain, you can see future mountains which your former self couldn't have seen. And so you are standing on mountains of knowledge and experience that are impossible for your former self to know. And you can also see future mountains that would, would be impossible for your former self to see. So it is a beautiful book and I, I hope you read it, I hope you listen to it, or however, however you do it. But it truly does explain the idea that all progress starts by telling the truth. Lessons are repeated until learned. And that you can't go to future peaks without ultimately learning the lessons of the peak and valley that you're on. And that if you truly do learn from those valleys, what you learn in the valley determines the sizes of your future peaks. And if you truly do learn, life is not a competition. There is no external competition. If you learn from your own experiences and truly learn it, then insane peaks can become possible. Because now you're a different person. And because now you're a different person, you can commit to different things. You, you don't have to keep repeating old errors and that everything in your life is happening to you because of the, of the lessons that you, you keep repeating and not learning. And so insane peaks await you as you learn the lessons of the peak in the valley that you're going through, that being in a peak or a valley isn't better than the other. Both are actually phenomenal. The, the more mature you get, the more you are actually happy, whether you're in a peak or a valley. And that your happiness is not external and that you, nothing is happening to you, everything is happening for you. And so as you go through even challenging times, you know, there's a concept in psychology called refractory period. A refractory period is essentially the length of time it takes for you to overcome a, a painful emotional experience, right? So you do go through a hard experience, but you can, you can have a very short refractory period sometimes if you go through a hard experience, like a trauma, some people, their refractory period is decades where they don't emotionally recover from the experience. But you can have Challenging experiences that force you inward and force you to look at. Look in the mirror. All progress starts by telling the truth. And you can, you can have very short refractory periods where actually it's almost immediate, where you're just. You're the observer of yourself and you're learning and you're humble and you're willing and you're really, you're fundamentally happy wherever you are. And so you can turn seemingly valleys into huge peaks wherever you are. You're super happy and you're. And you're learning and you're grateful and you're turning everything to your benefit and you're constantly learning. And this is how you go like, peak to peak to peak to peak to peak, where the peaks that you're pursuing are unfathomable to other people because you keep learning from your peaks and your valleys. And so you're just in a constant state of learning and growth and development, whereas a lot of people, they stay in valleys for so long because they just simply won't learn. Lessons are repeated until they're learned. And so the peaks that they're going for aren't, are like, they're not that massive, but they seem like peaks. They're really a molehill because they won't learn. But if they learn, they can climb that molehill which leads to a bigger mountain, which leads to bigger and bigger mountains. And so you can be climbing mountains that are so phenomenal because you are grateful, because you learn from the valleys and the peaks. And this just leads you to an amazing life. So my name is Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I hope you enjoyed this. Have a great day.