PNTV: Louder Than Words by Todd Henry (#257)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, Louder Than Words. Louder Than Words by Todd Henry. Subtitle Harness the Power of youf Authentic Voice I read Todd's other book, one of his other books called Die Empty that we featured and one of our members said, hey, you gotta check out his new book, Louder Than Words. I said, hey, that sounds great. Loved Die Empty. Recently interviewed Todd about both Die Empty and this book, Louder Than Words. Excited to share. Basic idea here is that Todd, when he looks at history and all the people who have made significant change, he says, look, the thing they have in common is they had a unique, salient, resonant voice. And we need to discover our authentic voice. And harnessing the power of that authentic, resonant voice is what this book is about. And now it's ostensibly geared toward everyone from artists and writers and entrepreneurs and engineers and managers, but I think it's really applicable to our lives. And that's what my intention is with this little episode, is to share ideas we can apply Now. Philosopher's Note, Bunch of big ideas. Check it out. Five of my favorite big ideas here. So let's start with how do we discover our authentic voice? The book is essentially all about that. Todd, as I mentioned in the note, is a consultant who is very good at taking the abstract and creating a structure around it and then translating that into practical exercises we can apply to our lives. So the book is organized around this idea of a voice engine. The voice engine has three components to it that we need to think about as we craft an authentic voice and authentic life. Here they are. One, Identity. Two. Vision. And three, Mastery. So if we want to have an authentic voice, we need to focus on our identity, our vision and mastery. He has three questions that help us do that that are worth thinking about deeply, no matter what you do in your life. Identity. Who are you? Who are you? What's important to you? What are your values? Who are you? That's the core question to get more clarity on your identity. To vision. Where are you headed? So you have a sense of your identity and who you are. Now, where are you headed? What are your goals? What's your vision for what you want to bring to life in the world? Right? What's important to you? And how is your work going to make an impact in the world? That's your vision. Three, how are you going to get there? What's your path to mastery? One, who are you? Identity. Two. Vision. Where are you going? And three, how are you going to get There, Mastery. What's your path to mastery? That's the basic idea that he unpacks throughout the book. And it's worth thinking about. I talk about it in the note that I kind of jokingly say, do you do these exercises? And I have space in the PDF to actually write your responses to it. And I strongly encourage you to press, pause, think about these things, write them down, reflect on them, even if it's just for 10 seconds or 30 seconds or a minute. The little micro repetitions of practicing, deepening our self awareness, any one of those exercises actually could change your life, frankly, but probably won't. But the aggregate of those tiny little repetitions lead to over time, a compounded effect that's huge. So if you're just going through this and staying at the high level of theory, I encourage you, if you're excited about it, to pause a little bit more and just do a little bit more of the repetitious work to drill the wisdom in a little bit more deeply. Doing these exercises, then finding ways to apply them is the way to move from theory to practice, which is obviously what this is all about. So anyway, identity, vision, mastery. Who are you? What? Where are you headed? How are you going to get there? As you embrace that, remember the second big idea, the big U. U. So imagine a U shape that will help us with this. There's our U shape, right? And Todd says, look, life has peaks and valleys. Any creative project, whether it's a piece of art or a business or whatever, and I extended to everything in your life, a relationship, parenting, whatever, follows this U shaped pattern. Here you are at the peak and you have a vision. You can see your destination. You want to get there, right? On the other horizon. Wow. That's it. It's beautiful. It's inspiring. I'm fired up. Let's do this right. Total clarity and inspiration. That's how we start creative projects. By definition, you're not going to start something you're not inspired by, right? Then as you go in to do the work, you enter a valley. And then here you are in the valley and that smile has been turned upside down and you're wondering, what am I doing? I can't even see where I wanted to go. I feel like kind of an idiot. I'm a little overwhelmed. Why was I ever excited about this? He says, you got to realize that all creative projects go through this. Otherwise when you get to this valley down here and you got a sad face and you're feeling overwhelmed and stressed, you're going to give up and you're not going to push through here so you can get that smile back and achieve that vision that you wanted to achieve. Simply acknowledging the fact that feeling the stress isn't a sign that something's wrong with you, but it's a sign that you're on the right path, you're pursuing something you're excited about. And of course, there are times where we're in that valley, we actually need to change course and it's just no longer the right path. And that's a personal decision we need to make. We talk about how to do that in Gabriel Oettingen's Rethinking Positive Thinking. But for now, let's assume it's a vision worth pursuing. Well, when you recognize that this you shaped process is inherent to anything worth doing, then you kind of buckle down and you do what needs to get done right, and you remind yourself of this vision that you had at the peak and you get back to work diligently, patiently, persistently, which we're going to talk about a little bit more at the end here. But remember that U shape and know that this level of inspiration at the peak is going to wane. That's just how it works. We want to develop the ability to be a master, navigate this plateau at the valley so we can get the next inflection point en route to creating something meaningful. The U Second big idea, third big idea is to run you your race. He's got a great section here. We talked about it in the interview that we'll be sharing soon as well. Run your race, not somebody else's race. If you want to have an authentic life and an authentic voice that's louder than your words and who you are, what you do, resonates deeply with the people you want to inspire, then you have to run your own race. You have to have a level of authenticity and a level of uniqueness. And you can't get that. If you're spending all of your time trying to. Trying to figure out what everyone else is doing, you're going to lean into their lane, is how Todd described it. If you're running a race, rule number one is run your race, stay in your lane. If you're looking over here, you're going to run that direction. It's not the direction you want to go. Focus on who you are and what you want to create, not whether or not you're keeping up with everyone else. In the note, I reference Sonia Lybomirsky, the great positive psychologist who talks about the fact that Happy People think about other people way less often than unhappy people. And when they do think about other people, they're not comparing themselves. They're not having envy or shame. They're celebrating successes and they're having compassion for any shortcomings. Right? So if you are obsessing about other people and what they're up to, realize that that's not helping you create an optimal life and actualize your potential. Run your own race. Think about who you are when you what your unique voice is and what your unique tasks are in this world and go do that. Fourth big idea and a way to support all of this is monk mode. So Todd references the guy who wrote Essentialism. His name is slipping my mind right now, McKeown or something. And this guy was writing his book, he was a little bit overwhelmed and he just had a ton of stuff going on. He said, look, I need to go into monk mode. I'm going to say no to everything else and I'm just going to be kind of a monk. From 5am until 1pm for nine months, all he did was work on his book. Todd talks about how important that is to remove all distractions. We've talked about the word decide, which comes from the root desir. To cut, you have to cut out other things that are in the way of doing great work. And Todd says, great work is expensive. You need to invest your best time in it consistently over time and if you want to do extraordinary work. And in the note, I joke that I was talking to Cal Newport yesterday when I wrote this note and at the end of all my interviews, it was a really good one on so good they can't ignore you. We'll be releasing that soon. But at the end of all my interviews, I always say, hey, how can our community learn more about you? Right? Where can they go? And when I said that to Cal, who's a professor at Georgetown, he laughed and said, it's actually really hard to find me. He said, I never joined Twitter, I never joined Facebook because I'm committed to doing deep work. And that's actually the title of his next book is Deep Work. And you can't do deep work if you're constantly paper cutting your attention through all the different distractions. We have social media, Internet, TV, entertainment, etc. You need to be willing to go into monk mode. I call it hermit mode. So I'm in hermit mode. I've been in hermit mode for the last year, since the beginning of this year when I turned pro. I literally created a new email address Autoresponder on the old one. If you need something from me, email someone on my team. If it's important, Obviously I'll connect, but otherwise we're good. I'm focused. I'm in hermit mode right now. I put almost nothing in my calendar other than interviews and my time blocks for creativity and time with my family. That's just it. I turn on my phone once a week and only because my wife wants me to when I take our son out for a little adventure to Whole Foods, which is a half an hour away. Right. Otherwise I wouldn't even turn that on. Monk mode, hermit mode, professor mode for Cal Newport, whatever your mode is. Entrepreneur mode, artist mode, parent mode, whatever. We need to discipline ourselves and be willing to be courageous enough to say no to the distractions. Create significant time blocks so we can do great work. Deep work is not done at a superficial level, so create the space. Getting fired up about that Fifth big idea is action and patience. So Todd says he's interviewed hundreds of people. He says the two words that come up the most often in conversations with people who have created a really powerful, unique voice. The two words are action and patience. Todd in die Empty talks about urgent diligence, where you show up with an urgency, yet you combine that with infinite patience. He doesn't use that phrase, but let's say infinite patience. You're going to do whatever it takes. You're going to work hard, action, diligently, consistently, for however long it takes. Action and patience. Really powerful combination. I reference a mantra that I use every single day that I talk about a lot in these notes. Haven't shared it recently, but Sn Gwenka, brilliant meditation teacher. Vipassana. If you've done that, you know what I'm about ready to say. He says work diligently, diligently. Work patiently and persistently. Patiently and persistently and you're bound to be successful. Bound to be successful. How awesome is that? Diligently, patiently, persistently, and you're bound to be successful. You're just committed to showing up, making today another great day, and you're letting the results take care of themselves over the long run. Todd talks a lot about if you just go after the next launch and the short term little things and squeeze that for all it's worth, you might be missing the opportunity to develop something really meaningful that takes time. You can't just snap your fingers and do truly great work. The diligence, patience, persistence, action and patience is huge. Oftentimes a monk mode or hermit mode or whatever mode is is a good thing to consider putting yourself into to focus and go deep. Run your own race, quit comparing yourself socially to others, quit envying others and just celebrate what they're doing and focus on what you're here to do. Remember the you peaks and valleys. All heroes journey. Have heroes journeys have this valley. This is part of the process. Quit beating yourself up and get back to work. Action plus patience and you'll get to your destination with a much higher level of likelihood. And then finally our voice engine. So if you want to create an authentic voice, identity, vision mastery, who are you, where are you headed and how are you going to get there? I hope you enjoyed. Check out the book in our interview for more and look forward to sharing more soon. Have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode. 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