Willpower Doesn’t Work with Ben Hardy

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Today Show, Rachael Ray, Larry King, Love Whoa, whoa, whoa. This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way. Hey, J.J. here with a really great topic today. Today we're going to be talking about willpower. Yeah, it doesn't work. That's what we'll be talking about. Willpower doesn't work. And I met this guy at, gosh, one event, then I saw him at another event. And very intriguing. Number one author on Medium since 2015. His name is Ben Hardy and you're going to fall in love with him on this, on this podcast when you hear more about him and who he is as a person. But I was intrigued at first. I didn't even know that till I interviewed him. What I was intrigued first was his take on willpower. And as we're going through this interview, you're going to see that there's things that you can put into your life that can make weight loss automatic. Getting healthy automatic. I always like, you know, to remove the blocks and, and make things easy. And that's what this does. And it's super cool. So I'm really excited to have Ben Hardy with me today. He's got a new book, Willpower Doesn't Work. And he is finishing his PhD right now in organizational psychology. Just an awesome, awesome human being. And you'll definitely want to check him out too, on Medium. Again, he's the number one author on Medium and just a Super fantastic guy. We have incredible show notes for today, and he's giving away a great. So you'll want to grab all that@jjvirgin.com willpower. All right, Ben Hardy, welcome to the show. I am super excited to be talking about this topic with you.

Thanks, jj. I'm glad to be here with you as well.

Well, you know, I work in the world of weight loss, and I can't think of a bigger place for willpower to be an issue than in weight loss. Right. So I know you talk about willpower in a lot of different stuff settings, but let's just kind of dive into how did you get interested in willpower in the first place?

Yeah. So when I started to pursue PhD programs in psychology, I actually wanted to study under Roy Baumeister, who wrote the New York Times bestselling book called Willpower, and all of his research was on willpower. And I decided to go a different direction with my study in psychology. But there's a few hugely pivotal events that kind of have changed my perspective. One was that I grew up in a really rough environment. My father was a meth addict. He became intensely addicted after my parents got divorced, and he since changed his life. But during my high school years and things like that, his house and his environment was very. Just a terrible place to be. And my mom at the time was a kind of a workaholic. She was. She had really good intentions, but she was trying to run a company. And so really, I lacked all stability throughout high school. I barely graduated high school, found myself at 19 years old a year after high school, living at my Cousin's house, playing 12 hours of World of Warcraft a day. My diet consisted of Mountain Dew and Little Caesar's pizza. And I kind of just kind of stepped back and said, how the freak did I get here? And I started running, actually, because my cousin invited me to go running with him. So I continued to play World of Warcraft all the time, but I started doing a little bit of running, and he quickly quit. And during those runs, when I was kind of allowing myself to think I was outside of my house, my environment, all those triggers, I started to kind of be honest with myself and think about how life happened to me and all the traumatic experiences I had. I had a lot of really rough experiences, as probably a lot of your audience has had. And I decided that I needed to go away and kind of restart and figure things out. And so I decided to serve a humanitarian mission across the country. And it was like a light switch flipped, like Immediately I was able to be a different person. I was able to make different decisions, and I ultimately went on to become one of the more productive missionaries kind of in that mission. Um, and during that time, I read tons of books. I ended up filling stacks of journals and came back a different person, but realized it was kind of shocking when I came back because everything was still the same when I came back. The people were still the same. They talked the same. I realized all my attachments with these people were based on the person I was before, and I had no way of relating to them with the person I had become. And so I decided to go to school, you know, to different schools and all of my high school friends, and to pursue psychology. So that was one experience where I realized that who I was was radically determined by the environment, the situation I was in, and the role I was playing, and that my options, my ability, was very different. The other, more recent experience was becoming a foster parent. My wife and I have been foster parents of three kids for three years. They're siblings, and we actually just adopted them about three weeks ago. Um, but what's insane is when you get these three kids from a really, really bad environment. These kids had been neglected. Uh, they were all over a year behind in school. They all. I mean, our. Our five year old girl, when we got her, you know, she would throw tantrums, break stuff, throw stuff. Just angry and vicious and. And so it was clear that, you know, these people came from a different environment than we had. And, you know, it. It took an enormous amount to, you know, change them and change ourselves so that we could be patient and loving and compassionate and caring. And obviously, over three years, they've changed. We've changed a lot. They're in Montessori school. They actually, you know, get healthy, clean food. During 2017, we went completely refined, sugar free, as a family. Yay. Yeah, totally. And I know that you're. I know. And trust me, I've listened to your interview with Joe Polish on that subject, and it actually brought. Blew me away. Your interview on that subject was very profound. Oh, no, it was.

I mean, I'm getting blown away right now by, I gotta tell you. I mean, like, I'm, you know, the courage to adopt these. It's, It's. I mean, I liked you before, but now I'm like, this is incredible. And I'm just thinking about your story of, like, understanding how your environment didn't change, but you did. And like, now with these kids coming in. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

So cool.

Okay. Well, I mean, so. No, no, no, I appreciate. I'm winding this up, but. But there's a big economic study called the Equality of Opportunities by two Harvard economists. And basically what they did is they studied a person's potential for economic mobility, for a person's op. You know, their potential to actually increase their economic standing and situation. And a person's ability to upgrade their economic situation is largely dependent on the county they live in, not just the state, but the county. And the county that our kids came from in South Carolina is in the 9th percentile. So basically what it means is if these kids had stayed in the county they lived in, their chances of improving their economic situation is basically zero. The county I came from was in the 91st percentile, meaning that if you're born in poverty in that situation, your chances of becoming better off financially are a lot better. Um, but anyways, I realized how powerful environment is. And as. As a psychologist, you know, most psychologists, if you talk to them about willpower, they're like, willpower is the last thing you should depend on because it's such a finite resource. And if you study addiction, you know, addiction researchers will say that the, you know, if you're going to spend willpower to try to overcome an addiction, it's actually going to just make the addiction worse, because willpower is a very individualistic thing. It's trying to do it by yourself. It's isol. It's not focused on the group. And there's a really good TED Talk called the Opposite, or the TED talk is all about. It's called Everything We Know About Addiction is Wrong. And basically what it talks about is, is that the opposite of addiction is connection. You have to change through vulnerability and through relationships, through connections, obviously through your environment, through getting information like this. It's why your podcast is great, is because you're changing people's environments by giving them new information. Um, and so just to kind of wrap this up, I realized that no amount of willpower, you know, could have provided our kids the opportunities they have if they were still in a situation where they were given cough syrup to go to bed, where they were not taken to school, where they were given food from, like, a package all day, every day, where just they were sitting in front of a TV all day. Like, these kids situ. Their. Their potential was influenced dramatically by their situation. And so the book is really all about the power of environment, that your environment shapes you, and that obviously we can make choices, but the most profound choices we can make is to choose what environments influence us, the foods we put in our body, the information we consume, the people we surround ourselves with. And that if you do not proactively change your environment, then you're going to reactively be shaped by it. So that's kind of the essence of what the book is. And that's kind of some of the core experiences that led me to writing that book.

Wow. And that is, it's. At 30 years old, I. I moved in with a gal who became my, who was my mentor. And that's the biggest thing she taught me was to tightly, fiercely control my environment. And the biggest part of my environment I controlled were the people I interacted with and what I read and listen to. And honestly, that saved my son when he was in the hospital was not listening to the people were like, oh, he's never going to wake up, you know, blah, blah. I just was like. And it's interesting because I have a mother who's very much the glass is half full type of person, or I'm sorry, the glass is half empty. So what do we do? You know, how do you create this type of environment? So let's say someone's like, you know, look at the kids that you adopted and you growing up in this environment, it was a big thing for you to, to shift out of the environment. How does someone do this?

Yeah, absolutely.

And is this really the key then? If you want to change your life, you've got to first start. Instead of thinking willpower, you have to first start with what my environment is making me behave this way. Is that what you're saying?

Well, I think that, you know, in Western culture, we, we tend to disconnect ourselves with our environment. We don't think that we are a part of our environment and that it, you know, we are two parts of the same whole, that who you are in one situation is actually fundamentally different than who you are in a different situation. And so I think that the first step is being mindful. Mindfulness is obviously becoming a popular topic, but the definition in psychological terms is that it's, it's an awareness of context and awareness of how that context is influencing you. And if you're truly mindful, you'll realize that you can actually create the contexts that you're in. And when you believe you can do that, and when you know you can do that, then you can actually believe that you can change. And so it's not having a fixed mindset, it's more having a growth mindset and realizing that you're fluid, you know, And I Know that you've talked a lot about epigenetics and about how, you know your genes and stuff like that. You know, I talk about epigenetics and willpower doesn't work that you're. That at the cellular level, you know, your biological expression is the influence of the environments that turn on and off the, the genes. And so, you know, at a biological level, at a psychological level, at a really, you know, at an identity level, who you are is based on your situation. And so I think that that mindful realization is kind of the first key. There's a quote from Marshall Goldsmith. He wrote the book Triggers, and he basically said, if we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. So step one is just mindfulness. That you are being shaped by your environment, that your choices are influenced by your environment, and that if you want to make better choices, you've got to start controlling the environment. I mean, obviously the first easy step is just avoidance of trying to use willpower. So removing things like when my wife and I, we went a year sugar free last year, first and easy step was just literally take all the sugar out of our house. And then we, I know, isn't this.

So obvious to people? I tell people, I go, if you like, you can't put, I know me like if I had mocha chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer at 10 o' clock at night, I'm going to go eat it. I mean, it's just like I'm going to. Or if I had like, you know, popcorn, you know, so why do that to yourself? Why, why try to put yourself in that situation? If willpower worked, we wouldn't be here as a people group, right? Like we're hardwired to go seek those things out. Why try to overcome your biology there? It doesn't make any sense. It's just mean at the core level.

It's very mean. I mean, it's, it's willpower. So I was talking to Dan Sullivan and he, you know, I, he, I was telling him about the title of my book, Willpower Doesn't Work. And he said, well, actually willpower does work, but it works at the expense of everything else. And so like, if you're willing to go there, if you're going to put yourself through that torture, you're going to ruin everything else in your life. But yeah, so I mean, step one is just literally remove the stuff. Why put yourself to the torture of having to make the decision? Clayton Christensen, he's a Harvard business professor, he says that 100% commitment is easier than 98% commitment, because if you're 98% committed, that means you leave everything up to the. To the situation you're in. Every situation you're in, you have to make a decision. So it's like, you know, if you're 98% committed, usually that means you haven't quite made the decision. And if you're indecisive, you're screwed. And so you left yourself out. Well, basically what you did was you left that. You left it up to the situation rather than deciding how you would act in the situation. And so Michael Jordan, he says that once I made a decision, I never thought about it again. So basically how I've broken it down is that willpower is the product of basically four things. One is that you haven't made a decision and so you actually aren't yet sure what you're going to do. And another word for willpower is decision fatigue. It happens when you have to make a lot of decisions. And there's a book called the Paradox of Choice, meaning when you have too many decisions, you end up not making any. And so if you just make one choice that you're going to do something, whether it's be sugar free or that you're going to quit smoking, like, obviously you've got to put a lot of external things in place. But step one is you actually have to make a decision. Step two, you know, you have to get clear on the why of the decision. You know, if your why is compelling, you'll figure out how. Step three is you need to start becoming invested financially in the decision. So if you actually start investing money in good food and in a personal trainer and a gym membership, if you. If you start actually buying books like JJ's, if you start investing your time, if you. But money, money is a really big thing. And interestingly, like, it's not just psychological. Like, I've spent my whole PhD studying the difference between wannabe entrepreneurs and actual entrepreneurs. And the change that happens when someone goes from wanting to do something to actually believing they are that thing is when they start investing money in it. Like, when you start investing dollars in something, you become really committed to it and you start wrapping your identity around it. Um, and I would say probably if someone hasn't made a shift yet where they just see themselves as a type of person, because once you have an identity shift, once you see yourself as a healthy person that doesn't eat sugar, then it's not as hard to kind of battle against yourself. Because your identity is different.

I've always felt like the best thing you could do for someone is charge them slightly more than what they feel they can afford. It's true, right? Because then they take it seriously.

Well, what's crazy is, is if you read the Alchemist, which is a totally spiritual book, one of the things they talk about, Paul Coelho talks about in the Alchemist, is that, you know, if you've read the book, the little boy who's like the shepherd boy, he meets, you know, the king, the African king, Melchizedek. And the king requires him to pay like six of his sheep, one tenth. And. And then he tells the boy exactly what he already knows he needs to do. He needs to go to the pyramids to find his treasure. And the kid said, why did I need to give you 10, 10% of my money to do this? And he said, I made you give me those things so that it would help you make the decision. And so I think that one of the most powerful, whether it be spiritual or whether it be psychological or behavioral, one of the most powerful ways to make a decision, make a commitment, is by investing money in that thing. And so, and that's what I found to be true. And I talk a lot about that. And willpower doesn't work about how to invest money to put yourself in environments. I mean, I've met you because we've both invest in our, in our, in our relationships, in our self improvement, in our network. And so we've met, you know, through multiple networks because we invest money in our relationships and in our environments. And that's one of the fastest ways to change your environment is to actually, you know, invest money in yourself, your skills and your relationships. That's a very fast and powerful way to change your environment. And then the, the third one, which I, you know, or sorry, the fourth one, which we've already talked about, is just literally you have to remove everything from your environment that conflicts with your commitment. If you actually make a decision and you have a powerful why behind it, and you start investing in that decision, then you have to, you have to remove everything in your environment that conflicts with that commitment. Because commitment can't just be an internal battle. You have to actually build external defense systems around your goal. So those are some of the reasons why people, you know, that's, that's kind of why willpower exists, and it's how you eliminate it.

I love everything you're saying because I've said these things intuitively. I've never studied this, but I Mean, obviously, as a weight loss coach, well, the food's in the house. You'll eat it, get the crappy food out and put. And the other side of it to put the good food in. We had one gal when I was on Dr. Phil who took all the bad food out and didn't bring the good food in. So then she would. At midnight.

Yeah, there was a void.

Right, Right. Yeah. It doesn't. Like, nature hates vacuum. I was like, well, you got to actually bring in, like, the good stuff, too. You can't just take the bad stuff out. But, you know, the other side. I say there. And it's interesting when you look at the research, the research shows that weight losses or obesity is contagious.

Totally.

And Right. And so you think about. And people ask me, after they've lost the weight, how do they keep it off? I go, you just find fitter friends.

Yeah, it's that true. I mean, it really is. Your brain just reshapes itself and so does your biology.

Then the other part is, like, the people who invest. And again, it's not the amount. It's the amount that's a stretch for them. It's the amount. I had a client who once told me that, you know, or a mentor that told me, you commit with your wallet. And I'm like, it is so true. When you invest something that's a stretch for you, both in your time and your money, it changes everything. You take it seriously. Then you surround yourself with people who are, you know, who are on the same path, and especially if they're further ahead, that's even better. And you make your environment totally set up. Like, I knew I wanted to make sure I was getting my burst training in every day, so I brought my exciser in, where I trip over it so that it would just be there. You know, I'm trying to remember the name of the guy who talks about all the different.

Is that BJ Fogg?

No, not bj.

But what you just described resonates so deeply with his research about eliminating willpower, about setting up conditions. You know, it's. He says it's design over willpower. You know, if you're. If. If you. If you have resistance to flossing your teeth, literally, just take a. Take it out of the little box and just put a strip of. Of of floss on your counter. And like that. That's what you just said you did. You eliminate the choice. You just walk. You walk over your workout machine.

Yeah, that's where I put. People are like, I can't remember. Take my supplements. I said, put them on your toothbrush.

Yeah. Like literally put them in your coffee cup.

Whatever it is, you know, that's like what you need to do. No, it was. I'm trying to remember. It's the guy who wrote mind. It's either mind, I think mindless eating. And what he found is that if you had Hershey's Kisses sitting on your desk, you'd eat six of them. If you took them off your desk and moved them over to another desk, you'd eat two of them. If you had to actually get up, if you covered them, you ate none of them. So I was like, well, there you go. I mean, he, he had all of these strategies from shrinking your plates and your.

Oh, yeah, I've actually read that book. It's shocking. Even where you sit in a restaurant, if you sit by the bar, you're more likely to drink. If you sit by a window, you're more likely to eat a salad. It's strange, right?

It's awesome. And so you look at all this stuff that you could just build in for success, and yet we make it so hard on ourselves again. I look at it and I think the people who say, but I have to have food for my kids, and I'm like, all right, well, do you like your kids? Because I'm not sure why you feel like you need to feed your kids. So they should have cheated. Chips, candy, and ice cream. You know, like, why are you doing that to them?

Well, I know you're just, you're gonna force them to have to figure it out on their own. And, you know, there's a lot of research that talks about how if, if, if adults have unhealthy relationships with their technology, like their smartphones, then their kids. It's almost impossible for their kids to develop a healthy relationship with technology because, you know, your children mimic you. You know, and so if you're, if you're letting them have, know, unhealthy food, then you're, you're telling them that that's fine, you know, and how, how are they going to overcome that? You know, they're going to have to, like, they're going to have to separate themselves from you because you're going to be the conflict for them actually becoming healthy because you've set this expectation that it's all right.

Yeah.

It's always amazing to me when I hear, you know, someone smoking, and I go, well, do you want your kids to smoke? Oh, no, no, they won't smoke. I'm like, of course they'll smoke. Like, of course they will. Like, of course they're going to eat crap. Of course they're not going to work out. Look at you. They're going to do what you do not say. So if the motivation to make these shifts isn't enough on your own, like, do it for your family. That's the next part. And build a bigger why for yourself on it. So I want to jump over to the cool freebie gift you're giving everybody, the journaling routine. Talk us through what you've got for everybody.

Totally. So there's actually a couple chapters in Willpower Doesn't Work. All about the power of, you know, clarity and getting and, you know, the need for that. And journaling is something that a lot of people do, obviously, first thing in the morning to kind of tap into their subconscious breakthroughs, you know, because your subconscious is always working, even while you're asleep. And anyways, what I have found, and I've been journaling for over a decade now, is that where you journal is just as important as when you journal. And so one of the chapters in the book is all about creating. Well, first off, stepping out of your routine environment regularly. Because, you know, when you're in your routine environment, it's. You kind of are. You're in the middle of the forest. You can't step out and see it for the trees. You've got like the worm's eye view, but sometimes you need to step out and have the bird's eye view. And so, you know, most people, they'll get their biggest aha's their clarity, like when they're on vacation. That's why people talk about sabbaticals, mini retirements, free days. I mean, so basically one of the chapters is all about giving yourself, getting yourself out of your routine environment regularly, getting clarity through writing in your journal. Uh, and then obviously you need a daily environment. And I would call it having like a sacred space where you go and you can just write in your journal and you write about your goals, you write about your aspirations. A lot of it's very affirmative, um, you know, affirmation style. But just writing down what you need to do. Writing, I mean, journaling is found, you know, obviously gratitude. Journaling is powerful. But even just journaling about your problems, people have, you know, a lot of research has found that it's almost just as powerful, if not just as powerful as having a therapy session. You know, you can have a lot of, you know, suppressed emotion come out when you just journal. It Out. And when you just start writing, you can start getting clear. And so for me, first thing I do in the morning is just wake up and get in my car. I leave kind of the. All the stuff in my environment at my house because there's just. There's plenty of distractions and things. I just get in my car, drive across the street into a parking lot, and I just journal, you know? And so what the journaling course is that. That, you know, jj, JJ is going to give you that. It's something I created is it's all about how to use your journal to literally reshape your subconscious patterns to achieve your goals and to get clear on all levels and then to obviously live proactively, to put yourself into a peak state, you know, first thing in the morning so that you can operate proactively rather than reactively. First thing most people do in the morning is look at their smartphone. They are literally living reactively to their environment. And so what you need to do is you have to set up this. This morning where you can put yourself into a proactive and peak state so that you can be who you want to be. And so the journaling course is. Is a deep dive into how to do that, how to shape your environment, how to. I mean, yeah, so there's probably, like, three or four hours of content.

So one of the first things that mentor I talked about earlier had me do as she was helping me create my environment, was journal every day. It's been something that I've done forever since, and I always have a stash of journals ready to go. So I'm completely on board with that. And I just love that you've put some structure around the things I've been kind of dropping into my work all along. So this will be fantastic. So I'm going to encourage everybody. This is definitely a book you want to pick up. Willpower doesn't work. And we will have all that in the show notes along with the this course that you are giving everyone around journaling. And that will all be at JJ, vion.com forward/power. And Ben, I want to thank you so much for being with us today. I super appreciate it, and I just absolutely applaud everything that you're doing with your kids as well.

That's jj. I'm a huge fan of yours, and it's really cool for me to be on your show. And thank you for everything.

I appreciate you. Alrighty now, everybody stay with me. After the break, we'll be answering a listener's question. Ready to lose fat fast and keep it off forever. Discover the number one resource for fast and lasting fat loss by visiting JJVirgin.com Access exclusive videos, content, rich blog posts and lots of free resources to help you lose weight and feel better fast and be part of a community. Get ready to transform your life one simple shift at a time by visiting www.jjvirgin.com. welcome back. This is the time where we answer a listener's question. Today's question is just perfection. I had to do it. Showed up on my Instagram.

On my.

Instagram live the other day and Joanne from Carmel. And first of all, like, when I think of Carmel, California, it's like bakery heaven. So this question will make sense. She goes, jj, I can give up the gluten, I can give up the dairy, but I can't seem to quit the sugar help. And again, I think of Carmel. And Carmel's like, know sweets capital. So that comes into play. Because if you're listening to what just happened with Ben, he talks about, you know, controlling your environment. So I'm like, oh, my gosh, you live around all that candy. Here's the big thing. I wrote the Sugar Impact Diet to help you reclaim your sugar sweet sensitivity so that you lose your sweet tooth forever. Okay. But it's something that you don't do overnight. You do over time. But one of the first things you're going to want to do is check out your environment. Get the enemy out of the house. That is one of the things I've taught in all my programs is get the enemy out of the house. Get rid of the ice cream, the candy, all those things that tempt you. I don't have those in my house because I don't have willpower. I don't, like, never believed in it. I think that's just me. So first thing you want to do is pull those things out of the house. And then I want you to grab yourself a copy of the Sugar Impact Diet. We'll put the quick start guide in the show notes too. And I want you to start tapering down first. Be aware of all where all the sugar is sneaking in because you're probably not even aware of it. And what's that doing is it's keeping your sweet tooth turned on so you want more and more and more sweet. So we want to shut down your sweet tooth and get rid of those cravings. So the first step is to is to get it out of the house and to lower your sugar impact. So you take the sugar sneaky sugar inventory and you lower it down and then make sure you're getting enough healthy protein, optimal, you know, clean protein, healthy fats, loads of non starchy vegetables and slow low carbs at your meals. So you've got good blood sugar balanced again. I walk through all of this in the sugar impact diet, but you can get rid of that sweet tooth and you can get rid of it for life. Honestly, when you get through this, things will just taste too sweet to you, which is awesome. All right, Joanne, I want to hear how this goes for you. And I want to do a shout out to Rachel Radiant Life, who gave a five star review, says trusted advice is the subject line and he or she says, I count on JJ to provide the latest and greatest nutritional and optimal lifestyle advice. Thank you. The guest she interviews really know their stuff and give great value on our show. Thank you JJ for guidance on solid new science and affirmation of what I'm already doing. Right. By the way, I love, love, love, love your Sleep Candy as it provides that extra natural sleep aid to help me get my Z's. Well, thank you for that. I actually made Sleep Candy for me. I call these products I end up making for me and then we get so many people using them around my family and friends that we end up making them. So Sleep Candy was one that we all were a big fan of. So I'm glad that you love it too, literally. My husband and I don't really go to sleep without it. We take it every single night and keeps me asleep because sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and that is just a rotten experience. So this is what helps me stay asleep. And so if you're needing any help falling asleep or staying asleep, Sleep Candy is. Give Sleep Candy a try. It's your ticket. All right, I will see you next time. Oh, and if you want to be featured on my podcast, either with a question, jump on my Facebook or Instagram feeds. That's where we check out and post poll questions from. Or if you want to be featured as one of the reviews, please, please, please leave a review. Leave a review. Yes. We love it so much when you do over on itunes. All right, thanks so much. Bye bye. That's all for this episode of the.

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Foreigners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I take all things Books and Reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshould I read next podcast.com to find out more.