8 Books That Will Change Your Life

Lori and Chris Harder recommend eight books that shaped their lives, including The Comfort Crisis, The War of Art, and Musk. They discuss how biographies and challenging reads fuel personal growth, resistance to hard things, and why relationships matter more than you think.
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The closer we get to the thing like the X that marks the spot of where our fulfillment actually is or what we should be doing with our life and our purpose, we tend to run into all of this resistance, procrastination, gambling, eating every single thing when we get closer to that thing that we know we should be doing.
And we're back with another episode of.
He Said, she Said.
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Why not? Okay, so, guys, we have a huge, awesome, massive discount only for you guys, our podcast listeners. How much off? 20%.
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25% off your first order. Massive off your first order. All you have to do is go to getgloci.com, that's G L O C I getgloci.com and use code HAPPY to get 25% off as our thank you to you for always listening and just being awesome advocates of the show and all that. We totally, totally love and appreciate it. Okay, so today we thought we would talk about books. And I know that might be like, oh, lame. Why you talking about books? Because they're such a big part of our life.
I'm obsessed with books.
We're obsessed. And what made us think of it as, you know, we're up at the lake house here. We haven't even been here a week yet, and it took us five days to drive up. And we listen to books. Books and podcasts, but we listen to books every time that we go on these road trips. And we just. We'll hit pause, we'll discuss them. We change things in our life. Like, everything centered around consuming books on a regular basis is such an important part of our success.
And.
And it really boils down to. It's one of the main ingredients for us to have large intakes of what I call positive propaganda. Because from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, you're being hammered with negative propaganda. Right. Bad news, people with bad mindsets around you, negative mindsets, scarcity mindsets, or just even comparison.
Like, even if you're looking at some.
Positive things, sometimes junk on social media.
It'S so easy to just, like, compare yourself to everything. And that's actually exhausting for your brain. Because as you're looking at social media media, what you're doing is you're literally asking yourself, like, where do I fall in accordance to this picture or this person or what they're doing?
Yeah.
And so everything is a decision.
Everything.
Like, are they better than me? Am I better than them? Like, you don't even realize you're doing it.
That.
But that is actually what humans are doing. And you're exhausted by the time you're off. So books are, like, a great way to learn to not have all of this, like, negative output for yourself. Even if you think it's, you know, not doing anything. It's not a draining thing. It's actually a really recharging thing.
It really is so we thought we'd share a couple of our favorites have like radically changed our life every time that we've done them. Babe, why don't you go first? What's one of yours?
Okay, so this isn't necessarily like my favorite, but these are books that have impacted my life that I think it should be like required reading.
I think that's important to point out. My favorites are not the ones that have necessarily shifted my life the most. Some of them are, but they're the ones that have been caused integral shifts for us.
Yes. Okay, so this one is the Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. And we read this together three years.
Ago now on a road trip driving.
Well, while we were up here, we would play it on our walks around the loop. We call it the Loop up here at the lake house because it's like once you're on the loop, you can't get off and it's like four and a half miles, so there's just farmland in between that you can't cross. So we would play it on this loop and listen to it. And I'm just going to give you some Cliff notes of it. So the idea of the Comfort Crisis is that we are meant to do challenging, difficult things frequently. And if we don't as human beings, it's actually to our detriment. So in the book they have something that called masagi. I think it's masagi or misogi. It's either masagi or misogi, but the word misogi. I'm just going to read this right off here. Comes from a Japanese Shinto practice of ritual purification. In the ritual, the participants wash their bodies in sacred waterfalls, lakes and rivers. More recently, the word masogi means difficult challenges in nature. The aim is to clean off the contamination caused by modern conveniences. Now, to do a musogi, there are two rules and this is what the book describes. And it is rule one, make it really hard. And rule two, don't die. So essentially in the book Michael Easter actually the author chooses a masogi himself and he goes on a 30 day elk hunting trip to Alaska.
Now, middle of nowhere.
Trust me, if you were telling me about this book before I read it and you're like, laurie, go read this. 30 day.
Not interesting.
I would have been like, absolutely not. I am so glad Jackie Koch, my brother in law's girlfriend, talked me into this book because it is now one of my favorites. I've read it twice. I wanna try to read it every single year to remind myself how important it is to do challenging things. So the whole book intertwines story with scientific facts around why human beings actually have to do hard things for our health, our wellbeing and our mental health. So it's one of books that like, you start reading it and you immediately are gonna set a goal after or you're gonna go buy a rucksack, which literally we did. Because he talks about rucking and if you don't know what a rucksack is, it's like a weighted backpack. And he talks all about like creating these little mini masogis in his life. And the reason for that is that if you go and challenge yourself and you do these hard things, when you go back to normal life, everything seems easier. Your brain has worked out. So the excuses that you want to make or so many of like these negotiating with yourself because you are doing this thing in real life that you're going to go and translate to everything, whether it's business or relationships. And the book really, really, really goes into why that is.
Yeah, I love that the book has changed my life too, because when we started doing tougher things again intentionally, then the rest of our life started seemingly feeling a lot easier. And the truth is we get soft. I'm sure most of you listening have gotten soft. The world has gotten soft. And we' meant to be that way. We're meant to do hard things to make the normal, everyday things not feel so damn hard. And that's the irony in it all.
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I'm obsessed.
Okay? So if you were gonna ask me, hey, what's one of yours, Kris? I would say any autobiographies or biographies of awesome entrepreneurs? I mean, I'm hooked. My favorite way to learn is not like, here's the seven steps to this or here's the five rules of that. There's value in that. Don't get me wrong. But I learn through reading the stories of the ups and downs and the types of decisions that some of the most famous entrepreneurs in the world have had to make. So from the Steve Jobs book to the one with Arnold Schwarzenegger to the two different Elon Musk books, to Richard Branson's Losing my Virginity, I recommend every single one of those and more. Now, if I had to choose one for me in particular, it's Elon Musk's original biography called Musk. And here's why. In there, you realize the significant risks that this man took after he was already successful, not just on his way to being successful. And it makes you. It frames for you what it means to go all in. For example, he was one of the original creators of PayPal. And when they had their exit, he had over $300 million. And he could have just hung it up right there and been like, all right, yay, I've got a very wealthy life. But then he went on to start Tesla and SpaceX at the same time, and he burnt through that $300 million to the point where he was asking friends if he could stay on their couches and begging friends for money to make payroll at those companies on a Sunday night or they were going to go bankrupt on Monday.
Oh, my God.
So how many of you, you know, you think, oh, I'm taking some risk right now. Ooh, I'm really going for it. No, you're not. Like, this is why I love these books. It really frames what going for it looks like. Now, I'm not saying you have to go to These extremes. But it sure as hell puts into perspective that you may not be entertaining and playing in enough risk. Right? You're afraid to make that investment. You're afraid to make that higher. You're afraid to go to that mastermind. You're afraid to host your own event. You're afraid to put the money down on, you know, whatever type of investment is you're considering. And then you hear about a man that. Whose life is totally set up and had $300 million and got to the point where he was so passionate about starting these other two companies that he was sleeping on his friend's couches and had not, literally not a penny, not a penny to his name because it was all taken and then some. And you just combine that with. When they describe his work week and the fact that he didn't take a single vacation for 12 years. Again, I'm not advocating that. What I'm saying is all of these perspectives, put your hustle, put your business journey into a real perspective of it's not that bad, and there's more you could be doing. And your goal may not to be the world's richest man. It's not my goal. But if you are a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a tenth as successful, that means all you have to do is take, you know, a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of the risk that he took to get to that level. And you realize, holy crap, I can do that. So that's why I love those biographies, and especially that one. What's one more for you?
Okay, so one of my other favorite books is Steven Pressfield's the War of Art. Do not get the Art of War. That's a very different book.
I like that one, by the way.
The War of Art. And this is all about resistance. So the idea of the book is a quote from the book is, most of us have two lives. The life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands resistance. And one of my other favorite quotes from the book that really summarizes it well is rule of thumb. The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more resistance we will feel towards pursuing it. So he talks all about how the closer we get to the thing, like the X that marks the spot of where our fulfillment actually is or what we should be doing with our life and our purpose, we tend to run into all of this resistance. And he goes on in the book to explain what resistance is. I mean, from. He goes in depth of, like, procrastination, Gambling, eating, sex, like, every single thing and how we're using it. When we get closer to that thing that we know we should be doing, like, oh, should have a hard conversation. Screw it. Maybe I'll go out to the bars. Like, it's. It's the. It's the mindset right before and during. And he really helps you, like, dig in and understand those moments that it's not just you avoiding it. It's because you're getting close. And I think that when we reframe it like, that, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm right here. When the resistance is as big as it can possibly feel, that means that I truly am on the verge of a breakthrough. But the way that frames it, you really start to understand how and why, like, with our brain chemistry.
I love that the fact that you just described what most of us do as humans right before we're supposed to do the tough thing, what do we do? We quickly resort to the dopamine hit.
Oh, my God, I'll even. You'll, like, pick up your phone, you'll be like, oh, I should do this. And you're like, okay, maybe I'll scroll five more minutes. Like, what?
Yep. What is that doing is delaying a million times a day, you guys. And that's why you don't seem to get ahead, is we keep choosing the dopamine hit over. Right. Moments before you're about to finally go do that scary or tougher, annoying thing that, you know, you have to do to move the ball forward. So I love that if I had to add one more to the list. I can't just add one more. There's so freaking many. I mean, God, I read 30 books in 30 days. So obviously I've got a lot of books, you know, that was years ago that I want to recommend, but I would say it's a tie between Conversations with God or Tuesdays with Maury. And I love those two books because they'll both give you perspective on how to live a great life. They're two very different books.
Very different.
Very different books. But, you know, Conversations with God really does a great job. Anyone who has either religious trauma or uncertainty or they just think that religion doesn't make sense, It's a fantastic book to put all of that into perspective. And it really takes a lot of anxiety or worry a lot of what you think, you know, this rule or that rule. It really puts a lot of it.
Into perspective or it just makes you think. Like, even some of it, you and I are, like, not sure, but it sure made us think and feel better.
Yep. So that one. But then I'd almost have to lean towards Tuesdays with Maury, which is a great true story about Mitch Elbaum, if you guys know who that is. You know, one of the most famous sportscasters out there. And newscaster, just incredibly famous, successful individual. And he went to college. He had a professor named Mitch. Professor Mitch. And the story kind of unfolds how he was really close to this professor. They swore they'd always stay in touch. And then multiple years go by, like, more than a decade goes by. And, you know, Mitch gets famous, Mitch gets rich, Mitch gets busy. And he never kept his promise to go back and visit Maury. Sorry, the professor is Maury. Mitch is obviously a sportscaster. And so then all of a sudden, he sees on the news that Maury is terminally ill. Literally on, like, they're doing a news story, he's like, wait, that's my old professor. I promise to stay in touch with this guy. So he reaches out. Don't worry, I'm not giving you any spoiler alerts here yet. He reaches out, gets back in touch, and it starts this weekly dialogue between the two of them where he literally flies to visit him every week. And it's that dialogue that has so much value. All the questions he asks this old man about perspective and life and everything. And it's not only the individual dialogue on a weekly basis that adds so much value to you, the reader, as perspective about life, but the whole story drives home the point that you have to put your loved ones or those you care about first and build everything else around that. And if you don't, a decade's gonna slip by. Two decades are gonna slip by, and you're gonna have a bunch of shoulda, coulda, woulda's. And I'll tell you what, this is the very first book I read when I read 30 books and in 30 days. And I think that was somewhere in the ballpark of 2015. I'd have to go look it up. I'm bad with years, but it was the shake by the shoulders that I needed to make sure I was putting family first. And that's what started the family date days. That's what started, you know, making sure that we're buying lake homes and everything else. And then when my dad passed away in 2020, one of the amazing things. I know, it's a weird thing to Say was I didn't have any shoulda, coulda, woulda because thanks to this book and many other things I made putting my loved ones and creating experience with them first. And this book played a big role in that. It really reminds you in a wonderful storytelling kind of way to do that. So I highly suggest Tuesdays with Maury. Oh, one more shout out to our buddy Mel Abraham and his new book. Guys, go get this one too. Building youg Money Machine. Seriously, just go to Amazon, type in Mel Abraham, Building youg Money Machine. It's an awesome book when it comes to simplifying your finances. So if you struggle with finances, it's a great book to go get. All right, guys, well, listen, whether you grab the four or five books that we talked about or whether you go find some of your own, it's changed our life. It's one of those simple, simple things that you can do a little bit every day that will radically change your life. And I was not a reader. I was not a reader until I read 30 books in 30 days. You guys. If you're like, oh, I'm not a reader. I don't think I could do this when I say I wasn't a reader. I had not finished a book cover to cover as an adult until I read 30 books in 30 days when I was in my mid-30s. That's messed up. But ever since then, my life has got exponentially better. And that's why we figured we'd do an episode about books. Also, one quick reminder. We have one room left, one spot left. Whether you're an individual or whether you're a couple to come with us on our Mastermind in Europe in Florence, Italy in October. Travel with Lori and I and our friends Robin, Kim Murgatroy and some really awesome high performing other entrepreneurs. Literally only one room left. Those went really quick.
Think helicopter rides, wine drinking, private shut.
Down tours of the Duomo. Like everything. Dinner with the Ferragamos. Like, yeah, the famous Ferragamo fashion brand. Those Ferragamos at family, like, just access the stuff you can't get on your own. Once in a lifetime experience. So if you want to grab that last spot, go to Chrishider Me. That's Chrishider Me. Chrisharter Me Italy. Grab that spot or just DM us and ask us questions. We'd love to answer your questions about it and then help you get that very last spot. Chrisharder Me Italy. Can't wait to see who the very last couple or the very last person is. That we travel. All right, guys, thanks for listening. Love and appreciate you.
Bye, everyone.
Hey.
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