In this solo spoken‑word review, Nick Hutchison introduces Philip Gabbard’s book Thrivation by invoking a fish parable that asks, “What the hell is water?” – a metaphor for questioning the unnoticed assumptions of everyday life. Hutchison explains that the book forces readers to confront big questions about mortality, purpose, and societal issues, positioning itself as a counter‑point to conventional self‑help. He recounts a favorite parable from the book, “The Hot Dog Man,” which illustrates how media‑driven panic can undermine personal enterprise and highlights the author’s emphasis on gratitude and the constructive use of mortality awareness. Hutchison critiques the self‑help industry’s repetitive, short‑term hacks, arguing that Thrivation instead encourages deep reflection, gratitude practice, and confronting uncomfortable truths. He connects the work to Gabbard’s earlier book This Day, noting similar themes and the community response it generated, and references related thinkers such as Robert Greene and Mike from Underdog Books. Throughout, Hutchison urges listeners to “play a bigger game,” share the book, and use its lessons to impact future generations positively. The review ends with a personal endorsement and a call to read the book.
Chapters
2 young fish swimming downstream pass an older fish that's swimming upstream. The older fish nods and says, morning, how's the water? The 2 young fish keep going. One stops a little bit farther down, the young fish, and he says to the other young fish, what the hell is water? And so that parable right there, I thought it was a very interesting way to start this review of Thrivation by Philip Gabbard because we all face that question. A lot of us are swimming downstream Doing the day-to-day stuff, caught in the whirlwind, and we don't really stop to think what's around us. What is this life that we're all living in? See, those questions are important. It's important to spend time reflecting on those bigger questions in life because while you spend your time reflecting, you're observing yourself, you're learning, you're using your critical thought, you're making progress in your life. But if you don't ever stop to ask What the hell is water? You're never really going to get there. This book right here, Thrivation by Philip Gabbard, forces you to ask those questions, and it confronts you. It's not condescending. It confronts you on a lot of different social issues and bigger questions like mortality and why are we here. That's why I love this book so much. You may recall that in— I think it was late last year, around December— I I read This Day, Philip's first book, and I was blown away. I had a really fun time reading it because it challenged a lot of the questions that I wasn't asking, or it challenged me to ask a lot of questions that I wasn't asking and think about things in a different way. It was a unique book, and I had a really fun time reading it, and I actually gifted a lot of copies to friends and family over Christmas. And here we are. This is Philip's second book, about a year later, similar time, and I really love this. Like I said, it confronts a lot of the bigger questions in life. It pauses. You know, it kind of took me a little while to read, and it's kind of taking me a long while to describe because it is so different. I had to stop after each short essay or parable and reflect. I took some notes in the book. I asked some questions. I brought things up with friends and family. It was one of those kind of reads for me. Now, Philip actually has a little bit of a— I wouldn't call it a rant. He confronts self-help as an industry in the book, and he talks about how some of it's kind of useless. It's repetitive. It doesn't really challenge you. You know, there are some benefits to biohacking and life hacking, but really, when you look out 10,000 years from now, are those things really going to matter? And so I'd like to read another parable, but this one's a little bit longer, so I'm actually going to read it out of the book and then talk about that point for a little bit. So check this out. It's probably one of my favorite parables that I've ever read. It's called The Hot Dog Man. There once was a man who worked on the side of the road and sold hot dogs. He was hard of hearing, so he had no radio. He had trouble with his eyes, so he read no newspapers nor watched TV. But he sold good hot dogs. He put signs up on the roadside telling people how good they were. He stood by the side of the road and cried, buy a hot dog, mister! The business was good. He increased meat and roll orders. He bought a bigger stove to take care of his growing demands. One summer, his son returned from college to help him out, but something happened. His son said, Father, haven't you been listening to the radio, watching the TV news? There's a big recession going on. The problems around the world are terrible. The domestic situation is worse. That made his father think, well, my son's been to college. He reads the news and he listens to the radio, so he ought to know. Go to the next page here. So the hot dog man cut down his meat and roll orders, cut his advertising signs, and no longer cried, buy a hot dog, mister! Sales fell almost overnight. You were right, son, the father said to his boy. We certainly are in the middle of a bad time. There just isn't any business. Fallow ground cares not what is planted nor when. If an idea can germinate, it can grow, be it a good idea or a bad idea. There are a lot of bad ideas germinating right now. See, I've been focusing on gratitude a lot recently because I read a quote in a book called Life's Amazing Secrets that said it's not happy people that are grateful, it's grateful people that are happy. One of my biggest takeaways from this book is that you can leverage gratitude and the presence of mortality in your life in a positive way, and those things can compound over time. You ask yourself big questions like this over and over and over again. You challenge yourself to get uncomfortable and to confront your demons. You look at a social issue, you don't pay attention to the big popular news media, but you just ask yourself questions about it. So there have been a lot of big issues this year in 2020, and so you could look at those issues and take in the opinions of other people and let that negative energy get to your soul, or you could stop, pause, reflect, pretend that your mind is a garden with a fence around it and you don't want anything to get in and ruin your garden, but ask yourself, you know, in what ways can my garden thrive in a more efficient way? And so that's what I really loved about this book. Thrive challenges you to ask bigger questions. Thrive challenges you to look at everybody else that's swimming downstream and wonder to yourself, is it really worth swimming downstream? Is what's downstream really that great? Is it going to make an impact? Will it help the world? The fish that's older that's swimming upstream, to me, that's kind of like a wise philosopher. That's somebody who stood the test of time. They're past all the drama. They don't really care about the junk that's downstream anymore. They're living upstream. Their consciousness is living upstream. They're thinking about the future. They're paying attention to the bigger questions in life. They're thinking about mortality because they're closer to death, which is a really important lesson. Now, Phil talks a lot about death in this book. If you guys didn't listen to my podcast episode with Robert Greene, we talked a lot about mortality. And its role and presence and importance in life. And so Phil has a similar writing style. He confronts those things. Some people say Robert Greene is condescending. Some people might read this and think, you know, you're bordering on that line, Phil, but you're making me think. It also kind of reminds me of Mike at Underdog Books. Like, he loves stuff like that, you know, border on the line but make people think. And so Philip, anyway, I think you wrote a great book. I'm really excited to share this with more people. I think it's going to sell a lot of copies. You know, This Day took over Instagram for a little while. All the book Instagrammers were reading it. I hope that happens with Thrivation. I'll play my role in gifting it to a couple people as well. Ask the bigger questions, play a bigger game. Also kind of reminds me of that saying, like, if you, if you play small games, you win small prizes. Play a bigger game, a more challenging game. One that confronts everything that makes you comfortable in life, and then you'll win bigger prizes. You'll be a more fulfilled person. You'll have more fun in life, and you'll also be able to impact future generations in a more positive way. So I'll kind of wrap up by saying that I had a very difficult time describing This Day, Philip's first book, and I'm having a difficult time describing this book as well, but in like the best of ways. I mean, it's such a beautiful book. There's so many different diverse essays, so many different things that are going to be confronted. I was talking to a friend of Book Thinkers, Rose Drive, Jimmy, and he was saying that when he read this book, he went through every emotion. It was like a roller coaster. You kind of just get hit from all these different directions. You're dodging punches, but you kind of want to lean into punches sometimes. And so anyway, I had a fun time reading the book. I hope you give it a try. Share this review with somebody that is important to you that needs to be playing a bigger game, and you'd be surprised at what happens after they read the book. And with that, I'll end my review. Go read something!
