Episode 40: Jon Acuff: Overthinking No More!
Transcript
Patsy: Hi, I’m Patsy Clairmont, and I’m a Boomer.
Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer, and I’m a Millennial.
Patsy: And you are listening to Bridges.
Andrew: Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations
Patsy: Season Two is brought to you by Food for the Hungry.
Andrew: Meeting the physical and spiritual needs of people all around the world for over 50 years.
Patsy: I love bridges. I love bridges of all kinds, and one of the bridges that I learned about on HGTV, which you don’t expect to learn about bridges there, was when one man was teaching another how to spackle the cracks in his ceiling, and he called it bridging. He said this is how we bridge between the broken parts and the parts that are good, and he said by the time we sand this out, you won’t know that it was ever in that condition.
And we have someone here today that’s gonna help us understand how to do some spackling in some of the places, some of the thoughts that we have that aren’t working to our benefit. We’re gonna spackle and sand, and we’re gonna do it with our friend. And you’re gonna tell us who that is, Andrew.
Andrew: He is not only a New York Times bestselling author, he’s an incredible communicator, and he’s a mutual friend of so many of our mutual friends. Or maybe that just means he’s friends with our friends — I’m not sure.
Patsy: Well, he lives in our neighborhood. I love that.
Andrew: He sure does. And his new book, and what we’re going to be talking about, is called Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking.
What a topic, Jon. I just want you to know that Patsy and I exercised a ton of overthinking preparing for this interview. Would Jon like us? Does Jon know us? Does Jon care?
Jon: You started by getting me coffee. That’s a pretty good, like set up a good conversation if you begin with presents. Very few podcasts I’m on begin with gifts. I think, quite frankly, more should.
Andrew: Thank you. There’s no overthinking to that, is there?
Jon: Yeah, exactly. How would I have a bad conversation? Like here’s a present, a warmup present, just in case you’re curious.
Patsy: You know one of the things I learned about you from sound checks is you love these two words: Dolly Parton.
Jon: Oh yeah, yeah. Of course, of course. One of my best friends, in my head. She doesn’t know that.
Andrew: She doesn’t need to know.
Jon: No, no. But again, she’s like one of the few people on the planet…I’ve never met somebody who’s like, “I don’t like Dolly Parton.” It’s impossible to dislike Dolly Parton.
Patsy: Oh, I love Dolly Parton.
Andrew: It’s like the disliking coffee. There’s a major line of distrust if someone says…
Jon: Yeah, or like puppies. If somebody’s like “I hate puppies,” you’d be like, What? Who did this to you?
Andrew: Okay, my first question for you about overthinking is, in the nature of overthinking, if we’re overthinking in a professional circumstance, in a personal relationship, at the end of the day, doesn’t overthinking kind of come back to us thinking too much about ourselves?
Jon: Um, I think it can be. But you can also worry about other people. I think a mom could overthink something her kid’s going through. So I think it can be about us, but I think it can be about life, I think it can be about events, I think it can be about circumstances, our family. I think that you can overthink just about anything in the world.
What’s interesting is the PhD who helped me with the research, we asked 10,000 people if they struggle with overthinking, and 99.5 percent said yes, and this was before 2020. 2020 was catnip for overthinking.
Andrew, you never, in the first 99 percent of your life, thought, Is this the right way to walk down this grocery store aisle? You never even had that thought. But now every part of life has these additional extra thoughts because of the pandemic and all this extra thinking. And so I think it can be applied to yourself but also to a lot of other situations.
Andrew: When you’re talking about that and when I think about the overthinking that’s taken place in my own life, I always think of it as detrimental to my health. I mean, to my mental health, to my emotional health, spiritual health, probably my physical health. Is that true? Is overthinking strictly aligned to negative?
Jon: I think it can be. I think what’s fun and what I really tried to aim for with the book was what if you could use your thoughts for you. What if you could create thoughts that pushed you forward, not pulled you back, because a lot of times when people talk about overthinking, they go, I gotta stop it, I gotta stop it, I gotta stop it. Why would I ever turn off this amazing thinking machine? I’ve been gifted with thought.
I always like to say every cardinal has built the same exact next. A cardinal can’t change. There’s not a cardinal that built a hole. There’s not a cardinal that built a townhouse. There’s not a cardinal that built a hipster Joanna Gaines farm style. Whatever. They are always the same.
We have the ability to be different. We have the ability to think. So what if we could take those thoughts and actually use that part of us in a positive way, can you imagine what we could do, versus going, I have to turn off my thoughts. I can’t. I must be a failure. And when you flip it and go, Okay, it can be a superpower, not a super problem, that to me is where it gets fun.
“[Overthinking] can be a superpower, not a super problem.”
Patsy: Yes. I love that transition, if it’s fair to call that a transition.
Jon: Totally
Patsy: But it really is a learning experience of how to go from the one side to the superpower.
Jon: Talk about a bridge. I mean, to walk across that gap — from Okay, I’ve got to stop my negative thoughts to What if my thoughts could cheer for me versus hold me back?
Patsy: And you give practical steps. First of all, you’re a fun writer. Next, you’re a very well researched writer. I love seeing someone who puts time and effort into their projects. I like the way you interview people and just don’t rely on your own experience, but you’re out there with everyone having conversations directed toward the topic to value others. All that is, for me, a thrill as someone who loves books.
Jon: You know what it’s like. I’m 46. Like goodness help me if I do a seventh book that’s kind of a memoir. At this point, I’m like, Yeah, I think maybe in the fourth grade this thing happened that I could write a book about. So I want to make sure that there’s more than just my story, and also, that way if you’re a single mom, you can connect with single mom who’s in the story. Or if you’re a college student, or if you’re a millennial, or if you’re a boomer, there’s somebody that you can say, Okay, this isn’t Jon Acuff’s story from his little office in his little corner of Franklin. It’s a bigger story, and I can see myself in it.
I would say everything I write first is a “dear Jon” letter, and then I open it up to helping the world and serving the world. So I go, What’s something I’m working on in my own life that I think it could be better? Wow. Now, do other people need that? Is it worth investigating for years into a book. And then I go down that process.
Andrew: I mean, that’s an interesting process that could be an interesting process for anyone. In our counseling circles or in my own counseling, one of the main things they encourage is to journal. Journaling has proven to have really wonderful effects for being aware of yourself, but then to take that awareness of myself and not just sit in it but to actually use it to impact my relationships and the world around me. How do we make that transition from, first step, let me be aware of myself, but then how do I take the health of that and apply it to the world around me?
Jon: Well, there’s so many different ways. One thing I always say is the scars you have become lighthouses for other people so that they don’t hit the same rocks. So if you’ll share those, you get to say, “I had this experience. This is what I learned.”
I like to think about it like if I’ll go first, I give everyone else in the room the gift of going second. It’s hard to go first with your story. It’s hard to admit something. It’s hard to share a weakness. It’s hard to share a mistake. But it’s easier to go second. So if you’ll share and go, “Hey, here’s this situation I had with my wife where I reacted and I was grumpy,” or, “Here’s this situation with my kids,” or, “Here’s this work situation. I found myself in a corner, and I had made some bad decisions, and here’s what I learned,” if you’ll share that, other people can come around, not only benefit from it but also speak into it.
When I share my heart honestly, friends get to speak into that and encourage me, and so that’s kind of how I try to communicate is how do I share this with other people because I also know I’m not the only one that has that challenge. We’re all human that way. I think that overthinking’s a very human thing, and so that’s, for me, the benefit of taking an idea and then going, Okay, well how do other people experience it? How do they process it? What are they overthinking that I might not be overthinking but is every bit as valid? And how do I kind of serve that?
The book is designed to help other people. My diary, my journal, is designed to help me. A book is designed to help as many people as I can, and so that, to me, is the distinction.
Patsy: In the opening here, you quote your wife’s comment about you, which I thought was just great. “Jon, I think you might be overthinking it.”
Jon: Yeah, a hundred percent. If she had a dollar for every time she said that to me, we would be very, very… I’d be giving you coffee.
Patsy: And we would like that.
Jon: Exactly, exactly.
We’ve been married, we’re going on 21 years, and it’s been an ongoing conversation is, “Okay, wait a second. I think you might be looking at this in a different way, or you might be overthinking this.” And so I always love putting ideas that Jenny and I have talked about in books. She was somebody that’s been my writing partner since we’ve been married. I’m in the middle of writing a new book right now, and yesterday, she helped me change something that I was stuck on. And so the ability to talk through ideas with her is invaluable to me.
Andrew: It gives your writings that yin and yang, right. It kind of invites us into a relationship where most things are fashioned and evolve better when it’s together.
Jon: Well, it makes you a full person too. I wish there was a leaders event where they could interview the spouses because I think sometimes you go, Okay, well that’s how you presented it, but what’s the reality? Are you really that person at home? Did you really…? And so I love getting to see both sides of a person’s family.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s kind of like going in public without your clothes on.
Jon: Well, yeah. I mean, my wife isn’t impressed. So like here’s an example: I was at an event, and somebody in the audience… My wife was sitting in the audience, and they were doing a Q&A, and somebody said, “What’s your favorite book?” And she could see me from the audience starting to think of an impressive sounding book. Like I was going to be like, “Well, there’s a German philosopher you probably haven’t heard of.” And she yelled out, “The unicorn book,” and what she was saying is there’s a fantasy book by Robert Jordan. It’s kind of a Tolkien kind of thing, super nerdy, and there’s a white horse on the cover, and I always say, “It’s not a unicorn, Jenny.” And she’s like, “It looks like one.”
And in that moment, she was not gonna let me pretend to look cooler than I really was, and that’s the kind of… We have that give and pull, and I just started dying laughing as soon as I heard it. So I think that a healthy marriage, you’re able to do that in, you’re able to have a conversation, you’re able to challenge. It’s what Andy Stanley I once heard him say: “You need a full cup spouse.” And I love that I’m married to a full cup wife.
Andrew: You have a lot of great pull quotes in this book. One that I highlighted was… Well, you highlighted in the book, I took notice of: “One of the greatest mistakes you can make in life is assuming all your thoughts are true.”
Jon: And here’s why that happens, Andrew. Your thoughts are spoken in the voice you’re most familiar with, which is your own. So you hear those in your voice, and so you assume, well, it must be true. Despite how many times your thoughts have told you something that’s wildly inaccurate — like, Oh, that person’s gonna be furious, and then you have the conversation and they’re fine with it. Or, This situation’s gonna be a nightmare, and then you do it and it works out. My personal thoughts are like one for 1,000 as far as terrible things they tell me are going to happen, but I’m still like, This could be the one though. This could be the one they’re accurate. I better really listen.
And so I think even just stopping for a second and going, Well, I’m not going to accept that as truth just because I’ve had the thought. I’m going to investigate. I’m going to be curious. I’m going to wonder, Could the opposite be true versus just accepting that and immediately acting out on it.
Patsy: You’ve said a word I love. Have you always been curious?
Jon: I would say that I got more and more curious once I really started to plug into writing. For me, I always tell people I don’t believe in writer’s block; I believe in idea bankruptcy. So I believe you just haven’t curated enough ideas.
So I mean, I put you in the book as an example of that. There’s a principle that Dorothy Parker talks about, the writers from the 60s, that creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye. The wildness is you collect different topics, thoughts, ideas. The discipline is you see the relationships between them and paint a new picture using a bunch of different pieces.
So you and I had lunch two or three years ago, and you told me a story about your first book. When the edits came back, it was edited in red and it felt like the page was dying, and so you asked the editor to change the color. She changed it to green ink, and now it felt like growth when you got edits.
And so that idea of what if you could look at feedback as growth, not an attack, that’s game changing. I wrote that down in my notebook. I didn’t know I’d put it in a book a year later, but because I collect ideas, I’m able to go, Here’s relationships between them, and then I get to create something.
So yeah, I would say I was always somewhat curious, but then I started to figure out how to really be professionally curious.
Andrew: You’re listening to our very insightful guest, Jon Acuff. We’re going to be back in a minute to find out what he wrote about me in the book.
Jon: Yeah, it’s a shorter passage. A lot of people call it a ghost passage because you can’t see it.
Andrew: We’re here with…
Patsy: I’m Patsy Clairmont, the Boomer.
Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer, the Millennial. We’ll be right back.
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Patsy: I don’t.
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Patsy: Patsy’s artwork?
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Patsy: We’re back with Jon Acuff, and he’s got a lot more to give to us. I love that.
Jon: He sure does. One thing, Jon, that you talked about in Soundtracks, you talked about masquerading. You say overthinking masquerades as being prepared, but in actuality, it’s really a simply mask for fear, for being afraid. Explain that.
Jon: So I call it the sneakiest, greediest form of fear because it steals time and creativity and productivity. Even something as simple as thinking for an hour about something dumb you said a month ago, that’s not helpful. You just lost that hour. That was not productive. Or thinking about writing a book versus writing a book. According to The New York Times, 81 percent of Americans want to write a book, which makes it one of the biggest goals in our country, and less than 1 percent do every year.
Patsy, when you tell people you write books, they inevitably say, “Oh, I want to write a book,” or “I’ve been working on for 10 years.”
Patsy: Absolutely
Jon: And anybody can write a book. I mean, people do it all the time, but one of the things that happens is they overthink it, they overthink it, they overthink it, and they spend all these years almost doing it versus actually doing it. So that’s what I mean by that.
When people say to me, and it’s a good pushback, they’ll say, “Jon, I’m just detailed. I’m organized.” I spoke to a logistics company recently, and you talk about an organized group of people. And the difference is this: Preparedness leads to action. Overthinking leads to overthinking.
If you’re prepared, if you’re detailed, if you’re organized, you write the book, you launch the podcast, you start the business, you ask the girl out, you do the thing. If you’re overthinking, it just generates more overthinking, and there’s no natural end.
I always say that fear doesn’t have a natural conclusion. Bravery starts, and there’s a big difference. So there’s a lot of people that are waiting for fear to stop, and fear doesn’t stop. It always moves a goalpost. It always changes the rules. It just keeps going. What happens is bravery starts. You choose to think new thoughts. You choose a new direction. That’s the difference.
“Preparedness leads to action. Overthinking leads to overthinking.”
Patsy: Yeah, and I always tell people give yourself permission to start at the wrong place in your story, and you’ll figure out the right place to begin later on, but let’s do the breakthrough moment where you actually put something on the page you can see.
“Give yourself permission to start at the wrong place.”
Jon: Start at chapter two. The problem is page one, line one is intimidating. The thought that you go, I just have to get the line that launches this book. Okay, I want it to be slightly bigger than “purpose-driven life.” That’s my only goal.
And then the other thing is we add additional pressure to already pressurized situations. So we say, “The book, I’m writing the book, and this book is gonna prove that I’m a real writer, or to my dad that being an artist is okay.” You’ve created this massive thing out of something that’s already difficult, so I tell people write on a Post-it note “It’s just a book.” Hang up the Post-it note by your laptop. It’s just a book. It’s just a book. It’s just a book.
You’ve gotta remind yourself, because if you’re in that pressure loop, you’re never going to actually finish it.
Andrew: Are we talking about perfectionism? That’s what I keep thinking about, because every time I think of someone who desires to get to the end of a project but can’t quite get started or can’t quite get to the next step, it seems like there’s some kind of indicator of perfectionism. Like that’s what’s keeping them from just doing.
Jon: I always say perfectionism is a poison that pretends to be a vitamin, so it looks like it’s going to help you, but it never really does. So it says, “No, it could just be a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better,” and you never actually do the thing. And so that’s why starting in the middle of the project is helpful. There’s so many different ways to kind of get around perfectionism.
One of the things that I believe is that 80 percent perfect and shared with the world changes more lives than 100 percent perfect and stuck in your head. And so to give yourself the gift of a B-. The problem is one of the soundtracks perfectionists believe is they’d rather get a 0 than a C-. So I’ll meet perfectionists that’ll say, “I’m gonna run three miles a day, but I only have time for two, so today, I’m gonna do none.” And you go, “Well, you know two is more than none?” But if they can’t do it perfectly, they won’t do it at all.
So the perfectionists listening to this right now have the messiest offices and the messiest cars, and you go, But aren’t they neat freaks? Aren’t they Type A? They can be, but unless they can clean something down to the toothbrush level, they won’t even start. So a perfectionist, that’s what the book is about. I want you to write your own soundtrack. I want you to approach this and go, Okay, I don’t struggle with perfectionism. I struggle with not even starting. Okay, what’s a soundtrack that could help you with that? Or, I am a perfectionist. My soundtrack needs to be B- is great. You get to kind of figure out how to remix the thoughts that you’re listening to, and that’s where I think it gets fun.
Andrew: There is kind of a spiritual element to excellence, right? So can you still be excellent and be okay with a B-?
Jon: A hundred percent. The reality is I’m just plugging into his creativity, not mine. The best creativity I’ve ever experienced was received, not forced. So I can’t even take credit for it. I can’t go, Wow, I am excellent. I’m not in the position. If anything, I’m going, Okay, God, you’re way more creative than I am.
It cracks me up when we discover some polka dotted, bright pink sea creature that’s in the Mariana Trench that no one’s ever seen for thousands of years, and it’s just been there for God’s pleasure. It’s a ridiculous looking surprise that he’s the only one that’s been enjoying, and then we get to enjoy it.
Every movie about the future is gray. Everybody’s in the same uniform. It’s cloudy. It’s dystopian. He didn’t have to make mountains. He didn’t have to make the Alps. He didn’t have to make the ocean. And so for me, as far as excellence, I’m just trying to plug into that. My vision of excellence is I was given five talents, I was given two talents, and I go and double it, and then I get a party and I get to celebrate.
My writing approach is just trying to tell people like let’s go get a shovel. If you’ve hidden your talents, let’s go get a shovel. Let’s go double them because it’s really fun. There’s a party when we do that.
Patsy: You are a walking, talking soundbite. You have so many quotes within your thinking. Has that been a discipline through the years?
Jon: A hundred percent. I bet if you went back 10 years ago and heard me on any interview, I would’ve told you a long rambling story and said, “I hope you can find something helpful in that.”
It’s like what you do where, when you’re a speaker, when you’re a public speaker, you know you have to distill stuff. One of my goals is I consider myself a handle maker. I’m putting handles on ideas so that you can carry them into your life. We have enough ideas. The world is full of ideas; they don’t have handles on them, so if I can figure out, okay, this is a helpful handle, you can pick this up, you can carry it.
So with Soundtracks, I put three what I’d call Trojan horse questions in it — simple questions on the outside, but when you sit with them, there’s something deep on the inside. And the three questions are: You take a loud soundtrack and you ask “Is it true? Is the thing I’m telling myself about myself true?”
Second question: Is it helpful? Because some things are true but not helpful. A friend of mine got fired from his job and said, “Every time I see a door close for a meeting I’m not in, I think, Oh no, I’m gonna get fired again.” Is it true he could be fired? It is. It’s true of all of us. Is it helpful for him to think that every time he sees a meeting door close? Of course not.
Third question: Is it kind? If I said it to a friend, would they still want to be my friend?
So those are three simple questions, those are handle questions that you don’t have to have a PhD to go, What were the 17 things Jon said?
So I think that I’ve benefited from being a public speaker because, as you know, it’s a school on stage where it better be quick, it better be about the audience, it better be sticky, it better be helpful. They better be able to bring it with them wherever they go after that event. And so I think that changed how I talk.
Patsy: I tell my audiences, especially those that gather for the purpose of wanting to be a communicator, whether in written or spoken form, the key to longevity is brevity. People want you to get to the point. They don’t want you giving them every detail that you know. It’s alright you know it, but you don’t have to tell them why you’re up there.
Jon: I learned that from I was in advertisement for 15 years, and the best ads allow me to finish the story. So when you see a Porsche ad, it’s really simple — white space all around, one hero photo, one headline, two small paragraphs — because a Porsche isn’t a car, it’s a story. And so if you’ll start the story and give me room to tell the rest of the story, I’ll use vocabulary you don’t have access to. I have 46 years of memories, and so if you’ll start the conversation and, like you said, not overfill it and give me room, then I get to make the story mine and then I get to really benefit from it. And that's kind of how I look at it.
Andrew: We’re gonna make room for a little commercial.
Patsy: Do it.
Andrew: Alright, we’re gonna be back with our friend Jon Acuff, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about overthinking, taking it from being a super problem, as you say, into a superpower but in the context of your family and parenting. We’ll be right back.
Patsy: Andrew, I understand, word is out, that you do another podcast with a friend of ours. Tell us about that.
Andrew: Mr. Mark Lowry, who was a guest on this podcast. He’s my co-host for Dinner Conversations with Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer. We have a ton of fun talking about all kinds of topics around the table, and you can find them at dinner-conversations.com.
Do you know something that we both love a lot of, Patsy?
Patsy: What’s that?
Andrew: That’s books.
Patsy: Food
Andrew: That too. But I hear you have a book club.
Patsy: I do have a book club. It’s called Porch Pals Book Club, and you can find out more about the book club by going to patsyclairmont.com.
Food for the Hungry Sponsorship Message
Patsy: Food for the Hungry is giving us a wonderful opportunity. I’m so glad that they have put this program into effect because of the literacy issue around the world, and this is going to help tackle that, plus bring the light of Christ into the lives of children that will be spread throughout the villages and the homes and the hearts of people. I love it. I love it. Tell us more.
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Andrew: Alright, we’re back with my Boomer co-host, Patsy Clairmont. I’m the Millennial, Andrew Greer, and we’re here with I would assume a Gen Xer.
Jon: Gen X, yeah, totally.
Andrew: Yeah, I thought I was a Gen Xer for years.
Jon: Greatest generation, a lot of people say.
Andrew: I don’t think that’s how it’s termed. But let’s talk about another generation, which would be your teenage daughters. So how do you use these concepts about making the transition from overthinking being problematic to a resource in the lives of your two teenage daughters.
Jon: Well, what’s really interesting, and I haven’t spoken about it much yet, is that the response that surprised me the most from the book was parents that would say, “How do I teach my teenagers this?” Because, one, they’re surrounded by more noise than any generation ever before, and two, if you can figure out truth at a young age, you can sprint with it. You don’t have to unlearn 20 years of old things that aren’t true; you can just adapt the truth.
And so we actually wrote a book together. So we did a Soundtracks for teenagers, me and my two daughters. I have one who’s a sophomore and one who’s a graduating senior in high school, and we wrote a book geared at teenagers; and they wrote the majority of it because I knew if I tried to write the book, it would be like, A, an adult trying to be like I don’t mean to flex on y’all, fellow youths. I’m so savage, what? I get TikTok. It would have been obvious.
And so that was how we kind of answered that question, and so many things came up. And part of the reason we wrote it was I started to see soundtracks in teenagers. So we were at a swim meet, for instance, and I was volunteering because servant leader. I just can’t stop giving, I guess. And this girl gets out of the poo, and she says to her mom, “I’m the slowest swimmer on the team. I’m the worst on the team. I’ll never get better,” and then she walks off. And my wife and I looked at each other and said, “Those are just soundtracks. She can change those. There’s something you can do there.”
And so we started to see that, and so it was really interesting to sit down with my teenagers and go, “What is your generation facing? What are the things that you’re hearing from friends? What are some healthy ways that are realistic too?” I think sometimes the flaw of books aimed at teenagers is we want to prevent them from every problem ever and go, “Hey, it took me 20 years to learn this, but by the end of this chapter, you will have learned it.” And you go, Whoa, whoa, whoa. How do we create a real, honest, fun book that gives them some tools, and that’s what we did.
Andrew: Are you a teen?
Patsy: I’m sitting here thinking, Where was all this good information when I was a troubled, crazy girl in my teenage years? And I realize we’ve really come a long way in getting a hold of concepts, and these fit into the business world. They fit into the everyday life of communicating with daughters and with your wife, learning what the soundtracks are. That’s gotta be something that’s going back and forth between you all the time, where you’re both saying to the other one, “Oh, that’s a soundtrack issue.”
Jon: Well, yeah, and so one of my daughters said, “I’ll never be good at geometry,” and we said, “Hold on. Let’s change that.” Because one of the signs that you’re listening to a broken soundtrack is absolutes. I’m the only one who doesn’t have a new phone. That’s one a teenager will say. Every one of my friends got to go to that party except me. I’ll never be good at geometry. And you go, “Wait a second.”
And that works for adults too, if you hear an absolute. And so we’ll say, “Let’s change that to I can get better at geometry.” Or even, I learned biology. I can learn geometry too. Let’s talk back a year ago when you were in a similar situation and thought, I’ll never be good at biology, but we got through that, so let’s remember that.
That’s one of the activities in the book for teenagers is write down a hard list. When you do something that’s hard, write it down and give yourself credit because you’ll forget that. Your brain will forget that, wait a second, I’ve gone through things before. And so there’s all these practical things we can do, but yeah, it has become a big part. And my kids will call me out on it.
I wrote in a book called Finish about goals. We did a study, and people who cut their goals in half were 63 percent more successful because they overestimated. So somebody won’t write for a year, and then they’ll go, I’m gonna write this whole book this month. And you’re like, That doesn’t sound sustainable. Or they’ll go, I’ve never run, and then they’ll go, I’m gonna run a marathon in three weeks. And you’re like, That doesn’t sound sustainable.
So if I have a big goal, one of my kids will go, “Hey, no offense, dad. I feel like you should maybe cut that goal in half.” Teenagers will tell you the truth. And so it has become a fun part of our family communication is soundtracks and how to goals get really accomplished. I can’t wait to record the audiobook with them, and we’re gonna do some speeches together and some podcast interviews. I just think it’s going to be a blast.
Patsy: Well, yes, and it’s going to also build into the relationships even more, the things we work hard at and do together. Boy, that’s good foundation. That’s a great bridge.
Andrew: It is. I love what you said about remembering, which I think is a bridge to gratitude. I think when we sit there and remember even when we were experiencing kind of the first upheaval of the pandemic, and I had so many friends who were reacting to very real circumstances but were worried about very basic things, like next meal and stuff while living in million-dollar houses, and I requested that we pause, that we remember how we’ve been provided for in the past. Just like your daughters remembering what they conquered already and that you will conquer again, remember what has been provided for us in the past and what will continue to be provided for us, even if we have to, like you’re saying, change and evolve and flex. That’s kind of the superpower of humanity is that humans, above all creation it seems, have been given the ability to flex.
“The superpower of humanity is that humans, above all creation it seems, have been given the ability to flex.”
Jon: The ability to adapt, the ability to learn, the ability to need community, the ability to admit they need community, yeah. And I think the last two years have shown so many different people that.
I told somebody a great question to ask is what would have made this year easier and then go build that. So last year, I asked that question: What would have made it easier? As a public speaker, when every event gets either paused or canceled, it would’ve been easier if I had a podcast because I could have communicated with ideas.
And so I don’t beat myself up for not having the podcast. That’s the key. You don’t say, “I’m ashamed. I should’ve done it earlier.” You say, “Okay, this year would’ve been easier with this thing in place, so let me go build that.” So I built a podcast called All It Takes Is A Goal.
But you could also say, “This year would’ve been easier if I had closer friends, so I’m gonna go build that. I’m gonna go reach out, and I’m gonna admit need. I’m gonna make space for a coffee. I’m gonna put real time to it.” You only get to grow things that you give time. And so you would say, “Okay, I feel lonely. What do I do with that? How do I process that?” I love how Chip Dodd writes about feelings. You say, “Okay, I’m going to do something with that.”
So my goal with the book is your thoughts become your actions become your results. That’s always how it goes, so if we want great results — and who would say they want bad results? — well, it starts with the actions we do. And often, it starts with changing those underlying thoughts, and so that’s kind of the simple pattern.
Andrew: Well, I think certainly this conversation will make the lives, at least the thought processes of some of our listeners going from A to B, a lot easier and will produce potentially new thoughts, which is what we always hope. We always hope that these conversations bridge in your own life to create new thoughts, new conversations, more productive lifestyles. Whatever we can offer we’ll try. And Jon, you offer a lot in a short amount of time, which I am personally grateful for.
Jon: Well, good. Yeah, it’s concentrated. It’s action packed.
Patsy: I like all that you’re doing, and I just want to say thank you.
Jon: Well, I love the example you’ve set for so many people like me, Patsy. It was the lunch we went to a couple years ago was so helpful to me and such a kind gift. I think you’re the kind of person that gives people gifts without even knowing that they’re gifts, and so I got to come home and take notes after that conversation. And so I know there’s other people listening to this podcast that would say the same, and they’re not in this chair today, so I’ll get to be the one that says thanks.
Patsy: Very generous, thank you.
Andrew: And if you do want to give a gift that is a known, tangible gift…
Jon: Like monetary?
Andrew: Right
Jon: I don’t know. I feel like you got a pretty nice coat on right now.
Andrew: Which was a gift I should be thankful for.
Jon: Who gave you that?
Andrew: Cindy Morgan gave this to me.
Jon: Cindy Morgan, okay. I do like it. It makes me want to ski.
Andrew: Thank you very much.
Jon: As soon as I saw you today, I was like, That’s nice. I like that.
Andrew: Thank you. Thank you, Cindy. I need no more gifts.
Jon, take your coffee home. We’ll see you later.
Jon: Alright, thanks, guys.
Patsy: Blessings
Patsy: Bridges is produced by my co-host, Andrew Greer.
Andrew: And co-produced by my co-host, Patsy Clairmont. Our podcast is recorded by Jesse Phillips.
Patsy: And sometimes my son, Jason Clairmont.
Andrew: At the Arcade in Franklin, Tennessee. Jesse Phillips is also our editor and mixes our show. And our theme music is written by Kyle Buchanan and yours truly, and all of the instruments of the music were played by Kyle Buchanan at Aries Lounge in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Our transcripts are provided by Rachel Worsham. Thanks, Rachel, for all your work.
Patsy: If you like what you’ve been listening to, you can help us out by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to our show.
Andrew: For more information about Patsy, myself, or to read transcripts and to listen to more episodes, go to bridgesshow.com.
Patsy: Catch you next time.