What's on Your Bookshelf?
“What’s On Your Bookshelf” is a personal and professional growth podcast exploring the intersections of passion, potential, and purpose - featuring multi-certified coach and leadership development consultant Denise R. Russo alongside Andy Hughes, Scott Miller, and Samantha Powell.
What's on Your Bookshelf?
75 - Solve for Happy - Chapter 13 - L.I.P. Part 2
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Welcome to what's on your Bookshelf, with your hosts Denise Russo and Samantha Powell.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, welcome back. It's another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is a life and leadership podcast where we are living out loud the pages of the books that are on our bookshelves. My name is Denise Russo. I'm here with my friend and co-host, sam Powell, and we're going through a book called Solve for Happy by Mo Gaudet. He's a former executive from Google, and we talk about living out loud the pages of the books that are on our shelves. But this chapter we're in right now is not about life, it's about death. But we're going to be talking today about how death can be associated with happiness. So, sam, I'm looking forward to the conversation. I'm not quite sure where we'll head into this one. This has been a tough chapter, but how are you doing today?
Speaker 1:I'm doing well. I'm doing well, yeah, and this is the so. This is part two of this one, so if you missed the last episode, go back and go to listen to that one, but this is happy. You have to accept these five truths, and so you have to accept that death is a part of of this existence, that is a part of life. It is something that we experience, and we talked about myths last time, and this time it was. It was really an interesting I don't know take on life. Kay calls this the long life continuum, and this was fascinating to me. I had never thought about life in this way, and so, while this is a heavy topic, I'm excited to talk about your thoughts on this, denise, because it was just an interesting one.
Speaker 2:It's super interesting.
Speaker 2:I think it's important for us this week to start with one thing that he shares in the book, because we don't know who all of our listeners are.
Speaker 2:If you are a listener and you haven't chatted with us or sent us comments or your feedback, we sure would love to hear from you Scott always puts ways for you to reach us in the show notes but because we don't know who you are, it's important for us to say this. Mo says it best there are different schools of thought on what happens to us after death, but there are some recurring conceptual building blocks. The most common are those of eternal life, reincarnation and nothingness. And so those are the three things that, if you break it down to the base level, people would think is either you live eternally, you're reincarnated into something else, or nothing happens to you current physical form on this planet, and the word death only refers to the end of this form that we have in this life on this planet. So we're not going to debate religions or belief systems of what happens when this human carcass is no longer. This is about the fact that we live a life and eventually this life as we know it goes away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's important right To just make sure you've got those definitions straight as one as this episode progresses, as we're talking about life, we're talking about the life in this existence and death being when this existence ends, despite whatever beliefs you might have beyond that. So just that's the clear, clear, clear definition we're working with, which is important.
Speaker 2:I think it's interesting that he also does say something, though here that is sort of time bound, which is that death lasts infinitely longer while life ends so quickly. So, even if you think about back in the early years of the United States being inhabited by settlers so not the people who lived here originally, but I mean the people that came over on the boats is that they often died at a very young age, and so yet we have a lot of history that comes from some of our first presidents. Right, Like we all learned about George Washington and the cherry tree and riding his boat across the lake. Right, His life ended quickly, but his life lived, the memory of it, the history of it, the lessons we learned from it lasted so much longer, and so he talks here in the book that death lasts infinitely longer than our life.
Speaker 1:Life ends quickly in our bodies, and so the question is in regards to the relationship that we have with time, yeah, and so he introduces this concept of the long life and depending on right Denise, you said those three views that you can take after death of eternal life, reincarnation or nothingness, that life really is this life right, this one before we hit death, plus eternal life right.
Speaker 1:This is what long life equals if you believe in eternal life or lifetimes, reincarnation like right Lifetimes, however many times you're reincarnated, what those lives look like. And then if you believe in you know neither of those things, that just this life right, like this, is the life that you have. So when you think about life, it's when he just finds long life, it's really kind of expanding it out to what happens next, if anything happens next. And then he uses this nice little picture, the picture of Aristotle or a picture of a statue of Aristotle, and he says that his life was only 62 years of aristotle, or a picture of a statue of aristotle, yep, and he says that his life was only 62 years.
Speaker 1:His death has been 2300 years, and so the long life equation here is the 62 plus the 2300 you know, and so when you think about, you know like this long life continuum is that that life, in one form or another, really continues beyond the event of your death, which is interesting, it's sort of like.
Speaker 2:Have you ever thought about or heard about this idea that you want to leave a legacy that transcends the life? Of your heart beating in your body is what are you leaving behind?
Speaker 1:yeah, it reminds me of a talk I listened to. I think it's simon sinek. I'll have to look it up. Um, but it talks about how, when people. It is because it's about the infinite game. It's in that concept of his that, when people are towards the end of their career, they start to get very concerned with their legacy, like you're saying right, like as their career is ending, as they're heading towards retirement, they start to really think a lot about the legacy that they're leaving behind.
Speaker 1:because it's like the death of retirement is one form of the death of your career right over and done with. People are left behind and, um, you know, you're hoping that your legacy continues. But his you know, thought process is that if you are concerned with your legacy from the beginning right, if you're really playing the infinite game like the point of the game is to play the game not the point of the game is to play the game, not the point of the game is to win something, it's to play then you approach your career very differently. It's not this thing, you're building towards that. Then you win it and you leave this legacy behind.
Speaker 1:It's I'm building my legacy every day, and I think about that in this context of if you're understanding that there's life, death and what he's calling this long life that extends beyond the event of death, then how differently would you live your life, right, how differently would you think about your legacy and think about I'm building my legacy every day. I'm building the things that exist beyond me, beyond this life, right, like Like that's interesting, and especially like now in this digital world. Right, like how long will this podcast exist after you and I are gone, like who knows? I have no idea how any of that works, whatever the storage limits are, I guess, on things when they purge data. But there's things you know exist beyond.
Speaker 1:I think of people that I've lost in pictures and videos that I have Like beyond I think of people that I've lost in pictures and videos that I have like you know, we keep these things alive, right, and that's I mean, that's one of the important things about families is that we keep the stories, the legacies. We make the life longer, right, like my son only lived for 16 months, but he will definitely live for however long I live, however long my husband lives, probably however long my son lives, and you know, my future daughter here too, because we will tell the stories, we will show the pictures, we will show the videos, and so, if you think about that way, like life I don't know, death is different, right, death is a different type of event than we tend to think. It doesn't have the finality that we put on it.
Speaker 2:There's a song song, and I can't remember who sings it. I feel like it's Matthew West, but I could be completely wrong. Maybe we can look it up, but it basically is a song that says, if today was your last day, you know, will you have, will you be able to say that you did everything you could to love people, will you be able to to be able to look back and say that you aren't leaving any regrets? And I wish I could remember who sings the song, but we'll have to look it up there. It keeps me to thinking, though, about how I've been talking to a lot of people in the recent months that were put in a position at their jobs where the jobs was making cuts, layoffs.
Speaker 2:I know many of you listening to this podcast, maybe you've experienced it and you're several months into your job hunt still but there was this time where there were some people that had an opportunity to accept a retirement buyout for some of their jobs, and two people in particular Sam, I remember talking with that said I'm so excited because now I can start my life.
Speaker 2:Both people decided to start like an entrepreneurial business coaching, things like that and I said to both of them what made you wait until you were at a retirement age to quote unquote start your life. And both of them kind of sat back. Both people know each other, but it wasn't a phone call where they were both on the phone together. Them had the same answer, which was I got so caught up in the day to day and the good money I was making and the normalcy of being in business that I put my dreams aside. And isn't that what we started.
Speaker 2:The whole retreat, for our retreat called your signature story, was built on the idea that you can awaken your dreams, you can elevate your potential, you can live a life of purpose and meaning, but only if you're willing to do some of the hard work that it takes. And here's these two people who really are at an age where they should be winding down and enjoying their retirement and they're starting, essentially, a new career, a new life, a new business. And they waited long and both of them also said I wish I would have done it sooner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we get so caught up in, I think, especially in, like, the ways society deems that we're supposed to do this. Right, like here's all these milestones you're supposed to hit, here's what this looks like. I think we see this especially like I don't know. I can only speak from my experience, but in American culture, right Like, there's just this you know you graduate, you go to high school, you graduate, you go to college. Then you know you get a job, you start working in the corporate America world, you or wherever, you know, whatever path you choose, when all of them have this very predefined thing, whether you're going to be a doctor or a teacher or a lawyer or like whatever.
Speaker 1:Then you get married, then you have kids, and then you do all this stuff and it's like if you can throw all those rules out the window, you can live a very creative life. But, like, those concepts have to die in your mind, right, the should has to die in your mind for you to get to the what could be right. Like, I think that should is the thing that has to die for possibilities to be the thing that live. And I want to live in a world of possibilities and so, like I always, I tell people this all the time it's like one of my biggest life mottos. I've stole from um the tv show whose line is it anyways? So I love that shame prop thing. But they start the show with saying, like, welcome to Whose Line Is it Anyways? Where the rules are made up and the points don't matter. And to me that's a life motto the rules are made up and the points don't matter. Like, what are we trying to do here?
Speaker 1:Right, Like I can do whatever I want technically, as long as it's an integrity with the values I hold, and that's just because I'm holding those values right, I don't have to play by any other rules. I get to play by the rules that I set for myself. And so like I think about that in, you know kind of in this concept, and he goes into this chapter to some again he goes down. I say this like there's like a third episode, said it's like very meta scientific theories, like he's talking about the double slit experiment in quasi quantum physics. He's talking about the uncertainty principle, um, the observer's paradox, einstein's theory of relativity, like I mean he gets into some interesting, interesting, interesting stuff. I definitely encourage people to read through this because he pulls it together in a very interesting way it hurt my brain, but it was super logical to reread.
Speaker 2:Like slow it down and, yeah, if you like science and you like physics and you like that kind of information around, how he talks in a very practical, scientific, formulaic way, while he also does talk about people who have near death experiences and say that they saw certain things and came, came back out of the comas and things like that. So there's that part as well in here. But if you like science and you like physics, this is the chapter for you for sure. When he pivots a little bit, sam, and talks about how, when he pivots a little bit Sam, and talks about how death is related to happiness, I'm curious what you you thought about this piece of it. Before he talks about the lessons we learn from, uh, from life and death yeah, I mean, I, I think that that's, I think that it's.
Speaker 1:It's true, like you know and we kind of talked about this at the beginning, I think we talked about this last the last episode is that for you to really get to happiness, death has to exist in this life and you have to accept that exists in this life and you have to live in some kind against this expectation that is, you know, outside of reality, right, that death is. You know all these things and it's you know we're trying to avoid it. You know like you're really missing out on some of the beauty of life. You know, if you, if you're ignoring this. So I, I think I agree that, like, in order to get to real happiness, you have to accept, accept this, you know, and I, you know, and I like that.
Speaker 1:You know he pulls all this together and you know he says that you know his definition that death is the end of our physical form. But it's not the opposite of life. Death is the opposite of birth. Birth and death are the portals through which we come in and go out of this physical form, but life is independent of all that's physical. If you read the book why he gets into the quantum physics theory, big bang theory of relativity, like all this kind of stuff you know, is to really get to that point that death and life are not the opposites. It's death and birth are the opposites of each other, not the opposites. It's death and birth are the opposites of each other. And life is, can you know, is, continued beyond all of that. It existed before birth, through in the middle and beyond.
Speaker 2:It's just, it's just interesting, it's very super interesting he talks about how I I would say like this is. It seems like he's describing that it took death for him to truly live, and so he says in here that the path to joy is to see life for what it's really worth. And so what I took away from this was that it was horrible to lose his 21 year old son in a tragic accident inside of a hospital. So it wasn't even that he was in a car accident. There was an accident caused by a nurse, and so if Ali had not passed away, mo was very successful in his career. He worked really hard. He wasn't home very often, he still loved his family and they went on trips and hiking and had a good, loving family.
Speaker 1:But there was still not this conscious awareness of this solving for having a happy lifestyle despite our circumstances, and it took ollie dying for mo to truly embrace what it's like to be living yeah, and it makes me think of that, even in like smaller ways, right, like some things have to die and it's like not a physical death really, but like a concept, a thought, that you have has to die in order for the next version of toddler to come around, and then that that has to die for the kid version to come around, and then the teenager, and then the young adult, and then the adult, and then that you know, like, as you're moving through all these stages and I think of, like, as I've hit this, you know full-blown adult status, right, like there are versions of me, like the version of me from seven years ago is dead, is gone. Do I carry pieces of that with me? Yes, but some of those pieces are buried because I had to give room for new pieces and I had to give room for those things. And I love the line he's got here. He says accepting death will set you free, but it first will really piss you off.
Speaker 1:And like that is my life experience on, like, especially those transitions, right, like I can't believe I'm going through this massive change, I can't believe this thing is happening to me, like are you freaking, kidding me right now? Right, but as you go through it. Like it, it sets you free, right Like letting go of the things, letting go of those old versions of you, go of the things, letting go of those old versions of you, of those old thoughts, of those old beliefs really do set you free. But it is hard to do that, it's a lot of work to do that, but it's freedom on the other side freedom on the oh man.
Speaker 2:This makes me think of one of my all-time favorite movies. Have you ever seen the movie shawshank redemption?
Speaker 1:I haven't, which is like probably a sin because it is like a classic movie.
Speaker 2:Classic. Oh my gosh, please go read this movie. It is such a good movie I've seen it, I can't even tell you how many times it is filled with life lessons and it's a beautiful movie for what you just said, which is, how do you see the lessons in things like death? And one of the most famous quotes in the movie is that one of the characters is talking about this. There's this guy in the movie and I won't give all the spoilers for any of you who haven't seen the movie yet but there's a guy in the movie who spent most of his life in jail and prison, and so he gets released, and so when he gets released into the world, it's a world he doesn't know. I don't know why.
Speaker 2:The last couple of episodes, by the way, are themes of people in jail.
Speaker 2:I think the last three episodes have been talking about this jail movie, anyways.
Speaker 2:So this is another jail movie, and in this one, though, this elderly man cannot accept life outside the walls of his cell, and so in the movie, there's this quote that says you can either get busy living or you can get busy dying, and there's only those two choices, like get busy living or get busy dying. And so how do you want to live your life? I know that the last couple of months I've been dealing with my mom had hip surgery and the first couple of weeks of her rehabilitation were miserable, like she just didn't want to get better, and so we had to sit and talk to her about how the doctors literally said in six weeks you're going to be back to normal. You don't feel it right now, but if you don't put the work in right now to get yourself to the six weeks, then it's going to take longer than six weeks. So you can get busy living, do what we're saying enjoy your life, be happy, be around the people that love you the most, or don't. It's a choice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it reminds me of the research on the chart that lives rent-free in my head now from the last book that Sonia Lubomirsky's work around. You know, an event happens in your life and after that event you're like brought down into survival mode, right, like whatever that is. It's rough, you're just trying to get by. But if you aim for thriving, right, not just recovering, like getting back to that normal, right, getting back to the same level, but if you aim for thriving, you can get to thriving. And I think that that's it. Like we die, all these little deaths, all these little things that happen, right, and it's just the death of, maybe, the current reality or the death of our current situation. But if we aim for thriving, if we aim for something higher, we can absolutely get there. But we have to put in the work now, just like just like the you know what your mom was told right, like you have to work hard now in order to get there later.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's three lessons that Mo talks about how we do that. So how to not how to die, but how to live a life that's worthy to lead, this fulfilling life of happiness and joy and peace. So why don't we go through for the next couple of minutes just what these lessons are? There's only three of them, but they may be things that are going to see self, seem self explanatory or simple, or maybe even that you've already heard us say. But if it reinforces it for you, these lessons may help you get past the feelings that, like you said, sam, that you're at the lowest level, but then you don't even have to be at the middle level. You can be way above that level, right.
Speaker 1:You can aim for happiness, you can aim for fulfilling, you can aim for joy. Yeah, which is interesting. So the first one is death is inevitable, and this part of the book is like very small, like three sentences, four, lines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very short, but it's like death is inevitable, Right, and again it's. It's not even just that big event of death, Right it's. You know we talked about change, but you know it's just these little deaths that happen all throughout our life. Death is inevitable. It is coming for us all in lots of little ways. It's actively happening every day.
Speaker 2:so he says surrender to that, then you can get into this worthy and fulfilling life yeah, he basically is saying here that you can't fight the fact that death will come, but what you can do is control the way you live until that time comes. Yeah, so the second one is that lesson number two is that life is now, and so we talked about earlier, which is that you have a birth date and you have an expiration date. What matters is the stuff that's in the middle and those. He describes it like this he says the start and the end of your life are like covers on a book and that they may feel significant, but it's the pages of a book that are significant. The cover is just telling you what it's about, but you have to read the book to get the essence of what the book is really about.
Speaker 2:So how would you live if you knew that today was your last day? I wish I could remember who sings this song. It's like I'm at the tip of my tongue now and I really think it's Matthew West. But any case, the point is is that if you aren't living today the way that you would, if you knew that today was the last day, what would you do differently and why aren't you living that way? This is a lot of what I talk about with my own clients.
Speaker 2:I know you do as well, sam, that if you are just skating along in your job or your career and maybe you're good at what you do but you're not great at what you do and you don't take the time for continuous learning. Or maybe you like what you do but you don't love it anymore if you ever even loved it to begin with. Or maybe you go to work and you say, oh, it's Monday, I can't. Oh, I have a meeting with so-and-so and I can't wait for this day to be done. Why live your life that way? Because the moments that pass can never be retrieved again. So why would you not think about, if today was your last day, how would you change your life?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And the third lesson is life is a rental, which I loved, that concept right. Like you can't, it's the, it's the saying of, you can't take it with you when you go, you are renting every single thing about this life and so, really thinking about you know, right, he says rent a full and happy life and nothing can be gained that will not eventually be lost. And this is where he finally gives us the title of this chapter, which is lip again, which is a play on RIP. Rest in peace and gives us a different thought process for that.
Speaker 2:So we're almost at the end of our time. Should we share a little bit what it is? I think so.
Speaker 1:I think this is the moment.
Speaker 2:Drum roll, please, Sam.
Speaker 1:I'll give you the honors. Yeah, so what he says is we stop thinking of the time we will rest in peace and only then do we learn to live in peace and I love that Right and thinking about bringing that into the now that life is a rental, that you know life is now and that death is inevitable. If you really embrace those concepts, if you really accept them for what they are, then you can live in peace. Now you don't have to rest in peace. You can live in peace before you ever get to this expiration event that will occur.
Speaker 2:He talks about this in terms of thinking of your life almost like looking outside of yourself, and so he describes it as being like a game, but I know I've done this exercise before with some of my coaching clients which is where you do step outside of your being to look at what you're doing and what you want to be changing, and so, if you can work with a coach that can help you through this, you may find areas where you can take back some control of your time or where you may elevate your experiences and the things that you want to learn. Or maybe you put things to the side, like my two friends who retired that are starting their new businesses, and realize you don't need to wait until you're at retirement age to start living your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and if you can step outside of yourself and talk about, like a video game, like a first person view, video game, right, and this avatar of yourself.
Speaker 1:And then earlier in the book he talks about you being the observer, the real you is the observer of this life, not necessarily like you living this life itself, and so when you can do that, then you can really view life as something you're able to kind of step away from and observe. And you know like the game can be intense and you know like, if you think about playing a video game, it can be intense and your character goes through all this stuff and maybe they get, you know, I don't know, beat up on the screen or whatever. But you can step back and say, well, that's fun, like, right, that was, that was interesting, right, like, and you can think about life events that way too too. That, hey, you can take this big step back and say, yeah, what's the next? Like, okay, let's level up, let's take it to the next thing, let's figure out how to just give us that space and really observe.
Speaker 2:Life has meaning, life is worth living, and you know, for most of you listening to this, if you listen to any of our episodes, you know I'm a person of faith, and so I'll close my part today with something that Mo says was Ali's last wish.
Speaker 2:He says that all I want when I get to the other side meaning when he dies is to go to the highest place and see the face of the one who made this awesome universe.
Speaker 2:And when I read that sentence, I highlighted it, because that's how I want to live my life. I want to live my life believing that I lived the best life I could, I loved the best I could, I was kind to others, but also remembered to be kind to myself, and that, when all is said and done, all I really care about is I'm going to get somewhere and have someone say you know what you did well, good and faithful servant, welcome to this next part of this new part of your life. And so, again, maybe that's not the way that you believe your life will be, but if you've taken anything away from the episode today and the one from last week, is that, yes, death is inevitable, and what happens after death is whatever happens that none of us know what that is, but what we do know what is is right now and how we live our lives today, how we love others and love ourselves, and how we live our lives out loud, and hopefully we were able to help do that for you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I really really love that. And next time we'll be talking about the fifth of the five ultimate truths, which is design, and the chapter is called who made who, so that one will be fun. I'm excited to get into that with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, looking forward to that as well. So, sam, as always, it's a pleasure and, friends, if you've liked this or you've gotten value from it, or you just know somebody that could get value from this, please share, please subscribe, and we love to hear from you. So many of you are commenting and sharing your thoughts with us, but we'd love to hear from you more about if this is resonating with you and also if you have books that you want us to add to our bookshelves. We've gotten a couple of cool recommendations lately, so we'd love to hear that as well. But for today, my name is Denise Russo and, on behalf of my friend, sam Powell, this has been another episode of what's on your Bookshelf.