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 Sam Powell, Zach Elliott, Tom Schweizer, Dennis LaRue, and Michelle King.
What's on Your Bookshelf?
131 UnF Yourself: I am Relentless-Escaping the Thought Trap
We explore Chapter Six of Gary John Bishop's "Un-F Yourself," challenging the notion that we are defined by our thoughts and asserting that our actions ultimately determine our reality and results.
• Your thoughts influence what you do, but you are defined by your actions, not what's in your head
• Breaking through belief barriers requires focusing on the next small step rather than getting overwhelmed by the entire journey
• Small, consistent actions compound over time to create significant results
• Admiral McRaven's "make your bed" philosophy demonstrates how one small accomplishment creates momentum for your entire day
• Clearing mental clutter through physical action creates space for productivity and clearer thinking
• Getting "unstuck" often requires action first, with improved thoughts and feelings following
• The cycle of thoughts, beliefs, and actions works in both directions - positive actions create positive thoughts
• "Action may not bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action"
This week's quest: Take one small action toward something you've been thinking about but haven't acted on yet - even when you don't feel like it.
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Welcome to what's on your Bookshelf, a life and leadership podcast where we live out loud the pages of the books that are on our shelves, with your host, denise Russo, and Sam Powell.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is our Life and Leadership podcast, where we're living out loud the pages of the books that are on our bookshelves. My name is Denise Russo, my co-host and friend is Sam Powell, and together we are reading a book called Un-F Yourself by Gary John Bishop, and it's about getting out of your head and into your life, and this chapter is chapter six and it's all about that. It's about getting out of your thoughts and really investigating what it is you're actually doing. So I'm looking forward to this chapter with you today, sam, just because I often focus on how the things you do or don't do do come from your thoughts. But this is sort of twisting it upside down a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, this is this is he's saying in the quote at the very beginning is you are not defined by what's inside your head, you are what you do, your actions and so this chapter is all about. Like. Your thoughts, you know, are great influencers in what you do and do not do, but ultimately it is what you do that matters, right it's. You can think every great thought in the world. You could write a great novel in your head, but if you never put pen to paper, you're not an author, right Like it's that it's getting again.
Speaker 1:His whole thing in this book is getting out of your head and into your life, and so it's. You are not the thoughts that go through your head, you are the actions. You know what you do about it. And it's funny, as soon as I read the I am not my thoughts, I am what I do, I thought of Saul for happy because he has that whole chapter on. You're not your thoughts, you're the observer of your thoughts, right Like. He puts that little bit of separation and the author here is kind of doing the same thing, right Like? Just because a thought goes through your head doesn't mean that defines you. It's what you do with that thought that really matters.
Speaker 2:I wonder if what's the missing piece in this chapter for me is when we talk about this sort of process or workflow or whatever you want to call it, where we do talk about how, if you look at your results in your life or the outcomes you have in your life, you take it one step back and look at the actions or inactions you took, you take it another step backwards from that which is what were your beliefs around whether or not you can achieve those actions or not, and then you go into your thinking and you do change your thinking.
Speaker 2:But so for this chapter, for me what's kind of missing is that belief piece, because we talked last week about even the idea of people having thoughts about what they want in life and then they don't do something about it. But okay, so I have a friend who uses vision boards and the vision board's beautiful and it's got all of these thoughts about things they'd like in life, like live on an island and be wealthy and have this and have that in life, but it's a board on their wall and then there's nothing besides this really great piece of art. So what you think you want, is it really what you think you want?
Speaker 2:And so that's where the belief part comes right, like if you think you like, there's a Bruno Mars song that says I want to be a millionaire, so effing bad. Yeah Well, he ended up becoming one and then, unfortunately, it seems like he's had some destruction in his life, went into massive debt because he used a lot of his money in Las Vegas, maybe took up some habits that were not so positive. So the question is, what is it you really want? But maybe why? Why do you think you want those things? If you say you're unhappy at work but you do nothing to get out of your job or change your career, that is action or inaction, but it comes from the belief you have. Maybe the belief is like, well, could I even possibly get another job? And you stay stuck. So do you really think you want a new job or do you just think it'd be nice to think about if you had a different job?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we spend so much time dreaming and stuck in our head about it, but we don't get into that space of believing what it is. I think this, I think this chapter, like, as I'm listening to you talk about this, I'm thinking this chapter is really about adjusting that belief part of it, right, that, like it's because that becomes the blocker. So often, right, I have the thought I, you know, therefore, I feel this way, I think this way, so therefore, I can't move to action, or I don't move to action or whatever, and it's like that belief is blocking you. And so I think this is almost like working through that part of the belief. Piece of it is that you're not your thoughts. Right, you have to believe that you're not your thoughts. You have to believe that you're the step that comes after it. So you have to believe that action is possible, believe that action can be done, right, that you can make those steps. It reminds me I saw this thing.
Speaker 1:I wrote down on a Post-it note. I don't know it's me. I saw this thing. I wrote down on a post-it note. I don't know, it's probably two years ago at this point, but it was like one of those internet you know, swipey slide things at carousel posts and it was like the five steps to manifesting and like I have such a like love-hate relationship with all the manifesting stuff especially being a coach, because there's so many like woo-woo coaches in the world and like they're always just manifest it and do whatever, like the vision board things which, like is good. Right, I think you should set very clear visions on what you want.
Speaker 1:But this was the first time I'd seen somebody use manifesting in sort of a little bit different way and he said the five steps for manifesting are one, dreaming it, so I think it's thinking it right, you think it up. Two is believing it right. Right, in line with what you're saying, right, believe that you can achieve this. And then the third step is work at it. The fourth step is achieve it right, actually go get the thing. And then the fifth step is receiving it right, like acknowledging, taking that moment of gratitude, really saying like, yeah, I did this, like all right, let's go. But it was the first time I've seen somebody talk about manifesting in action.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I think it's my like favorite definition of like I'm going to manifest this. It's not like I'm just going to talk into the world and be like I'm going to become a millionaire. It's like there's a working step right in the middle of that. Like is really the key right? If you just manifest and dream and vision and all that sort of good stuff, but you never put the work in, nothing happens. Nothing comes out of it. Nothing happens. But you've got to believe that you can do it in order to step into action.
Speaker 2:I like that. I've heard before something like believe it to achieve it. But what you're saying is, if I think back to last week we talked a little bit about our Retreat, your Signature story and if we think about how that all came to pass, is we came up with an idea? So maybe that was the thought of what would it be like if we went on a retreat ourselves to go map out what we were going to do for this next chapter in our own lives. So we didn't know. We had just left our jobs and we left corporate careers that were more than a decade long for both of us, and we were thinking about doing this thing that was completely out of the natural state Not completely, I guess, because we both had experience doing similar types of things that we were about to do but it wasn't our natural state. So we thought about it.
Speaker 2:But I think then, when we started to believe it was possible, we still didn't know that other people would believe it or want to do it, and it didn't become real till we took an action, like I remember the day when we finally booked your flight to come to Florida and suddenly it was like, oh, holy crap, now it really is real. We're going to really have to do this thing. And, oh my gosh, if we could tell you all the story of what really all happened and transpired, with people registering and then dropping out and people having personal things come up and couldn't come, people that we didn't even know that ended up actually coming, actually doing the event and it's an outdoor event and it was pouring down rain so bad and then the problems that we had at the hotel and stuff like it was almost a comedy of errors in many ways for some of the pieces of it. But it's like thinking through on it in hindsight now how all those things you mentioned it, I think, last week that they are what made the event so absolutely beautiful and better because of those things happening. And so if we had thought that those things, like if we had known fast forward that those things were going to happen I wonder if you and I would have been stopped then in our beliefs and thoughts and just said you know what? No, don't do this, because all these other bad things are going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that I and probably not right we probably have been like, oh, it's just not worth going through all of that, right, but like, once you go through it, it's worth going through it, right. We have this weird thing as humans where it's like when we think about all the obstacles in the future, it's like just not like exhausting, don't want to do it, I just like why even try? But when we think of all those exact same obstacles in the past, it's like I'm awesome. I like look at what I did, right. Like I'm proud of myself, like I can't believe we did this. Like oh, it was just so worth it. Oh, it was meant to be, oh, it was right.
Speaker 1:We like have all these sayings that we throw on to all this junk that happens to us along the way in hindsight. But it's the same, like they're the same obstacles, and so it's like it's that just because, like they're the same obstacles, and so it's like it's that just because you think that these things are going to be insurmountable, just because you think that these things are going to be rough, and like it doesn't mean you don't do it anyways. And that's really what he gets into is this is like you know. He says that you know people who you know get the things, what they want out of life. Like they simply focus and lean in. They act anyway. Like and you and I, as we were jumping on here, I said this is my most marked up chapter in the whole book Like I've got, I think, highlights and words and all so many things written on this, because I think this is fundamentally my like.
Speaker 1:If there was one hill I could die on like, this would be the one of like, just go take action. I like I, it kills me to watch people not die to step into the whatever thing that they want. Like it is possible, they absolutely can do it. And like this is what I work with clients all every single day is like you can do it. You just got to go, take the steps. Let's break them down into something achievable. And just because you don't feel like it right, because it feels hard, because you think it's hard, because you think there are all these obstacles in your way, it doesn't matter. Like you just have to do it anyway, because the results you end up with in your life are results of your actions. Not all those thoughts, right? Not all the things that went through your head, and so you got to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, john Maxwell says this, saying that. You've probably heard recently that he says everything worthwhile is uphill and that means it's not easy. And there's this book, one of one. I can't say I have a favorite of his books. I have all of his books, but there's a one chapter in one book that's one of my probably favorite of chapters, I guess, and it's a law of Mount Everest.
Speaker 2:It's in the 17 laws of teamwork book and what it basically is talking about is the story of these two guys that ended up being named as the first two to ever summit the mountain and put a flag at the top.
Speaker 2:But the storyline goes that there were a lot of Sherpas with these climbers, that they lived on the mountain, they went up and down the mountain all the time. They were the people that carried up all the supplies for these two guys that ended up getting the credit for being at the top of the mountain. But in the story it talks about how many people fail to get to the top. But they don't fail at the first summit point, they fail at the last summit point, right before. It's just like that last tiny little bit to get to the top, because at that point it's like they're just too tired, they don't have oxygen, they're probably bruised, they can't breathe and they just stop. And then they go back down the mountain. And how tragic to think that you were almost there. Yeah, and you turned around right before you could see the top.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that we do that so often, right, like that's where the doubts creep in, the intrusive thoughts creep in and, you know, tell us like, oh, you can't do this. Oh, other people are more successful. Oh, there's, you know, a lot of people in this game and so you can't possibly be in it too. Right, and it's like no, like right, so it's that he says in here right, you don't have to feel like today is your day, you just have to act like it is. And I think that that's it and that's. You hear a lot like again, I read a ton of information about, like, owning a business and how to be successful and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Right, like, every day I'm inundating myself with those kinds of things, and a lot of it is consistency. It's like, half the time, the people who have a successful business are they're not better than you, they're not smarter than you, they don't have a better product than you, they don't have you know something magic. They just are consistent. They just do it all the time, right, like they're just out there hustling, and the hustle turns into results. The actions turn into results.
Speaker 2:You have to start somewhere, and I don't know if I could say that I even have a favorite of our episodes on shows, but one of my most key, marked moments in my brain of our shows was when we did Atomic Habits by James Clear, and there was the chapter where you were talking about how you just have to act as if, and so it was this chapter where you were talking about how I get up every day, and I started by just putting on my exercise pants, and maybe I didn't get on the treadmill or walk 10 miles or lift a bunch of weights, but I started by just changing my clothes and by changing your thinking and believing that you were going to be a person known as somebody who is healthy.
Speaker 2:You put the pants on. That was the action, and then, from there, though, if you never do anything, that's step two. Now your feet are stuck in the quicksand. You took the next step and you said, okay, if I put the pants on, what's the next thing I can do? I think it was called sub stacking or something like that.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I can't remember what term he uses, yeah, but it's that. It's that like micro movements that you just sort of stack on top of each other, and I think that that's one of the big ways and action to bust out of it. Because what we tend to think about and I see this all the time when people are like I want a new job and it's like, okay, but to have a new job, I have to update my resume, and then I have to talk to people and I have to network, and I have to interview, and I have to apply and I have to find the job and I have to do whatever, and so they sit in this cycle for like a year and a half of like I hate this, but all these things I would have to do, and it's like it's just all put a pin in every single one of those things. What is the next thing you have to do? And then, once you do that, what's the next thing? You're like I've got to put on the workout clothes, and then, once I put on the workout clothes, I got to go do three pushups, right, and when I do three pushups, then I'm going to do another set of three pushups, right, like it's just what's the next thing and the next thing. Like if you break it down into something that you can do in I don't know a minute or less, like there.
Speaker 1:I think James Clear does have some rule in the book of like it's a three minute rule or something Like it's very short, whatever it is of like.
Speaker 1:It is of like, okay, pick an action you can do in three minutes and do that and then go do the next one and then go do the next one, right, and then by the time you've done it, like eventually you've stacked the whole deck and you know you got all 52 cards in a row, but you just did it one little card inside, no big deal.
Speaker 1:Right, we're not even going to think about the 500 things down the road. We got a vision for what that might look like, right, right, you need that thought for sure, so you have some direction pointing you. But then you scale back. Once you set the vision and you get the trajectory, then it's well, am I on it? Like, right, what's the? What's the one track, the next track, the next track, the next track, and I think that that's ultimately like, if I think about this chapter, if I think about you know the atomic habits and you know other things that we've looked at is you just got to be willing to take the step and it doesn't matter what you think, it doesn't matter how you feel, you got to do it anyways.
Speaker 2:I wonder if some of it self-proclaimed ADHD brain and it's very easy for me to get unfocused, because I start one thing and while I'm doing the one thing I realize I have to do another thing, and then I start doing the other thing, I forget about the first thing, go back to that first thing and realize, oh wait, there's another thing. And this book says that. Have you ever noticed? When you're fully immersed in something, all of your problems or negative conversations seem to disappear. When you're cognitively and genuinely engaged in a practice or a project, internal chatter gets quieter and quieter. And it's really that's about focus. He talks about how athletes call it in the zone, which I'm sure that you think about a lot or talk about with your company lead the game. That when you're in the zone, you're kind of in your sweet spot and that's where you get the best traction or action from those things that you're thinking or believing. I think the best way to do that is with a coach, because a coach for me helps me zero in on whatever that thing is. Maybe it's also your accountability buddy concept, which is, if you have someone that's just going to say, all right, put the blinders on, look straight ahead. We're going to focus I think I told a story about this a few times on episodes where I used to have these one-on-ones with a friend of mine while we were at work, and it was not a one-on-one to talk about work.
Speaker 2:We literally just felt like we were losing ourselves in work and we were not getting our laundry done. So we would do these one-on-ones at lunchtime and our only focus was to pick what thing we were going to do, and so typically it was like putting away our socks or folding laundry or something like that. I ended up using that one time with a client of mine who you know as well, and this client, when she first started being my client, was the same way, where she just wasn't getting results that she wanted, but what was blocking her was the distractions around her. So I remember the conversation was something like I really want to change something about my job. And we got deeper into the conversation, which was around the fact that she had a bunch of bills on behind her on the desk and we spent an hour literally just me being quiet, but where my face was on the webcam and she sat there and, one by one, opened the mail, paid the bills, got them off the desk and at the end of it I remember us both saying that, man, this wasn't what we set out to think we were going to do today, but it turned out to be the most powerful thing because suddenly, at the end of that piece, we weren't done by the end of that time, but at the end of that activity, now the mind was open to thinking about what you said.
Speaker 2:All right, now I can think about my career. Now I can think about what do I need to do? And I end up doing that same exercise with another client right after, and that person transformed their entire business simply by doing what I promise you we have to just do someday, which is the life-changing magic of tidying up, Because it's sometimes the clutter that's in front of our eyes, but often it's the clutter that's inside our minds that's preventing us from being able to get outside of the quote unquote clutter comfort zone. He even says in the book it's called your mind is the equivalent of a funhouse mirror, distorting, contorting and blurring all of your potential in life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always say you got to nix the naggers in your life, right?
Speaker 1:We all have those things that are nagging you right. It's like, oh, I got to do the dishes, oh I need to put the laundry away, oh I need to do whatever. And it's like those, like you say, they take up so much mental space that you end up not doing the other things. And you know, he, he says, right, like doing gets you doing, gets you doing what you need to do, of course, but it is ironically also the quickest way to change your thoughts, and I think it's what you're talking about is like, once you're doing something right.
Speaker 1:So, like you know, I really struggled for a while after my son passed away, of like just getting kind of out of like funk, of like probably a depressive funk, of like just go do the things right. I would be like, okay, I'm just gonna sit here and insulate and like just get through the day. And it was like, but then I would feel guilty because it's like I just need to do the dish and I need to do whatever. And so, like, the thing that I worked on was like, pick one thing and just do one thing right, go wash one dish. Nobody ever washes one dish. You wash all the dishes eventually. But if all I'm doing is lowering this like cost of entry and doing one thing. It would then open it up and then, once all the dishes were done, guess what? The sink is clear and all of a sudden it's like it just gives you that like mental space to then go do the next thing and the next thing, and it's like just starting and getting in motion and getting in action can change the whole trajectory of the day, like they always talk about. Like the first part of your morning is so important, right, what you do. Mel Robbins talks about that. She's got like five things she does every morning or whatever. But it's like whatever you do sets the tone for the rest of the day and even when you get into these spaces of like that funky, I just don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:Taking that action, getting in the game, helps you then kind of compound from there and you know, move on and move forward, and that will change how you think about things. Right, it's like well, if I did that, then I could go like right, if I put, if I did the dishes, I could probably go put like at least my shirts away or I'll put my socks away. That's easy, I'll find the pairs and match them right and it's like, well, once I'm doing that, I might as well do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. You know, like, now I have all this space and then, once I have the space, it's okay. Now, what did I need to work on? What were the things I was putting off that I? You know, all these things were in the back of my head, taking up that clutter that you're talking about.
Speaker 2:There's a Navy SEAL, or former Navy SEAL, named Admiral William McRaven that, in fact, zach and I are going to be walking through a book with two other special guests soon. It's. The book is called Wisdom of the Bullfrog, but this guy became well-known to business people, I guess, because he did a speech for a commencement ceremony that ended up going viral on YouTube, where he ended up making a book about the speech. But it was about making your bed, and basically the premise was he said that when he was in the military, just starting out, the first thing that they had to do when they went through their bootcamp or whatever was just simply make the bed and make it well and make it right. And he said one thing that always stuck with him over his life was the importance of just starting your day by doing one thing, creating an atomic habit around it, and that thing being the thing you could say well, you know what if all destruction broke loose throughout the rest of the day? You could still go back at the end of the day and say, but at least I made the bed because I did that thing. And so this book is a really short book. I don't think that I have it right here handy, but it's, it's. He had these two books the Wisdom of the Bullfrog and then this book about making your bed. But you can Google Admiral McRaven and just look up make your bed and you can see the speech.
Speaker 2:It's such a powerful speech about how, if you just start by doing that one thing, like you said, putting on your yoga pants, or just doing the one thing, that's going to get you next step ahead.
Speaker 2:Maybe you don't dislike your job and you want to grow in your job, but you've done nothing to make a networking connection or showing initiative to want to grow into the next part of your job, or making a one-on-one with an actual agenda for your manager when you go sit down and talk with them.
Speaker 2:Do the one thing, take the one action, but then consistently do it. There's a really awesome book that I have Maybe we'll do it next year sometime, but it's called the Compound Effect by Darren Hardy and that book a friend of mine gifted that book to me years ago but it basically says that you could do one thing. But it's about not just the one thing, it's about the one thing plus, the one thing plus, the one thing plus and the compound effect, even in finance and money, is about the results you get when all those things are added up together. Yeah, and now the reverse could happen too, right? If you don't do the one thing and you don't do the one thing and you don't do the one thing, the compound effect works the other way too.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, and Atomic Habits. He has really good visuals on that chart of like if you get one piece, this is the 1% better, like I want to get 1% better every day. And 1% is like you're so much better versus like 1% worse, you end up like really quickly dropping off right, and so it's this huge. You know space between one plus one plus one versus. You know one minus one minus one. You know and what you lose in that space.
Speaker 1:And you know he's Gary John Bishop here says you know it's only through your actions that your thoughts actually become your life, only through your actions that your thoughts actually become your life. And it's only through those little things that you do that you know really. You know, like you said, like the thought and the belief become reality only if you take that step of action right and knowing that, like those thoughts that go through your head, they are just thoughts. And if you go back to self or happy, like you are the observer of your thoughts, you are not your thoughts and this is that same thing. You are what you do with those thoughts, what you, you know, choose to believe that leads you in that you know, in that direction of action.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've mentioned Soul for Happy a couple of times on this episode and I really loved that book as well. And I want to just touch on the fact that we spent an entire year, one whole year, talking about what is happiness in life, and we went through several books. We went through four different or four and a half different books through the year for that particular series. There's a quote in this, at the end of this chapter, that says action may not bring happiness. But there is no happiness without action.
Speaker 2:And I highlighted that one because it made me think about how, if there is something you want differently in life but you don't do anything differently about it the definition of insanity, right, wanting something different but not doing anything different about it. And so if there's some area in your life that you are not happy with or in, but you really don't do anything about it except brood in it, think about it, be unhappy in it, then why would you expect you're going to get out of that valley if you really truly don't take action? And so I think that for me, in concluding this chapter, I did sort of shift my own thinking pun intended there. I guess that I still believe it all is about the way you think that drives your actions.
Speaker 1:But this chapter ended for me saying that if there's something that I'm not having in life, that I'm not happy about or don't want and I really don't do anything about it, including the action of changing my thinking, then that's on me, yeah, and I think, like I think your, you know, your thoughts become your beliefs, become your actions is right, but it's not a line, it's a circle, right, and that's sort of like the point he's making is, like, your actions feed your thoughts, your thoughts feed your beliefs, your beliefs feed your thoughts, right, but it's a cycle all the time and so if you're stuck, do something Right, don't do anything, because it will help you adjust those thoughts, right. He says, like on the second to last page here eventually, we'd all like to have better, more positive thoughts, but sitting there isn't going to make it happen. You have to do something to make that difference and make that change.
Speaker 2:Have you ever heard a quote that's something like watch what people do, not what they say, or people are what they do, not what they say they'll do, something like that. Yeah, that's it right. Say you're going to do something and then not do it. There's even a parable about that where there's these two guys and one son says to the father I'm going to do this thing for you that you asked me to do, and then the son ends up not doing it. And then the other son says I'm not going to do that, and then kind of relents and ends up doing it.
Speaker 2:And then the parable is like well, which son was right? And it ended up being that the son that kind of did it reluctantly, said he wasn't going to do it but still knew it was the right thing to do and did it was right, not the person that said yeah, I'm going to do that, and then just didn't do it. So maybe the quest for this week is you gave us a quest last week which was just do something, and maybe the quest this week is did you do it? And if you didn't do it, we're giving you another pass. Go do the thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even when you don't feel like it right, that's the whole point. Doesn't matter what you think, doesn't matter what you feel, do it, go, do it yeah.
Speaker 2:Next week we're going to talk about how you can be relentless, because it's not just doing it one time, it's that habit of repeated actions. Yeah, looking forward to it. Awesome. Well, thanks for being with us again this week. If you've enjoyed our episode, we'd love for you to not just like it, but share it and let us know what value you're getting out of this journey with us through the book. On behalf of my friend, sam Powell my name is Denise Russo.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us this week for another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. Thank you.