In my house, up in the attic, there’s a picture of me from around third grade. I don’t remember having this picture taken—probably because I never wanted it taken—and I don’t recall how it got into my house, since it’s a school portrait that probably my mom should have, hanging above the staircase next to my sister Bridget’s. But somehow it found its way onto my desk, and I haven’t been able to put it away because, for some reason when I look at it, I can’t help but feel a certain way about it. Why is that? Is it because I knew this kid would have a somewhat shaky start in life? Not exactly. This isn’t about feeling bad for myself. This is about wanting to elevate myself so if I ever could go back in time, I’d be able to assure this little version of me that everything would turn out more or less OK.
Now, a lot of people—some much more successful than me—hang portraits of their heroes on the wall, so it might seem a little perverse, some might even say a little narcissistic, for me to find motivation in staring at a picture of myself. But I look at it only because it serves a purpose. This photo of me in an ugly brown-and-white sweater vest, smiling a stretched and dimpled smile, full of naïveté and annoyance, serves as a self-reminder to work hard and become the sort of person whom this young boy would be proud of if he knew exactly how his life was going to turn out.
It reminds me that I don’t want to be just successful. That I don’t want to be just good at things. That I want to do what’s important, what matters. I’m over being remembered or famous. If it happens, great. Mostly I want to make a difference. And to do that, I need to show up every day and put in the work that would inspire my younger self and cause me to look forward to—at the very least not be worried about—the person I was about to become. More than anything, I’d want to be able to assure my younger self that my life would have meaning. That I would do something. And that this something would matter.
In the previous pages, I’ve made the argument that meaning is found in freedom but not the kind of freedom most Americans would think of. Freedom comes in knowing and making and doing good things, and all of that is more Aristotelian than it is uniquely American. Americans are—how’s the best way to put this?—umm . . . headstrong? Rebelliously independent? We don’t like to be told what to do. I get that, believe me—I don’t like to be told what to do either, especially by some guy in a book, let alone one I’ve never met. But these types of freedom (freedom of indifference and freedom for excellence) are not mutually exclusive—they’re just different types—and one, as we’ve argued, is merely requisite for another. I said you need skills to express yourself—to do and know and make good things—and to the extent you have more skills, rather than fewer skills, well, all the better, wouldn’t you say? When this is stated simply, I think most would agree. Even we rebellious Americans.
We also start to go against the conventional perspective of achievement when we talk about generalism—or the idea that it is actually better to eschew hard-core, lifelong specialization and to just get OK, maybe even good to great, at a lot of things and then find ways to combine them.
It’s good to have skills and know things. So far, I’ve presented a series of principles for developing skills, though all of that has been very general. Now I’d like to get specific. And here’s how I think we should go about it.
When I first began talking about generalism on my blog, a lot of people asked how I would approach public education, since so much of what I was saying seemed contrary to what we are taught in school, particularly in college. We’re instructed to specialize. We’re told that if we want to get ahead, we need to narrow our interests, not widen them. The whole thing is very screwing. It’s why people get degrees in subjects like economics. And it’s why people then get even more specialized in their degrees upon graduating, like studying international trade theory, for instance. I think this is a misstep for a lot of people. Not because the world doesn’t need specialists, but because it probably doesn’t need another international trade theorist telling us how to run the world economy. We’ve had just about enough of those, thank you very much.
To answer this question of how I would approach education, I think it might be instructive, and perhaps interesting, to take a lesson from Mister Rogers and enter the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, where I’m the principal—no, take that back . . . Imperial Viceroy—of all the schools in the world. The World School System, let’s call it. And since we’re in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, we can simply ignore any small, technical hiccup that might arise in an actual top-down, centrally planned regime.
Because even if thought experiments like this one are not practical on a societal level, that doesn’t mean they can’t impart knowledge on a personal one. By explaining how I would educate all God’s children—that is, how I would teach generalism, generally—my hope is that you’ll see how this would apply to you individually—that is, how you could become a generalist, specifically.
The idea behind my World School System would be to bring kids up through a hierarchy of skills, whereupon the foundation would be skills that are essential and helpful to anyone—these we shall call metaskills—and then the skills would become more particular and specific and (probably) exciting as we go.
This is how we should create a skill stack: First, we build the bottom and focus on all the skills that apply to everyone, skills like focus and logic and faith. (Those last two may sound contradictory, but you’ll see why they’re not.) From there, we plop on our personal interests. Maybe we want to be musicians or cage fighters or whatever. Wonderful, let’s spend time developing those interest skills. Finally, as it is in most situations, there are “filler” or need-based skills required—skills needed to bridge the gap between being good at something and getting paid to do it.
So these are the types of skills:
Metaskills
Fundamental skills that are helpful to everyone. For example, persuasion.
Interest Skills
Skills you are interested in and love doing. For example, playing the ukulele.
Need-Based Skills
Skills needed to make a living around your interest. For example, marketing and promotion.
Looking at the above skill stack, if a person were good at the ukulele, but also knew a thing about persuasion and how to advertise, they would have (almost) everything they need to garner a paycheck by playing their adorable little instrument, even if they’re not the best in the world at it. That would be the objective of my World School System: to teach all kids the skills every human should possess, develop the skills each individual is particularly interested in, and layer on any other skills needed for each person to make a living by doing what they love. That’s a skill stack.
YOUR FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL
A Letter from the Imperial Viceroy
Welcome to your first day as part of the World School System. I’m glad you made it—as if you had any other choice. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters. And we’re all together. Isn’t that nice? I just think that is so nice.
Since we have so many formative years ahead of us, I thought we should take a few moments to get to know one another and to understand the reason why we’re here. Because the job, of course, of the World School System is to guide our youth—that’s you!—toward competency, productivity, fulfillment, and being a useful, not-too-annoying citizen. The goal is to get the stars to align, so to speak, to ensure that all our students find that just-right mix of success and happiness and peace.
So here I am, looking at you. And I can see on all your smiling faces the look of carbonated optimism. That is optimism, right? Or do you need to use the bathroom? OK, you go to the bathroom, but everybody else stay where you are and keep looking optimistic. Because I think optimism is just wonderful. I think we can all have trust in some providential hand at play, even if we must not think everything’s going to be done for us. I think we must view the world in a certain, very particular way, and I think a quid pro quo perspective might help. In other words, the universe gives to those who go out and get. There are no metaphysical handouts, so to speak. Only hand ups.
You may not always get what you want, but you’ll almost certainly get what you deserve, and a few things you don’t. So yes, providence is there, but you have to respond to it. You have to take the time to develop yourself and accept challenges and build character.
There’s a scene in the 1967 version of the movie The Jungle Book—which is far too old for most of you to remember—where a boy, Mowgli, has escaped into the wild and joined with an army of elephants, lined up in single file. The elephant in charge, Colonel Hathi, is pacing up and down, lecturing his troops. At one point, he examines the trunk of a rookie elephant and associates it with a dusty firearm.
“Soldier,” he says, “remember in battle that trunk can save your life.” Then, after a short ramble about earning his commission in the maharaja’s Fifth Pachyderm Brigade, he exclaims, “It was then I received the Victoria Cross for bravery above and beyond the call of duty. Ha ha! Those were the days. Discipline! Discipline was the thing! Builds character, and all that sort of thing, you know.”
In that short scene, Colonel Hathi has given us one of the great secrets to life. It’s about discipline. Because discipline builds character “and all that sort of thing, you know.” Discipline, in other words, equals freedom—the freedom to express yourself, the freedom to do good things and make good things, and to know what good things are.
Discipline is one of the first metaskills we’re going to learn, because discipline, one could say, is the most fundamental, the most essential, of all the skills a human can have. Since without discipline what do you have? What you have are improperly ordered values and priorities. What you have is a lack of the ethic to deny what’s gratifying in lieu of what’s important. And that, my little elephant, is a problem. You are a slave to your animal instincts.
We’ll work on that shortly, and don’t worry, this isn’t boot camp. But we do have standards. After discipline comes focus, which is in some ways an extension of discipline, though we can think of focus as discipline applied, or discipline concentrated. Focus will prevent us from getting distracted. We’ll examine that in a few moments.
Next is logic, because if we can learn logic, we can learn how to learn. It’s the skill that takes care of so many other skills above the fundamental level. Without logic we’re lost; we’ll fall for pretty much anything. But with logic we’re found. We can figure things out and not say or do generally unintelligent things. That’s all logic is: thinking done right and done well.
Next, and this is the one I’m sure everybody will be interested in, is persuasion. Essentially, how do you get along with people? How do you get people to like you? Sometimes people think of persuasion as a series of psychological tricks or clichés or manipulation strategies. But that’s not really persuasion. Persuasion is about taking a stand and having a voice and making what you say attractive to people—or at least some people.
Finally, we have faith. Yup. And this is the big one. Faith is what undergirds and reinforces all efforts and creations and orients those efforts and creations toward the continuous and purposeful development of self. It’s what stops us from chasing the wrong things in life, like becoming a career prostitute or congressperson, pardon the redundancy. Faith is what keeps us going. It gives us a sense of surety when it seems the world has gone completely insane—which, trust me, it has. So maybe also trust me when I say you’re going to need faith and you’re going to have to work at it. It’s why we think of faith as a skill.
Now, I get that none of these fundamental skills may seem particularly appealing at first, especially to children. Who really wants to study logic? But I can promise you this: once you see how useful these metaskills are for getting pretty much whatever you want out of life, they will become not only interesting but immensely so. Think of it this way. Learn logic, and never lose an argument again, even if nobody else knows it, and even if it’s only because you’ll learn exactly what arguments not to make. Wouldn’t that be a nice position to be in?
Lastly, we’ll work on these skills through the principles of generalism—by applying Short-Term Specialization, the Rule of 80 Percent, Integration > Isolation, Repetition and Resistance, and, what’s that other one again?—ah yes, Skill Stacking > Specialization. How could I forget? Because that one is really what this school is about. We’re not overmuch concerned with any of you becoming the best at anything, because, well, let’s be honest here—that isn’t what this is about. We merely want you to be exceedingly competent across a wide swath of human abilities so you can combine the skills fundamental to whatever just so happens to interest you, and be not only productive but fulfilled.
Let’s begin.
DISCIPLINE
You’re not going to have a lot of discipline at first—this is just a fact. You’re going to have a tough time keeping your butt in the chair or getting your butt to the gym. Because your butt has a mind of its own—and this we call Butt Mind—which is notorious for offering temptations and reasons to procrastinate. This is where we need to step in and assertively protest, “No, you listen to me, Butt Mind. I am in control. You listen to me, now.” And I think this is pretty much what discipline is about: getting your butt to sit when it would rather run, and getting your butt to run when it would rather sit.
Butt Mind is not just a metaphor; it’s something we all say to ourselves, and probably a lot more often than we think. It goes, “Yes, but . . .”
What is discipline? Discipline is this: putting yourself in a position to follow orders, and hopefully, eventually, your own. We need discipline because we can’t acquire skill without routine, and we can’t find meaning without something to work on, something we feel is significant, like writing a novel, becoming religious, or baking a cake. Without discipline we’re just wishy-washy. Life will toss us whichever way it wants.
Discipline gives us meaning, then, because it gives us something to do; through discipline, we work at our craft and can make things. We also learn things. And through discipline, we develop a routine that makes sense of our day—we wake up, steep the coffee grounds, and start on something big and fantastic. We sit our butts in the seat or use them to do kettlebell swings. Maybe toward the evening, there’s time for a dessert, but let’s just see how the day goes before we make any decisions about that. Discipline sets the agenda, and that’s what makes us productive and creative.
Whoever has found discipline has found freedom. Discipline, in fact, equals freedom, and there’s actually now a guy who writes books on this idea, and he’s a former Navy SEAL and people love him. He also happens to be fairly intimidating, so when he says discipline equals freedom, you’re likely to believe him. Now, I’m not particularly intimidating, so I wouldn’t expect I could just say something and have you take my word for it. But hopefully by this point I’ve made a good argument, because I’ve said about a million times that the person with freedom is not the person who chooses to do whatever they want but the person who chooses to not do whatever they want. Freedom is found in restriction, restriction that leads to the practice of something useful. If you want freedom, you need boundaries that force you to improve. You need to impose rules upon yourself, and you need to adhere to those rules as if they were enforced by someone in uniform.
So, like I said, you’re not gonna have a lot of discipline at first. Because nobody does. You’re probably gonna start out a pretty indolent sack, like me. You’ll slink by. You’ll do the minimum. You’ll cheat on your exams by peering over a person’s shoulder, and if they’re bratty about it, they’ll wrap their arms around their test so you can’t see what they’re writing. But one day something will hit you where it hurts, and you’ll realize you’ve been wasting your life with this attitude of mere survival and disinterest in getting better at things. We can say this is your awakening. You’ll feel degenerate and awful, which, believe it or not, is a good thing. I mean it’s certainly better to feel degenerate and awful now, while you can still do something about it, than to feel degenerate and awful on your deathbed.
Let’s take a few minutes, right now, to all feel degenerate and awful, so we don’t wind up like that. Everyone feel it? The terribleness? OK, good. Because sometimes you need to meditate not just on what you do want but on all the things you don’t want, to get yourself inspired.
The problem with calling discipline a skill is that it leads us into somewhat of a paradox. Because what do you need to develop skill, if not discipline? And if discipline is a skill and you don’t have discipline, then how in the name of Jonah and the whale do you even get started on such a thing? I’ll tell you. You go back to that deteriorated and abysmal sense of self—the Lack, as I call it. You look yourself dead in the eye (most people will need a mirror for this) and say, “Enough is enough, you sack of mildewed shit. It’s time to get it together.”
Discipline is empowered by passion. Sometimes that passion starts as a negative, and as you improve, it goes into a chrysanthemum or whatever they call it and turns itself into this big, huge, beautiful, and bountiful thing. It becomes gorgeous and worth pursuing. It becomes something you want to chase, rather than something that chases you. But at first, yes, most of us find discipline by trying to avoid some ugly and significant, god-awful, no-good, terrible pain in our lives, so the more we meditate on that pain, the less we stop trying to ignore it or avoid it, and the more passion we have for our pursuit.
Maybe you’re like I was. Maybe you’re sick of being slower, less informed, and less skilled than almost everyone. Maybe you want to just be happy for a while, to feel that your life has meaning and that you actually did something terrific and awesome, like whoever invented disinfectant wipes. That guy should be super proud. Because honestly, that’s enough; you can’t really ask for anything more. But you need to focus on that sense of inadequacy—like visualize it, you know. Yes, it’ll suck, and it’ll sound like the reverse of all self-help advice that says you should envision your future with mansions atop waterfalls, but it’ll get you going when you don’t feel like you have the discipline to start. It’ll motivate you more than mansions atop waterfalls; you’re just going to have to trust me on that. Pain is the only way out. The Buddha taught us that when he said nirvana is found through way of samsara. He made a compelling point.
I remember working with a guy—he wasn’t exactly a life coach but he kind of was—who had me do an exercise in which I brought to mind five life instances when I was embarrassed or ashamed because of my lack of initiative; five times when I really wish I had done something, but I didn’t or couldn’t act. He then had me review those scenes repeatedly to build disgust, to the point that I simply had to do something about it. And so I did. I remembered the time I failed to ask a girl to the fifth-grade dance (and then somebody else did), the time I got cut from the basketball team, and so on and so forth. I kept rewinding and reviewing these scenes, over and over. And the very next day, almost entirely out of the blue, I signed up for tae kwon do. Because to me that seemed ideal. Why not start with this one very simple and humble skill and then use it to kick the ass of everybody who ever made fun of me? How perfect.
As mentioned earlier, I started working out because I hated the way I looked and I hated that everybody was better than me at everything I wanted to be better than them at. I hated being picked on, pushed around, and picked last for pretty much everything. I didn’t feel fondly about any of these things at the time, but I remember them fondly now. They led me into that chrysanthemum, remember? They changed me from a fat and disheveled teenage derelict with a fairly significant dandruff problem to somebody with something to show for myself—in this case, a yellow belt.
As I started to lose weight, I started to gain confidence. What happens when you gain confidence? Your discipline improves. When you gain confidence, you gain discipline—a different discipline, a discipline that comes from being excited about what you can do, not what you’re trying to run away from. The whole thing eventually flips over on itself, like a pancake. And now one side is beautifully firm and brown because you’ve been cooking it. It’s no longer clumpy and amorphous.
All of us must start with a belief that we can, in fact, do something about ourselves and that it’s never too late to start. No matter how ragged you feel, no matter how run-down, you’re never past the point of rescue, unless you’re, say, ninety-three, maybe?—then we might want to consider other options. But so long as you’re not ninety-three—and maybe even if you’re ninety-two—it’s never too late to turn the operation around and become the person you’ve wanted to be.
I’ll give you an example. I have a much older friend who was really overweight his entire life—more than fifty years. And in just these last two years he’s lost one hundred pounds and his attitude and outlook and everything is just so cool to see. He has confidence now. He’s out doing things. He’s pursuing goals, learning skills, starting a health business, even. And when I asked why he was able to succeed this time, after starting and stopping so many times before, he said it was because he finally gave himself permission to succeed. He said every time he tried to lose weight before, he always doubted that he could do it. He never really believed. Now, I didn’t get a chance to conduct a full and proper psychoanalysis on him, but if I had to guess, I’d think it was that he finally realized he was worth investing in. He also had something of a religious experience. So that helped. Give yourself permission to believe. It should also be mentioned, of course, that he trained with me. I do seem to have a knack for getting people to lose weight; I’m like the fat-person whisperer. (I can say that because I used to be more than just hefty myself, but don’t you say that. It might come off a little insensitive.)
Finally, how do you get started? The question answers itself. Get started.
And get started on something that interests you, because discipline isn’t a skill you develop in isolation. It’s a skill you develop through integration, through the practice of something specific, like karate. You don’t sit down and “do” discipline, because what would that look like? It would look like you were just sitting there, and unless that sitting involves meditating, you’re not actually practicing discipline. You’d have to be doing something to be practicing discipline, right? So you sit down and write or strum the guitar or get up and exercise, and that is practicing discipline. The secret is to start with whatever rouses the emotions, whatever infuses you with passion.
There are other things we can do as well, like, for example, following an exercise program. Here’s an idea: make the first act you do every day an act of discipline. This can be a workout or a meditation or a cold shower. In fact, I think it should be a workout and a meditation. Because why not both? So let’s put that into the schedule. Let’s say that at the start of the day we do a little exercise and then spend a little time focused on our breathing. We’ll start with the sweaty stuff and then become super silent. It won’t take long. Say, a ten- to fifteen-minute workout, followed by a ten- to fifteen-minute meditation. We’re talking thirty minutes max.
I remember when I used to spend the night at my grandparents’ house, I’d come downstairs in the morning to find my grandfather working out. He did a simple routine, but he did it every morning with no exceptions or complaints. He’d start with some push-ups and then he’d use hand weights and finish on the ground and stretch like a frog. It wasn’t the most laborious workout I’ve ever seen, but then again it didn’t have to be. He was very active otherwise, so this was just the start of his day, a way to get himself going.
Small acts of discipline undertaken every day do magical and fantastic things to our unconscious mind. Having the discipline to do the work kick-starts the creative process. A writer friend of mine said good ideas are rewarded to those with a disciplined mind; it’s not something you just happen into. He said if you want to invoke the muse, you have to show that you are worthy of handling what she gives you, and the only way to do that is to show up every day and to be on time. He said it’s like waiting outside a Zen monastery. You’re going to be tested. And likely you’ll think you’ll never get in. But eventually, if you keep showing up, those doors will open, even if only to slide you a piece of bread. The good ideas will come. I promise—at least, he promises.
This means that you need to get better at showing up for whatever you want to get better at. That’s discipline, and we practice it by starting something and finishing what we start. Because next to starting, finishing is the hardest thing, maybe even harder than starting itself. The only thing that isn’t hard to finish is sex. So in one sense I’m just super at finishing, but in another I’m still working on it like anybody. Because you get started and you get so far along and then you quit, because—well, you know—life is hard. That’s why we need discipline. It’s about the only thing that can get us through.
Exercise can help. We can torture ourselves physically to acquire grit—that always works. Certainly it does in the military. We can do exercises that are just plain excruciating and see if we can go ten seconds longer (or ten pounds heavier) than we think, every time, or every other time, or what have you. Front squats, hollow holds, pretty much any of these will do the trick. Whatever hurts. Whatever you hate doing, go with that.
As we move into the other sections—that is, the other metaskills—you will find particular ways of practicing discipline. Note that your initial discipline must come by pursuing what’s important. All the other metaskills can follow. And they will follow as you become interested in them—you should become interested in them because they’re fun skills to have and, like, super useful.
Here is one quick and very important part of developing discipline: track and monitor everything. Write down what you eat, what workouts you’re doing, all your income and expenses. If you’re playing guitar, record your practice sessions; if you’re practicing a martial art, then get yourself on videotape. What gets measured gets managed, as they say. And you know what? “They” are right. Tracking builds not only awareness but accountability. It also illuminates progress. It gives you something to celebrate.
So one last word about discipline before we move on. Let’s talk about moderation—you know, that whole idea of just dipping your toe in, starting slow, and so on. Well, I’ve got to go ahead and say I think the concept is mostly, if not entirely, worthless. The disciplined person is one of extremes, often even a person obsessed. When it’s time to go, we go all the way: Short-Term Specialization, remember. Now, none of that means we’ve gotta be perfect or can never enjoy a little something sweet after we’ve eaten our protein and vegetables. It just means that when we commit, we don’t commit 70 percent. We commit 100 percent, even if we can only give 70 percent sometimes. It’s the intention that counts. This is different from the Rule of 80 Percent we learned earlier, just to clarify.
This is why, when I’m talking fitness or business and people ask how long it will take to reach their goal, I give them an estimate of about double the time I honestly expect. This is sort of my assessment device. Because if you care about something—if you’ve found that boiling-hot cauldron of passion—then spending double the amount of time on developing that something should be no big deal, right?
If you ask me how long it will take to become happy and successful and totally fulfilled, and I reply, “Until you’re ninety-three,” would you still be interested? Would you still engage in everything we’re about to do?
The good news? I’m convinced anybody can achieve freedom and happiness—that anybody can become a successful generalist and a sufficiently disciplined person—with about an hour or two of practice a day. My only request is that you should be willing to give eight. (I’ve provided some brief guidelines for developing each skill discussed in this chapter, to give you a kick start.)
DAILY DISCIPLINE CHECKLIST
Establish a regular bedtime. Get at least seven to eight hours of sleep. (Preferably, wake up before 5 AM and go to bed before 10 PM.)
Exercise at least thirty minutes a day.
Meditate/pray at least ten minutes a day.
Eat protein at every meal.
Take a cold shower or a shower with a cold finish (i.e., use cold water for the last two minutes).
Walk ten thousand steps a day.
Each day, do without something you “need” (hint: phone, TV, etc.).
Make your bed.
Do the most difficult/important thing of the day first.
Keep a gratitude journal.
Recommended Additional Reading
Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual (Jocko Willink).
FOCUS
If there’s anything I’ve noticed about life, it’s that most of us probably think too much and that most of the thinking we do isn’t superabundantly helpful. In fact, it would seem that most of our thoughts are jealous, clingy, eerily narcissistic, or otherwise focused on things that aren’t that important, like what we would say if we ever got the chance to meet Richard Nixon, whether we missed the boat on getting orthodontia, or whatever.
Thinking is a skill—and one we’ll soon get into—but not thinking is also a skill, and that’s called “focus.” Others might refer to this as meditation, but meditation is more of a technique used to develop the skill.
Focus can be used to make ourselves smart and to stop from going insane. It’s a powerful skill and one that is left curiously undeveloped in most people. With focus, we can concentrate on what matters and not give into our concupiscible appetites as much. We can say no to sin. Father Arul would be proud. (Father Arul is a priest friend of mind. Short guy, mostly bald, Indian. Maybe you know him?) Because with focus we can sit our butts in the seat and not get up for anything. Focus is the skill that lets us do the work once we’ve got the discipline to show.
Here’s the biggest differences between winners and losers in life: The winners know how to keep their butts situated when it’s time to write or get their butts in the gym when it’s time to train. The losers procrastinate. They get distracted. They stop before the job is done. And that’s it. Now, part of that is discipline; the other part is focus.
Because, here’s the thing (and I don’t know how else to put this): there are enemies out there trying to do everything they can to stop us from succeeding, demonic forces (I’m convinced) that delight in our undoing and that we absolutely must battle against if we want to survive. Sound serious? Well, it’s true. Author Steven Pressfield calls this universal negative force “resistance.” And maybe I’m a bit old-school, but I just think of this bastard as the Devil. Now, we can see that most public school systems have gotten away from offering instruction on demonology, and personally I find that just a little irresponsible. Because I very much believe the Devil is out there, buzzing around with his big, leathery wings, or, occasionally, walking on his buttocks like Red Guy from I Am Weasel, doing everything he can to either scam, torment, or destroy us. And he’ll use whatever he can to do it, too, though mostly he’ll work through secondary means, using such sly instruments as complacency, self-doubt, and, as we know, the DMV. These are just a few among his beloved pets. Also, the dishwasher repair guy. But the most amazing trick the Devil has ever pulled is getting us to believe that he doesn’t exist. That one, you can bring to the bank.
I really think so much of success is engaging in some level of spiritual warfare. Butt Mind—the universe—Hades—resistance—Satan—whatever this ongoing, negative opposition is and however you want to envision it—is a real thing and is constantly attempting to thwart our efforts to make something of ourselves. It throws every distraction and assignment on our plate at once. It’s the reason there’s never a good time to start a diet plan, write a book, or pick up a musical instrument, and it’s the reason there never will be.
Our job is to do whatever we can to piss the Devil off and let him know that we’re simply not going to stand for this abuse. That no matter the amount of smelly garbage he tries to pile in front of us, we’re going to remain focused. We’re going to stay on the job, and we’re going to finish what we start.
It’s not only the goings-on of life that get us distracted. It’s our thinking, as well. Most of us have next to no control over the thoughts that flit through our head. We’re possessed by them. Probably we feel we could benefit from an exorcism, at times. And perhaps some of us could (a little exorcism now and then never hurt), but the good news is that most of us just need to learn to focus through the techniques of meditation and/or prayer.
Because it usually goes something like this: You decide you want to do something—let’s take writing for example. Say you’re excited—really excited—because you just read a book that motivated your socks off and now you’re going to practice the skill and you’re going to write a novel. You know, I just think that’s swell. You haul your bony, little butt up to the attic, sit down, and turn on your computer. You open a Word document, crack your knuckles, and realize you forgot your cup of coffee. Darn. So you schlep downstairs into the kitchen and brew something nice for yourself, not once noticing how the Devil has already scored a point against you. Now you’re back in the attic, ready to write. And then, a social media notification. Oh joy, somebody commented on the thread you started in the dog lovers group your sister added you to—how nice. So you take a peek to see what they said, imagining it to be pleasant and interesting, and not intending to start a conversation because you’ve got work to do. You click on the person’s profile only to discover that their entire timeline is just one, long, quivering, insane rant against everything you stand for politically and religiously, and, well, that just about does it. You blast them with everything you’ve got, barraging them from completely out of left field, and then slam your computer shut. All right, now that that’s done, time for business. There’s only one problem: you can’t get that reptilian idiot out of your head. The excitement you had, the jollity over the project, has all turned to rage, and you can’t stop thinking about all the things you wish you had said to that person and their dumb little dog: you could have, for example, illuminated them with the minorly helpful fact that the only reason they exist is to serve as one hilarious and pathetic example of what not to look like, and so it’s no wonder they own a corgi. You’re just so enraged; this isn’t how your morning was supposed to go; this isn’t how you wanted to write. And then, the doorbell. Well, look who decided to show—if it isn’t our old friend, the dishwasher repair guy. And on and on it goes, your day bombarded and beleaguered by all these distractions and disappointments and doubt. Oh, you think this is coincidence, do you? OK. Sure.
That’s where focus comes in. It’s pretty much the only weapon we have. To be able to stay on target. To sit and stay seated or run and keep running. And this, believe me, is a skill. It’s not something any of us have. It’s something we develop. Here’s how.
First, we sit. Cross-legged, tall kneeling, on a rocking chair—look, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t lie in savasana like at the end of some heathenish yoga ritual. Father Arul would be very upset. Plus, why run the risk of becoming possessed by a throng of demons? It’s not like we don’t already have enough to worry about. Second, we do something to center ourselves. Here we could focus on breathing or reciting a mantra or prayer. For people who are particularly prone to overthinking (yes, hello), I recommend speaking aloud. It gives you something a little more solid to hold on to. The whole mindful breathing thing is a bit much starting out. It’s too easy to get distracted. But if it works for you, great. Or you could start with some sort of guided meditation—that can be helpful.
FOCUS AND MEDITATION
Upon Waking
Engage in ten minutes of mindfulness mediation and/or prayer.
During the Day
Do “trigger” meditations:
• Doorway mantras/prayers: Every time you walk through a doorway, recite a mantra or say a prayer, returning to the present moment.
• Two-minute car meditation: Every time you’re about to leave the car (or at least twice per day), take two minutes to practice mindfulness meditation.
Before Bed
Engage in a mindfulness/prayer-based tea ritual an hour or so before bed.
Recommended Additional Reading
How to Pray: Reflections and Essays (C. S. Lewis).
It’s pretty simple: We sit for at least five to ten minutes first thing in the morning and let whatever thoughts happen to come, come. We don’t try to push them away, but we don’t try to hold on to them either. Instead, we simply note them. We build awareness and welcome them lovingly but also don’t pay too much attention to them. Oh, hello anxiety—come right in. Cup of tea, perhaps? It’s this warm, empathetic invitation that gives us headspace. We’re after clarity and independence of mind—we’re after a state where we’re no longer so entangled with our emotions that they dictate our every behavior, and where we can dispassionately observe them, almost as if we’re standing on the sidewalk, watching the cars go by. Because most of the time it feels like we’re standing right in the middle of the road, doesn’t it? Dodging and swerving and throwing our hands up, yelling stop! Focus is simply about standing off to the side, where it’s safe and not alarming. It’s not about trying to halt the traffic of your thinking, which only leads to congestion problems. It’s about alleviating that congestion and letting it cool off—which it will. You just need to get out of its way. You need to stop getting so involved with the circulation of thoughts. You need to stop playing traffic cop.
Start your day with this. And do it again before lunch and then after dinner. Remember the principles of generalism. Repetition and Resistance. Start with a period of meditation and/or prayer that is challenging but leaves you successful. Don’t strive for too much too soon—you’ll just get angry and overwhelmed. Increase resistance by meditating or praying for longer periods or in more chaotic environments, like work. The latter is when we get into integration.
I remember a talk from a holy man who, upon being asked how often he meditates, said he meditates all the time—that he was even meditating right at that moment. The person interviewing him was astonished by this and his eyes widened. He looked aghast. Now, this holy man could have been making a bunch of stuff up, having once decided that so far as con jobs go, spiritual guru might work out better in some respects than colonics, but say he wasn’t. Say he was the real deal. Well, then I think the point the holy man was making is that meditation isn’t something you’re supposed to do on the side of a mountain. Meditation is something you’re supposed to practice very nearly all the time.
Harnessing the power of focus is how we snap our attention onto whatever deserves it and pull our attention away from anything that doesn’t. There’s no reason your work—playing the piano, practicing with a potato gun, shooting pool—shouldn’t be a point of meditation. You should also be focusing on whatever skill you’re working on. But at first we develop the skill by extracting the principles and practicing them in a seated or kneeling position—at home, in church, while waiting in the parking lot as your spouse finishes the weekly shopping—and as soon as we’re able, we apply this focus to every single activity we can. This is how we break free of the prison of our own minds; this is how we overcome anxiety and self-sabotage and avoid turning into someone we really don’t want to be. It all starts in our mind. Here’s a little suggested schedule to help you hone your focus.
LOGIC
It was the philosopher Norman L. Geisler who told us why logic matters:
Simply put, you can’t avoid studying logic, so you might as well know what you’re doing. It is the basis for all other studies. It is the basis for all math and science. Even music, from Bach to the Beach Boys, is based on logic. Without it, there could be no rational discussion of anything; writing would be impossible. How can you put a sentence together without a logical order?
OK, sold. Now, where do we start? Well, we start by examining a few simple rules of logical thinking, and learning what makes for a good argument and how to avoid a few of the more common fallacies. For example, learning the differences between induction and deduction, and why you shouldn’t answer an argument by attacking a person’s character. The basics, then.
LOGIC WORKSHEET
Questions to Ask Before Engaging in Argument
On this subject, what are my biases?
On this subject, am I willing to accept an outcome I dislike?
How could I argue against my position?
Have I taken the time to best understand my opponent’s position?
Thou Shalt Not Commit These Ten Logical Fallacies
1. RED HERRING: Intentionally distracting away from the argument.
2. NON SEQUITUR: Arriving at a conclusion not supported by the premises.
3. GENETIC FALLACY: Attempting to invalidate a position by explaining how it came to originate. (Example: You think democracy is great only because you grew up in America.)
4. BANDWAGON FALLACY: Assuming that because many people believe something, it must therefore be true.
5. COMPOSITION FALLACY: Assuming that something is true of the whole because it is true of some—or all—of the parts. (Example: If a team has all the best players, it will always win.)
6. AD HOMINEM: An attack on the person. Attempting to undermine the character of a person rather than addressing their argument.
7. FALSE DILEMMA: Claiming a situation to be either/or when there is at least one additional option.
8. CIRCULAR REASONING / BEGGING THE QUESTION: Already assuming what you are attempting to prove. In other words, offering no evidence distinct from the conclusion. (Sandusky is in Ohio. Therefore, Sandusky is in Ohio.)
9. APPEAL TO AUTHORITY: Assuming that just because someone is in a position of authority, they are therefore correct.
10. STRAW MAN: Setting up an artificially weak version of an opposing point, therefore making it easy to refute.
How to Practice Making Arguments
Join a Facebook debate group. Engage daily.
Record at least one logical fallacy in conversation per day.
Engage in frequent, consensual, low-stakes arguments with friends or family.
Write a weekly well-reasoned opinion piece on social media.
Recommended Additional Reading
Come, Let Us Reason: An Introduction to Logical Thinking (Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks).
Logic is ordering your thoughts; it’s thinking done well and done right. It’s what stops us from buying stupid things and voting for stupid people and putting our fingers in places that could shock us. Logic, put frankly, is life’s foolproof bullshit detector. And since this is your life, you’ve got to be able to think if you’re going to survive. You’ve got to be able to figure your way through things. You’ve got to know what makes for a good argument and what sound reasoning is.
Logic used to be a skill taught to almost everyone. Now almost no one studies it. The effects of this, I think, are obvious and gross. People are duped by slick-sounding folks with an appealing accent—on infomercials, at political rallies, in the classroom. This is not good. This is really not good.
We all like to think that thinking’s important, but very few of us ever learn to do it well. We never learn what logic is or why it matters or how to use it or how to tell when somebody else is using it, or not. It’s a skill with carryover. To think clearly is to write clearly—or at least to have the potential to. (It is also to have the potential to persuade, though we will have more to say on that later.) This is why we say logic is a metaskill—ordered thinking is how you make sense of the world and how you make sense to other people.
You learn to think so you don’t get taken advantage of, but also so you can express yourself, solve problems, and communicate. There’s a lot of benefit to thinking about thinking. So let’s think about it. Specifically, let’s think about how to get better at it.
Well, one way—and this is going to sound simple, but it works—is by practicing puzzles. There are so many apps and games these days that set you up with logical exercises: starting your day solving a few of these puzzles will do a lot to build your critical capacity. Most people spend no time with exercises like these, with questions like “If Bob and Jon and Matt are all brothers, and the following statements are all true, who’s the oldest?”
Another one of the best ways to become a better thinker is to engage in debate—to actually practice making arguments and defending a position on something. So that’s why in our little World School System everybody is on the debate team and everybody argues and is judged on how they do, and winners will be celebrated and losers sentenced to some sort of yet-to-be-determined, very likely excruciating, punishment, probably. Nobody gets out of this. Because this will force students to intellectually grind a question to pulp, and that’s something we should all get in the habit of doing.
There will be assigned reading, as well. The book in this class will be Come, Let Us Reason: An Introduction to Logical Thinking by Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks.
From there, each student will engage in a weekly debate with another student or as part of a panel. Sometimes students will get to pick their topic and other times they won’t, since it’s a good exercise to argue for a position you don’t necessarily believe in—in fact, people should be doing that as often as they can. A good debate involves knowing not only your position but the opposite, as well. Plus, having to argue for a position you don’t agree with will either strengthen your defense or cause you to adopt a different point of view, but either way, you’re getting closer to getting things right, and that’s what we want.
Like for any other skill, we use Integration > Isolation. Yes, it’s good to study the rules of logic and each of the many individual fallacies—something we don’t really have time to cover in detail now. You learn to be logical mostly by making and defending arguments and trying to get better at it. Pick a topic you’re interested in—it can be spicy or it can be dull (you don’t have to make every argument about religion or politics). Some arguments can be boring but made well, and that’s fine. It’s all practice. Often it’s better to start with lower-key topics because emotions will be less likely to erupt if, for example, you’re making an argument that oatmeal can lower a person’s blood sugar instead of an argument that the minimum wage has long-term effects on the American economy. Though you might be surprised.
The next step is to increase resistance. Raise the stakes. Seek out more rigorous topics and opponents. Talk about the minimum wage. Or religion. Force yourself to establish a series of premises and defend them. Doing this can be exhausting, but it makes you better. Sometimes you’ll lose. That’s fine so long as you always take something away from it—either an opportunity to strengthen your argument or change your position, because, well, because you were wrong.
Here’s the thing: the person who practices logic understands that almost all truth is discovered through the gradual removal of error. You figure out what’s right by being corrected and adjusting your position on things. Nobody is born with the answer to everything—not even Father Arul. We have to figure out most of this as we go along, and be flexible and willing to change. Logic, let me tell you, is just as useful for calling yourself out as it is for calling out others. We all get emotional. We all form attachments to things. But we mustn’t let what we want to be true determine our beliefs about what actually is true.
If logic does anything, it gets you to think before you open your mouth, and what a valuable skill that is. It gets you to assess your arguments before you present them. And what a valuable skill that is.
For instance, right away, a sense of logic should stop a person from ever falling for poor dietary advice, even if they don’t have a degree in nutritional science. Of course, a degree in nutritional science can help, but we all can’t have a degree in everything we’re interested in, and there are a lot of things in life we’re going to need to figure out without having the time to be formally educated in them. This is why we think about thinking: so we can think about things and do a good job thinking about them, or at least realize when we don’t have enough information to go on. Logic can lead you to the right conclusion or, often, to the conclusion that you don’t know enough to form a conclusion just yet. And that’s a wonderful and prudent thing—not getting ahead of yourself.
Don’t worry about never being able to speak up for lack of certainty. That’s not what logic is about. An argument is merely presenting reasons for assuming that a position is true and making those reasons as convincing as possible, even if they aren’t absolute. Say you want to argue for Austrian economics, or the existence of God, or Megadeth over Metallica. You don’t have to establish a geometric proof for any of these. You only need to offer reasons that make your position more plausibly true than not, and some will accept those reasons and others will attempt to refute them, but hopefully everybody will learn something and get along.
I just want to emphasize the use of the word argument before we wrap this discussion up. When most of us think about “arguing,” we picture how badly our extended families behave around the holidays, shouting at each other over their various religious and political and economic beliefs, never once presenting anything in the realm of lucidity. That’s not what I mean when I use that word; I mean something that is well presented and well debated. Something, well, logical. Not something people do when they’re drunk, not something emotional.
I’ve lost a lot of arguments, and I think I’m getting better at it. The better I’ve gotten at losing arguments, the more I’ve tended to win them. The point of arguing shouldn’t be to win, however. That may be the point of being on a debate team, but that’s not the point of arguing, which should be to figure out a position, to discover truth. The best way to win an argument is to not be wrong, and the best way to be right is to know when you’re not right. Logic can help you do that.
PERSUASION
So far, we’ve talked about discipline and focus (or patience) and logic (or reason). Now we need to talk about persuasion. Because it’s hard to get what you want in life without being able to convince people to give it to you. That sounded odd. Let’s put it this way. It’s better to get along with people than not. It’s better to have people like you than not. And if persuasion is anything, it’s being liked by people, even if it’s only some of them. So here’s how to get people to like you and why this doesn’t involve being liked by everybody.
All worthwhile attention starts by telling the truth. If you want to be persuasive, you need to have confidence in what you say, since people can always tell when others aren’t sure of themselves. Persuasion isn’t about getting everybody to like you. Persuasion is about getting enough people to like you. Because here’s the problem people fall into: they think being persuasive means to pander. But pandering isn’t being persuasive. Pandering is having no backbone, no real, true center of belief. It’s not having enough conviction to say what is true—it’s saying only what you think people will like, whether you believe in it or not. Nobody wants to be friends with somebody like that, or, if they do, it’s only because they want to get something out of them, like free coffee at work.
People are attracted to those who have something to say and who apparently believe in that something. And if you have something to say, people are going to either agree with you or disagree with you. A good example—love him or hate him—is Donald Trump. Very few people “like” Donald Trump: they want to either marry him or send him to the gulag. I’m not saying you have to be like Donald Trump to be persuasive, but I’m saying there’s something you can learn from Donald Trump, who is persuasive. (I’d like to note something about one of Donald Trump’s persuasion techniques. Some people say he’s a liar, yet I just said being persuasive starts with telling the truth. What gives? Well, Donald Trump has learned to make statements that are often “directionally true” but specifically or in other ways exaggerated. This is a more nuanced technique—and not something we have time to get into now—but it is not necessary to use this technique to be persuasive, and I do not particularly agree with its use on an ethical level, though virtually every effective politician engages in it. Anyway, it’s worth noticing. For more, see the book Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini.)
The first thing is to become very OK with the fact that not everybody is going to like you and not everybody is going to agree with what you have to say. Because as soon as you have something to say, there’s always someone who will disagree with it—even if you state the earth is round, there will be someone who disagrees with it, unfortunately—and someone who will be offended by it. You simply can’t go through life worried about who you’re going to upset with your beliefs. The very act of having beliefs is bound to upset somebody. The fact that you own things is upsetting to someone, and the fact I just said that is upsetting to someone else. Instead of worrying, go through life getting clear on your beliefs and the reasons you adhere to them, and then speak. Now, don’t be an ignoramus, however. Don’t voice an opinion without backup. This is why we use logic and reason. Because you’re going to need to know how to defend yourself after you’ve offended someone, even if you never intended to.
Back when I got into fitness, a lot of my original audience was drawn to me because I was bold about what I believed. A lot of people were specializing. I was saying maybe try generalization, for a change. This got me into no small number of arguments. But I always presented my reasons lucidly (I think) without taking personal digs. People appreciated that. They liked that I was clearheaded and that I was confident in what I had to say, even in the midst of debate. And let’s be fair: I was also very fit, which illustrated my beliefs. But so were many of the people I was arguing against. Ultimately, my appeal came from standing for something—something people themselves seemed interested in or at least curious about. I was speaking up for the generalists and all the people who weren’t the best at anything but still wanted to improve. That’s a lot of people.
That’s one little secret of mine. When you speak about something, when you voice your beliefs, if those beliefs are held by people in addition to yourself, all the better. So much of persuasion is finding people who already agree with you and getting them to follow along because you’ve found some new, cool way of doing that thing they already agree with. I’m not sure how many specialists’ minds I’ve changed. There may have been a few. But mostly I’ve built my audience by attracting the attention of people who were already generalists or wanted to be. Think of political talk shows. They’re not necessarily persuasive to the other side—who on the right was ever brought to the left by watching The View, and who on the left was ever brought to the right by listening to Rush Limbaugh?—but they’re attractive to people who already assume that position. It’s only because those talk shows are so assertive and bold that people tune in and are “persuaded” by them. Either people pay attention and they agree, or people pay attention and they can’t stand a single word of what they’re hearing. This is called the Howard Stern effect—you either love him or hate him—but almost nobody is indifferent about him.
TWO-STEP NETWORKING AND PERSUASION PLAN
Step 1
Reach out and introduce yourself to at least one new person every day. (Form connections.)
Step 2
Reach out and ask how you can help someone already in your network. Better yet, just do something to help them. (Build reciprocity.)
Ideas
Share something with your connections online, comment meaningfully on their work, or send them something you think they’d enjoy reading about. Even better, introduce them to someone they might benefit from.
Recommended Additional Reading
How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships (Leil Lowndes).
At this point I’d like to add a measure of subtlety to this approach. Although I’ve used examples like Donald Trump and Howard Stern, I don’t want you to think being polemic is the same as being persuasive. These are merely illustrations to bring out a particular element of persuasion, which is polarization. You can be persuasive without being polemic, without causing people to want to twist your bratty little nose off. But I’m not sure how persuasive you can be without being polarizing—and that’s what I’m trying to get at. To be polarizing is to make people choose one way or another. It’s about marking your territory and saying, “Here’s what I believe and I want to be as clear as I can about it.” You don’t need to be rude or offensive to be polarizing, but you do need to be up-front about where you stand. People don’t need to hate you, but some will strongly disagree with you or see your way, your style, your product or service, as simply not for them. And that’s fine. Because the more people you push away, the more you attract from the other side.
The problem is that people are afraid of pushing away. They’re afraid of not being liked by someone, and the tradeoff is that they wind up being ignored by everyone. There’s a saying in marketing that if you’re not upsetting at least one person with every advertisement you write, then you’re not really marketing. I think this is true for everything. If you’re not upsetting at least one person every day by taking a stand on something, voicing your opinion, or being clear about who you are, then you’re not really living. Think of the apostles. Those guys really knew how to piss people off, since many were put to death because they just wouldn’t shut up about that Jesus guy. And now look. People remember them, even though they weren’t all that well liked at the time. Talk about polarizing. They weren’t polemic or rude. They just said everybody else was wrong about, well, pretty much everything. And that was enough.
You can tell people they’re wrong, and I think you should, but only if you’ve reasoned out your point of view. Once you’ve got your life figured out—your religion, your politics, your great, good service to the world—talk about it. You’ll pull some people in and push others away, but I promise you this: you’ll certainly be persuasive. Boldness is a lost attribute in today’s society. People are so afraid to speak up about things. Even just a mild act of courage goes a long way toward getting attention. That’s what persuasion is—it’s having the courage to speak candidly about something people already think is true. Good writing is the same way, and that’s why good writing is persuasive.
People want to be happy. That’s the first thing to understand. Any action people take will be aimed at happiness—there are no exceptions to this. But different people believe different things will make them happy, which is why we can have valuable exchanges in which both parties emerge better than before. Thus, if you want to be persuasive, your job is to find the people who think the thing you offer is what brings happiness, whether that’s a diet plan, a skateboard, or a political ideology. Persuasion, I repeat, is not about flipping a person’s opinion. It’s about confirming it.
I hope you weren’t looking for any psychological tricks or clichés you could use to close the deal on a used-car sale. Because that isn’t what persuasion is about. Persuasion is finding points of common interest and connecting over them. It’s having the audacity to speak up. That’s why persuasion, marketing, sales—whatever you want to call it—is inherently magnetic. The more it pulls some people in, the more strongly it repels others.
You may ask: How do you even practice this? Well, you practice it by (again) getting into arguments and writing advertisements and sharing your beliefs with people. Also, by networking. By reaching out. By being friendly and offering help.
I’d like us to turn our attention to those last few points. Most people suck at networking. They suck at reaching out and making friends. This is absolutely a skill, and it is one you need to practice.
Let’s talk for just another minute about persuasion through argument. Remember, an argument isn’t about exploding your emotions; it’s about giving someone reasons to believe in a particular point of view. The purpose of the argument might be not to convince the person you’re arguing against but to impress whoever’s in the audience. Let’s face it, almost every argument these days is a public event, because almost every argument is happening online. So if you’re debating on a forum with some person who’s adamantly against everything you do and represent, I doubt you’re going to make much progress with them. You never know who’s watching the engagement, though, even if they’re not engaging themselves.
Again, when I was just getting started with my business, I would incite arguments on internet fitness forums. When I say “arguments,” I don’t mean I went into every thread and told everybody how wrong I thought they were. Don’t be that person—that person is annoying and rude. Rather, I would try to be helpful by being clear. I would say what I think a person should do to reach a particular goal, and I would explain why. Obviously—because it was the internet, after all—people would sometimes disagree with me. Then I would have to argue with them because you don’t just let somebody disagree with you—again, this is the internet. You’re allowed to defend yourself, and you should, especially if you have good reasons for what you believe. But it should be done respectfully. This is where one of your fundamental skills (logic) can form the foundation of another fundamental skill (persuasion).
Remember my definition of argument, which is no more than giving people reasons to believe in a certain point of view. And when I say you should start arguments, I mean you should try to be helpful by giving your perspective on something—on social media, in an advertisement, throughout the pages of a book. Because that, my little parakeet, is the secret to persuasion: meeting people where they are and trying not to change their beliefs but rather to enhance their beliefs. I don’t think I ever sold somebody on a kettlebell program who wasn’t already into kettlebells. My business was built on people already using kettlebells who wanted a cooler, better plan for doing so.
Now, it’s one thing to stand up for what you believe and it’s quite another to turn those beliefs into helpful vehicles. Combine the two and your powers of persuasion really blossom. Because when you confirm a bias (like a love for kettlebells) and then say how that bias can further a person in some meaningful, productive way, you’ll probably have that person begging to do business with you. Maybe you’re not even in business—maybe you just write books and want people to talk about your stories. Well, same thing. Being persuasive means appealing to people like yourself—people with similar beliefs and ideas and views of the world—and offering them a special experience. Novels can certainly do that. So can music.
Not to overuse my example, but that’s pretty much what I’ve done with generalism. I’ve told people it’s OK if you’re not the best in the world and, hey, don’t worry if you’re not, because with the right approach, it’s actually better if you’re not. So people who are like me—that is, not the best at anything—will want to hear more. I’m not trying to persuade specialists; I’m only trying to get the attention of people who already believe in the position I’m promoting, even if they’ve never thought of it the same way I have. I’m helping people who are already hot on the idea that they don’t need or want to be the best in the world; I’m only trying to show how that idea can be developed. That is persuasion.
FAITH
You might be wondering why in the world I would say faith is a skill, and, of all things, a foundational skill. Well, I think for a lot of people, faith doesn’t come as naturally as it does to others. It’s something you have to practice, because if existence can do anything, it can make you jaded—it can make you angry and upset and cause you to call into question the point of being here. There’s a lot of—go ahead, call it what it is—bullshit that goes on in our lives, a lot of stuff that none of us particularly like or can make sense of. For example, deer ticks. But also the nuclear arms race, polio, and smog. All of these are seriously awful situations, and sometimes such things make you wonder whether this is all just one big put-up job. It’s no wonder nihilism is growing. I spent a few years in that department myself. It was certainly an experience.
So, yes, I would say faith is a skill, and I think it’s a necessary one.
I think people sometimes equate faith with credulity: “Oh, you just believe things without evidence.” But that isn’t what faith is—at least that isn’t what faith should be. This is why I like Saint Thomas Aquinas with his “preambles to faith” or what we would call “philosophy.” Essentially, he says, Here are the reasons we have for believing the world isn’t just some random, pitiless accident, and why we can trust in God’s plan. Now, let’s figure out what to do about it. Aquinas’s whole point, though, was to show that faith was meant to be not infra-rational but rather supra-rational—that is, on the far, not near, side of reason. Faith, in other words, is simply trusting in that which you have good reason to believe. Many subsequent philosophers agreed. This was a turning point for me. Because for most of my life, I was anything but a person of faith—I was, indeed, a person of science, of facts, and of reason. Faith just seemed like unnecessary woo-woo. If it couldn’t be measured empirically, then what was the point? Or so I thought.
Then one day I got into an argument with a religious person (as I called people of belief at the time), and straightaway we quarreled over the existence of God. I accused him of believing in things with no evidence, and he responded by asking what sort of evidence I required to change my mind. I said something scientific would be nice, don’t you think? He replied that I had simply made a categorical mistake and that no clear-thinking religious person sees God as just another entity within the universe—some big, bearded warlock in the sky twirling his beard or twisting his ring—so to expect to detect him empirically is to have a fundamental misunderstanding about who God is, to be arguing against something that God is almost certainly not. He said if God is anything, he is the ultimate, sole reality—timeless, spaceless, possessed of intellect and will, and so on—an extremely simple, but extremely powerful mind, in other words. God, in principle, is not some “thing” to be found under a microscope. And there went my spaghetti-monster argument, before I could even present it. He then trotted out a series of logical arguments for the existence of God that I had never heard before—arguments that were altogether convincing, arguments that I didn’t even know existed. Now, I don’t recall how particularly convincing I found them at the time, but they did cause me to see there was another side of the story, one I had somehow successfully avoided, maybe because I just never wanted to believe in something like God.
Long story short, I studied the other side, and after many years of doing so, reached the conclusion that there was, in fact, good reason for believing in something greater than myself. That’s where faith comes in. We can’t “prove” the transcendent (whatever that may be)—at least not scientifically, because the transcendent is by definition beyond the purview of science. But we can at least make it reasonably acceptable and likely, or, as philosophers like to put it, more plausibly true than not. And that’s all a good argument is for.
All of this, of course, is a return to logic. It’s important once again to note that faith is not below reason, but rather above it. Again, faith is on the far, not the near, side of logic. And that’s why it’s a skill. Anything less is credulity, maybe even gullibility.
In trying to figure out what faith is, I’ve decided it can be nothing more (and certainly nothing less) than trusting in that which you have good reason to believe. But you still have to take that wee bit of a leap. You still have to trust in that which you have good reason to believe. It’s like being married. I can’t verify that my wife loves me, at least not empirically, and to even suggest conducting such an experiment would cause me a considerable amount of grief. But I have good reason to believe that she does, in fact, love me. I’m trusting in that which I have good reason to believe.
There is one problem with having faith that I forgot to mention, and that problem is this: as soon as you believe in something greater than yourself, you must accept there’s a reason for being here that transcends your selfish, little ego. That means it can no longer be just about you, you, you all the time. It now must be about something else and something more. Life probably isn’t about how much money you can make or how famous you get or how many awards you acquire. Faith takes not only practice to have but practice to live out, since true faith—true belief—means turning yourself over to some greater plan, becoming an instrument, if you will, of divine intercession.
While I was writing this book, there came a point when I was extremely annoyed. Resistance was high. Deadlines were tight. Patience was short. So I was a bit snippy with people and not quite as polite as I should have been. I decided to take a break that day to visit a local church to see if I could pray it out, a practice I wasn’t particularly sold on at the time. On my way to the church, I nonetheless asked God if he wouldn’t mind sending a spiritual pick-me-up. I requested something nice, something cheerful. Like the sighting of a dove, say. I told God things were a little stressful right now, so if he could work this one small favor for me, well, that would be nice. And how did God respond to this? I’ll tell you: by putting a kid with cancer in the very front pew.
Now, before my, I guess you could call it, conversion to faith, I struggled as so many do with the problem of evil. Why, I would always wonder, if there is a loving God, would he allow such horrible things to happen in the world, particularly things like childhood cancer, which I think we might all agree is at the very top of the list of things that suck and make absolutely no sense. Eventually I concluded there is at least no logical contradiction between the two. That is, so long as God may have morally sufficient reasons beyond our grasp for allowing such atrocities to occur, then such atrocities are not at conflict with God’s existence—Saint Thomas Aquinas taught me that. Solving a problem logically is not the same as solving a problem emotionally. That day, I came a great deal closer to solving that problem emotionally.
As I walked into the church, we were handed a copy of a song we would be singing to Ben: “This Little Light of Mine.” Throughout the service, various groups of people came to offer prayers and support for this young boy and his family. The church was packed with people of all ages and types, each giving whatever they could—some flowers, other Legos, and all of us a lot of love. The priest eventually presented his homily. He told everybody in the congregation that Ben’s presence was indeed a miracle in the sense that one particular, catastrophic illness had given so many people the opportunity to show just how much they love one another and offer such profound kindness to a family most of them had never met. I just so happened to agree and began to see a point in something I might otherwise have written off as utterly barbaric and gross. I began to see how suffering in some ways might very well be the necessary means for us to build character traits that would be impossible in a world free of calamity and sin. This made sense to me, a little bit. I then began to think: if heaven is real and if we are free agents, then certain incentives ought to be provided for us to become the kinds of people others wouldn’t mind spending an eternity with. Without sickness, there can be no caring for the sick, no compassion. Without wrongdoing, there can be no justice or mercy. But still. Childhood cancer? Do we really need that? Maybe, in fact, we do. Maybe it’s because we get so darn lost in the noise, as Flannery O’Connor once proposed, that God needs to shout. Maybe? I don’t know.
More personal, however, was the sense of perspective this experience had given me. Who was I to worry about missing a book deadline (God forbid) while this family and their boy were grappling with arguably the most impossible struggle of all? Immediately my ego was vanquished, my petty problems dissolved, and I began to pray. I walked out of church a delivered man and resolved to remain a delivered man for at least the next several hours. But at that moment I became solidly convinced of one thing: God answers our prayers. He might not always give us what we ask for, but if we’re receptive to subtle—or in some cases, not so subtle—hints, we’ll find he is always willing to give us what we need, and then some.
OK, great—how does all this play into becoming better at (almost) everything? I’ll tell you. Faith is the ultimate—and perhaps only—way of orienting yourself toward happiness. It’s what drives your efforts and goals in a direction that actually will fulfill you and actually could make a difference in the world. Look, I’m a believer in capitalism (if that hasn’t already come across), but if it’s being conducted by people of good conscience, all the better. Because then we wouldn’t need the stupid government to keep interfering with things, which almost always has the effect of making the problem worse than it was to begin with. What’s that Harry Browne quote, the one about government being the only entity that could ever make you feel grateful for handing you a crutch after breaking your leg? I like Harry Browne. He knew things.
Just imagine if all people were rooted in a sense of higher purpose. We probably wouldn’t have much, if any, need for the EPA or the IRS or international trade agreements. People would stop doing things just because they were profitable and start doing things more because they were good. Obviously, I’m fantasizing. Utopia is not of this world. People would still have to do hard and dirty jobs to pay their bills, and people are by no means angels. But you can’t tell me things wouldn’t at least significantly improve if everybody were rooted in a sense of something greater—something beyond themselves. Now, I’m not saying without faith you can’t be a good or moral person—I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying if your worldview is one of ultimate meaninglessness, then you don’t have much of a reason to be. That’s what Nietzsche taught me. I like Nietzsche. He also knew things, at least some things. I think he was wrong on that most fundamental premise of reality, but darn if he wasn’t consistent all the way to his conclusion.
That’s one big reason we need to practice—and notice I didn’t say “have”—faith. Not the I-go-to-church-on-Sundays or I-read-a-spiritual-book-once kind of faith, but a deep, abiding love of humanity and God. Faith is the orienting mechanism, as I said. It’s what can drive you and give you a why so enormous and unshakable and profound. You’re not working out just because you want a set of abs or learning guitar just so you can get with groupies. No. You’re doing things for reasons so much more meaningful than that. You’re building a skill stack so you can change the world—maybe even save it—and serve some greater purpose in life. Having a why—having faith—is what will keep your butt in the chair or get your butt to the gym. You’ve got to offer it up.
Now, take it a step further. Faith compels not only trust but virtue. In other words, it’s not just about what you believe but also about the kind of person you become because of that belief. This again is very Aristotelian (Aristotle argued that the point of knowing and making and doing good things was, at least in part, to build positive character traits). You do good things because doing is becoming.
Therefore, morality is about not only the acts you perform but the sort of person you’re shaped into because of them. Here again is where faith can either help or hurt, depending on how well you understand it. You want to do the right things, but you also want to do them for the right reasons. Because good acts without good intentions don’t make a better person, do they? You’ve gotta want to do the thing you know you’re supposed to, if you get what I mean. For me, that was always the hardest part. I was charitable before I had faith; I just didn’t particularly want to be. Mostly my generosity was driven by my desire to buy myself a good night’s sleep. Now it’s driven by love . . . mostly. I had to work at that and am still doing so. It’s part of my spiritual practice.
We can argue that, at the end of your life, faith is the only skill that’s going to matter. Ninja skills, writing skills, your abilities as a salesperson—none of that is coming with you—and neither is your Beanie Baby collection, your bank account, or that Cayman GT4. What you will be remembered for is the person you were and how you affected others. This point was made painfully obvious to me when my grandfather passed. He was a man I never considered to be the epitome of success, when I was growing up. He had a lower-middle-class job and lived in an upper-lower-class neighborhood. He never seemed to aspire to anything. But that’s only because I had the wrong view of aspiration. My grandfather aspired to everything, because he aspired to love people and be a man of faith. And he accomplished both. He was the one who always held me on his shoulder as a crying babe, came to all my sporting events (however insignificant), volunteered constantly at charity events, and never missed a Sunday sermon. His was the most crowded funeral I ever saw. People lined up around the building like at a midnight premiere for a summer blockbuster. And that’s when I realized he had a skill that was fundamental and essential and utterly lacking in my own life. If I had died that day, I doubt if even most of my own family would have shown up. For me, the line would have been like one at a matinee of a movie that’s been out for three months.
My grandfather taught me that faith was not just believing but also trying really hard to make good on those beliefs, no matter how many times you fail or don’t live up to your own expectations. We’re all going to fail and to some extent we’re all going to suck at having faith—especially at first. But that’s what makes it a skill. Repetition and Resistance. Integration > Isolation. Just start with small acts of goodness and giving. Bring water to the thirsty and food to the hungry, and offer somebody who looks downtrodden an unexpected compliment. Meditate and pray at home or in church, but then bring your faith out into the world. Then take on more challenges. Maybe work a mission trip in there somewhere. Or here’s a challenging one: tithe. Let me tell you, tithing is tough: you have all these plans for the money you’re making—vacations, retirement, clothes, whatever—and then you go and just give it away. Don’t tell me that’s an easy thing to do. (Maybe for some people it is, but certainly it wasn’t for me.) Don’t tell me faith isn’t a skill.
Yes, make gobs of money doing good and then give gobs of money away to an even greater good. But don’t stop there and don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Go out and do the good acts yourself. Prep the meals. Visit the poor. Wash the feet of some very sick person. If you tell me these things are hard, I’ll tell you: I know.
Honestly, I’m not trying to be pushy about religion. Which reminds me, a friend of mine goes to a church whose motto is “friendly, not cultish.” I like that. I think it makes sense. That’s another person who knows this: Whatever religion you are, or whatever religion you aren’t, faith should be attractive because it’s beautiful and because of the good things it gets people to do and because of how it brings people together. You don’t believe in God because you want eternal fire insurance. That’s not what faith is about. You believe in God because you love the world and want to save it and because you love Him and everything He’s given to you.
Faith will stop you from taking shortcuts. Faith will give you the framework you need to engage in fulfillment. If you need a practice plan, start with this: When you meditate or pray in the morning, you don’t need to make it just an exercise in focus. You can make it a spiritual workout, as well. Start there.
ONE-PAGE SPIRITUAL PRACTICE PLAN
Morning Meditation
Spend five to fifteen minutes in mindfulness meditation. Use a guided app to get started if you need to. The skill being developed is focus, and the benefit is presence and awareness. This will flow into all the rest of your life. Be sure to do it every day.
Midafternoon Affirmations/Prayer
Whatever your religious orientation, prayer is a powerful and transformative practice. (Affirmations also tend to work well.) So spend five to fifteen minutes on prayer every day, whether reciting affirmations, chanting mantras, praying the rosary, or praying in whatever way your religion suggests or you feel comfortable. (I prefer to do this in the midafternoon, though I will sometimes stack this with my morning meditation session; prayer, I’ve found, can often be a steadying force to lead into meditation.) There are no strict rules here, aside from that you should try to stick with one prayer or form initially, in order to set up a pattern for yourself.
Evening Journal Session
Finally, spend five to ten minutes every night reflecting upon your day in a positive manner. Don’t just record what you did; rather, explain why you’re grateful for whatever happened. This simple exercise gets you into the habit of seeing the good in things—and seeing that life itself is good—a much-needed habit in a society that constantly slams us with bad news.
Recommended Additional Reading
Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis).