4. Borrow from the Best

The question isn’t whether or not you’ll hear a soundtrack today. The question is whether you’ll choose it or chance it.

Some mornings, I forget this. I wake up and before I even turn the light on I say, “Okay, feelings, what soundtrack do you want to listen to today?” My feelings say, “The angry one!” I don’t usually ask why they’ve picked this particular tune. I don’t question if someone attacked us during the night that I have forgotten about. I just say, “It’s a deal!” I jump out of bed with Rage Against the Suburb blasting at an 11.

“Why are you so angry?” my wife will ask.

“No idea!” I say, a storm cloud of completely unprovoked frustration barreling through the kitchen.

Has that ever happened to you? Before your feet hit the floor, your feelings have picked an angry soundtrack to listen to all day. I know it has because we have a phrase for it: “I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

I would love to have a better day, but my feelings decided this morning that today would suck. It’s really my bed, you see. One side is pleasant, the other side is where I keep my pit vipers—and alas, it is on this side that I have risen.

When you don’t choose a soundtrack to listen to, the music doesn’t stop. You just hear a bunch of songs you don’t like.

I like feelings. This isn’t where I’m going to tell you that feelings are useless or stupid or out to get you. Feelings and Netflix are two of the things that separate us from the animals. But as I started putting my overthinking under the microscope, I began to realize that feelings aren’t the best DJ.

One morning I woke up and my feelings said, “Today’s soundtrack is stress. That’s what we’re listening to all day.”

This time I actually said, “Why?”

My feelings responded, “Because you sent that big proposal to the client and they might not accept it.”

That felt true. It didn’t feel particularly helpful or kind to myself to be stressed out, but it was a big proposal, so I rolled with that soundtrack. I wish I could compartmentalize better. I tried, I promise. I told my overthinking, “Hey, let’s not stress until we get that email from the client this afternoon. I have a lot of other work to do this morning that doesn’t involve that proposal at all.” My overthinking giggled and then proceeded to play the stress soundtrack in the background of my entire day.

Birds can fly across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping because they can sleep with only half their brain while the other half stays in motion. That’s what it feels like when I’m distracted by overthinking. I went through the whole day, but half my brain was playing that soundtrack at full volume. What if the client doesn’t accept my proposal? What if they want to cut it in half? What if the whole thing falls apart? I listened to thoughts like that on repeat for hours. I couldn’t focus on my kids. I couldn’t pay attention to my wife. I was mostly absent from meetings. I was too busy attending a private concert for one.

At the end of the day I got a message from the client. Not only did they accept the proposal, they wanted to double the amount of work, which meant doubling the amount of money they were going to pay me. It was the biggest contract of my entire life. I shouted for joy in my garage when I read the email. The stress soundtrack had to end now, right?

You’re better at picking out great thoughts to listen to than your feelings are.

The next morning, I woke up and my feelings said, “Today’s soundtrack is stress. That’s what we’re listening to all day.”

I said, “Wait, what? I understand why we listened to the stress soundtrack yesterday. We were worried about the proposal, but it worked out! It’s a huge win. We should listen to a celebration soundtrack!”

And my feelings said, “Sure, you got a massive deal, but what if you can’t deliver? A deal that size brings a lot of pressure.”

That was the moment I realized that no matter how my circumstances changed during the course of a day, my feelings weren’t always going to pick a soundtrack that accurately matched what was really going on. If stress was the song of the day, there wasn’t a single event that could change that tune. If doubt was the music my feelings set in motion, then all the wins in the world wouldn’t do anything.

I decided that maybe I should be the one to pick the soundtrack. Maybe I could make my own playlist and listen to that instead. I didn’t know how to do that yet, but it had to be better than just pressing shuffle and accepting whatever soundtrack my feelings served up.

Start Your Playlist with Somebody Else’s Song

One night my wife and I went out to dinner with another couple from Nashville. We didn’t know each other very well, so while we waited for our food, we asked the type of wide-sweeping questions you ask in moments like that: “How did you two meet?” “What brought you to Nashville?” “What are your hobbies?”

I piped up to that last one and admitted, “This is kind of silly, but I love graphic novels.” The table got oddly quiet and my wife leapt into the silence. “He means comic books. That’s what a graphic novel is, it’s a comic book.” It didn’t hit me that when you say “graphic novel” most people who actually went to the prom assume that means erotica. They don’t think Batman, they think 50 Shades of Grey.

There I was at dinner with near strangers, proudly declaring that one of my favorite hobbies was erotica. “A lot of people say they like it for the stories and the plot, but not me. I’m a big fan of the graphicness.” That was an awkward night, but I’m no stranger to conversational car wrecks. I certainly encountered a lot of them when I talked to people about the topic of overthinking.

When I would tell someone I was writing about overthinking, they would inevitably say, “Oh, I need that book. I’m an overthinker.”

I’d ask, “What do you overthink?” and they’d reply, “Everything!” I would get them to list out a few areas of their life where overthinking was a particularly big hassle and then offer a few suggestions for turning down those soundtracks. But if I then switched gears and asked, “What soundtracks would you like to listen to instead?” I would be met with blank stares.

I might as well have said, “I love porn! Please pass the salt.”

It was 100 percent easier for people to list out broken soundtracks they wanted to retire than it was to list out the new soundtracks they wanted to jam. The same thing happened to me in 2008. When I decided to listen to the soundtrack “I think I can be a public speaker and author,” I didn’t spend the next few days writing down other positive thoughts I wanted to listen to.

That’s not how it happened at all. The blank paper was too intimidating for me. So, instead of trying to come up with my own, I did something unusual: I listened to somebody else’s soundtrack.

God Bless Dorothy Parker

I borrowed a soundtrack from author Dorothy Parker fifteen years ago and haven’t looked back once. I’ve used it almost every day of my life since. It’s one of those true-north soundtracks that guides my books, my career, and my research. Now that I’ve built it up to the point that you’ll definitely be underwhelmed, allow me to share it.

Parker once said, “Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.”

The wild mind means you give yourself permission to put a thousand different ideas in your head. You notice a song lyric, a comment from the mailman, a sign at a coffee shop, a question your curious toddler asked, and an article in the New York Times. You collect anything that is remotely interesting to you.

Then you look at that vast collection of unrelated ideas and have the discipline to see the connection between them in a way no one has before. I use this approach to write books, articles, and speeches. For example, one of the topics I talk about a lot to companies is empathy. In my speech, I share a story a chimney sweep told me in Branson, Missouri, a marketing principle I learned working for Bose, and a rap lyric from Dr. Dre. Those three ideas had nothing to do with each other when I initially collected them, but when I connected them they turned into a highly memorable soundtrack for audiences.

When I woke up to the fact that I could choose my own soundtracks, I made an important decision. I didn’t have time to wait for a list of eureka moments to show up. The lightning strike of “I think I can be a public speaker and author” took me thirty-two years to have. I didn’t want to be sixty-four and saying, “Okay, I’ve figured out a second soundtrack that I think is true, helpful, and kind for my life.”

I’d turned down my overthinking a bit with the dial approach, but I felt like my best shot at long-term success was to turn up some new music. And the antidote to overthinking isn’t more thinking—the antidote is action.

You don’t think your way out of overthinking. You act your way out. You retire broken soundtracks. You replace them with new ones. You repeat those so often they become as automatic as the old ones. Those are all actions.

I decided that instead of doing a deep dive into my own head to find a new soundtrack, I’d look around for one. I liked the odds of that a lot better because it gave me access to the songs seven billion other people were listening to instead of just my own. I decided to be like Dorothy Parker. I’d have a wild mind. I’d collect stories and comments from friends and movie quotes and anything else that lit me up. Then I’d have the eye discipline to see the connection and remix it until I had a playlist that made me unstoppable every morning.

How can I say this with such confidence?

Because my life is dope.

What Would Kanye Do?

When you give your brain permission to start finding new soundtracks for your collection, you’ll be surprised how many phrases jump out at you in the most unexpected places. It’s practically impossible to ignore them. That’s how a long-forgotten video clip about Kanye West yielded a fresh soundtrack for me.

In the clip, comedian Dave Chapelle tells Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon about the first time he met Kanye. Although Kanye was relatively unknown at the time, Chapelle had booked the young artist to perform on his Comedy Central show. They were together watching clips of the show that hadn’t been aired yet, like the famous Rick James skit. In the middle of that moment, Kanye’s phone rang, and Chapelle told Fallon, “This is when everyone knew Kanye was going to be a star.”

On the phone, Kanye told the caller, “No, no I can’t. Because I’m at the edit for The Dave Chapelle Show watching sketches that no one has seen before.” Then he paused and said, “Because my life is dope and I do dope *#$@.” Then he hung up. Fallon burst to his feet at the telling of the story. Chappelle said, “No record out, he didn’t even have a record out!”1

Kanye’s confidence, enthusiasm, and willingness to accept how fun his life was jumped out at me. What if I could hear that soundtrack every time something good happens? “My life is dope and I do dope *#$@.” It would sure beat what I usually hear, which is, “Must be nice.”

I don’t know where that one started, but I envision an old woman wearing spectacles looking down on me and criticizing whatever smidgen of joy I’ve just experienced.

Must be nice to get a book deal.

Must be nice to set your own schedule.

Must be nice to be able to afford that vacation.

It’s probably cousins with the phrase “Somebody has a lot of free time!” If anyone ever says this to you, they’re saying, “I’m a lot busier than you and thus more important.” Only you can’t say that in real life, so instead people say things like “Must be nice” and “Somebody has a lot of free time!”

The internet factors in here too. I once posted a photo of my alarm clock. I was up at 4:30 a.m. for a flight and asked my followers what they were doing up so early. One person responded, “I’m looking at your clock thinking that it must be nice to call 4:30 early. My daily is 3:50 a.m., and if I overslept to 4:30 I would be upset.”

Joke’s on him, because Mark Wahlberg would be disappointed in both of us for missing a 2 a.m. burpee session with the Rock. We’re both lazy in that story.

I liked Kanye’s soundtrack and decided to borrow it. The next time something good happened to me, I said out loud, “My life is dope.” I didn’t say the second part, because I’ve got young kids with big ears and they’re already reeling from the fact that their dad is into graphic novels.

It felt strange to say “My life is dope” the first ten or twenty times, but then something funny happened: I discovered gratitude. Everyone always talks about how important it is to be grateful, but I could never connect with that idea because I had too many broken soundtracks in the way.

“My life is dope.”
—Kanye West

You can’t have gratitude if you can’t first admit something is good. Whenever I tried to, I’d hear soundtracks like “Must be nice,” which was guilt that I didn’t deserve something, or “Don’t get your hopes up,” which was fear that I’d lose the good thing if I enjoyed it too much. I didn’t write down the Kanye soundtrack “My life is dope” thinking that it’d lead me to a lesson in gratitude. I wrote it down because I thought it was funny, ridiculous, and inspiring. Then, when I put it into action, I learned something unexpected: there was gratitude on the other side of it.

That’s what’s so fascinating about replacing your broken soundtracks with new ones. It always leads to places you can’t imagine. Recognizing that, I started borrowing soundtracks from everywhere.

One afternoon, I told my Lyft driver I was working on a book but it was a hard project. He said, “Nothing good is ever easy.” I wrote that down.

I did an event with musician Andy Gullahorn. He’s really into badminton. I told him I’d love to play but hadn’t before, so I wouldn’t be very good. He said, “No one is good at things they’ve never done before.” I wrote that down.

I read a book by Deena Kastor, the female American record holder for the marathon. After a successful career, she was burned out on the sport of running and almost quit. Instead, she hired legendary running coach Joe Vigil and learned a completely different approach. He taught her that “shaping her mind to be more encouraging, kind and resilient could make her faster than she’d ever imagined possible.”2

That switch in her thinking and training helped her win America’s first marathon Olympic medal in twenty years. One of her soundtracks when things get tough is a question: “Are you going to throw in the towel finally, or are you gonna drop that hammer?”3 I wrote that down.

Crispin Porter Bogusky, an ad agency behind massive campaigns like Burger King’s “The King,” thinks positivity is so important that they list it as one of their secrets to good work in their employee handbook. They call it delusional positivity. They believe that “there is no way we could do what we do here without a relentlessly positive attitude. It shapes our future. It creates our momentum. It keeps us moving forward when we’re pushing the boundaries of possibility.”

That’s a lot to swallow, especially in an industry like advertising where it’s easy to become jaded and cynical. They’re aware of that and chose “delusional” on purpose. “The ‘delusional’ word makes the idea easier to digest for people who still have a foot in the cynical and negative world and are just discovering how powerful a positive attitude can be in their lives.”4

Delusional positivity. Consider that borrowed.

Which Soundtracks Should You Borrow?

All of them.

At the beginning of this journey, don’t waste time judging which ones are worthy of your new playlist. Just write down any soundtrack that’s even mildly interesting to you. If that seems like a lot of work, take out your phone and tell me how many photos you currently have on it. I’ve got 19,928 on mine. Don’t pretend you’re not good at collecting stuff.

Speaking of phones, if you don’t have a notebook handy because you’re not a dorky writer who has a billion notebooks, snap a photo of a soundtrack instead. Start an album and throw a new one in it every time you see something that makes you curious. They don’t all have to be amazing either.

My soundtracks range from “Small spark” to “That’s what’s up!” The phrase “delusional positivity” is on the small-spark end of the spectrum. It’s a soundtrack I added to my playlist, but I probably won’t think about it too often. On the other end of the spectrum are the soundtracks I can’t stop talking about. Those are the ones that make me shout, “That’s what’s up!” the first time I hear them.

That’s exactly what I said to Patsy Clairmont at lunch one afternoon. She’s written over thirty books and is one of the most accomplished public speakers in the country. She’s in her seventies now but told me that when she wrote her first book, the edits crushed her. “The editor sent back pages covered with red ink, and it looked like the manuscript was bleeding. I asked her to use a different color next time because it was so discouraging. The second round of edits came back with green ink and now it felt like I was growing.”

That’s what’s up!

Imagine if the next time you make a mistake or get feedback from a coworker you think of the green ink. Instead of feeling like you failed, you remember that you’re growing. That’s what’s up! I borrowed that one the second Patsy said it, and you should too.

Borrow These First

Want a head start on your new collection of soundtracks? Here are five I’ve personally found helpful. Remix them according to what works for your own life. That’s what usually happens. You end up tweaking them, editing them, and combining them to create something that makes sense to your unique opportunities, strengths, and challenges.

1. People are trying to give me money.

This is the soundtrack I use when going into new business conversations or opportunities. It’s not magic. I rarely walk out of those meetings with pockets full of bread, but readjusting my thinking ahead of time changes my demeanor in the meeting. I don’t get stuck on all the work I have to do or the fear that I could fail the project. I remember these people are trying to give me money.

2. I’ll feel awesome after.

This is the soundtrack I turn on when it’s fifteen degrees outside and I don’t feel like running. Instead of thinking about how cold I’m going to be, I think, “I’ll feel awesome after. The after is going to be amazing. I’ll feel so proud of myself. I’ll get all those endorphins and lift my head high that I actually did it.” I used this soundtrack to run one thousand miles in 2019. The same goes for finishing a difficult project. I know that when I finish filming a series of videos that takes months to complete, I’ll feel awesome. I focus on that positive future when my present feels challenging.

3. Spare change adds up.

If my goal is to write 1,000 words, I write 1,050. If my goal is to run 3.1 miles, I run 3.3. If my goal is to email ten clients, I email twelve. I think of that extra effort like spare change. It doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up. Over a year, those extra fifty words turn into five thousand. Over a year, those extra .2 miles turn into fifty. Over a year, those extra two emails turn into two hundred. I don’t force myself to run ten miles if my initial goal is three, because that’s the broken soundtrack of “more” at play. But a little bit of spare change is always fun to stack up.

4. Pick ROI, not EGO.

One afternoon, after reading an early draft of this book, Jenny walked in and said, “Do you want feedback or compliments?” I started laughing because that’s such a perfect soundtrack question. I might want compliments in the beginning stages of the project, but the further I go in the work, the more I need actual feedback.

I remixed her question to a new soundtrack I could use in other parts of my business, not just my writing: “Pick ROI, not EGO.” Instead of picking the thing that feels best for my EGO, I want to pick the thing that has the best ROI: return on investment. This one should be plastered in every conference room in corporate America. When I shared it with colleagues, they shook their heads and proceeded to tell me stories of leaders who threw every bit of data out the window as they led in a different direction with their EGOs.

5. Pivot, don’t panic.

When the coronavirus turned my world upside down in the spring of 2020, I had a simple choice to make: panic or pivot. Earlier in my life, I would’ve obsessed about the news, binged on social media doomsayers, and stayed stuck for weeks, if not months. I would’ve eaten macaroni and cheese at all hours of the day and put on twenty pounds of these-sweatpants-are-so-forgiving weight. I did that when I lost my job in 2001 during the dot-com bubble. But this time I’d just spent two years researching the power of soundtracks and knew what I needed to do.

I wrote “Pivot, don’t panic” on a notecard. I repeated that soundtrack to myself and anyone else who would listen. I started a new YouTube channel. I invested in teaching virtual events when live events got canceled. I wrote a new keynote called “Pivot, Don’t Panic” and began teaching it to clients around the world. I pivoted a thousand different ways, and I’ll do it all over again the next time life throws me a curveball.

“Do you want feedback or compliments?” If you want to get better, you know which one to pick.

The World Is Your Oyster—or in This Case, Your Record Shop

There’s no limit to the number of soundtracks you can borrow. There’s no minimum either. You’re in control of the whole process. Go at your own pace and collect them in whatever way makes the most sense for you. It’s impossible to fail this activity.

It can also be a lot of fun, but the real fun begins when you start creating your own. If you wrote down a few while reading this chapter, you already have the beginning of a great playlist.

If not, don’t worry. I’ll show you how to make some of the best soundtracks you’ll ever hear with one new question: Where do you want to win?