Jen Sincero: Believe Better Stories — Transcript
Caitlin: Welcome to Simplify. I’m Caitlin Schiller
Ben: I’m Benjamin Schuman-Stoler
Caitlin: Hi, how you doing?
Ben: Pretty good. Yeah, how about you?
Caitlin: Excellent.
Ben: You ready for some Simplify?
Caitlin: I am so ready for some Simplify.
Ben: So what do we got today?
Caitlin: Alright. So today we have a dynamic lady named Jen Sincero, who is a life coach, an entrepreneurship coach, a best-selling author. She does all kinds of stuff.
Ben: What’d she write again?
Caitlin: She wrote a book that you’ve probably seen in an airport or on somebody’s desk, or maybe on my desk with 8,000 Post-it notes in it. It’s called You Are a Badass.
Ben: So, why’d you want to have her on Simplify?
Caitlin: All right, so, full transparency. Truth be told, I really didn’t want to.
Ben: Okay…
Caitlin: At first! Because I sometimes have snobby tendencies with book titles and I always regard book titles with curse words in them with a little bit of a side-eye, like “Hmmm. What is this?” Yeah, so I wasn’t totally sure after, you know, just reading the book title. And then, you know, I looked at the stats and people love this book and Nat, our production assistant, urged me to at least read the book and give it a shot. So I did and then, not only did I like You Are a Badass, I actually found it really, really useful. I even ended up doing the activities that Sincero outlines.
Ben: Oh, cool.
Caitlin: Yeah.
Ben: So, yeah, so what what’s the one thing that you remember from the interview before we get into it?
Caitlin: Well there’s so much to talk about with Jen Sincero. There were so many ways to go but I thought a really powerful place to start would be with beliefs. So we mainly talk about beliefs, and how our beliefs are formed by a lot of different material, but ultimately, they’re stories. They’re stories that we tell ourselves and we can choose to change that story. But we have to be really, really aware of the fact that, especially for beliefs that aren’t helping us, there’s probably some sneaky way in which we’re benefiting from every belief we hold. It’s probably keeping us “safe” and being safe is cool and all but, if it’s keeping you from getting what you want, you need to really take a look at it and disassemble it.
Ben: Yeah, I think that’s we should just play the interview and let’s talk about it more with some book recommendations afterwards.
Caitlin: Sounds great. Let’s do that.
Ben: Alright.
Caitlin: See you at the end.
Caitlin Schiller Interviews Jen Sincero
Caitlin: Hey Jen! Thanks so much for taking the time to talk today. Just to give people an idea of the breadth of what you do, could you introduce yourself the way that you like to be introduced?
Jen: Oh, I am Jen Sincero. I am the author of the You Are a Badass book series and that’s who I am.
Caitlin: So, there is a lot to cover in your Badass guides and what I wanted to speak with you today about most I think, is beliefs. How our beliefs about ourselves, and about others, and about how the world is, really affects an end creates who we can become.
So there’s this great quote in You Are a Badass that I circled and its “most people are living in an illusion based on someone else’s beliefs.” Can you unpack that a little bit? What does this mean to you?
Jen: It means that we create our version of reality and subscribe to “truths” based on what we hear and what we’re taught. And so it’s really important to question things that you’ve just taken for granted your whole life. Especially the things that are not making you happy. So for example, if you’ve been told that you have to work really hard to make money, you might want to investigate that if you’ve been working really hard and you’re not making any money, you know what I mean? Like, just don’t take anything for granted.
Caitlin: And so what are maybe some of the surprising things that I might find if that were my belief? If I started to interrogate it, how is that belief keeping me back?
Jen: Because you are being a victim to it. If you believe that it’s impossible to find love after 50, or if you believe that everybody in your family has trouble losing weight because of your metabolism or, you know, whatever negative result you’re getting, there is a belief that is attached to that result. So it’s so super important to start with the belief and be like, “Hey, you know, I’m unhappy being overweight and feeling sluggish and feeling unhealthy. And I’m not available for that “truth” that I’ve been told my whole life. So I’m going to seek a new way to exist in this world and do exactly what it takes to create what I desire.”
Caitlin: One of the things that I really love that you say in this book is that for all these negative beliefs that might be tearing us down like, “oh, I have a slow metabolism” or “I can’t find love after 50” we’re actually secretly benefiting from these beliefs. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Jen: Well, you benefit by not having to take risks and not doing scary things and not getting outside of your comfort zone. So, you know, you get to stay status quo and you also get to not take responsibility for your life. So then you can blame other people and be a victim and you don’t have to go for it, which you know in the immediate can seem very comfy and beneficial, but in the long run you got one shot on planet Earth as the you that is you, and why would you want to spend it settling for what you can get?
Caitlin: Right. So it has a lot to do with with fear of risk?
Jen: Absolutely. Yeah, you know, I’ve seen so clearly that everybody has the ability to create what they desire. It’s just so many people aren’t willing to do what it takes. And that is kind of in a nutshell the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people. Successful people not only do what it takes, but they don’t give up until they get there.
Caitlin: But the whole point of these ingrained beliefs is that they have this really amazing gravity to them. They’re attractive to us because they’re comfy and you know, we fit neatly into that spot on the couch that we’ve sat on for a long time. How do we start to change these negative beliefs?
Jen: First you’ve got to become aware that they exist. So that’s where all the journaling, and all the meditation, and the being really conscious of the words that are falling out of your mouth. That’s where it all starts, is waking up being like “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’ve been saying, you know, I suck at making money my whole life, you know, and so maybe I should stop saying I suck at making money and turn that around.” So just becoming aware is enormous. That’s the first step because then, once you have the specifics of what your stories are, then you can set about changing them.
Caitlin: So are there some questions that you you like to ask people so they can start to get at what those ingrained stories are?
Jen: I think an important thing to do is to look at your life and be like “which areas of my life are bringing me zero joy?” And then start paying attention to “Okay well, what do I believe about this area of my life?” you know, and then busting yourself on what your beliefs are.
And and journaling is a really good way to do that because when you freeform journal about something, you know, it’s staring back at you from the page and you’re like, “Oh my God, I had no idea I believed that!” So I think writing stuff down is very helpful in those situations.
Caitlin: Awesome, that’s really helpful and seems like a generically useful thing that anybody can do. So asking yourself what the areas of your life are that are not bringing you any joy at all. Did you have a specific area that you are really working on when you first started on your journey?
Jen: Oh, yeah, it was money. I was living in a garage when I was in my 40s and just couldn’t get out of my own way with it and I just eventually was so sick of being broke and so sick of feeling like “this is the best you can do?” And that’s when I started reading self-help books and I started looking at my crap around money, which was plentiful.
So I think the problem is is we’re in pain in certain areas of our lives and we feel frustrated but we don’t take the time to get into the specifics around what we believe to be true. And that I mean honestly it can take like four minutes to sit down and be like, “Okay, what do I think about money? How do I feel about rich people? What do I think about my right to make money or my ability to make money?” In four minutes, you know, kaboom! There’s like all this stuff staring back at me from the page and that’s where you start.
Caitlin: Yeah, okay. So then we have to become aware and then you start to write down maybe what these stories and what these beliefs are. And we want to kill these stories. We want to reverse negative beliefs, but you know, there’s a space that’s left over if we do that. What do you tell people to replace those negative beliefs with?
Jen: With positive ones. You know, so for me I busted myself on the fact that my mantra was “I can’t afford it.” I would say “I can’t afford it” a hundred times a day and then I was like, “All right. I don’t want to subscribe to that anymore. So now I’m going to say, ‘money flows to me easily and freely.’” And so even though, you know, when you start saying these positive mantras you can be like “Girl, you’re high. Money does not flow to you easily and freely,” you know, all the resistance can come up.
But the important thing is it when I started saying “money flows to me easily and freely,” it felt so much better. And so you’re looking for a feeling and an emotion, because we are creatures that are motivated by emotion. So once I started saying “money flows to me easily and freely,” I started looking for proof of that. So, at first it started with like, you know, I found a buck on the sidewalk and you know that counted. Or I got a freelance job that I wasn’t expecting. So I started counting that. I started noticing and being grateful for all the ways in which that was true, and then it just started, you know, it started flowing more. And the other thing it did is it opened me up to the possibilities and the opportunities that were always there, but that I couldn’t see because I was too busy proving that I couldn’t afford it.
Caitlin: The part that I have trouble with here is we are creatures that are made up beliefs, but we’re also creatures that believe in empirical evidence. So if all that we’ve seen is that we’re not making money so far, how is it convincing to say “I will make money.” I just I’m having a really hard time connecting those two things. If I don’t see the proof of it, then telling it to myself will just feel like bullshit, right?
Jen: Yeah, totally. So that’s why I don’t encourage people to wait until you believe it. Because of course you don’t. Like I have 40+ years of proof that I sucked at making money, you know. So it was a big stretch for me, but I desired it. So when you make the desire more important than the proof. So it is, it’s all about this agreement to believe it anyway, to decide that your desire is the truth, not your environment.
And so it is, it’s a bit unicorny and it’s a bit, you know, magical thinking and all that stuff. But how’s it working out for you believing that your environment is the truth instead of what you desire is a truth? Why not? We’re on a ball in infinite space right now. So why not have your desires be the truth? I mean, none of it makes any sense anyway.
Caitlin: I can’t decide if that’s really exciting or really bleak.
Jen: Right?
Caitlin: Okay. I guess this is sort of related to a whole section that you have on affirmations. And affirmations are just things like, you know, “money flows to me easily and freely” or “I am beautiful and can flirt with anybody.” And you know, this is a thing that you hear about in self-help a lot, “positive affirmations.” Have you ever seen affirmations just not work or maybe a better way to ask that is what do you think the limitations of affirmations might be?
Jen: I think when you just say a bunch of stuff that you have no emotion around, it’s completely useless. I see them not work all the time. So, you know and then it just becomes one more annoying self helpy thing that you have to do that you don’t want to do and you money flows to me easily and really, you know. You know it just causes more grouchiness and stuff like that. So that’s why the most important part is the desire and the emotion around it.
So like I was so hell-bent to get out of my money story and to start writing a new one, and then start making money that I was available to say the crazy “money flows to me easily and freely” and act as if and do that work because I was really serious about it that I wasn’t really interested in focusing on the fact that it seemed rather ludicrous.
Caitlin: Suspending one’s disbelief can be a pretty big step.
Jen: It’s a huge step.
Caitlin: Yeah, that’s a big commitment.
Jen: But you gotta want it more than you want proof, or want, you know, your excuses. It really does come down to that and it’s so funny because I remember when I was starting I was so grouchy and so just like “Prove it! This is insane. This doesn’t make any sense, you know. Money does not flow to me easily and freely.” I was so caught up in that that I put off my transformation for years because I was so busy being in a bad mood about all this stuff that I now teach and have seen completely transform countless lives. So it really is a decision to do it anyway. To just do it anyway and give it a shot. What the hell do you have to lose?
Caitlin: What do you think people are so afraid of? Of not giving it a shot, of not deciding? Why don’t they?
Jen: Because change freaks humans out and because of all these underlying beliefs, right? The subconscious beliefs that they haven’t dealt with yet. So if you change who you are and if you change who you’re being in the world basically, you’re killing off your old identity, right? I had to kill off broke complainy Jen to become successful rich Jen, right? And so a lot of people who knew me my whole life liked broke complainy Jen because they were my friends, you know. And so you risk abandonment, which certainly happened to me in some instances. You know, you risk being judged, you risk being not liked for changing. So, there is risk involved absolutely. And that is why the majority of people don’t change our lives is because they’re not willing to take that risk.
And so certainly there’s some pain and loss involved in making transformations. But man, there is so much more to gain and that’s what you got to focus on is the benefits instead of what you risk losing. And also, the people I lost who weren’t supportive and who have judgments over who I am now in the world, bye! You know, really! And believe me, it’s not that many people. I still have such dear long, you know, lifelong friends that are so happy and excited for me. And those are the people I want to surround myself with.
Caitlin: Absolutely, not the people who didn’t want you to succeed in the first place.
Jen: Exactly.
Caitlin: Yeah, we talked a little bit about how what we believe about ourselves can influence how successful we can be with whatever we want to bring into the world. But another part of the book that I found really interesting was when you talk about what we believe about other people. Specifically, how we judge other people and what we think about them, particularly when they’re really annoying to us. And you say that that’s a really good tool for us because it helps us figure out something about ourselves. Can you talk about that a little bit and why it’s useful to notice when people are annoying to us?
Jen: Yeah, because it has way more to do with us than it does with them, unfortunately. So like you could find somebody hilarious and adorable, and I could find them completely irritating and annoying, right? So the same person is doing the same things, but yet you and I have completely different reactions to them. So what does that say that has way more to do with you and me than it does with them. So and it works, you know, and with everything if somebody is completely inspiring to you or you’re scared of them or they’re annoying, whatever reaction you have is all about you because we can only see in other people the things that we already have within ourselves.
So when somebody inspires the crap out of you, it’s because they struck a nerve with you that you feel like well maybe you know, you may not realize this but you’re like, “I could do that too” or “they’re speaking in a language that I can really hear, that really resonates with me” because it’s like a chemistry thing, right? And same with the irritation. Like, we’re irritated by people who do stuff we do all the time, but we may not want to own it or we may not even realize it.
Midroll
Caitlin: Here’s a self-defeating belief that I hear all the time: “I just don’t have time to read!” Well, first, I recommend you inspect that belief, Jen Sincero-style, and second, you should really try Blinkist. Like I’ve been saying every episode, Blinkist gives you a sneak peek into a whole world of great nonfiction books. So, it’s a busy, discerning reader’s best friend. But it is also an aspirational reader’s best friend, because it transforms the key ideas from those great non-fiction books that you wish you were reading, like Jen Sincero’s You Are a Badass, or even stuff by Dawkins, or ancient philosophers, into these powerful little audio or text experiences. So all these insight packs are put together by real readers, like me and Ben, who pull out the highlights so that digesting the key ideas will take you only about 15 minutes. And those 15 minutes? They might just be so good that they inspire you to become a better person, who reads. You know, I think it’s best, my dear aspirational readers if you just see what I mean for yourselves. We made it easy. Just go to blinkist.com/friends and you can try it for free for 14 days by using the code: badass. Alright. Let me know what you thought. I really hope you’ll love it. Okay, back to my talk with Jen Sincero.
Interview Contd.
Caitlin: I’m gonna skip around a little bit here for a second because I don’t want to get too far away from what we were talking about in terms of affirmations and manifesting things before. And I cannot keep the the sarcasm out of my voice when I do that, I’ve been trying really hard for the past few days looking at your materials to not cringe every time I see you use the term “source energy.”
Jen: Awesome. I can relate. I 100% relate.
Caitlin: Yeah, I kind of feel my own lights go dim whenever I read it and I just go “Oh, I’m not tapping into the vortex or into source energy.” But I also recognize that there’s something there and what is source energy to you and how can you talk to me and our listeners about it so that I don’t feel all squirmy inside and want to like run in the other direction?
Jen: I feel like source energy is a connection with our own intuition, which I hugely believe in. So I believe in it, but then what’s intuition? Okay. So now I’m going to step out and go a little unicorny on you. So you know these intuitive hits that we get, where does that come from? Where did brilliant ideas come from? Where does that thought of that friend of yours that you haven’t thought of in two years come from the moment before they call you on the phone? Where is all that coming from? And so the source energy that runs through all of us, I feel like our intuition is like the divining rod to that knowing source energy that created everything that is. How do you feel about that?
Caitlin: Okay, a little bit better. But still not great.
Jen: Yeah, I mean I get the resistance to believing in that and embracing it 100%. And I also have seen so much evidence of it being real that I don’t care what anybody thinks now. Like I believe, baby. I’m a believer.
Caitlin: Okay. So then how do you counsel people to start to especially people who don’t necessarily have a sense for source energy or there being some organizing principle or some “help out there in the universe” for them. How do you counsel that they start to tap into that more?
Jen: First to get them to agree to be open to it. You know, because if you’re not open to it, I can’t help you. You know what I mean? As with anything: anybody who’s not open is welcome to stay right where they are. So just an openness is required at first and then, meditating. And even if we just start for like 5 minutes a day sitting down and shutting up that is I believe one of the most important steps. Because in our culture we value our conscious minds way over our intuitive minds. And we don’t really give a lot of credibility or weight to intuitive impulses. And so I think that really is the first step is to just sit down and shut up for a little while, and strengthen your relationship with this inner knowing that we’ve all got. And then once you start to develop an ear for your own intuition and a respect for it, I believe that starts to crack open the disbelief of the wickedy-woo.
Caitlin: Why do you think that we put so much more stock in conscious mind over intuitive mind? What’s that about?
Jen: I don’t know. I think we’ve just been trained that way and I also think that it’s easier to control conscious thinking and you can spoon-feed people beliefs and tell them the way it is. But intuition is extremely powerful and does not subscribe to anybody here on Earth. So I don’t think you can control people who are listening to their intuition. So it’s probably got something to do with that.
Caitlin: That’s interesting.
Jen: That’s why we burned the witches.
Caitlin: You can’t control people who are listening to their intuition. Um, let’s see. I wanted also to talk about beliefs about fear. And you have this great story in the book about how you went into a dark, dark cave. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Jen: Oh yeah, so I went spelunking and we got to the point in the cave where it was pitch black and we had to crawl on all fours because it became so small. And I am already a bit of a claustrophobe and I could not believe I was doing this and it became such a raw, primal situation where it was almost like my fear was personified because it was all there was. It was just me and fear, and everything else had slipped away in that moment. And it made it so obvious to me that I was like, “Wow, it is 100% a choice to be afraid or not to be afraid.”
And yeah, there was just something about everything being so stripped away that it it made me completely conscious of the fact that we choose fear. And I was like, “If I choose fear right now it is not going to go well.” Because it is, you know, I was on all fours crammed in this cave and I had somebody in front of me and somebody behind me. And I was like, there’s just not going to be any benefit to me choosing fear, so I am just going to focus on something else. And you know, which eventually became talking everybody to slowly back out of the cave. But yeah, but it was really interesting because it was a situation that was extremely scary to me because I am a claustrophobe and not choosing fear in that moment, it honestly wasn’t even that hard.
Caitlin: That also sounds like a moment in which you really changed a core belief. You went from believing that fear was something that could control you and came from outside yourself to believing that fear was a thing that you control and came from within.
Jen: Exactly. It’s a great way to put it.
Caitlin: You’ve talked to so many people and helped so many people through coaching and through books. I’m sure you get letters and feedback and tweets and emails. Are there some central fears that people, or some central negative beliefs that you see popping up over and over again?
Jen: Totally. That’s the thing that’s so interesting to me about human beings. We’re so damn unoriginal in our are psychoses. It makes it very easy to coach and do all this stuff. But we really subscribe to the same fears. It’s really interesting. You know, the biggest fear is a fear of abandonment, and it comes in so many different forms. But you know, one of the questions I get the most at every talk I do is “What do you do when the people you love don’t support your growth?” Right? What do you do when the people you love make fun of you because you’re reading self-help books and they think it’s cheesy?” You know what I mean? And that one is because we don’t want – what we talked about at the beginning of this – was we don’t want to change because we’re scared of losing the people of being abandoned by them, right?
We also don’t want to outshine the people we love, I’ve discovered personally. And I think a lot of people have this one too, where I didn’t want to make money. I didn’t want to get richer than my dad because I thought that would emasculate him and make him feel like he wasn’t needed in my life like he couldn’t take care of me anymore. That was a huge stumbling block for me. And I’ve seen that a lot in other people, where they don’t want to become more successful than their parents. You know, you don’t want to stand out because you’re afraid of being judged, that’s another huge one, especially with creative people where if you get big and successful, I mean look what we do to celebrities! My God, no wonder everybody’s freaked out about being visible. Everybody has an opinion.
So and that’s why this whole thing about doing the inside work on yourself and being confident and loving yourself is so critical because that really is all the matters at the end of the day. You know, there are always going to be people who think you’re a genius and there are always going to people who think you’re a big fat loser. So why does it matter what anybody else thinks. As long as you are in integrity and being authentic and doing what you really feel like you were meant to do here, that’s all the matters.
Caitlin: When it comes to people trying to change their lives really hard, what do you think they spend a lot of time worrying about that they really don’t need to be worrying about that’s just wasteful energy?
Jen: How they’re going to do it. Because basically when you decide to change your life you are starting with where you’re at right now, right? So you are existing in this “reality” and when you want to exist in a new reality, you’ve never been to the new reality. So, of course, you don’t know how to do things in that new reality because you never been there before. So, if you sit around and spin out in your head of like “How I can do this? Okay, how am I going to this?” You could spend the rest of your life doing that.
The important thing to do is to take action, and do what you know how to do right now and to push yourself to constantly do things that are terrifying to you: to get outside of your comfort zone, to take those risks, to spend the money, or to approach that person, to risk rejection – all that stuff. You just do what you know how to do, and don’t be so freaked out about “Is this the right thing to do?” You know because it will start to present itself once you get in the game. It’s a huge one because I’ve seen people, myself included, waste years spinning out on how am I going to do this? You don’t know how yet, but you will figure it out if you take action.
Caitlin: It’s a great one. Okay. Well, if there were a central enduring idea about beliefs and how our beliefs affect us that you could share with everybody listening today, what would that central idea be?
Jen: That you have a choice on what you believe. That you are not a victim to your beliefs. And that you can change your beliefs if they’re not working out for you.
Caitlin: Awesome, that will definitely be what I want to end the interview on. But the one last thing is that, so Simplify is a podcast from a company called Blinkist and we deal with non-fiction books, which is why you and I are talking. So I always love to ask the writers that I talk to about what they’ve read lately and what they could really recommend?
Jen: I just read part of Gloria Steinem’s autobiography on something on the road, something about traveling. Oh My Gosh. I can’t remember. (My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem) Who knew?! She had such an interesting childhood. They were like gypsies roaming around. I did not know that about her.
And now am I only talking nonfiction that I’m reading?
Caitlin: No, it’s actually okay if you’d like to talk about fiction as well.
Jen: Good, because I am obsessed with All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. I just finished that book. And holy frijoles! Have you read that thing?
Caitlin: I haven’t but I’ve heard it’s great.
Jen: I demand you read it. It is really the greatest book I read in like 30 years. It is so beautifully written and what a story. And I just, All the Light We Cannot See, and it’s all I want to talk about.
Caitlin: Cool! Well, all right, that wraps it up here. Jen Sincero, thank you so much for joining me today.
Jen: Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is really, really great.
The Bookend
Ben: Welcome to The Bookend where we end with books. Jen Sincero. I really like this. Can I just say I really like the way she says we’re on a ball in infinite space?
Caitlin: Yeah, me too. What did you think? What did you think, like, what did you take away from the interview? You’ve asked me that but I’m curious about what you thought.
Ben: I mean you talked about stories. Beliefs are stories. I like the way she she was really—she was really strong about awareness. Be aware of your stories. You can’t change anything until you know it. Know what you’re saying, know how your how you’re saying it? It only takes a couple minutes to start being aware of that like take she said it took four minutes for her to understand the way she was looking at money and that should that led to this huge change and I found that really powerful and really sticky. And I guess it all comes down to this idea that once you’re aware, you can change your beliefs.
Caitlin: Yeah, and for you know, all of you listening out there, what she thought about money and I think this is a really interesting and worth saying is that basically she had this belief that money was kind of evil and the people who had money were kind of evil and if you believe that money is evil on some level, even if you want more money, you’re probably still going to act like money is evil and not be making enough of it for yourself. Yeah. It was just an assumption that she took apart.
Ben: Right, and that like you have to have a willingness, I guess to go into that in yourself. She has this great energy, this great attitude. You said also during the intro you don’t like titles with swear words in it, but sometimes it it connects to an energy and an attitude in an approach and I think that’s what this was. I don’t think it’s like a stunt.
Caitlin: No!
Ben: I think it’s a… it’s who she is.
Caitlin: Absolutely! This is her. This is her voice and that’s great. It’s just I wanted to inspect it and you know, give it the due diligence before I was totally sure.
Ben: Yeah, what are your thoughts about the interview or do you wanna just go straight into books?
Caitlin: Let’s do it. Would you like to go first or shall I?
Ben: I’m happy to I mean, mine is kind of simple. I mean, I think it’s the first one that came to mind when I was listening to the interviews was Sarah Knight’s The No Fucks Given Guides.
Caitlin: Right good old Sarah Knight from season four.
Ben: Season four. Also great energy. Also swear word in the title. Also quite funny. Also this thing where you look at like you look around the office, you see these books sort of everywhere you like what what is this what could be so great and then you get a little snobby and then you open it up and you talk to the person you’re like, okay. Yeah. I understand why. And to talk about one book from Sarah Knight. I think Get Your Sh*t Together might be the most actionable one, I found. We also saw a really good response to it on Blinkist, so you could check it out there. Do you remember anything in particular from the book?
Caitlin: I think that listeners should just go check out that episode. Season 4.
Ben: Okay. Yeah. What books what books did you have?
Caitlin: I’ve two. the first one is called The Discomfort Zone by Marcia Reynolds. So a lot of what Jen Sincero talks about in her book is busting through your own dishonest, weasly little stories in order to figure out what you actually want and what you’re really hiding from. And this book walks you through how to do that exercise for and with someone else. So, this book could be especially useful for anybody who leads a team or mentors someone. What I like is that there is an actual five-step protocol for going through a hard conversation with someone and it takes you through how to get to the conversational goal .
Ben: But it’s called The Discomfort Zone?
Caitlin: It’s called The Discomfort Zone by Marcia Reynolds.
Ben: Okay what you have another book?
Caitlin: I do. The other one I have is The Index Card by Helaine Olen and Harold Pollack. So one of the other things that Sincero really talks about a lot which you and I’ve already touched on is money. Why you can’t have it, or think you can’t have it, and how to get more.
But sometimes we need a more practical guide before we get to the more airy belief stuff, especially if we’ve got debt and, lord knows, I still do, The Index Card has really simple strategies to get your current financial situation under control while you’re planning and dreaming and scheming about how to make a ton of money in the future.
Ben: Cool. Simplify is produced by me Ben Schuman-Stoler, Caitlin Schiller. Hi Caitlin.
Caitlin: Hi!
Ben: Nat Darozhina and Ody Constantinou, who once destroyed a sink in his apartment like pipes and wash basin with his homemade toothpaste.
Caitlin: But you got to admit, that guy’s teeth are great. So, if you enjoyed this episode of Simplify, please consider rating it and leaving us a little review in the iTunes Store. It helps other people find us.
Ben: Yeah, and if you want to share some thoughts or like, I would love to hear more beliefs and stories. You can email us. We are at [email protected]. Or write to us on Twitter. Caitlin is responding with users on Twitter in Spanish. I noticed a couple weeks ago.
Caitlin: Every now and then! If need be!
Ben: So she’s @caitlinschiller and I’m @bsto, but I will not respond to you in Spanish
Caitlin: You’ll respond in gifs.
Ben: I can respond in like, children’s neuroscience book recommendations.
Caitlin: All right, that’s it. We’ll be back with more Simplify next week.
Ben: Cool, till next time, checkin’ out.
Caitlin: Checking out.
