Emily Ann Peterson’s book Bare Naked Bravery is about to come out. The book is about her becoming more brave and how to enable other people, you the reader, to become more brave. I’ve been a part of Emily Ann Peterson’s community online since I was on her podcast almost a year ago and I find the community full of support and people becoming more brave. So I recommend her book sight unseen. Her approach to becoming more brave is to break it down into practical elements, practice that you can do yourself exactly what I find helps for active social, emotional, expressive fields like leadership, like entrepreneurship. So if you are here for leadership, I recommend looking into Emily Ann Peterson stuff because she comes to this as a musician. She approached learning to practice bravery from how to play music. This is exactly what I found works. And I think there’s a lot of overlap between bravery and leadership. So if you want to lead, I think will be helpful to become more brave. If you want to be more brave, I think it’s also helpful to learn more leadership. So if you want to be more brave, listen. I recommend joining her community online. Her personal challenge changing top is a little bit. She interpreted environment differently than many other people did which gave me something to learn. And she’s not the first person to do this, and I’ve learned in other cases where people have interpreted environment to mean something different. So listen on and I look forward to seeing how it comes out for her because I expect to learn in the process as well.

Joshua: Hello everyone. This is the Leadership and Environment podcast. This is Josh, I’m here with Emily Ann Peterson. How are you doing?

Emily: I’m doing so good, I’m excited about this. I really love jamming with you on these subjects so I’m excited.

Joshua: Now we spoke before and we jammed before and in fact we spoke before about leadership in the environment. Well, let’s put that off for a bit because we’ll get to that. And you’re writing a book. Actually, I have a book of yours because it’s a coloring book.

Emily: Yes.

Joshua: And that was like getting things started I bet.

Emily: It was at the beginning when we launched so I started the research for this book about three years ago. It started with memoir kind of just I write to discover things for myself and that kind of it was like oh, maybe this writing is going to be a memoir. And then I was like well I’m going to put a book out maybe I should do some research. That research soon became a podcast which you were on. It’s called Bare Naked Bravery. And that podcast then became a community and the community eventually became this book and everything that we’re doing right now. So the coloring book though was like a “Yay hurray, we have a podcast.” And there are…It features like 12 international artists and their work and each page is like a really beautiful design centered around that concept that we discuss a lot on the show so it’s a fun coloring book if you’re in that kind of thing.

Joshua: I think that a lot of listeners to my podcast but to every I think a lot of people out there want to create books or they want to create something, they want to leave a legacy of some sort. And most people are not. I think that’s probably why a lot of people are listening. Were you also someone who is like “I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do this” and what made the shift to do it? Because my experience with writing is like it makes you bare and naked and that’s really scary. But that’s maybe it’s different for you. How did you get started?

Emily: So I’m a singer-songwriter, I’m a musician. I have always you know since very young have understood that like you know there is value in just being creative for the sake of being creative. But there’s so much more value that you can get from your creativity by sharing it with other people. And so I just grew up with that knowing that like you practiced piano so you can be in the recitals so your grandparents can snap photos of you and be really proud of you just like you are of yourself you know. And that just kept going for me even with my own career. And when I started I just always have had a practice of writing on a really regular basis. I actually talked about this in the book that I do a kind of radical version of Morning pages where I will write a stream of consciousness for like 15 plus however many minutes. And then at the end of the session just delete or trash or burn the whole piece of writing, like you don’t keep it, I don’t get rid… Like I don’t keep it around, I don’t do journals anymore. I just like write it and get rid of it right away because for me the act of creating is valuable in and of itself. But that kind of writing is the most value when you’re just writing to process things is not in the keeping of but in the just getting it out.

And so for me you know as a singer-songwriter who just wrote a book which is not a very normal thing for singer-songwriters to write books. It happens but it’s not like an obvious next step, you know. For me it was sometimes you as a creative you come across things, I’ll just use the word thing for now, you come across things and realize that you have to follow through with it that there’s like something else that’s just causing you to follow through with it, even if it’s weird or out of the box or doesn’t quite belong. And this book is an example of that like… It felt like as I kept doing my own internal processing of writing the stuff I kept discovering and learning more and more and then it became not just a song that needed to be played at a recital. You know it also became a, “Oh, wow. These things need to be shared with the whole world.” Not just like, “Oh, look at how cute she is kind of thing.” It was like, “No, the world needs to hear this what I just found. I can’t believe that this is so easy or that it’s so straightforward.” So yeah.

Joshua: Is that is what it takes to get from not doing that to doing that? Is it being bare naked? Is it being more self-aware?

Emily: I think it takes practice, and this is what I discovered with bravery is that a lot of times the big feats of bravery that we see in the world like somebody jumping into a burning building is like my go-to example. We see that and if it’s a firefighter jumping into a burning building, he does that every day. He trained for that. He knows how to do that. He is ready for that. Even if it’s someone like a Joe Schmo who jumps into a burning building to save someone, he had an entire lifetime that led up to that moment that taught him that that was the right thing to do. So, it comes from all the way back into like kindergarten days of practicing how to put yourself out there in the world or making a new friend or say hello to somebody. And like the tiny little steps that we make and fail at all add up to these big acts of bravery. And in this case leadership as well.

Joshua: What are you talking about the firefighter going into the burning building is helping others at his own personal risk or her own personal risk. And in your case is writing the book something you’re doing for yourself? I mean because from what you said before you are doing it for others.

Emily: I mean I have an entire album sitting in my Dropbox just waiting to be released into the world. But I knew that this book needed to get out there first. And so yeah, I could have chosen to not write this book and do maybe less good selfless things you know or less… The word is escaping me, but I could have chosen to release this other album first. I could have chosen to not do any of it, right? But there’s something… What I’ve noticed with bravery is that there’s generally three big reasons why somebody does something really big and bold. One of them is that it’s worth it. Like the thing the awkwardness of “Yikes, I’m going to do this crazy scary thing” that awkwardness has a payoff somewhere down the road. And you and you can see that ahead of time. That’s the first reason. The second reason is that it’s contagious. Bravery is contagious. So if you surround yourself with people who are doing similar things, then that feat of bravery for you ends up becoming easier because it’s just normalized, it’s a thing that you do. And the other reason is that people need you to do it. So, in the case of the burning building someone is on the inside of that building who needs to be saved. In the case of this book it was I saw that if I had the answers to help somebody is really awful low season of life to be just even a hair easier or kinder or more compassionate, then I needed to share that with them. Like I knew that the awkwardness of me doing something different, you know swimming upstream in the music industry by releasing a book instead of another album that awkwardness was worth it because I knew that there were people on the other side of it that needed to read this book, that needed to hear that going through some of the things that I’ve gone through or also see the correlation between my story and their story and their story know that ok, everything’s going to be all right if I do these things or if I take a deep breath and get a little bit more vulnerable or take a deep breath and sit and read in between the lines and also read the lines as well in my given situation, or use my constraints instead of working against them. Yeah.

Joshua: So, this book is for people who… I mean I’m picking up that one of the things that someone who has struggles, has challenges but doesn’t feel understood and feels like maybe I’m supposed to know this but I don’t, or I’m supposed to be pass this but I’m not or I’m not… Maybe I feel like other people…

Emily: Well, so what I discovered during my research is that the word bravery was seemed like this thing that we all know of. We see it a lot, we see it out in the world and we go, “That’s bravery.” But when you ask yourself “How do you be brave? or How do I be brave, become a brave person or courageous?” that answer was not as easy to find. And so that’s what this book is about. It’s like “Why are we brave? How are we brave?” and then “How do we build that bravery?” Because what I discovered was that you know you’re not born brave, you’re not born hero. You have to practice at it. You have to learn it very similar to leadership. You have to practice it on a daily basis and practice it from all angles and stretch it and mold it and you know and work it like a ball of dough because otherwise it just gets stale and unused and you know those muscles atrophy.

Joshua: This is so music to my ears and I hope listeners of mine is that the things where yeah, the things where it’s emotional, expressive, performance-based theory doesn’t help it’s not going to hurt. But you got to do these things. And it really helps to have stories and examples of people who were where you are, who’ve gotten to where you want to be. So I think when I asked “Is it for this type of person?” I think you’re more saying this is what it will get you. And so if people are like people who are afraid, people who have fear, whose anxiety is overriding this will help them overcome, which is everyone right? Yeah, I mean maybe there are few who’ve like gotten so far that they forgot or something like [13:27] or I don’t know what. But most of us I’ve come pretty far and compared to where I was and there are so many things I’m afraid to do.

Emily: And that’s the thing I was telling somebody earlier today that I will never stop learning and like bravery will never stop being a difficult thing for me because that’s just the way it is. It’s a spiral. The more you practice it the more you have to learn. The more you use it, the more you have of it or have to use. And so yeah maybe performing on a little stage is scary for me at a certain point but the more I do that, the more that will be easier. But I’ll also be introduced to other opportunities where the stage is bigger, the audience is bigger, the arena is bigger, the world, the global stage is bigger. And that bravery is just going to get stretched just as much as you practice it and move forward with it.

Joshua: I have this model in my head of I was talking about this cusp where when you learn stuff before you reached the cusp like when you’re trying to learn a foreign language and you’re trying to learn new vocabulary or you try to practice and you can’t say anything you or maybe you can order you know like I think of French, something like you can order some cheese at a restaurant but you can’t really talk and if you don’t practice, you get worse. So, you have to keep practicing and it’s uphill, uphill, uphill and it gets worse. But then you cross the cusp and then maybe it’s where you’re conversational and it’s easier to continue than it is to stop. And I never got… I took music lessons when I was a kid and I never got over the cusp. So, for me it was always there was always work to practice a musical instrument but my friend who plays a violin and she’s at Carnegie Hall and all the stuff. And she’s like for her to practice is… If she goes along with that practicing, she has to practice. It’s not hard. It’s easy. It’s what she wants. I’m sorry. It’s not easy. She’s trying to learn new things. It’s always challenging but it’s rewarding. And so, this book is for people to make bravery. Something to get them over that cusp.

Emily: Yeah, and I would say so I have a background in Suzuki music education so that is a specific method of teaching mostly children but I also taught adults how to play an instrument and it’s based off of Dr. Suzuki’s philosophy that every person can play and that music is a language that is learned very similarly to how you acquire a language. So first you do a lot of listening, then you do a lot of repeating sounds, then you repeat some more sounds, then you make sentences out of that and then eventually you become fluent. And so, using that as an analogy this book will help you become fluent in bravery.

Joshua: Where were you in my life years ago? I mean for me the Suzuki method is a lot if in acting… Do you know Meisner Technique? Is it…

Emily: I am sort of familiar with… I’m just like sort of familiar but I’m not super.

Joshua: Okay. Because that I took Meisner technique acting classes and it completely… And anyone who knows Meisner will look at what I do and say, “Oh, he’s just doing Meisner but for leadership.” And you’re doing the same thing I saw Suzuki did it for music.

Emily: Oh, he is amazing and you know he’s kind of a cult following and there’s a big… It’s also a polarizing subject in music education just because there are some teachers that are like, “Oh, no. A child needs to learn how to read the music from the get go.” But his theory was like, “No, the reading will come easier if they are more familiar and somewhat fluent before they look at a page of music or are forced to read a page of music.” Very similarly to how you know a child can speak full sentences before they learn how to read a book. At least the way our education system is right now. And so that’s what happens with bravery as well is that you see it a lot, you start to repeat those actions and behaviors and learn what it feels like to be brave and feel a little bit scared and exhilarated at the same time. Then you learn how to apply those situations to other skills in other situations. And then from there you can start to make your own bravery sentences and then before you know it you’re literally improvising on a stage in an arena as a public speaker or you know leading in front of a bunch of people. You’re able to actually do brave things on the fly. So, yeah.

Joshua: This rings so true to me. I can’t wait to read the book. And if you listen to me on my podcast, then you’d like the style. That’s how I got where I am. And if you like me feel anxiety and that keeps you from doing things, then this sounds like exactly what to use and…Alright, story time. Can you share it from your life or from people in your community how has this worked out in practice in the world?

Emily: So, I mean what I’ve noticed since writing the book is that because I now know… What I discovered is that there’s 12 ingredients to bravery. A singular brave moment may have more of one ingredient than the other but for the most part every brave action has some combination of these 12 ingredients. The three main ones are vulnerability, imagination and improvisation. And so, when you mix those three things together you’re utilizing your constraints and your limitations and you’re looking out at your environment to determine like how receptive are these people that I’m about ready to do something with or to or amidst. You’re looking at “Where are my boundaries here? Are these my boundaries or are these someone else’s boundaries? I’m about ready to cross someone else’s boundaries or should I respect my own? Should I remove my own?” It’s about analyzing your risk as well in a given situation. There’s going to be really high risk, and maybe it’s not a wise idea to just like take off your shirt and go streaking through the office, right? But it might be a good idea to stand up and say, “Hey, I disagree with this person.” But you have to be able to…What I do on stage is read the room and…

Joshua: As a musician?

Emily: Yeah, as a musician, and as a performing songwriter I have to read a room and determine well, this squeezy bar is not a place to play this little sweet little love song because these guys at the bar would much rather me you know go away.

Joshua: You could do the theme from Rawhide.

Emily: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So…

Joshua: Does anyone catch the Blues Brothers reference? Okay, sorry.

Emily: So there’s going to be situations where you’re going to feel like doing a brave thing and it wouldn’t matter because that given situation wouldn’t be receptive to you anyways. So you can choose to go for it but you also have to analyze whether you’re ready for that rejection or not. And if you’re not ready for that rejection, then sometimes the brave thing to do is to stay silent and just listen.

Joshua: So this is…I feel like you’re setting up the mindset like the bravery mindset or the bravery, how to be aware, because what’s the moment to act or not act. And I guess it’s to [20:57] yourself to do at first a small act of bravery and work up to the bigger act so you don’t start by a high wire act across a chasm or something like that. You start with…

Emily: Well, I mean…So one of the things I do now I mean I have corporate clients who I work with on marketing messaging. Surprise. I mean I’ve been gleefully surprised that songwriting is like the missing tool for a lot of marketers. And so because we’re really adept at telling a story based on who the audience is. So all that to say I have one client who recently is taking a big pivot in her business and she was messaging me saying, “I’m scared. How do I make this big announcement?” And my response was, “Well, you don’t have to.“ She said like,“Wait, what?” “Yeah, you already know who was going to be receptive to you in your business so go ahead and just one by one reach out to them and say, “Hey, I now offer this service.” You don’t have to announce to everyone in the whole world that you do it now you know now you’re doing this crazy act. You can just do one by one you know. And that blew her mind. She was like, “Oh, you’re right. I really don’t have to like do the equivalency of taking off my shirt running around the office. You can just like reach out to the one person that is going to appreciate that service.”

Joshua: So, you broke down a big act of bravery into a series of smaller acts. I presume each telling one person still not easy. Is that the case?

Emily: It might not be. I mean I’m not her. I wouldn’t be able to determine that right. But she, it’s easier for her to determine how that act of bravery is going to be received because you’re just dealing with one person rather than a crowd of people or a crowd of naysayers. Right?

Joshua: So learn on a small scale, take what you learn, build it and plan on a bigger scale and I guess after she’s done it a few times one-on-one a few different announcements she’s done one-on-one, she can work up to doing a bigger thing, if that’s a goal of hers.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah.

Joshua: Oh, man.

Emily: And I think you know for me personally what I’ve learned so I deal with stage fright when I perform, that’s just like a very common thing for performers to have some form of stage freight… I know Barbra Streisand was very infamous for that and I don’t know if she still does it today but there you know she took a very long hiatus because she was so like she… I think it was for she forgot lyrics at one performance and then just took a very long hiatus, she was like, “No, I’m never going to do that again.” And I think it could be wrong but I think she’s still to this day when she performs she has all of the lyrics in front of her.

Joshua: At her crutch.

Emily: Yep, her crutch and she knows it’s her crutch and she’s OK with it. And I think that’s part of being brave is going… These are all of the ingredients of this situation and given all of that information I’m going to choose to do something that maybe is abnormal for my level of career. And I say more power to you. Like if I would much rather listen to somebody perform a song completely than to have them perform a song and be scared about missing words. And so, I think that those kinds of decisions where you say, “You know what? I’m going to be brave. I’m going to get out there on the stage and I’m going to do it in a little bit of a different way.” Great.

Joshua: I feel like mastery leads to genuine authentic expression, mastery through rehearsal, through repetition, through practice that the ultimate outcome is that the ultimate outcome from this is like in situations that require bravery that your natural voice comes out that you can be yourself.

Emily: Well, OK, I’ll give you a really good story. Here’s a good story. I was recently at a music industry conference and I was attending this one panel discussion with a friend who’s also a singer-songwriter. She and I were sitting there next to each other and the title of the panel was Everybody can make an album. No one can make money. Now what? And so, I was thinking that it was going to be a panel discussion on like here’s all the fun new ways that you can make money as a musician. And it actually was I found out just like Woe is us. Let’s talk about what’s not working. And so we got like 20 minutes into this panel and I was thinking inside I was like, “I actually I’m really excited about this. The way technology is helping us. I’m really pumped about our industry right now. This is really depressing. I don’t want to be here right now. This is not what I came here for this weekend.” Like all these things are all happening inside of me and I finally was like, “OK, I’m just going to like leave. I’m going to leave and go outside just wait out in the foyer for my friend to finish.”

Joshua: This is before the panel began or in the middle of the panel?

Emily: This is in the middle of the panel. The panel is happening.

Joshua: You walked out and people watching?

Emily: Well, no. I was in the audience.

Joshua: Oh, in the audience. Ok.

Emily: Sorry, I’m sorry. That’s a bit [26:08]. I was in the audience just watching this and I’m going, “This is really depressing. This is not what I came here for.” And then…

Joshua: [26:14] had the opposite of what I wanted.

Emily: I know. I know, exactly. And so, I leaned over to my friend and I said, “Hey I’m just going to… Actually, I really disagree with this but I’m just going to leave and do this.” So internally. I was internally being brave by acknowledging something different from what was happening in my surroundings. I was internally acknowledging that truth, not internal bravery. Externally by leaning over to my friend I was displaying external bravery by telling her one thing that differed from my surroundings. She then mirrored that back to me with her own version of external bravery saying, “I agree with you. You need to stand up and like say something. You need to stay and say something.”

Joshua: To everyone?

Emily: So, I sat there and kind of they got to a Q&A part portion and I raised my hand and when it was my turn they said, “OK, now, your turn.” And I said, “I actually disagree with everything you guys have just said. I disagree with everything.” And the panel moderator was like a little flabbergasted. And then…

Joshua: Is the whole room now turning and looking at you?

Emily: Yes. I was terrified. And at the same time, I could feel the whole vibe of the room do a 180 degree turn…

Joshua: From complaining…

Emily: From [27:39] to [27:41]. It became more of a question and curiosity then rather than like just oppression and depression, right, and just by one person saying, “I disagree.” And you know I went on to describe some like, “Well, we’re still doing the same stuff. We just get to do it in new ways. And technology is amazing.” And I went on my whole like a little micro soap box. And then a few other people in the room raised their hand in agreement saying, “Yeah, and I found this to be helpful” and “Yeah, and I found this to be helpful.” And then later on throughout the weekend I had people coming up to me in this conference saying, “I really agree with you. It’s really exciting. I’m really excited. I’m glad you said something.” And we had amazing conversations out of that. But all that happened because I wanted to be brave and leave the room.

Joshua: And you acted on it in a way that the way you talk about the internal external told me that there’s a structure that your book is going to give people so that…

Emily: Right. And so, here’s my favorite part about bravery is that there’s the internal and there’s the external. But there’s a resonant bravery as well that even if I don’t feel like I’m doing a brave thing, even if I’m not displaying internal or external bravery if someone else watching me thinks that that is brave, then it is and it spreads.

Joshua: So, people who read your book will be able to reach a point where other people think, “Oh my God, she’s a natural” or “He’s a natural” or “He can do things that I can’t do” but actually they’ll be able to step through ways that internally you’ll know I had to work at this but the result will still be that people are like, “Wow, I want to follow that person.”

Emily: Yeah. A good example of this is or of resonant bravery is so Chelsea Handler and Amy Schumer are two of my favorite female comedians right now. Love them. If they do something bold and audacious like post a picture of themselves in bikinis on Instagram or something strange like that, then they’re going to get a bunch of responses or comments saying like, “Oh my gosh, you are so brave.” They are also going to get a lot of trolls saying other things but when you hear somebody saying “Oh you’re so brave” what they’re actually saying is “I acknowledge the resonant bravery that is in me and I admire what you just did.” So even if you don’t think that you’re being brave in that moment even if you think like, “Oh, you’re just…” maybe you’re being you know you’re targeted as a whistleblower and somebody comes up to you saying “That was a really brave thing to do” but you’re still terrified they’re acknowledging that that they want that kind of bravery for themselves.

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Joshua: I’m going to segue from that into acting on the environment. It may sound like an abrupt shift but actually that’s the kind of thing that I want people, my guests to instill or bring out in others. And is that cool with you to switch to the environment?

Emily: Yeah.

Joshua: So, when we talk about the environment one of the great joys of these conversations for me is that the environment means different things to different people. And people value it for different reasons. Some people don’t value it. For you when you hear environment when you think of the environment, what does it mean to you? Is it something you care about?

Emily: Yeah. I mean on a micro scale if like right now I’m in the middle of this book launch and things are crazy at work and my house is a disaster and my like immediate environment affects me greatly. Like I don’t have the same peace of mind knowing that like the recycling is piling up in the corner or that that the laundry is piling up downstairs, that kind of thing. So, my mentality is greatly affected by my environment. On a larger scale, though, I also care about my community and I care about you know kids being able to go to school where there are heaters during the winter that they’re warm. I care that you know I live on Orcas Island in Washington right now and I care that the island stays as beautiful as it always has been. So, when we are walking on the beach in the water area and I see trash coming in it’s kind of like it’s a downer, you know, to see it like to go from collecting sea glass to collecting plastic, sea plastic. That’s you know…

Joshua: Yeah. It’s how you talk about connecting with a lot of rich emotions with a reasonable intensity. And you know one of my things, I pick up a piece of trash every day from New York City and it’s like so…Ah, I can’t get into it. It’s so… How does a person get to that? Anyway. Would you be interested in doing something consistent with one of these values with a perspective that you weren’t already doing? And before you say yes or no, there’s a few things that I’ve learned that are important. You don’t have to solve the whole world’s problems overnight all by yourself because a lot of people think, “Well, if I do and no one else does, it won’t make a difference.” And it can’t be something you are already doing and it can’t be something that you tell other people to do. It has to be something you change. And that’s make a measurable difference, no simply being more aware or learning things because the environment it reacts to behavior.

Emily: Let me tell you. So, I actually chose on purpose. I live in… The house that I live in it is kind of bizarre right now. So, the downstairs area is my bedroom and you have to walk outside to get upstairs to where the rest of my house is. And the downstairs area I’m just there when I sleep. And so, this last season when it started to get cold I had that choice of, “Should we get a heater? Do I tough it out? Do I get a heater?” And I actually chose to get an electric blanket. Because what I realized was all I needed was the bed to be warm. I didn’t need the whole downstairs area to get warm. And so that was one of the choices that I made recently. Specifically, on this topic to collect something that I know would make a difference would be to not get a massif heater to heat this whole entire space for…

Joshua: Ok. I applaud that.

Emily: Yeah. And you’re asking for something that I haven’t done yet.

Joshua: Yes.

Emily: Goodness. I actually don’t…You know I think that… So one of the things that I could do is probably turn off my computer at night. I don’t do that every night.

Joshua: Do you just leave it on?

Emily: Well I mean it sleeps, it goes to sleep. Right. Like to actually turn it all the way off.

Joshua: And is the goal there to change…You spoke about environment in a slightly different way than I think of. But you’re not the only one who’s done this where you’re saying environment is like your environment affects you. So I’m learning as much from my guests as any other direction. And so, I think partly you’re saying when I think of the power savings is pretty small. I mean computers don’t use up that much power. But the change of your environment is actually pretty big. Well depending on who you are. Yeah. When I installed the thing that makes the color of my screen go warmer at night I was like, “I’ll do it but it’s not going to… That’s just nonsense.” And I’m like falling asleep on the computer. It really works. It works for me anyway. And it’s going to affect your environment. So it’s not a power thing. It’s like how it affects you. OK. So I even though it’s not what I expected not that I’m a judge here but like I will accept it, I applaud it because I want to hear what happens. And my goal… One of the things I’ve learned here is that it’s not how big the effect is when you do something. It’s “Do you do something?” And I’ll be curious to hear how this works out.

Emily: And I would say the same thing happens with bravery as well. You know like Did you attempt something? Did you practice it that day? Like if you didn’t practice bravery that day, then you didn’t become more brave. And the same thing goes with the environment – if you didn’t make a change or didn’t improve your environment in some way, then which way did it go?

Joshua: How often would you turn off your computer before? It was be like once in a while or never?

Emily: It would be most closer to never or only when I could tell like the computer actually needed rest.

Joshua: So now I’m going to ask you… It sounds like this is a SMART goal. So, I mean to me it’s you know specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time. So the time part, how long do you think you’d have to do this before you’d be able to report back what the effect was? Because it’s up to you.

Emily: It’s a good question.

Joshua: Hopefully, we can follow up and talk about this again keeping in mind the listeners want this when the book comes out.

Emily: Yeah, yeah. So let’s see. I mean I could say a week because I actually think… Or two, I mean whatever.

Joshua: So I’m getting my calendar out right now and I’m fine with either.

Emily: Let’s do a week.

Joshua: OK. Now, today’s Thursday, next Thursday is packed crazy for me so can we do it a week and a day.

Emily: All right. So like next Friday?

Joshua: Yeah, Friday 26.

Emily: Let me make sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Joshua: And let’s see we did this at 4:00 o’clock my time. Could we do it an hour earlier than we did this time?

Emily: Yes. So at 12:00 noon…

Joshua: Your time. Yeah. So one week screen off every night. And one thing I didn’t mention to you is that I ask people to consider is I didn’t say this to you but it could be temporary and almost virtually I haven’t picked something temporary but I say when you do it imagine to make it permanent. So OK let’s leave it there for now and pick up where we left off now. And then, how does it sound to you? Does it sound like…

Emily: Oh, yeah, it sounds great. I mean I can already see how much better my life’s going to be.

Joshua: We’ll see because it’s the second conversations are remarkable. Like I’m going to give you two things that I give people to help. One is if you travel in that time, then sometimes you’re in an environment that you can’t control. So what if you’re in someone else’s place and their computer you can’t turn off? Or travel ends up being a thing. And the other is other people. So maybe someone’s visiting you and they want to work late or something like that. You can never pick everything, you can never predict everything that’s going to happen. But those are the things that like the people… I really love hearing people’s stories like you know, “I was going to do this. My husband or my wife said, “That’s not going to happen.” And what do you do? And that’s the… So it might be like, “My life is going to change” or it might be “It was all overcoming hard challenges.”

Emily: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I’m excited.

Joshua: All right. So it is a sound only but she did this little thing with her fingers like, “Ah. I’m going to [39:31].

Emily: Evil Knievel. Yeah, exactly.

Joshua: Yeah you don’t have a mustache to twirl.

Emily: It’s true. It’s true.

Joshua: All right. So let’s wrap up here. I will talk to you again in a week and a week and a day. And what I’m going to do next time what I’d like to do is we will start immediately. There will be no chatting beforehand because I like the listeners to get everything.

Emily: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Joshua: OK. Good luck. Enjoy. I look forward to hearing how it goes.

Emily: Thank you.

Joshua: And also to give the listeners everything when the close we are just going to close. The next time we speak we’ll be after it’s done.

Emily: OK, great.

Joshua: I talk to you then.

Emily: Ok, sounds good. Bye.

Joshua: Bye.

***

I loved learning about the Suzuki method which after hearing her talk about it I went up and started researching it and I expect it to filter into some of my work. I love that she’s applying it to bravery, something that most people don’t think about. And that you could tell that she has coached people and herself to becoming more brave. I also love that she picked something environmental different than expected. Yes, technically it’s going to use a little less power but really she’s going to be changing her environment in a way that I predict is going to be very similar to how people change our environments when I think of you know the environment like the air and water and land that we share. I have a feeling she will get a similar experience out of it and that afterwards she’ll be more interested in doing something with the regular environment as a result of what she does with the computer and her environment.

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