KindSight 101
host: Morgane Michael
Useful Not True, reframing, parenting, building meaningful relationships
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Transcript:
Morgane
Hello and welcome to Kind Sight 101 with me, your host, Morgane Michael. And I am here with the Derek Sivers. I’m so excited to introduce you to Derek. If you haven’t yet gotten to know him or been acquainted with his work. Hi, Derek.
Derek Sivers
Hi. I like the “the” in front of my name. That’s kind of like the poor man’s, sir, I like that.
Morgane
I just want to introduce you to the audience here. Just to give them a sense of who you are. And this is obviously the bio. There’s so much more to you. I think what really connects me goes beyond the written up bio. But I’m going to give people a little context. So you’re an entrepreneur, a writer, a musician, and you became really well known for your project and your business CD Baby, which you sold. And much of the proceeds from that went to charity, which is remarkable as well. You have worked with so many prominent and really interesting thought leaders, and you yourself have put out so many books as well that are deep thinking, 30,000ft question type books that drill down to like when I read your work. Although they’re really big picture, I feel a sense of calm and clarity after having interacted and spent time with your books. So I love all that you do, and I just want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
Derek Sivers
Cool. Thanks, Morgane, I appreciate it.
Morgane
I want to start with some of the themes in your newest book. So you have written a book called “Useful Not True”. And it’s an interesting take on the “idea of truth”. And you outlined five main topics or sort of guiding principles, maybe we could call them that help us to reframe this concept of truth and then how we relate to it. Can you tell a little bit about what made you want to write this book in the first place?
Derek Sivers
Sure. I noticed a lot of people dismissing the contents of something because they didn’t like the wrapping. And what I mean is, people like to think of a person or a philosophy as entirely true or not true, and if they call it true, then they think that everything in that philosophy or that mindset or everything that person says, they subscribe to it all. But then if that person says something they don’t like, or the philosophy has one thing they don’t like, they want to dismiss the whole thing, the baby with the bathwater. And I thought, why do people do that. Okay, so that question was sitting in my head for a few years. Why do people dismiss a whole book? I’ll pick one concrete example. Say there was a brilliant book years ago called “How We Decide”, I think. Loved the book, it was really helpful. Wonderful book by Jonah Lehrer, who years later was found to have plagiarized just like 2 or 3 sentences in one of his other books. But because of that, he was a completely canceled, like books yanked off the shelf, publisher removed him from their catalog. People would no longer read that book. A similar thing happened with a philosophy book called “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman. A few of the tests he quoted in there were later found out to not replicate in repeated examples.
Derek Sivers
And so a lot of people will just dismiss the entire book and say, “I’m not reading that. You know, some of the tests were proven not to replicate, that author was found to be plagiarizing. So I’m not going to read that book.” And I think, well, why is that? Why would people dismiss everything even though it could be so beneficial to them. So that hold that in your head for a second. Then there are lots of beliefs that I deliberately subscribe to because they’re useful to me. And let’s just pick a common one where this belief that everybody is going through their own struggle every day, or everybody has the best of intentions or every jerk racing through traffic might have a dying family member in the back seat that they’re rushing to the hospital. All of these beliefs are things that are not necessarily true, but by choosing to believe them, it affects your actions for the better. It it makes you either act more generous or just feel more at peace inside to not be so angry at the jerk in traffic. You feel more at peace. So I’d often share my beliefs, whether it’s about business, about motivation, about productivity, whatever. I would share my beliefs in public, and every now and then somebody would come in and say, “That’s not true. But yeah, but that’s not true.”
Derek Sivers
And I’d say, “I didn’t say it was true. In fact, I don’t care whether it’s true or not. All I care is whether this belief affects my actions for the better. And I will choose to believe it because it’s useful, not because it’s true.” And I said that so much I thought I should explore this subject more. Now, going back to what I started with, then I realized so many of the other implications, like when people want to subscribe to an entire book and think of a book as true, entirely true. That way I can follow it because it’s true. And as soon as the tiniest little ding is put into it so it’s no longer perfect, they go, bah! It’s no longer true. I think it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You can find useful things. It just kind of like you can find wisdom coming out of the mouth of a child or a drunk in the in a gutter can say something wise. And it’s just because the person themselves might be despicable or you know, not intelligent, doesn’t mean that nothing they say is of any use to you. So I realize this is all kind of under one umbrella of choosing beliefs. Because they’re useful, not because they’re true. Because ultimately what matters are your actions.
Morgane
I think this is so important. And when you were saying that this whole idea of reframing, you speak a lot about reframing and essentially that whole idea of the irrelevance of whether something is actually true or not. And I think you’ve talked about the fact that truth is really... Could you explain it to an alien, or would an alien say, okay, this is something along the lines of, this is true. There’s absolutely no gray area here. It either is or it isn’t.
Derek Sivers
It’s not a thing of the human mind. You got to ask yourself this thing that I’m saying is true. Is it just because I’m inside a human mind? Like, would an octopus also agree? Would an alien from another, you know, species agree that this is also true? If we would all agree then I consider that to be true. But most things we call are true are things of the mind. By the way I don’t want to make it sound like I am a what do you call those people, a denialist? You know those people that say like, the flat earthers or whatever, you could say that. You’ll see in the book, I mean, right there in like page one, I say, “All right, first, let’s be clear. If something’s a physical fact, then it’s true.” You know, that’s where I draw the line. Somebody else might want to draw the line somewhere else. But for me, it’s like physical facts. That’s why I say if it’s observable, it’s an absolute fact. Such as, you can look in a microscope and you can see vaccines working, or you can tally exactly how many votes were cast for which candidate. Like, these aren’t debatable things. These are things that yeah, an alien an octopus could view that and agree. But I’m talking about these other issues we’re talking about, like, is it necessarily good to be selfish? Do you owe your parents your life? Is it important to be loyal to the country of your birth? Like, a lot of these things are held up as absolute truths, when in fact it’s like, well, I don’t know. Maybe if you grew up in an abusive family, then maybe somebody’s saying it’s an absolute fact that you must be loyal to your family, or your family is the most important thing in the whole world. Maybe that’s not necessarily true for you. It’s a belief that’s useful for a lot of people, but not everyone.
Morgane
And I think what you do is you invite us to look at it differently. And when I think about this, in the case of a rear ending kind of situation in a traffic accident, and when you make that benevolent assumption about somebody, their context, all of these things, your overall perspective and the way that you react is very different, the way you interact with someone. And that overall will make your life more positive, easier, I think more beneficial. You just never know. You might be surprised. I think approaching things with a certain degree of curiosity and go, “ I wonder what’s happening.” I think about this from the context of an educator, too. It’s very easy to typecast students. It’s very easy to typecast parents in a particular way, and I think the demands for us to be creative in our approach, and even in the way that we view our students. I think we can do that in a in a different way than maybe some of us do. And by approaching this idea of “Useful Not True”, I think that we could see our students differently, you know, when they show up and perhaps their behavior is a particular way. Yeah. Okay, there might be some things that we would assume about who they are inherently. But when we take away that typecast and we really look at it head on and we deal with their behavior through through that curious, benevolent mindset, their behavior can often shift and change, and they can reflect the person that we see in them or the potential that we see in them. And that is a beautiful thing. And I think that’s where as as leaders, I think about the people that we work with, we have a tremendous capacity to see the best in people and in doing so, kind of prime the pump for that continued behavior and continued sort of relationship building, if that makes sense.
Derek Sivers
Morgane, it’s such a beautiful point. I’m so glad you brought that up. Yeah, that’s such a great use of reframing, is to see the best in others because then it becomes self-fulfilling. I love the self-fulfilling ones. Like, for example, if you’re invited to some social event where you don’t know anybody. And of course, that would make anybody nervous. And you walk in going, “Oh, God.” And it’s like you can deliberately choose to adopt the belief that everyone in this room is just waiting for somebody else to break the ice, or everyone in this room is a potential friend. And if I just initiate things there are a hundred potential friends in this room. That might not necessarily be true, but choosing to believe that will make it more likely to be self-fulfilling. Just like believing the best about a student.
Morgane
What do you think about this connection between the beliefs and the emotions and our overall actions? You speak about that a lot in various contexts, in your books and in your podcasts and interviews. What if we were born into a family that was very black and white in their perspectives, and we’d like to see things a little differently, but we get caught in that cycle of maybe telling a negative story over and over to the point where it becomes entrenched and it just feels like fact. You know, let’s think about divorce, for example. You know, you have one side and the other, and quite often it plays out that way because you have two very distinct sides. There’s sort of a wall that gets built and there’s a good side and a bad side. And ironically, you’re experiencing this very same experience through two very different lenses. How do we shift our beliefs? How do we do that, even to audit those beliefs and go, is it true? Like, what do we do to shift that? Do you know?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I think to judge any particular belief, you have to look at the therefore actions that belief creates. So, for example, if you believe that the town you live in right now, is a terrible place with no opportunities and no good jobs and everybody here is stupid. And there’s nobody interesting here. If you believe that, what actions will that create? So think about that for yourself for a second and then say, “Okay, well, if I were to believe something else that would generate better actions in me, what would that other thing believe?” So like the everybody in this room is a potential friend, or everybody is waiting for somebody else to break the ice. You could just choose to believe that the town you live in is full of interesting people that just aren’t used to sharing themselves so readily and need to be drawn out of their shell a bit. Or you can go find specific examples of people from your town that have made it big and done incredibly successful things. Or you could decide that the idea of being the pioneer to be the first person in your town to go do something big and amazing is what inspires. Whatever beliefs you’re considering.
Derek Sivers
The way you should judge them by is by what actions will that belief create, because nothing of the mind is necessarily true. If it’s just like a thought in your head, well then somewhere on Earth is somebody who believes the opposite and they also believe it’s true. So, you know, see yourself from a zoomed out perspective and realize that even if all of your friends agree, it’s not the only way to think of it. Therefore, it’s not necessarily true. And the reason I’m always hesitant to use the word true is whatever we consider true is closed. You just consider it a closed matter. No questioning. It’s that and that’s that. And we’re done. So I think by saying something that, it’s not calling it false, but just not necessarily true. That opens it up for reconsideration. So if you catch yourself like you just said a belief about, say divorce, I think you were talking about like in a divorce.
Morgane
In a divorce. Yeah, there’s two opposing sides seemingly. Not always. But that’s often the narrative that plays out.
Derek Sivers
Right. And so you might be thinking, this other person is terrible. My ex is terrible and wronged me and is an evil person. And I’d say, okay, well, if that’s true, what actions does that create in me? It means I’m sitting here stewing in resentment. That’s all it creates in me. Okay, what’s another way of looking at this? What if I unfortunately fostered a situation that made my ex act like that? I encouraged and rewarded that behavior. Okay, now, if I were to believe that. What actions would that create in me? I think that would create an action in the future where I am a little more careful with my words or my actions, or I make sure to think of it from the other person’s point of view and now objectively looking at those two different viewpoints, I’d say, “Okay, viewpoint B is better because viewpoint A, my initial one, just has me sitting there stewing in anger.”
Morgane
Yes. Yes.
Derek Sivers
So I would be empowered by choosing belief B. So the second half of your question, you said, “How can we choose a belief.” And everybody’s got their own way. To me, I just privately in a diary, stack up all kinds of evidence for this belief. We can always cherry pick supporting evidence for anything we want to believe. That’s what we already do. You choose your belief first. You know, “This town stinks. My ex was an asshole.” And you decide on this viewpoint first, and then you go pick evidence that supports that point of view.
Morgane
And continues and perpetuates. Yes, yes.
Derek Sivers
So as long as we’re doing that anyway, you can choose a different viewpoint that you can just tell is the healthier viewpoint. It makes you feel better, it makes you act better. Then just go stack up evidence. Just go replay your whole history in your private diary and find supporting evidence of this point of view. And then I really like the one of almost right away I call a friend and I say, “Hey, I need to talk. I’ve got something on my mind. I’ve just been realizing that, you know, maybe I made a big mistake with my ex. And I just say it out loud, and then my friend will echo it back to me. Either or, sometimes strongly disagree. Sometimes a good friend will say, yeah, “Morgane. No, you’re just rolling off right now. You’re way off the mark. That is not what happened.”
Derek Sivers
Which then you might be able to pull up the useful not true. Like yeah, well it’s useful for me to believe. Okay. So sorry to pause this. I have a very similar example. I’m thinking but not saying which was my company after ten years of running my company. The last year was awful and all my employees kind of turned against me and it was almost like, the crew, making the captain walk the plank.
Morgane
Like a coup?
Derek Sivers
It was a coup. I don’t get to use that word much. No, I was so angry and so resentful about that for about two years. I was just doing like, “Those jerks, those...” You know, like, go on and on and on about what bad people they were for doing that to me. And then after two years, just one day, I just went, “Oh, whoa. What if all of that was my fault?” I was like, “Oh, that is so empowering. If it was my fault, well, that’s something I can do something about. If it’s their fault, there’s nothing I can do but just continue to be angry. If it’s my fault. Wow.”
Derek Sivers
I mean, for one, that’s just kind of badass empowering. Like, look at the disaster I made happen. Look how powerful I am in a bad way, you know. But that is so much more useful to me. And so that’s an example of something that... I shared that publicly in a blog or something. And I said, “You know, I’ve decided that everything is my fault.” And somebody said, “But that’s not true.” And I said, “I didn’t say it’s true. I don’t care if it’s true.” No, this to me, that choosing to believe that everything is my fault. That works for me. And then somebody else in the comments said, “That is the worst thing you could ever say to me. I am ridden with guilt. I grew up with parents that filled me with guilt and I hate this new article of yours.” I said, “Great, so don’t adopt it. No I’m not saying this is true and everyone should think this.” I said, I like to think that everything is my fault. This works for me. Which is another wonderful angle of this is realizing it takes away this universal advice giving dogmatic everyone should believe what I believe kind of thinking. And just says, “No, this works for me.”
Morgane
I love that, and I think, you know, I can see people kicking back against the my fault thing. But I think this kind of leads into this whole idea of relationships piece, too. Because I think whether you are in a professional relationship, you’re in a relationship with people whom you serve, your spouse, your children, all these things, that if you take a certain amount of accountability, whether you’ve found yourself in a position where perhaps you feel disempowered. So I’m not saying and I think you’re not saying, “Oh, it is inherently your fault that someone has acted a particular way.” But if you were to look at things as though you have some accountability in there, it cracks it open so that the very least you’re not going to continue patterns that are maladaptive for you. Right, bottom line. So I think about this as a very helpful mechanism. And actually, like you say, very empowering where some people may misread that and see it as disempowering because somehow, yeah, you’re disenfranchising yourself from the whole thing. But within the context of that, you know, how would you frame it where we are faced with so many different people in our lives. And as we get older, it’s like there’s more and more and more and we want to discern. I mean, for me, I like to discern people who bolster me as an individual, who help me to think critically about some of the decisions I’m making, who build me up, who make me feel good. When I leave an interaction, I feel filled up. I don’t feel depleted. What are some of the things that we can do to create those and nurture those meaningful relationships in our lives?
Derek Sivers
I studied friendship. I moved around a lot. I moved around as a little kid, and then I stayed in place for like nine years from age, say, 6 to 16. And then I started moving every year or two again. So somewhere in there I thought, I want to get better at making friends. And so I read like five books about making friends and learned some healthy thoughts around this. And then a lot of it was just anecdotal. I just noticed that say, for example, even people that I had no initial chemistry with, I just learned that if I push below the surface quicker. It can lead usually, or let’s say more often to a better friendship than if I had kept things kind of shallow chit chat, effortless. You know, because it takes an effort to push below the surface. It’s easy to just meet with anybody and just, “Oh, yeah, you know, the weather and this and that. And how am I? Oh, where are you from? Oh, yeah. Where are you from? Okay, I’m from here. You know, this and that. Okay, cool. Well, it was nice to meet you.” And I just noticed that I’d walk away from those interactions feeling like a missed opportunity. They don’t know a damn thing about the real me. I don’t know a damn thing about the real them. All we had was just some polite chit chat and I did not walk away with a better friend, but I noticed, I think first being on the receiving end of it.
Derek Sivers
I’m going to give a shout out to Rob Bailey. When I was 17 years old, I had just arrived in Boston to go to college and there was this one guy named Rob Bailey that if you would ask him a shallow question, he would turn it deep right away. He was just one of those rare people. Even at that age. I say something like, “Hey, Rob, you know, what are you working on?” And he’d be the kind to go, “Man. I’m just trying to figure out what’s really worth doing, you know, like there’s some things, like, I could work on my scales, but why? You know, I started thinking about the kind of music I like making and whether scales are as much a part of that as, say, the harmony.” And I’d say, “Wow.” I just noticed that I just walked away going, “Damn, that was cool.” Like, I talked to Rob for only two minutes and I felt a deeper connection than ten minutes of shallow chit chat with somebody else. So feeling that on the receiving end, I went, “Wow, I want to be like Rob Bailey.” So that when somebody says, “How are you doing?” I have a deeper answer. And then I noticed when people would play these little kind of parlor games, like you get a deck of cards that are like conversation starters. Oh, I know like the 20 questions or the 80 questions or whatever it is that lead to love, those kinds of things.
Morgane
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know the one, the 36 questions.
Derek Sivers
36, so I thought, well, damn if those lead to love. Like let’s just use that with everybody we meet. Let’s try to like almost everybody that goes beyond a complete stranger. I should be asking them these questions. Not that I want to fall in love with everybody, but if these are the ones that lead to more endearing connections, let’s just do that deliberately. So yeah, that’s what I try to do.
Morgane
I think that’s so great. I love those questions too, because it it does. Essentially it’s a framework for vulnerability and digging beneath that surface. If it doesn’t come naturally to you, or you didn’t grow up that way, or maybe you’re born in a country or a particular environment where it feels rude or it feels uncomfortable to to push that or boring or something. You know, I think it kind of challenges that. And then it’s like a little starter or like a way to practice with somebody. So I love that. And I think, you know, there’s a certain maybe a washing away of our cultural customs that we learn in our society when we can just kind of dig past all that and go like, “But who are you really? And what matters to you? And what are the things that maybe stung a little bit or hurt that have revealed your character, like those types of things?” It’s the simplicity. And I know that for you, the idea of intentionalism and and simplicity is something that you have spoken a lot about. I’m not going to put words in your mouth, but I think about this like we’ve talked a little bit about it in terms of how do we relate to others. But when you zoom out to your broader life, you know, what is that simplicity or that minimalistic approach mean to you generally? Does that does that make sense?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, listeners we are totally changing subject here. Huge subject change because I should look up to see what the word dogmatic actually means. I think of dogmatic as objectively bad for some reason. I think that’s usually used as an insult, like, “Oh, you’re being dogmatic.” You know that you’d say that to somebody who’s just following the rules without being practical. But maybe I’m kind of dogmatic in that if I learn about or think of a way of thinking of something that seems to make sense to me and seems to be a good way to think about it, I like following that through to its conclusion, even if where it leads is unconventional. I’m going to give you the tiniest, shallowest, stupid example because it was something I was talking with a friend about just five minutes before we hit record. I was talking with another tech friend of mine. He runs web servers. I run web servers. He said something about his logs. I said, “I don’t keep logs.” And he goes, “What? You don’t keep logs? You specifically went in and you disabled your web server’s logs?” I said, “Yes, I did.” He said, “Why on earth would you do that?” I said, “Because I wasn’t using them.” And he goes, “But Derek, it’s the default. Why not just keep them just in case?” I said, “Ah, see, I don’t like that. Why not keep it just in case mentality. That’s the kind of mentality that keeps our homes cluttered.”
Morgane
Totally.
Derek Sivers
I said, “I like as a default to get rid of everything that doesn’t have a really good reason to be there.” Like when in doubt, throw it out.
Morgane
Yes.
Derek Sivers
So even when it comes to my web server logs. Yes, my web server by default keeps logs, but I never look at them. Therefore it’s digital junk on my hard drive. So yes, I went in and disabled them and he goes, “Man, you’re crazy.” And I said, “Wait, it gets worse.” I, a few years ago, legally removed my middle name because I wasn’t using it. Because I apply this to different aspects of life and I’m like, you know, my birth certificate has this middle name. I have never, ever, ever used it. I’m halfway through my life now. I don’t think I’m ever going to use it. Why is it there? And I think I had thought that before, but then it actually became a problem when I moved to Singapore and to open a bank account, they wanted my birth certificate. So then they put my bank account in the name with my middle name that I’d never used in my life. When I tried to do a transfer between my two accounts, they said the names don’t match. And I was like, “All right, enough of this. I’m legally removing my middle name.” And so I did. I just had to file like a $50 certificate somewhere and just, like when you get married and you change your surname. So it’s just like I filed the thing to legally remove my middle name because I wasn’t using it.
Morgane
Interesting. That is interesting.
Derek Sivers
All of this sounds like I might just be some weird eccentric. But it’s it’s also just kind of the answer to your question that all of the other best things in life have happened to me because I took a viewpoint or value system or philosophy, and I thought about where could I apply this, or where am I incongruent with this belief that I believe this belief is good. You know, when in doubt, throw it out. You know that thing? Where am I being incongruent with that belief? And so okay, web server logs, etc. but it doesn’t mean that you blindly follow it. You still have to ask yourself, for example, “when in doubt, throw it out” does not apply to friends.
Morgane
Okay, I was going to ask you about that. It’s interesting.
Derek Sivers
Good. Good. I’m amazed that you you went there first. So yeah, I realized that I had in the past to a fault apply that to some relationships in my life. And that hurt and it stung. And I felt the pain of doing that. And I went okay, like. And now I’ve felt the pain of that mistake. I won’t do that again. So no different rule for friendships. Just because something is a good rule doesn’t mean you apply it to everything you know.
Morgane
And discerning that is not always easy. I have recently, when I did a big move, I spoke to somebody who was a minimalist. And she had a really beautiful perspective that shifted because I think, I can’t speak for everybody. But for me, when I thought of the concept of minimalism, I didn’t necessarily link it with intentionality. I linked it with a sense of restriction, kind of like a diet, you know, in much the same way that we think of dieting or we think of that. We think of it as restriction. And she said, “No, no, no, no. I look at it very differently. It’s liberating.” And you know, she gave an example because I said, okay, let’s think about closets. That’s an area that, you know, on an environmental level is very tangible and easy to grasp, hard to do, easy to grasp. So she said, “Think that you’re going to somewhere that’s got a similar climate and you’re going to move for two months. Think about all the things that you would take with you and put those in a suitcase. You’re only allowed like a suitcase.” And I’m like, “Okay.” And she’s like, “Live with that, live within that for the next two months.” And then she said, “Challenge yourself to really see whether or not you’re going to go and visit your closet, the rest of your closet area for the other clothes that aren’t in that said suitcase.” And she said, “What you’ll find is most of the time you’re very comfortable living out of this the suitcase size closet and you really don’t need the excess. It’s like that just in case mentality.” And I went, “Oh, I get it.” And I really got it for the first time. This idea, it’s not about limiting yourself, it’s really about simplifying so that you can open, I don’t know with more clarity to what actually matters without getting bogged down with all the other stuff. I don’t know. Does that fit for you?
Derek Sivers
I love that, and I would love to meet this friend.
Morgane
She’s amazing. She’s amazing.
Derek Sivers
You can ask almost anybody on Earth, would you like the simple life? And almost anybody will go, “Oh, I would love to have the simple life. I want a simpler life.” It’s like, well, guess what? It’s very attainable. You just say no more often and you judge your possessions more harshly. Like, do I really need this thing? Really, really need this thing? If I don’t really need it or let me see if I can do without it, then I don’t need it. And voila, you have a simple life.
Morgane
If we were to to look at this in a simple way, how do we audit? Like you said to yourself at one point, am I living intentionally, this sort of minimalistic lifestyle in all facets of my life. How do we do an audit like that so that it feels like we are living with more intention? I know it’s a big one, but I think that’s what people want. You know.
Derek Sivers
I just reread my notes from David Allen’s classic book called “Getting Things Done”. And in it he said, “You know, that thing that people do in major transitions in their life, like if they’ve just been diagnosed with cancer or they just graduated college. Where they take their whole life into assessment and they reevaluate everything in their life and ask themselves, like, what am I really doing here? What’s it all about?” He said, “I recommend you do that every Sunday. Every Sunday look at everything in your life and just reassess, realign, reevaluate, prune. Let go of things that just aren’t working for you. Think about what’s missing in your life that you want more of. Look at what you have too much of and need to have less of.” He said, “You should really be re-evaluating every week.” And yeah, I was doing that because I just finished my book called “Useful Not True”. And I took care of some other things that had been piling up while I was writing that book and just had that feeling of like, “All right, what’s next?”
Derek Sivers
I went, “So I’m going to reread my notes to that book. I think I’m in a getting things done kind of mode.” And I came across that. I was like, “Oh, that is such good advice.” Like, if it’s not every week, then something close to it. Maybe it’s every month, maybe it’s every quarter. But just looking at what’s going on in your life, what obligations have I taken on that are not really working for me? Where am I feeling things pulling me down versus what’s putting the wind beneath my wings? If you just reevaluate that stuff, it becomes really pretty clear what you need to just let go of. And it’s often kind of uncomfortable, whether it’s private or social, to let go of something that you had previously committed to, whether it’s just telling yourself you’re going to do it or having to admit to somebody else, “Hey, sorry, I know I told you I would do this thing, but I just can’t, and I just won’t. And I’m so sorry.” And you just have that uncomfortable conversation for two minutes, and then it’s done. And yeah, I try to do that more often.
Morgane
I think that’s amazing advice. And I think, you know, just touching on that too. I think at the end of the day, it might disappoint somebody. And circling back to kind of those friendships or those people that you want to surround yourself with. I think the people that that really matter are going to understand that you don’t have the bandwidth or the capacity to show up in that way, and they’ll allow for that, knowing that they have your best interest in mind and the ones who really have a hard time or have to hold a grudge or can’t let it go themselves. You know, at some point that’s information for us and we get to do with that what we may. But I think over time, that sort of piece has been like, “Okay, this person might not necessarily be someone that that I spend a tremendous amount of time with because they don’t get it.” And I think that’s an important piece.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I’ll share a really private thing. Why not. Just a couple of months ago somebody that I considered a pretty close friend was coming through Wellington, New Zealand, where I live, and it was just at like a really hectic time for me. I’m not usually a hectic person, but just like that week, I was just completely overwhelmed and completely hectic and she was asking if we could hang out. And I just said, “No offense, but no, I don’t want to meet up.” And she instantly blacklisted me. She did that thing, like in the WhatsApp app where you can, like, ban somebody and you can tell because their icon disappears. And then, like, the weird thing is just because I’ve known her for years, she was on my business mailing list. And so, like, when I sent out the announcement, it just went to everybody in my mailing list that my new book was out. And the next day it came back saying, “This person has reported you as a spammer.” I was like, “Oh man, she is mad.”
Morgane
Really mad.
Derek Sivers
I was really upset by this. I was like, “Wow, this is one of my better friends. “And just because I couldn’t meet up, she’s yeah, like completely furious at me. And so I kind of turned to a couple other friends and I was like, “Hey, I need to talk about this. This is really upsetting.” And somebody said that the perspective that you kind of hinted at, which is why I told the story, is they said, “Like the fact that she would do this. It sounds like maybe she was harboring some other resentment or something that just you not wanting to meet up one day led her to, like ban you and blacklist you and report you as a spammer.”
Morgane
Like a disproportionate response for a disappointment, right? I think at the end of the day.
Derek Sivers
My friend said, “I think she might not have been as good a friend as you thought she was.” And this is what revealed it. I went, “Oh, wow.”
Morgane
And it’s so important, you know, to realize sometimes those things happen, the shifts. And I love that idea that it’s not your business what other people think of you. I think you lead with a certain set of values. You follow those as best as you can with integrity and that is all that you can do, you know? That is all that you can do. And so listen, Derek, I really want to thank you for being on Kindsight 101 with me today. My audience is largely educators, moms and people who care for others. And what one piece of, you know, messaging would you leave them with? As we head out and we close the conversation today.
Derek Sivers
All right. I’m going to close with an open question for your audience that I would love to hear your thoughts, meaning, you plural audience on this. So first I’ll just say that my email address is right there on my website. My website is sive.rs. And right there there’s a link that says contact me. I have an open inbox. I actually really like my inbox. I spend about 60 to 90 minutes a day just answering email from strangers. I reply to every single one and I thoroughly enjoy it. I mean, I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I live in New Zealand and so I really like connecting with people from around the world. So anybody listening to this, please go to my website, send me an email, say hello. But if you have thoughts on this next question, please let me know. Because just yesterday I was talking with a dear friend of mine that has two kids and I have one kid, and she said something about tantrums. Well, you know, “Every kid has their tantrums.” And I said, “No, mine never did.” And she goes, “What? How on earth you’re lying? You’re lying. If you said your kid never had a tantrum.”
Derek Sivers
I said, “I swear I’m not. Never. Not once, not for a single minute of his life. He’s 12 now. He never, ever, ever had a tantrum. Not since he was born.” And she said, “That’s insane. There is no way.” And I said, “I swear to you, I’m not lying.” And so I thought about why that might be. And here’s my hunch. I’m going out on a limb, and I don’t know why I’m doing this on a public podcast, except to maybe since you asked, you know, a request for proposal from your listeners. I suspect it might have just been a lucky DNA roll of the dice. And so, I mean, I strongly suspect that might be the case, but I also lightly suspect it might be because ever since he was born, I always let him be the leader. So whenever we were hanging out, he led the way. If he wanted to go left, we went left. If he wants to go to the playground, we go to the playground. If he sees a creek and he says, like, “I want to get naked and get in.” I go, “Okay. And he whatever he wants to do.
Derek Sivers
We would do that. I would only set the hard boundaries. Like at the far edge. You know, I’d let him do almost anything he wants to do, but of course, you know, don’t hurt somebody else. And, yeah, I told your mother we’d be home by 7 p.m., you know, but anything between here and then, you know, we’re going to do. And because of that, I think that he grew up feeling that he was in control. And my friend with the two kids that have a lot of tantrums said, “All kids feel out of control. All kids feel that they’re not powerful enough. And a tantrum is their way of reclaiming power.” And I went, “Oh, maybe it’s because I always let my kid feel in power.” Even if I had already predetermined that we were either going to have, you know, corn or black beans. Instead of saying, “We’re having corn and black beans.” I’d say, “You know, it’s totally up to you tonight. What would you like, would you like corn or would you like black beans?”
Morgane
Oh nice, nice.
Derek Sivers
Those kinds of parenting 101 things, you know? But at every step, he felt that he was in charge. And I think maybe that’s why he never, ever had a tantrum. That is a very naive hypothesis. I would love to hear your listeners thoughts on that. So anybody if you’re emailing me anyway, say hello. But let me know your thoughts on this subject.
Morgane
And I bet you’re going to get a wide range of people who have different, varied experiences. But that’s so interesting. And I think your hunch sounds pretty bang on. You know, just from what I’ve seen, we’ll see what listeners say. But I’m curious about that experiment. That’s great.
Derek Sivers
Me too.
Morgane
Derek, thank you so much for joining me today. Derek Sivers, it has been an absolute pleasure. I feel inspired and excited and definitely love the idea of simplifying and becoming more intentional. So thank you for that.
Derek Sivers
Cool. Thanks Morgane.