Ready for the Quest

NOTES // Chapter Seven

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Here’s your regular reminder that I am not licensed therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, or counselor. This stuff is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice or treatment.

00:22 // "I still have hope..."

That's my friend Azalea Faye. They are speaking the words of Morgan Harper Nichols, which she posted on Instagram on September 19, 2021.

00:40 // "Hope locates itself in the premise..."

After Azalea, you're hearing the voice of Jennifer Schlueter, with whom I've done my best work in the theatre. She's reading from Rebecca Solnit's incredible book Hope in the Dark.

6:06 // "I've got a list of nine Achievement Skills..."

That list is right here.

8:10 // "I read about hope being a cognitive function..."

Much of this comes from a 1995 article by C.R. Snyder ("Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Nurturing Hope") in the Journal of Counseling & Development: Volume 73, Issue 3.

08:36 // "Hope is being able to see that there is light..."

9:14 // "I started investigating and I found the work of C.R. Snyder..."

That's John Dranschak reading the words of Brené Brown. These quotations come from The Gifts of Imperfection (which is now available in a 10th anniversary edition) and Daring Greatly.

9:52 // "Hope is a way of thinking..."

That's right. It's not a feeling, it's a cognitive process, transforming a goal, pathways, and agency into action.

Similarly, optimism is not a feeling. Optimism is a thinking style. It's a way of deciding how to deal with informtation.

11:16 // "Evander Holyfield said that his coach told him..."

Here's Kim Garrison Hopcraft again. This time she's quoting Triple H.

Paul Levesque AKA Triple H tells this story in Tim Ferriss's book Tools of Titans. He also suggests that working out for 15 minutes after long flights can eliminate jet lag.

This book is on the list, by the way. It's huge, and the entries range from philosophical thoughts to very practical tidbits from some very interesting people – many famous and some very famous.

12:04 // "There are ways to better describe your goal..."

Here are several ways to work on defining your goals.

My friend and mentor Artie Isaac has an "annual message in a bottle" that walks you through the process of defining your aims. (Not goals – aims. Don't worry, Artie will explain.)

Michael Bungay Stanier has an excellent (and impressively short) book called How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters. It's one of a few books that came out and had me thinking, "Oh crap! Someone wrote my book!" Luckily it's both totally great and totally not my book. (Whew! That was a close one.) MBS writes about goals in the book and in a number of helpful blog posts – here's an example – and says that a "Worthy Goal" is thrilling, important, and daunting. He explains it in this video.
Then, in late 2023, Ali Abdaal put out his book, Feel Good Productivity. And boy oh boy, when I saw that title, I thought I was done for. "This is it," I thought, "Someone's written my book already and I've wasted all this time." Again – not my book! Thank goodness! And also – Really great book! Abdaal prefers NICE goals, which stands for "Near term, Input measures, Challenging, and Energizing." He explains it in this video.

12:13 // "If you've ever watched Simon Sinek's talk..."

You haven't?!? Well, here it is →

13:42 // "I wanted to be the next Bret "the Hitman" Hart..."

Here's a video of Bret Hart vs Ricky Steamboat from 1986. Classic.

22:13 // "The biggest obstacle to creativity..."

There's my neighbor, actor Rudy Frias, quoting Rodney Mullen, who is the “Godfather of modern street skating” and one of the most influential people in the world of skateboarding. These days, he's kinda of an elder statesmen, and has more than a bit of a Jedi Knight sort of vibe. The quotation is from his TEDx OrangeCoast talk.

Here's Rodney in an excerpt from the fantastic Tony Hawk documentary, Until the Wheels Fall Off.

17:01 // "Do not wait for someone else to rescue you..."

That's Michelle Schroeder Lowrey reading something that Maggie Smith (poet, writer, editor, and teacher) posted on Twitter →

Today’s goal: Do not wait for someone else to rescue you. Do one thing today, however small, in Operation: Save Yourself. Make a ladder, pick a lock. Keep moving.
— Maggie Smith (@maggiesmithpoet) January 9, 2019

"Keep moving" became the title for her excellent and – well, moving – 2020 book about "loss, creativity, and change," which also includes that quotation.

She has a book on writing and creativity, Dear Writer, coming out soon. I can't wait to read it. I note that she includes hope as one of her "ten essential elements of creativity." Fantastic!

18:09 // "A lot of work on these concepts was done by Albert Bandura..."

Read about Albert Bandura →

Sorry that it's an obit, but it's the best short biography about him I could find.

25:26 // "It's time now to tell your own stories...."

A couple other examples:

During the recording of this audiobook, I often worried that it wasn’t fun or entertaining enough. So, I kept a list of all the parts I thought were charming or delightful, so I could combat that negativity bias.
When I started sharing chapters from this book, I created an "encouragement file" on my computer and collected the kind words of praise that came back to me. When things got tough, I opened up that file.

26:05 // "From the start of his day..."

That's Acacia Duncan, reciting Steven Pressfield's story about Randy Wallace. The story was told on a Tim Ferriss podcast →

22:13 // "Serena yelled, both in joy and agony..."

John Michael Holmes is quoting from a piece called "Serena Williams and the Policing of Imagined Arrogance" from Hanif Abdurraqib's book of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us.

Shout out to Two Dollar Radio, an independent, Columbus based publisher.

I started to write a whole, long thing where I gushed about Hanif's work and tried to explain how and why I like it so much – but let's make this shorter. Here's a quotation from the philosopher Walter Benjamin, which is stuck in my head because it's one of the epigraphs at the beginning of Reality Hunger, by David Shields.

All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.

Come to think of it, that's something that Maggie Smith and Hanif Abdurraqib have in common. Cool.

30:14 // "... a small but significant reach."

After working on The Ladder of Self-Efficacy I was able to codify my own, personal version of the shortest possible instructions for making art. Goes like this...

Start small. Reach.
Experiment. Repeat.

30:54 // "Learning to ride a skateboard..."

I'm only including this song because it's one of my favorite things. Enjoy!

And – Oh, wait! Did you see this when I posted it on social media? Brant Jones made this video and it's reallllly cool.

0:00

/0:41

I always wanted to be in a rad skateboarding video!

35:16 // "Rick Rubin tells this story..."

I’ve heard this Rick Rubin story several times, and I’ve told in probably 100 times. This seems to be the source of it →

Look at that beard!

I remember walking the fields of Chimaingo (which I talked about here) listening to the episode. Who knew that moment would stick with me for so long?

Rick Rubin's worked for seven years on this amazing book. Check it out →

39:20 // "He finds one word that satisfies him..."

People often ask, when I tell this story, "What was Neil Diamond's one word?" Well – I don't know. But we can conject. The album Neil and Rick made together was called 12 Songs. There's a song on it called "Create Me."

If you listen to the song, it's not hard to imagine that he's speaking, full of desperation, to his muse. Check out these lyrics →

Create me
Take me in your hands and shape me
Wake me from this sleep to then begin again
To live again
Create me

Know that my destiny is tied to yours
Just need to trust me; our destiny is now.
Create me

Create me
Life me up and give a meaning
To a dream that I've been dreaming, endlessly

I suggest that his one word was "create," and it didn't take him long to get to the second word – "me."

42:13 // "Lever of the day..."

This is Ian Short reading some more of Rebecca Solnit's writing. This piece quotes from her essay, "Protest and Persist: Why Giving Up Hope Is Not An Option."

This was part of a "a gloriously weird theatrical collage" called Bootleg Radio which, I co-directed with the aforementioned Jennifer Schlueter. We put together a huge team of incredible collaborators from all over the United States and made sure that each of them left their mark of the finished production. It was overflowing with music, movement, poetry, and hope.

It was one of the best things I ever worked on.