32 - Crux Beta Topout (Keep Showing Up)

Welcome to Crux Beta Topout: a show where every week, Phill and I talk about our biggest challenges and mistakes, the lessons we’re learning from them, and then bet on how to be better.

If this is your first episode listening, I’d suggest listening to one of our other episodes! A couple of my favorite episodes are Crux Beta Topout (Don’t See the Acorn Doctor) and Josh Todd Pt. 1 (Why Hustle Doesn’t Always Work). This one might largely be just for Phill and me because we talk about things out of context and a lot of inside baseball.

But if you’re dead-set on keeping up with us, Phill and I talk about the importance of showing up even when you don’t feel like it, his post-breakup anger and my general grumpiness, and how important it is to keep moving--even when you don’t feel like progress isn’t being made, it’s important to remember there’s a critical threshold in every effort. In Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about these threshold moments, where he asks you to think of your goals in this thought experiment. Imagine you have an ice cube in front of you. You’re in a cold room, but your goal is to melt the ice cube. If you were to turn the thermostat up, all the way to 31 degrees, the ice would still be solid. But when you move from 31 degrees to 32 degrees, something happens. Suddenly, that one degree makes all the difference. But it wasn't just that one degree that made the difference. It was everything before it. Every bad painting. Every bad podcast. Every time you decided to try, especially when there was no applause or feedback or when it felt as impossible as it did important. And so, we have to remember: we need to show up every day for the things that matter. We need to be getting warmer degree by degree, even if the ice isn’t melting yet. Too many people quit at 31 degrees. Keep showing up, every day. Get better, degree by degree. Day by day. It all counts.

QUOTES

“Above all, it was an attempt to know. The Greeks were perhaps the first to see the world as a question to be answered--they were particularly gripped by the passion to understand, to penetrate the uncertain flux of phenomena and grasp a deeper truth, and they established a dynamic tradition of critical thought to pursue that quest. With the birth of that tradition and that quest came the birth of the Western Mind.” - Richard Tarnas

“When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before it.” - Jacob Riis

BETA MENTIONED

Books:

The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas

Atomic Habits, James Clear

Podcasts:

Seth Godin on The Tim Ferriss Show

You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes

Brené Brown on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

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If you or someone you know would be interested in being vulnerable for this podcast, I’d love to talk about it. I’m interested in your story of confronting doubt, uncertainty, and the mystery and mess of being human. You can email me at [email protected].