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“What is the title of Tricia’s next (fifth) book?”

Despite her brother’s teasing, Tricia came to this podcast ready to present the new title of her new book in this episode!  The new title is, “This Book Is For You!”  Subtitle: Loving God’s Words in Your Actual Life.

Tricia describes the book as ideal for anyone who has ever thought the Bible is boring, or anyone who honestly admits, “I know I’m suppose to like the Bible, but I just don’t.”  She describes the purpose of this book as being about “falling in love with the Bible in your actual life. It’s about the reality that you don’t have to be a monk or nun, or one who can step away to a place of enlightenment or a person of great discipline, or a person who isn’t in the carpool lane late and doesn’t have mismatched socks on her kids!”  The theme of this book is to help us learn what the Bible really says and how it still very much applies in this century, this place, and in our “actual lives.”

Tricia talks about living according to what the Bible teaches with an awareness that sometimes we have gotten it wrong; we make assumptions or believe very strongly about things that we believe are important, and yet, we may not learn until later in our lives that, actually, we were wrong.  It has happened many times in history among Christ-followers who thought they were doing what God wanted.  What would happen if we open our minds as we read the Bible and ask God to be “the Lord over our ignorance?”

When we are sure we are right but we might be wrong…what should we do as people who follow Jesus in a world that is filled with opposition? Tricia advises taking these steps: (1) be still and listen, and  (2) lead with love, knowing there’s a chance we might find out some day that we were wrong about what we thought was right!

“We have one job. Everything falls into the lens of loving other people.”  - Tricia

“Much like the year 2020: fast and furious, and also long and slow.” – Rob

“I don’t always know the right thing to do, Lord, but the fact that I want to do the right thing? I think that pleases You.”  - a monk from an episode of West Wing, quoted by Rob

“STOP IT.  JUST STOP IT.” – Bob Newhart, playing a therapist on The Bob Newhart Show

“Don’t start reading the Bible at the beginning! That’s a rough place to start! It gets hard fast after Genesis!” –Tricia

“We are called to be known for one thing, and that one thing is love.” –Rob

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation, by Latasha Morrison

The Prince of Egypt, movie

How the Bible Actually Works, Peter Ens

Irresistible, Andy Stanley

Episode 30: Crisis Management

This podcast episode opens with a crisis of sorts: a very scary surprise (to Tricia, at least) that happens in the first two minutes! Fortunately, it all ends well.

Today Rob wanted to talk about the book Drive, by Daniel Pink. Written back in 2009, it is best described as the science behind what motivates people.  Pink’s three concepts on how to best motivate people: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. “Heads will spring off pillows in the morning if people know that they get to go and do the work they are great at today!”

As a way to discuss the benefits of doing what we LOVE to do, Tricia wanted to compare this principle with the opposite today: the time she watched her son learn about the kind of job he never, EVER wanted to do again! Her two sons decided to try being baseball umpires for a season. One of them found exactly these concepts for his own life through his baseball experience: autonomy, mastery and purpose. And for one of them, well…it was a disaster and a learning experience, all rolled into just a few weeks.

Tricia shares an important principle she learned through through raising boys, part of the time as a single mother: you cannot nurture a boy into manhood. It just doesn’t work that way. “You cannot keep him safe, cozy, cuddly and free from hard things, though that is our nature, as moms.” She quotes her dad’s advice for fathers of sons: “A boy becomes a man when his father tells him he is.”

“Are you raising a son whom you want to become a leader, who loves his wife, who contributes to his community and can handle criticism and be responsible in his circle of influence?  You cannot nurture a little boy into manhood. There comes a time when he needs to step away from his mom and be really bold, really brave, and do the hard thing, to stretch those muscles just to see that he can.” – Tricia

“You cannot nurture a boy to manhood.  There comes a point when he has to be brave, to do the thing you think he cannot do.  He has to prove it to both of you.” – Tricia

“Let your sons take risks, because at some point they will be people in a situation of crisis, and someone will look to them to handle it.  If they have never had to handle it before, they won’t know how.  Let them climb too high in the tree, wander too far from home, be heckled at a baseball game…let them try it so they can figure out, ‘can I do this?’ Because some day somebody will look to them and say, “Oh no!  What do we do right now?” and you want to have raised a son who will say, “I’ve got this, here we go.”  -Tricia

As much as these principles—autonomy, mastery and purpose—are essential in parenting, Rob has relied upon them in his work as a director and motivator of creatives: to let them do the things on their own, give them the time and space to become great at it, and always point them back to “here’s why we are doing this project.”

Rob closes out this episode with…an update on his beard!

This episode was recorded just a little later in the day than usual because...apparently Tricia won an auction?  What?  So this episode begins with her story of…their option to own a real live “bicycle built for two.” 

Her 13-year-old son Tyler was reticent about even getting onto the bike with her—he knew his mom could ride a bike, but he’d never had to share an axle with her.  He is quite “risk-averse,” and blames this entirely on his Uncle Rob for putting him in the front seat on the Space Mountain at Disney World before he even knew what the ride involved.   (Uncle Rob feels bad about that too, in retrospect.)

Tricia’s take-away lesson from tandem bike riding? It’s a good test in leadership and trust!  Particularly if you’re in the second seat where you cannot steer; the back-seat rider has no choices except to keep pedaling and to trust the driver.  Tricia shares this and other wildly practical lessons learned in this experiment.  (And also, they decided to pass this bicycle ownership opportunity along to the very next buyer.)

But, who would guess there could be leadership lessons tucked into this wild experiment?  Tricia raises these related-but-unrelated questions for discussion:

Would you rather lead or follow, and what makes you want to do either of those?

When you decide, ‘I can follow this,’ what kind of leader are you choosing to follow?

And, when you decide, ‘I can lead this,’ what kind of followers do you need?

Rob’s and Tricia’s leadership experience—and followership experience as well—provides good fodder for great discussion between them on the topic.

Episode 28 If I Liked Something About This

 show notes

Tricia and Rob begin this episode with a verbal mistake (on Rob’s part), which begins a brief discussion of what can happen when you think you are listening to someone but your mind is elsewhere, and their conversation continues from there with—as it often does—a whole lot of laughter.

In this episode, Rob announces his decision to…(drum roll)…shave his beard into a different style. After shaving daily for nearly 20 years as a Disney cast member, the pandemic and subsequent closing of Disney World has allowed him to take a long break from that habit.  Tricia expresses her limitations on what styles she can allow or not allow her brother to do in facial hair styles (telling herself that she has unlimited power in that area)!

Tricia is working her way through “Broken Leg Summer,” as her elder son holds some sort of record for the most injuries to various parts of his body. She shares the question she learned from a professor who suggested readily asking yourself this question: “If I liked something about this, what would I like?”  She and Rob both recommend it as a great lens for “looking at hard things,” a creative and thought-provoking way to find the small positives that can exist in otherwise very difficult situations. This question came in handy just last night, when she needed to ask herself, “If I liked something about the fact that my son has broken his leg…”—and found several ways to, against all odds—find something good about it! 

Resources

One Second Every Day (“1SE”) app – Rob has used this app for several years now to capture one random second of every day, and it results in a really fun montage at the end of each year, such that his family and friends look forward to watching all 365 seconds! He describes it as a very easy way to lock in the memories of special days as well as the common moments of our everyday lives.

In this episode, Rob asks his sister to talk about her super power: her ability to remember where she was on any eventful day of her life, not to mention what she was wearing—and for that matter, what anyone else was wearing.  Not surprisingly, this is not a super power of Rob’s, but he’s curious about what it’s like to have a “pictographic memory.” Tricia contends that it is possible for anyone to remember the details of the earlier seasons and events of their lives, and tells how she advises new writers to develop that ability.

This opening topic raises two questions for Rob that he asks Tricia to discuss: (1) What role does the truth play in story telling? And, (2) Rob quotes Rob Bell on the importance of knowing the specific differences between news, journalism and entertainment, as all three serve very different purposes. In Rob’s words, “There are some stories being told very well out there that are not news; they are not journalism, they are not based in fact. They’re just ‘trying to keep you on this web site’ for as long as we can.’”

The second question Rob asks Tricia to discuss: “how do you approach grammar in your creative writing?” Tricia discusses that balance between appreciating the ‘rules’ of good grammar and punctuation, while not reading Facebook and other social media to be the grammar police!

And did you even know that the word “yet” is funnier than the word “again?”

Or that there is a paint color out there that is called, “Camel Spit?”

Rob closes with an experiment he has wanted to try: what if we invite listeners to title the episode? And so, this episode will be known as The Untitled Episode to see if maybe a listener out there will send us “a winner of a title!” 

Tricia and Rob begin this podcast with a ‘fascinating’ discussion of their shared dislike of chewing or slurping noises, their own or others. They suspect they are not alone in their misophonia: a strong reaction to specific sounds!

Tricia opens today’s conversation by quoting Denver newscaster Kyle Clark on taking a day off after this incredible news marathon that the year 2020 has been thus far: “You don’t realize how much you’re carrying until you set it down.”

But what does it look like, to set it down? She and Rob converse about the rejuvenating practice of truly taking a day off, creating the space to do what relaxes you, and to enjoy a day that looks different from your typical work day routines.

“People who work through lunch, never take a break…in our society, that is celebrated. And you can rise to the top really fast just by working harder than everybody else. But it’s also a recipe for burnout. Take some time every day to retreat—and just start there.” – Rob

They both offer very practical suggestions for how to truly make the most of a day off in ways that are rejuvenating for you.  “There isn’t a time when I’m accountable to no one, but for me to be able to say ‘I am only doing the things that I like doing today. I’m only reading or writing for pleasure. …Does it feel like work to me? Then I’m not doing it today.” -- Tricia

“What is the one thing, such that by doing it, makes everything else easier?” Rob, quoting Gary Keller (below).

“Who do you need to let know—so that you can let go?” –Tricia

Resources mentioned:
Next with Kyle Clark, 9news.com

The One Thing: the Surprisingly Simply Truth behind Extraordinary Results, by Gary Keller

Tricia keeps track of the books she reads (“sort of”), and her favorite from the year 2016 was Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert. In this episode, she explains her love of the book and highly recommends that you buy it—not borrow it—because “you’re going to want to write all over it.” (She admits being guilty of writing in library books because she forgot that she didn’t own them.  Large fines were involved.)

Tricia shares an excerpt from the book in which Gilbert describes “the nasty dialogue” going on in your head when you feel you “are stupid, have no talent, and you serve no purpose.” This quote kicks off a conversation in which Rob and Tricia discuss the importance of having confidence and belief in ourselves first before we can have a message or gift to offer our world. 

“My responsibility is to just show up.”—Gilbert.

“My responsibility is not that the work be great; my responsibility is that I show up every time and that I continue.” –Rob

“At the end, someone might say, ‘oh, I was hoping for more.’ Okay, well, I gave it everything I had. I poured my cup into yours—that’s what I had.” – Andy Stanley

“Defend yourself to yourself today!” – Tricia

“So very rarely will you be trusted to do a thing until you have proven that you already know how to do the thing. In a job interview, people will ask you questions about if you can do this job that they’re hiring you to do. They’re not hiring you to learn how to do it or to teach you how to do it, they’re hiring you to do it. So you may need to create your own opportunities to get the chance to do it.” – Rob

Tricia and Rob discuss the “six thinking hats” (see resource below) as an effective way to look at all sides of a project or creative process, whether you’re thinking, imagining and creating alone or with a team. They also dialogue on the benefits of inviting someone into your thinking process just to help you look both creatively and realistically at all sides!

Resources mentioned and highly recommended:

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Big Magic

Pressfield, Steven. The War of Art

Godin, Seth. What to Do when It’s Your Turn (and It’s Always Your Turn)

DeBono, Edward. The Six Thinking Hats

Iger, Robert. The Ride of a Lifetime